Macadamia Nut Cookies

In December, my good friend Jodi went to Hawaii for a holiday and sent me a really nice box of Hawaiian goodies. It included all kinds of macadamia nut products, including a couple of bags of Mauna Loa dry roasted macadamias with sea salt. Oh my God - yum! I love these! They are not too salty, which is great, and as such they make a great addition to baking, adding just a touch of saltiness to the sweetness of cookies. I have made two batches of cookies - so far! I have almost a full bag of nuts left, too, so there should be more on the way!

Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup coarsely shopped macadamia nuts

Bake at 350F.

Oatmeal Coconut Macadamia Butterscotch Chip Cookies

2 cup butter, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups quick oats
1 3/4 cups butterscotch chips
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts

Bake at 350F.

Both cookies were awesome!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

It shouldn't surprise you to find out that I was highly disorganized this Christmas and didn't actually have most of my home-baked gifts ready until Christmas afternoon. It's a long story, but I do have to thank the weather in part for helping me get it all done: the good old outdoor fridge was my ally and let my baking cool much more quickly than it would have had I kept it indoors. It was sunny but chilly, and the new deck's railing was the perfect size to keep the pans reliably steady.

I am in the habit of giving biscotti to C & R, my SIL's parents because they are big biscotti fans, and they have always told me how much they've enjoyed receiving it in the past. This year I made a double batch so that I could give some to my brother & SIL, too. Previously, I've made chocolate hazelnut biscotti and a lemon & sour cherry biscotti. This year, I chose to do peanut butter & chocolate biscotti.

It's always the same recipe, which I got from culinary school. It's fairly generic and therefore versatile.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

85g butter
185g sugar
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
300g flour
50g cocoa powder, sifted
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
1 or so cups of peanut butter chips
chopped toasted peanuts for sprinkling on top
about 1/4 cup or so dark chocolate chips or other dark chocolate, melted, for drizzling on the top

Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla. Add the dry ingredients.

Knead the dough lightly and pat into a "half moon" shape for even cooking, about 3/4" thick. (The "half moon" thing is in the original culinary school recipe; it's a little deceiving. What that means is rounded sides and a slightly rounded top.)

Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes, or until the top is firm to the touch, dry and cracked-looking. Remove from the oven and cool slightly. Slice with a serrated knife, and then bake again until crisp and dried out - another 20 minutes or so.

Cool completely. Drizzle melted chocolate over the top and sprinkle with nuts.

Apparently, these were a huge hit!

Peanut Butter Tart Squares

I mentioned in an earlier post that I made about 33 dozen cookies this year, and this simple but totally decadent recipe was one of them. It's like a pecan tart, only with peanuts, and on a peanut butter cookie crust. These are not too sweet, surprisingly enough considering the corn syrup content. I got the recipe from this year's Bakefest insert that came in the December issue of Canadian Living, and I doubled it and used a 9x13" pan.

Peanut Butter Tart Squares

Base:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 tsp salt

Topping:
1/2 cup corn syrup
2 tbsp corn starch
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
2 tbsp butter, melted & cooled
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

1. Beat butter, peanut butter, and sugar in a bowl until creamy. Stir in flour, cornstarch, and salt until well combined and crumbly. Press into 8" pan lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350F for 12 - 15 minutes, or until pale golden around the edges. Set aside.

2. For the topping, stir together corn syrup, corn starch, baking powder, and salt until smooth. Stir in butter, eggs, and vanilla until well-blended. Pour over crust. Sprinkle peanuts, peanut butter and chocolate chips over the top.

3. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden and just set in the middle. Let cool completely in pan on rack. Cut into squares. This was probably my favourite out of this year's batch of baking. I just love peanut butter and chocolate together, and these squares totally satisfy that craving!

So, here are this year's cookies:

Two-Tone Chocolate Shortbread
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Shortbread
Mini Mincemeat Tarts
Pecan Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies
Christmas Blondies
Pecan Cookies
Oatmeal, Cranberry, and White Chocolate Chip Cookies
and these squares

Not bad, eh?

