Cosima Underwater

By popular demand, little man and I made chocolate crinkle cookies last Sunday. Thank you very much for helping us decide :).

For all of you interested in the other recipes, here is a link to the yummy-looking persimmon cake, which one day I will bake as well. Persimmons are quite new to me, but they are offered in every supermarket in Hong Kong at the moment. I am amazed about the different tastes and textures they have. Some remind me of pear, others taste more like pumpkin pie. I think persimmon would go very well with Christmas spices in cakes or cookies. And here is a link to a video showing how to make Tuiles.

We however baked chocolate crinkle cookies, using this recipe, for which you will need:

8 ounces of melted bittersweet chocolate
1 3/4 cups of flour
1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of baking powder
pinch of salt
4 ounces of butter at room temperature
1 1/3 cups of brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup milk (which we didn’t use)
1 cup caster sugar for rolling
1 cup icing sugar for rolling

Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Carefully melt the chocolate in a microwave or double boiler (heat resistant bowl in a pot of simmering water), taking care that the chocolate doesn’t become to hot. Let cool slightly.

In the meantime, mix the butter with the brown sugar until well combined (I used a fork). Then add the eggs and beat mixture until light. Add the melted chocolate.

Slowly, spoon by spoon, add the dry ingredients and milk to the mixture, making sure that everything is well combined before adding the next spoon. I have to admit that I completely forgot to add the milk, but the dough consistency was still fine. It should be thick and heavy.

Wrap the dough in cling wrap and chill in the refrigerator until firm. We cheated and divided the dough into two equal sized portions and popped them into the freezer to speed up the process. When I took the dough out after about 15 minutes, it had the consistency of hard, chilled Muerbeteig.

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit/180 Celsius.

Prepare one bowl filled with granulated sugar and another one filled with icing sugar. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

And now comes the fun and messy part: take tablespoon sized portions (3/4 ping pong ball-sized) off the dough and roll them to balls between your hands. Then press them slightly. First, roll the cookies in the granulated sugar, then in the icing sugar until they are well coated. Put them on the baking tray about 1.5 inches apart, and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Little man and I had a hard time waiting while they cooled down enough for us to try them. And I have to say that we were a bit disappointed. Maybe we did something wrong? They had a crumbly and dry texture which I didn’t like, and they were tooth-achingly sweet. Even little man, who normally loves all things sugary, had only a few and asked for a big glass of water afterwards. That said, the overdose of sugar and chocolate makes them a perfect wake-me-up snack for a drowsy morning or afternoon. After eating a handful, I felt very alert, a bit like a nervous hamster…lol.

(Sorry, no photos this time. My digital camera died, and my phone camera wasn’t up to the challenge of taking pics in low light.)

Tomorrow is little man’s school Christmas fair, but on Sunday it’s time for the fourth installment of our Christmas cookie marathon. Please help us decide what to bake:

1) Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Because we love chocolate!!!

or

2) Tuiles

Because they are thin, crunchy goodness!!!

or

3) Persimmon cake with candied ginger and walnuts

I know it’s not a cookie, but persimmons are in season, and that cake does look good, doesn’t it?

Please cast your vote :)

It was one of those days today.

The sun was shining, but to be honest I was hoping for rain. Sometimes it is just wonderful to have a lazy morning in PJs without feeling guilty about it.

Little man had a relapse into the terrible twos, and kept his mama on her toes. Why?

Because it was one of those days.

I was toying with the idea to take a break from our Christmas cookies test series, but then I thought that baking may get little man’s mind out of his rebellious state, and give him something fun to do.

Initially it helped, but somehow baking wasn’t enough for a little six-year old with boundless energy this morning. He disappeared after a while to make paper airplanes, and came back after five minutes to ask mama to help him with folding. Busy mama with dirty hands, had to say “no, sorry”. Unfortunately, little boys with a bossy streak do not take no for an answer. So while I was explaining to little man why he has to wait, and he was saying “but I want my paper airplane NOW”, and I was saying … etc etc… I messed up the recipe.

I ended up with a very soft and sticky dough, and wondered why.

Because it was one of those days.

Because in my side-tracked state of mind, I had taken only half of the recommended amount of icing sugar, but the full quantity of egg whites. Something to do with initially planning to half the recipe but then eventually deciding to do the full amount, and somehow forgetting what the final plan was midway through.

Anyway, here is the recipe for Zimtsterne from “Unser Kochbuch Nr. 1″ (Our Cook Book No.1), which my parents, clearly worried that I would starve, gave me when I moved out of their house about 20 years ago. It has 700 recipes with a special how-to section for dummies. You can half the recipe or not, or can, or not, or can, but don’t forget what you settled on:

For 60 Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) you need:

400g ground almonds, 5 egg whites, 400g icing sugar, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon (I used 3 though), additional icing sugar for rolling out the dough

Beat the 5 egg whites until very stiff, add the icing sugar one spoon at a time, and then the lemon juice. The mixture should look like shiny whipped cream. Take 4 tablespoons from the egg white mix and put it in a separate small bowl for later use as icing.

Fold the ground almond and cinnamon into the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius (285 Fahrenheit).

Roll out the dough to about 1cm thickness on icing sugar or corn flour (we did two batches, one 1cm thick the other only half a centimeter, while the thicker cookies stayed chewy in the middle, the thinner ones were crispy, I liked the crispy ones better, little man the chewy ones).

Cut out stars with a cookie cutter, brush the egg white creme on top, and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake the cookies – it is more drying than baking – for 30-40 minutes.

