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!