Week 9 Christmas Cookies

Now these tasted good, if not a little sweet, but I had to cook it longer than the recipe called for (I've increased it below), These are delicious and chewy and would be amazing with ice cream for dessert while still warm.  I added both macadamias and freshly roasted chestnuts, but don't put in chestnuts, they turn out a bit too hard, and not a good crunchy hard like the macadamia.  These are definitely going in to my Christmas cookie gift boxes! 

Chestnut Macadamia Brownies *gluten free


225gm butter
120gm bittersweet/cooking chocolate
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup chestnut flour (sifted) *not water chestnut flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup coarsely chopped roasted macadamias

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease brownie pan. Microwave chocolate and butter for approx 2 minutes or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted, set aside to cool. Beat eggs and sugar until thick and pale; add vanilla. Fold chocolate mixture into eggs and sugar until well combined. Sift in chestnut flour and baking powder and fold gently into batter, mixing until just blended. Fold in macadamias. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for 30 minutes before cutting into squares.

Week 9 Twelve Weeks of Christmas:

mmmm Bloody Mary

oh the perfect breakfast drink for those warm summer weekends..

so I didn't have it for breakfast, its 3pm though, and the bottle of v8 was staring at me! 

Ingredients
ice
1.5 shots vodka
1 dill pickle, cut lengthways in quarters
1/8 fresh lime
freshly ground pepper
hot sauce/tabasco
V8 original or hot and spicy

place ice in glass, pour over vodka, add pickle, pepper, hot sauce, squeeze lime and leave in rind, top with V8 for the perfect spicy Bloody Mary thats almost good for you! 

Week 8 Christmas Cookies

Pecan Blondies (gluten free)

First make sure you have some gluten free flour mix.. this makes just less than 2 cups, and you only need 1&1/4 for the recipe.  I couldn't be bothered working out the exact measurements, I'll use the mix for something else instead.

Gluten Free Flour Mix:

1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons tapioca flour/starch
1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum

Mix all ingredients together until well blended.

Ingredients for Blondies:

•170g (1 1/2 stick) salted butter, melted
•1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
•4 teaspoons vanilla extract
•2 eggs
•2 teaspoons coconut milk
•1/2 teaspoon baking powder
•1 1/4 cups flour mix (see above)
•1/2 cup chopped pecans

Method
Preheat oven to 170c (350f) degrees. Lightly grease an 7x11 inch pan with coconut oil.
Mix melted butter and sugar together in a medium sized bowl. Beat in vanilla, eggs and milk until well blended.
Mix remaining ingredients into the egg mix until well blended. Pour into prepared pan and smooth the top out.

Bake blondies until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

 Week 8 Twelve Weeks of Christmas:

Week 7 Christmas cookies

Mulled Wine cookies

Ingredients:

140g raisins
75g dried cranberries
150ml red wine (I used a shiraz)
100g redcurrent jelly
pinch of chilli power
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
50g walnuts, chopped
50g blanched almonds, chopped
100g plain dark chocolate, finely chopped
4 tablespoons coconut flour
2 tablespoons tapioca flour
finely grated rind of 1 orange
50g unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
icing sugar for dusting

Method:

put raisins, cranberries, wine, redcurrent jelly and spices into saucepan and simmer till jelly has disolved, bring boil and boil for 2-3 mins until syrup is reduced by half, set aside to cool.

in a bowl add chopped nuts, chocolate, flours, orange rind, butter and egg, add cooled fruit mixture and stir till combined, place spoonfuls onto baking sheet and bake in oven at 170c for 15-20 mins, cool and dust with icing sugar.

these are so easy and so delicious!!  my room mate is commissioning me to make them for her families christmas baskets this year.  that good!  yup.

Week 7 Twelve Weeks of Christmas:

12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies - Week 6

Snowman and Reindeer Cake Pops

I have been dying to try my hand at Cake Pops.  I have a baking friend, who is also my gym friend, and I like to call her my vodka friend too, after the slightly crazy evenings we have had whilst drinking vodka... another one is due soon, and since its almost Summer down this way, I'm sure there will be one or two. 

So Reindeer and Snowman were the cake pop adventure of the weekend.  We had a blast, we laughed so hard our sides hurt.  I baked a Chocolate cake from the Edmonds cookbook.  (A New Zealand icon and almost every NZ woman has at least one edition in her cookbook collection) The chocolate cake was delicious.  We followed instructions from Bakerellas blog for basic cake pops.

Chocolate Cake:
175g softened butter
1&3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1 cup milk

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla till light and fluffy, add eggs, one at a time and mix well.  in separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together.  alternately add flour mixture and milk to butter mixture till all mixed, pour into greased and lined 22cm round cake tin and bake in oven 180C deg for 30 mins or until cake tester spike thingy comes out clean.  rest on wire rack until cooled.

Our chocolate melts were not viscous enough, so we had to add some cacao butter so we could dip and coat properly.  The edible pens I bought were useless, so we improvised with toothpicks and food colouring.

next we decorated.

Snowman:
orange coloured white chocolate rolled into small noses
licorice sticks for the hats
black food colouring

Reindeer:
dark chocolate piped into antelors on wax paper then cooled
M&M minis
Glace cherries, halved

Voila!  super cute cake pops!