Chocolate Caramel Biscuits

This is another one of the numerous biscuits myself and the sister make together. I oddly don't have a picture of the finished product. I guess I'll have to make them again.....

What you'll need:

for the biscuit

• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 125g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 175g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

for the caramel

• 1⁄2 of one 379g of condensed milk
• 3 tablespoon light brown sugar
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon golden syrup

for the topping

• 125g dark chocolate

For the cookies, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg, mix well, add flour and baking powder. Combine. Shape the dough into a log about a thumb in diameter, wrap in cling and leave in a fridge for 1 hour.

When the dough is firm, preheat the oven to 165°C/gas mark 3. Slice about 15 biscuits. Place on a prepared baking tray. Bake for about 15mins. They might be a bit ready beforehand pop them out once they're a pale golden colour. They'll be soft. Leave them on the tray for about 10min and move them over to a rack ro cool.

While the biscuits are cooling make the caramel, place all ingredients in a small pot over a low heat. Stir regularly, allow the mix to thicken. The moment you see the caramel setting on the side of the pan it's ready. Transfer to a shallow pan and cover in cling, let it cool for 30min. Once it's cool, divided it into 15 balls and place it on top of each biscuit. Flatten.

Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water. Once it's melted make a mess....or use a slotted spoon. Dip the biscuit into the chocolate and leave to sit on a rack in the fridge to set.

Eat.

Imagine lovely chocolate dipped biscuits.....maybe i'll just make more...and take a photo and eat more....

Supper Happened! 25th July!

Another supper! I'm sorry I'm so behind on these but I'm catching up!...I think. Moroccan food is probably one of my favourite foods. This was also my most prepared and professionally hosted suppers. I was really pleased with how it all came out. Great company as usual and lots of fun!

It was cherry season! I bought cherries. I ate far too many cherries. Took the stones from each....I need one of those stone popper things...but I quite enjoy taking the stones out. Cooked them down with some water and sugar and seived the batch. Left it to cool and made sorbet! Next was the mousse! I like mousse...I've noticed the large number of 'like' in this post. But I liked all of this. The mousse is made with a little spiced rum. It's wonderful and tasty. Lastly I baked the buteer biscuits. My favourite recipe for biscuits. This time I added saffron and lemon zest.

    

I wanted my cous cous to be cold for the supper, so I made it in advance as well. I roasted the squash and mixed in lemon and harissa.

3 hours before my dinner, I made my flatbread dough and left it to rise. Next I moved onto the chicken dish with 1 hour before people arrive. I got this chicken recipe of a wonderful Moroccan-American man by the name of Hassan.I'm very glad to have had the pleasure to have met him and the luck to have received such wonderful recipes from him. If you're ever in New York and happen to be frequenting Dean & Deluca find him and tell him I say hay! The thing I like about Moroccan food is that it is spicy but fresh, citrusy and wonderful all round. It's really a simple dish but has wonderful flavours. I used my own chicken stock to cook it in and it all worked really well.

I turned the oven up to 200°C and rolled out my dough. Flat breads began baking. Last but not least was the clams.....

Sadly I didn't end up with clams for this dinner, we were unlucky and ended up with a Red Tide. I ended up getting my hands on some wonderful mussels. So it was all ok! Panic over. I heated sherry, some water and my dry harissa spice mix. Cooked the mussels for a few minutes about a minute before the mussels were ready to come off the heat I mixed through the samphire. Put some chopped coriander on top. That was it ready to go!

Apologies for the hazy picture. **was organised, forgot to take photos..**

Everything served up. All at once. Bam. We ate, laughed and enjoyed everything.

Chocolate Covered Orange Blossom & Cointreau Biscuits

So this was one of the many biscuits we made on our day of many biscuit making. The recipe was originally from Willie's Chocolate Bible with a few tweaks...

What you'll need:

• 170g unsalted butter, softened
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp orange blossom water
• 1 tbsp cointreau
• 150g plain flour
• 150g fine semolina
• 300g good dark chocolate

Beat sugar and butter in a large bowl till light and fluffy. Pour in blossom water and cointreau. In a seperate bowl soft together both flours, mix them into the butter mixture till it forms a soft dough. Wrap in cling and chill in a fridge for 40min.

