New Recipe = New Favourites

One of my 101 in 1001 items that I have been working on for a while was to try out 50 new recipes.  I crossed this one off my list a few weeks ago and thought I would share some of my new favourites that I discovered.  I won't share them all because 50 recipes is a lot but I have put together a collage of some of my favourites.  To see the recipes simply click on the corresponding link below the collage

Lemonade Scones/Apple Cinnamon Muffins/Cheese & Herb Pullapart/Orange Pound Cake/Chocolate Celebration Cake

Chicken San Choy Bow/Valentines Cookies/Choc Mint Cake/Healthy Banana Muffins/Banoffee Pie

Chicken Taco Chilli/Bliss Balls/Curried Lentil Soup/Oat Banana Pancakes/Raw Vegan Lemon Bars

PB & Honey Granola/Blueberry Breakfast Cake/Pizza Muffins/Crunchy Thai Quinoa Salad/Apple Tea Cake

Chia Pudding/Raw Choc Mint Slice/Puffed Quinoa Balls/Quinoa Fried "Rice"/Blueberry & Banana Breakfast Muffins

My number one favourite by far has got to be the bliss balls!  They are just so easy to make and so delicious.  For the more savoury minded people the pizza muffins would have to be my pick.  They made my house smell amazing when I was cooking them.  If you give any of these recipes a go be sure to let me know.  And for more recipes I have tried and liked check out my folder here on pinterest!

Valentines Week - Heart Sandwich Cookies

Cookies are so much fun to make but for some reason I don’t seem to make them very often.  I think this is because my go to baking thing is always cupcakes.  Whenever I feel like baking I instantly think cupcakes or cake but never cookies.  So when I was deciding on things to make for Valentine’s Week I thought I am definitely doing some cookies.

I love the look of sandwich cookies.  They are so easy to make and look so cute.  They are a little more time consuming with the assembly but I think the end product is well worth it.  I think these would make a great valentines present or even an anniversary present.  Simply pop a few cookies into a cellophane bag and tie with some pink ribbon.  Quick and easy!

For these cookies I used the chocolate rolled cookie recipe from The Decorated Cookie which you can find here.  Making them into these cut out sandwiches is super easy.  First cut your hearts out.  With half the hearts use a smaller cookie cutter to cut another heart out of the centre of the cookie.  Once the cookies are baked and cooled ice your full heart cookies and top each with a cut out cookie.  Simple as that!  If you want to take the cookies a step further you could also ice the top cookies or dust them with icing sugar.  The options are endless!

Crisp Coconut Cookies

Yesterday I went and visited my work mates and since I knew they had been having a few busy weeks I thought they could do with a sweet treat.  I had a flick through my cookbooks to find something that I could cook with the ingredients in the cupboard.  I had coconut leftover from when I made the sushi cake.  Since I can't eat coconut I thought this was probably the only opportunity I would get to use it.  I saved a few for Corey and he loved them.  They last about 5 minutes before he inhaled them.  They also made the house smell amazing!

Crisp Coconut Biscuits from Beautiful Biscuits by Australian Women's Weekly

125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
2 cups sr flour
pinch salt
1 cup coconut
extra sugar

Cream butter and sugar, beat in egg.  Add sifted flour, salt and coconut.

Roll into balls and press flat between your hands.  Dip top side in extra sugar.

Place on a greased oven tray (allow for spreading).  Bake in moderate hot oven 10 to 15 minutes.

Makes about 40.

White Chocolate Fudge

This week I have been picking a few items of my 101 in 1001 list to try and tackle before bub arrives.  I figure if I can smash out a few items before her arrival it won't matter as much that I don't cross anything off for those first couple of months.

The first item I decided to knock off was #21 - make homemade fudge.  I found this recipe and thought it sounded nice.  I had a delicious fairy bread fudge when we were in Noosa and I was hoping this would achieve a similar taste.  Unfortunately it didn't but it was still delicious!

I did make one slight adjustment to this recipe by leaving out the almond essence.  I find the taste of almond essence way too overpowering and I am not a fan so I opted to leave this out.  I am so happy with how this fudge turned out.  It was a lot easier than I expected it to be.  I am finding with a lot of things that I have always put off making because they looked or sounded difficult that it is all a matter of perception.  So far things have been going pretty well with my baking adventures.

Caramel Chip Cookies

Next time you are in the supermarket if you see a packet of caramel chips in the baking section do yourself a favour and buy them. Hell, buy 10 if they have them because these babies are delicious!  I spied a packet of these the other day for the first time and curiosity made me buy them.  I whipped up the recipe off the back of the packet and now I wish I had bought 10 packets because these cookies are just too good!  Do yourself a favour and walk, no, run down to the supermarket, buy a packet of these caramel chips and whip these cookies up asap.

