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Pecan Blondies and No Sleep

- Michael Leave a comment

Insomnia. Or something. Well whatever I have it’s annoying. Really annoying. I got ill on Sunday night, when I went to bed (tired) and got feverish. I only had an hourish sleep. But it’s extended to 3 nights on the trot now. With little sleep, but now just minus the fever. The third night, Tuesday night, I tried a few things in advance to wear me out. I cycled and I baked. Tried to fill my time up a bit. It didn’t work. I ended up with just a couple of hours again. If anyone has any solutions that may help me to sleep, leave them in the comments below. Please!

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However, as I said, I did end up baking, in an attempt to be active. I tried my hands at one of the recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery book that I was given for Christmas (thanks gran!). I opted for the blondies, partly because I’ve never made any before and partly because I already had everything but the white chocolate and pecans already in. I am now without a brownie, so I used my “bar” tray instead, which meant for slightly reduced cooking time and already portioned off blondies. I’ll leave in the timings for both in the instructions below!

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Pecan Blondies and No Sleep
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 150g White Chocolate
  • 125g Unsalted Butter
  • 150 Caster Sugar
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1 ½ teaspoons Vanilla Extract
  • 200g Plain Flour
  • A pinch of Salt
  • 120g Shelled Pecan Nuts, chopped
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 170°C(150°C fan assisted).
  2. Place the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Don’t allow the bottom of the bowl to touch the water. Melt these together, stirring occasionally.
  3. Take off the heat. Mix in the sugar, stirring well. At this point the mixture may split but don’t worry.
  4. Add in the vanilla and the eggs, beating well as you do to stop the eggs from scrambling.
  5. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until everything has incorporated well and the nuts are spread throughout the mixture.
  6. Grease the baking tray you are using and add the mixture.
  7. Place in the oven. If using a divided bar tray like mine, bake for approx.. 20 minutes until the edges are golden but the center still soft. If using a tray then bake for 35-40 minutes.
  8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tray on a wire rack. Divide up.

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Christmas 2013

- Michael Leave a comment

Well hello, and a Happy New Year to everyone. This is my first post of 2014. I hope everyone had a super awesome Christmas and New Year. Mine was a mixed bag all in all. Christmas itself was great, we went to spend it on Mull at my parent’s cottage, which is available for rental now coughHINTcough.  It was great to get to the middle of nowhere and also to get some walking in. Also baked several times while I was there, as well as helping cook.

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We were very fortunate however, as the storm that went through the UK hit that area fairly badly. My mother and sister only just managed to get to the island on the last ferry that ran before Christmas.

I baked a Cheese, onion and mustard loaf.

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A cranberry and orange loaf.

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And a chocolate Loaf, which was a bit of a disaster (the tin I used was too small) but still tasted pretty awesome.

And guess what?! My mum got me this amazing “Bearded Bakery” apron.

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Unfortunately, what made the period less good was breaking up with my Girlfriend, which happened the night I got back, which got me down. I won’t go in to it, because you don’t want to hear it; you’re here for food, not my life story, afterall.

If you want any recipes for the above things, just drop me an email or leave a comment. I’m sure I’ll get around to them eventually! This post actually started off as being about Brioche Buns, which were my first bake of the year. But I’ll just have to do that one tomorrow!

 

OH YEAH. I almost forgot. I also made some Reindeer pretzl cookies for a party just before Christmas.

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Hope everyone has a great year, all the  best.

(ps, This blog is 1 soon. How exciting?)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

- Michael 2 Comments

It’s national baking week. That means everyone should bake. GO. GO TO OUR OVENS. Take out your food mixers, your wooden spoons and your scales. Weigh the nation down with sugar, butter, flour and eggs. It doesn’t have to be anything hard. I decided to keep things simple this week, so that any beginners could join in. That and my card was cancelled (fraud on my account, apparently) so I had to make do with the ingredients I already had and anything I could afford with a couple of quid.

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I went for double choc chip cookies. Simple, quick and delicious. You’ll probably even have half the ingredients in already. The key with this is to mix it until it’s combined. Also not to press the balls of dough down like you usually would, as these’ll spread but stay chunky.

Not only this, but to celebrate National Baking week, guess who got interviewed? Topps Tiles (you know who they are, you’ve seen the vans) approached me and asked whether I’d be interested in taking part in a campaign they were running about male bakers. It was a great opportunity and I snapped their hands off. The interview can be seen here (sorry, it’s not mobile friendly).

I’d desperately wanted to do this at the start of the week, but my internet at home hasn’t been working for the last couple of weeks. Not cool. Hopefully Sky will actually be helpful at some point (they’ve failed to be so far). So I’m actually posting this from my girlfriend’s house.

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5.0 from 1 reviews
Chocolate Chip Cookies
 
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Serves: 12-15
Ingredients
  • 100g of caster sugar
  • 100g of butter
  • 1 tbsp of golden syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 150g of self raising flour
  • 175-200g Mixed chocolate (I used dark and white), chopped.
Instructions
  1. Preheat your oven to 180°C(160°C fan). Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
  2. Soften the butter using your mixer, beating it until it’s well creamed.
  3. Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy (this can take several minutes).
  4. Mix in the golden syrup and the vanilla.
  5. Mix in half of the flour with the chocolate. Once this has combined mix in the rest of the flour.
  6. Keep on mixing until it starts to combine. Eventually I had to use my hands to form it into a proper dough.
  7. Separate the dough out into sizable balls. Don’t press them down. This should make 12-15 individual cookies.
  8. Place in the oven for 12-15 minutes.
  9. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the tray for a few minutes, before transferring to a wire rack.

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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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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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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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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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