No-churn Cookie Monster Ice Cream

September 16, 2020September 16, 2020 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! Do you have a toddler in front of the TV right now totally hypnotised by Sesame Street? Do you hear the phrase “C is for cookie” at least once a day? Then your kid is probably a true Cookie Monster fan. Well, I don’t have kids of my own (yet) and I was never really a fan of Sesame Street when growing up.

Despite that, I wanted to share a recipe with everyone that screams the colour blue, and when doing some research one fine weekend, Cookie Monster desserts flooded Pinterest and Google Images. So embrace your little one’s love by adding some Cookie Monster fun to this dessert. This super simple kid-friendly No-churn Cookie Monster Ice Cream is loaded with Oreo cookies and chocolate chip cookies that make for a great combo. In just a few minutes time, you can have this fun cookie-loaded ice cream in your freezer. Plus the recipe only needs cookies, sweetened condensed milk, cream, and vanilla. Super simple.

Before we dive into tonight’s recipe, please take the time to check out the original where I drew my inspiration from over on Baking Beauty by Krystle.

PREP TIME 4 HOURS* | COOKING TIME — | SERVES 6-8

* For freezing time, minimum 4 hours or up to 24 hours.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups (500ml) all purpose cream, chilled
1 can (218g) sweetened condensed milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 to 1 tsp blue food colouring, may need more or less for your desired shade of blue
Chocolate chip cookies (such as Chips Ahoy), roughly chopped
Chocolate sandwich cookies (such as Oreos), roughly chopped

METHOD

In a chilled medium-sized mixing bowl, whip the all purpose cream using an electrical hand-held mixer until soft peaks start to form.
Add the sweetened condensed milk together with the blue food colouring and vanilla. Continue to whip to soft peaks, it should be fluffy and mousse-like.
Gently fold in half of the chopped cookies and transfer to an airtight container. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining cookies and freeze for 4 hours or up to 24 hours. Let sit at room temperature for about 15-20 minutes before scooping and serving. Enjoy!

Store-bought cookies work really well with this recipe as their crunchy texture stands up to the ice cream. You may also make your own homemade cookies, just make sure they’re super crunchy.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

November 16, 2016 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! For those who follow me on my personal social media pages will most definitely know that I’ve probably celebrated my turning of a quarter of a century one too many times that I guess an average person would celebrate their birthday. To quote a friend “[I] only turn 25 once” I think she meant that in a way that I probably had too many celebrations – but of course I’m going to take that as yes, I only turn 25 once so I’m going to go all out and use my birthday as an excuse to eat all the cake and food without feeling guilty *cheeky grin* Okay, so it’s been exactly a week now since I turned 25 so I guess it’s only fair to put a cease to the celebrations and start hitting the gym to burn off all the cake (3 cakes in total to be honest).

That aside, tonight’s recipe that I will be sharing is one that I whipped up last year for Christmas. I baked a batch of soft, chewy Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookies long with some traditional Sugar Cookies to take to the office with me on Boxing Day, to share with my colleagues – I know right. I’m so nice. Anyway, you might realise in the photos that the cookies may look like they have a hint of red to them – well, I tried adding a little bit of red food colouring (what I had left of it anyway) to make it look like a red velvet crinkle cookie, but I guess I didn’t have enough coloring for it to really shine through.

Oh you know – just my little owly friend that also happens to be one of my measuring spoons basking in a bowl of flour mixture.

Anyway! Before I head onto the recipe, please take the time to check out the original over on Sally’s Baking Addiction. I think I have said this before, but nonetheless, I will say it again. Sally’s recipes are definitely spot on and easy to follow. I don’t think that I’ve ever screwed up a recipe of hers when in the kitchen myself. Somewhere in the past, I attempted to bake crinkle cookies after seeing my Aunt post her cookies on her Facebook page. I followed a recipe, not Sally’s of course and they ended being a total FAIL. I was so sad because I had baked them to share with friends – which I did anyway, and I think they were just being nice and said that the cookies were ‘still’ good haha.

