Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have been spending a lot of time at my office lately as there are some projects which needs completion asap. I know...too boring! Also, Mumbai has witnessed some heavy rains lately making the weather so beautiful and also making it even more difficult to concentrate on work. My time away from my oven coupled by the weather is making me so uncomfortable to work at office flipping through the various excel spreadsheets, reviewing the work of my staff. 

Gosh!!! I need some comfort. 

I need some cookies at my office so that I can collect my brains to concentrate on the work I have been trying to finish while sipping the hot cuppa tea and looking at the clouds pouring down heavily and heavenly. 

Talking of comfort, nothing has given me more comfort in my life than having Peanut Butter on toast for breakfast and rush for office for over 6 years now. That's the way I go whenever I am running late and there is always a jar of Peanut Butter sitting on my kitchen counter to save me from hunger. 

This is the first time that I have used PB in my baking and I am completely smeared by it. I loved the PB in cookies as much as I like it on my toast. Not only me, everybody in the house enjoyed these cookies so much as the jar of cookies was over the next day it was made and I had to bake the second batch of cookies the next day, the dough for which I had kept in the freezer. Yeah, these cookies are perfect for freezing and you can enjoy freshly baked cookies any time you want. 

Lets not wait more and have a look at the recipe I used.

Print this Recipe

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes: 45 cookies approx.

Here's what you would need to make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies:-

Ingredients: 

3/4 cup/ 170 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup/ 105 grams light brown sugar
1/2 cup/ 100 grams caster sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup/ 185 grams peanut butter (smooth or crunchy) (I used Smooth)
2 cups/ 260 grams all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (omit if you using salted butter)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Here's how you can make it:

Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

• In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. 
• In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). 
• Beat in the peanut butter. 
• Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat to combine. 
• Add flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture and beat until incorporated. 
• Fold in the chocolate chips. (If the batter is too soft to form into balls, place in the refrigerator for about an hour or until firm.)
• Roll the batter into 1 inch (2.5 cm) balls. Transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheet, placing them about 2 inches (5 cm) apart. Then, using the tines of the fork that has been dipped in white granulated sugar, make a crisscross pattern.
• Bake the cookies for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned around the edges. 
• Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely before transferring to an air-tight cookie jar. 

How to freeze the cookies to bake later

• Place the ready to bake cookies on a baking sheet and place the baking sheet into the freezer to for 20 minutes to chill the cookies.
• Once chilled, transfer the cookies into a ziplog bag and write the date of freezing on the bag.
• When you want to bake the cookies, take out from the zip log bag. Let it come to room temperature and bake as described above.

Hope you would also enjoy baking these cookies as much as I did.

Happy Baking!

Coconut Macaroons (#Eggless)

Have you ever got into a situation where you were flipping through a recipe book and your eyes struck on a recipe which is perfect for the season, involves the use of bare minimum ingredients you already have in your pantry and is super quick. What would you do? 

Would you still flag a post-it on the recipe to fall under "to-make" list or would you go to the kitchen and start preparing for the recipe? What did you say? You want to start preparing for the recipe...Yeah, that's what I did! And see in less than half an hour I have my first batch of these coconut macaroons out of the oven. Its Yummmm.... still warm from the oven, crisp on the outside and perfectly chewy on the inside and the coco-nutty smell. Ahhh! Nothing can beat this.

All this needs is just 4 ingredients. Yeah, you heard me correct, just 4. The good part is no butter... I don't even feel guilty after having 4 cookies by the time I write this part of my post and the second batch is still in the oven.

Hey, where are you planning to go? What...you also heading to the kitchen to make these cookies. Atleast wait to see all the ingredients.

Here's what you would need to make these Eggless Coconut Macaroons:-

Makes: 24 cookies

1/3 cup/ 40 gms all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

3 cups/ 225 gms unsweetened shredded coconut

3/4 cup/ 170 ml sweet condensed milk

Here's how you could make it:

Preheat your oven to 180°C (350ºF). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or grease them with butter.

• In a bowl, sift all purpose flour and salt and whisk it.
• Add shredded coconut and whisk them until it gets mixed properly into flour and salt.
• Add condensed milk and whisk it until it becomes a thick paste. That's it, we're done!
• Using 2 tablespoons, drop the cookies into baking sheet keeping a gap of 2 inches between each cookie.
• Bake for about 15-18 minutes until the cookies turn golden from the sides.
• Let it cook completely on the baking sheet placed on a wire rack. 

