There are times when a simple chocolate chip cookie just isn’t enough, more chocolate is needed. That’s when these babies are needed! A pound of chocolate, and cocoa powder too, these definitely scratch that chocolate itch. As a bonus, they’re barely any harder to make than regular cookies.

Cream the butter and sugar together and add the melted chocolate (4oz of the 1lb of chocolate chips is melted).

Once the chocolate is incorporated add the eggs gradually.

Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder, when they’re almost mixed in add the chocolate chips.

Scoop out onto lined sheets and bake. It’s hard to tell when these are done as obviously you can’t see when they have turned golden, inserting a toothpick into them (avoiding the chocolate chips) they’ll come out with some moist crumbs. This means they’ll be nice and crisp around the edges and chewy in the middle.

Even Michael, the man who doesn’t like chocolate, liked these cookies,! They’re just everything you can ask for in a chocolate cookie *grins*

Recipe – From Big Fat Cookies
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Yields 12 large or 24 small cookies
Temperature 350F/160C

16oz Chocolate Chips
113g Butter
100g Brown Sugar
55g Sugar
1 Egg
1tsp Vanilla
110g AP Flour
30g Cocoa Powder, Dutched
1tsp Baking Soda
1/2tsp Salt

I’m fairly certain I’ve mentioned my love of all things gingerbread flavoured before.. Apparently I mention it a lot at home as one of my Christmas presents this year was this fantastic book dedicated to gingerbread!

It was hard to narrow down what I wanted to make from it first but we finally settled on the gingersnap cookies! They have the perfect balance between spice and sweetness, with a crisp edge and a chewy centre. We’re certainly spoiled now though, no store bought gingersnaps are ever going to match up!

As a bonus, they’re relatively easy to make too…

All the dry ingredients are combined together, including ground cinnamon, ginger and cloves, whisk together to blend. Form a well in the centre.

Mix together the melted butter, molasses, sugar and egg and pour into the well.

Mix together to form a soft dough.. it is a very soft dough and it doesn’t look all that appetising right now.. tastes good though (not that you should eat raw dough, but if you’re going to this is a good one *grins*).

The next step depends on how you are going to shape them. If you’re going to roll the dough into balls by hand then chill the dough first and roll them once it is firm. I scoop my dough out so I scooped it while it was soft and then chilled them.

Once chilled roll in sugar.

Bake until the cookies have spread, are a light golden (which is hard to tell, I know) but the cracks still appear moist. The recipe recommended 10-12 minutes (at 350F) but we went for 15 and found they still could have gone for a minute or two more. Leave on the sheet to start cooling as they will be soft straight out the oven.

We found them the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea! They’re good for dipping too… or just on their own, but never just one at a time, that just didn’t work!

Recipe – From Gingerbread by Jennifer Lindner McGlinn
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250g AP Flour
2tsp Baking Soda
1/2tsp Salt
2tsp Ground Ginger
1 1/2tsp Ground Cinnamon
3/4tsp Ground Cloves
6oz Butter, Melted
225g Sugar
1/4cup Molasses
1 Large Egg

It seems to be the time of year where Christmas is looming and you still haven’t found that perfect present for the one you love. Well, if that person happens to like cooking and food then you’ve come to the right place. Today’s aim is to give suggestions for foodie presents.

Lets start with cookbooks. Lots of people have been writing lists of their favourite cookbooks of 2010.

Gluten Free Girl and the Chef were among them, with their list including Around My French Table, The Heart of the Artichoke, Pig and of course, their own cookbook that came out this year.
Slashfood broke their list down into sections cute books for anybody, for serious cooks and for cooking voyeurs and readers.
Epicurious’ list highlighted the best in several catagories such as desserts, European and historical.
Serious Eats concentrates on books that a home cook would love to use.

Don’t want to get a book? That’s fine, that’s been covered too!

