Thursday 28 November 2013

Peanut Butter and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've seen several recipes for peanut butter and chocolate cookies on Pinterest recently, all of which look delicious but as most of them are American recipes the measurements are in cups. 


So instead I searched for a UK recipe and found a BBCFood one which I added dark chocolate chips too.


This is another recipe that requires very little ingredients and even less effort as it is a 'shove it all in at once and mix' recipe. 


Once you've combined all the ingredients into a dough, roll it into walnut size balls. 


As you place the dough balls on the baking tray, squish them down with the palm of your hand to make them flat on the tray. 


Pop them in the oven and in no time at all you'll have a fresh batch of peanut butter and chocolate cookies.

Friday 15 November 2013

Duffins (doughnut-muffin hybrid)

Duffins (doughnut-muffins) are just one of the many hybrids to come from the cronut craze (croissant-doughnut). The best way to describe it is; a soft doughy muffin but with a jam centre and sugar coating.


For the batter: combine the dry ingredients (plain flour, sugar and baking power) together, add in the melted butter and then the wet ingredients (yogurt, eggs and vanilla essence).


Spoon a tablespoon of batter (I did a tablespoon and a half to make sure there was enough to stop the jam from leaking through the bottom) in each buttered cupcake mould. Then add a teaspoon of jam in the centre of each one.


Use the rest of the batter to fill each one up, making sure the jam is completely covered. 


They should be lightly golden when they're ready. I'd recommend taking them out and placing them on the worktop upside down as it will stop any jam leaking out (as you can see there are a few that have thin bottoms).


Once they are all out of the tin, you can begin rolling them in sugar. It's best to do this whilst they are still hot as more sugar will stick to them.


Then they're ready to eat. Perfect served warm.


Sunday 10 November 2013

Gooey Treacle Sponge

If you have a sweet tooth as bad as mine, and you can't find anything in the cupboards after dinner, this is the perfect pudding to rustle up in no time at all. 


In essence it is a vanilla sponge but with a gooey treacle bottom. It tastes just like the ones served for school dinners (the nice ones!).


You need to make sure you butter the dish beforehand as the golden syrup will make it very hard to get out otherwise.


The recipe says to use 6 tablespoons of golden syrup but I tend to ignore this as even when I double that it isn't enough, so I normally just use enough to cover the bottom of the dish with a thick layer of it.


Then as you would normally with a sponge, cream the butter and sugar together, and add the eggs in one at a time. 


Follow this with the vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence) and then the sieved self-raising flour.


Then blob the cake batter on top of the golden syrup, it's important that you 'blob it' on instead of pouring it and then trying to spread it, as you want to keep the golden syrup on the bottom - not in the mixture.


Then all that is left to do is pop the custard in the microwave ready for when it comes out of the oven.


 As you can see this one doesn't last long...this was gone in one sitting.