Variation:-

Temper the chocolate. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies making zig zag pattern or simply dip the cookies in chocolate and place them on the parchment paper to cool.Enjoy the chocolate coconut macaroons.

Hope you would also enjoy making these cookies as much as I did!

Happy Baking.

ANZAC Cookies

Sometimes the simplest of things give you the most pleasures in life! That's how I felt when I had the first bite of freshly baked still warm ANZAC Biscuits. It was love at first bite! I made these cookies as yet another baking experiment in my kitchen of the 'eggless' and 'pick me up anytime' category. The texture of these biscuits (cookies) is crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. 

An Anzac biscuit is a sweet biscuit popular in Australia and New Zealand made using rolled oats, flour, desiccated coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, baking soda and boiling water. As a history, ANZAC biscuits have been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) , established during World War I. It has been claimed the biscuits were sent by Army wives to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation. 

One notable omission from any Anzac biscuit recipe is eggs because of the scarcity of eggs during the First World War (as most poultry farmers joined the war) and also so that the biscuits would not spoil when shipped long distances. Check the Wikipedia page here for more details on ANZAC biscuits.

For me, these biscuits represent the love and affection of the Army wives for their husbands. I packed my love and affection for my brothers and sister snd sent these biscuits tn Indore and I was delighted to know that they were finished the day they reached them. 

So, without taking much of your time, lets get straight to baking.

Here's what you would need to make these ANZAC biscuits:-

Makes 28 cookies

1 cup/ 90 gms rolled oats
1 cup/ 130 gms all-purpose flour
⅓ cup/ 150 gms caster sugar
¾ cup/ 60 gms  desiccated coconut
2 tbsps golden syrup ( I substituted corn syrup for golden syrup)
1/2 cup/ 115 gms butter
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsps hot water

Here's how you can make these biscuits-

Preheat oven to 160°C (320ºF). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and keep it aside.

• Mix the oats, flour, sugar and coconut in a bowl. 
• Place the golden syrup (corn syrup) and butter in a saucepan over low heat and melt. 
• Mix the baking soda with the water and add to the butter mixture. 
• Add to the dry ingredients and mix well. 
• Using a ice-cream scoop or with the help of two tablespoons place the mixture on to the  baking tray, leaving space between each one for spreading and flatten slightly with the help of your finger tips. 
• Bake for 8–10 minutes or until the cookies are deep brown on the sides. 
• Cool on trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. 

These cookies can be stored for a long time(more than a week).

Variations:-

Sandwich one scoop of vanilla ice-cream with two ANZAC biscuits and you are good to go for a perfect dessert!

I hope you would also enjoy making these biscuits as much as I did!

Happy Baking!

Karachi Bakery Style Homemade Fruit Cookies (Eggless)

One of the best baked things I have grown up eating are Karachi Bakery's  Fruit Cookies(the famous Hyderabad based Bakery). I had gone to this bakery as a kid with my Mom and bought 2 big boxes of these cookies and regretted later that I should have brought more boxes as these are so addictive. I would simply gorge on to the cookies until I would finish the last bit of the cookies from the box. Thanks to the supply chain these cookies are now available in almost every city in India and I can buy them whenever I want. Since I had started baking at home, I decided to give the Karachi Bakery style cookies a try.

I love the colour and sweetness that tutty fruity brings to the cookies and a little bit salty taste that comes from the salt added to the dough. To make these cookies rich, some chopped cashew nuts are also added to the batter. Prepare the log, freeze it for a couple of hours and you are done. Cut and bake the cookies.

Here's what you would need to make these Fruit Cookies:

115 gms/ 1/2 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
100 gms/ 1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
100 gms/ 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
30 gms/ 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup Tutti Fruity
2 tbsp chopped Cashew nuts

Here's how you can make it:

Preheat your oven to 160°C/ 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

• In a large bowl of your stand mixer using paddle attachment or using hand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Add vanilla extract and mix it well. Scrap down the sides of the bowl as required.
• Add salt and flour and mix it well until the dough starts to come together.
• Add tutti-fruity and cashew nuts and form a soft dough. 
• Make the dough into a log shape, cover it with a cling film and freeze it for at least a couple of hours to overnight. I kept my log overnight.
• With the help of a serrated knife, cut the log into 1/2 inch wide slices. You may shape the cookies with your hands if it breaks.
• Keep the cookie slices onto the baking tray leaving few inches gap between each other and bake for about 10-12 minutes until the cookies turn brown from sides. Turn the baking tray front to back half way through the baking. Cool completely on a wire rack.

