Sarah Cooks: Cookies

Christmas 2020

12/22/2021 10:16:00 PM

Hello hello! Can you believe Christmas is just THREE DAYS AWAY? This bizarre year seems to have gone by both at a snail's pace but also at breakneck speed. Phew. I just realised I never blogged Christmas 2020, and desperately want to blog it now. I obviously posted all about it on Instagram and Instagram Stories, but I really felt the need to record it properly here on ye olde blog. I'm always on Instagram and genuinely love using it like a food diary, and sharing those "slice of life" type posts that used to be a mainstay of old-school food blogging. However, for me things aren't really official unless they're on the blog! And I figure that in years to come I'll want to look back and see what I did in Christmas 2020. So here we go!

So, December 2020. Melbourne was coming out of its long second lockdown and enjoying extremely low COVID cases and many donut days - with no idea that Delta and four further lockdowns were lurking around the corner. The weather was warm, we were tentatively catching up with friends and family again and life was good! It was also our first Christmas with little Maya, and even though she was too little to remember it, we wanted to make it special.

We got these cute Christmas decorations from Target, which I loved because they're teeny tiny German Christmas market stalls!

Christmas decorations

A little sweet stall!

I baked quite a few Christmas cookies - Nußmakronen, Vanillekipferl, Spekulatius, and even some baby-friendly teething biscuits using the pretty moulds that my sister-in-law sent us from Germany.

Baby-friendly banana teething biscuits

Spekulatius

Vanillekipferl, Nussmakronen

And here's my first Bunter Teller!

Bunter Teller

I bought my first panettone - a cute little mini-Galup brand one. Delicious!

Galup Panettone

I gave some gorgeous Sisko chocolate trees as gifts. I love this fabulous chocolaterie - their hot choccies are amazing by the way!

Sisko Chocolate Trees

Phillippa's bakery was selling Stollen BY THE SLICE at the farmers' market, and I had to try it! (Their mince pies are my absolute favourite). It was so good, highly recommend. It was also good to be able to buy just one slice rather than having to buy and finish an entire loaf.

Phillippa's Stollen

We were still too nervous to go out and do a lot of social stuff, (and tired with the baby), but I wanted to do some special Christmas activities at home, so the Sunday before Christmas I did a little German Christmas market day and served Christmas market food at each meal! We had waffles and whipped cream for breakfast, Kartoffelpuffer and soup for lunch, and Glühwein and Bratwurst for dinner. Actually cute and fun and delicious! (You can read about my most recent visits to German Christmas markets back in 2018, I miss them so much!)

Dinner: Bratwurst im Brötchen with Sauerkraut

Glühwein - mandatory

Kartoffelpuffer with chicken soup and apple sauce

Lunch: Kartoffelpuffer with chicken soup, apple sauce, crème fraiche and chives

Breakfast: Waffles!

We also bought a Christmas gift box of Reed avocados from Barham Avocados. Treat yoself!

Barham avocados

Here's a random Christmassy hot chocolate in an old Glühwein mug.

Hot chocolate

On Christmas Eve, we had a regular dinner at home (actually totes delicious delivery from Malay Kitchen), and followed it with a little chocolate cherry pavlova. So festive! (It was a reduced-quantity version of Nigella's chocolate raspberry pavlova from Forever Summer, with cherries instead of raspberries).

Chocolate cherry pavlova

For Christmas day, I pushed out the boat and made a huge Roasted Peach and Custard Trifle for dessert. In the lead-up to Christmas, Nat from Beatrix posted some Christmas ideas on her Instagram stories using the recipes from her book. This one comprised layers of sponge cake, custard, pink sparkling wine jelly, roast peaches and whipped cream. She suggested adding amaretti for a textural component but I can't stand them, so I substituted my homemade spekulatius. It was so good and so festive!

Roasted peach and custard trifle

Of course, Christmas lunch needs savoury food too. We had lunch with my parents, and Sandra and I made a ham, potato gratin and red cabbage, which we served with apple sauce and a little mustard.

