Chai Shortbread

Chai-biskut or chai-biskit! The all essential Indian snack, perfect for anytime, any guest and any mood! A good strong ginger flavoured tea preparation, laced with fragrant cardamoms and cloves, milky yet strong, chai is an all time Indian drink you can get in any road-side street shop and the first thing you are offered in anyone’s home, usually accompanied with biskit/biskut (that is how biscuit is pronounced in India). And of course you don’t refuse, why would you! So here I did a take on chai-biskit… a Scottish shortbread with Indian chai flavour. Shortbreads are butter biscuits, crumbly and a Scottish speciality and are perfect accompaniments to tea.

For the chai shortbreads, you will need:
200 g unsalted butter at room temperature
80 g icing sugar
200 g plain flour
100 g rice flour (you can substitute with semolina or plain flour)
¼ tsp salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
for the chai mixture:
6 cardamom, take out the seeds and powder them, I use mortar pestle to do this.
6 cloves, powdered
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger powder
½ tsp ground tea- open a tea bag and grind the tea from it into a fine powder
1. In a food processor, cream the butter for 1 minute, add sugar and mix for another minute. You do not want to whip for too long otherwise the butter will become too soft and the biscuits will spread. You can do this by hand as well.
2. Sieve flour, salt and chai mixture.
3. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in the food processor and whizz till it comes together into rough dough- just about a minute or so. you do not want to mix too much, else the butter will become too soft, which will make your cookies puffy and cause it to spread, they will still taste great but will not hold their shape.Take it out on your kitchen work surface and bind the dough by hand. Wrap it up in cling film and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

4. After 30 minutes, take the biscuit dough out of the fridge, roll out the dough, about a half a cm thick, and cut into circles using a cookie cutter. Put the cut shapes onto a lined baking tray.

Put the tray in fridge for about 10 minutes while you pre heat the oven at 160˚C (fan). Bake the shortbread biscuits for 10 minutes or till they are lightly browned on top.

5. Cool the shortbreads on wire rack. You can dust them with icing sugar or a mixture of icing sugar and chai mixture. I also melted some plain chocolate in the microwave and dipped one-half of each shortbread in the melted chocolate.

Enjoy!

Cookie Oreo Fudge Brownie

Cookie oreo fudge brownie topped with ice cream-yumm

I had made this a while ago and it had been lost among the several batches of biscotti and breads I had been making for the last couple of months. It is a delicious combination, an indulgent dessert and is so easy to make. Layering a cookie with a brownie seems to be such a simple idea; it is surprising it is not done very often. May be because this combination does not have a name? What will you call it, a brookie or a crownie??  Well, it is such a versatile cakey thing to make- the crunch of cookie, the fudgey chewiness of brownie; throw in some nuts, the indulgence of chocolates, endless possibilities!

The recipe is adapted from Kevinandamanda.com and bbcgoodfood.com. For the cookie base you will need,

113 g unsalted softened butter
110 g granulated sugar
65 g light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
262 g plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
about 100-150 g of chocolate chips- this is variable in amount and variety, you can use a mix of plain,milk , white chocolate chips.
2 packs of oreos

For the brownie you will need,
185 g unsalted butter
185 g good quality dark chocolate, chopped into pieces
85 g plain flour
40 g cocoa powder
100 g of mixed chocolate chips
3 large eggs

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 ˚C (fan). Line a rectangular baking tin, I used a about 9” by 6 ½ “ tin, with foil and grease it with vegetable oil.
2. For the cookie layer, cream butter and sugars with an electric mixer or by hand for 3-5 minutes till it is light and fluffy.
3. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix it in.
4. In another bowl whisk the flour, baking soda and salt. Combine this with the butter egg mixture till just mixed in and stir in the chocolate chips. Do not over mix or the cookie will become dense.
5. For the brownie, cut the butter in cubes. Set a bowl on top of a pan of water such that the bowl does not touch the water. Add the chopped chocolates and butter and melt it in the bowl above the pan of boiling water on low heat till the chocolate is melted.
6. Cool the chocolate butter mix to room temperature.
7. Sieve the flour and cocoa together and keep it aside. In another bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar till it is pale and creamy and has doubles in volume. This takes about 5-8 minutes.
8. Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and fold it in till they are combined into a smooth mixture.
9. Sift the sifted flour and cocoa again onto the chocolate+egg mixture and fold it in. Stir in the chocolate chips.
   

