We made it: Speculaas

Suzie from Munch+Nibble and I are taking part in the "We made it" project, where we choose a food magazine each month and cook as much as we can from it. It's an attempt to actually use the magazines we subscribe to, rather than just bookmarking them.

This month's magazine is Gourmet Traveller and the first dish I made was from the "Classic Dish" section: speculaas. This is a thin and crispy spiced biscuit from Europe. According to GT writer Emma Knowles, the Dutch and German versions of speculaas are heavily spiced, with cardamom and ground white pepper added to the mix. Emma also added star anise and mace to her interpretation.

I have a simplified speculaas recipe from Miranda Sharp that appeared in Epicure a few years ago and it makes a very moreish biscuit. But the spice mix in this GT version sounded more robust and interesting, with cardamom, cloves, star anise, white peppercorns, mace, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg all featuring. Rather than using ground spices, you grind up the cardamom, cloves, star anise, peppercorns and mace yourself. I made it the old-fashioned way, using a mortar and pestle, and it does produce an intense spice mix with an almost medicinal smell. However, letting the dough rest overnight softens the harsh edges of the strong spices and mellows them into an aromatic biscuit. The aroma while baking is heavenly. As Emma notes, it's a good thing that the recipe makes a lot of biscuits, as it is almost impossible to stop at just one.

The verdict: An intense, addictive biscuit that would find favour at any time of year but is particularly welcome at this time of year; aromatic spices feature heavily in Christmas baking. While this is an easy biscuit to make, it does involve some labour and you need to allow time for the dough to rest (at least eight hours, but preferably overnight), as well as chilling the cut biscuits before making them. So while I thoroughly enjoyed this biscuit, it is not something you can whip up in a hurry. My simplified speculaas recipe is better if you're in a hurry; but the intense spices in this version make it a winner.

Speculaas

Recipe by Emma Knowles, p 38, Gourmet Traveller, December 2009

500g plain flour, sieved

2 tsp baking powder

220g butter, softened

250g dark brown sugar

2 Tb milk

Speculaas spice

8 green cardamom pods

8 cloves

5 star anise

1 tsp white peppercorns

1 piece of mace

2 Tb ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp finely grated nutmeg

1. For speculaas spice, finely grind cardamom, cloves, star anise, peppercorns and mace in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Transfer to a large bowl, add cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, stir, add to flour and baking powder and set aside.

2. Beat butter, sugar and a pinch of salt in an electric mixer until creamy (3-4 minutes). Add milk, beat to combine, then add flour mixture and mix until just combined. Form mixture into a dough with your hands on a word surface (add extra milk if the mixture is too dry), shape into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate to rest (eight hours to overnight).

3. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Roll pastry on a lightly floured surface to 5mm thick, then refrigerate until firm (30 minutes). Cut into desired shapes and place on trays lined with baking paper. Chill until firm (20 minutes), then bake in batches until light brown and crisp (10-12 minutes). Cool for 5 minutes on trays, then transfer to wire racks and cool completely. Speculaas will keep, stored in an airtight container, for 1 week.

Snowy drifts of sugar

So many of the traditional Christmas baking dishes that we favour seem wrong for our climate: hot roast dishes, rich puddings and dense spicy treats are perfect for a snowy, northern hemisphere Yuletide but seem inappropriate when we're more likely to be heading to the beach.

Yet the tradition persists. To me, the aroma of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves are the essence of Christmas and conjure up images of sweet treats that we can eat with a reckless abandon that doesn't exist during the rest of the year (or why else are the January magazines full of post-Christmas diets?)

It is a time of excess, particularly in relation to baking. A slice of panforte here, a wedge of fruit cake there, here a mince tart, there a spiced biscuit ... there's plenty of excuses to indulge.

Despite my mounting pile of recipes, it's nice to return to some old favourites. I adore spiced biscuits and cakes - put the word "spiced" into the title of a recipe and you have my attention immediately. These cute little spiced biscuits by Donna Hay, finished off with a dusting of snowy icing sugar, are a perfect way to offer season's greetings.

Sugar-dusted spice biscuits

125g (4 0z) butter, softened
3/4 cup (150g/5 oz) brown sugar
1/4 cup (95g/3 oz) golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 3/4 cups (235g/7 oz) plain flour, sifted
1/2 cup (55g/ 1 3/4 oz) hazelnut meal
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Beat butter, brown sugar, golden syrup and vanilla extract with an electric mixer until pale. Add the egg and beat well. Add the flour, hazelnut meal, spices and soda and beat until just combined.

Roll two teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and place on baking-paper-lined baking trays, allowing room for spreading. Bake in batches for 8 minutes, or until light golden. Cool, then dust with icing sugar.

Recipe from Donna Hay Magazine, issue 12

Going dotty

Certain things are guaranteed to always catch the eye of children, particularly if it involves lollies or bright colours. Smartie-studded biscuits, cute little iced gingerbread men and sugary honey-joys are a magnet for my son Daniel's eyes.

I believe that moderation is the key to eating well and I have no problem with the occasional treat of a cake or biscuit. However, I very rarely buy them. Sometimes it's because the promise never seems to live up to the taste (many cafe cakes are disappointingly dry) but it's mostly because I prefer home-made because I know exactly what is going into it and there's no hidden preservatives or additives.

