simple cake, take 1 (pineapple & coconut)
I’m a great believer in simplicity and I don’t necessarily think using shortcuts is bad if the result turns out good. So when I found a recipe for a cake that didn’t even require shaking, just baking, of course I had to try it!
The original called for canned pears and lemon cake mix, and it was good, although I found the lemon cake to give a sort of artificial flavor to the cake. My mind immidiately started whirring with possible alternatives and I’m still in the process of trying them out. So far, I’m not sorry to say, they’re all freakin’ delicious!
This, a pineapple/coconut-cake was the first variation I tried.
You’ll need:
1 can of pineapple bits in juice (app 500 – 600 g) including about 1/2 cup of the juice!
1 package of cake mix (plain)
1/2 cup coconut flakes
50 g butter
And here’s how to:
1. Spread the pineapple bits evenly over a pie-form.
2. Mix the cakemix and the coconut flakes. Spread the mix evenly over the pineapple.
3. Pour the juice evenly over the cake.
4. Melt the butter. Spread it evenly over the cake.
5. Bake in the oven for 40 min at 175 °C/350 °F.
Let cool slightly and serve with ice cream. If kept in the fridge, it’ll keep fresh for days thanks to the “stickiness”. Once it’s cold, it’s splendid on its own.
Mint Chocolate Cookies
These are really a friend’s fault. A while back, she talked about making cookies with peppermint candy in and the idea
sounded so lovely I immediately decided I wanted to make some too. She made chocolate chip cookies with crushed candy canes, which came out looking very seasonal due to the pieces of red, white and green candies in them. You can see them and read her recipe here (while you’re over there, take the opportunity to check out her adorable Squires of Dimness).
Because of a variety of reasons (mostly lack of life management skills on my part) it’s taken me some time to follow her example, but this Saturday I celebrated the first quiet evening at home for a very long time by listening to Tori Amos and baking cookies. Sometimes I really do suspect I’m a girl after all…
Since I live in Sweden, the choice of candy was pretty easy. See, here, we have the traditional “polka pigs” (or “polkagrisar” in Swedish) which are supposed to be made in Gränna, Småland. Polka Pigs are recognized by their stripes and they come in various shapes, but this is the traditional one:
Please note that as these were a cheap brand, the stripes are more pink than red as they are supposed to be, but they tasted OK. Crushing them, however, was quite a task… Pheew.
Anyway, I didn’t want to downright imitate Anne, so I decided to make some chocolate cookies instead. Because I didn’t quite find the perfect recipe and my local store doesn’t carry baking soda or chocolate chips I sort of invented a recipe of my own. The cookies came out perfect, with just the right texture (due to the large amount of baking powder) and loaded with chocolate and chunks of mint. I used some rather exclusive chocolate (86 % cocoa) to make up for the cheap mints, and it turned out to be a good bet – since the mints were so very sweet, the rather bitter chunks of dark chocolate balanced that up a bit.
I can’t say exactly how many cookies this recipe yields, but I ended up with 32 (which rapidly diminished to 30). I think somewhere between 30 – 35 would be reasonable to expect.
Here goes:
110 g butter (1 stick) at room temperature
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar (may be replaced with 1 tsp vanilla essence)
1 egg
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp instant coffee
3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
100 g dark chocolate, chopped
about 1/3 cup peppermint candy, crushed
- Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and fluffy, preferably using a mixer.
- Add the egg, the coffee and the cocoa and the vanilla and make sure the color is an even dark brown.
- Sift together the flour and the baking powder and add it to the butter mix, a little at a time until you have a smooth and evenly colored dough.
- Crush the peppermint candy into tiny pieces and chop the chocolate. carefully work them into the dough until they are evenly distributed.
- Drop about 1 tbsp of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and press into a cookie. Repeat until the sheet is full. The cookies will swell quite considerably during the baking so don’t put them too close to each other (speaking as one who made that mistake herself).
- Bake in a preheated oven at 175 °C (325 °F) for 15 minutes.
Note that when they’re done, the cookies are very soft and the chocolate chunks runny so don’t try to move them right away – let them cool a bit first.
white chocolate and cranberry cookies
I love to bake. The problem is, I’m only one woman and there are only so many cookies I can eat. Sometimes I bring the result of my baking frenzies to work, but people are starting to glare at me, muttering things about not being able to button their jeans anymore. I might have to find new markets for my baked goods soon…
Anyway, despite the difficulty in disposing of the result of my baking ventures, it seems I just can’t stay away from the flour, butter and sugar. And I do eat a fair share of cookies myself too, to be honest. Especially if they’re as good as these were.
The idea with adding the white chocolate, which melted, was to add an effect of cream to accompany the tart sweetness of the cranberries. It actually turned out exactly the way I wanted it!
You’ll need:
225 g butter (room temperature)
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar (as usual, I used muscovado)
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
100 g white chocolate, finely chopped
100 g dried cranberries
- Blend the sugar and the butter until it’s smooth. Add the eggs, one by one and mix well.
