Lemon Polenta Biscuits

Well we made it to February, well done everyone! What got me through the last week of January was these fabulous lemon cookies, made a on exceedingly dreary Sunday afternoon. Once they were cooled we curled up on the sofa with steaming cups of tea and dunked these sunshiney cookies (well I did, I'm the dunker of this household). For the next few days they provided a lovely accompaniment to our after work cups of tea.

I spotted the lovely Emma's tweet about her lemon polenta biscuit recipe, and immediately got up and surveyed the kitchen cupboards to see if we had the right ingredients in. Everything except the almonds, so I did a bit of searching and came up with this recipe, halfway between Emma's and this one on Taste.au.

These are forgiving biscuits, quick to make and if your dough starts to get a bit soft, pop in the fridge for a bit and then bring it back out again to separate into balls.

Lemon Polenta Biscuits
makes 12 - 15

100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
grated zest of 2 lemons, plus juice of 1/2 lemon
150g plain flour
75g polenta

1. Put your butter and sugar in a large bowl, and cream together. Or if you are fancypants (me) pop them both in your stand mixer and mix for a couple of minutes with the beater.
2. Add in an egg yolk at a time and keep beating.
3. Add in the lemon zest and juice, flour and polenta. Mix with a spoon (if you're using a mixer it's best to switch to a spoon now), and then knead with your hands briefly to allow it to come together.
4. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes, then separate the dough into 12 - 15 balls around the size of a walnut. Preheat your oven to 200c
5. Arrange on a lined baking tray, and then squish with a wet fork to flatten.
6. Bake for 12 minutes or until lightly brown on the edges
7. Leave to cool and then remove from your tray, and into your mouth.

They keep for about 5 days in an airtight container.

News! I'm holding another food event. My long awaited Gujarati Supperclub is on the 22nd February in Cambridgeshire. Find out more and book one of the last few spaces here: www.foodmela.co.uk 

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Nankhatai - Indian Spiced Biscuits

photo by Ozzy

One of my favourite recipes from my Indian Afternoon Tea last weekend was Nankhatai - they are the perfect cup of tea biscuits and are very easy to make. You can customise them with different spices and once they are baked, different toppings.

Nankhatai can be found in most Indian bakeries and sweetmarts, they usually bake with a cracked top but I couldn't achieve this - I'm not sure what the technique is - but they tasted just as good!

Nankhatai are eggless biscuits, a lot of Indians don't eat eggs for religious reasons which is why they are such a popular baked good in India. They contain a pleasingly large amount of butter, which gives them their melting soft texture and makes them very moreish.

My biscuits are flavoured with cardamom and saffron and I topped them with chopped pistachios (bound with a little runny honey to stop them falling out), and some of them cumin seeds, which I love with sweet things.

Nankhatai - makes about 30 biscuits (easily halved)

100g softened butter
100g icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of saffron
3 pods worth of black cardamom seeds - ground finely
250g plain flour
20g gram flour / chickpea flour
30g coarse semolina
Pistachios or other nuts to decorate.

Preheat your oven 160c / gas mark 4
Cream together the butter and sugar til smooth.
Add in your spices and baking powder and stir briefly
Sift in your flours, mix with a wooden spoon first and then as it comes together use your hands to form a dough - it will be quite soft.

Line or grease a couple of large baking trays and then make 1 inch balls out of the dough and place on the sheet. They should be fully round, don't flatten otherwise you won't get lovely rounded biscuits at the end.

Once you've got all the dough balls ready press into the middle to create a small hole, being careful not to flatten them. I used a velun (a rolling pin for rotli) - you could use the end of a tablespoon very carefully to do this.

Bake for 15 minutes til they are only just a little golden on the edges. Remove from the oven and then add your pistachios or other choice of topping - other nuts work well, as does desiccated coconut, or when they are cool you can add chopped chocolate.

They keep very well for a few days in an airtight tin stored at room temperature. I recommend you have them with a cup of masala chai!

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Chai Masala Biscuits

Whilst making a cup of masala chai the other week I was thinking what a good idea it would be to put some of the masala into a batch of biscuit/cookie dough. I've made spiced cookies before, with a bit of ginger or cinnamon, and the punchy chai masala would probably work just as well. And I am pleased to say it did!

The masala mix is made up of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, ground ginger and nutmeg, I bought some back from India, you can either buy some from your nearest Indian supermarket, grind your own or use the individual spices in the cookie mix. Some larger Tesco stores might even stock it now too.

I used a basic cookie dough from BBC Good Food, which if you read my blog regularly you'll know is a site I use a lot, there are tons of recipes on there and their baking section contains lots of classic recipes - basic sponges, shortcrust pastry, fruit cakes, mince pies. Good stuff.

