Cowboy Cookies, from Baked Explorations

Wahoo! a properly butch cookie, get the name, the size, the salty pretzel addition.  Yep, it gets 9/10 on the butch scale (and 10/10 on the yum scale).  Of course my saying wahoo and giving marks out of ten probably gets me 20/10 on the geek scale.  Well, it's too late to try to be cool now.

I bought Baked Explorations on the strength of the first book, Baked, the recipes I tried from Baked were totally delicious and just worked, which is what I like in a cookbook! lol.  I've now made two recipes from Baked explorations and although I didnt get a picture for #1 (the carrot and coconut scones, delicious, I added a little less sugar than suggested and served them with a curried lentil soup) I'm counting this book in! I have b2/m2'ed it and it stays.

October birthday #3 (take two, the cake)

Happy Second Birthday Dearest Squid!



I love birthdays, presents, hugs, golden excuse to bake things otherwise shelved indefinitely... Like this! I've been absolutely dying to make this cake since I  first saw it, but when, why? I really needed a good excuse for such a huge and colourful beast of a cake.

I admit it, I used mix, I trolleyed into town and bought ye olde Duncan Hines white cake mixes, just because I wanted really bright colours and doubted my own white cake would be quite so bleached.  Another trip to the purveyors of all things bright and glittery (hobbycraft!) and I was six tubs of lurid food colouring gel better off.

 The cake was easy enough to make... mix the mix, weigh and divide by three, add the food colouring and bake in 20cm tins.  Each mix made three thin 20cm cakes, perfect! a normal thickness cake would have needed planning permission before frosting and stacking.  As it was I stuck it with many wooden skewers to keep it together, just in case.

The cream cheese frosting (yes, again) is from Nigella this time and I will never stray again.  It went on, stayed on and tasted good.  I layered it with apricot cake glaze which gave it a nice sweet/tart flavour.

 The cake tasted pretty good, much better than the amount of colouring would have you believe it could, it also kept well, after a few days in the fridge it still tasted really nice (that'll be the huge amount of e numbers I guess *sigh*) and wasnt stale.  Every last bit was eaten and I'd definately do it again, lol, just not for a while.

October birthday #3 (take one, the cookies)

Yep, somesquiddy was two! you can tell, right?

 In my perpetual quest to be the ideal mommy (it is mommy, just is, I don't know why, something to do with the cherry pie/milk and cookies image of the good old all American mom, clean living and so on) I did number cookies for her birthday.  Recipe from how to be a domestic goddess (a book which gets a free pass owing to heavy use over the years) was as good as ever, it stays in shape while baking and tastes good.

 They were decorated with royal icing and a whole lot of little choking hazards sweeties.  The decorating was a lot of fun, I was ably assisted by my glamorous assistants with the piping and splodging.  The results looked not too bad really, it's a massed effect thing I guess! 

And Cake Win!

Or, how my mojo returned!

 Today is October birthday #2 and in the interests of getting right back on my horse I decided to gamble it all on a new recipe.  Killing off a birthday cake and an item from the b2/m2 list.  I bought the Greyston Bakery book a while ago from tk maxx (home of an ungodly amount of cookbooks) but had yet to bake from it.

 The carrot cake baked beautifully, even and flat on top and perfect for a birthday cake!  This carrot cake uses melted butter instead of corn oil, and I like that! butter is good.  I hate cream cheese frosting, for frosting, to eat from a bucket it's just fine.  I knew as soon as I smeared some onto the cake that the consistency was off.  But it looks ok... the carrot decorations are just a follow on from my pumpkins, in our house any excuse for marzipan is a good excuse.

The cookies, well, the cookies were totally unnecessary.  But who doesn't love a cookie? these were a lovely confidence booster! I like a nice, wholesome looking hessian kind of cookie.  These fit the bill. 

Greyston Bakery Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies

1.5 cups plain, unbleached flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1.5 cups packed soft (dark, I used) brown sugar

1.5tsp vanilla extract

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (I used a local mix of spelt, rye, barley and oat flakes)

3/4 cup shredded coconut

7oz dark chocolate chips

 if you're playing along use the waitrose conversions, they worked just fine.

Preheat the oven to 180, get two baking sheets and line with parchment paper (the non stick one, I was taking no risks here).

Whisk together the flour, salt and baking soda.

In a mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg and vanilla, keep beating till it becomes a light, creamy mix.  Scrape down the sides and beat briefly.

On low speed mix in the flour until just barely combined.  Mix in the oats, coconut and chocolate using a spatula.

 Either drop the dough by the spoonfull and hope for the best or weigh the dough, divide by 24 and make perfectly round cookies (you just know what I did, right?) that bake evenly.  With this dough each (unbaked) cookies weighs nearly 50g! big cookies.

 Space them evenly on the sheets and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, till golden brown.  Cool on the sheets briefly then move to wire racks to finish.

 Enjoy, with a big glass of milk.

Cake Fail!

It happens to all of us, right? right!

 The other day was October birthday #1... birthday tea was planned, with fondant fancies, cake pops, cute iced cookies etc.  All bloody night the day before and most of the actual birthday was spent baking, however I was missing one crucial ingredient, my baking mojo.  It upped and left.

 Result? uh, three usable fancies, and they only came into grudging existence because my sister (perhaps more genetically gifted and naturally suited to pretty and cute cakes) is no quitter! I was all for chucking the bastard things out.  There were six good fancies, but the dog ate the other three, that was just the sort of day it was.

My cherry bakewell whoopie pies were very cute and (dare I say?) pretty tasty, they were also more at my level decoration wise, I mean, splodge on the icing and press half a (E number loaded, no natural image to protect here) glace cherry on top.  The recipe came from The English kitchen, a lovely blog with lots of nice recipes. 



The cake pops were sweet, in every sense, I might try them again but with home made cake and frosting.  They were quite cute though, even my very non professional looking efforts.  My iced cookies ran, dripped and failed to set properly... *sigh* the jam tarts, delicious, almondy short pastry, sad they all collapsed then! my dear family scraped them off the cooling rack and made very appreciative noises.  Good pastry, bad mojo.



Cute little cookies

Please, be gentle.  Cookies, iced cookies, not one of my strong points.  I prefer the roll into a ball, dunk in sugar and bake variety, or maybe the cut out with a cutter and pretend it's a plain/folksy/Steiner thing.  However, perhaps all this will change? I borrowed the totally gorgeous Biscuiteers book from the library (and would like to have my own copy eventually! ) the other night and have since been itching to make something, well, cutesy.

The recipe (adhered to strictly, I love this level of do as we say in a book) produced a lovely lemony cookie, despite the fact I rolled them a little to thick I think.  Applying the icing, it wasn't exactly a breeze, but for a first attempt I'm pretty pleased with them.

 Obviously the first ones I tried were Halloweeny, I love Halloween! seriously, a lot, I'm like a crazy dyke version of Martha Stewart (only without her gazillions of dollars, hordes of minions and snappy dress sense, obviously) and it is now officially pumpkin season! I noticed while making these biscuits I only have one exceptionally crappy pumpkin cutter, this must be put right, as soon as possible... because, who knows when the strange urge to bake may strike? after all, I do have half a batch of this dough in the freezer and another box of royal icing in the baking cupboard.

And finally... a tip, from me to you (because I care) if you should happen to be in the trade department of a well known home improvement store, enquiring as to the availability of 2" thick insulation grade styrofoam board, do not, I repeat, do not tell them it's to make a gravestone.  They look at you funny, just saying.