Oatmeal Cookies
Oct0
While I lived in France I actually forgot how beautiful fall could be in Munich. Trees are plunged in all shades of red, orange and yellow while waves of leaves start to cover the floor, gleaming in the last warm sun rays of the year. Well, that’s as much as I see of it while taking a look through the windows of my new flat, which is in a complete mess at the moment. A bazillion of cartridge boxes are scattered everywhere between partly assembled pieces of furniture. Why partly? Well, while reading the instructions and assembling as you go, you always reach a point where the pieces described in the pictures are nowhere to be found or where three different parts could fit and instead of making the painful choice you think “oh, there are still some boxes to unpack, I rather go with that :)))))))”
In these rough times there is nothing like a cookie to comfort you! Usually I always make chocolate chip cookies, but I’m glad that this time I decided to try this recipe I found in a German food magazine. Oatmeal cookies might be something completely ordinary for British or American people, but over here in Europe they don’t really belong to those childhood treats you remember when growing up. In fact I actually haven’t seen them for sale (in that form) anywhere yet. Too bad, as I’ve been missing out on one of the most delicious cookies I ever tasted. Not to sweet, lightly flavoured with vanilla the cookie gets a nice texture from the oatmeal and raisins while still being soft and chewy.
These cookies keep up to two weeks and can be frozen fairly well. Try to keep them in a closed container to prevent them from drying out.
Oatmeal Cookies (adapted from “Lecker” November 2008)
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 360 g soft butter
- 400 g brown sugar
- salt
- 4 eggs
- 320 g all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 200 g raisins
- 400 g oatmeal (”kernig” in Germany)
- Start out by lining three baking trays with baking sheet and putting them aside.
- In a large bowl combine butter, sugar, salt and beat with an electric whisk until the mixture reaches a creamy consistency.
- Add the vanilla extract and beat in the eggs seperately.
- Mix the flour with the baking powder and soda and add to the butter-sugar-egg mixutre. Incorporate briefly.
- Now stir in the raisins and the oatmeal and incorporate them with a wooden spoon.
- Preheat the oven at 180 °C.
- Drop tablespoons of cookie dough on the sheet (about nine little piles) and flatten them with the spoon until they are flat and round.
- Put the cookies in the oven and let them bake for about 12 minutes. This is only an approximation; it is absolutely vital that you look at the cookies from outside and check them frequently. Every oven is different and my baking time differed greatly from the one described in the original recipe. Once the cookies have that soft brown color (with the edged being a little darker) you can remove them. Let them cool out completely on the baking sheet.
- Continue this way with the other trays.
Makes about 30-35 cookies. Enjoy!
Shortbread Biscuit Cake (Gâteaux aux petits beurres)
Sep1
Do you know the kind of dish you taste for the very first time, thinking “this is so good; imagine I’d have died without ever having a taste?” or “my palate just touched a piece of heaven “. This actually happens quite rarely to me. Mostly I need to acquire tastes and once I eat a certain type of food several times, I start to develop a liking for it. But this cake… I literally fell in love with it after the first bite.
When I first came to France, my husband took me to the birthday party of one of his friends (the most provençal family you can imagine by the way). That friend’s mum had made exactly the above pictured cake and when I threw a glance at it, my first thought was “this can’t taste good, it looks like a cake made by a child at vacation camp” (yes, I have such evil thoughts one in a while, I should get scolded^^). They seemed to have noticed the look on my face and just smiled before starting to serve up pieces. I saw the whole family jumping and snatching plates away, then silently devouring the whole piece with closed eyes. And when I finally decided to give it a try myself, I swore never to judge a dish by it’s looks - ever - again :p
Turns out the recipe is actually from an old issue of Mickey Mouse magazine, which is why it’s so suited for making with your kids. It’s really really quick on top and requires no baking, just some resting time in the fridge…
The only ingredient which might be hard to come by is the “brown” biscuits:
If you can’t get a hold of these, simply use shortbread biscuits, they taste almost the same.
Shortbread Biscuit Cake (Gâteaux aux petits beurres)
- 24 shortbread biscuits
- 125 ml lukewarm, strong coffee
- 1 fresh egg
- 75g powdered sugar
- 100g butter
- grated chocolate as garnish
In a bowl break the egg and add the powdered sugar. Incorporate it by stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture takes on the texture of a sticky fluid. In a second bowl whisk the butter until it becomes fluffy then add it to the egg and sugar mixture and beat everything until you get a smooth, rather firm cream.