So these sweet little vanilla-scented buttery biscuits are perfect. Budding little cooks will enjoy helping mix up the dough and will most of all love to decorate the biscuit with brightly coloured smarties. Quick to mix, quick to cook, a creative outlet in designing patterns on the biscuits ... this is a lovely little project that has kept Daniel amused many times. Best of all, these are certainly a lot cheaper to make than the cafe versions, which often sell for $2.50 each.

Dotty biscuits

125g butter, softened

125g caster sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

125g plain flour

125g SR flour

1 cup (250g) smarties

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Cream butter and caster sugar together until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix in.

Sift the flours together and fold into the butter mixture with a wooden spoon to form a soft dough. Turn out onto a sheet of non-stick baking paper, cover with another sheet and roll out to about 5mm thick. Cut out circles with a biscuit cutter (I used a 6cm diameter), place on the lined baking tray and press smarties into the biscuits.

Bake in the oven in batches for 10-15 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Review: Donna Hay chocolate cookies

Packet mixes of cakes and biscuits are not often a feature in my trolley. I prefer home-made treats where possible, mostly for taste reasons but also because I know exactly what's going into the final product and there's no hidden preservatives or chemicals.

But I admit to a twinge of curiosity when Donna Hay recently launched her own brand of cupcake and cookie mixes. I'm a huge Donna fan and have all her cookbooks. I couldn't imagine her putting her name and brand to any product that wasn't of the highest quality.

Last week, when visiting Andrew's Choice in Yarraville, which is so much more than a butcher's shop and stocks a great range of deli items, my son Daniel found a box of Donna Hay chocolate chunk cookie mix, conveniently placed at exactly his eye level. He was entranced by the enticing picture on the front of the box and no doubt thought he could open the box and find the biscuits inside, waiting to be devoured by a hungry toddler.

So, in the interests of research, the cookie mix came home with us and we baked the biscuits. Making biscuits is not a hugely time-consuming exercise at the best of times, but mixing up the biscuits was so fast that the 12-minute cooking time felt like an eternity. We provided 80g of soft butter and a melted egg, and the box provided the cookie mix and a generous bag of dark chocolate buttons.

The raw dough tasted as good as anything else I've made and the final product was delicious - one of the best chocolate chip cookies I've eaten. In fact, it tasted exactly like the Donna Hay chocolate cookies that I make from her cookbooks. Checking the ingredients list, I discovered that the mix contains wheat flour, brown sugar, natural vanilla flavour and raising agents 450 and 500. There are no added artificial colours or preservatives.

The verdict? This product gets a huge thumbs-up. Most people would not be able to pick that the biscuits originate from a box and it certainly does save time in the kitchen. The only slight downside is the price: on the Donna Hay website, they are listed at $14.95 (although currently on special at a more reasonable $8.95). I know choc bits and other baking goods have recently increased in price but $15 seems quite steep for a box of biscuits - I don't think it would cost that much to make a batch from scratch.


But that is a minor quibble - chocolate chip cookies are a treat, rather than an everyday indulgence anyway. As Donna says on the box, these biscuits is "as good as baking from scratch, only foolproof." I'll definitely use this product again.

Baking with toddlers

Being surrounded by fresh food and a busy kitchen from a young age is surely one of the key ingredients to becoming a cook. If you see cooking being done on a regular basis, see how easy it can be to transform simple ingredients into delicious meals, and learn that food comes from pots and pans rather than cardboard boxes or tin foil containers, that will surely teach you more about how to eat well (in season, in moderation etc) than heavy-handed nanny state messages about X food bad, Y food good.

I come from a family of excellent home cooks but I don't remember the message ever being rammed down my throat that I must learn to cook and like it. Cooking was a life skill that you acquired, along with other skills necessary to function in life, and it was a bonus that I enjoyed it. Cookbooks were in the house, recipes were clipped from magazines and we were encouraged to try our hand in the kitchen, no matter how much of a mess we made or how many mistakes happened. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes in the kitchen, as long as you learn from them. You'll only forget to grease a cake tin once; the resulting mess, and disappointment, as you try to scrape out a cake glued to the tin will stay with you and ensure you don't forget again.

My son Daniel is almost three-and-a-half and he loves helping in the kitchen. Measuring, mixing and scraping (and, of course, tasting!) are all things he can easily do to help and he gets a real buzz out of seeing how a runny mixture can be transformed into a delicious cake or biscuits (although he's not so keen on the wait involved!)

This week we decided to make "gingie men" (gingerbread biscuits). I've got dozens of recipes but this dough is easy to mix up and there's no need for it to relax in the fridge, so this is a simple recipe for rainy days or when the demand for biscuits needs to be met quickly! It's based on a recipe from Notebook magazine. You can ice your biscuits or decorate them with currants to make them fancy, but I don't usually bother.

"Gingie men"

125g butter, softened
100g brown sugar
125ml golden syrup
1 egg yolk
375g plain flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 ground cloves

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line two oven trays with baking paper. Use an electric mixer to beat the butter, sugar and golden syrup together until pale and creamy. Add the egg yolk and beat until just combined. Add the sifted flour and spices and use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until it's just combined. Tip out onto a lightly floured bench and use your hands to knead the dough until smooth.

Divide the dough into two portions. Put one portion aside and roll out the other portion to about 5mm thick. Cut into shapes using biscuit cutters and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden. Transfer from trays to a wire rack and cool.

