Food

Homemade Oreo Cookies

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I’ve had a hankering for my ice cream sandwich cookies for weeks, but it’s midwinter—who wants to eat ice cream sandwiches?

But yesterday I had an idea. What if I turned those same cookies into homemade Oreos?

Oh. Yes.

I took my ice cream sandwich cookie dough and, rolled it out a bit thinner than I do for ice cream sandwiches. Instead of cutting it into rectangles, I cut circles with a cookie cutter. I baked them for 8 minutes at 190ºC (375ºF), and then let them cool completely on a rack.

When cool, I stuck them together with the following icing:

60 g (1/4 cup) softened butter
60 g (1/4 cup) Olivani at room temperature (shortening will work, for those in the US)
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups icing (confectioners) sugar

Beat butter and Olivani until smooth and light. Add vanilla and beat thoroughly. Sift confectioners sugar over the butter mixture and beat until smooth.

The icing was too soft at first and tended to squeeze out of the cookie when we bit into them, but it hardened overnight into the perfect Oreo filling consistency. I found this quantity of icing perfect for the number of cookies, but if you like double-stuff Oreos, make twice as much filling.

It has been decades since I last ate a real Oreo cookie, so I can’t say whether they are exactly like Oreos or not. But they are FANTASTIC!

Cinnamon Biscuits

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The line between biscuits (in the American sense of the word) and scones is a blurry one—add an egg and little sugar to a biscuit and, hey presto, you’ve got a scone! Take away the egg from a scone and, voila, you’ve got biscuits!

This morning, wanting scones but facing an egg shortage, I found myself improvising. The biscuit variation I came up with was absolutely marvellous, particularly when eaten with a dollop of honey.

This is a giant Sunday morning quantity of biscuits—enough for breakfast for four, plus extra snacking through the day. Easily halved, if you’re not feeling like Sunday decadence.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 Tbsp brown sugar
125g (8 Tbsp) cold butter
1 1/2 cups milk

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Stir in milk. Briefly knead dough, just until smooth. Roll to 1.5 – 2 cm (1/2 – 3/4 inch) thickness and cut into squares, rounds, or whatever biscuity shape you like. Bake on an ungreased sheet at 210ºC (425ºF) for about 15 minutes, until browned.

Nostalgic Baking

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I made Irish soda bread to go with dinner today. As I mixed up the dough, I remembered making soda bread back when the kids were preschoolers. The recipe I have is easily quartered, so I would make a full batch, and each of the kids would make their own quarter-sized loaf. It didn’t even require any calculations—I simply gave them a smaller measuring cup (1/4-cup and 1/4 tsp to my one-cup and 1 tsp measures) and they could follow the recipe just like I did.

They loved baking their very own loaf, and then seeing it next to their plate at the dinner table.

Of course, these days, the teenagers are less keen on baking the bread and more keen on eating it, but I reckon one day they might make their own Irish soda bread again and remember making mini-loaves with Mum.

The recipe I use comes from Beard on Bread, by James Beard. I don’t know if this wonderful little cookbook is still in print, but I encourage you to find a copy—if you’ve never made bread before, Beard will walk you through it. If you’re a seasoned baker, Beard’s comprehensive selection of recipes will give you plenty to riff off as you experiment.

3 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups buttermilk

Combine dry ingredients. Mix in enough buttermilk to make a soft dough. Knead on a lightly floured board for 2-3 minutes. Form a round loaf and place on a buttered baking sheet. Cut a cross in the top with a sharp knife. Bake at 190ºC (375ºF) for 40-45 minutes.

Trying New Things

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I regularly check out cookbooks from the local library. I enjoy trying new recipes and getting inspiration for new dishes.

I’ve gotten some fabulous recipes from library books.

I’ve also gotten some duds.

In winter, I gravitate toward the baking books, so when I saw the book, 500 Cupcakes on the library shelf, I checked it out without even opening it.

The first recipe I scribbled down and tried was mint chocolate cupcakes. Everyone in the family loves chocolate bars with mint, so why not a cupcake?

I had my first misgivings as I was mixing up the batter. The recipe called for only 1/4 cup of cocoa. Surely a chocolate cupcake should have more cocoa, I thought.

But I don’t bake with mint often, and I decided to trust the recipe on quantities—I would hate to get the balance off and not be able to taste the mint over the chocolate.

Unfortunately, I should have gone with my gut feeling on the chocolate. The resulting cupcakes are simply not chocolaty enough to stand up to the strong mint flavour. They’re not awful, but after the whole family weighed in on them, I wrote “meh” on the recipe.

Oh, we’ll eat them all. They’re not that bad. But I won’t be making them again, at least not by the recipe.

Still, it wasn’t a wasted exercise. Every time I try a new recipe, I learn. That’s worth eating some lacklustre cupcakes now and again.

Pear Crisp

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We’ve run out of our own frozen and bottled fruit from summer, so when I found a tin of pears in the cupboard yesterday I immediately decided we needed dessert.