Get a large, flat recipient like a big plate or a platter and start out by dropping six biscuits into the coffee (one at a time). Be careful here, biscuits get soggy really quickly (just like sponge biscuits for tiramisu). So simply drop the biscuit into the coffee, count one second, flip it and count another second then remove it and start layering the plate. When the layer of six biscuits is done, cover it by a layer of 1/4th of the cream we made earlier. Continue this way until you use up all biscuits and finish with a layer of cream. Dust the cake with grated chocolate and refrigerate for three hours.
Serves 6, please make sure to refrigerate the cake well and use it up quickly as the cream contains raw egg.
PS. I challenge you to eat more of this cake than 2 pieces at a time, so far no one we know has managed! (It really stuffs :p)
TQFTPC (Part III): Chewy Cocoa Cookies
Nov1
My perfect cookie has to be chewy...While I was browsing the Orangette blog the other day I saw a recipe for chewy cocoa cookies that intrigued me because it uses yogurt to make the cookies soft and to reduce the number of calories a little. The pictures of the cookies were absolutely stunning (that’s how I always imagined a perfect cookie!).
So when I tried this recipe I used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose (because I only had that at home). It worked very well and I loved the taste the cookies had. However I think that next time I’ll reduce the amount of sugar to 1/3 cup (refined sugar). Because they were a little too sweet for me. Also I’d like to use this yogurt recipe as a base to try normal chocolate chip cookies. I could substitute the cocoa powder with vanilla pudding mix and nuts (in that case I’d also leave away the vanilla extract).
The recipe, adapted from Orangette:
Ingredients
- 1 + 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour (all-purpose works fine too)
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 125g unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar
- 7 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/3 cup plain yogurt
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ cup chocolate chips
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with cookie sheets.
- In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Melt the butter (either in the microwave or in a small pan on the stove). Add the sugars, and sift in the cocoa. Stir to blend well. (The mixture will have the consistency of wet sand) Add the yogurt and vanilla extract. Stir to mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients, and stir to just combine. Fold in the chocolat chips.
- Drop the dough by generous tablespoons onto one of the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool down for 10 minutes. (Do not skip this step, it is very important that you let them cool off a little because when they come out of the oven they are very soft still). While you let one batch cool down, spoon some cookie mixture on the other cookie sheet and repeat the same procedure. Remove the cookies from the baking trays and put them on wire racks to cool completely.
Makes about 15-20 cookies.
Carrot Cake
Nov3
My favourite cake must be carrot cake. No wait, this carrot cake.
I remember when I lived in Germany, as a student, I used to work at a coffee shop to earn a bit of extra money. It was there that I saw carrot cake for the first time. “Möhrenkuchen” it was called and we had a lot of it left over one day. The owner of the shop gave me some to take home but I almost declined (imagine that!) because I thought it would just land in the trash can anyway… like the ignorant tart that I was, I left the carrot cake in the fridge for a day before unpacking it and eyeing it dubiously. When I decided to finally take a bite, it tasted so good, I had tears of joy in the eyes!
I desperately tried to make my mum try it but she refused.. “Carrots are for savory dishes, don’t you know that?!”. This is where I went on a mission: Whenever I made some carrot cake, I tried to sneakily make her eat it. Like Inspector Gadget I invented different disguises for the cake. I coated it in chocolate, covered it with powdered sugar or tried to give some to her right after a nap… but do you think she fell for it even once?? Nope!
This recipe is my absolute favourite. It’s very easy to make, doesn’t require fussy ingredients and is actually healthier than a cake made with butter.
Ingredients
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole-wheat flour
- 1 cup nuts, grated
- 1/2 cup refined sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 cups carrots, finely grated
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup oil
- 3 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 1 tablet of white chocolate
Preparation
- Combine the two flours, nuts, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Mix well.
- In another large bowl combine oil, egg, and milk. While blending slowly add the two sugars and the carrots. Then add the dry ingredients that you combined before.
- Preheat the oven at 170°C. Grease a baking tin (round or square), put some baking sheet at the bottom and fill it with your batter. Put it in the oven for 50-60 minutes and keep checking with a long knife if the cake is done. Once no batter gets stuck to the knife, you can remove the cake from the oven. Let it cool down for 10 minutes in the baking tin then remove it from the tin and let cool down on a cake rack.
- Melt the white chocolate either in the microwave or over hot water. If you melt it in the microwave, put the chocolate pieces in a bowl, turn down the power of your microwave to medium and let it run for 40 secs. Stir the chocolate once, then put it in the microwave for another 40 seconds.