Magazine Monday #58: Pecan Dulce De Leche Sandwich Cookies

Guess where this week's Magazine Monday recipe comes from?

Come on!

Yeah, Canadian Living. Sue me - they rock.

All right, I saw this recipe and knew I just had to make these cookies as part of my Christmas baking spree this year. I cannot resist the siren call of dulce de leche! President's Choice makes a good one, and that's what I used. I still have some left over in the jar, and it's all I can do not to take a spoon and empty that jar in seconds!

Of course, typical CL, this recipe is not in their online database probably because they want you to buy the December issue of the magazine this recipe appears it. So, here it is!

Pecan Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies (slightly adapted by me)

3/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup each granulated sugar and packed dark brown sugar
1 egg yolk (you know, I hate it when recipes ask for one freaking egg yolk; forget it - I used a whole egg and things turned out just fine)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup toasted finely chopped pecans
1/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut, toasted
1/2 cup dulce de leche

1. All right, make cookie dough as you would any other cookie dough.

2. Once you have a nice, smooth cookie dough, divide it in half; form each half into a 4cm-wide log, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour, or overnight.

3. Cut logs into 1/4" slices and arrange 1" apart on a lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350F until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer to rack & cool completely.

4. Spread bottoms of half of the cookies with about 1/2 tsp dulce de leche. Top with remaining cookies to make sandwiches.You're supposed to get about 36 cookies from this, but I got closer to 24 - 25 in total, probably because I cut my slices a little thicker.

These are really tasty, let me tell you!

Magazine Monday # 50: Chocolate Walnut Tart

My dad's friend, who lives near Kelowna, has a walnut tree and some time ago I was gifted with a bag of walnuts from it. Yeah, I said "a while ago" because I let the nuts - still in their shells - sit around my kitchen for over a month. Why? Because I hate cracking nuts. Remember my hazelnuts from last year and the blister I got cracking them all? Well, I wasn't too excited about a repeat blister or sore hands. But, I didn't want to let the nuts go to waste, so I got out my cracker and set to work.

Man...About halfway through the bag - which yielded me 1 whole cup of nuts - I had a blister and a bruised-feeling palm. I'd also made a mess: the nuts were harder to crack than the hazelnuts and I guess letting them "mature" over the summer wasn't a good idea and the shells flew all over the place as I cracked them. My kitchen table & floor were both a disaster. But I had my one measly cup of nuts, enough for this Chocolate Walnut Tart recipe that came from the Feb. 2009 issue of Taste of Home, which came to me via my good friend Pierce earlier this summer. My nuts didn't need to be chopped; I had such a hard time prying them out of their shells that they were all in pieces - but my fingers were nice and soft from the oil and smelled really nice, so it wasn't all bad...

Chocolate Walnut Tart

Pastry for 9" single crust pie
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 eggs
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla

1. Press pastry into bottom & up sides of 9" fluted tart pan with removable bottom; trim off excess pastry. Sprinkle nuts & chocolate chips into crust.

2. In a bowl, combine the remaining filling ingredients & mix well. Pour into crust.

3. Bake at 350F for 25 - 30 minutes or until top is bubbly and crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate leftovers.

OK. This was a massive FAIL. FAIL, I tell you!

First off, I made this in a 9" square pan because I wanted to freeze most of the tart and cutting it into squares would be much simpler. A 9" square pan is 81" in total area; a 9" round tart pan is 63.6" in total area. I mean, this is basic math, here...Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, my point is the square pan is bigger than the tart pan, so the filling was spread over a larger surface area.

