baking

Chewy molasses cookies

/ femkesfavouritefoodstuffs / 2 Comments

Because my husband and I like to cook new things, we are always looking for interesting recipes and new ingredients (well, new for us). The newest thing that we got was a jar of molasses. I’m not sure if any of you know this, but in the Netherlands, molasses really isn’t a thing. We have syrups for on sandwiches or on pancakes, but molasses has never been a part of my life until about a week ago.

My first thoughts on opening the jar and giving it a sniff weren’t favourable, I’m sorry to say. It smelled kind of yeasty and musty and reminded me more of damp cellars than anything edible.

So, what to do with it? After some consideration, and some searching on the world wide web, I decided to make chewy molasses cookies. I figured that if anything could make me like molasses, it would be my favourite thing in the world: baked goods.

Below I will write down the recipe that I used. I found it on a site called “bon appétit” and if you want to check out the site, you can find it here.

A friend of mine told me the other day that she liked the blog, but that she couldn’t make any of the recipes. She lives in the US and told me that all my grams were nice, but unusable for US kitchens. We can’t have that of course, so from here on in, I will put different measurements in the recipes (and during the summer I will go back to older posts and adjust them as well), so that hopefully everyone can try them out for themselves. I will use the conversion tables that I found here and here.

Ingredients (makes about 36)

2 cups (256 grams) all purpose flour

2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking soda

1.5 teaspoon (7.5 grams) ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon (5 grams) ground ginger

3/4 teaspoon (3.75 grams) ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon (2.5 grams) kosher salt

1 large egg

1/2 cup/1 stick (113 grams) unslated butter (melted)

1/3 cup (67 grams) granulated sugar

1/3 cup (113 grams) dark molasses (I used the dark one, so that’s the one I’m naming here)

1/4 cup (55 grams) pcked dark brown sugar

coarse sugar for rolling (I used granulated)

 

Method (taken directly from bon appétit):

Place racks in lower and upper thirds of oven; preheat to 375° F (190° C). Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and salt in a small bowl. Whisk egg, butter, granulated sugar, molasses, and brown sugar in a medium bowl. Mix in dry ingredients just to combine.

Place sanding sugar in a shallow bowl. Scoop out dough by the tablespoonful and roll into balls (if dough is sticky, chill 20 minutes). Roll in sugar and place on 2 parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 2” (about 5 cm) apart.

Bake cookies, rotating baking sheets halfway through, until cookies are puffed, cracked, and just set around edges (overbaked cookies won’t be chewy), 8–10 minutes. Transfer to wire racks and let cool.

As I was making the recipe, I was amazed at how good it was. The instructions and amounts were exactly right and while I was doubtful it would work out (mostly because I was afraid I’d end up hating the flavour), these worked really well. The only thing I felt I needed to change was the rolling of the dough balls. Even after chilling the dough was very sticky, so I put blobs of dough in the sugar and then, once they were coated in sugar, I rolled them into balls. This way worked fine for me, so that may be a tip for you if you encounter the same problem.

Here is what the end result looked like:

chewy molasses cookies
chewy molasses cookies close up 1
chewy molasses cookies close up 2

 

So, my verdict: I had not expected to like them at all but I am very happy to be able to report that I was dead wrong. To me, the flavour and texture of these cookies reminds me somewhat of gingerbread and that makes it more of a wintery thing for me. Next december, when we’re about to celebrate Sinterklaas (our version of saint Nick, we exchange gifts and make a fun evening with the family), I think these will be an absolutely fantastic addition to our usual spread.

Would I make this recipe again? Yes, absolutely!

What would I change? Apart from the aforementioned change in method, not a thing. Great recipe, fantastic cookies that are chewy and soft and absolutely wonderful in every way. What’s not to like?

If there is a recipe or an ingredient you would like me to try out, do let me know! Put it in a comment or send me an email (femkesvafouritefoodstuffs@gmail.com) and maybe I will feature your recipe next!

Battle of the cookies

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Whenever I want to bake something small but nice, I bake cookies. The other day, I made one batch of a standard cookie dough, devided it into two and made two different kinds of cookies. One batch were with milk chocolate chunks, sea salt and caramel and the other batch were with dark chocolate chips and cadied orange peel.

The base recipe is my favourite recipe for simple cookies and it comes from Laura’s Bakery (a wonderful website with lots of great recipes. be warned: the website is in Dutch).

I’ll put Laura’s recipe here in English so you can all see how wonderful it is:

 

Basic recipe for cookies

Ingredients (for 15-20 cookies)

225 grams of butter

150 grams of white caster sugar

8 grams of vanilla sugar

1 egg yolk

280 grams of plain flour

pinch of salt

Method:

Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla sugar. Add the egg yolk and mix it through. Add flour and salt and mix them in, forming a firm dough.

