Cranberry, White Chocolate & Pistachio Cookies

These cookies just shout Christmas to me! They're red, white and green and packed with Christmassy flavours. I always make cookies to give as Christmas gifts because they are so transportable and always so well received.  Every year I say I should make more cookies and fewer chocolate-y things because of the heat but it never happens!

These are the sort of cookies with so many mix-ins you wonder how they will stay together. Then you make them and they're perfect, crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle and packed with little surprises. Oh and they make the house smell amazing :)

Cranberry, White Chocolate and Pistachio Cookies
Recipe adapted from Brown Eyed Baker

1¼ cups plain flour
½ ts baking powder
½ ts baking soda
¼ ts salt
120g butter, at room temperature
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 large egg
1 ts vanilla extract
½ cup rolled oats
½ cup roasted salted pistachios, chopped
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 190 / 170 degrees fan-forced. Line 2 trays with baking paper and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl.

Using an electric mixer beat the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined. Carefully mix in the dry ingredients then using a spatuala, fold through the oats, pistachios, cranberries and white chocolate.

Roll the dough into balls and place onto prepared trays, allowing room for spreading. Flatten the top of each biscuit with your fingers then bake for approx 10 minutes or until slightly golden on top. Allow to cool on the trays for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool to room temperature. Store in an airtight container.

Makes approx 30.

Cranberry & Cream Cheese Strudel

I love all the free Christmas magazines put out by supermarkets at this time of year. I mean I love food magazines any time but you gotta love free stuff! While there is a lot of advertising you can find little recipe gems and some great ideas for menu plans, table settings and gifts.

This recipe came from a freebie booklet from Coles called Recipes for Christmas Baking. I've no idea whether it is still available but just check your local Coles.

I made this intending to take it to our mother's group Christmas breakup but after baking I realised it is actually more of a dessert than a morning tea treat. No worries, I made a batch of brownies to take and saved this strudel for us!

It has gorgeous Christmas flavours with cranberries, almond and nutmeg but it would make a lovely dessert any time of the year. While it is meant to be served warm with ice cream, we ate most of ours sliced and cold from the fridge and it was delicious that way too.

Cranberry & Cream Cheese Strudel

250g cream cheese, softened
1 large egg
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 ts ground nutmeg
100g dried cranberries
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
1/2 cup almond meal
6 sheets filo pastry
75g melted butter
1/4 cup flaked almonds

Preheat oven to 200 / 180 degrees fan-forced and line a baking tray with baking paper.

With an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, cream, egg, sugar and nutmeg until smooth and well combined. Fold in the cranberries and set aside.

In a small bowl mix together the almond meal and breadcrumbs. Lay one sheet of filo onto your prepared tray and brush with melted butter. Sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of the almond/breadcrumbs mixture. Lay another sheet of filo on top and repeat until all filo and almond mixture is used.

Spread the cream cheese mixture over the filo stack, leaving a 4cm border around all edges. Fold in the short sides of the pastry, then with the long side facing you roll up tightly into a log. Brush the top with remaining melted butter and sprinkle over the flaked almonds.

Bake for 5 minutes at 200 /180 degrees fan forced then reduce the temperature to 180 / 160 degrees and bake for a further 25-30 minutes or until crisp and golden on top and firmish to the touch.

Serve warm with ice cream and cold from the fridge. Serves 8-10.

Tim Tam Balls

It seems I have been missing out because I hadn't even heard of these little beauties until last week!

Apparently they are the most popular recipe on the Stay At Home Mum blog and I can see why. I mean everyone loves tim tams and having them in ball form makes them even more appealing. But be warned, you won't be able to stop at one!

These are just one of the tasty little homemade morsels our family and friends will be receiving this year. I will also be making my famous Rum Balls, mini Christmas Cakes and Peanut Butter squares as well as a few other things which I will post soon.

This is half the original recipe which you will find here on Stay At Home Mum.