Christmas lunch

I was lucky enough to receive some lovely foodie presents - including a magnificent Dolce & Gabbana chestnut and chocolate panettone, some gorgeous ceramics made by local artist Yen Qin (also a friend of mine), and some delicious Christmassy Koko Black chocolates. (My fave local chocolate pralines!)

Christmas gifts

Check out the panettone! So delicious, so beautiful! They're expensive but worth an occasional splurge!

Dolce and Gabbana Choc Chestnut panettone

There were lots of Christmas leftovers. Lots! Dad somehow bought the biggest ham imaginable, and there was much hammy deliciousness over the next few days.

Top: Ham slices dusted in mustard powder and fried in bread roll; Ploughman's
Bottom: Ham & cheese baguette; Pasta with ham, cream & peas

And once the panettone started to go stale, I made Nigella's Italian Christmas pudding cake and her Panettone French toast (both recipes from Nigellissima).

Italian Christmas Pudding Cake

Panettone French Toast

And I'll just sneak this New Years' Eve photo in here as well. Sandra and I were exhausted and wanted to stay home, but to keep it feeling like an occasion, I made NYE-celebration appropriate food for us to eat for dinner. We had cheese cubes and grape canapés, bread rolls, pão de queijo (store bought), devilled eggs, and scarlet prawns and a lobster tail with burnt butter lemon garlic sauce. Hilariously, I'd bought champagne but was too exhausted to open it on NYE, so I had a sneaky mimosa with lunch on New Year's Day itself.

New Year's Eve meal

So that was Christmas 2020! At the time I felt that the celebrations were restrained, but looking back I can see there were lots of very fun and special moments! I hope that life is treating you well and that you're keeping safe, and that the festive season is looking good for you, even if it's different to years gone by.

Chocolate

Small Batch Shortbread

8/19/2021 02:06:00 PM

Small batch shortbread! A crisp, buttery shortbread biscuit, with crunchy edges and optional dark chocolate chunks. (Not actually optional). This recipe makes just eight shortbread rounds, a perfect little lockdown treat!

Small Batch Shortbread

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Hello hello! I know it's been a little quiet here around ye olde blog lately - this year I've been averaging fewer than one post a month. Mum life has really taken priority! We've also moved house this last month so there's just a lot going on. Often I'm just getting through the day, and don't have the time or energy to cook or bake anything exciting, let alone create new recipes and photograph them and write them up. And once I get out of the habit of regularly blogging, it takes some effort to get back into it.

However however... in this latest lockdown, I've noticed that my recipe for Small Batch Scones has been going great guns and heaps of people have been baking it and tagging me on Instagram. (Yay!) That's why I decided to do a round-up post of all my small batch recipes, to try to give my other small batch recipes some love. Writing up that post really gave me the itch for some small batch baking, and literally the next day I came up with this shortbread. It's funny how inspiration works like that!

Shortbread is really easy to make in small quantities because most recipes don't contain any eggs - I always find it's hardest to scale down eggs in recipes, and I'm not a fan of using half an egg.

So, this recipe makes eight shortbread biscuits, which I think is a sensible little batch. But to be honest, I'm an absolute shortbread fiend and anything less than an entire packet of Walker's Shortbread counts as a "small batch" to me, hah! Because it uses such small quantities (only 50 grams of butter and 50 grams of flour), this is very easy to stir together in a small bowl using a spoon, no mixer required.

Shortbread mixture

Rice flour or ground rice are traditional in shortbread; I take a tip from Mary Berry and use semolina, which is very fine but still gives a nice texture. I also always have semolina in the pantry, and never use rice flour or ground rice for anything else, so it's a lot more convenient for me. (We use semolina for the annual Christmas roast potatoes, and Oma Frieda's Grießklösschen mit Kirschen, or in English: semolina dumplings with sour cherries).

Rather than rolling the dough out and using a cookie cutter, for such a small quantity I find the best way is to roll the shortbread into a log and then slice it into round cookies. (This way you don't waste any of the precious dough!) It occurs to me now that you could also press it out into a circle and cut it into wedges in the traditional Scottish fashion.

