Tag: biscuits

Oat florentine and how to adapt it

I based this nuts and oat florentine on oats and on a variety of nuts. There is lots of space for accommodation around your taste.

Florentine cereal bar

Those tips were posted in a post I placed on this blog and you may not have seen them. Consider them, they are convenient. Now feel free to add other ingredients than oats to your base, for example you can add silvered almonds or corn flakes.

Tip 1 – the “glue” of your oat florentine

In the end, I realised it doesn’t matter too much what you want in it, it is important to make sure you have a good “glue”.  I looked at a number of recipes for that binding mix and opted for my own made with simple ingredients (butter, honey and brown sugar), so no glucose syrup or other fancy items.

Tip 2 – you need salt in your florentine

One thing I did wrong was having a little too much salt. So put salt but go slowly, once added you can’t remove it

Tip 3 – solid ingredients: let yourself go! There are no limitations there. You need to think of the flavours you are combining together, this is crucial but not too hard. if not sure, stick to a few nuts, seeds or dry fruits in addition to the oats.

Mine was a little extravagant as I went through the pantry nuts jars: brazil nuts (cut), shredded coconut, pepitas, walnuts, roasted hazelnuts, macadamia pieces. And some dry cranberries.

Now for he new tips:

Tip 4 – bake your florentine until nice and brown, do not hesitate to go to a nice coloured brown as it means the florentine will be more solid. The caramel is what binds the ingredients together. If it is too light, it will not hold.

Tip 5 – the slice shape is so much easier to handle, but the florentine round shape is pretty.  My round shapes are enormous, too big really but fun!

Ingredients:
  • 250 g of rolled oats
  • 175 g of brazil nuts, cut in pieces
  • 50 g of shredded coconut
  • 100 g of pepitas
  • 100 g of walnuts broken
  • 150 g of roasted hazelnuts, cut in pieces (quarter size roughly)
  • 100 g of macadamia, also cut in pieces
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • Wet mix:
    • 100 g of melted butter
    • 120 g of honey (you may need to heat up the honey if it is solidified)
    • 150 g of brown sugar (or up to 200g if you like them quite sweet)
  • 180 g of dark cooking chocolate gently melted for the top
Method:
  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.  Line a baking tray or slice tray with baking paper.
  2. Prepare the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix them.  Prepare the wet ingredients in another bowl.
  3. Mix dry and wet ingredients.
  4. if using a slice tin, press the mix to a thickness of 1.5 cm to 2 cm. If doing florentines, use a tablespoon of mix minimum and press down to a 1.5cm thick disc.  The width will depend on the amount of mix.
  5. Bake in the middle of your oven for 1/2h to 40 minutes until nicely brown (the time will depend on your oven)
    Florentine cereal bar
  6. Cool down before covering with melted chocolate. If doing a slice, cut when the chocolate has almost hardened.

Florentine cereal bar

 

Gluten Free Porridge Cookies

I made these gluten free porridge cookies (and the recipe) one day as I had enough of seeing left over porridge go to the compost bin.

Now, if you are coeliac, you may need to be careful, this recipe contains oats, which has a protein that can trigger an immune reaction (but not always).

GF porridge cookies

Ingredients:
  • 1 egg
  • 230 g of porridge with sultanas.  If you need to cook the porridge, use 1 volume of oats for 2 volumes or water or a mix of water and milk (I prefer a mix).
  • 100 g of white sugar
  • 100 g of butter
  • 1 tsp of raising powder
  • 230 g of brown rice flour
Method:
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C
  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the leftover porridge to loosen a bit the mass.
  3. Add the sugar and the egg.  Mix well.
  4. Then mix in the rice flour and raising powder.
  5. Place little mounts, about the size of a tablespoon on a lined baking sheet.  Bake until light brown.
  6. Cool down on a wire rack.

Note: the dough is quite wet and sticky but not runny, it keeps its form when spooned on the tray. If your porridge is quite runny, you will need to increase the flour a little.

GF porridge cookies GF porridge cookies

Chocolate crackle tops

These chocolate crackle tops are easy chocolate biscuits to make. They suit all ages, can be used for parties, lunch boxes, morning or afternoon tea or with a simple dessert like yoghurt or stewed apples.  This is a recipe perfect for involving the children: mixing, adding ingredients including breaking the eggs, measuring ingredients, forming balls, coating the balls,…

I tried the original version and a version where I removed the cocoa because I was using a strong chocolate and did not see necessary to add the cocoa. Below is the original version and how to apply the variation.