PREP TIME 3 HOURS 30 MINS* | COOKING TIME 10 MINS | SERVES 20 COOKIES

*Includes chilling time – it is highly recommended that you chill the cookie dough for at least 3 hours. The longer, the better! Chilling helps the flavors to develop, prevents spreading, and makes the otherwise sticky cookie dough easy to handle.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup all-purpose flour, levelled
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, for rolling
1/2 cup & 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
180g Belgian dark chocolate, roughly chopped
115g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 large free range egg, at room temperature
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

METHOD

Using a hand-held electric mixer, beat the butter in a large mixing bowl for about 1 minute on medium speed until completely smooth and creamy. Then, add in the granulated sugar and brown sugar, continuing to beat on medium-high speed until fluffy and light in colour. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract on high speed. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Set aside.
In a separate medium-sized bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together until combined. On low speed, slowly mix into the wet ingredients until combined. The cookie dough will be quite thick. Switch to high speed and beat in the roughly chopped Belgian chocolate. At this point, the cookie dough will be sticky. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours and up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory for this cookie dough.
Remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator and allow it to sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes; if the cookie dough was chilled longer than 3 hours, then let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. This makes the cookie dough easier to scoop and roll.
Preheat oven to 180C (350F or gas mark 4). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats, and then set aside.
Scoop and roll the dough, about 1.5 tbsp of dough each, into balls. Roll each ball generously in the confectioners’ sugar and place them on the prepared baking sheets.
Bake the cookies for about 8-9 minutes. The baked cookies will look extremely soft in the centers when you remove them from the oven. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet; they will slightly deflate as you let them cool. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. Once cooled, enjoy and share with family and friends!

Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. Baked cookies freeze well – up to three months. Unbaked cookie dough balls (that are not coated in confectioners’ sugar) freeze well – up to three months. Coat the frozen cookie dough balls in confectioners’ sugar, then bake for about 10 minutes. No need to thaw them.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Brendon’s Cookies & Cream

August 11, 2015January 16, 2019 amcarmen3 Comments

Hi Everyone! Hope you’re all having a lovely day wherever you are. My name is Brendon D’Souza and I am a writer and food blogger from Sydney. I’m very honoured to be a part of this Auguest series and have some exciting dessert creations to share with you over the next two posts.

I launched my website Brendon The Smiling Chef in 2012, posting simple recipes that I had cooked for dinner. I developed skills in food styling and photography through internships and writing and editing roles at Green Lifestyle, Grapeshot, Australian Catholics and Youth Food Movement Australia and started to apply these skills to my recipe posts. This year I plan to make a few exciting changes with the website and include a restaurant review section called “Smiling & Dining @” which features reviews that I publish at Zomato While you’re there feel free to check out all my foodie adventures in Instagram at @brendonthesmilingchef.

I met Ally a few months ago at a food blogging seminar held in Sydney and she told me all about her passion for exploring cultures through food, which is something that I too love! We caught up a few weeks ago for a fabulous cooking day where she showed me how to make some delicious Filipino recipes (Which you can check out at Brendon The Smiling Chef next week). The recipe that I’m going to share with you today is a bit of an invention that I have drawn from my experiences of growing up here in Australia. Like Ally, I too am a bit of a third-culture foodie. My family are Indian and are originally from the state of Goa which sits on the West Coast of India. Goa is largely influenced by the Portuguese, who colonised the region in around the 16th Century, so our culture, customs and cuisine are surprisingly similar to Europe. I was born in Bahrain and lived there for two years before we migrated to Australia in the mid-nineties.

Growing up in Western Sydney, I was surrounded by a wealth of multicultural diversity and from a young age I was introduced to the cultures and cuisines of the Philippines, Southern America, Malta and Vietnam to name a few. Despite all this I have to admit that as a child I was very embarrassed about being Indian. It’s one of side-effects of growing up in Anglo-Saxon society. I saw myself as different from all the other kids at school. I had black hair, brown skin and brown eyes rather than blonde hair and blue eyes. Now that we’ve all grown up, a lot of my friends have said that they experienced these feelings too! I would cringe when I opened my lunchbox to find the beautiful Goan prawn curry and rice that mum had packed for me. What would the other kids think? We never really ate much Indian food at home when we were younger because my sister and I, being True Blue Aussies, didn’t like the pungent spices used in most of our cooking. They were too hot for our tiny tastebuds to handle. In these instances, six-year-old Brendon would drag a chair to the kitchen and reach for a jar of tomato paste sauce to put together my version of Spaghetti Bolognese; 1 kilogram of beef mince with 1 jar of tomato paste, yes paste (#IcantbelieveIdidthat), stirred through.