My new favourite thing

Anyone who knows me well knows that I much prefer home-baked biscuits and cakes to store-bought versions.

But I've lately discovered a sweet little biscuit that I'm quite partial to - and it's not home-made! It is petit ecolier, little chocolate-topped biscuits from France with a gorgeously intricate picture of a little schoolboy imprinted into the chocolate layer. The biscuit base is similar to a shortbread and the topping is either milk or dark chocolate.

These biscuits are perfect entertaining biscuits when there really is no time to bake something. We've been serving them at our French classes and they are the first thing to disappear from the plate. The crisp shortbread and good-quality chocolate combine together in the most pleasing way. It really is very hard to stop at one!

Speedy baking

Following on from my recent post about easy-to-prepare meals that will feed you quickly and healthily without the need to resort to takeaway, I've discovered some speedy baking recipes that will give you a delicious bite of sweetness in the same time it would take you to get in the car and drive to the supermarket to pick up a packet of tasteless mass-produced biscuits.

Although baking (and here I'm referring to baking cakes and biscuits, rather than meals) tends to be a reasonably quick preparation process - it doesn't take long to beat up some eggs, butter, flour and sugar - it can take some time in the oven. Some cakes will be done in 30 to 45 minutes, but most require about an hour, meaning that they can't always satisfy you, or unexpected guests, as quickly as you would like.

Biscuits, on the other hand, usually can. A short mixing process and about 10 minutes in the oven will see your first batch ready and cooling on a wire rack while the next batch bakes.

In the past week, I've twice found myself in a situation where I've needed some sweet nibbles at very short notice. It might sound crazy but, if I'm short of time, I find it more convenient to quickly bake something than I do to buy something from the supermarket. By the time I load up the car and then negotiate supermarket aisles with a wonky trolley and a baby and a toddler, it really is much easier to cream butter and sugar and add some flavourings such as chocolate chips!

So, in the past week, two new super-quick and easy recipes came to my rescue. In about 15 to 20 minutes (the same time it would have taken me to buy a packet from the supermarket), I had some fresh honey biscuits ready to eat. These biscuits, made up of only four ingredients (honey, butter, flour and ground ginger), were from a recipe by Matthew Evans, published in the Good Weekend magazine of the Saturday Age. I've collected Matthew's recipes for years but unfortunately don't try as many of them as I should. This one was a winner and filled the kitchen with a sweet perfume that lingered long after the biscuits were devoured.

The second recipe, for nuvoletti (little clouds) came from Rosa Mitchell's new cookbook My Cousin Rosa. I've eaten several times at Journal Canteen, where Rosa is behind the stoves, and the food has always been excellent (especially the divine mulberry tart I had there one day, made with mulberries freshly picked from Rosa's tree). This is a delightful cookbook, with old family recipes interspersed with Rosa's childhood memories of Sicily. Nuvoletti are made with eggs, caster sugar and flour but the end result is so much more than these simple ingredients: moist, slightly chewy biscuits that have a fluffy, airy texture. Perhaps this is what a little cloud would taste like if you were able to nibble at its edges. These biscuits symbolise something that I love most about baking: that you can take simple, everyday ingredients and transform them into something else with a minimum of effort. Eggs, flour and sugar don't sound like much on their own, but they are basic ingredients found in most pantries. Combine a few simple ingredients with some imagination and you have a snack without a preservative or artificial flavouring in sight!

Honey biscuits
From "The weekend cook" column by Matthew Evans in Good Weekend

100g butter
100g honey (a good floral version is best)
135g plain flour
1/4 tsp ground ginger, or use a generous pinch of mixed spice

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the honey over low heat until just dissolved. Don't let it get too hot. Tip in the flour and ground ginger and stir well until the mixture is smooth.

Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and dot dessertspoon-sized bits of biscuit mix in rows, leaving room for them to spread and not touch.

Bake for 5-10 minutes (it will depend on the thickness of your dough) or until well-tanned but not dark. Cool on the tray for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Store in an airtight container.

A special chocolate treat

My parents have just returned from a month's holiday in wintry England. It was certainly a shock to their system to return from 3 degrees in Manchester to Melbourne's summer temperatures of almost 40 degrees. To me, one of the most interesting parts of travel is sampling different food and drink overseas, particularly local delicacies, so I was eager to hear about their experiences. Mum and dad also spent a week in Belgium, so their gifts included some boxes and blocks of gorgeous Belgian chocolate. Mum brought home some special chocolate blocks to try in cooking and she also brought home another special treat: a bag of cacao nibs.

Cacao nibs are an unusual cooking item that I only recently discovered through reading Clotildé's wonderful Chocolate and Zucchini blog. Mum had discussed the use of cacao nibs with the chocolate shop proprietor, who recommended that she use them in chocolate cake to add some extra crunch.

Long ago, I bookmarked a chocolate biscuit recipe from Clotilde that used cacao nibs. Having not yet discovered a stockist for cacao nibs, the recipe had languished among my "recipes that I must try as soon as I purchase unusual ingredient" pile. So when Mum produced the bag of cacao nibs, I whipped out the recipe and proceeded to bake a batch of these velvety, dense chocolate biscuits. The triple hit of chocolate - from melted chocolate, cocoa powder and the cacao nibs - make these a true chocoholics delight. Although these biscuits would still be a winner even if the nibs were omitted, the aromatic crunch from the nibs elevate these biscuits above your everyday chocolatey snack and I highly recommend seeking out cacao nibs, if possible, to make these biscuits.