Commercial tinned pears can be overly sweet, so I ‘pimped’ my usual crisp recipe to enhance them. The result was truly spectacular.

First, I tossed the pears into a shallow baking dish and squeezed an entire lemon over the top of them.

Then I made the topping. I mixed:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour

scant 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp each cloves and nutmeg

Into this mixture I cut 1/4 cup of cold butter

Then I mixed in 1/2 cup of finely chopped walnuts.

I spread the topping over the fruit and baked it for 30 minutes at 190ºC (375ºF).

I served it warm with a dollop of unsweetened yogurt and a dollop of lemon curd (which ended up looking like a fried egg…).

The sour lemon and yogurt and the bitter walnuts beautifully balanced the sweet pears.

Tinned pears never tasted so good!

Citrus for Sickness

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Salty lemons and sweet lemon curd…mmmmm.

The entire family came down with a nasty head cold last weekend. We’re all still feeling under the weather a week later.

The scientific evidence is pretty clear that, contrary to popular belief, vitamin C doesn’t actually help a cold. Regardless, we’ve all been gravitating to citrus fruit this week. We went through more than six litres of orange juice, a kilo of lemons, half a kilo of oranges, and the better part of a bottle of lemon juice. I made lemon cornmeal pound cake for the week’s lunchbox treats. I made lemon barley scones with lemon curd for Sunday breakfast. As I type, my husband is making roast vegetables with salted lemons for dinner.

There’s something soothing and clean about citrus on a sore throat. Something refreshing about a juicy orange, even if you can’t taste it because of a stuffy nose. No, it doesn’t actually help us get over a cold faster, but it’s pleasant. When you’re sick, all you want is comfort.

So bring on the citrus. I’m under no illusions about its health benefits, but if that’s what tastes good, I say enjoy.

The Mathematics of Pastry

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I was making pastry for cheese pasties the other day. I made a thick round of the dough on the kitchen table and cut it into eighths for rolling out into individual pastie rounds.

The cut pastry on the floured table was so lovely, I had to take a picture. There’s something pleasingly mathematical about the shapes.

Makes me think about those old school days…

Robinne makes a double-crust recipe of pie dough and divides it into eight equal portions. She makes a cheese pastie from each portion. What percentage of a pie is each resulting pastie? If each of the four family members eats one and a half pasties, what percentage of a pie has each member eaten? How long before they all die of a coronary from eating too much pastry?

Nostalgic Cookie Stars

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Remember those Barnum’s animal crackers that came in the little box printed like a circus wagon and with a string handle?

When I was a kid, those were my favourites. Mum used to let us kids get a box when she did the weekly grocery shopping (no doubt a ploy to keep us quiet), and I can still remember trailing her through the store carrying my little box of cookies.

This week, I found a cookie recipe that evokes those animal crackers. From the most beautifully designed cookbook I’ve ever seen–The Gourmet Cookie Book–these Moravian White Christmas Cookies are stars.

The recipe makes a huge number of cookies, and the dough is not the easiest to work with. Make sure it is well chilled before rolling, roll it in small batches on a well-floured board, and give yourself plenty of time.

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbsp sherry (I used brandy)

Cream butter. Add sugar gradually and beat until light. Add eggs and continue to beat. Combine dry ingredients, and add them alternately with the sherry. Chill several hours.

Roll dough to 1/16 inch (seriously–the thinner the better) and cut with cookie cutters. Bake on a greased baking sheet at 450°F for 7 minutes (I found that the cookies burned at this temp/time combination–keep a close eye on them and pull them out when they begin to brown).

 

Giant Pumpkin

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I made pumpkin soup for dinner yesterday. I chose to use a jumbo pink banana squash for it, because their flesh is quite moist–perfect for soup.

I like to bake my pumpkin when I use it for soup. I cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake the halves, cut side down, on an oiled baking sheet. I tuck a few garlic cloves into the hollow under one half, and end up with beautifully roasted garlic for the soup.

The only problem is that the pink banana squash really are jumbo. I knew the largest one wouldn’t fit into the oven, so I chose the next largest one. I barely managed to squeeze both halves in together. For the soup, I used only one of the halves, and it made enough for two meals.

That’s some serious pumpkin!

A Bite of Summer for the (winter) Solstice

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I’ve been celebrating the winter solstice in little ways all week–candles at dinner, an extra log on the fire, sunny-coloured food on dark plates…Yesterday I pulled out the last of the blackcurrants to make blackcurrant tarts for dessert.

I’d been saving them for a special occasion, and I thought the solstice was an appropriate one, since the blackcurrants were picked and frozen around the summer solstice.

Biting into one was like biting into a piece of summer–bright and sharp.

In case you missed my blackcurrant pie recipe from 2015, check it out here. It is incredibly simple, and oh-so good! In summer, it goes particularly well with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. In winter, I recommend a cup of strong coffee, some whipped cream, and a crackling fire.