Baking

A collection of baking recipes

Brownie Crackle Cookies (Snowball Cookies)

- Michael Leave a comment

Brownie Crackle Cookies

Brookie? Crownie? What’s the best abbreviation for brownie cookies? Is there one that doesn’t make them sound mega lame, because both of those options aren’t so good and I’ve had people saying them at me for the last week. Last year I was sent a recipe by my girlfriend which we both made about 3 times in the weeks running up to Christmas. The recipe easily makes about 50 cookies, doesn’t take all that long to put together and its icing sugar shell makes it a perfect fit for a Christmas treat. You roll them in icing sugar just before you bake them, which causes them to crack and gives a lightly dusted, snowball like shell. They’re pretty intense; gooey and chocolatey like a brownie but with a crunch of a cookie.
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Pecan Pie

- Michael 6 Comments

Pecan Pie

As mentioned in my last post, where I talked at length about my love for cheese, I had some friends over the other day to play board games and drink a copious amount of alcohol. As well as the bread I finally nailed my pecan pie recipe once and for all. After trying on a couple of separate occasions recently and failing, pastry falling apart and filling overflowing everywhere like a river bursting its banks, it turned out all I really needed to do was sort my pie dish out.
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Garlic & Thyme Bread Wreath With Camembert

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Camembert Bread Wreath

I had my first baked Camembert of the season on Saturday. A number of my friends came over to play board games so I spent the morning in the kitchen rustling up some things for us to snack on over the course of the afternoon and evening. The first of these was something I’ve been contemplating for a while. I wanted to make something perfect for sharing at Christmas that involved one of my favourite elements of this time of year; baked Camembert. Initially I had grand ideas of baking the cheese actually inside the middle of the bread, but on further thinking that was just stupid, and so the idea of the Camembert Christmas wreath was born, with the Camembert nestling at its center.
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Pumpkin Spice Baileys Glaze for Pumpkin Cinnamon Buns

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Pumpkin Cinnamon Buns

I’m freshly back from a trip to Norway, and I may have eaten my body weight in cinnamon buns. They were completely different to the ones I’m about to post about, but I thought it was relevant. I’m going to be trying to find a recipe for one of them soon, so keep your eyes out for that. In the meantime, this is an updated recipe to something I baked a year ago, and while pumpkins are still in season (yup, they don’t disappear after Halloween) I felt that it was a great time to stick this together. The cinnamon bun recipe itself is the same as the first one, I just didn’t roll it as thin and changed the glaze, from the maple to something slightly different. I stirred through a decent helping of the new Baileys Pumpkin Spice to give it a bit of a kick. The pumpkin spice, unsurprisingly, goes well with the pumpkin in the buns and the cinnamon that’s running through them.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Buns
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Red Onion & Rosemary Focaccia

- Michael 2 Comments

Red Onion & Rosemary Focaccia

As alluded to previously, on my last trip up to Scotland the weather was pretty awful. This meant we spent a lot of time baking, and as well as the honey & rye cake, mac n cheese and chocolate cardamom bread we also baked a loaf of Focaccia. I’ve tried making focaccia once before, and to be honest, that was a bit of a disaster. It didn’t rise properly, dried out and came out looking a bit like cardboard. Having seen other people have similar issues I put off trying to bake focaccia again for a very long time, years, in fact. A dark and rainy day on the Isle of Mull felt like the perfect time to try again, and this time we cracked it.
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