The biscuits are quite like shortbread, and the masala gives a nice little warmth. If you are a hardcore dunker (well done) I would suggest making them 1.5cm thick instead of 1cm as below.

Chai Masala Biscuits
adapted from BBC Good Food

Makes about 30 cookies, maybe more.I froze half the dough (wrapped in cling film and then put in a sandwich bag), my standard behaviour when making biscuits or cookies - so that I have a stash for when I really crave them.

250g softened unsalted butter
140g sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tsp of vanilla extract
295g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
5g chai masala or mixed spices

Optional:
50g chocolate melted with 5g butter (to keep it shiny) for dipping
Extra sugar and chai masala for sprinkling on before baking / onto the chocolate

Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 5 / Fan 180 / Electric 190 
Cream together your butter and sugar til combined well and nice and fluffy.
Add in the egg yolk and the vanilla extract and mix in well.
Sift in your flour and masala, mix in - you'll need to get in with your hands here and knead to a dough. 
Add a tiny bit of water at a time if it seems a little dry.
Knead very briefly to a soft dough, wrap in cling film and chill for 20 minutes.

Roll out to about 1cm thick and cut into whatever shape you fancy, with a knife or cutters.
Lay on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. You can put them reasonably close together as they don't spread too much during baking.
Sprinkling the biscuits with a little chai masala mixed with sugar before baking gives a nice crunch when they are baked.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes in the centre of the oven.
They can go from not cooked to brown in 30 seconds so keep an eye during the first batch, your oven may behave differently. 

Cool on a wire rack, you can either now eat them or dip them in melted chocolate and leave to set. 
I couldn't stop fiddling around with them and sprinkled the unset chocolate with a little chai sugar for extra spiciness.

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Oat & Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

I think this recipe is the fastest read to bake ratio on the blog yet. Joy the Baker blogged this lovely recipe on Thursday and I was in the kitchen making them on Sunday. I think I would have been quicker had my car not broken down on Friday (I'll save moaning about that for my Twitter account!).

I've been searching out the Peanut Butter Co. peanut butter for a while. They are based in New York and make natural peanut butter without all the scary preservatives and palm oil that most producers use (even brands made in the UK which doesn't use as much palm oil as the States).
Sainsbury's stocks the smooth peanut butter, they have lots of different flavours (cinnamon raisin swirl! dark chocolate dreams!) so I am hoping they get more popular here and start stocking more.

These cookies are so great, I always have success making oaty cookies and these were no exception. They have tons of flavour, lots of crunch from hazelnuts and that amazing peanut butter filling. I used a touch less sugar in both the cookie mixture (2/3 cup) and added icing sugar to taste, I don't like cookies too sweet as I like to taste the rest of the ingredients.

I made up the whole batch of dough according to the recipe, but only baked half, I saved the rest and froze them in little balls in the freezer - ready for future cookie cravings! I do this a lot with cookies as we can't eat such big batches ourselves, and it is nice having cookie dough in the freezer. I made half the icing for my half batch of cookies.

Oatmeal & Peanut Butter filled Sandwich Cookies
From Joy The Baker, makes about 24 cookies.
100g / 4oz unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup of brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups of porridge oats
1 cup of plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
few grinds of black pepper (Mr doesn't like nutmeg so I gave this a go and it worked!)
1/2 cup of chopped hazelnuts

Peanut Butter Filling (this is the whole batch, half if you are freezer stashing your dough!)
3 tablespoons of butter, softened
1/2 cup of good quality smooth peanut butter
1 cup of icing sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3/4 tablespoons of milk

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180c.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl or mixer, add in the egg and mix to combine, add in the vanilla extract and combine.

Mix the oats, flour, baking powder, salt and spices in a separate bowl. Then adding a bit at a time fold in the dry ingredients with the butter mixture. Be careful not to overmix. When it is all incorporated stir in the nuts.

Prepare a flat baking sheet by lining it with baking parchment. Scoop out teaspoon size bits of dough, roll into a ball and place on the sheet 1.5 inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes for soft chewy cookies and 13 minutes for crispier cookies. Bake in batches if you don't have room.

For the filling:
Put the butter, peanut butter and vanilla in a bowl and cream together. Add the icing sugar in batches. I added in half first and mixed, tasted for sweetness and added more to taste. To get a creamier icing that is spreadable add in splashes of milk to the icing.

When the cookies are cool enough (leave in the tray for 5 minutes and then cool on a wire rack for 10 - 15 minutes) spread the icing over each underside of the cookie and then sandwich. Place in mouth. Place another one in your mouth. Make a cup of tea and dunk that cookie in it!

