Sourdough Nuts & Fruits Biscotti

Ingredients;

Starter 50g

Strong flour 50g

Plain flour 50g

Egg 1

Almond powder 20g

Almonds, Walnuts, Cranberries, Raisins (As much as you like...)

Honey 1 tbsp

Salt pinch

I made sourdough biscotti again (here is my previous attempt), this time with more nuts and fruits, and it's truly addictive!!

I love this recipe because it has no rising agents except the natural yeast from the starter, also there is no sugar, no butter, which feels (and I believe is!) pretty healthy;)

The crunchy nuts gives me a good energy boost in the hot kitchen too;D

Do you dip your biscuits?

Macaron - Step by Step -

With macarons I've had many failures in the past. I've tried and tested many different ways to master the art of making macarons. And now, finally, I can say that my macaron success rate is 99.9%.

So here is the recipe for you!
Bon Appetit - Macaron - step by step -

With the quantity of the ingredients shown in this recipe you can make about 10 sets of macarons. This recipe is for a small amount of macarons so you can try many different flavours. Also, with this method, you don't need to leave the piped mixture before baking, so you don't need to wait around or misjudge the timing to put the macarons in the oven. (with an authentic way of making macarons, you need to let the macaron's skin dry before baking...)

Here are some of my favourite flavours.

Pistachio used to be my favourite and wherever I go and find a macaron shop I had to try their pistachios. 

However, my new favourite is this one, salted caramel popcorn!

The combination of sweet and salty is so addictive.

I like to put some Japanese influence to my macarons too...

Purple sweet potato.

Matcha green tea.

Mini ones;)

Vanilla & Matcha Melon pan with sourdough starter

Following my last post, Sourdough Annn pan, here is another Japanese bread.

Melon pan!

(Are you thinking 'what's melon pan?', then here is the answer.;D)

Lana, Andy, and I, we all love this sweet buns. This time I made one with vanilla biscuit on top and the other matcha green tea biscuit. The matcha ones also have chestnut paste inside.

I think the beauty of Melon Pan comes down to the skin (the biscuit.) I like my skin to be nice and crunchy, not to thin but not too over powering to the bread. The ratio I usually do is '50g dough to 40g biscuit' for a bun.

Ingredients:

*Bread*

Starter (banana) 120g

Very strong Flour 250g

Milk 150g

Egg 1

Sugar 30g

Honey 1 tbsp

Oil 15g

Butter 35g

Salt 3g

---

*Biscuit*

Butter 60g

Sugar 115g

Plain Flour 200g

(For matcha, use 190g flour +  10g matcha powder)

Egg 1

Not only is the biscuit goes well with the sweet bun, but also it's pretty awesome as is. So, if you get any leftovers, bake them at 175 ºc for 10 minutes, then another 10-15 minutes at 150 ºc.

They are so moreish. ;-d

Inside the Matcha Melon Pan.

Chestnut and Matcha, it's like a dream team!

They are best eaten on the day they are baked (if you could kept them long enough...), but if you're having them the following day, I recommend you put them in the fridge (since it has chestnut paste inside) and take them out to room temperature or warm them up slightly in the oven before you eat them.

Sourdough Biscotti

I made my first attempt of Sourdough Biscotti, and it came out rather good;)

I was going to put more variety of nuts like whole almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts... but..., I simply forgot...

So, this time it's just a simple almond biscotti. ;D

Ingredients:

Starter 50g

Strong flour 50g

Plain flour 50g

Almond powder 20g

Egg 1

Flaked almond and/or any nuts or dried fruits of your choice! ;)

Honey 1 tbsp

Salt pinch

My Sourdough Biscotti was a little softer than the biscotties made with baking powder or baking soda but it still had that nice nutty flavour and crunchy texture. I'm definitely trying this again with bigger bits of nuts and fruits!

To dip or not to dip...

Gluten free vegan coconut cookie

The other day I was talking to my sister on Skype, and she told me that she had made cookies first time in a long time... and there was me thinking... 'Oh, I haven't made cookies for a little while, I want to make some too!'

So, when I came off the call, I went into the kitchen and I started mixing the ingredients.

This time I've tried a new 'vegan' cookies with my homemade coconut butter. I made the coconut butter by food processing coconut flakes about 10 minutes until they became like 'butter'.

I also use gluten free flour, so the cookies ended up being both 'vegan' and 'gluten free'. Humm, I like the sound of it...;) But, not only do they sound nice and healthy, they also taste well good!

The sweet smell of coconut was so good, and I loved how it crumbled!

Lana loved it too. 