The 2000’s came along we noticed a number of American food products appearing on the supermarket shelves including Pop Tarts, Oreos, and Krispy Kreme Donuts. My favourite was Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Creme bar, (or the Mars® counterpart Dove), a dreamy combination of white chocolate with tiny chocolate cookie pieces. It was ever popular among my Filipino friends. They had experienced this delight for years because it was sold in all the Filipino grocery stores. We saw it as a luxury because it was so new! It became one of my favourite flavour combos and, to nine-year-old Brendon’s delight, even started appearing in ice creams and cheesecakes!

I was playing around with the idea of reinventing Cookies and Cream and turning it into a sophisticated dessert. Chocolate chip cookies would definitely feature because who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie? A white chocolate and vanilla bean ganache could represent the Cream and a 70% dark chocolate ganache would balance the sweetness. It had been a while since I’d tried to make macarons from scratch but I thought it would be nice to have some chocolate almond cigars to add another texture and flavour to the dessert. We made up the recipe for these while referring to the Master Adriano Zumbo’s for rough measurements. They weren’t as smooth on top but they made delicious chewy cookies.

PREP TIME 30 MINS | COOKING TIME 15 MINS | SERVES 2-3

INGREDIENTS

For the white chocolate and vanilla bean ganache

100ml pure cream
200g white chooclate, chopped
1 tbsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp glucose syrup

For the bitter dark chocolate ganache

100ml pure cream
150g dark chocolate (min. 70% cocoa solids)
1 tsp glucose syrup

For the chocolate almond cigars

1 free range egg white
250g caster sugar
150g almond meal
2 tbsp Dutch process cocoa powder

For the chocolate chip cookies

250g unsalted butter, softened
200g dark chocolate, chopped
200g milk chocolate, chopped
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup baking powder
1 free range egg
1 tbsp vanilla bean paste (or extract)

METHOD

Preparation

White chocolate and vanilla bean ganache: Place the cream and white chocolate into a microwave-safe bowl and stir to combine. Heat for 30 seconds on medium then give the bowl a stir with a spatula. Continue to heat and stir the ganache in this way until smooth. Alternatively you can place the chocolate and cream into a heatproof glass bowl set over a pan of simmering water and stir until melted. When smooth, add the vanilla bean paste and the glucose syrup and stir until smooth. Allow to cool completely. Transfer the ganache to a disposable piping bag, seal the end with a rubber band and place in the fridge until cold but pliable.
Bitter chocolate ganache. Place the cream and dark chocolate into a microwave-safe bowl and stir to combine. Heat for 30 seconds on medium then give the bowl a stir with a spatula. Continue to heat and stir the ganache in this way until smooth. Alternatively you can place the chocolate and cream into a heatproof glass bowl set over a pan of simmering water and stir until melted. When smooth, add the glucose syrup and stir until smooth. Allow to cool completely. Transfer the ganache to a disposable piping bag, seal the end with a rubber band and place in the fridge until cold but pliable.

Chocolate Almond Cigars

Pre-heat the oven to 150C (300F or gas mark 2). Line a baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
Place the egg white into a clean stainless steel or glass bowl free from grease or dirt. Whip to soft peaks using clean electric beaters. Add 1 tbsp of castor sugar to the egg whites and beat for 20-30 seconds or until the sugar has dissolved. Continue to add the sugar in this way until you have a glossy meringue. Sprinkle the almond meal and cocoa powder over and fold using a spatula to form a smooth batter.
Transfer the batter to a disposable piping bag, twist the opening to enclose the filling and carefully cut off the tip of the bag to create a hole 2cm in diameter.
Pipe 5cm cigars onto the baking sheet. You will need about 8 for this recipe. Allow them to rest for 10 minutes.
Place the tray on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cigars have risen. Remove the tray from the oven and allow them to cool. When cool, take your piping bag with the white chocolate ganache and pipe a line down half the cigars. Sandwich with another cigar on top.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Place the butter and sugar and vanilla into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until fluffy. Alternatively use electric hand beaters. Add the egg and beat until combined. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir to form a smooth dough. Add the chopped chocolate stir to combine.
Roll out 12 cookies using 2 tsp cookie dough for each. Place them onto the prepared baking tray leaving about 3cm between each cookie for spreading. You will only need a small amount of the dough for the recipe but I’ll show you what you can do with your leftovers in my next recipe. Wrap the leftover dough tightly with cling wrap and place in the fridge.
Place the baking tray on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes until the cookies have spread. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Crumble 4 of the cookies to form cookie crumbs.