I'm really quite smug that I have another 12 cookies to be in my freezer.

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easy flourless peanut butter cookies

These have to be the easiest cookies to make ever. Four ingredients, made and in and out the oven in 30 minutes, and no flour!

They are crumbly and soft and if you want to add a 5th ingredient I urge you to press in some dark chocolate chips.

Please use good quality peanut butter for these, I opted for Whole Earth organic peanut butter which has nice chunky peanut pieces in it, and a lot less oily than standard peanut butter.

Update - 14/7 - Something I forgot to say! I tried these with a mixture of honey and sugar too, 3/4 of the sugar and 1/4 of soft set honey which works just as well. I think half and half might even work too!

Makes 24 cookies
adapted from joy the baker

1 cup (200g) good quality crunchy peanut butter
1 cup (200g) of brown or caster sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 tsp of baking powder

Preheat your oven to 180c / gas mark 4. Grease and line a flat baking sheet. This recipe makes two batches, if you have two trays you can cook them at once or cook in batches.

Add your peanut butter, sugar and baking powder to a mixing bowl, stir well to combine the ingredients. Add in your beaten egg and mix for a few minutes until you have a soft dough.

Form into walnut sized dough balls and add to your baking sheet, press down with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes until golden brown.
Leave to cool completely on the baking tray (I know, torture!) so they harden slightly - they are quite soft when they come out of the oven.

Serve with a large cup of tea, feet up and begin dunking!

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macadamia, hazelnut and choc chip cookies

These cookies are a result of having lots of tiny packets of nuts from the Graze box we receive. I have to admit we eat the interesting things first (korean chili crackers, wasabi peanuts, chili almonds..) and the plain things like macadamia nuts and hazelnuts generally remain unopened.

So I make them into cookies!



I based this recipe on this one over at Joy the Baker- but replacing the white chocolate with 70% dark and using a mixture of nuts. The best part of this recipe is the browned butter, it gives the cookies a wonderful nutty flavour, which obviously goes with the nuts!

Macadamia, Hazelnut and Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Makes about 12 very big cookies or 24 smaller ones
(I used cups for this recipe so I'm afraid I have no grams conversion!)

1/2 cup unsalted butter - softened
1 cup caster sugar
2 tablespoons of milk (I added a touch more to the end as my dough was a bit dry)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 and 3/4 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

50gs macadamia nuts
50gs hazlenuts
50gs dark chocolate

Preheat your oven to 190c / gas mark 6

Heat your butter on a medium heat in a saucepan, stirring regularly. After about 5 minutes you should see brown bits appearing in the butter, once this happens remove the butter from the heat, leave to cool for a 5 minutes more.

Once your butter is cooled add it to your sugar in a large bowl, slowly mixing it in. Then add in your egg and combine. Add milk and vanilla.
Then slowly add in your dry ingredients (except nuts and chocolate).

Bash up your macadamias and hazelnuts in a freezer bag so that they are coarsely chopped.
Chop your chocolate in to medium chunks - however small you like them.
Add your nuts and chocolate to the mixture.

For large cookies spoon tablespoon ( I made big ones) fulls on to a greased and lined baking sheet, for smaller ones aim for a generous heaped teaspoon.

Bake for approx 10 minutes until golden. Leave to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Eat with a lovely frothy coffee or a glass of milk!

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Sunday baking...

Lately I've been cooking a lot with chocolate - brownies, biscotti, more brownies - I was really craving oatmeal raisin cookies after this blog post on Smitten Kitchen. I tried the recipe from Friends (I'm not sure if it was an official Friends recipe though, lol) a couple of years ago and they were indeed the best oatmeal raisin cookies ever. I don't know why it took me such a long time to make them again, they are perfect cookies.



I used the recipe from A Spoonful of Sugar in the end and it turned out some gorgeous cookies - crumbly, chewy and crispy.

The only thing I'd change about this is the amount of sugar, as they are a bit too sweet, even for me. I think next time I will go down to 200g in total of brown sugar. The mixture was quite dry anyway so I think taking out the sugar will help next time.

The beauty of this recipe is that it makes LOTS of cookies, my batch made about 45 - probably more if I hadn't made the first batch bigger than I should have, the cookies spread out quite a bit when they bake.
I froze half of the mixture. To do this form into dough balls, freeze on a tray and then chuck them in a freezer bag - you can cook them from frozen (I'd double the cooking time for this). I like doing this, nothing cheers up a bad day like fresh cookies made with no effort.

I think next time I am going to experiment with a bit of lemon zest or maybe cranberries and raisins.


xx

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