Coconut Macaroons December 1, 2008

I had coconut and I wanted to make something out of it. So I made macaroons. First time I used a whole can of sweetened condensed milk!! I LOVE this stuff but never baked with it. So here you go.

It was easy. They kinda pooled a bit on the bottom but I don’t know why so I can’t help you there. Maybe I should try the recipe on the back of the coconut bag next time. It uses sugar instead of sweetened condensed milk. These cookies are a nice chew.. and of course really sweet.

Coconut Macaroons
14 oz sweetened shredded coconut
14oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 egg whites, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1/8 tsp kosher salt

Directions:
1. Whip egg whites with mixer until soft peaks form. Add salt and extracts and mix.
2. In another bowl, mix the coconut and sweetened condensed milk.
3. Fold egg whites into coconut mixture.
4. Drop golf ball sized pieces of “dough” onto parchment paper covered cookie sheet.
5. Bake at 325F for 25-30 minutes or until bottoms and tops are lightly browned. Remove from cookie sheets immediately and cool on wire racks.

Snickerdoodles!! September 20, 2008

Yum. One of my all time favorite cookies. So buttery and cinnamony! Mmm and fattening. I made them because I was bored and because my brother’s nose got hit with a frisbee. Thought cookies might cheer him up.

I used Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles recipe from allrecipes.com. The only things I changed was (1) I used 3/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup shortening instead of half butter, half shortening and (2) I used 1 tsp cream of tartar and 1 tsp baking powder instead of 2 tsp tartar just because I don’t like the tartar taste. Cookies turned out great though my dad thinks they’re way too buttery. I ate five.. mmm.

That’s 4 dozen cookies for you!

My First Madelines August 31, 2008

I finally bought a madeleine pan after scrounging online for a few days. The online ones were a bit too expensive for me but luckily I found one in a super cool store near Columbia University while visiting my sister. The store had everything kitchen related you could possibly want (seriously) and a lot of other stuff for your home too. My pan was only $16. It’s not nonstick but I didn’t want nonstick because I read that those brown to easily making the cookie look dark. (Plus those are more expensive.)

I used this recipe from 101 Cookbooks site. What a great site, another one to add to my blogroll. There’s also a bunch at Eatyet’s blog but I didn’t have all the ingredients for those.

I only got about 1.5 dozen out of this recipe.. not the 2-3 dozen it’s supposed to make. The cookie also tasted very eggy. Don’t know if that’s the recipe’s fault or if that was my fault somehow. Will have to try other recipes to see which one works best with me.

With powdered sugar sprinkled on top.

Fortune cookies! August 6, 2008

So Monday was my friend’s birthday and we went to a really expensive Asian fusion restaurant in the city called Tao. The food really wasn’t spectacular but OMG the dessert sampler we ordered was amazing. There was ice cream, chocolate lava cake, fried dumplings filled with chocolate, a box of chocolate and more. But my favorite part of the dessert was the GIANT fortune cookie filled with vanilla and chocolate mousse with the edges dipped in chocolate. It was sooo good and $12 if ordered by itself. The dessert platter was $55!

Anyways, because of that, I wanted to recreate the fortune cookie dessert. After looking through various recipes, I realized that there is no way in hell I’m going to get myself to make mousse. Why you ask? Because it uses over a cup of heavy whipping cream. Uhhh.. sorry, won’t want to eat it after I finish making it. So that’s why I just settled on making some simple fortune cookies. Not even going to bother dipping them in chocolate because it’s too hot here.

Recipe from a Richard Simmon’s cookbook.. haha.

Fortune Cookies
Says it makes 16 cookies but I was only able to make 13.