Round 2, icing sugar finely sieved

Makes 35-40

Ingredients
  • 200 g dark cooking chocolate
  • 90 g of butter
  • 115 g of caster sugar
  • 5 ml of vanilla essence
  • 200 g of plain flour
  • ½ tsp of baking powder
  • Pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
  • 25 g cocoa powder
  • 100 – 150 g of icing sugar for coating (see recipe)Tip:  Using or not cocoa powder. if you use a chocolate with a high level of cocoa, adding the cocoa will make the biscuits too strong in chocolate.  Either use a 50 % cocoa cooking chocolate and the cocoa or if using a 70% chocolate, do not add the cocoa and add one tablespoon of flour (or the dough will be too wet).
Method

 

  1. Melt chocolate and butter until smooth
  2. Add eggs one at the time, mixing in between each egg
  3. Add sugar
  4. Stir in vanilla essence
  5. Add in at once the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
  6. Your dough would be quite soft. Place a plastic film on top and place in the fridge for at least an hour (or a day!).  If you have used couverture chocolate, you dough would be fine to use straight away (couverture chocolate crystallise quite quick when cooling down).
  7.  Once the dough is hard enough, remove from the fridge.  Heat up the oven to 180 deg C. Use an ice-cream spoon or any strong spoon to form walnut size pieces. Roll in a ball. Place a couple tablespoons of icing sugar in a larger bowl and dust the balls all over.  Remove any excess by shaking it off.
  8. Place on a baking sheet covered with a baking paper or buttered. Insert in the oven for no more than 10 minutes (between 7 and 10 minutes). The top should be lightly firm. Transfer to a cooling rack.  You will need two rounds or two baking sheet to bake all the biscuits. Keep well for a week in a box.

Tip: Ensure the icing sugar is fully free of lumps for an even result.

Version 1- original (as you can see I had not sieved the icing sugar to full dust)
Version 2 – very thin coat of icing sugar , this batch omitted the cocoa

 

Strawberry and rosemary madeleines

 

These strawberry and rosemary madeleines go really well with some fruit desserts which ask for a little cake or biscuit on the side.

I love madeleines, they are cute, crusty, light. They go with so many things and can be made rapidly (very rapidly) and for many reasons.  As a child, it is one of the first cake recipes we made again and again, the other two ones being the yoghurt cake and the “reine de Saba”  (or Sheba’s Cake), a light chocolate cake.

Strawberry and rosemary madeleines

The recipe is pretty close to the recipe for the plain madeleines, with the addition of the strawberries and rosemary.

madeleine fraise et romarin

Ingredients

These proportions made about 40 strawberry and rosemary madeleines.

  • 120 g butter
  • 2 tbs rosemarry (very finely chopped)
  • 1.5 cups of strawberry
  • 250 g of plain  flour
  • 150 g white sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 eggs

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan on low heat with the chopped rosemary. Before it turns colour, emove from heat and let infuse and cooling.
  2. Use a food processor to mix the eggs and sugar together until fluffy (alternatively use a whisk).
  3. Remove the leaves of the strawberry and puree in a blender. Mix with the egg and sugar.
  4. Add the flour and baking powder
  5. Add the butter (keep the rosemarry) slowly
  6. Put a tablespoon of the mix in each madeleine print and bake for 10-15 minutes on oven 17o°C
  7. Cool on a rack, make sure they do not touch when cooling.

madeleine

Madeleine? Any time!

Madeleines are very versatile biscuits.  First, they taste great.  Then they are kind of cute.  The other advantage is that they take no time to make and that you generally will ave the ingredients at home!

Madeleines cooling down

Madeleines can be served on their own for the afternoon snack, or with coffee or tea.  I love them, and I am not the only one (tested for you!).  They are also perfect for children who come back again and again for a spare one!

Want to do it?

The recipe can be found HERE.

Have you had any palets bretons before?

The question is: have you had any palets Bretons before?

If you are French or have lived in France, the answer would be yes.  For others, you probably have not eaten any Palets Bretons.

I could not resist this recipe.  I am not being patriotic just now (no! 🙂 ), this is just that I LOVE those little biscuits and you can’t find them in Australia.

IMG_9606

So easy… yes, really!

They are very easy to make.  The only limitation is that they cannot be placed to cook on a flat sheet as they need support.  Turned out that I had a silicone mould for mini-muffin (which I never use normally) just perfect for it!

You can keep them in a cookie box for a couple weeks easily (please not in the fridge, just in an airtight container or cookie box).  They are perfect with a cup of tea, with desserts like yogurt or fruit compotes and can even be used for lunch boxes snack.

IMG_9600

There are only few ingredients, same as in most cookies: flour, butter (of course, we are speaking Brittany), eggs, sugar and baking powder.

Now I am sure you feel like making them!

Read on for the recipe…

Ingredients:

Makes the quantity you can see on the above photo.

  • 140 g caster sugar
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 150 g soft butter (either use unsalted butter and add 4 g of salt) or use salted butter
  • 200 g plain white flour
  • 15 g baking powder
Method:

In a first time, you need to make the dough:

  1. Mix egg yolks and sugar until white and creamy (use a whisk)
  2. Add the soft butter and combine (swap the whisk for a wooden spoon or similar)
  3. Add the flour and baking powder
  4. Bring the mixture into a ball. Wrap in cell film and place in the fridge for a few hours or even better overnight.

The second part is the cutting and cooking:

  1. Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
  2. If you are using metal muffin trays or pastry rings, grease them with butter and place the pastry rings on a sheet of baking paper on the cooking tray.  If you are using a silicone mould, no need to grease.
moule improvise palets bretons
My improvised cutter and moulds for the Palets Bretons
  1. Lightly dust with flour your kitchen bench and roll the dough to 5 mm thick.
  2. Cut out round shapes for your palets bretons using either one of the pastry ring or if using a muffin tray or similar something in your kitchen of same diameter as your moulds (for example: a small glass, an egg cup, a towel ring).
  3. Place in the cooking moulds.
  4. Cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Turn over or slide on a cooling rack.