Preheat the oven to 150°C, line two baking trays with baking parchment. I rolled our the dough on a semolina covered surface. Roll it out to a thickness of about 1cm, get a 6cm biscuit cutter and cut out about 24 biscits. Space them away from each other on the trays. Put them in the oven for 18-20mins, until golden at the edges.

Remove from the oven leave on the tray for 5min then transfer them to a wire rack.

While they are cooling prepare the chocolate, for dipping biscuits it's best to temper by seeding the chocolate.

Tempering Chocolate:*

Split the chocolate up into 200g & 100g. Roughly chop the 200g chocolate and finely grate the 100g. Place the chopped chocolate in a heatproof dish above a pot of very gently simmering water. If you have a thermometer it really helps here, heat the chocolate to about 45°C and melted. Try not to stir the chocolate and make sure the bowl is not touching the water below it. Once at the correct tempature remove from the pot and stir in the grated chocolate. You want to keep stirring the chocolate till it drops to a temperature of 28°C for dark or 26°C for milk. Once at this temperature place back on top of the gently simmering water and bring the temperature back up to 33°C. Chocolate is now tempered. Taking the time to do this with your chocolate will make everything better in the long run.

*Seemingly 300g of chocolate is the smallest amount of chocolate to successfully temper. I've never really tried anything smaller.

Place the wire rack over a baking tray.vTake each biscuit and dip the top into the choclate mixture, place back on the rack. Once the choclate is cooled. EAT THEM.

Making/baking with the sister 2

  Michelle arrived early Wednesday morning, I had just gotten back the evening beforehand. I had to get everything ready that night! So we had a bit of a busy morning. We got right to it..we went for breakfast. Then went looking for biscuit cutters. Then we decided to start getting ready. We got around to making 3 things.

Gingerbread women, men & men dressed as women

Well we went shopping, found people shaped biscuit cutters and a new rolling pin. We decided it was necessary to have some kind of biscuit baked each time we do this, so this time round gingerbread people! I also wanted these buscuits to go with the Elderflower Icecream for that evenings supper.

Yes I'm aware of the spelling mistake.

What you'll need:

• 350g plain flour
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 100g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 150g light soft brown sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup

Preheat oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Sift flour, ginger and bicarb into a bowl. Rub in the butter till you get a sand like texture, then stir in sugar. In a separate bowl whisk together golden syrup and beaten egg in a bowl. Mix it in the dry ingredients to form a dough.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface till is about 3mm thick. Cut out you gingerbread:

• Women
• Men
• Snails
• Whales
• Hedgehogs
• Foxes
• and so on

Place them on the prepared tin, with a tooth pick give them faces and angry eyebrows. Bake for about 10min or till golden. A tip also which I forgot with the first batch, give them a bit of space. Let them cool for about 5min on the tray then transfer to a rack.

Michelle's Chocolate Cookies

So we were so prepared and moving with great speed and poise Michelle decided she'd make a batch of chocolate cookies. She had been given a recipe from a friend but decided to tweak and change a few things today.

What you'll need:

• 140g unsalted butter, softened
• 90g brown sugar
• 80g caster sugar
• 1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 150g dark chocolate, min 70%
• 200g chocolate chips

Beat butter and sugars in a bowl till it's nice and creamy. Add the whole egg and mix, the add the yolk and mix again. Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate together and gently mix into the mix. Leave to once side. Place a bowl over a pop of gently simmering water and melt down the 150g of dark chocolate. Once with melted add the the mixture. Mix well to combine. The mix is stiff so don't worry if it's difficult to stir. Finally mix in chips.

Preheat your over to 180ºC/ gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper. Using an icecream scoop pick up big helping of the cookie mix and place on the trays with a good with of space between each mound. we made rather large cookies today so we just had 10 mounds. You could easily half the size for more cookies in the end. Bake for around 25min if you are making large cookies, otherwise jsut 18-20 for smaller. They'll come out of the oven a little soft. leave them on the tray for 5min then place onto a wire rack to cook completely.