Sweet Treats

Sweet treats for everyone!!

Ok maybe not everyone... just for my colleagues at work.

This is a post that should have been written AGES ago but as usual I never got around to it.

Ever since I’ve started baking, I love an excuse to dress up food. Why would anyone pick an ordinary cookie over one that has a bow around it? Everything looks better with a bow around it !

So for the last two Eids I wanted bake goodies and put them into cute little individual boxes. For the first Eid, I probably went a little overboard and decided to make 6 sweets in a little box. I probably pushed it a bit with the 6 sweets in 2 days because on the day of Eid I was still at the supermarket buying eggs and running around town trying to find peppermint extract.

 

 Fortunately except for a few mishaps it all came together and I was able to come up with something I was very happy with!

 

The boxes had

·         A chewy chocolate chip meringue

·         A rainbow whoopee pie

·         A piece of carrot cake

·         2 pieces of Mint and chocolate fudge

·         A piece of chocolate cake

·         Dates (that should have been Turkish delight L )

The chewy chocolate meringue (from bakerella) was my favourite treat from the box. They really were chewy like a good cookie with the surprise of mini chocolate chips inside. Couldn’t help eating a whole bunch of them as they came out of the oven :D

 

For some reason the Turkish delight didn’t quite turn out right and had to be chucked last minute L After all that stirring, I was quite disappointed. 

 

Aaaaand for the second Eid, I decided that I probably should try to do something a little bit simpler; COOKIES. Now every time I make a cookie I ask myself why on earth we buy cookies from the store, when it is so simple to make them at home. Laziness I suppose. Something I’m experiencing right now on this very slow rainy Saturday evening. I want a raisin cookie but I’m too lazy to walk to my kitchen and make it. The bed shall be my home today :D

The initial plan was to make five kinds of cookies and put them into transparent cookie bags, tied with polka dotted ribbons. However on the way to the bookshop to buy wrappers, I came across these absolutely ADORABLE gift boxes that made life so much easier. How cute are they??

 All lined up waiting to be eaten :D

The cookie boxes had;

·         Every cookie box HAS to have a chocolate chip cookie
·         A peanut butter cookie
·         An orange glazed cookie
·         A filled raisin cookie
·         Carrot and ginger spiced cookie

Now as much as I love a good chocolate chip cookie I was very surprised with how amazing two of the cookies on the list turned out.

While I was making the orange glazed cookie, I misunderstood the recipe and made the glaze really runny. I poured it over a batch of cookies turned the other direction for a minute and the next, the glaze was dripping all over my kitchen. So I made the glaze again! Finally using some common sense I added more icing sugar and the glaze sat beautifully on the cookie. Thing is once I was done cleaning I didn’t feel like trying even one of the orange cookies because everything I touched smelt like orange and I was feeling a bit sick. Fortunately at work the next day my stomach was growling (as it always does because  I cant seem to ever make time for breakfast) and I ate one of these guys and I was pretty blown away! Definitely making that one again. Super impressed with how well it kept as well. 

The next one I loved was the raisin filled cookie. Generally I don’t like raisins in anything other than cookies. I was originally planning on making oatmeal raisin cookies but decided on these at the end. I’m glad because not only where a delight to eat but now I know how to make a stuffed cookie! Sure it takes slightly longer to make than other usual scoop batter and bake cookies but it is worth it.

So I’m going to give you both recipes so you can go make it and tell me what you think!

Orange glazed cookies
Filled raisin cookies

Dripping Quiches and Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Its been ages since I updated this blog. I have been cooking and baking but I think I have been shying away from uploading the tiny things I’ve made because of all the crappy photography. I wonder why I can’t spend just a few more minutes and take a decent picture. (Always in such a hurry….. -.-)

Over the last month I made an upside down apple cake, red velvet cupcakes, a failed quiche and chicken pot pie.

The quiche is an interesting story because I love quiche!! I can eat quiche for breakfast, lunch and dinner! My favorite quiche is spinach and cheese and although I planned to each quiche last week I wasn’t destined to. I think once again I should refer to my disaster making pouring fondant but this time really it was nothing but my stupidity that ruined what could have been a beautiful quiche. I stay away from making dough due to my lack of confidence but then earlier this year my friend Simone’s mom made these yummy little quiches using store bought puff pastry.

Mistake number 1; I thought it was brilliant and I decided to give it a try, except for some ridiculous reason I decided it would be easy to make it in a pie tin.

5 mins in the oven and pastry fell and about 1/3 of the filling dripped out through the bottom.

Mistake number 2; I should have listened to my father. When I bought the oven my dad mentioned that I should probably keep the cookie tray underneath the wire rack if I was going to bake something that might overflow. Well I obviously didn’t do that or it would have saved me the trouble of cleaning cream and cheese off the bottom of the oven. -.-

I did salvage it though. I pulled the pastry into a silicone cake tray and put it back in the oven to see if it would work out mainly because it was too late to go out and buy dinner. It was fine. Obviously the pastry wasn’t great because it was soaked through but it was edible. Unfortunately by the time I cleaned the gigantic mess in the oven and the floor of my kitchen I had lost of appetite. So I gave the quiche away.

On a happier note, I found some really cool ingredients and baking stuff. Those of you who are my friends on facebook and follow me on twitter would know that about a week ago I found Polenta! ; an ingredient that I have been looking for high and low in Oman. I found it!! In Sri Lanka! Who would have thought?  I am super excited to make Polenta! Insanely excited!! So keep posted for something this weekend. 

I have been having a major cookie craving! That too for Subway cookies. Does anyone else think that Subway cookies are way better than any store bought cookie? Yesterday was Poya, (Poya is a Buddhist public holiday here which occurs every full moon day), so I moved my lazy ass to the store and bought all the ingredients and made a gigantic batch of cookies. Super easy, no mess cookies which I’d like to think are pretty healthy.

I used a recipe from smitten kitchen 

I was very pleased. No issues what so ever. If you prefer a sweet cookie you might want to add more sugar to the recipe.