   Brownie mixture

10. Now to assemble, spread the cookie mix onto the prepared tin. Layer it with oreos and pour over the brownie mix.
    

    Top the cookie layer with oreos

    

    Top the oreo layer with the brownie mixture

    

    Brownie-baked

    Cover the tin with foil and bake in the pre heated oven at 170˚ C for 25-30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 20-25 minutes. The brownie will have cracks on it and a skewer will come out with crumbs stuck to it. Do not over bake else the brownie will become very dry and loose its fudge like texture. Cool the cookie-brownie completely on a wire rack.

Cookie-oreo-brownie layer cut into squares

Once cooled, you can cut the cookie-brownie into squares. These are great on their own but the super indulgent way to enjoy it is of course to top it up with vanilla or chocolate ice cream, splattered with caramel or chocolate sauce with walnuts on top of it. Yummm…azing. I did not have any sauce to top but nonetheless it was divine!

Cookie oreo fudge brownie topped with ice cream and walnuts

Hazelnut and chocolate biscotti

Biscotti, are Italian biscuits, crisp and crunchy, they are twice baked biscuits, and since authentic biscotti’s do not use oil or butter, they store very well. They are perfect to dunk in coffee or in tea. I made a big batch hoping it would last at least a week, but it’s so easy for me to get through 3-4 of them in one go!!

Ingredients:

135 g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
230 g all-purpose flour
110 g semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
110 g hazelnuts

1. Pre heat the fan oven to 180 ˚C .
2. Put the hazelnuts on a baking tray and roast in the oven for 10 minutes, shaking the tray couple of times in between, make sure they don’t burn. Take it out and wrap in a tea towel for 4-5 minutes and then rub the hazelnuts in the towel to get peel off the skin.  When you leave the hot hazelnut wrapped in the towel, it creates steam which helps to loosen the skin which easily comes off when you rub it with the tea towel. Keep this aside.
3. Beat sugar and eggs with a hand mixer till the mixture is thick, pale and fluffy, it will take about 5 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and mix it in.
4. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and beat till combined. It will form a wet doughy lump.
6. Fold in the hazelnuts and chopped chocolates.
7. Transfer the dough to a well floured surface and bring it together to form about a 12 inches by 3 ½ inches log. The dough is very sticky, so you just need to pat some flour on your hands and shape it.
8. Bake the log on a baking sheet for about 25 minutes, till the dough is hard to touch and cracks appear on the surface.
9. Take the tray out and leave it to cool for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature of oven to 160 ˚C.
10. Cut the log into ½ inches slices, use a serrated knife and saw back and forth to cut instead of pressing the knife down which will probably break off pieces of you cookie than cut it. Put the slices with cut side down on the tray and bake again for 5 minutes, turn them other side up and bake another 5 minutes so that both the sides are golden brown.

Cool on wire rack and store in air tight container for several weeks. (Though it never lasts more than a few days , they are so yumm!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Pin Wheel Cookies

Happy New Year!

The last couple of months have been very hectic but a lot of fun– three weeks of vacation, some work in between and then the Christmas and New Year break. All good fun! Except, I did not get much time to bake or for that matter to update my recipe journal.  What I had planned to do was a big Christmas bake but that didn’t happen. In between some Christmas shopping and the turkey dinner and a trip to London, there just weren’t enough hours in a day between buying gifts and opening gifts (I miss that now L ) and eating-lots of eating and meeting friends and well just being all –you know-Christmassy. Among my initial holiday baking plans were these pin wheel cookies, mix of vanilla and chocolate and they look pretty; such an easy recipe but looks soooo much cooler than the amount of effort that goes into it. The dough, once rolled out can also be frozen. This recipe makes really yummy cookies- it not just that they look funky they taste great too.

