Number four started school today…  yes I am the type of mother who fights back tears at the school gate. Mercifully, this time was much easier.  Finally I have a child who was excited about going to school! Usually I am the mother who has the hysterical child pried off her with instructions to “not look back,” it has always been horrendous.

But number four has been counting down the days until big school, and he went off without even a backwards glance.  The build up for big school seemed to be going on forever, first the orientation days last year, then buying the school uniform.  Santa bought lots of school supplies and a school bag.  Then we had to find a special spot in his room for the uniform, school bag and shoes.  He has been dying for his lunch box to be filled with food and to have a drink bottle he can drink from all day.

Now the day has finished and all went well. As we were coming home from school I decided that we needed an after school treat like I used to have when I was in kindergarten.

I thought we would make Cornflake Cookies.  The recipe makes 30 huge lunch box cookies.  They are delicious, a little bit nutritious and very quick and easy to make. So now he has a special lunchbox treat for tommorrow.

Ingredients:

250gm butter

1 cup sugar

1 t/s vanilla essence

3 eggs

2 ¼ cups SR Flour

5 cups Cornflakes (lightly crushed)

1 cup sultanas

250gm dark chocolate bits 

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla and eggs one at a time and then mix on high.

Remove the bowl from the electric mixer and add the remaining ingredients.  Mix altogether until well combined.

Roll the cookie mixture into small balls and place on a well greased baking tray. Leave space for spreading.

Cook for 15mins, or until golden.  Allow to partially cool on the baking tray before transferring to a wire rack.

So there you go!  Number 4’s first day of big school and a lunchbox cookie recipe from yesteryear. 

Something tells me I will have trouble convincing Number 5 to wait the two years until she is old enough to start big school.

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Week 1

Stone Fruit

Welcome to 2011 Cookbook Challenge! My regular readers will remember last years list of 52 cooking themes. This year the themes are fortnightly, so I will only have 26 topics to contemplate creating a dish to represent the week. Last year there were themes I had difficulty interpreting in culinary terms, and readers were fantastic, making suggesting of dishes and providing recipes via facebook.  I really hope that continues this year, the interaction was something I really enjoyed. As soon as I know the year’s topics I will post them so you can look ahead at the topics and help me with ideas.

This week’s topic is stone fruit.  I love Christmas time for all the delicious fruit available to us.  Stone fruit means Christmas to me. There have been so many delicious cherries in the stores that my next thought was to create a dish using cherries.

The most famous cherry recipe I could think of is the Black Forest Cake, but I wanted a twist. So I give you, my version of a Black Forest Macaroon.

I had a little trouble finding Kirsch so I substituted for a cherry liqueur which was delicious and much easier to find. The sentiment amongst my tasters was that these macaroons were the best I have made.  The reason they gave was that they are not too sickly sweet.  I usually fill my macaroons with a flavoured ganache and this time chose a cream flavoured with the cherry brandy and Morella cherries.

Macaroon Ingredients:

3 egg whites

¼ cup caster sugar

1 cup icing sugar (sifted)

120gm ground almond

¼ cup cocoa powder

Cream Filling:

250ml cream

5 Tbs pure icing sugar

100gm canned cherries drained and patted dry

2 Tbs cherry brandy

Cream Topping:

100ml cream

3 Tbs pure icing sugar

1 t/s vanilla

Cherry Tops:

15 cherries

15gm copha

100gm dark chocolate

Method:

Beat egg whites until soft peaks form.  Slowly add the caster sugar beating well between each addition. Beat until stiff peaks form. Transfer the mixture to a larger bowl and gently fold through the icing sugar and then the almond and cocoa.

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees. Prepare two baking trays with paper.

Once the mixture is combined place the meringue into a piping bad and pipe round macaroons.  Leave the macaroons to sit on the baking tray for 20mins prior to cooking.

Bake for 30 mins or until cooked.  Leave on the tray to cool.

To make the cherry cream filling, beat the cream with brandy and icing sugar until it is very stiff.  Stir through the cherry and refrigerate.