She even said 'more biscuit?' when she finished her half. ;D

Ingredients:

200g coconut butter

1tsp sesame seed oil

50g brown sugar

100g Gluten free flour

Gingerbread House Cake -2013-

Has everyone recovered from the 'food food food' Christmas period yet? I... ate too much and mainly filled my belly with cake, cream and sweets...

This year I was very determined to make something bit more than an ordinary gingerbread house.

First of all, I designed my gingerbread house on paper, then printed out the template and practiced making the house with paper before I actually built it with biscuits. Yes, call me a control freak geek...

The biscuits, the cake, and the building work... All went very well. By the evening of Christmas Eve, "The Tower" made it to Andy's mum and dad's house safely. ;D

The gingerbread house was built on a very light coconut sponge iced with cream cheese frosting and coconut flake to make it look like a snowy ground.

The stained glass effect ;D

Cotton candy for the chimney...

What's more special about this year's gingerbread house was it had a secret inside, which was revealed at the dinner table by breaking "The Tower"!

...., So....,

We broke "The Tower"

bang,

bang,

bang!

"The Tower" was filled with sweets!!

It was such a fun to make the gingerbread house from scratch then destroy, and just tuck in it!

Not only was I pleased with the look but also, taste wise, the cake was nice and light and the gingerbread was very moreish too.

I'm definitely up for doing this again. ;D

Happy Halloween - Pumpkin cookies!

Happy Halloween! Tick or Treat!

Following my Jack-o'-lantern black cream puffs, I made Halloween pumpkin cookies!

I say 'Pumpkin' cookies, but they actually have no pumpkins in it...sorry...
They are made of one of my favourite biscuits, the Almond Ball Biscuit (recipe is on Biscuit Assortment). I added a bit of orange food colourings and shaped them like mini pumpkins.

It was a little bit time consuming to shape them but it was worth the effort. I was very pleased with how they came out. ;)

I used a chop stick to make the lines and put a pumpkin seed on the top.

I also made one Dokin-chan for Lana. ;)

(It's a famous cartoon character in Japan.)

Before drawing the faces. They looked so cute. :)

I can see myself making other shapes...

(This could be on my Christmas baking list....)

French bread biscuits

Because I'm trying to perfect the French style breads and I keep baking them, sometimes I have more breads than we can eat and the breads get dry after being left for a few day... ;(

So, this is how I rescue these dry breads. Simply, slice the bread thinly, spread butter on each slice, sprinkle sugar on top and bake in 160ºc oven for 20 minutes. You'll get a nice sweet snack.

Give the old bread a new life before you give it to the birds.... :D

Happy Halloween

I'm waiting... I'm still waiting for the knock knock on the door... so far no one has come...

Anyway, Happy Halloween.
Boo Boo Boo!

I don't remember anyone actually knocking on the door on Halloween, nor I've never been around to other people's house to get sweets. However, Andy told me that kids might come around for trick or treat, so I baked some funny face biscuits and went to a shop to get some sweets.

BUT..., no one came... it's 9pm... I think kids must have gone to bed by now. Oooh well, at least they are treats for me then. ;D

My another Halloween treat was a super creamy fake pumpkin soup (it was squash...) with a rather scary looking flat purple bread. It tasted awesome and I ate so much that I felt like I was pregnant again...

Melon pan

Any Japanese or anyone who is into Japan must know メロンパン(melon pan, which means melon bread). For me Melon Pan is something I've liked since I was a kid and tried so many of them from different shops.

So..., for those who are thinking "what is Melon Pan?'. Although Melon Pan has the word 'melon', it doesn't necessarily means the bread has melon in it, nor even melon flavoured. The reason why it's called 'Melon Pan' is because it looks like a melon. (No? Ok, it does in my eyes anyway...) Usually a sweet bun is topped with biscuit and the biscuit has lines to make the bread look like melon.

In Japan you get all sorts of melon pans such as green tea melon pan, one with custard cream inside..., I've had earl grey flavoured one, mango flavoured one, strawberry, caramel, chocolate..., the list goes on and on....

I'm sure everyone has the one they like. I like the one with crunchy biscuit on top of a nice soft bun. And of course, a freshly baked melon pan is simply too good to resist. :D

Medal cookies for Robin Hood event

It was a busy week in the WOS kitchen last week since I was making medal cookies for the weekend's Robin Hood event. These special cookie were given to the kids who scored three gold at Deben Archery Range "Have-A-Go".

Apparently the event was a great success and over 100 cookies were all gone on the first day! Amazing!

