Oaty Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

115 grams of butter
2 deciliters of plain flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
1,25 deciliters of brown sugar
0,6 deciliters of sugar
1 egg
30 grams of dark chocolate (57%)
30 grams of milk chocolate (31%)
3,8 deciliters of finely ground oats

Making Oaty Chocolate Chip Cookies

Set your oven temperature to 175 degrees Celsius. Melt the butter in a pan and measure out the dry ingredients. Mix the brown and white sugar with the oats. Mix the flour, salt, vanilla sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and plain flour together. Chop up the chocolate into small chunks and set aside. Add the melted butter to the oats and sugar mix. Add the egg and beat it in, before you add the flour mix. Finally add the chocolate chunks and mix the cookie dough well.

Take out two baking trays and cover with baking paper. Use a table-spoon to measure out your cookies, 9 on each tray.

Bake in the oven for 12-14 minutes, until golden brown.

 

Homemade Scottish Oatcakes

Ingredients

140 grams of oat flour (from old-fashioned/steel cut oats)
140 grams of porridge oats
small pinch of salt
75 milliliters of sunflower oil
2 -4 tablespoons of boiled water

Making Homemade Scottish Oatcakes

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Add the old fashioned oats to kitchen machine or blender and pulse until close to finely ground. Measure up your flour, and your oats and add salt. You can mix the dough in a kitchen machine or by hand using a bowl. Add the sunflower oil and enough water to gather the dough. Leave the dough for ten minutes to suck up the fluid. Add the dough to a work surface. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough and a 6-7 centimeter in diameter cookie cutter to cut out the rounds. The cakes have about 5 millimetre thickness.

This dough makes about 20 cakes, but don’t fret if you make 16, it just means some of them are thicker. Transfer the cakes with a palett knife (in my case steel frying spatula) to a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven, until the edges start to brown. Take out the tray and leave the cakes to set for five minutes. Transfer the cakes, on the baking paper, to a baking grid to cool off completely.

The cakes can be kept in an airtight container or eaten straight away. They make a really nice addition to the wine and cheese table, and also taste wicked with jam or blue cheese on the breakfast platter.

Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Chocolate & Orange Biscotti

Ingredients

200 grams of almonds
200 grams of sugar
3 tablespoons of homemade vanilla sugar
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
50 grams of dried cranberries
60 millilitres of orange juice
Zest of 1 1/2 orange
400 grams of plain flour
1,5 tea-spoon of baking powder
Dark chocolate

Making Chocolate & Orange Biscotti

Before I begin I have to mention that I was not really sure how the biscotti should look and so they are not exactly the shape they should be, that is, not as high in the middle. Anyways, taste wise they are awesome and I’m thinking of dropping the biscotti look altogether, making round cookies and dipping the bottom in melted dark chocolate. Oh yes…

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Take out your almonds, a good knife and a chopping board and chop, chop away until all your almonds are roughly chopped. Measure up your cranberries and grate orange zest over the lot. Squeeze the oranges and save the freshly made orange juice for later.

Take out two bowls, and crack the eggs, separating the egg yolks and the egg whites into two separate bowls. Leave the bowl with the egg whites for last. Add sugar and vanilla sugar to the egg yolks and beat with a mixer, until it becomes slightly creamy. Beat the egg whites stiff (a clean bowl and clean beaters are essential if you want to get a good result) and fold it gently into the creamy batter. Add the rest ingredients to your dough, chopped almonds, zest and all. Measure up your flour and baking powder and sift it in. The dough should not become too dry, but if it is a bit sticky, as mine were, I suggest you add some more flour to get a more manageable dough. You can also flour your baking surface, to get more control over the dough.

Cut the dough into 3 pieces and roll them out into even sausage shapes the length of your baking tray. Flatten them slightly they should have about 2 centimeter in height and about 6 centimeter in width. (If you even out the surface they might look slightly nicer than mine. My biscotti’s got a slightly rough surface since my dough was so wet. Bake the Biscotti on the middle shelf for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown in colour. Take the Biscotti out and onto a chopping board and use a sharp knife to cut them at an angle. Leave them to cool on a baking rack.

When the biscotti’s have cooled down you can dip them in melted chocolate. I bought dark chocolate chips that melt easily in a thick pan or in the microwave (just don’t let the chocolate burn). Dip the cookies in the chocolate and leave them to dry on a sheet of baking paper. (If you dip the biscotti in chocolate they should be kept in the fridge).

Tip: Replace cranberries and almonds with dried apricots and hazelnuts. The cookies also make for a great present, just add them to a pretty jar with a bow and a nice label.

Enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea …

Chocolate & Raisin Cookies

Ingredients

450 grams of flour
1 & 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1 & 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
2 teaspoons of salt
230 grams of margarine
150 grams of brown sugar
160 grams of honey
200 grams of sugar
1 teaspoon of homemade vanilla sugar
2 eggs
75 grams of dark chocolate (74%)
40 grams of chopped almonds
90 grams of raisins
100 grams of oats
Coarse sea salt (optional)

Making Chocolate & Raisin Cookies

Measure up flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix in a bowl. Add margarine to another bowl, preferably soft from having had a nice stay at the kitchen counter, but if not don’t despair, a quick run in the microwave (we’re talking seconds) and it will be soft enough. Anyways add the sugars and honey to the butter, vanilla sugar included, and mix well with a hand mixer. Add the eggs one by one and add the flour mix in the end. Mix well before you add chopped dark chocolate, chopped almonds, raisins and oats to the bowl, mix well again.

Use two spoons to scrape the cookie dough onto a baking sheet, three times three makes 9 cookies per tray. Drizzle coarse sea salt on top, optional for the skeptics out there, it tasted awesome though. Preheat the oven to a 180 degrees Celsius and bake for 16-18 minutes.

Tip: If you don’t have a party coming up and want to keep some cookies for later, either half the recipe or freeze the cookie dough. I made two trays of cookies left the dough in the fridge until the next day and then added it on to cling foil. I used the cling foil to shape it into a long sausage and then I put it in the freezer. Then if you have people coming over unexpectedly pop out to the freezer, sett the oven on, leave the dough on the counter for a few minutes and make one or two trays of freshly backed cookies.

Chocolate & Hazelnut Cookies

Ingredients

180 grams of white sugar
180 grams of brown sugar
240 grams of room tempered butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons  of vanilla sugar
350 grams of plain flour
30 grams of baking cocoa powder
80 grams of dark chocolate (70%)
100 grams of hazelnuts

Making Chocolate & Hazelnut Cookies

Whisk the butter and eggs white. My new 50 DK 2nd-hand mixer completely failed me on this task, but at least I got it all packed together. Was it whisked white? No, but they still tasted incredible. So arguably they will be even better if you do it right. Add eggs and flour a little at a time, still whisking, at this point I was stirring by hand (like a crazy person). Add baking powder and vanilla sugar. In the end you add roughly chopped nuts and chocolate.  At this point the dough will be a bit sticky, add it to a baking surface with some flour. Roll it into a sausage shape, the flour will help with this, and slice them into 30-40 pieces depending on how big you want your cookies. Put them on a baking tray with baking paper, remember to have some space in between, they melt in the oven, and expand.

Bake until golden, about 9 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Cool on a baking rack, store in an airtight container.

Enjoy with coffee or a glass of milk.