Tim Tam Balls

1 packet of Tim Tams, any flavour
125g cream cheese (1/2 a block) at room temperature
1 cup dessicated coconut OR hundreds & thousands

Place the tim tams into the food processor and blitz until they turn into crumbs. Add the cream cheese and pulse until the mixture forms a clump around the blade. Roll teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and then roll in the coconut or hundreds & thousands (I did 1 batch of each). Makes approx 20. Chill until ready to serve.

Baking with Julia - Finnish Pulla Failure

I feel like I have lost my baking mojo these last few weeks. Which is scary to admit considering how close to Christmas we are and just how many things I am yet to bake!

Today's Finnish Pulla takes the cake for disasters. It just didn't work. I'm partly blaming the weather (very hot) and my being distracted and leaving it too long in the second rise (because of a screaming 2 year old refusing to nap).

My bread was flat and mishapen and tasted strongly of yeast. I'm positive I measured correctly so not sure what's going on there. The end result was ugly and inedible and so very disappointing.

 
Our host this week is Erin of The Daily Morsel. I'm hoping she had better luck than me!

No Baking with Julia this week ...

So I didn't get around to making the Gingerbread Baby Cakes for Baking with Julia. I was kind of leaving them until the last minute but it was a scorching 38 degrees here in Brisbane today and the oven is staying off!

If it's cooler where you live and you love gingerbread check out our host Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories for the recipe and some gorgeous photos.

Baking with Julia - Best-Ever Brownies

It's no secret I fell in love with brownies through baking with Tuesdays with Dorie. Before that I thought they were chocolatey but kind of blah. So I was really keen to see how a recipe called 'Best-Ever Brownies' would compare with what I had made previously!

Whether they were amazing or not we definitely didn't need a whole batch sitting around, especially so close to Christmas, so I made 1/4 of the recipe in a mini loaf tin. My altered recipe is below.

The taste test ...

While I wouldn't say it's the best ever, it was pretty good! I overcooked my little brownie but the very middle was perfect - fudgy and gooey and just divine with a dollop of double cream. The ends were a little drier but still in a good dense chocolate cake kind of way. My photo in no way does it justice but at 8pm under fluorescent light that's the best I'm going to get!

Best-Ever Mini Brownie

1/3 cup plain flour
pinch salt
60g unsalted butter
45g dark chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 ts vanilla extract
1 large egg   

Follow the method as per Baking with Julia p 331. Bake in a mini loaf pan at 180 degrees celsius for approx 16 minutes until firm around the edges and squoodgy in the middle. I gave mine 20 minutes and it was overdone so a few minutes less ie. 16 mins should be pretty close.

Our host this week is Monica of A Beautiful Mess so make sure you check out the original recipe!

Happy Birthday Charlie!

Hard to believe but my baby turned 2 last week! Quite honestly it has been the fastest 2 years of my life and my boys are growing up so very quickly.

To celebrate we had a party on Sunday for friends and family. It was supposed to be at the park but rain the day before (the first real rain in months) put an end to that. I had visions of muddy toddlers sliding all over the place! So Plan B was at our place and amazingly we fit 19 adults and 13 children in our lounge/dining room and little backyard. We must live in the Tardis.

Here is the birthday boy checking out his new cubby and opening his presents ...

And onto the important stuff, the food!

As you will have seen above I made Charlie a digger cake. He is obsessed with all things truck and I just I would have to do some sort of truck cake for him. I have 3 kids birthday cake books but unfortunately there was nothing quite right. I was thinking I would have to just wing it (a dangerous idea because cake decorating is really not my strength!) when I came across a digger cake on Cake 2 the Rescue.

This is a local business which sends out cake kits complete with everything you need to make a brilliant cake - cake mix, icing mix, pre-coloured fondant icing in the right amounts, food colouring, a rolling pin, cake lifter and cake board. While I wouldn't normally go for something so pre-packaged it was a real time saver and a lot of fun! And just for the record this is not a sponsored post, I paid for own cake kit and just wanted to give them a shout-out.