These cookies are best to have at tea time or any time you want a sweet kick.;)

Hope you would also enjoy making this cake as much as I did!

Happy Baking!

Eggless Nutella Pinwheel Cookies

I love trying different types of cookies and gifting them to people. I think, these are the best gifting option as it can be stored for a long time, not too sweet hence a win-win situation if the person you gift is not a fan of sweets. Its also a great way to incorporate chocolate and satisfy your chocolate craving anytime you want without feeling too guilty.

I got one such opportunity when my sister in law was going to Bangalore to meet her elder sister. The elder sis-in-law wanted some Delights and I decided to make something which looks beautiful like her. To make that happen, I decided to use her favourite (and mine too!) Nutella. The richness of Nutella swirled into dough of wholewheat flour and butter makes the cookies ''Divine". Hence, presenting you Eggless Nutella Pinwheel Cookies.

Before that, I have to share the story of making these cookies. I made the rolled up the nutella spread cookies dough and kept it in the freezer overnight to harden so that they are ready to bake in the next morning when my sister-in-law had to catch the flight. But, the next morning I got so late in normal house chores that I got to baking these cookies only when there was just one hour left for her to check-in for the flight. She had left for office in the morning, hence I needed to bake it, pack it and leave for the airport which was about 15 kms from my home. I was under so much pressure that I was feeling like I was participating in some Masterchef competition. 

I utilised every single second in that hour and was just on time, like a minute before she had to check-in for the flight. Phew! As they say, All's well that ends well. My cookies reached safely to Bangalore and made an awesome tea time delight for my sweet sis-in-law. 

I adapted the recipe from The Purple Foodie, a great website by a young girl Shaheen Peerbhai from aamchi Mumbai and is currently based at Paris. I looked up to her recipes and aspire to win scholarship from Le Cordon Bleu like her some day. The recipe posted by her uses an egg, I omitted the egg and used a little milk to combine the dough as some in my family don't prefer eggs. It worked great!

Here's what you gonna need to make these Eggless Nutella Pinwheel Cookies:

125g / 1 stick butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 heaped cup sifted flour (I replaced 1/2 heaped cup with wholewheat flour)
3 - 4 tbsp nutella (a little more won't harm anyone, I would love some more)
2-3 tablespoon, toasted, chopped hazelnuts

Here's how you can make it:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/ 350°F. Line two baking trays with parchment paper or grease it with some butter.

• In the bowl of your stand mixer or in a large bowl using you hand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Add in vanilla extract and give it a good mix. Scrap down the sides as needed.
• Sift in the flour and mix it until the dough is all combined together. Make a ball of the dough using your hands, wrap it with some cling film/ plastic wrap and keep it in the refrigerator for about half an hour to firm it up a little. This will facilitate rolling out the dough nicely.
• Sprinkle some flour on your work surface and roll out the dough into a rectangle of ¼ inch thickness. Rotate the dough with your hands while rolling.
• Spread a good amount of Nutella on the top surface and make sure to leave one finger space on all four sides. 
• Sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts and roll up the dough.
• Freeze the roll for about 2 hours or upto over night before cutting the slices. I used dough cutter to cut the slices. This can be done with the help of a sharp knife as well.

                          

                                              Before                                                  After

• Place the slices on a pre-lined baking sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes until the cookies are slightly brown at the edges. Rotate the sheet around half way through the baking. Shaheen suggests baking time will vary depending on how thick or thin you have cut them. Hence, look for the colour as a good indication. 

Now you are ready to enjoy these wonderful cookies.

Hope you would also enjoy making this cake as much as I did! Don't forget to share your experiences by way of comment on the blog or on FB! I would love to hear from you guys!

Happy Baking!

Triple Chocolate Cookies

I love Chocolate, I love Cookies and I so love the cookies which has not a single, nor double but triple chocolates in them! These cookies are simply irresistible as these are soft textured cookies and perfect to dunk in a glass of cold milk or even with a cup of strong cup of coffee. These cookies go one step ahead from the delicious Chocolate Chip cookies as they have melted chocolate, cocoa powder and chocolate chips, all in one. These cookies are beautifully cracked, crunchy around the edges, soft and chewy in the middle, and full of deep, caramelized and chocolate flavor.