(Adapted from theheritagecook.com) You will need:

320 g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
112 g unsalted softened butter
155 g granulated sugar
1 lightly beaten egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50 g plain chocolate, melted and cool

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and keep aside.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and sugar till it is light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract.
3. Add the flour mix from step 1 slowly to the above mixture and beat it in till it is combined. It does seem quite dry but just mix it all in.
4. Divide the dough into two. Add cocoa to the melted chocolate and mix it into one half of the dough. I have usually found this step a little tricky and the chocolate starts to harden again. But just be as quick as possible and the chocolate does mix in. The other dough half is your vanilla dough.
5. Now roll out the two dough types separately into a square. I honestly do this by eye, it would probably be about 6 inches to 10-12 inches and about a cm thick. Put the vanilla dough on top of the chocolate dough or the other way around.
6. Now tightly roll along the short side to have a rolled log. Wrap it in a clingfilm and store in the fridge for half an hour.
7. Take it out and just give it a roll on your palm just so as to roll out the flattened bit. Then cut it in 1 cm thick cookies. Bake it in preheated oven at 180 ˚C fan oven for about 10-11 minutes. The cookies would be ever so slightly browned. 
8. Cool on the wire rack and store in air tight container.
9. With my left over scraps of dough from the sides, I just piled them up, pressed them together and again made a cm thick cookie slices. Surprisingly they looked pretty cool as well !

Happy munching! Leave your comments please 🙂

Caramel orange macaron

After months and months of trying batches and batches of macaron recipes, I have finally found the one that works for me. After so many trials I have come to the conclusion, as do all who get obsessed with , not making, but perfecting their macarons is that everyone has their ‘own’ recipe, one that works with their ingredients and especially in their oven. I know for a fact that ovens play a big role in adjusting the macaron recipe. After the mocha macarons which did work beautifully, I had been struggling to get consistent results. Some batches would work fine one day and the same recipe would fail miserably the other.

What works for me and which might suit your fan oven too is:

35 g almond flour ( now the recipe would normally use 30 g but I use 35 because once you sift the flour you lose a few grams in the a large un-sifted leftover)
58 g icing sugar
1 egg white (about 35 g)
20 g caster sugar
pinch of cream of tarter
pinch salt

1. Put the almond flour and the icing sugar in the food processor and mix it for at least 2-3 minutes, this also makes the almond flour fine. 
2. Now sift the mixture, at the end you will be left with about a tablespoon of larger granules of the almond flour, do not sift that in. Keep aside the sifted almond flour mixture.
   

   Discard the unsifted granules

3. Whip the egg white , when the whites are foamy add a pinch of cream of tarter. Whip for another 30 seconds and then add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Now whip the egg whites till it forms almost stiff peaks, so that you can add whatever colour you want in your macarons before the final whip else you will end up over beating the egg whites. The egg whites are done when it forms stiff peaks and it clumps together in your whisk.
   

   When the egg whites are foamy, add the sugar in.

   

   Beat till the egg whites form stiff peaks.

4. Using a spatula, fold the almond flour mixture in 2 steps. Add half the mixture and fold in just till it is incorporated for about 8-10 strokes. Add the rest of the mix and fold it in. The strokes you use to fold in the mixture should be made as to deflate the egg white. It takes about 35 strokes in total to get the mixture such that it forms ribbons. This is the key step in macaron making- it is called macaronage. If you under beat the mixture, it will still be stiff and full of air that means your macarons will have large air pockets. If you over beat them, they will be too runny! It is perfect when it falls like a ribbon. When you put a dollop of mixture on the mixture itself it smooths out a little but does not incorporate back fully.
5. Put the mixture into the piping bag and pipe about 1″ circles on the baking sheet lined tray. Once piped, bang the tray onto the table 3 times, this is to get rid of any air in the macarons- you will see bubbles coming to the top. Leave it at room temperature for 15 minutes.
6. Pre heat the oven at 150 ˚C. I have a fan oven which I have found very tricky to bake macarons in as my oven does not maintain a consistent temperature. It is hottest at the back so my macarons towards the back always split! So you will have to play around with your oven settings. I have found that if I bake on the lowest shelf and turn the tray around half way through the baking then they are fine.
7. After 15 minutes of resting the macarons, bake them for 10-12 minutes.
8. Cool on a wire rack. When cooled peel the macarons off the baking sheet.
9. Pipe the filling on the base of a macaron and sandwich it with another shell.

This is the basic macaron recipe. Now this can be flavoured with a variety of fillings. For the petit fours I made an orange and caramel buttercream filling.