Here is the finished cake with M&Ms 'dirt' and lots of little fingers waiting (or not) to dig in! It was a real hit on the day and Charlie loved it. Everyone loved the taste of the cake but as the decorator I found the cake a bit too spongy. Despite being in the fridge first it still crumbled in parts when I iced it whereas a slightly denser buttercake may have held together better. No big deal really but still.

Keeping with the truck theme I also had a go at decorating some biscuits. I found this cute cutter at Matchbox and used Charlie's favourite colour orange to decorate. This was my first ever attempt at decorating biscuits and I think I did ok. My only real issue came with the tyres. I completely underestimated how much black food colouring I would need to make a real black and of course my icing was far too runny by them and began to ooze and run off the edges of a few of the biscuits. Luckily no one cared!

I used a sugar cookie recipe from Sweetapolita which you can find here and an icing recipe from I Am Baker which you can find here. I was really happy with both of these and would definitely recommend them. I also used Wilton gel colours.

So that's it! Another birthday done and dusted. Oscar is already asking for a dinosaur cake for next year so I will have another opportunity to work on my cake decorating skills.

Christmas Baking with Lucky Nuts

Recently I received a lovely gift bag of nuts from Lucky courtesy of Product Talk by Nuffnang. Just look at that haul! As a baker it made me very, very happy especially in the lead-up to Christmas which is the time of year when I cook with nuts.

I grew up watching my mum use Lucky nuts in her Christmas baking and they are what I turn to for special occasion baking too. I didn't actually realise it but Lucky almonds are all grown in Australia and in fact Lucky is the leading cooking nut brand in Australia, so they are definitely doing something right!

In case you can't see well enough I received a bag each of blanched, slivered and flaked almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, almond and hazelnut meals and 2 new products which I was very excited about.

Firstly was a bag of Easy Chef Oven Roasted Almond Meal, which as the packet says it basically a cheesecake base in a bag. So of course I had to make a cheesecake!

Secondly was a bag of Easy Chef Almond Crumble which is a mix of almond meal, flaked and slivered almonds with oats and again as the packet says, is a crumble topping in a bag. Perfect.

The walnuts didn't make it into my baking but I enjoyed them as a tasty mid-morning snack during the week. The pine nuts are set aside for pesto and the almond meal will be used in a gluten free almond shortbread recipe I am working on for Christmas. The blanched almonds will of course be decorating the tops of my Christmas cakes which aren't ready to bake yet.

I ended up making 4 desserts, perfect for Christmas for anytime really - some moist Choc Hazelnut Cakes, a Panforte Ice Cream, Almond Cheesecake and Blueberry Crumble Pie.I'm trying to cut back on sugar so some of my recipes use Natvia.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and if you would like to try any Lucky products for yourself, the full range is available in Coles with a smaller range available in Woolies and independent grocery stores.

Almond Cheesecake

Adapted from Lucky

For the crust
125g unsalted butter, melted
250g packet Lucky Oven Roasted Almond Meal
1 tbs Natvia for Baking (or 2tbs brown sugar)

For the filling
500g cream cheese
3 eggs
3/4 cup Natvia for Baking (or 3/4 cup caster sugar)
2 ts vanilla extract
1/2 cup pure cream
1/2 cup Lucky Flaked Almonds, toasted*

Lightly grease and line the base of a 23cm springform pan.

Mix together the Lucky Oven Roasted Almond Meal with the melted butter and Natvia. Spoon into the prepared tin and press over the base and up the sides. Place in the freezer to chill for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius (160 degrees fan-forced).

In a food processor or electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese and Natvia until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla and cream and beat for 3 minutes. Pour the mixture into the prepared base and bake for 35-40 minutes or until cheesecake is lightly golden and just set in the middle.

Remove and allow to cool to room temperature before chilling in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Decorate with toasted almonds. Serves 8-10.