Ingredients
3 Tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large egg whites
2 Tbsp canola oil
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 drops yellow food coloring (optional)
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp all purpose flour
nonstick vegetable oil cooking spray
24 paper fortune strips (2 1/4 x 1/2 inch) <– why 24 if recipe makes 16 cookies? Huh

Directions
1. Make sure there are no lumps in brown sugar. Add granulated sugar, egg whites, oil, extracts, and food coloring and whisk until blended. Sift in flour and whisk until smooth. Let batter stand 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly coat baking sheet with spray. spoon 1 Tbsp of batter onto sheet and spread out to a three inch circle with back of spoon with even thickness. Repeat 3 more times on sheet. Place a muffin pan nearby.
3. Bake until golden around edges, about 5 minutes. Loosen cookies from sheet. Remove one to work surface and return others to oven to keep them soft – keep oven door open. Flip cookie over, lay fortune strip on center, fold cookie in half over fortune. Fold in half again, bending on the straight side to form traditional cookie shape. Place in muffin pan cup to hold shape and cool. Repeat with other cookies. Store cookies in airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week. If they get soggy from moisture, re-crisp in a 275F oven for about 10 minutes. Re-cool in muffin tins.

Comments:
- I do not know why we have to let the batter sit 20 minutes but I did it.
- They don’t turn out that crispy, almost chewy but not bad.
- I did not return the pan to the oven to keep the non-formed cookies warm. I worked fast enough that they were still pliable by the time i finished all four.
- I used a little less than 1 Tbsp per cookie and tried to thin it out as much as possible. The batter was a little thick so next time I might add 1 or 2 teaspoons of water.
- The top of the cookies were kinda sticky while the bottoms were dry and crispier. So I used the top of the cookie as the inside of the cookie and the bottom of the cookie as the outside which is not according to the recipe.
- I had to bake them for more than 5 minutes because the longer they baked the crispier they were. I baked them for about 8 minutes but will try for 10 minutes next time.
- I tried to re-crisp them in the oven while the cookies were in the muffin tin. it kinda worked but some of the cookies (the ones that had the top of the cookie on the outside) stuck to the bottom of the pan and tore.
- They were reallllly sweet and predominately almond flavored.. but otherwise yum!

Five minute mango ice cream and puppy cookies July 29, 2008

Freeze some mango chunks and blend with some sugar and cream and what do you get? Five minute mango ice cream! Smooth and creamy soft serve style. Freeze for a bit to make it scoopable. We just ate it right out of the blender. Probably easier to make with a food processor.

Doggy shaped cookies made with Ovaltine! Ovaltine is a delicious chocolate malt drink mix. Usually we mix it with warm milk and sugar and it’s a great hot chocolate replacement. My bottle is the European formula which may make a difference in whether it has sugar or not. The cookies were based off of the doggy cookies made out of Horlicks so that’s why mine are darker.

Here’s the original recipe:
Horlicks Puppy Cookies (for humans)
Ingredients:
(makes about 48 cookies)

180g butter, soften at room temperature (1 1/2 sticks)
80g Horlicks (original flavour)
200g top flour or cake flour
25g corn flour
25g milk powder
100g chocolate chips
some chocolate rice
some Koko Krunch

Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 140deg C. Line baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
2. Sieve top flour, corn flour and milk powder.
3. Cream butter and Horlicks for about three minutes at low speed. Do not overbeat.
4. Put in top flour, cornflour and milk powder and beat for about one minute to form
dough.
5. Divide dough into 10g each. Put three chocolate chips into each piece of dough and roll into balls.
6. Insert two pieces of Koko Krunch to form the ‘ears’, chocolate rice for the “eyes”, and a chocolate chip in the centre for the ‘nose’.
7. Bake at 140 deg C for about 25 minutes. Depending on your oven, it may take another 5 to 10 minutes more for the cookies to be ready.
8. Leave to cool on wire rack before storing in an airtight container.

Recipe from here. Also on craftster.

I substituted Ovaltine for Horlicks and added about 1/2 cup of white sugar because I like my cookies sweet. The original recipe does not make very sweet cookies. I also made mine bigger and cut out ears because that brand of cereal is not available in the U.S. and I couldn’t find a replacement. Since mine are bigger, I made only about 24 cookies.

Woof woof! O_O