Shortbread roll

I rolled the biscuits in Demerara sugar for extra crunch - this (as well as the addition of chocolate chunks) was inspired by the beautiful shortbread biscuits that Good Karma Bakery sells! (I was actually lucky enough to win an Instagram giveaway of a bag of her cookies when she launched the bakery, and can highly recommend the molasses ginger ones).

Shortbread roll in Demerara sugar

That's it, slice and bake! I like to bake shortbread slowly at a low temperature (150C) so it crisps up slowly but doesn't go brown or bitter at all.

Small Batch Shortbread

These shortbread biscuits were so beautiful! I loved the short (duh), crisp texture and the absolute butteriness. They're easy and quick to make, and even easier to eat. (I would have definitely eaten more if there had been more!)

Small batch shortbread with iced latte

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!

Small Batch Shortbread
A recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients
50 grams softened unsalted butter
50 grams plain flour
1 pinch salt
25 grams semolina
25 grams caster sugar
25 grams dark chocolate, chopped medium-fine (optional)
1-2 tablespoons Demerara sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 150C.
Place the butter in a mixing bowl, add the flour, salt and semolina and mix with a wooden spoon until combined. Stir in the sugar and chocolate chunks (if using).
Roll the dough into a log of about 4 cm diametre. If the roll is quite soft, let it firm up in the fridge.
Roll the log into the Demerara sugar to coat the edges.
Slice into 8 even pieces, and arrange the cookies on a lined baking tray.
Bake for 15-25 minutes, or until lightly golden and firm.
Allow to cool on the tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 8 shortbread biscuits

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Chocolate

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies

7/14/2021 10:57:00 AM

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies. It's a mouthful, but what a delicious mouthful!

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies

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Hello hello! I've got a brand new, incredibly delicious cookie recipe for you today! Burnt butter, caramelised white chocolate and toasted pecan cookies. So much toasty nutty buttery caramelly deliciousness. I don't have any exciting story behind the creation of these cookies, these are just some of my favourite flavours and I'd long been thinking I should combine them into the one fabulous cookie!

Ingredients for cookies

So, burnt butter. I love it, love it, love it! The rich toasty nutty flavour and the gorgeous aroma - just heavenly! (You can also check out the previous burnt butter recipes on my blog if you are similarly obsessed). If you don't already know, when you burn butter (or brown it), you're melting it until the fat separates from the milk solids, and continuing to cook until the milk solids turn golden brown and smell amaaaaazing. (Go easily the first few times until you get the hang of it - if you properly burn the milk solids, it makes everything taste unpleasant and bitter, and there's nothing to do but to chuck it out and start over again. I speak from bitter - hah! - experience). I love burnt butter in baked goods, where it gives everything a gorgeous rounded nutty flavour, but it's also great in savoury applications (sauce grenobloise with fish, burnt butter and sage with gnocchi or tortellini, for example). It never doesn't taste good!

Question: Can I use replace normal butter with burnt butter in any baking recipe?

Generally yes... but with a little care and adjustment. It's not just a one-to-one swap. When you burn butter, you're allowing the water in the butter to evaporate, so you end up with a smaller amount of butter after it's been burned. I've found that the easiest way to get around this is to start with the same weight of butter that your original recipe asks for, burn it, then weigh it and add enough water to make it up to the original amount. That way there's no guessing around with the amounts, you get the burnt butter flavour, and you've replaced the evaporated liquid! Ta-dah.

Burnt butter, caster sugar and brown sugars

I also love caramelised white chocolate. My particular favourite is the expensive and hard-to-come-by Valrhona Dulcey. I used to buy small blocks of it either in Paris or at the Singapore Airport duty free in transit, and slowly savour them at home, but I've since discovered that some small chocolatiers here in Melbourne stock Valrhona Dulcey fèves and sell it by weight. (The fèves are small oval pieces, like large chocolate chips). It's good stuff - I usually buy a smallish amount at a time and just snack on it. Absolutely wonderful. If you can't find Valrhona Dulcey, Cadbury Caramilk is a more widely available alternative, which also comes in bars or chips. (I'm not personally a fan of Cadbury Caramilk as I find it too sweet and milky tasting, but I know it has legions of dedicated fans, so you may love it!) It's also possible to caramelise your own white chocolate if you are so inclined. (I haven't tried this myself, but there are loads of tutorials online!)