Plate up the dessert

This is where the fun begins. Feel free to let your imagination run wild. Sprinkle the cookie crumbs across 4 serving plates. Pipe some white chocolate ganache onto each of the serving plates. Then rest a cigar along the ganache. Divide the chocolate chip cookies among the plates. Make a 1cm hole in the piping bag with the biter chocolate ganache and pipe them around the plate. Serve.

Ally and I had lots of fun with the plating. Check out our attempts.

Happy cooking and keep smiling,

Brendon D’Souza 🙂

Gingerbread Cookies

December 20, 2014December 31, 2018 amcarmen2 Comments

Hello Everyone! I apologise in advance for not posting yesterday as scheduled. Long story short, I didn’t write my post yesterday (I have my reasons) and I just wanted to go to bed when I got home from a work event yesterday. Anyway, if you read my last post on the Gingerbread Muffins, you would’ve know what tonight’s recipe will be about. I wanted to do something nice for my colleagues in the office for my last week before the Christmas/New Year holidays, so I decided to bake batches of Gingerbread Cookies. Actually these cookies inspired me to try out and bake Gingerbread Muffins on Monday to stick to the festive theme. I packed them into little plastic bags and tied them up with Christmas tags that I bought from the Christmas Markets at The Grounds of Alexandria.

I think, if not all, most of them loved my cookies. My boss had the best reaction hands down when he saw his bag of goodies on his desk when he came into work; he let out what seemed like a squeal of excitement. I also managed to change my manager’s view on gingerbread – she normally doesn’t like gingerbread, but mine were an exception. I genuinely believe that she wasn’t just saying that because I was there; she apparently went on for about 5 minutes about the cookies to her sister. Also, one of the interns didn’t come in at all so he didn’t get his bag of goodies, so the other manager said that he was tempted to just open his bag for more. Towards the end of the day I saw the bag closer to his desk and opened. Yesterday I asked him if he ate all of the other intern’s cookies, and he said he gave some to his housemates!

Some of my cookies ended up on Instagram as well:

Like the little gingerbread men that was featured on Tuesday’s post, I made my own cookie cutter using aluminium foil, which meant that each time I pressed it on the rolled out dough, it would slightly deform. I would then reshape it, but that meant that I had men that differed in shape – some were fat, some skinny. Some had one leg longer than the other, one arm higher than the other, big heads, small heads, etc. but to quote Jialing (as well as from the previous post), “everyone is different in their own way and we don’t discriminate!” Also, a special thanks and shoutout to my main girl Jialing for decorating my cookies while I frantically tried to do some many things at once in the kitchen. They look absolutely stunning!

Before I move onto the recipe, please do visit the site where I originally got the recipe from: Food Network. As usual, I used slightly different ingredients only because some I didn’t have on me – or I wasn’t up for buying let’s say a bottle worth $30+ of orange liqueur when I only needed half a teaspoon of it. Making my own orange liqueur crossed my mind, but then I only thought of a week before making these cookies. I still wanted to add a hint of booze to my frosting though, so I ended up getting a tiny bottle of vodka for this. Again, I didn’t want to buy a big bottle of vodka because I don’t drink vodka. If you are making these for the little ones, just remember to exclude the vodka from the frosting!

PREP TIME 25 MINS | COOKING TIME 8-10 MINS | MAKES 3 DOZEN

INGREDIENTS

For the gingerbread dough

4 cups plain flour (plus 1/2 cup additional for rolling, if needed)
170g unsalted butter, softened
2 large free range eggs
1 large navel orange, zested
1 lemon, juiced
1 & 2/3 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses (or honey in my case)
1/4 cup milk*
1 tablespoon ground dry ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

For the easy orange frosting

1 cup soft icing sugar
1 large orange, zested and juiced
1 tsp vodka (optional)

*I don’t know what I did wrong but when I was rolling out my dough after I had chilled it in the fridge for about 15-20minutes, my dough it felt a bit dry and crumbly. I fixed it by adding some milk and putting it back into the fridge before rolling it out again. It seemed to have worked this way! I’m not sure if I did something wrong or just looking at the recipe, maybe the ratio between dry and wet was a bit out of proportion.

