Month: July 2013

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookies

- Michael 4 Comments

What do you get when you take two great things and add them together? Well, mainly stuff like Kingdom Hearts (Final Fantasy combined with Disney? I’m sold!), or Machete (Danny Trejo plus graphic violence, plus bad acting, plus tits, plus f*cking with the wrong Mexican). But in this case, it’s to take two of my favourite baking ingredients, peanut butter and Oreos to make something that’s just that little bit excessive. One of these will leave you feeling like you don’t need your dinner but it’s 100% worth it.

 Oreo Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookie

I’d been meaning to put an Oreo inside a cookie for a long while now, ever since my friend Dan did it at the Wonder Years house show my friend Reece put on a few years back. But I just had to take it one step further and found a recipe here which obliged. Peanut butter. However if I were to do these again, I’d personally add that little bit more peanut butter so you get more of a kick.

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookie

 

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookies
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Ingredients
  • 225g butter, softened
  • 110g packed brown sugar
  • 150g granulate white sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 65g peanut butter (I’d personally use a little more next time).
  • 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
  • 450g all-purpose white flour
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 100g ounces milk chocolate chips
  • 1-2 packs Oreo cookies
Instructions
  1. Cream together the butter and the sugars. Beating until light and fluffy.
  2. Add in the eggs, one at a time. Beating well after each addition.
  3. Beat in the vanilla extract and the peanut butter.
  4. In a separate bowl mix together the baking soda and the flour.
  5. Mix in the flour in several additions. The dough will be fairly dry but should form into a block. Mix in the chocolate chips.
  6. Set aside in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
  7. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with grease proof paper.
  8. Divide out the dough into balls. They should be large enough that when flattened they are slightly larger than an Oreo.
  9. Place an Oreo on top of one of these disks, place another disk on top and merge the sides together around the Oreo so it’s completely encased.
  10. Bake for 9-13 minutes, taking out while the cookie is still ever so slightly undercooked on the cop.
  11. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

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Mini Lime Drizzle Loaves

- Michael 1 Comment

First of all, apologies for the lack of updates the past couple of weeks. I’ve spent a lot of time away the last month or so and had barely any free time. Then the sun came out, and suddenly I found my evenings filled with sitting in the sun with friends and the odd beer. But in amongst this I’ve been doing the odd bit of baking. From  cheese (scotch infused mull cheddar) and onion bread through to more summery pieces. Today’s recipe is one of the latter. I absolutely love lemon drizzle cake, it’s sharp, moist, full of flavour and refreshing. It’s perfect for a summer’s day. I also got my hands on some miniature loaf tins a few months ago and have been itching to put them to use. A drizzle loaf is the perfect thing to just make miniature.

Lime Drizzle Loaves

Unfortunately when I popped into the shop they were 100% out of lemons. It’s pretty lucky that limes work just as well for this isn’t it then? This recipe only makes a few, small loaves, which makes it great for a set of light summer snacks.

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Mini Lime Drizzle Loaves
 
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Ingredients
  • Ingredients:
  • 125g butter
  • 125g golden caster sugar
  • 125g self-raising flour
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 Dollop Sour Cream
  • 2 Limes
  • 5 tablespoons of golden syrup
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and grease the loaf tins.
  2. Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy.
  3. Beat in the first egg, beating until well combined. Add half the flour, beat again. Repeat, with the second egg and then the last of the flour.
  4. Grate both limes into a bowl (do this before you juice them, or it’ll get a bit tricky). I used some of the rind in the cake mix, but it’s up to you.
  5. Mix in the sour cream, two tablespoons of lime juice and (if using) some of the lime rind.
  6. Divide up evenly between the mini loaf tins. These rise pretty well so make them about ⅔s full.
  7. Bake in the oven for between 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
  8. Remove from the oven and ease out onto a rack.
  9. While they are cooling, prep the drizzle. Take the rest of the juice from the limes and the rind. Reduce over a low heat then stir in the syrup. This will turn runny fairly quickly. Take it off the heat to avoid it catching.
  10. Prick holes into the loaves with a fork (I push the fork about ⅔s of the way into the cakes) and drizzle the syrup over the top.

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Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies

- Michael Leave a comment

What happens when you start baking and realise you’ve ran out of vanilla essence? Bourbon. Bourbon is what happens when you realise you’ve ran out of vanilla essence.  Or at least, it is in my house. I don’t mean drown your vanilla-less sorrows in a sea of bourbon, I’m not condoning becoming an alcoholic here, but the vanilla flavours present in bourbon make it perfect as a substitute in recipes where the alcohol has a chance to cook off. I was putting together some butterless and flourless cookies, i.e. I was baking simply because I had the urge to bake and hadn’t stocked up on some of the necessities, when the situation arose. I was following a recipe, which was first done by Averie Cooks, which it calls for fairly sizable amount of vanilla, meaning that a complete omission just wouldn’t be a good idea. Fortunately I had a bottle of cheap bourbon nearby and substituted the vanilla for a healthy glug of the hard stuff. Thus the Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies were born. The lack of butter and flour made them friendly to the vegan and gluten free friends.

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I’ve never had something requested to be made again so rabidly. I made them again just two days later and will undoubtedly make them again soon.

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Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies
 
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Author:
Ingredients
  • Ingredients:
  • 260g Smooth peanut butter (I have done this since with “crunchy” peanut butter but preferred the result of the cheaper smooth stuff that I used first time around partly as the cheaper peanut butter spreads less.)
  • 220g light brown sugar, packed
  • 2 Medium Eggs
  • 1 tsp Bourbon Whiskey (I used a cheap brand, no sense in wasting good whiskey and the cheaper brands tend to have more flavourings in them) OR 1tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 150g dark, or bittersweet chocolate, chopped roughly (larger chunks are encouraged)
Instructions
  1. Instructions:
  2. Start by creaming together the peanut butter and the sugar on a medium speed. Once they have encorporated, beat in the eggs. One at a time.
  3. Add in the glug of bourbon and beat until the mixture isn’t at all granular.
  4. Beat in the baking soda. Once this is incorporated beat in the chocolate chips. This won’t need much and you don’t want to blitz the chips themselves too much.
  5. Place in the fridge for between 2 and 24 hours. You want the dough nice and chilled.
  6. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
  7. Form the dough into small balls and press them (gently, you don’t want these too flat) onto the baking tray a couple of inches apart
  8. Bake for around 8-10 minutes, until the edges have cooked but the center is still gooey.
  9. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a wire rack.

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