So far the theory, reality didn’t go as smoothly. Even after adding the forgotten half of the icing sugar, the dough was still too sticky. I have done this recipe several times and it always worked out fine, why not this time?

Because it was clearly one of those days.

Or because I didn’t use ready-made ground almonds, which are fairly dry. Instead I used unblanched whole almonds, which I ground myself in an old coffee grinder. They smelled wonderful, but were fairly greasy.

I had to add corn flour to the dough to make it manageable. First, we folded a paper airplane, then we rolled out the dough on icing sugar.

And as you can see, we didn’t have a star shaped cookie cutter. We made a modernized version of Zimtsterne with airplanes, trains, cars, and other merry Christmas folk, and it suddenly hit me why these “Christmas cookie cutters” had been such a bargain.

Then little man brushed on the egg white mix, and we put the cookies into the oven. After only five minutes, the icing turned slightly brown. It is supposed to stay as white as snow.

Say it with me please: Because it was one of those days!

I blame my prehistoric gas oven, for which it is very hard to control the temperature and keep it at a low level.

They don’t look very pretty, but taste delicious nevertheless.

It was one of those days. But with cookies. And so the day had a happy cinnamon star ending.

Can you tell we are gearing up for Christmas?

Little cookie monster and I are trying out a different recipes every weekend. Only the best will be on our final Christmas cookie list. Last week’s biscottis were my favorite, but little man didn’t like the hardness of them. So this week, we tried a more kids-friendly recipe:

Muerbeteig cookies with lemon icing and a ton of colorful sprinkles

Knead 70g of caster sugar and the mark of one vanilla bean into 140g of unsalted butter. This works best if you cut the butter into little cubes. Add one egg yolk, and 210g of flour. It’s a 3-2-1 Muerbeteig dough (3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part sugar), which also works great for tart bottoms. You can leave out the egg, but I find for cookies adding one egg yolk works best.

I don’t have a fancy kitchen machine, so we used our hands. There is something very satisfying about grabbing a handful of buttery dough and pressing it through your fingers. Through experience I have learnt to only put one hand into the dough, so that you still have one clean hand to prevent a little cookie monster from eating half of the dough or eating all the sprinkles :).

Wrap the dough into cling wrap and let it rest for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. You can also make the dough one day in advance and leave it in the fridge over night.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (320 Fahrenheit). Roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness on a floured work top, and then use cookie cutters or a small glass to cut out shapes. We got about 65 cookies. Lay them on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake for 10-15 minutes. We watched them all the time, you want them to brown only lightly.

Let them cool. For the icing, mix about 120g of icing sugar with a few tablespoons of lemon juice, until it becomes a gooey sauce. Brush the cookies with the icing, and then let little cookie monsters add the final decoration.

It was such fun to see little man enjoy making cookies and eating them. We agreed to only eat the broken cookies today. You know, the reindeers without horns and the Christmas trees without tops. There were surprisingly many of them. I am counting making cookies with little man today. He is such a sweet little cookie monster :).

I should have made more.

I had such a craving for something sweet this afternoon and there was plenty of flour and a big bag of almonds in my kitchen cupboard. After a bit of surfing on the internet, I decided to make almond biscotti. I love them, but had never baked them myself before. The ingredients and instructions below are a combination of several recipes I found on the internet. They are surprisingly easy to make.

Almond Biscotti

100g of whole blanched almonds (go here on how to blanch almonds)
125g of plain white flour (but have plenty more at hand)
125g of brown sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
mark of 1 vanilla bean
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). Lightly grease a baking tray or line it with baking paper.

Lightly dry toast the almonds in a frying pan, or on a baking tray in the oven until fragrant. (Side note to self: Do not eat too much of the almonds, even if the smell is intoxicating. You’ll need them.)

Mix the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Don’t add the almonds yet.

Scrap out the mark of one vanilla bean. Beat the eggs and vanilla mark in a separate bowl until light.

Combine the eggs with the dry ingredients, but leave out the almonds. Knead the dough until it becomes elastic, adding more flour if it is too sticky.

I ended up adding a lot more flour than in the original recipe, about 100g more. How much flour you need probably depends on the particular size of the eggs and also how the flour that you use absorbs moisture. (Note to self: Keep the flour bag open and close at hand, so that you don’t need to rummage through cupboards with fingers full of sticky dough, leaving traces everywhere.)

Add the almonds and knead them into the dough.

Form long loaves about three fingers wide and one finger high, and put them on the baking tray. I ended up with two loaves about 40cm (16 inches) long.

I baked the loaves for 30 minutes, then switched off the oven, and let them sit in the oven for a further 30 minutes. They should not color much.

When I baked them, the smell of almonds and vanilla permeated the whole apartment. Little bubbles of almond oil oozed out of the biscotti loaves.

Take them out of the oven.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) again.

Let the loaves cool for a bit, then cut them diagonally into one centimeter (about half an inch) thick slices. I used a serrated bread knife.

Try stopping yourself from eating more than half of the biscotti at this point. Nibbling away the loaf ends is allowed though :).

Spread the slices out on the baking tray, cut side down, and bake for a further 10-15 minutes, turning them over after half the time. It’s better to keep a close eye on them while they bake for the second time. They should be completely dry but not color.

In theory, biscotti should keep for a few weeks in an airtight container. In reality, they will be gone by tomorrow. We are a two person household, so double or quadruple the ingredients if you are baking for more people. The original recipe called for 500g of flour and 500g of sugar.

Mmmm… crack … sweet… crack… full of almond aroma… crack… yummy!