- If you melt your chocolate over hot water, you’ll need two bowls. One big one and a smaller one that fits inside. Fill the big one with hot water and put the chocolate in the smaller bowl. Now put the smaller bowl inside the big bowl so that the heat of the water comes through the smaller bowl and melts the white chocolate. Be careful though, the water must not get in touch with the chocolate. Let it melt like that, stirring once in a while.
- Pour the liquid white chocolate over the cake so it covers the whole surface. Once the chocolate turns solid you can slice the cake.
Enjoy!
The Quest for the Perfect Cookie: Part II
Oct0
Today my husband asked if we could make some cookies together for the coming week. We very much enjoyed the ones I made last week because they were so versatile. Sometimes we ate them quickly on the way to university as breakfast (not healthy I know :p), sometimes we took them along as dessert for lunch and sometimes it was simply enjoyable to sit down with a cup of tea and a nice cookie. There is something comforting about having self baked cookies at home, can’t really explain why.
This time I tried out a recipe from allrecipes.com (Steven’s Chocolate Chip Cookies). I altered it slightly to fit my tastes (I prefer less sugar in general, more vanilla extract and less chocolate chips) and the result was very good. Still I used about 100g more chocolate chips than last week and whilst the cookie is perfect for people who are really fond of chocolate, it was a little too much for me. I’ll reduce the amount to 150g next time. Also I think that I’ll try to chop up some quality semisweet chocolate (70%+) instead of using ready-made chocolate chips.
Last week’s recipe is my favourite so far, not only because there were less chocolate morsels but because the cookie itself had a nicer texture, was less crunchy and the flavour felt cleaner. Have fun trying this out and if you’ve got a perfect cookie recipe, please share 
Ingredients
- 225g butter (soft)
- 110g brown sugar
- 100g white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 160g all-purpose flour
- 150g whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 150g chocolate chips (white, milk or semisweet, or mixed)
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
—————–
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 175 °C.
- In a medium bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flours, salt and baking soda). Mix them and put aside.
- In a medium bowl whisk the soft butter along with the different sugars until you get a creamy texture. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
- Stir in the dry ingredients from before and mix everything well. Fold in the nuts and the chocolate chips.
- Lay out a baking tray with an ungreased baking sheet. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough on the sheet making rows with enough space for each cookie to expand.
- Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes - until golden brown. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- This recipe yielded about 44 cookies for me.
Enjoy
The Quest for the Perfect Cookie: Part I
Oct0
“Does the perfect cookie really exist?” A truly existential question if you ask me. A good cookie can save your life. No really. For instance, imagine you walk home through the rain, a car splashes you with water, your socks get all soggy and when you come home you realize that your neighbour decided to use the loudest electric screwdriver he could find to assemble his new IKEA shelf. Basically you got two possibilities: grab a frying pan and run after your neighbour (who is at least one foot taller than you) or follow the seducing smell of freshly baked cookies and forget all your troubles. See? A cookie can cheer you up in any situation!
So what are the characteristics of a perfect cookie? Well, that’s the problem: everyone likes their cookie differently 
To me the perfect cookie has a soft texture, a color between dark beige and light brown, a fragrant smell of butter and vanilla and once you decide to devour it, there must be the flavour of deep dark chocolate chips rounded up by the not too sweet aroma of brown sugar and the earthy flavour of chopped nuts.
Am I dreaming? Oh well, guess I am. Or not, because I think I managed to find a recipe that comes veeeeery close to what I call a perfect cookie. Try it out on your very own quest to the perfect cookie and tell me how it went!
(Recipe adapted from the authentic Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe)
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole-wheat flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 pound (250g) butter
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 150g chocolate chips/morsels (or chopped chocolate - you can use white, milk or dark chocolate, or a mix)
- 125g chopped walnuts (you can use any nuts you like)
- 2 Tbsp of milk (only add this if you like your cookies soft)
————–
Preparation
- Put the butter in a little saucepan and make it melt over low-medium temperature.
- Meanwhile combine both flours, baking soda and salt.
- Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large mixer bowl.
- Add eggs - one at a time - beating well after each addition.
- Gradually beat in flour mixture.
- Add the milk (if you are using any) and beat well.
- Fold in nuts and chocolate chips.
- Refrigerate the dough for an hour or two.
- Preheat your oven at 180 °C approximately. Make a few tests with your oven to be sure you’ve got the optimal temperature. This strongly differs depending on the oven you got… and temperature matters a lot for cookies.