(At this point I split the dough into 2 portions and added the chocolate and candied peel to one batch and caramel and seasalt flavoured chocolate to the other).

Wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the fridge. Let the dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour before you work with it again. I made two long sausage-shapes before wrapping them in clingfilm.

After an hour, take the dough out of the fridge. Here, you have different options. You can form little balls of dough and flatten them with the back of a spoon or a fork. Alternatively, you can do what I did and make the sausage shapes before refridgerating them. Once cool, all you need to do is unwrap them and cut them into discs.

dark chocolate and candied orange peel cookies
caramel and sea salt flavoured chocolate chunk cookies

The baking time for these cookies is about 16 minutes in an oven that’s been preheated to 190 degrees Celcius  (374 degrees Farenheit). Depending on what you add to the cookies, the cooking time can be a little bit different. The cookies are done when the edges are golden brown. Remove the cookies from the over and let them cool for a few minutes. Then move them onto a wire rack and let them cool completely. Whatever you do, do NOT be tempted to transfer the cookies immediately after baking. They are very soft when they come out of the oven and will break as soon as you try to lift them. They will firm up during those first few minutes out of the oven and will be far easier to move to the rack then.

 

The results of my baking you will be able to see down below. I personally can’t really choose a winner, because both batches were equally wonderful in my opinion. I guess it really depends on your personal preference and I just like cookies, all cookies. So, I’ll leave it to you to decide which batch is the winner. Do put your votes and thoughts in the comments, I’d love to read your opinions!

Lemon curd and lemon and blueberry muffins

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A little while ago, I had a hankering for muffins. I wanted something fruity and zesty and went in search of an appropriate recipe. It wasn’t long before I found a delicious recipe for lemon and blueberry muffins, but there was a tiny problem: I didn’t have the required lemon curd.

 

Of course a problem like that is never truly a problem when you have ingredients and recipes, so the search went on to lemon curd. Well, I found a wonderful recipe that didn’t seem too difficult (I had never made lemon curd before, so I wasn’t entirely certain I could succeed at making it myself). All the ingredients were already in my home, so I quickly got started.

 

Because both recipes are to be found online and in English, I’ll simply put up links to them. The recipe for the here and the recipe for the lemon and blueberry muffins is here.

 

I started with the lemon curd recipe, because I figured it would need some time to cool before I could actually use it in the other recipe.The instructions were fairly simple and were absolutely right. I just got a little bit impatient at one point and turned the heat a little higher. In hindside, that was a mistake. While the lemon curd tasted absolutely wonderful and had a great consistency, a very small part of the egg whites cooked too quickly, so there were some small white flecks in the curd. They didn’t bother me, because the flecks were only very small and there weren’t very many, but I’d prefer it if they weren’t there of course.

 

The verdict for the lemon curd is: I’m DEFINITELY making this again, and apart from keeping the heat a little lower, not becoming so impatient, and maybe not adding the lemon zest (I used my finest zester, but the peel ended up in little strings and they would stay behind in my moouth, which I don’t like) I wouldn’t change a thing. The curd was very tart, very lemony, and absolutely delicious! I did have a picture of the curd, but somehow, that picture looks unappetizing. I must put that down to my “skills” in photography, because in real life it looked amazing and tasted even better. I’ll show it here because I’m all about the good as well as the bad, but please keep in mind that reality was so much better than this one not so great picture.

IMG_4090

My ugly picture of utterly fantastic lemon curd

You can’t say I didn’t warn you…

Anyway, on to the next bit!

Once the lemon curd had been made, I started on the muffins. I’m not sure if you know the Hairy Bikers, but my husband and I like to watch their shows. They’re funny, they love their food and they have no fear of the good things in life. Yes, I’m talking about fat and sugar.

 

Again, the instructions were fairly simple, but in hindsight I was glad that I ended up with more than I could get into the oven in one go. The first batch, I did everything exactly as it was said in the recipe, but because the sugar on top of the lemon curd started to burn, the first batch came out looking rather dark. Those muffins also had a few edges that tastd a little….burnt.

Img_4097

The first batch is at the back, the second batch is at the front in this picture.

 

 

So, for the second batch, I decided to just skip the sprinkling of sugar that the Bikers recommend, and those muffins actually turned out amazing! The muffins came out very soft and they smelled absolutely fantastic. The lemon curd on the top gave them that extra zing and also helped the muffins stay moist. If I had to say one negative thing about these muffins (which in my opinion really isn’t a negative at all, but some people might nont like it) it would have to be that they ended up a little bit sticky.

 

All in all, I would love to make these lemon and blueberry muffins again, but now I know that I prefer them without the sugar on top of the curd.

 

What are your favourite muffin-recipes? Please let me know in the comments and who knows, they might feature in a future post!

 

lemon and blueberry muffins closeup
lemon and blueberry muffins cooling