COOKBOOKS GALORE

I made these to take to a local coffee morning. Chocolate and spice go so well together. These freeze well, so you're never short of something sweet when the mood takes you! You need - 200g dark chocolate, 210g plain flour, 11/2 tspn ginger, 1/2 tspn mixed spice, 1 tspn cinnamon, 1 tbspn cocoa powder, 110g butter, 120g dark brown sugar, 4 tbspn golden syrup, 1 tspn bicarb, whole almonds to decorate Preheat oven 160C/gas3 Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper Chop the chocolate up, and in a bowl sift the spices and cocoa together with the flour. In another bowl beat the butter and sugar till fluffy, then add the golden syrup and beat again. Dissolve the bicarb in 11/2 tspn boiling water. Beat half o f the flour mixture into the butter one, beat in the bicarb then the rest of the flour mixture. Add the chocolate chunks and mix well. Roll into a sausage shape and cover in clingfilm. Chill for about 2 hours till firm. Cut slices off the roll and place on the ba...

I made a couple of batches of cookies recently, so thought I'd post the recipes here. They're both very easy and quick to make. The first one is for Chocolate-chip and Oats cookies, and the second one is for Ginger and Chocolate cookies. For the Choc-chip and Oats ones  - Preheat oven 180C/gas4  Mixture makes enough cookies to cover 3 baking sheets, but I did it in 2 batches, as I only have 2 baking sheets. Beat together 125g butter, 100g soft brown sugar, 110g caster sugar and 1/2 tspn vanilla extract till pale and thick, using an electric hand beater, then beat in 1 egg. Fold in 110g oats [not the jumbo ones]. sieve 150g plain flour with 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1/2 tspn bicarb. together and fold into mixture. Finally fold in 175g dark chocolate which has been chopped [not too small] and 150g peeled and chopped hazelnuts [you could toast them first]. Using a tablespoon or an ice cream scoop, put balls of dough onto the baking sheets, leaving a space between eac...

This is something for visiting children over Christmas. but I'm sure adults would like them too! I've made peppermint bark for several years, but recently, looking on Pinterest, I saw that you could make cookies with a bark topping. I had to try these, as I wanted to take something for my grandchildren when we visited them yesterday. I decided to make a shortbread type dough. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease a Swiss roll tin and line with a strip of parchment paper down the middle, leaving the ends overhanging to get the cookie out of the tin. Beat 220g butter till creamy and white, then gradually beat in 200g of caster sugar. Keep beating till it's nice and fluffy. Add 1 tspn vanilla extract and a large egg yolk and beat in. Add 240g plain flour plus a pinch of salt and slowly add to the batter till blended. I found it easier to drop spoonfuls of this into the tin as it's a stiff mixture, then using my fingertips I pressed the dough into the tin to make a ...

                                      Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year. These are a nice treat to have if anyone pops in for a coffee or a hot chocolate over the festive period. The recipe makes about 14 cookies. The biscuits have a chocolate filling with a coffee mascarpone topping. Preheat oven 200C/gas6 and line 2 baking trays with baking paper or silicone sheets. For the biscuits you cream together 60g of softened butter with 90g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 1 beaten egg and mix in, then fold in 60g of plain flour. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle and pipe 28 blobs on the baking paper, spacing them a bit apart. Bake for 6-8 mins till firm in the middle and beginning to go brown at the edges. For the filling - put 150g mascarpone cheese in a bowl; stir 1/2 tspn of instant coffee powder into 1 tbspn of dark rum and st...

My grandsons came for the weekend, and as the weather wasn't very kind, I wanted to find something to do with them. They enjoy cooking, so we made some cookies. The original recipe had walnuts in it, but I needed to use up the last of my pecans. We found the recipe in an old Blue Peter book, which had belonged to the boys' Dad. They were then called biscuits, but cookies sounded more modern. They all took a turn beating the mixture, adding ingredients and making the cookies into balls. I have to own up that I drizzled the chocolate over the ones in the photo - their efforts had the chocolate mainly over the worktop! They proudly took the finished cookies [well most of them!] home for their Mum, and wanted to take some in their lunch boxes. We made 15 cookies. Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease 2 baking trays. Put 125g butter, 70g soft brown sugar and 70g caster sugar in a bowl and beat together till nice and creamy. Add 1 beaten egg and beat into the mixture. Fold in 200g...

These came about because I had a sort out in my baking cupboard and found some marzipan that needed using up.  I remembered eating some biscuits in France that had a layer of marzipan in the middle, and they were delicious, so thought I'd have a try and make something similar. I used my usual cookie recipe, rolled out the dough and added a chunk of marzipan to the circles I'd cut out. To give an extra flavour I added a few bits of broken dark chocolate before putting another circle on top and sealing them together. I piped some white chocolate over when they were cold. I made 12 complete cookies. 150g butter 150g light brown sugar 1 egg 250g flour 100g marzipan 100g dark chocolate, broken in small pieces 100g white chocolate Preheat oven 190C/gas5 Line a baking sheet with some parchment paper. Beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer, then beat in the egg. Fold in the flour. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1/2 c...

Christmas Baking 5 I didn't get time before Christmas to post this biscuit recipe. It's yet another variation on the basic cookie recipe I posted a while ago. I made up a hamper for my aunt and wanted to make her some special biscuits. There was a box of Matchmaker chocolates and a bar of white chocolate hanging round, good Christmas flavours, so how could I use these? I came up with the idea of a double cookie - 2 cookies with the Matchmakers chopped up in them, sandwiched together with a white chocolate ganache. A real Christmas treat for my aunt. I thought they'd be fiddly to make, but they weren't. I made 15 double cookies from this recipe - 30 cookies Basic recipe: 225g butter [soft] 240g caster sugar 1 egg yolk [beaten] 2 tspn vanilla essence280g plain flour pinch salt Extras: 100g Matchmakers [or any mint chocolate sticks] chopped up finely icing sugar Filling: 2 tbspn double cream 100g white chocolate, broken up Preheat oven 190C/gas5 Line...

Now that my son is living at home, we seem to get through an awful lot of biscuits and cakes. I thought I'd start to make my own biscuits/cookies to fill the biscuit tin, so at least I know what's in them. I love most  American cookies as well as lots of great British favourites like digestives, shortbread, bourbon etc. so thought that in the next few weeks I'd bake a mixture. With cookies, once you've found a good basic recipe, you can adapt it in many ways. When we lived in the US, my lovely neighbour gave me lots of her family recipes, including a basic one for cookies. This is it, adapted to UK measures and ingredients. Oven 190C/375F/gas5. Grease a baking sheet or line with parchent paper or a silicone sheet. Basic recipe 225g soft butter 140g caster sugar 1 beaten egg yolk 2 tspn vanilla extract 280g plain flour pinch salt Beat butter and sugar together in a bowl with a wooden spoon, then beat in egg yolk and vanilla essence. Stir in the flour...

Thought I'd make some cookies for a change and found this recipe in my folder. They're part of my new 'healthy eating' - well oats are healthy aren't they? Forget about the butter and syrup! It makes about 18 cookies. 115g butter 115g caster sugar 2 tbspn golden syrup 1egg 115g plain flour 1 tspn baking powder 1 tspn each of cinnamon and mixed spice 115g oats Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4 Cream the butter and sugar together till it's nice and fluffy. Add the syrup and the egg and beat together. Fold in the flour, baking powder and spices and then the oats. Grease a couple of baking sheets and put spoonfuls of the mixture on the sheets; make sure you leave a space between each one as they spread. Bake for about 15 mins till golden and just firm when you touch them. Leave them to cool on a wire tray.