Recipe 66 - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

It's her turn to choose the recipe this week. She picked this but asked me to put it up here for her. I think she was a little too drunk to be able to see the keys and do it herself.

This recipe is another David Lebovitz one.


We'll need

225 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150 g granulated sugar
200 g packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
245 g flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
175 g old –fashioned rolled oats (not instant or quick-cooking)
240 g raisins

His results - Jacques Torres' Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe is pretty famous I guess. It certainly gets mentioned a lot. Sometimes well regarded recipes like this turn out to be a little bit of a disappointment when you make them yourself. The notoriety seems a little undeserved. Not in this case though.

These were really wonderful cookies. I didn't manage to get a good picture of the finished product sadly. I ate a good proportion of the dough raw and then manage to destroy most of the finished cookes before I took a picture of a baked one. By the time I took this I was down to a single cookie and I wanted to eat it right then. Fancy photography be damned. I wanted a cookie right then.




These are awesome. Bake them now!

Recipe 65 - Jacques Torres' Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm ill :(

I've not really got to do anything today other than sit around in a blanket feeling sorry for myself. If I'm well enough to bake tomorrow I think cookies are what will be required to put me on the path to health. This is a very well regarded recipe.

We'll need:

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons

(8 1/2 ounces) cake flour

1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract

1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)

Sea salt.

And ideally a 24 hour chill after making the dough.

His Results - Coconut-Chocolate Patties

These are, as She said, incredibly easy to make.





And they were pretty good too. I didn't put any almond extract in but perhaps I should have done. I think they needed a little something. Perhaps a pinch of salt. They were pretty tasty as they were though!

His Results - Ginger Biscuits

She bought me this awesome saucepan. I have a lot of nice stuff in my kitchen but this may be the nicest. Making the batter was very straightforward. When it came to adding the ginger I decided to forgo measuring and just dumped in a pretty large pile.

I must have added just the perfect amount. More than the recipe called for certainly but the's great since I love ginger.


They turned out really well. A bit chewy, nice and moist and fantastically gingery. I handed some round to a few folk and they were very keen on them. Loads of compliments. I'd certainly recommend the recipe.

Recipe 63 - Ginger Biscuits

You can't go wrong with a ginger recipe can you?

I chose this recipe for ginger biscuits.

We'll be needing:


100g butter
1tbsp golden syrup
2oo g demerera sugar
300 g flour
2tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate soda
3tsp ground ginger
Pinch of salt
1 egg beaten

I'll probably pop a little extra ginger in in some form too.

His Results - Green Apple Cakes

A colleague of mine has an apple tree or two in his garden. He brought some of the bounty in to work for me last year and did so again last week.

I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep the apple peel in one piece when I peel them by hand with a knife. I did pretty well with this lot.

It was dead easy to make this cake. In the recipe it said to put it in a buttered pyrex dish. I'd suggest you line it with baking paper though since mine stuck a little.



This was honestly one of my favourite cakes I've made as part of his little project. It was the texture and moistness that really pushed it over the edge into being extraordinary. The flavour was great too but the super moist, sticky, light texture was knock out. I think I probably put in a lot more apple than the recipe writer intended. I also left it in reasonably big chunks, perhaps a centimeter cubed. That will have helped with the ridiculously fine texture. Try this cake gentle reader!

His Results - Victoria Sponge Cake

Delia was as dependable as ever.



Making a victoria sponge is a little more involved than the all in one sponge recipe I mostly use. It's amazing how much difference the technique makes really because the ingredients are more or less identical.



I sandwiched the layers with seedless raspberry jam and served it with some whipped cream. It was very nice! Not the perfect victoria sponge but a nice one.

Recipe 61 - Victoria Sponge Cake

Once more we turn to football club majority owner, best selling cookery writer and fairly-old-lady Delia Smith. This week she will guide us through the making of a true british classic - victoria sponge cake. I've made it a fair bit in the past but never from this recipe. I'm assuming it's a good one.

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/victoria-sponge-cake.html

His Results - Salted Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I did a pretty poor job getting photos this week.

There's even less excuse than normal since I made this twice. This is a great recipe. Super tasty and a doddle to make. I enjoyed it so much that I rustled up another batch on thursday.

I didn't get a photo of the finised, baked cookies for some reason but they were nice. I've just never found a single cookie recipe where I enjoyed the finished article more than the raw dough. Most of both batches never even made it to the oven.

His Results - Fluffy Date and Ginger Cake

Cakes with dates in always have such an awesome texture. It's kind of suprising there aren't way more recipes using fruit or veg to provide moisture. Courgette, beetroot, carrot. It's all great at making moist, delicious cakes!


It was a doddle to put this together and super tasty too.


