One Dough – Hundreds of Biscuits

In the Easter 2011 ‘Indulge’ magazine put out by Countdown there is a fantastic biscuit recipe that I have had heaps of fun playing around with.  It is easy peasy and makes a good 50+ biscuits each batch.


All you need is:
250g butter, room temperature
¾ cup caster sugar
⅔ cup condensed milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
4 cups self raising flour

Use an electric beater to combine butter, sugar, condensed milk, egg and vanilla until light and creamy.  Add flour and stir with a wooden spoon until combined.

At this point you can divide your mixture (the magazine recommends in 3) and start adding different ingredients to make your different biscuits.  My favourite is a raspberry (I use a natural soft raspberry liquorice log, chopped up), pistachio nut and white chocolate combo.  I’ve also tried, triple choc – add cocoa powder, white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate drops, and chocolate chip biscuits – just add chocolate chips.  You could add dried fruit, smarties or m&m’s would be great for kids lunch boxes or birthday parties.  Give them a go and experiment, be sure to let us know how they turn out!

To bake roll two teaspoons of mixture into a ball and flatten with a fork.  You can also make mixture into a log, chill and cut into biscuits if you prefer a more perfect look.  Bake time and number of biscuits will vary depending on your fillings but a guide to bake time is about 12mins in a 180˚C oven, just keep an eye on them.  You should get at least 40 biscuits out of the mixture (the first time I used it and made three different types of biscuits I got 60).

*Tip – Due to the popular demand of the raspberry, white chocolate and pistachio biscuits in our house I divide the mixture in half and make into x2 logs which I place in the freezer, one just until it is hardening then I cut it into 24 pieces and lay them on a biscuit tray to bake.  The other, I leave until we are out or our supply is low and thaw until it is able to be cut, but is still semi frozen, and bake.

Roast Tomato & Broad Bean Salad with Haloumi

I know, not baking, but hey – wotcha gonna do?  Simon and I made this last weekend to go with our dinner before we had the Raspberry and Ricotta Cakes.  The recipe comes from Foodtown Magazine, issue 56, December 2010 / January 2011.

Serves 12 as part of a buffet.

250g punnet of mini tomatoes, halved
olive oil spray
salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g packet frozen broad beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
125g haloumi, sliced into ½ cm thick slices
1 tablespoon lemon juice
130g packet baby spinach leaves
½ cup balsamic dressing

Preheat oven to 200˚C.  Place the tomato halves on a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Spray with the olive oil spray and season with the salt and pepper.  Roast the tomatoes for 20 minutes or until they are soft and lightly browned.  Remove the tray from the oven and set it aside for the tomatoes to cool.

Meanwhile, bring a medium sized saucepan of lightly salted water to the boil.  Add the frozen broad beans, bring back to the boil and blanch the beans for one minute.  Drain, run the beans under cold water to cool, then peel them.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat.  Add the haloumi slices and cook them for 1-2 minutes on each side, or until they are golden.  Sprinkle the cooked haloumi with the lemon juice.

Place the baby spinach on a serving platter.  Top with the tomatoes, broad beans and haloumi.  Drizzle over the balsamic dressing and serve immediately.

*Gluten free, Diabetes friendly :)

Raspberry and Ricotta Cakes

 
As mentioned previously, I am hosting this weeks edition of Magazine Mondays for Cream Puffs in Venice.  I made Raspberry and Ricotta cakes from the October 2010 edition of the New Zealand recipes+ magazine.  They look so summery and inviting, especially with the raspberry syrup drizzled over the top of them.  Yum!  They were the perfect accompaniment to my stay with Simon at my family’s beach place, up North at Ruakaka.  Aside from baking I also managed to go swimming for the first time this summer :)

One little note about the cakes though; mine don’t look like the picture in the magazine.  They are supposed to be little loaf-like cakes, but I didn’t have a mini loaf pan up at my beach house.  Simon and I couldn’t find any on our trip to Whangarei either, so I made do with a texan muffin tin.  Anyways, here is the recipe:

 
Makes: 4          Preparation: 15 minutes          Cooking: 20 minutes

1 ⅓ cups self raising flour
⅓ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup buttermilk
1 egg
30g unsalted butter, melted, cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
80g fresh ricotta
80g frozen raspberries, plus 220g extra
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
Whipped cream to serve

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Grease 4 holes of a ⅔ cup mini loaf pan with butter.  Sift flour into a medium bowl.  Add the brown sugar and stir to combine.