The cream topping is made by beating all the ingredients together until stiff. Refrigerate.

Chocolate Cherries are made by melting the copha and chocolate in the microwave together.  Stir until smooth. Place baking paper on a tray. Ensuring the cherries are completely dry dip them in the chocolate mixture and place onto the baking paper.

Once complete refrigerate the cherries.The remaining chocolate is used for the shaved chocolate on top of the macaroons.  Pour the chocolate on to baking paper and refrigerate.  Once harden grate the chocolate into a dish to sprinkle over the macaroons.

Assembly the macaroons when you are ready to serve.

Just a warning, the macaroons need to be eaten on the day they are assembled. The cream will soften the macaroon over time. This wasn’t a problem for my tasters, and the ones that were eaten the following day were still delicious, but they lack some of the previous day’s meringue crunch.

Hello Dear Readers,

Today I did something rather unusual for me. I rode my bike into the supermarket to collect some items I needed for cooking.  That may not sound like an unusual activity, but for those who know me well, they would understand, this does not happen too often.  I am a chronic exercise avoider.

So what inspired this outpouring of enthusiasm? Believe me it wasn’t anything as noble as “wanting to get fit.” It was simply looking at the ingredient list for these cookies, and wanting to maintain something of a waist line.

I knew the smell of the molten peanut butter would make me weak at the knees. No amount of willpower was going to stop me popping these little babies in my mouth before they had so much as cooled. Hence, the ride!

I have to give full credit to “She Simmers” for the recipe.  My 3 year old daughter noticed these cookies when we were flicking through our usual sites, and she wasn’t going to let me move off the page until I had agreed to help her make them.

The method is so simple and quick, that it was a perfect recipe for us to make together today. I have doubled the recipe, changed the method slightly and renamed them Snickers Cookies because I think they taste exactly like a Snickers bar, but all the credit and thanks goes to “She Simmers”.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

½ t/s salt

1 t/s baking powder

2 cups natural peanut butter (healthfood shop)*

1 cup of unsalted peanuts

30 Bittersweet Lindt Chocolate Drops

Method: 

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two baking trays with paper.

On one baking tray place the peanuts and allow them to roast until fragrant.

In a bowl add all the other ingredients.  Remove the peanuts from the oven and add to the bowl.  Mix all the ingredients together by hand.

Make thirty walnut sized balls and place them on the baking tray. Flatten them slightly and place the trays into the oven.

Cook for 13 mins turning once if necessary.

Remove one tray of biscuits from the oven and turn the oven off.

Place one chocolate drop in the centre of each biscuit.  Press the chocolate firmly into cookies and place the tray back into the oven.

Remove the second tray and repeat the chocolate drop process.

Remove the first tray as soon as the chocolate drop becomes shiny, and before it has a chance to melt. Approximately 1 -2 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool fully before removing them from the baking tray.

I am sure by now you can see why I went for a bike ride. These scrumptious little morsels are very, very bad. Whilst they have no flour or gluten, and would be suitable for someone with this diet restriction, I don’t think they could feature regularly in my diet without dire consequences.

They are however, absolutely delicious and taste exactly like a Snickers which is my favourite chocolate bar. Something tells me I needed to ride further and faster than I did.

Peanut butter should be 100% peanuts, no sugar, salt or additives.

I have been experimenting with macaroon flavours recently and came across a post by Rasberri Cupcakes  who had been busy trying to create a creaming soda flavoured macaroon. Her attempt did not end up in a successful macaroon but instead she decided to make the most awesome looking ice-cream soda cupcake.  Her post got me thinking of how I would go about producing a macaroon with creaming soda.

Steph had said in her post that she was having difficulty in getting the flavour of creaming soda into the macaroon or the filling, as creaming soda has quite a mild flavour.  I remembered having a “soda stream” when I was a kids, and mum buying a creaming soda concentrate.  I went in search of the creaming soda mixer, and then set about making a macaroon with the syrup.