The last key ingredient - toasted pecans. I like pecans, but I'm not as obsessed with them as I am with burnt butter or caramelised white chocolate. However it is surely the perfect nut for this cookie. Their fragrance, light sweetness, crunch and butteriness are just right! The only tip I'll share is that you should definitely toast them first to amplify their flavour. And as per Beatrix Bakes' sage advice, toast them gently in an oven to get them evenly toasted all the way through, rather than in a frying pan (where they'll likely end up scorched on some parts and raw within).

So - with all that out of the way, this recipe is based on my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe (David Lebovitz' wonderful Salted Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies), with with the butter being burnt, the chocolate chip being caramelised white chocolate, and the nut being toasted pecan. Sometimes I make this cookie dough with unsalted butter, but in this case I think the salted butter (plus the extra 1/2 teaspoon of flaky salt) is really needed to balance out the flavours and temper the sweetness of the caramelised white chocolate.

Cookie dough balls, ready for their overnight rest in the fridge

I don't always bother refrigerating cookie dough overnight, but I think with these cookies it's important, to really make sure the butter has re-solidified and prevent them from spreading out too much.

Cookie dough, ready for baking

I also use the tip of banging the tray against a hard surface halfway through baking to knock some air out of the cookies and give them a nice undulating, craggy texture. (Got this idea from Edd Kimber and Tieghan Gerard!)

Burnt butter, caramelised white chocolate and toasted pecan cookies

I like these a little underbaked, and still warm from the oven, when the chocolate chunks are all melty and the batter in the centre is still gooey. That sweet buttery gooeyness against the crunch of the edges and the crunchy pecans is just perfection! These guys also freeze really well - I only bake a few at a time so I can spread out the deliciousness but also so that I only eat them fresh out of the oven, when they're at their absolute peak. (Just freeze the dough balls in a single layer in a freezer bag or airtight container, bake from frozen, and add a couple of minutes to the baking time when you do bake them). Good with tea, excellent with strong black coffee.

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies

That's it! If you love these flavours like I do, you simply MUST make these cookies. If you can, splash out on the expensive chocolate and the fancy butter, as you can really taste them in the final product. A total decadent treat!

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies

A recipe by Sarah Cooks, adapted from David Lebovitz' Salted Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

150 grams pecans

115 grams salted butter

110 grams dark brown sugar

100 grams white sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

180 grams plain flour

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling if you like

200 grams caramelised white chocolate (either in chips or roughly chopped)

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C. Spread the pecans out on a tray in a single layer, and cook for 20-30 minutes or until slightly darker and they smell amazing. Remove from the oven, allow to cool, roughly chop and set aside.

Place the salted butter in a small saucepan and place over a medium-low heat. Allow the butter to melt, swirling occasionally to help it melt evenly. After it melts, it will start bubbling and spitting. Keep cooking, stirring well with a flexible spatula and scraping the sides and the bottom, until it goes darker in colour, smells amazing, and you can see small brown flecks in the liquid. Pour into a bowl and set aside to cool until almost solid again. (You want it to firm up enough so that it's like softened butter, ready for baking). Weigh the brown butter, and add enough water to bring it back up to 115 grams. (You'll likely need a tablespoon or so).

Place the brown butter and water, and the two sugars into the bowl of a stand mixer (or just beat by hand), and beat until smoothly combined and lightened in colour. Add the egg and vanilla and beat in.

Sieve over the flour and bicarb, crush in the salt and mix to combine.

Add the pecans and white chocolate and mix in.

Use a spring-loaded ice-cream scoop to scoop the mixture into a shallow airtight container in a single layer and cover with the lid. Refrigerate overnight or at least for a few hours until the balls (heh) are solid. If you want to freeze some of the cookie dough, store the balls in a freezer bag or airtight container in a single layer and put in the freezer.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 175C.