These cookies make a perfect option for gifting, as it would be very hard to find someone who would not love these cookies. Make these cookies once, I guarantee, you will make these cookies again.

Here's what you would need to make Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies:-

• 226 gms (1 cup/ 2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 250 gms (1¼ cup) brown sugar
• 100 gms (½ cup) granulated white sugar/ caster sugar
• 70 gms (2/3 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 200 gms (1 cup) melted semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 325 gms (2½ cup) all purpose flour 
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp cinnamon powder
• 165 gms (1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
• 160 gms (2/3 cup) caster sugar, for rolling

Here how you can make it:-

• Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper/ grease with butter.

• In a large bowl, sift flour, baking soda and cinnamon powder and mix it to come together.

• In the bowl of your stand mixer (or with hand mixer), cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift cocoa powder and beat it until incorporated.

• Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla extract and melted chocolate and beat until well incorporated. 

• Mix 1 to 2 tbsp of flour from your flour mixture and mix it in chocolate chips so that the chips gets completely coated in flour (this process prevents chocolate chips from sinking to the bottom of the mixture). 
• Add the flour mixture and mix it with the rubber spatula (only if using hand mixer like me, else mix using your stand mixer). Add the chocolate chips and mix until all the ingredients starts to come together.

• Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop out the dough to form dough balls and roll them in caster sugar kept for rolling. Place the dough balls on the baking tray lined with parchment paper keeping a gap of few inches. Flatten the cookies with by gently pressing with your hands.
• Bake the cookies for 11 to 13 minutes depending on your oven. The cookies are done when they are set in the center. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on the baking tray before transferring them on to wire rack to cool completely. 

Enjoy these cookies!

Hope you also enjoyed these cookies as much as I did!

Don't forget to share your experiences by way of comments here below or on FB! :)

Happy baking!

French Macarons

Here I am, after a break for a long time... almost couple of months. I have been coping up with some health issues, traveling and engaged in refurnishing of house. With everything done now, I am back with full energy, enthusiasm, a newly furnished house and loads of recipes to share with you all. All this while, even though I was not writing I did a lot of baking and just can't wait to share with you all the different things that I have tried my hands at. One of the various things I tried for the first time in these past couple of months is French Macarons. Yes... maiden attempt and fairly succeeded!

Making perfect French Macarons is the dream of every baker. I started, keeping my fingers crossed, hoping to make my first Macs perfect.

My First French Macarons

These are the best cookies to have with some of your favourite frosting (the filling in the macarons) for those moments of perfect indulgence. Here, I have tried dark chocolate ganache, white chocolate ganache and nutella frosting. Other great options to frost these cute little macarons are swiss buttercream, lemon curd, dulce de leche, jam of any of your favourite flavour-starwberry, raspberry, orange and the list just goes on....

I know these pictures are enough of temptations and now you would also like to try it out by yourself...... so what are we waiting for? Lets get to the work...

Here's what you would need to make french Macarons:- 

All the ingredients here are given by weights. It is important for a successful macarons to have all the ingredients measured with a digital weighing scale. Believe me, this investment would be worth every single penny.

100 gms of almond flour (click here to know How to make Homemade almond flour)

180 gms icing sugar

100 gms egg whites at room temperature

1/4 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

35 gms superfine sugar/ castor sugar

Output: 30 macarons

Here's how you can make the perfect French Macarons:-

1. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper and draw a template of 15 circles (3X5) of 1.5 inches or 3 cm in diameter each on parchment paper the size of your baking sheet.

2. Sift together icing sugar and almond flour in a medium size bowl and keep it aside.

2. In another clean and dry bowl, add egg whites and cream of tartar (optional) and beat with your hand beater or stand mixer using whisk attachment until foamy. 

3. Gradually add caster sugar in the egg white mixture while beating it. 

4. Once all the sugar goes into the egg whites, beat the egg whites for 3-4 minutes until you get stiff straight peaks. Care should be taken not to over beat the egg whites. Keep checking for the stiff peaks and stop once u get the straight peaks like shown in the picture above.

5. Add the dry ingredients i.e. mixture of almond flour and icing sugar into egg white mixture in 3 additions. Mix the dry ingredients well after each addition. Do not worry if the air incorporated in egg whites is vanishing, you want some of the air to go off the egg whites. At the end, you will get a paste like mixture smiling back at you with a gloss. And yeah..... you are done!