Caramel Chip Cookies

125g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup sr flour
250g caramel chips (mine were nestle but not sure if other brands make them too).

Preheat oven to 170*C/150*C for fan forced.  Grease and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Place butter, brown sugar and egg in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy.

Stir in flour.  Add caramel chips.  Mix until well combined.

Roll level tablespoons of mixture into balls and place on prepared trays 4cm apart.  Flatten slightly.  Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.  Cool on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Fight your husband away from the cooling racks before he eats all the cookies! Yes Corey, I'm looking at you :-)

Birthday Baking

Yesterday we had a joint celebration at work.  It was one girls birthday and another girl was leaving to go on maternity leave.  We had a mini party and everyone made something to bring along for afternoon tea.  I decided to make some cookies and cupcakes.

Firstly I made these delicious White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies from Sugarlace.  These were delicious! I love cookies that are soft and this were the perfect consistency.  I halved the recipe because I didn't need need 4.5 dozen cookies.  It was all going well until I reached the part where it said 3 eggs and couldn't decide how to split it.  I ended up using 2 eggs and the cookies came out perfect.

My very favourite cupcakes are the ones that my mum baked for our wedding cupcakes.  The recipe comes from the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery recipe book and they are ridiculously delicious.  I think you all need to bake a batch of these this weekend.  I like to top them with a basic buttercream icing.  Delicious!!!

Scented White Cupcakes by Crabapple Cupcake Bakery

2 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g softened unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups caster sugar
6 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp rose water
1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 170*C.  Line muffin pans (makes 24 normal or 48 mini cupcakes)
2. Sift together flour and baking powder.
3. In a separate bowl cream the butter for 1-2 mins.  Add the castor sugar a third at a time beating for 2 mins after each addition.  After the last addition beat until the mixture is light and fluffy and the sugar has almost dissolved.  Add egg whites a quarter at a time beating for 1 min after each addition or until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla essence and rose water and beat until combined.
4. Add a third of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and beat on low speed until combined.  Add half the milk and beat until combined.  Repeat process.  Add the remaining third of the flour and beat until thoroughly combined.  Do not over beat as this will toughen the mixture.
5. Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake cases.  For mini cupcakes bake for 13 minutes.  For standard cupcakes bake for 18-20 mins.  Rest for 30 mins before icing.

These are seriously my favourite cupcakes ever!  The only issue I have is that I now have 6 egg yolks waiting to be used.  I am thinking of making some lemon curd but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Chocolate Lace Cookies

Last Friday at work we had Festive Food Friday.  We do it once a month to celebrate everyones birthdays from that month.  The idea is that everyone brings a plate of food and we have a morning tea/nibblies to eat all day.  This month I made cookies.  Everyone loved them! One of my friends kept appearing near the buffet with 3 cookies in his hand.  I'm pretty sure he ate about 80% of the cookies himself!  So judging by that reception I am pretty sure I will be making these again.

Chocolate Lace Crisps by Australian Women's Weekly

100g dark cooking chocolate chopped

80g butter chopped

1 cup caster sugar

1 egg

1 cup plain flour

2 tbs cocoa powder

1/4 tsp bicarb of soda

1/4 cup icing sugar

Melt chocolate & butter in a small saucepan over low heat.

Transfer chocolate mixture to a medium bowl; stir in caster sugar, egg & sifted flour, cocoa and soda.  Cover, refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180*C/160*C fan-forced.  Grease oven trays, line with baking paper.

Roll level tablespoons of mixture into balls. Roll each ball in sifted icing sugar, place about 8cm apart on trays.

Bake for 15 minutes and cool on trays.

Deck The Halls

On December 1st we have a tradition of putting up the Christmas tree, watching The Grinch and baking cookies.  We were thinking of changing our Christmas tree this year but since we only have used ours once we figured it would be a waste of money.  I wanted to get a white one and do rainbow decorations but instead we stuck with what we already had.  Maybe in a few years we will change it up!

I love our Christmas tree! We bought it from Big W last year for $20 and it is the bushiest fake Christmas tree I have ever seen.  All our decorations came from either Big W, Kmart, Target or Myer (on sale).  There are also a couple we got as gifts.  This year I am hoping to make a few to add to the tree but it depends if I get time.  Christmas is fast approaching so I might run out of time before I get a chance.

This year I was super prepared and made sugar cookie dough before going to work in the morning so all we had to do was cut them out and bake them that night.  I made Christmas trees and snow flakes and iced them with royal icing.  These were super easy to make!  I took them to work the next day to share around the office and everyone loved them.

The snowflake cookie cutters I got a few years ago in a Christmas themed apron swap and this is the first time I have used them.  The come in a few different sizes but I used the smaller ones so I could get more out of the dough.

I really love Christmas! It is one of my favourite times of the year.  December is going to be super busy this year but I really just can't wait for Christmas.