Arrange the balls on a lined baking tray, allowing room to spread. If you like, sprinkle with a little extra sea salt.

Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the tray and bang it firmly on a hard surface (like the corner of a kitchen counter). Place the tray back in the oven (if your oven has hotspots, rotate the tray to ensure even browning), and bake for a further 2 minutes or until lightly golden brown but still gooey inside. Remove the trays from the oven and allow the cookies to firm up before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. (Or cool until cool enough to handle, then INHAAAAALE).

Makes 16 big cookies

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Chocolate

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

8/10/2020 10:15:00 PM

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies! These rich fudgy cookies are a total chocolate bomb. The rye flour gives them a subtle tang, and a generous sprinkle of flaky sea salt really makes them pop!

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

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I spent much of Melbourne Lockdown One searching (unsuccessfully) for rye flour, hoping that it would help kick my slow-to-start sourdough starter into gear. It turned out to be far more elusive than I expected, not because of panic buying and shortages, but rather because none of my local stores (supermarkets, speciality stores, health-food stores, organic bulk food stores etc.) seemed to stock it as a regular line. My local supermarket is huge and has a great range of flours - they stock buckwheat, spelt, coconut, tapioca and even banana flours (banana flour, honestly!) as regular items on their shelves, but for some reason rye flour doesn't get a look in.

By the time I found some rye flour, at a nearby gourmet grocer sometime between Lockdown One and (sigh) Lockdown Two, my starter was going great guns and didn't need the rye-boost. However, rye flour had been on the brain for so long that I had to buy a packet!

The first thing I wanted to bake with my rye flour were chocolate cookies. I'd had a gorgeous squidgy dark chocolate and rye cookie at 10 Belles in Paris last year, and wanted to recreate that deliciousness at home. A quick Google search revealed that the Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies from the Tartine No. 3 cookbook were all over the internet and incredibly popular - decision made! (For those of you who don't know, Tartine is an über-famous bakery in San Francisco. I can also recommend the flaky pastry recipe from their first cookbook).

This recipe is very different from the usual cookie recipes I follow - standard cookie recipes start with creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs, flour and add-ins like chocolate chips or nuts. However, this recipe starts with you whisking eggs and sugar until light and fluffy and tripled in volume, then folding in an obscene amount of melted chocolate and a little melted butter. There's just a very small amount of rye flour added to bind. The result is a soft cookie that packs a real chocolate punch. It's basically like a miniature portable brownie in cookie form.

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

I decided to write up the recipe here - even though it's already all over the internet in dozens of places - because all the recipes I saw were on American websites and were in cup measurements, not weights. Usually I don't have a huge problem baking with cups (in Australia we tend to use a hybrid of cups and gram measurements anyway), and by now I've memorised the conversion of cups/tablespoons to weight for butter. However, the main sticking point for me was that using cup measurements for chocolate made no sense. "2 and 2/3 cups finely chopped chocolate". What is that even? How finely chopped does it need to be? The size of a standard chocolate chip? Or do you keep chopping until it becomes a pure powder? Obviously the less finely you chop the chocolate, the less actual chocolate you'll fit into those measuring cups, so you could have huge variations in the amount of chocolate in the cookies. And importantly, how much chocolate do you need to chop to get that amount?

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Anyway, to figure this out, when I made the cookies, I started by chopping a one-hundred gram block of chocolate into fine shards (slightly larger than if you were to crumble a Flake bar with your hands) and scraping it into a measuring cup. I kept chopping and adding chocolate in twenty gram increments until I got enough to fill the measuring cups. It turns out that you need one hundred and eighty five grams of chopped chocolate to make 1 and 1/3 cups. The cookies turned out super delicious and mega chocolatey, so I'm confident sharing the "185 gram" measurement in the recipe below for you all (and for future Sarah).