Panforte Ice Cream

Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, p68

1 cup full cream milk
1/3 cup Natvia for Baking (or white sugar)
1/2 ts cinnamon
1/4 ts ground cloves
1/4 ts ground nutmeg
Zest of 1 orange
2 cups pure cream
4 large egg yolks
1 x 110g pack Lucky Slivered Almonds, toasted*

Warm the milk, Natvia/sugar, spices and orange zest in a medium saucepan. Remove the pan from the heat, cover and leave to steep for 30 minutes. Add the cream and rewarm the mixture.

In another large bowl whisk the egg yolks.

Pour the warm milk/cream over the yolks, whisking constantly, then pour the mixture back into the saucepan. Cook the custard over medium heat, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until it thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer into the cream. Mix thoroughly.

Place the bowl into an ice bath and stir the custard until it is cool.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the fridge before churning in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Add the toasted almonds in the last few minutes of churning.

* To toast almonds place them on a large ungreased oven tray and bake at 170 degrees celsius for 10-12 minutes, stirring several times. Leave to cool    

Makes approx 1 litre.


Moist Choc Hazelnut Cakes

Adapted from Curtis Stone

90g Lucky hazelnut meal
125g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa)
125g butter
pinch of salt
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
65g caster sugar
Plain flour for dusting (can use gluten free flour)
Butter for greasing
Raspberries for serve

Place a baking tray in the oven and preheat to 180 degrees celsius fan forced. Grease the inside of 6 metal dariole molds with butter and dust with flour. Set aside.

Melt the chocolate in a small bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl. Stir in the butter and remove from the heat.

Place the whole eggs, egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer for 5-7 minutes or until light, pale and foamy. Fold the melted chocolate into the eggs and then the hazelnut meal, mixing gently until well combined.

Spoon evenly into the prepared molds, place on the baking tray and bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to rest for 1-2 minutes, before turning out onto serving plates. Dust each one with icing sugar and serve with fresh raspberries. Makes 6.


Blueberry Crumble Pie

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Double Crusted Blueberry Pie in Baking from My Home to Yours, p361

Crust
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbs sugar
280g salted butter, very cold and cut into tablespoon size pieces
68g coconut oil, cold
About 1/2 cup ice water

Put the flour and sugar in a food processor and pulse just to combine the ingredients. Add the butter and coconut oil and pulse only until the butter and coconut oil are cut into the flour. Gradually add the water, a few tablespoons at a time, until the dough is moist and clumpy. You want to see some pieces of butter. Check to see if the dough will stick together if pinched, and keep pulsing until it does.

Tip the dough out onto a piece of cling wrap, bring it together into a disc and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before rolling out.

Roll out the dough on a floured work surface or in between 2 pieces of baking paper. Lay the dough out into a greased 9 inch pie pan and trim the edges. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Blind bake the pastry shell for 20 minutes, then remove the lining and bake for a further 5 minutes.

Filling
1 x 500g pack frozen blueberries
2 tbs sugar
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tbs cornflour mixed with 2 tbs water

Place the blueberries, sugar and lemon zest and juice in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the blueberries have thawed. Add the cornflour and water and cook for a further few minutes until the liquid has thickened and is clear and syrupy. Remove from the heat and cool for 10 minutes.

Crumble
1 pack Lucky Almond Crumble
80g unsalted butter
2 tbs raw sugar
1/2 ts ground cinnamon

In a medium bowl mix together the Almond Crumble, sugar and cinnamon. Rub in the butter using your fingertips until well combined..

To assemble
Spoon the filling into the prepared pie shell. Sprinkle over the crumble topping evenly over the filling leaving a small gap around the edges to show the gorgeous colour of the blueberries.

Bake in a preheated 180 degree oven (160 degrees fan forced) for approx 20 minutes until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving with a big dollop of cream.

This recipe makes 1 large 9 inch pie or 4 smaller pies.

Note - this is not a sponsored post however I did receive product for consideration. For more information see Product Talk by Nuffnang.