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180C. Add the unsalted butter, sugar, and orange zest in a large bowl and beat using an electric mixer fitted with a paddle at medium-high speed until smooth; about 5 to 8 minutes.
Meanwhile, in another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, dry ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Whisk to blend and then set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, molasses (or honey), and lemon juice.
When the butter and sugar mixture is smooth, lower the speed of the mixer and add the dry ingredients. Then add the egg mixture until well blended. At this point, if you feel your mixture is too dry or crumbly, add the milk in.
Divide the cookie dough in half. Wrap each half with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes. This step will make it easier to finish rolling out the dough when it has chilled. It will also mean you only have half of the dough getting warm as you roll it.
Lightly flour a flat surface. Use a floured rolling pin to gently roll the first half of the dough about 1/2-inch thick. Lightly flour the cookie cutter(s) and cut the shapes, making as few scraps as possible. Got scraps? Form the scraps into a ball, press it flat and chill in the refrigerator. These cookies may be a little more “tough” because the dough will have been worked a little more than the others.
Transfer the cut out cookies to a tray lined with baking paper. Leave room between the cookies as they can spread a little. You’ll end up having to bake them it batches depending on the size of your cookies and how many can fit into a single baking tray. Bake until brown around the edges; about 8 to 10 minutes. While your first half of your batch of dough is cut and baking/waiting to bake, work on your second half of cookie dough. Once your cookies are done, set them aside to cool down and get started on making your easy orange frosting.
Easy Orange Frosting: In a medium bowl add all of the ingredients and whisk together to combine. If the consistency is too thick, add a touch more orange juice (or vodka if you prefer) to thin it out. Transfer the frosting into a party bag (or if you are like me and don’t have one, you can use a zip lock bag and cut a hold at the tip, OR even use a ketchup bottle as you will see in one of the photographs below).
Work on and decorate the batch of cookies that went into the oven first as these would have had enough time to cool down before the others. The work your way through the batches of cookies.

I guess, if you want it to look more festive you can go with green/red decorations but our local Coles only had blue or pink. Of course, cookies are best served fresh but you can store these cookies in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Double Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Cookies

November 20, 2014December 31, 2018 amcarmen6 Comments

Hello Everyone! Before I dive into today’s recipe, I just want to let you know that I may not be posting up a recipe next week Tuesday as I will be away from Saturday to Tuesday evening (I say ‘may’ only because depending if I can write up a post in advanced or even write one the night I get back, but may be to tired for that). This also means that Jialing and I won’t be having our fortnightly Muffin Making Monday because well, Monday I will be on a road trip back to base camp. I will be heading to the Red Centre of Australia exploring the rugged outback beauty and taking in all the richness in Aboriginal culture. For a person who loves adventure but hates camping, it’s going to be an experience, and I don’t know whether I am looking forward to or will regret looking forward to a weekend of 38-42 degree celsius weather over at Alice Springs/Uluru…

Anyway, you’ll probably hear more of that on next week’s post I presume, so let’s get back to the point of tonight’s post. So as you know from my previous post, Jialing’s actual birthday was on Tuesday. On Monday she came over and baked herself some birthday cupcakes, gluten free chocolate cupcakes I believe. Anyway, as usual, I didn’t want to just sit around and watch her bake, so I decided to bake too! Just something simple to kill time and something that I could easily take to work because I wasn’t keen on having them all to myself – and so I decided on baking some cookies. I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to make at first, until I stumbled upon Martha Stewart’s recipe for Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies. It was so convenient because I practically had every ingredient in my pantry, except of course the chocolate and I was a little short on cocoa powder as well. When I got to the chocolate/lollies section at Coles, I was unsure of what chocolate to get for the cookies. The original recipe uses milk chocolate, but I personally don’t really like milk chocolate – I like them dark… Just like my men (just kidding)! If you know me, I never fail to finish a sentence, be it my own or a friend’s, like that! Just as how I finish a sentence breaking out into a song if the first part resembles lyrics to a song I know. Anyway, got side tracked there, as I was browsing through the dark chocolates, I came across Lindt’s Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate. I knew instantly that these bad babies are going into my cookies. And I’m glad I got them! They did not overpower the double chocolate flavour of the cookies, but instead they gave just a subtle hit of saltiness and oozy gooey caramel. Soft and moist on the inside, crunchy on the outside. I am actually salivating now just typing that!

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 15 MINS | MAKES 15 COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

2 large free range eggs
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
200g Lindt Sea Salt Caramel dark chocolate (or any other kind of chocolate), 100g coarsely chopped, 100g cut into chunks
100g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (optional)*

*The original recipe adds 1/2 tsp of salt, but because I am using a chocolate that already has sea salt in it, I lessened the amount of salt a little bit – or I guess depending you can ignore the salt completely. My cookies did not turn out to be very salty in the end anyway.