Hope everyone enjoyed a fun archery experience as well as a sweet reward. ;D

Happy birthday to Pete

Happy birthday to Pete, Happy birthday to Pete, Happy birthday to Pete, Haaapy Biiirthday toooo Pete♪...

Today is my dad-in-law's birthday. Happy birthday, Pete ;)

I made a selection of breads and funny face biscuits for him. They were... "seedless raspberry jam bread", "chocolate bread", "purple grape bread" (have you seen how to make it?), apple and cinnamon roll, and birthday special... "Jumbo cinnamon roll"!

I hope he is enjoying those sweet buns and rolls with the birthday tea. ;D

Funny face biscuit

"Hello, hello, hello"... Those funny face biscuits are the best friends with a nice cup of tea and sure to bring a smile to everyone's face. :)

To dress up the funny face I sandwiched my grape jam in the middle. The almond shortbread biscuit worked very well with the thick grape jam.

Dunk one face in a tea..., and another and another..... such addictive stuff those faces are... :)

To see how to make the almond biscuit, please see my biscuit assortment.

Billionaire's shortbread

The order was "the biggest millionaire's shortbread I've ever made". So, I baked the shortbread in my big tart tin and poured caramel followed by a thin layer of white chocolate and velvety chocolate on top. I didn't even cut it, but I just delivered the whole thing.

The shortbread was nice and buttery, caramel was sweet and gooey, and the chocolate was smooth and silky.... this millionaire's shortbread was a little more indulgent than "millionaire" so I decided to call it "billionaire" instead. :D

Ok, so.., here is how to indulge yourself or someone...

Ingredients:

Shortbread

butter 200g

Icing sugar 100g

Flour 200g

Rice flour 100g

Caramel

Condensed milk 2tins (397gx2)

Butter 100g

brown sugar 100g

Chocolate

White chocolate 200g

Milk chocolate 200g

Dark chocolate 200g

Double cream 240g

1. Make the shortbread. Soften the butter. Cream butter and icing sugar together.

2. Sift flour and rice flour into 1. Bring the mixture together until it forms a dough. Wrap in a cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

3.Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Press the dough on a tart tin (10 inch) and prick the dough with a fork. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes until the top of the shortbread has become slightly golden. Let it cool.

4. Prepare the caramel. Combine all the ingredients for the caramel in a sauce pan. Place the pan on a low heat. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens and becomes light brown. Pour the mixture into the cooled shortbread. Let it cool.

5. Prepare the chocolate. Malt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Pour over the caramel.

6. Make the chocolate topping. Heat the cream in a sauce pan over a gentle heat. 

7. Add milk chocolate and dark chocolate into the pan. Keep stirring until the chocolate has dissolved and the mixture has become silky. Pour over the white chocolate.

8. Make some swirls with white chocolate. Leave to set.

Biscuit assortment

Biscuits are simple. But perfecting an ultimate biscuit recipe is pretty hard. I've been trying to come up with an easy enough biscuit recipe which also have that "moreish-ness" to it.

So... yesterday I made 4 different biscuits that I've been meaning to test out. Normally when I do multiple recipe experiments, some of them fails miserably.... However, this time all of them came out awesome!

So here we are. There are what I made...

Jam biscuit (I used raspberry jam)

Flour 100g

Butter 50g

Sugar 50g

Jam 50g

Baking powder 1/2 tsp

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter and sugar together.

2. Add jam and mix well.

3. Fold flour and baking powder into 2.

4. Knead lightly until the mixture come together and smooth.

5. Wrap with cling film and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

6. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to 5mm thickness. Cut out the dough and place on a baking sheet.

7. Bake in the preheated (180ºc) oven for 10-12 minutes.

Salted vanilla biscuit
Same as the Lemon meringue's sweet pastry.
After making the dough, shape it into a stick and rest it in the freezer until it's hard. Cut the dough into 8mm thickness and bake. When the biscuits are done, sprinkle salt.

Cocoa biscuit

Flour 100g

Cocoa powder 15g

Butter 50g

Sugar 50g

Egg yolk 2

Baking powder 1/2 tsp

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter and sugar together.

2. Add egg yolk and mix well.

3. Fold flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into 2.

4. Knead lightly until the mixture come together and smooth.

5. Wrap with cling film and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

6. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to 5mm thickness. Cut out the dough and place on a baking sheet.

7. Bake in the preheated (180ºc) oven for 15 minutes. 

Almond ball biscuit

Butter 100g

Icing sugar 50g

Egg yolk 1

Almond powder 120g

Flour 130g

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter and icing sugar together.