- Mix the flour and the baking powder and stir it into the butter mix. Work it into a dough.
- Add the cranberries and the chocolate pieces, making sure they’re evenly distributed.
- Form little knobs, about 1 inch big and place on a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper). Press lightly into a cookie.
- Bake in preheated oven at 175 °C (350 °F) for about 12 minutes or until the edges start to turn slightly brown.
And don’t ask me how many cookies the recipe yields, because I didn’t count ‘em. Sufficient to say: a lot.
As usual. 
Almond & Brandy Butter Cookies
I had some almond paste over from baking this weekend and thought I’d use it to make some cookies. I wasn’t all that inspired so I returned to the most basic form of cookie dough I know. Not saying it’s not good though, mind you. In fact, when I and my sister were teenagers we would make a batch of this and eat it straight out of the bowl, never mind cookies!!
For the record, I love cookie dough.
And they weren’t hard to make. In fact, after I’d put the dough into the fridge, my broadband connection died, so the actual baking I did with one hand while I had the phone in the other, trying to get in touch with the support.
Am I a skilled food blogger or what? 
Anyway, here’s how to:
cookies:
200 gr butter
3 tbs light brown muscovado sugar (I don’t know if maybe you could use any brown sugar. This has a special toffee-like taste, with a hint of something very much like brandy – which was how I came up with the idea for the filling.)
4 dl (1 2/3 cup) flour
1 tsp vanilla sugar (my own)
filling:
about 1 dl (about 1/2 cup) almond paste
1 tbs brandy (I used my finest Marc de Bourgougne , bought on site in Nuits-Saint-Georges, but lacking that, even cognac will do
1 egg
- To make the dough, simply mix the sugar and butter (which you can do in a food processor or using a mixer) and add the flour.
- Knead it into a firm dough and form a long roll out of it, app 1 inch in diameter.
- Cover it with plastic foil and put it into the fridge for at least 1/2 hour or until it’s hard.
- Meanwhile, mix the almond paste (store bought like mine or home made if you’re slightly more industrious) with the brandy and egg, also using a food processor or mixer (not saying you couldn’t do it by hand, just that I’m too lazy).
- Remove the dough from the fridge and cut it into slices – about 1/2 inch thick.
- Make a little indention in each and put them on a greased baking sheet.
- Fill the little indention with some filling.
- Bake them in the oven at 200 °C (400 °F) for about 15 minutes.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies
One of my friends is amazed how I can have chocolate around the house and not eat all of it. I don’t know, I always have chocolate at home but somehow I’m rarely in the mood for it. So today, when I felt like baking, I found some dark Lindt chocolate I’d forgotten about. Further investigation revealed some organic peanut butter, so I decided to make something using those two ingredients.
Since I didn’t have a recipe to match, I improvised by combining a few different recipes. They were made in sort of a hurry and they’ll never win any awards for good looks, but they were, well, to put it mildly, very good.
about 25 cookies:
50 g butter (at room temperature)
1 1/5 dl ( 2/3 cup) crunchy peanut butter
1 1/5 dl ( 2/3 cup) brown sugar (I used light brown muscovado)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla sugar/vanilla essence
3 dl (1 1/4 cup) flour
1 tsp baking powder
chopped chocolate or chocolate chips (I used 100 g of Lindt’s 65 % Madagascar Dark Chocolate)
- Put the butter, the peanut butter, the sugar, the vanilla and the egg in a food processor and mix it until smooth.
- Add the flour and baking powder.
- Put in the chocolate bits/chips and form little knobs, about an inch in size.
- Put them on a greased baking sheet and press them flat.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 °C (400 °F) for about 10 minutes.
- Remove from baking sheet to cool on wire racks.
Enjoy!
Mint Chocolate Cupcakes
I’m going through a phase of frantic baking right now. Tonight, I made these because a friend talked about making something like this once and I thought the idea sounded very tasty. It was. Dangerously so.
To make ten cupcakes you’ll need:
150 g butter
2 dl (4/5 cup) sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp of vanilla essence/vanilla sugar (I make my own vanilla sugar, by putting a vanilla pod in a jar with sugar)
1/2 dl (3 1/2 tbsp) milk
3 dl (1 1/4 cup) flour
1 tsp baking powder
10 + 10 After Eights
- Beat the eggs with sugar and add the eggs, one by one.
- Add vanilla and milk.
- Mix with flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder.
- Put some of the cake mixture in every muffin cup and then put one After Eight in every cup. Like this
- Then cover the chocolate with the remaining mixture and put them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 200 °C.
- When they’re done, put one (but of course, two or three will be even better) After Eight on every muffin and put them back into the hot oven for about a minute, just so that the After Eights will melt.
- Quickly smooth the chocolate over the muffin so that it gets a layer of After Eight frosting.
Let cool.
Enjoy!