- Lay out a baking tray with ungreased baking sheet.
- Depending on which size you like your cookies to have, drop a spoonful of the dough on the baking sheet. Repeat until you got the sheet covered with several rows. Be careful to let about 10 cm of space around each cookie.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes until they are golden brown. Let stand for about 2 minutes and remove them from the tray. If you make small cookies you’ll get about 4 batches out of this recipe.
Enjoy and if you have a “perfect” recipe for cookies, please share
Tarte aux Tomates (Tomato Tart)
Oct1
When I moved here to France I started to get to know French cuisine. One thing I truly fell in love with are tarts and quiches of all sort. If you wonder what’s the difference… well quiches normally always contain a savory custard which is made of eggs, milk and cream. They are also often garnished with several different ingredients like leeks and crisp bacon for example. Furthermore there is no sweet version of quiche.
Tarts on the other hand can be both sweet and savory. They can be filled with a custard but don’t have to and it mostly only features one main ingredient like “Tarte au chocolat” or “Tarte au citron” (Lemon-tart).
Anyway both are equally tempting. If you find the idea strange of eating a savory tart/pie, just forget about it and try some, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
My mother in law, who has been a great inspiration for me, was so nice as to teach me her recipe for a tarte aux tomates. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.
Ingredients
- 1 roll/sheet of shortcrust pastry
- 4 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 little onion (optional)
- 2-3 tomatoes (depending on the size)
- 250g of grated cheese (I used emmental, you can use a different cheese though, Parmesan for example)
- thyme (best is fresh but dried works too)
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
——————-
Preparation
- Preheat the oven at 180 °C.
- Cover a tart/pie form with the sheet of shortcrust pastry.
- Pierce it with a fork a few times and put it in the oven for about 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile wash the tomatoes and cut them in slices.
- Once the pastry is done, remove it from the oven and while being careful not to burn yourself spread the mustard on the bottom of the pastry.
- Cover the whole bottom with half of the cheese.
- Add the onions if you are using any.
- Lay out the tomato slices evenly to cover the whole tart. If you’ve got too many, just stack them a little. Don’t put too many though else there is going to be too much liquid.
- Cover with the rest of the cheese, add a little salt and pepper and sprinkle with the thyme.
- Drizzle a little olive oil on top then put the tart back into the oven for approximately 20 minutes.
Serves 8. Enjoy!
Shortcrust Pastry (Pâte Brisée)
Oct0
This easy to make pastry is often used as a base for tarts or pies. When baked, it does not rise up, but instead reaches a nice crunchy texture. Usually I just buy a roll of shortcrust pastry at the supermarket because I don’t have much time, but whenever I can I try to make it myself.
Pâte brisée is used a lot in french cuisine for both savory and sweet tarts. Possible fillings are tomatoes, zucchini, ham and cheese, apples, figs etc. Some people make a sweet alternative called sweetcrust pastry by adding sugar to the original recipe. Personally I use the basic shortcrust pastry for sweet tarts as well because I love the contrast between sweet and salty.
The pastry itself is very easy to make, however the tricky part is to prevent it from getting soggy once you add the filling (which mostly doesn’t need to cook as long as the pastry itself). This is why it’s very important to lay out a pie/tart-form with the finished dough and prebake it for approximately 10 minutes without the filling. This will ensure that the pastry is baked properly at the end and that it doesn’t absorb the liquid from the filling before the latter solidifies.
Ingredients
- 200g flour
- 100g soft but still cold butter (unsalted)
- 1 egg yolk
- 4 cl water
- 1 teaspoon salt
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Preparation
- Pass the flour through a sieve and make a little pile with it.
- Form a hole with your fingers in the middle of the pile and add the butter.
- Work the flour and the butter a little until you have a pile of crumbs (you can do this with a food processor as well).
- Form another hole and add the egg yolk, the water and the salt.
- Knead everything well with your hands until your pastry has a smooth but firm texture. If it feels wet still and if it sticks to your hand, gradually add flour until it reaches the desired texture. Do not work it too long or it will start to fall apart.
- You can wrap the pastry in a piece of clingfilm and refrigerate it for later use. Actually it is recommended to let it rest for approximately 2 hours in the fridge. If you don’t have the time you can still use it right away.
- Roll out the pastry so it becomes a round, 5-7 mm thick sheet.
- Lay out a tart/pie form and pierce the pastry a few times with a fork.
- If you want to make a tart or a pie, remember to prebake the pastry for approximately 10 minutes before adding the filling.