2. Add egg yolk into 1 and mix well.

3. Fold almond flour and flour into 2.

4. Rest the dough int the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

5. Take out the dough and make small balls. Place the balls on a baking sheet.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.

My favourite was the Almond ball biscuit. I can see myself making it again pretty soon! :D

Father's Day foot print biscuit

It was the very first Father's Day for our baby girl, Lana. She (or rather me...) made biscuit for daddy. It was no usual biscuit but her actual foot print!

I made templates of her foot print by applying baby oil on her foot, pressing them on a coloured paper and quickly drawing the outline before the foot print dried out. Then I used them to cut out the biscuit dough.

So that's how her tinny feet made into biscuit for her daddy. ;D Happy Father's Day!!

Mint biscuit

Now, we've finally got a house with a garden, and I can't wait to get started with growing my own veggies and fruits. Luckily the previous owner of the house has kept the garden very nice and neat, there are already thing I can use...

One of the things I found was mint! Humm, nice fresh smell. There was no way I wouldn't experiment with those fresh herbs in my baking. So, I've decided to make biscuits with a "hint of mint" (that's what Andy said...nice rhyming...)


As soon as I started preparing the dough, from the smell of fresh mint and sweet biscuit dough I could already tell they were going to be pretty awesome. After 20 minutes, they came out from the oven nice and golden. We tasted them straight away with our dinner.

I was like..."Oh... my..., I think I'm genius... This is so good!" Yes indeed, it was one of those moments that I was really pleased with my experimental recipe. ;D

We also try them with cheese, which brought the flavour of mint more and tasted really nice too:)

I'm going to try this recipe with other herbs next time!

Ingredient:

Flour 100g

Butter 50g

Sugar 50g

Egg yolk 2

Baking powder 1/2 tsp

Salt pinch

Fresh mint leaves (chopped) 1 tsp

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Cream butter and sugar together.

2. Add egg yolks and mix well. Mix in mint leaves.

3. Fold flour, baking powder and salt into 2.

4. Knead lightly until the mixture come together and smooth.

5. Wrap with cling film and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

6. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to 5mm thickness. Cut out the dough and place on a baking sheet.

7. Bake in the preheated (180ºc) oven for 20 minutes or until the biscuits become slightly golden. 

Speculaas

Christmas is still a way away, but that doesn't stop me making these tasty spiced cookie called Speculaas;) They are traditionally eaten on St. Nicolas Eve in Netherlands, and often have images related to the stories of St. Nicolas.

Since I don't have those special cookie cutter, I opted for a very simple cookie shape. As soon as I started working on the dough, the kitchen was filled with that spicy aroma of Christmas! ...hummm..., maybe this year we're having Christmas twice (or at least twice!) ....

The key ingredients of this recipe are, of course, the spices. To get the best effect of them, you must let the dough rest so that the spices spread through the dough and give the cookies a nice spicy taste:)

To see the recipe, visit The World of Sweets Recipes, Netherlands.

WOS gift for little ones

My mum asked me to make something that she could take to her friends and their kids. I remembered that when I made the carrot cupcakes with animal sugar crafts on top (have you seen it?), Skyla was very pleased. So, I decided to use the same trick, "Animal", again.

This time, animal biscuits! I used the same recipe as the scone, so it's not so sweet and lighter than buttery cookies, which I suppose is better for kids to eat lots...

I hope my mum's friends' little ones enjoyed finding their favourite animal:)

To see the recipe, visit The World of Sweets Recipes, Scone.

Digestive cookies

I often get a craving for baking in the late evening, and indeed, tonight was one of those nights...

I'm thinking about making a New York style cheesecake tomorrow. That's why I decided to make digestive cookies myself tonight so that I can use it as a base for my tomorrow's cheesecake. Oh... by the way, some people might already know by now that I love making stuff from scratch.. (have you seen my lemon curd and dulce de leche ?)

These cookies are extremely easy to make. Mix everything up, put them together, rest, bosch in the oven. It's nice as it is or with butter, jam, cream, etc. And of course, it's great for a cheesecake or tart base too! :)

Ingredients;

Plain flour 80g

Wholemeal 80g

Brown sugar 40g

Honey 40g

Margarine 50g

Milk 30g

Baking powder 3g

Salt pinch

1. Melt margarine in the microwave.

2. In a bowl, combine sugar, honey, milk and melted margarine. Mix well.

3. Sift flour, wholemeal, baking powder and salt together into 2. Mix well to form a dough. Wrap the dough with cling film and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4. Roll out the dough on a baking sheet to about 3mm thick.

5. Make square shapes with a knife and little holes with a fork. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.