CLOTILDE'S BISCUITS CHOCOLAT ET FEVES DE CACAO

120g good quality bittersweet chocolate
110g unsalted butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
100g brown sugar
120g all-purpose flour
90g unsweetened cocoa powder*
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel (substitute 1/4 teaspoon regular salt)
4 tablespoons cacao nibs

Melt together 90g of the chocolate and all of the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Transfer into a large mixing-bowl and let cool for ten minutes. In the meantime, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder and set aside. Finely chop the reserved chocolate, and set aside.

Whisk the eggs into the cooled melted chocolate. Add in the sugar and mix again. Sift in the flour mixture, and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. The batter will be thick. Fold in the chopped chocolate, cacao nibs and fleur de sel.

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F) and line a baking tray with non-stick paper.

For bite-sized morsels, scoop out rounded teaspoons of batter, shape them into balls with the tips of your fingers, and line them up on the baking tray. Use about one dessertspoonful of batter if you prefer larger biscuits. Make sure you leave space between the biscuits for spreading. Put the baking tray in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (if the sheet and batter are cold, the biscuits are less likely to spread), then bake for eight to ten minutes, until the tops feel just dry to the touch. Don't overbake, or they won't be as moist inside.

* Clotilde added an update to her original recipe stating that some bakers found this amount to be too much, resulting in cookies more bitter than they like. You can use less cocoa (about 60g) if you prefer. Make up for the difference in flour.

This recipe appeared on the Chocolate and Zucchini website on 13 February 2006.

Baking days

We've finally moved into the new house and have most of the boxes unpacked. It's such a massive, daunting job to move house that I'll be quite happy not to move again for a very long time. At least in this house I have space to unpack a lot of my kitchenware that's been stored away in boxes for a long time. It's like going on a shopping spree, as I uncover dishes, bowls and platters that I've not been able to use. Many of the beautiful dishes were wedding presents and I'm pleased to finally be able to use them and display them.

Moving into a new house has also meant acquainting myself with a new kitchen. Fortunately this one was renovated a few years ago, so is filled with lots of cupboards and new appliances. I have a dishwasher for the first time in my life! And I'm loving the new oven, with its gas hotplate and electric oven. My last oven was perfectly functional but it was so old that it was still in Fahrenheit and it took some trial and error in the early days of baking to work out just how long it would take to bake a cake or biscuits (cakes usually took at least 10-20 minutes longer than the recipe specified).

So it was time to try out the new oven and the recipe I chose for the occasion was choc oatmeal cookies from Bill Granger's bills food. This recipe has special resonance with this house: the previous owner baked a big batch of these cookies on the day of the auction and we nibbled on them afterwards as we signed the contracts. She told me the oven was a great baking oven and glowing testaments from neighbours about her baking prowess are testament to that. These cookies are now known to us as "auction cookies", so it was only fitting that they were the first thing I made in the new house. I can report that the oven works like a dream!

BILL GRANGER'S CHOC OATMEAL COOKIES

150g unsalted butter, softened
230g soft brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
235g rolled oats
175g choc chips

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line three large baking trays with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until fluffy and smooth. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and mix lightly. Add the oats and choc chips and stir to combine.

Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls and place on the baking trays. Flatten the balls with a fork dipped in flour. Bake for 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Remove from the oven and cool on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Makes 30.

Recipe from bills food by Bill Granger

From the larder...

We will soon be moving house and I'm finding that packing up can be a great inspiration for cooking, as well as a good chance to rationalise kitchen equipment. As I go through cupboards, I'm revealing all sorts of pots, pans, dishes and platters, some of which have been pushed to the back of the cupboard and forgotten about. Who knew I had so many white platters? Most of them have been gifts but do I really need so many? I'm also finding bowls of varying sizes and casserole dishes and hope that more of these can be put to good use once I have decent storage space in our new home.

It's also a good chance to go through the pantry and refresh stocks of spices and other baking items, and use up half-used jars and bags. I discovered half-empty packets of walnuts and chocolate chips in the pantry this week and they provided the inspiration to make some chocolate espresso biscuits, the perfect dense, fudgy snack to have in the house when you feel like a chocolate treat. I used what I had on hand and what I felt like eating so feel free to play around with this recipe and omit the coffee and walnuts, or substitute other nuts, so that the biscuits suit your tastes.

CHOCOLATE ESPRESSO BISCUITS

250 butter, softened
1 Tb instant coffee powder, dissolved in 2 Tb boiling water
1 cup (tightly packed) brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa, preferably Dutch-process
250g chocolate chips
100g walnuts, chopped roughly

Beat the butter until as white as possible. Add the coffee mixture, then mix in the brown sugar until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa and add to the butter mixture. Stir through the choc chips and walnuts. Roll dessertspoonfuls of mixture together and place onto baking paper-lined trays, flattening slightly with a fork. Bake at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. You want the biscuits to still be a little soft and fudgy, as they will firm up while cooling. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 36.