But my tart didn't set! At all! I baked it for the allotted time, at the correct temperature, according to my oven thermometer. I then put it in for an additional 10 minutes - twice. Then, I put it in again, only to take it out shortly thereafter because the crust was getting too brown, as was the top. Upon cooling, the filling still didn't set. The sides were OK, if a bit gooey, but OK nonetheless, but the centre was a different story altogether. I refrigerated it for several hours, and still it didn't do its thing. It was a mess.HMPH!!! I was not happy and couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong. The pan size shouldn't have made a difference. This is basically a pecan pie filling, and I've made tons of them before, and never had this problem. The only thing I can think of was that it was the recipe itself. Perhaps 2 eggs would have sufficed, instead of 3. I don't know.

I managed to salvage the squares around the edges and freeze them for our camping trip, and the middle I picked away at when I needed a sugar craving - but still, I found this to be a waste of valuable ingredients for me, not to mention the time I put into cracking all the nuts! Grrrr!

Cooking With Kylie: Stir-Fried Chicken Fillets with Cashews

So, this is my third recipe using Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking (I've also made soy sauce eggs and Mongolian Beef). I was attracted to this dish because of its simplicity and the fact that I had cashews on hand. I made half a recipe, which gave me two hearty meals, and since I don't like cucumber, I stir-fried in some sliced zucchini in its place.

Stir-fried Chicken Fillets with Cashews (adapted by moi)

Marinade

1 tbsp shao hsing wine or dry sherry
1 tbsp cornstarch
1.5 tsp cold water
1/2 tsp sea salt

Chicken

400g boneless, chicken thighs (about 4 thighs)
1 medium zucchini
2 tbsp veg oil
1/2 cup raw cashews
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp shao hsing wine or dry sherry
1 tsp sea salt
3 finely sliced green onions

1. Combine chicken with marinade ingredients & marinate for 30 minutes.

2. Chop veggies.

3. Heat oil in wok & stir-fry chicken until cooked through and slightly browned. Remove from wok with slotted spoon & place in a bowl.

4. Stir-fry veggies until tender. Add nuts & stir-fry until golden.

5. Return chicken to wok with accumulated juices. Increase heat to high and add wine/sherry. Stir-fry for a few more moments. Season with salt.

6. Serve & garnish with some more green onions.

I suspect that, with this recipe, I was really missing the shao hsing wine. Try as I might, I cannot find this ingredient anywhere in da boonies. We simply don't have the population for specialty ingredients like this, and I think I'm going to need to get to a larger centre, like Vancouver or Calgary, in order to do pick up some of these more obscure items. Instead of shao hsing wine, I've been using cooking sherry, which is OK, but this dish needed a lot of help flavour-wise. I wound up adding a bunch of soy sauce to boost the flavours.

I served this over rice, and it was a good meal. I really liked using the chicken thighs; they aren't something I use a lot - I always thought them too fatty. But they are quite succulent and flavourful, and not to mention, cheaper than breasts. I'll definitely cook with them again!

I probably won't make this recipe until I get my hands on some real shao hsing, but it's still not a bad recipe. Worth attempting again once I get the right ingredients.

Magazine Monday #36: Almond Cupcakes

Why do I do stupid things when I bake? Like not grease my pans properly. I know better!

Well, I was struck by a cupcake section in May's Canadian Living and I decided to make a batch of Almond Cupcakes in my king size muffin pan. When I've used this pan before, I've gotten away with just spraying it very well with my oil sprayer thingy and everything's been just fine. Well, not this time. Three cupcakes would not come out of the pan and I was ticked. Luckily, three came out OK, and I had just enough icing left over from the ricotta cookies to ice them.These were pretty amazing, though I have to say two things about this recipe A) it says you'll get 12 cupcakes, but they are going to be teeny-weeny cupcakes. Good thing I used my king size pan and got decent-sized cupcakes, but if you use a regular 12-cup pan, you're going to have really small cupcakes. B) These are a little oily - probably due to the high almond content. The cake has a wonderful, tender, buttery texture, but the outsides are a little oily. Just so you know.

Definitely a keeper recipe!