Weird picture. I like the super low res looking shadows. This was yummy. Incredibly moist and tender and with a lovely ginger flavour. It goes onto my recommended pile. Not a knock out stellar cake but a good one for sure!

Recipe 59 - Fluffy Ginger and Date Cake

Things I love which are in the title of this recipe:
1) ginger
2) dates
3) cake

surely it'll be a winner!

Recipe is here at the ever reliable technicolor kitchen. As per usual it's helpfully already in metric.

His Results - Cherry Chocolate Brownies

I left it to the last minute to go shopping for ingredients and sadly couldn't find any cherries. Undaunted I soldiered on substituting a mixture of strawberry flavoured gummy sweets and necco wafers.



And that actually worked really well! It wasn't what it was supposed to be but it certainly was good. A crunchy, medicine tasting bite every now and then fromt he necco wafers. Chewy bite every now and then fromt he gummy sweetss. And all in a really rich, fudgy exterior.


I undercooked them a bit and I think it was probably a good thing. They were chewy and rich and delicious. No airiness or crumbliness. Pure chocolately chew. Yum!

His Results - Swedish Visiting Cake

I love my skillet. I've made a lot of different stuff in it too. It's a very versatile piece of equipment.




I thought this was awesome. I ate the entire thing to myself in less than 30 hours. As you can see I didn't decorate the top or any of that fancy stuff. It was incredibly tasty though and had an awesome texture. I was heavy on the vanilla extract (quality stuff) and used salted butter.

Yum!

Recipe 57 - Swedish Visiting Cake

I'm sure I've chosen a recipe from the Technicolor Kitchen before. This one looks good to me. We'll be making Swedish Visiting Cake.

We shall need:
200g superfine sugar + a little more for sprinkling
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise, seeds scraped with the back of a knife – or use ½ teaspoon almond extract, as per the original recipe
140g all purpose flour
113g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
about ¼ cup sliced almonds (blanched or not)

I may skip the almonds I think!

His Results - Coconut Cookies

It's been a while since I used my food processor. It was good to get some more use out of it and it made these a breeze to make. It took longer rolling the balls in the coconut than all the rest of the process combined





I added a pinch of salt to these and used salted butter. They are really, really good! I can highly recommend the salt. They have a nice chewy exterior and a creamy soft interior. They are pretty much macaroons but with a slightly chewier outside. Good stuff!

His results - Lemon Ginger Bars

I was out of candied ginger and they didn't have any at the only shop open when I went to pick up ingredients for this. Instead I used candied peel and grated fresh ginger. Other than that I more or less followed the recipe apart from adding in a pinch of salt and doubling the quantities. I thought these were delicious. I wish I'd added a little more ginger but I'm a huge ginger fan. They were pretty cakey rather than crisp or chewy which are the two directions bars tend to go. I can certainly recommend them!

Recipe 55 - Lemon Ginger Bars

She is a fiend for ginger and I'm a fan too. I know she'll approve of this week's choice!

You can find the recipe here at serious eats.

We'll be needing:

• 300g plain flour
  
• 50g sugar
• 2 tablespoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 230g unsalted butter
• 1 large egg
• 40g chopped crystallized ginger
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
• 200g confectioners’ sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice

His results - These Lemon Muffins

I made a loaf rather than muffins. It was an easy recipe, low on washing up which is always appreciated. It was pretty good. Moist enough and with a good texture but to be honest I can't see why it has got so many rave reviews. We've made plenty of better cakes. Solid but not outstanding I'd say.

His results - Scones

These turned out pretty well. There were a couple of things that would have pushed them over the edge into awesome I think. First on the list is cream. I bought some from the shop which was a week inside its best before date but when I opened it it was inedibly gone off. I was pretty gutted.

I could also have done with a proper cutter as could She. Using a mug like I did gives slightly fluted sides and doesn't let hm rise perfectly. Still they tasted nice and had a good texture. Fat is key though. Scones love cream and so do I.

Recipe 53 - Scones

I have eaten a lot of scones in my life. A lot.

Good ones are thoroughly fantastic, the worst are like eating sawdust. This article from the Guardian purports to contain the very best recipe for scones. Fingers crossed they're right about that.

We'll be needing:

350g self-raising flour, sifted
50g butter, softened
50g lard, softened
100-115ml milk

His results - Ooey Gooey Taffy Tart Squares

This was another recipe that was so good I made it twice in a week. It was much better the first time though. I put that firmly down to using muscavado sugar the first time and having run out the second time. Normal brown sugar was OK but not a patch on the first bath. I highly recommend you use muscovado!

I'm not a nut fan, I put sultanas in the first batch and nothing in the second since one of the folks who'd be eating it can't eat dried fruit. Sultanas were good!