Cooking heaven

I've been to cooking heaven and it's called The Essential Ingredient. I'm ashamed to admit that a baking aficionado like me, who loves trying new recipes and ingredients and is an avid reader of Gourmet Traveller, whose recipes quite often include an ingredient list marked with an asterisk that says "available from The Essential Ingredient", has never been to this shop. It's been on my list of places to visit for a very long time but I've never done it. This year I'm determined to stop making endless lists of places I want to visit and actually do it.

So I made the effort to visit and I could have spent hours there. Recipes churned through my mind as everywhere I looked I saw jars, bottles and packages of ingredients: preserved lemons; piquillos; anchovies; capers in salt; peppercorns in brine; extra virgin olive oil from around the world; sherry vinegar; verjuice; quince paste; carnaroli rice; harissa; type 00 flour; puy lentils; quinoa; olive tapenade; vanilla beans; saffron threads; chestnut flour; orange blossom water; chestnut puree; jars of milk, white and dark couverture buttons; light and dark muscovado sugar; rich, dark cocoa powder; light and dark demerara sugar; rosewater; cocoa nibs; cornichons in vinegar and slabs of couverture chocolate. There were dozens of glossy cookbooks, a wall of shelves filled with white dinnerware; and a huge range of cooking tools and implements. Oh for a huge budget, unlimited pantry space and a free week to devote to cooking and baking! I could easily have filled the entire car.

But I was forced to restrain myself and came home with just a few "essentials". One small item that made its way into my basket was dried lavender flowers, which I used to flavour some sweet butter biscuits. The lavender flowers impart a gentle flavour to the biscuit, giving them the faint taste of a lazy summer's afternoon. Taking just 15 minutes from the time you pull out the mixing bowl to the time you pop a warm biscuit into your mouth, it is also the sort of biscuit that is perfect to whip up on a lazy summer's afternoon.

LAVENDER BISCUITS

125g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
200g SR flour, sifted
2 tsp dried lavender flowers

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg, then gently mix in the sifted flour and lavender flowers, taking care not to overmix. Roll teaspoons of mixture into balls and place on baking paper-lined trays, flattening slightly with your hand. Leave room for spreading. Bake at 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire racks.

Spiced biscuits for Christmas

With just 10 days to go until Christmas Day, it's time to get serious about Christmas baking. Now is the time to organise ingredients and a timetable for making sweet little edible gifts. My files are bulging with ideas, including recipes for gingerbread, nougat, shortbread, chocolate fudge or truffles, panforte and mince tarts. It's just a matter of deciding what to make. There are some old favourites that I love to make every year but I also like to try something new each year.

Last year, I gave little boxes of chocolate fudge and pistachio and cranberry nougat. I planned to repeat the process this year until I ran into the great liquid glucose brick wall. Last year, liquid glucose was on the shelf at my supermarket but this year it's nowhere to be seen and the local health food shop is out of stock.

With the clock ticking, as I needed my gifts ready for the next day when we were catching up with several groups of friends, the fudge was fine but I had to quickly come up with something else to accompany it. I wanted something quick and simple but with a Christmas theme, so I decided to give a festive twist to my grandmother's burnt butter biscuit recipe by adding some spices commonly associated with Christmas. The result was so good that I may make the spiced version far more often than the original!

These biscuits are another entry into Susan from Food Blogga's "Eat Christmas Cookies" event (in which I've previously entered lebkuchen). This event, which has been running all month, is a great source of inspiration and is providing me with a whole lot more biscuit recipes for my already massive file. Recipes have been posted from all around the world and it's been fascinating to learn about different traditions and ingredients, not to mention the lovely stories that accompany these recipes.

These little biscuits are extremely easy to make, keep well, are easy to store and transport as gifts and will be quickly devoured!

SPICED CHRISTMAS BISCUITS

115g butter
115g caster sugar
1 egg
200g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon each of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom
almonds for decoration (optional)

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat until it is a light brown colour. Cool. Add the caster sugar and beat to a cream, then add the egg and beat well. Sift the flour and spices together and mix in until you have a soft dough. Roll into small balls and press half an almond in each (this is optional. The biscuits are just as nice without the almonds, so please leave out if you're worried about nut allergies). Leave room on the tray for the biscuits to spread. Cook in a moderate oven (180 degrees Celsius) for 10-12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

It's Christmas time - lebkuchen

Now that it's December, I feel I can officially get excited about Christmas. The trees and decorations have been all around town since November, but I don't feel like I can start celebrating until December begins. But now it's time to get into the full swing of Christmas baking!

I've already made my Christmas pudding and cake and they are maturing nicely in cool, dark places. Now I can turn my attention to spiced biscuits, panforte, panettone and all sorts of other sweet treats that will make good presents.

I'm not the only one preparing for Christmas baking. Susan from Food Blogga also feels that baking and eating is part of the true Christmas spirit and she is hosting an "Eat Christmas cookies" blog event. People from around the world have been sending in their favourite recipes, usually accompanied by a story about why these biscuits are special in their family.

There's many dishes I associate with Christmas, As I've already blogged about my grandmother's shortbread, this post is about my Aunt Margaret's lebkuchen biscuits. Margaret is of Austrian heritage and each Christmas she always made a huge batch of lebkuchen biscuits, a spicy biscuit topped with lemon icing. Rather than being eaten on Christmas Day, we feasted on them in the lead-up to Christmas and afterwards. After many years, I've finally obtained the recipe and this year I made my first batch of lebkuchen. They were delicious and will definitely become part of my Christmas baking repertoire each year.