Baking with Julia - Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

A homemade muffin, warm from the oven and fragrant with cinnamon and nutmeg. Is there anything better on a blah Monday morning?

I made quite a few substitutions with these and will do a full post on why and what I used instead, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime make sure you visit our host Alisa of Easier Than Pie for the recipe!

Banana Bread

Fellow Aussies will remember the Great Banana Shortage of 2010 when Cyclone Larry destroyed up to 90% of Australia's banana crops. I think I actually got hubby a banana for his birthday that year!

What a difference a few years makes, because I recently bought a ton of them at 99c/kilo and we've been eating bananas every way you can think of since then. Which brings me to banana bread ...

Nothing beats homemade banana bread. Not only does it taste great but when you've got cheap bananas you can almost make a loaf for less than you can buy a single slice of it at some cafes ($4.75 at Gloria Jeans on the weekend).

I'm still trying to cut back on wheat and dairy but in a way that's not particularly noticeable to the rest of the family. Here I swapped out half the wheat flour for white spelt and used non-dairy milk and butter. You can of course use any flour, milk and butter you like.

This made a lovely moist loaf with a heady banana flavour and gorgeous aroma from the spices. Normally I would use dark brown sugar in something like this but had run out so I made do. As you do.

I froze most of the loaf already sliced so that's this week's lunchbox treat sorted. Or maybe my breakfast!

Banana Bread
Adapted from Taste.com.au

1 cup plain flour
1 cup white spelt flour (or plain flour)
1 tbs baking powder
1 ts cinnamon
1/4 ts allspice
Pinch of salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tbs golden syrup
2 eggs
1/2 cup oat milk (or any milk)
50g nuttelex (or butter), melted
3 medium overripe bananas, mashed

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (160 degrees fan forced). Spray a loaf tin (approx 11 x 21cm) with oil spray and line the base and 2 sides with baking paper, allowing it to overhang.

Place the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, salt and brown sugar in a large bowl and whisk to combine. In a separate bowl mix together the mashed banana, eggs, milk, melted butter and golden syrup.

Add the banana mixture to the dry ingredients and mix gently until just combined. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

This cake will keep for 3 days in an airtight container on the bench or slice and freeze for up to 1 month.

Pumpkin, Banana and Date Muffins

I've been on a real pumpkin kick lately, it's just such a versatile ingredient. Coming into summer here I foresee lots of roast pumpkin and feta salads, while from the northern hemisphere there is sure to be an abundance of pumpkin pie and cake recipes. Bring it on!

Ever on the hunt for healthy lunchbox ideas for hubby and the boys, I came across these muffins in a healthy lunchbox post on Fig & Cherry. I made a few small changes to the original recipe - using all wholemeal flour instead of half and half. I also added a mashed banana simply because I didn't have quite enough leftover pumpkin and wasn't keen to cook any more.

All my boys loved these. I think the banana upped the sweetness a bit and helped them to not be quite so pumpkiny (a bonus for my pumpkin-hating husband).

We took these for morning tea on our day trip to Underwater World last weekend and they felt like a real treat! Definitely made me feel better about the fish and chips we had for lunch later that day :-)

Pumpkin, Banana and Date Muffins
Adapted from Weight Watchers via Fig & Cherry

2 cups (300g) wholemeal self-raising flour (or 2 cups plain flour plus 4 ts baking powder)
2 ts ground cinnamon
1/3 cup (80g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (125ml) oat milk (or any milk)
1/4 cup (60ml) rice bran oil
1 egg
1 cup (250g) cooked mashed pumpkin
1/2 cup (100g) mashed ripe banana
1/2 cup (80g) dried dates, chopped
1 tbs raw sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (160 degrees fan forced). Line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper liners and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, cinnamon and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, egg and oil together. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir until just combined. Fold through the pumpkin and dates being careful not to overmix.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tray, sprinkle the tops with raw sugar and bake for 18-20 minutes or until cooked. Stand in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Makes 12 muffins.