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Apart from converting the Tartine Salted Chocolate Rye Cookie recipe to metric weight measurements, I also halved the quantities to make a more sensible portion for a two-person household in lockdown. As I keep telling you, we are actually a three-person household, but only two of us are onto solid foods. It's not quite the small-batch baking of my previous efforts (small batch scones, baby-batch buckwheat brownies, petite passionfruit loaf cake), but I suppose at least it's not wantonly hedonistic or wasteful. However, looking at the ingredient list now, I feel that the quantities could definitely be halved again. If I do get around to testing this out in future, I'll update this post with the results.

They've lasted quite well sitting out on a plate in the living room for the past few days; I'd suggest popping them in an airtight container if you want to keep them longer.

Enjoy!

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Adapted from Tartine No. 3

Ingredients
55 grams (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) rye flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
185 grams (1 + 1/3 cup finely chopped) dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids
30 grams (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
2 eggs
150 grams (3/4 cups) dark brown sugar
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
Flaky salt, for sprinkling

Method
Place the rye flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Allow to melt, stirring occasionally, until melted. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
Place the eggs into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk for 2 minutes or until fluffy. With the mixer running add the brown sugar, a tablespoon at a time, and continue whisking almost tripled in volume, about 6 minutes in total.
Pour in the chocolate mixture and the vanilla, and whisk until combined.
Add the flour mixture and whisk until combined.
Use a flexible spatula to mix the dough through and check for any last pockets of flour.
Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 175C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
Scoop 2 tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, allowing room for spreading. Sprinkle with flaky salt.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until cookies are puffed and the outsides are dry.
Allow to cool on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool further.
Makes approx. 12-15 cookies

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Burnt Butter

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Salted Shortbread

6/27/2020 10:38:00 PM

Brown butter brown sugar salted shortbread. These chunky shortbread bars are easy to make, super delicious and totally compulsive. The perfect snack to have on hand for tea time!

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Salted Shortbread

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Hi! Sneaking in with a quick recipe post! I absolutely love all kinds of shortbread, and when I saw this recipe for chinsuko (Okinawan salted shortbread) on Adam Liaw's Instagram, I had to have them and got straight into the kitchen!

These biscuits look plain but are absolutely full of rich flavour. I amped up the flavour even further by browning the butter. (You have to melt it anyway, so why not just let it go a bit longer until it turns brown and smells amazing?) The remaining ingredients are just brown sugar, flour and a generous amount of flaky sea salt. The brown sugar brings a lovely light toffee flavour, which works so well with the nutty browned butter. And the salt enhances all the flavours and really makes them pop! Shortbread 2.0.

Another modification I made to the recipe was a lazy simplification - with our baby at home and with me being back at full time work (also from home), I just did not have the energy or time to roll the dough out thinly and carefully cut the biscuits out, so I took the lazy route of simply pressing the dough into a lined twenty centimetre square tin. This resulted in a slightly thicker, chunkier, biscuit than Adam's recipe, but I found the plain sturdiness very appealing. I kept them in an airtight container and kept snacking on them throughout the week - perfect with a cup of tea to fuel an afternoon conference call!

I would have called these "Brown Butter Chinsuko", but after a little online research I learned that chinsuko are delicate little biscuits from Okinawa that are traditionally made with lard - very different in style and substance to these chunky bars. These are a lot closer to traditional British shortbread, so I've stuck with that naming.

Brown butter brown sugar salted shortbread

Enjoy!

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Salted Shortbread

Adapted from Adam Liaw

Ingredients

175 grams unsalted butter

150 grams soft brown sugar

300 grams flour

1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C.

In a light coloured pan, (so you can see the colour change), melt the butter over a medium heat. Continue cooking until the butter foams up and starts to sizzle, and the milk solids separate. Stir with a heatproof spatula to prevent the milk solids sticking to the pan. Once the sizzling has subsided and the butter has turned from yellow to a medium brown colour, (and most importantly, smells amazing), take off the heat and stir in the brown sugar.

Stir in the flour to form a dough.

Line a 20 x 20cm square tin with baking paper, leaving some overhang to make it easier to lift out the finished shortbread. Press the dough into the tin, flattening it with the back of a wooden spoon or the base of a sturdy glass. Prick all over with a fork, and sprinkle with sea salt. Press the salt in with your fingers. Bake for 15 minutes.