I was really hoping the syrup would be the candy pink colour I remembered as a child but it seems the mixer is an iridescent green so my styling didn’t go according to the initial plan.

Image concept from Rasberri Cupcakes

Anyway, here is my experiment in creaming soda macaroons. I hope Steph at Rasberri Cupcakes and everyone else enjoys the recipe. The macaroons are very sweet, but they all disappeared in one sitting, so I am taking that as a success. I have included three alternate fillings for the macaroon so if the creaming soda jelly is too much of a sugar hit, you could use a vanilla cream instead.

The dusting of Wizz Fizz is another leftover from my childhood.  It just felt like the appropriate finishing touch to this sweet treat.

Ingredients:

Macaroon

3 egg whites

¼ cup caster sugar

1 ¼ cup sifted pure icing sugar

120gm ground almond

1 T/s creaming soda concentrate syrup

6- 8 drops yellow food colouring 

Creaming Soda Jelly Filling

120ml boiled water

1 T/s Unflavoured Gelatin Powder

80ml creaming soda concentrate syrup

150ml cold water 

Ganache Filling

360gm white chocolate

120ml cream

2 T/s creaming soda concentrate

10 drops yellow colouring

 Vanilla Cream

300ml cream

1 t/s vanilla bean paste

2 T/s icing sugar

Wizz Fizz for dusting

Method:

Boil water and measure 120mls into a glass bowl.  Sprinkle gelatin powder over the hot water and combine so that there are no lumps, and the liquid is smooth.

Add the creaming soda concentrate and cold water and stir until combined.

Pour jelly into a square or rectangle vessel at about ½ - 1cm thickness, refrigerate to set.

Melt white chocolate and cream in a glass bowl in the microwave on high for 2 minutes.  Stir until vigorously until smooth, add food colouring and creaming soda concentrate until the desired colour and taste is achieved. Refrigerate until needed.

Combine the cream, vanilla and icing sugar in a bowl.  Use a stick blender to whip the cream until stiff, refrigerate.

Beat egg whites in a small ball with an electric mixer until soft peaks form.  Slowly add the caster sugar and a few drops of colouring. Beat until the sugar dissolves.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and gently fold through the almond, sifted icing sugar and creaming soda concentrate in batches.

Once combine fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe on to a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Preheat oven to 140 degrees.

After the macaroons have been standing for 20-30 mins bake in the oven for 15 -20mins, cool on the tray.

Using a circular implement the same size as your macaroon cut circles from the jelly and use an egg flip or cake slide to place on one half of the macaroon.

The macaroons can be filled with ganache, jelly, cream or a combination of all three.

Once the base macaroon has been filled, use a second macaroon to sandwich together.

Dust with wizz fizz for a final sugar hit.

So tell me, what flavour macaroon would you like to try?? 

Cookie Mix

2 ¾ cups Flour (may need another 1 or 2 T/s)

2 t/s Baking Powder

½ t/s Salt

250gm Butter

1 ½ cups Sugar

2 Lg Eggs

Cinnamon Chip

280gm White Chocolate

3 t/s Cinnamon

Donut Dusting

3 T/s Sugar

3 T/s Cinnamon

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees.

To make the Cinnamon Chip, melt white chocolate in microwave and add cinnamon and stir until combined. Line a tray with baking paper and pour chocolate over the chocolate mix. Spread the mixture very thinly over the paper and refrigerate until set. Once the chocolate has hardened break into little chips.

Next prepare the Cinnamon Sugar, simply combine the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Reserve the mixture in a bowl for coating the cookies.

Cream butter and sugar until the mixture is pale, light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combine. By hand add sifted dry ingredients and the pre- prepared cinnamon chips. Stir until ingredients are combined.

Roll mixture into 50 small balls and press each ball into the cinnamon sugar ensuring that each cookie is completely coated.

Place well spaced on a lined biscuit tray. 

Bake for 10-12 mins.  Remove when golden to give a biscuit with a crisp crust and a soft cake centre.  Cool on tray for two minutes and then transfer to cooling rack.