6. Time to tint the batter with you favourite food colour. I divided my batter into 3 parts and coloured them blue, yellow and pink respectively. This step is absolutely optional. Add the food colour drop by drop and see if you are happy with the colour. You simply need to follow your instincts for this step. Cool.. ..isn't it?

7. Pour each of these different coloured batter into three disposable piping bag or ziplock bag and snip off the end of the bag. Put the template below the parchment paper on your baking sheet and pour the batter into the circles drawn on template. Try to pour the batter within the circle as the batter has some tendency to spread. 

8. Remove all the air bubbles from the batter by either tapping the baking tray or break the bubbles with the help of tooth pick. Let the macarons sit in the baking tray sit for 30 - 60 minutes. In the meanwhile, pre heat your oven to 160° C/ 325° F. Bake the macarons for 14 - 16 minutes, rotating the sheet front to back about halfway through the baking.

9. The macarons are done when you can barely remove the macarons from the baking tray. There will be a little browning on the corners of the macarons. If you see the bottom of the macarons brown too much, you can line baking tray with sheets of two parchment papers.

10. Remove the macarons from the oven and let it cool completely on the baking tray kept on a wire rack. 

Assembly:-

To assemble the macarons, take two similar size of macarons and sandwich them together with your favourite filling. The best choices of filing are lemon curd, chocolate ganache, swiss buttercream, nutella or jam.

While the macarons can be served the day they are made, the best of flavours come out the next day. These cookies need to mature for a day or two in the refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.

                                     

I filled my macarons with dark chocolate ganache, white cocolate ganache and nutella. Everybody simply loved it.

                                        

Hope you also making macarons as much as I did! Don't forget to share your experience with me, leave your comments in the comment box below. I would love to hear back from you all.

Happy Baking!

Chocolate-chip Cookies

My first connection with chocolate-chip cookies was at Subway. I like these cookies so much that I never order a subway without these cookies. I have gone alone many a times to Subway to eat a loaf and the chocolate chip cookies all by myself. Hence, when I started baking, this was the first ever cookies that I made. By far, I have made them so many times (and gifted to a lot of my friends) and never got bored of the taste. 

I remember the first time I made these cookies was in a very small Morphy Richards OTG that could bake only two cookies in one batch and I had to bake these cookies for almost half a day (9 batches! Can you believe it?). This gave me sufficient reason to buy a new oven. I grabbed this opportunity totally and got myself a great looking, gorgeous Samsung CQ138S and have been totally in love with it from the day it arrived at my home. Now, I can bake all these cookies in just two batches. Life is so much more beautiful with  yummy food and sexy gadgets.

These soft and chewy cookies need a combo of white and brown sugar. It is easy to find brown sugar these days in India, you can get Bluebird Dememera sugar at your nearest grocery store or D Mart, Hypercity. Hence, there is abosolutely no challenge in making these cookies at home.

Chocolate-chip Cookies

Here's what you gonna need to make Chocolate-chip Cookies

113 gms/½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (at room temperature)

45 gms/ ¼ cup caster (superfine) sugar

100 gms/ ½ cup light brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
175 gms/ 1½ cups all purpose flour 

½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt (leave the salt if you are using salted butter)
175 gms/ 1 cup chocolate chips
50 gms/ ¼ cup walnuts, roasted and chopped (optional) 

Yield - 24 cookies

Here's how you gonna make it

Preheat your oven to to 170° C/ 325° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until nice and creamy using your hand mixer.
• Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
• Add egg and beat in the batter until combined. In case you are doubling the recipe, add one egg at a time and beat.
• Add vanilla extract and you guessed it right, continue to beat.
• In another bowl, sift all purpose flour, baking soda and salt (if using unsalted butter) and stir. Add chocolate chips and walnuts and stir.
• Mix the dry ingredients in the butter and egg mixture and fold it with the help of a rubber spatula giving your hands a nice workout. Fold the dry ingredients until it is combined together with the wet ingredients.
• If the dough is very soft, keep it in the refrigerator for 30 - 40 minutes.
• With the help of an ice-cream scoop or using two spoons, scoop out the dough into the baking sheet keeping a gap of 3-4 inches between the cookies as these will spread while baking.
• Bake for about 10 -14 minutes or until the cookies edges are golden brown. Let it cool completely on wire rack.
• Store these cookies in an air tight container for few days.