Remove the tin from the oven and cut the dough into bars. (If your tin is non stick or you're worried about scratching it, you may like to use the paper to gently lift and slide the shortbread slab from the tin onto a chopping board, before cutting it into bars and then placing back in the tin).

Bake for a further 10-15 minutes or until dry on top. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before serving. The shortbread will keep in an airtight container for weeks.

Makes 1 x 20cm square of shortbread

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Christmas

Nußmakronen / Hazelnut Macaroons

12/21/2019 11:15:00 PM

Nusßmakronen / Hazelnut macaroons. Another Christmas recipe for you! These German cookies are soft and moist, and delightfully fragrant. They're quite luxurious but also quick to make, and easy to adapt to be gluten free. It's a great one to add to your Christmas cookie collection!

Nußmakronen

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I made these Nußmakronen a couple of weeks ago, when Sandra requested them as part of our huge Christmas cookie bake-athon. I hadn't tried them before, and must admit that I wasn't super excited at the prospect of them, assuming they'd be a bit boring or plain, but I'm pleased to say I was wrong. So very wrong! They were absolutely gorgeous! So fragrant, moist, and luxurious. The hazelnut fragrance and flavour is so rich and lovely.

Nußmakronen ingredients

I found this recipe on The Daring Gourmet, a really great cooking blog with loads of German recipes! I've rewritten below, with my adaptions being to convert the measurements to metric and weights.

The ingredients are all supermarket staples, apart from the Back Oblaten, which we brought back from Germany when we were there for Christmas last year. Back Oblaten are German baking wafers, and are a standard ingredient over there. They're used as the base of Christmas cookies (and I suppose regular cookies too), and are almost tasteless - they remind me a bit of that edible rice paper that you sometimes see decorated in bright colours to top cupcakes.

Back Oblaten

I haven't seen Back Oblaten here on Australia, so I made sure to test a few macaroons without them. It works great without the Back Oblaten! So I'm happy to share the recipe here with you. Incidentally, the Back Oblaten contain wheat, and if you make these macaroons without them, they're gluten free.

Nusßmakronen mixture

The mixture is easy to make - just whisk the egg whites with salt until stiff, then gradually add sugar and cinnamon, before folding in some ground hazelnuts. You spoon the mixture out onto the wafers (or directly onto the baking paper if you're not using the Oblaten), press a little hazelnut into each one, and then bake.

Nußmakronen

The only added flavouring is a little dash of cinnamon, yet they somehow taste so complex and rich. I suppose it's the magic of the hazelnut meal! These keep quite well, so they're good to have in the cookie jar to pick at over a few days or even weeks.

Nußmakronen

These are so great with a cup of tea or coffee, perfect for a little break in between all the craziness of the Christmas period. I hope you love them as much as I do! (P.S. this recipe uses three egg whites, and my Vanillekipferl recipe uses three egg yolks. I think you know what needs to be done).

Nußmakronen / Hazelnut Macaroons

Recipe adapted from The Daring Gourmet

Ingredients

3 egg whites

1/8 teaspoon salt

170 grams icing sugar, sifted

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

250 grams hazelnut meal

24 x 50 millimetre Back Oblaten, optional

24 whole hazelnuts

Method

Preheat oven to 175C.

Whisk egg whites and salt until stiff. Gradually add icing sugar and cinnamon, while beating. Add hazelnut meal and fold in gently with a metal spoon.

If using the Backoblaten, arrange them on a lined baking sheet. Place approximately 2 teaspoons of mixture onto each Backoblaten.

If not using Backoblaten, spoon the mixture directly on a lined baking sheet.

Press a whole hazelnut into each macaroon.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the outside is dry and the edges are starting to brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Makes approx. 24

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

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Christmas 2020

Small Batch Shortbread

Burnt Butter, Caramelised White Chocolate and Toasted Pecan Cookies

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Salted Shortbread

Nußmakronen / Hazelnut Macaroons

About Me

CONTACT ME

Follow me on Pinterest

recent posts

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