LEBKUCHEN

1 cup honey
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup treacle or molasses
1 tablespoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons finely chopped mixed peel
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 cup finely chopped blanched almonds (or use almond meal)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
2 teaspoons hot water
1 egg, beaten
3 cups self-raising flour
1 1/2 cups plain flour

Mix honey, treacle, sugar, spices, mixed peel and almonds. Stir soda into boiling water and add to the fruit/sugar mixture along with beaten egg. Mix in flour, one cup at a time. This makes a very stiff mixture and must be thoroughly blended. Leave at least overnight in the fridge to ripen*.

Next day, roll out mixture to approximately 1/2 inch thick, cut into bars/shapes, place on baking paper-lined baking trays and bake in moderate oven (180 degrees Celsius) for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks. While still warm, ice with lemon or orange-flavoured icing (I prefer lemon). Leave to set completely before storing in airtight containers. Makes approximately 80-90 biscuits.

* Note - dough can be left two or three days to ripen in fridge if desired - it only improves the flavour.

A month of Christmas baking

It might feel too early to be getting into the Christmas spirit, but Christmas decorations are being put up all around the city and boxes of shiny tinsel and fat mince pies have been in the supermarkets since October. I feel like we've barely packed up the decorations from last year and it's time to get them out again.

But I don't really mind because Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I love the preparations, particularly planning the Christmas Day menu and the food treats that I'll make as gifts.

Regardless of the weather, we've always had a traditional Christmas lunch in our house, with ham, roast turkey, roast vegetables, peas with mint sauce and tomatoes topped with breadcrumbs, followed by plum pudding with brandy sauce and thick custard. It's a menu more suited to the snowy English season than to a hot Australian summer but it's our tradition and we love it, despite the fact that seafood is now becoming a much more popular (and well-suited) choice. As my mum's birthday is on Christmas Eve, we usually have seafood or a BBQ that night (and Santa and his reindeer were always guaranteed a big slice of birthday cake to keep them going!)

November is the time to make plum pudding and Christmas cakes and to get organised for other baking. I've been stockpiling my supplies of butter, flour, sugar, dried fruit and nuts in preparation and have already picked up frozen suet from my butcher. I'm the designated pudding maker in my family and I'm also the custodian of my grandmother's recipes for shortbread and fruit mince tarts. To these old favourites, I've added new ones over the years, including a chocolate panforte, panettone, assorted gingerbread and spice cookies, and sweet treats for gifts, such as pistachio and cranberry nougat and chocolate fudge.

I wish I could say that I use an old family recipe for our Christmas pudding but that's not the case. My dad has fond memories of the rich plum pudding his mother made each year, with a penny hidden inside. It hung in its cloth wrapper in a cool dark place for at least six weeks before Christmas. Alas, the recipe appears to have died with her. The recipe I do use is an old one and it is from Stephanie Alexander's grandmother. It was first published in The Age many years ago and also appears in her book The Cook's Companion. I've been making it for many years now and it's always eagerly received. I make it in two old pudding tins that belonged to my great-aunt, rather than in cloth, as I've never had any luck using cloth. The pudding is extremely easy to make and the only drawback is that you need to set aside a day to make it, as it requires six hours boiling time (plus at least an hour's boiling time on Christmas Day to reheat it). But the end result is well worth it.

Here is my grandmother's recipe for shortbread. My grandmother and mother have made this every year for Christmas that I can remember and it makes a lovely gift. You can make this at any time of the year but it is a nice festive treat, particularly if you use a Christmas tree-shaped cutter.

SHORTBREAD

270g plain flour
60g rice flour
210g butter
90g caster sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract

Beat the butter until as white as possible. Add vanilla extract and then slowly add sugar. Continue beating until soft and fluffy. Sift flours, add to mixture and stir to a fairly dry dough.

Press dough out to approximately 2-3cms thick. Cut out with a Christmas tree cutter (or other shapes). Place on baking trays lined with baking paper and cook at 180 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. Do not allow to brown. Gently lift with a spatula and cool on a wire rack.

Celebrating chocolate week

According to English newspaper The Guardian, October 15-21 is Chocolate Week. What a great thing to celebrate! Chocolate recipes are by far my favourite and, out of the thousands of recipes I've collected over the years, the chocolate file is the largest. No matter how many chocolate cake or biscuit recipes I have, I can never resist collecting a new one. They essentially all use the same ingredients but there's always a new twist that entices me to try it - perhaps some coffee granules added to a choc-chip biscuit recipe, or a white chocolate fondant centre in gooey chocolate puddings.

What else is there to say about chocolate that hasn't been written before? We all know its wonderful properties and how a piece of moist chocolate cake can fix almost anything in the world. Whether you choose to whip up a basic cake on a whim, a more grand affair that requires a long list of ingredients and concentration in the kitchen, or some choc-chip biscuits to share with friends, there's always a chocolate recipe available to satisfy.

I've noticed recently that most chocolate recipes call for the "best quality chocolate you can afford", usually meaning expensive Vahlrona or Callebaut chocolate. I have no doubt that in some recipes you may notice the difference if cheap chocolate is used but I also think that this is another example of food snobbery, something that seems to be creeping in more and more to modern recipes. There's been quite a few occasions when I've gone to the trouble and effort of sourcing difficult and expensive ingredients only to end up disappointed with the final result. The recipe works, the end result is fine and yet there's a feeling of flatness, that the end did not justify the means. But that's another article all together!