Variations:- 

You can do so many variations of these cookies. Few of these variations could be - 

• All chocolate cookies - Substitute 15 gms/ 1tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder for the equal amount of flour.
• Mocha - Use coffee essence or 1 tbsp of strong black coffee instead of vanilla extract.
• Hazelnuts - Substitute whole or coarsely chopped hazelnuts for the equal amount of walnuts.
• Dried fruits - Substitute chcolate chips and walnuts for the equal amount of chopped dried fruits such as raisins, almonds, cranberries, glaced cherries etc.

Hope you will also enjoy making these cookies as much as I did!

Cheers!

Cappuccino Swirls

Its been a while that I have started baking and trying out different cakes. I got a request from my uncle to make some cookies and send them but the challenge was to make something eggless. I flipped through my 'The Cookie Book' by 'Catherine Atkinson' and got this recipe which immediately caught my attention. It looked awesome and tastes exactly as it looks...YUMMY!!!. I really enjoyed making these swirl cookies.

Cappuccino Swirls, melt-in-the-mouth, mocha flavored cookie drizzled with white and dark chocolate is just the thing to have with your mid morning cafe latte or with afternoon tea with your friends. 

Yield - 18 cookies

Here's what you gonna need to make Cappuccino Swirls

2 tsp instant coffee powder

2 tsp boiling water

1¼ cup (150 gms) all ourpose flour

½ cup (115 gms) corn flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1 cup (225 gms) unsalted butter (at room temperature)

¼ cup (50 gms) golden caster sugar

For the decoration

50 gms white chcolate

25 gms dark chocolate

Here's how you gonna make it

• Preheat your oven to 375° F or 190° C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Put coffee powder in a cup and add boiling water and mix until the coffee dissolves completely. Set aside to cool completely.
• In a bowl, sift together all purpose flour, corn starch and cocoa powder and mix it well.
• In another bowl, beat butter and sugar with the help of your hand mixer until nice and creamy.
• Add coffee and dry ingredients and fold it until combined.
• Transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with plain nozzle.
• Pipe 18 swirls on the baking sheet already lined with parchment paper keeping a gap of few inches with each other.
• Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until firmed but not browned.
• Let the cookies cool in the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Decoration

• Melt white and dark chocolate in separate heatproof bowls in microwave or double boiler.
• Place the cooled cookies close together on a parchment paper. Using a teaspoon, drizzle white chocolate over the cookies moving your hands speedily from left to right and create small lines (see photo above).
• Once all the white chocolate is used, repeat the process with dark chocolate so that dark chocolate is at an angle to the white chocolate.
• Leave until the chocolate is set. Store in an air tight container for a few days.

Hope you will also enjoy making it as much as I did!

Cheers.

Nan Khatai - Indian cookies

I have been eating homemade Nan khatais (cookies) made by my Mom since I was a little kid. Now, its my turn to make them and send it as a gift to my Mom. These cookies can  be made all round the year and works as a perfect gift for anybody. The best thing about these cookies is that the ingredients would be available at any time in your kitchen.

NAN KHATAI - INDIAN COOKIES

Preparation Time - 5 minutes

Dough Resting Time - 15 minutes

Baking Time - 20 - 25 minutes

Yield - 18 cookies

Here's what you gonna need for making Nan Khatai

1 stick (100 gms) unsalted butter (at room temperature)

½ cup (60 gms) powdered sugar/ caster sugar

¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp nutmeg powder

¼ tsp cardamom powder

1 cup (130 gms) all purpose flour

1/8 tsp salt (leave the salt if you are using salted butter)

Here's what you gonna make it

Preheat your oven to 300° F or 150 ° C

• In a bowl, sift all purpose flour, baking powder and salt and mix it well.
• In another bowl, with the help of hand mixer, whisk butter until soft. 
• Add sugar and whisk until nice and creamy.
• Add nutmeg powder and cardamom powder into butter mixture and fold them well. 
• Fold the dry ingredients in small portions into the butter mixture and make a soft dough.
• Let the dough rest in refrigerator for about 15 minutes.
• Make small balls without any cracks and keep it in the baking sheet lined with parchment paper keeping a gap of about 2 inches with each other.
• Bake the nan khatai for about 20 - 25 minutes until you see the sides of the cookies turn lightly brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
• Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

These are best served the day you make them. You can also store them in an air tight container at room temperature for about a week.

Happy Baking!

Cheers