Whisk buttermilk, egg, butter and vanilla together in a large jug.  Stir buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture.  Add ricotta and 80g of raspberries and stir until just combined.  Spoon mixture into the prepared loaf pans.  bake for 20 minutes or until golden.  Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack.

Place the extra berries in a small saucepan over a low heat.  Add icing sugar and juice and stir until the sugar has dissolved.  Simmer for 5 minutes.  Serve cakes with berry sauce and whipped cream.

Check out what other people have made this week:

• Heather from girlichef made Turkey Tetrazzini from Saveur Magazine.
• Tia from Buttercream Barbie made Buttercake Bakery’s Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Bundt Cake from the L.A. Times in June 2008.
• Sue from Couscous & Consciousness made Pork Chops with Saffron Baked Potatoes from the November 2007 issue of Delicious magazine.
• Tina from Life in the slow lane at Squirrel Head Manor made Noodle Casserole from Family Circle magazine.
• Lynn from I’ll Have What She’s Having made Pear and Cranberry Hand Pies from the December 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine.
• Mary from Caramels, Bonbons et Chocolats made Crisp maple shortbread cookies from the latest issue of Chantelaine.

Marshmallow brownie cupcakes

One of the blogs I follow, Cream Puffs in Venice, has a weekly feature called Magazine Mondays.  Basically the blog author makes something from a magazine so that she hasn’t purchased them for nothing.  This makes me feel a little bad.  I buy A LOT of magazines.  And about 3 – 4 of my monthly magazine purchases are foodie ones.  And I never end up making anything from them.  This changed has hopefully now changed and I would like to thank Ivonne from Cream Puffs for motivating me.  Also, last weeks Magazine Monday post was hosted on ReTorte, which is another fab food blog that you should check out :)

I made the ‘marshmallow-topped brownie cupcakes’ from the Oct/Nov 2010 issue of Donna Hay magazine.  They were beautiful.  The marshmallow was so sweet and delicious and the brownie base was intensely chocolate.  I will be making these again.


Makes 12

50g dark chocolate, chopped (after my experience in Melbourne I used Lindt.)
60g butter, chopped
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon cocoa
¼ cup plain flour, sifted
¼ teaspoon baking powder

Marshmallow topping:
1 cup water
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon gelatine powder
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
pink food colouring

Preheat the oven to 160˚C.  Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until smooth.  Allow to cool slightly.  Place the sugar, egg, cocoa, flour, baking powder and chocolate mixture in a bowl and stir until well combined.  Spoon into 12 x ½ cup capacity muffin tins lined with paper cases and bake for 12 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.  Allow to cool completely.

For the marshmallow topping: place the water, sugar, gelatine and vanilla in a saucepan over a high heat, bring to the boil and simmer for  3-4 minutes.  Allow to cool completely.  Place the cooled mixture and a few drops of pink food colouring into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat from 10 minutes until thick and fluffy.  Spoon the mixture over the brownies and refrigerate for 1 hour or until set. 


Donna Hay topped her cupcakes with ½ cup of toasted desiccated coconut.  I used pink sparkly sugar crystals.  Also, my cupcakes are flat on the top – in the magazine the cupcake that has been given a close up peaks up in the middle like a proper cupcake.  I reckon Donna Hay has poured a little bit of the marshmallow mixture on the brownie, let it set, added to it, let it set, added to it… as it kind of looks layered.  Meh.