METHOD

Preheat oven to 160C.
Add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and whisk together until combined. Set aside.
Melt coarsely chopped chocolate together with the butter in a small heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave for about 30-45 seconds. Stir to combine the mixture.
In a large bowl, add the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and the chocolate mixture. Using a handheld electric mixer, mix on medium speed until well combined combined. Then reduce the speed to low and gradually mix in the flour mixture. Once combined, fold in chocolate chunks using a spatula.
Scoop the batter onto a baking tray lined with baking paper (as Martha’s recipe goes, I used an ice cream scooper to measure out my cookie batter). Leave about a 2-cm gap between the cookies as they will flatten out while baking in the oven.
Bake until cookies are flat and the surfaces begin to crack (about 15 minutes). Once done, remove from the oven, lift the baking paper from the tray and transfer the cookies to a wire rack. When you remove the cookies from the oven, you will notice that they are a bit soft – this is normal as they will start to firm up when they cool down. So be careful to not assume they are underdone and risk over-baking them.
Let them cool for about 5-10 minutes. Cookies can then be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

I mean, just look at that caramel goodness trying to peak through the cracks! As I mentioned above, I brought these bad boys into work the next day and they were a crowd pleaser! My boss Max (who by the way, just got back from Bali that day and said he’d have half because he’s on a “diet”), had a whole cookie to himself and was practically having foodgasms. I don’t blame him, they were THAT good. Everyone in the office loved it, but not enough for a second helping, or maybe because they were just so sinful, they couldn’t bring themselves to have another – except for my community manager James. He was quick to ask for another cookie before he stepped into a meeting, and before I left for the day.

If you want to attempt making these cookies – I HIGHLY recommend the sea salt caramel by Lindt! Even if it’s just eating them on their own. Too good!

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Cranberry & Pistachio Cookies

April 20, 2014December 27, 2018 amcarmenLeave a comment

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16 ESV)

Happy Easter everyone! I spent my day eating, shopping, walking, and eating some more with my food buddy Jialing and her boyfriend Zargham. It started off with lunch at the newly opened Roadside Café in Kingsford, then we made our way to the city to do some unnecessary shopping. Most of the stores in Pitt Street and the Westfield were closed because of the Easter holidays but as you walked towards Market City, stores were opened and busy with insane sales. We made this conclusion: “Asians” not that we were being racist being Asians ourselves, just pointing out the obvious stereotypes.

Anyway, on our shopping trip, we stopped by a store called General Pants Co. along George Street. I met a saleslady and her name was Shannon (apologies if this isn’t how you spell your name). We talked about what we’re up to for the Easter long weekend, and she mentioned that she was wanting to do some baking today. I mentioned to her that I recently started a food blog and gave her my link. Shannon, if you’re reading this, hope you enjoy my blog! Feel free to share with your family and friends 🙂

We ended the night having dinner at Chinese Noodle House, and about $80 poorer from food and shopping today.

I wanted to make something special for Easter but I didn’t get around to being out all day. So nevertheless, I pulled out an old recipe as requested by one of my friends, Miss Yvonne Wang. She has had these cookies many times and always gave it a big thumbs up. So just for her, and of course everyone else, today’s recipe as titled: Cranberry & Pistachio Cookies

I originally followed this recipe and tweaked it a bit, so please do check out the original as well by the BBC GoodFood

PREP TIME 1 HOUR 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 12-15 MINS |
MAKES 2 DOZEN COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

For the cookie dough

175g unsalted butter, cut into chucks
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup pistachios, roughly chopped
1/3 cup dried cranberries, roughly chopped

For the pistachio paste

1/4 cup pistachios
1 tbsp icing sugar
3 tbsp cold water

METHOD

Combine the pistachio paste ingredients in a blender and blend until pistachios are roughly chopped and combined (does not have to be smooth in texture). Set aside until needed.
Toss the butter, sugar and vanilla extract with a spoon. Add the flour, pistachios and cranberries into the mix and stir – you might need to use your hands at this stage to bring the mix together as a crumble mix. Add in the pistachio paste and stir it in to combine as a dough.
Half the dough and shape each half into a log. Cover in cling wrap and chill in the refrigerator for a minimum of 1 hour before baking, or alternatively, the dough can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Preheat the oven to 180C. Slice the logs into about 1cm thick rounds and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely on the tray.