I'm a sucker for any food recipe that has a chocolate picture on the front cover. It doesn't matter if I've already got 10 versions of the recipe; I have to add this one as well. Clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way, judging by how often chocolate will appear on a front cover.

Chocolate is indulgent and chocolate is fun. You can get a mini-hit through a choc-chip biscuit or a major overdose through a decadent dessert. It's not something to scoff but to savour. A French chocolatier once told me that you should eat a little bit of chocolate every day and that you should make it the best piece of chocolate you can afford (there's that phrase again!) so that you can savour it and then feel satisfied. My preference is for dark chocolate and I find that I am satisfied after a couple of small squares, whereas a chocolate bar leaves me feeling like I've had too much.

In Melbourne, we are spoiled for choice with our chocolate shops: Koko Black in Royal Arcade, Haighs Chocolate shops around the city, Cacao in Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Fraus in Victoria St, North Melbourne for wickedly rich hot chocolate, and chocolate afternoon teas at the Sofitel are just some of the treats on offer.

To celebrate Chocolate Week, here's a recipe for Choc-Nut Biscuits that I made up. It's an easy and fast recipe and will satisfy any mid-afternoon craving for chocolate.

CHOC-NUT BISCUITS

125 g butter
125g white sugar
125g brown sugar
250g self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
150g chocolate chips
100g chopped nuts (your choice - I find walnuts or blanched almonds are good)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs and vanilla, then stir in the sifted flour. Add the choc chips and the nuts, mixing well.

Put spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking trays (it may be quite sticky, so shape as best you can), and allow plenty of room for spreading. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden. Cool on the tray for about five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Addictive small bites

Several years ago, Adam and I house-sat for our friends Kerry and Matt while they were overseas. Apart from leaving me an impressively stocked pantry and cupboards bursting with cookware, Kerry also left out a large pile of Delicious magazines (my first taste of my new favourite cooking magazine) and a pile of books. Among the pile, I found a book called On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis. Although I had a pile of my own books to read, I quickly became immersed in the world of Susan, an American who spent a year as a chef in Paris and then returned several years later with her husband to buy a 300-year-old house in Louviers, Normandy.

Susan is an excellent writer and her tale of life in France was beautifully told, interspersed with delicious recipes that reflected the best of Normandy produce and the love that the French have for good food. Her second book, Tarte Tatin, continues the story of her life in Louviers and the cooking school that Susan has opened, where visitors stay for a week of cooking classes and meet with local producers and artisans. I highly recommend either of these books, although be warned that it may induce feelings of envy! Susan also has an excellent website: http://www.onruetatin.com/

In her book, Susan featured a recipe for les scourtins des vieux moulins (olive cookies from vieux moulins), a very old recipe from a family who produced olive oil at Les Vieux Moulins, an ancient olive mill in Provence. The recipe is an intriguing mix of sweet (icing sugar) and salty (olives) and I've been longing to try it since I first read it. Of course, like many of my clippings, it got put aside until recently when I decided to whip up a batch for morning tea. I'm sorry I waited so long now! These biscuits are totally addictive and, if it wasn't for the fact that I was making these for others, I would have devoured the whole lot on the spot! Enjoy.

OLIVE COOKIES FROM VIEUX MOULINS

125g unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup (110g) pure icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 1/3 cups (200g) plain flour
1/2 cup (100g) cured olives, such as kalamata or nicoise, pitted and coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

Cream the butter until soft and pale yellow. Mix in the icing sugar until blended, then drizzle in the olive oil until combined. Add the flour and a pinch of fine sea salt, then mix gently but thoroughly until the dough is smooth. Add the olives and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated into the dough.

Place a piece of baking paper on the bench and put the dough in the middle. Cover with another piece of baking paper and roll out the dough until it is about 0.5cm thick (the dough is very sticky and the paper will make it possible to roll out). Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, and up to 24 hours.

Cut out 5cm rounds of dough and put them about 1.5cm apart on the prepared baking trays. Bake until golden (about 15 minutes), then cool on wire racks. Gather the leftover dough trimmings into a ball and roll out into a 2.5cm diameter log. Wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you're ready to bake. Then cut off 0.5cm-thick rounds from the log (this avoids over-rolling the dough) and bake.

Sweet bites

About five years ago, a group of friends and I hired a houseboat and went sailing along the Murray River near Echuca-Moama on the Victorian-NSW border. It was a hot March weekend and we cruised up and down the river, stopping the boat for swims or to have lunch or dinner in a picturesque spot. Among the group were several excellent cooks and several hungry, appreciative men, so we were all happy.

We took boxes of champagne and beer and several esky-loads of food, far more than we needed and could possibly have eaten during the weekend. We'd serve up massive antipasto platters of olives, sun-dried tomatoes, marinated artichokes, dips, brie, camembert, blue cheese and crackers each evening and eat them while we watched big flocks of cockatoos screeching their way across the sky splashed with a deep pink sunset. We'd pull the boat into some shade at lunchtime and, after a swim to cool off, we'd cook up a BBQ of thick steaks and fat hamburgers.

In between the meals, there were plenty of snacks to keep us going. Every time I plan a trip somewhere, a food magazine or newspaper fortuitously publishes an article with the perfect recipes that I need to bake before I go. This time, Gourmet Traveller published a special on biscuits a few weeks before the holiday, so I made up big batches of spicy gingerbread biscuits with honey icing and hazelnut and vanilla creams. Not only were the biscuits delicious, they were also extremely easy to make. Both recipes quickly entered my repertoire.

HAZELNUT AND VANILLA CREAMS
75g hazelnuts
125g butter, chopped
150g soft brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
300g self-raising flour, sifted
Vanilla cream filling
130g soft butter, chopped
240g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the hazelnuts on a tray, roast for 5-10 minutes, then tip into a tea-towel and rub off the skins. Cool and coarsely chop.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg and beat till well combined. Stir in sifted flour and nutmeg and the chopped hazelnuts and mix until well combined. Refrigerate the mixture for 10 minutes.

Roll heaped teaspoons of the mix into balls and place 5cm apart on baking paper-lined trays. Using the back of a fork, press the balls down to form round biscuits. Refrigerate for 10 minutes, then bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden. Cool biscuits on tray.

For filling, using an electric mixer, beat butter until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar and vanilla extract and beat until smooth and creamy. Sandwich biscuits together with vanilla cream (you may find you have some icing left over). Biscuits will keep for one week in an airtight container.

A little morsel of sweetness

It's mid-morning or mid-afternoon and the craving starts. Just something small and sweet, a voice whispers in your brain. Or a piece of chocolate. Something to inject a little morsel of sweetness into your day.

I haven't worked out whether these cravings are physical (your body needs a sugar hit to keep it going) or mental (I really need some chocolate now!) But when you decide to give in, it's best to do it with a tasty home-cooked biscuit than something mass-produced, flavourless and full of preservatives.

Cakes and biscuits are often seen as wicked calorie boosters, particularly in the current debate about obesity. While I think generous portion sizes and too much processed food are more to blame, sweet treats should certainly be enjoyed in moderation. But if you've made the decision to indulge, make sure you choose wisely and eat something that you'll enjoy, rather than something that will only half-sate your craving and leave you feeling guilty afterwards.

These sweet little biscuits definitely fit the bill. They use few ingredients, all of which will be found in any fridge and pantry, they take minimal time to mix up and bake, and they partner beautifully with a cup of tea or coffee.

These biscuit recipes are from my grandmother's cookbook, so I've updated the recipes to metric measurements.

CARAMEL COOKIES

115g butter
115g sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
225g SR flour, sifted

Put butter, sugar, golden syrup, milk and vanilla into a saucepan and boil gently for five minutes. Cool, then mix in flour. Roll into balls and flatten with a fork. Bake in a moderate oven (180 degrees) for 10-12 minutes.

BURNT BUTTER BISCUITS

115g butter
115g caster sugar
1 egg
150g SR flour, sifted

Cook the butter in a saucepan until a light brown colour. Cool. Add the caster sugar and beat to a cream, then add the egg and beat well. Add the flour (I found 150g was not quite enough flour, so I added some more, tablespoon by tablespoon, until I had a soft dough). Roll into small balls and press half an almond in each. Cook in a moderate oven (180 degrees) for 10-12 minutes.

Happy Easter

Easter and Christmas are great times for baking. The house fills up with visitors and there's always plenty of takers for the mountains of food prepared, especially if the kitchen is filled with enticing aromas while it cooks. There are so many traditions associated with Easter and many of those traditions are demonstrated by the food that we make to share.

The Sydney Morning Herald this week published an article about the multicultural food traditions surrounding Easter. It featured Lebanese ma'amoul and mashabk, Slovakian bohanek and roast duck, Cypriot flaounes and tahinopitas, Filipino meringue cakes and crispy pork, Portuguese breads and 'nests', Russian kulich and pashka, and Italian colomba and gelato. Alas, there were no recipes and all the shops where you could buy these delicacies were in Sydney (it will be fun to try and track down Melbourne equivalents). So if anyone has any recipes, I would love to receive them, as it would be great to try some of these recipes next year.

As everyone is frantically busy in the lead-up to Easter (the queue at the Haigh's store in Block Place at lunchtime today was absolutely ridiculous!), here is a recipe for a batch of simple, gently spiced biscuits that you can whip up to enjoy over the weekend. It's a Jill Dupleix recipe that I found several years ago but only bothered to make this year. I don't know why I waited so long. I made a batch to share with my family at the weekend but Adam has already polished off the whole lot! Although the recipe calls for one teaspoon of mixed spice, I misread this and used one tablespoon. I have to say we enjoyed the end result, so I'll continue to use one tablespoon but feel free to follow the recipe if you're not a fan of mixed spice.

Happy Easter to all!

EASTER BISCUITS

100g butter
80g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice
100g currants
1 extra tablespoon caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy and beat in the egg yolk. Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice. Add the flour mix to the butter mix, mixing well with a knife. Mix in the currants, squishing the dough together and kneading briefly until smooth (allow the warmth of your hands to soften it). Roll out finely on a lightly floured bench (best done under a sheet of clingfilm or non-stick baking paper). Cut into 6cm or 8cm rounds with a plain or fluted biscuit cutter. Place on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper and sprinkle with the extra caster sugar. Bake for 12-15 minutes until just cooked, but not browned. Carefully transfer to a wire rack. The biscuits will be a little soft but will become crisp as they cool.