Brown Eyed Baker starts us off with her 5 favourite gifts. The cupcake pedestals are insanely cute!
The Purple Foodie has mostly food themed gifts, the apron is entertaining and the charms are cute!
Yumsugar’s suggestions are more of a practical nature. I will say, if the recipient loves cooking nothing will beat the silpat liner they mention!
A Nutritionist Eats includes truffle salt, bacon and chocolate.. Really, how can you go wrong!
And our very own local Fete and Feast has gifts from local producers and stores and even some foodie themed adventures!

If none of these strike your fancy you could always made a gift. There’s a fair few suggestions here so I’ll just list them with no additional comments.

Cookies of course!
Gluten Free Cookies
Cookie mix in a jar
Hot Chocolate Mix
Cinnamon Honey Butter
Curried Lentil Soup (in a jar)
Almond Roca
Fudge
Coffee Liquer
Flavoured Salts
Maple Vanilla Granola (in a jar)
Quick Bread in a Bottle
Pancake Mix
And for your favourite furry friend – Dog Bones

I hope this helps inspire you this holiday season.

I did the unthinkable! I liked the look of an Alton Brown recipe so much I had to make it! It’s not that I don’t like Alton…. I just find his presentation style… irritating. He is however Michael’s tv boyfriend *grins* so the odd episode makes it my way.

This was from his latest episode on oats. Rather than using flour the oats are toasted and then ground down, it yielded a very nice chewy cookie that turned nice and crisp around the edges.

So, start off by toasting your oats. Lay them out on a tray and put them in the oven. You can do it in a pan but that only really works with small amounts. After about 10 minutes the kitchen will smell like porridge (or oatmeal). After 15-20 minutes depending on the amount, and your oven, it will smell like porridge that is starting to slightly burn. That’s actually when it’s done. You’ll see in the photos that none of the oats are actually burnt, they’re a nice toasty brown.

Leave them to cool a little, then take half of them and grind them up in a food processor, add the cinnamon, baking powder and salt and it will get well mixed in. Congratulations, you now have oat flour.

Now, cream the butter and the two sugars, but just until combined. Mix in the egg.

Next up mix in that lovely oat flour. My oats were still very warm so it made my mix liquidy.. I think I melted the butter a little. But they still turned out well so maybe that’s supposed to happen!

Lastly mix in the remaining oats you have that weren’t ground down, along with some raisins. I felt the cookies could have done with more raisins, but that’s personal preference.

Scoop out onto a baking sheet and bake for 12-16 minutes, rotating halfway through. They’ll be nice and golden around the edges. Take them out the oven and after cooling for a couple of minutes move to a cooling rack. They stayed soft for quite a while afterwards until they were fully cooled so take care.

Sit back and enjoy! Especially nice with a cool glass of milk.

Recipe – Courtesy of Alton Brown

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16oz Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1tsp Baking Powder
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
Pinch Salt
10oz Unsalted Butter
6oz Dark Brown Sugar
3.5oz Granulated Sugar
1 Large Egg
1tsp Vanilla Extract
4oz Raisins

Oven Temperature 375F

You may recall this article I posted a few weeks ago on the Friday round up, about cooking with children. Of course it’s going to be messy, but it’s fun, and what’s more important than that.

Now, I was baking cookies with an almost 4 year old, so there are a lot of topics I can’t even go in to right now. When can they use a knife? When can they take things in and out of the oven? When are you happy letting them use the stovetop? All things I would like to eventually explore, there’s nothing more exciting when you’re a child than cooking an entire dinner, all by yourself doubly so.

Since she wasn’t quite up to scaling out yet I had that all done and ready, it was important here to have my mise en place as ready as it could be, I didn’t want to get distracted, or have to stop the process midway through so I could finish off preparing.

We got her all prepped with an apron, luckily I had a couple with adjustable neck lengths so we could shorten it, it meant it was a full length apron, practically touching the floor, but well, we did get covered in flour so maybe that was necessary.

I chose cookies as aside from being quick and simple we could dig in with them with our hands.. Sure that’s making it even messier, but what’s more memorable than getting wrist deep in cookie dough.

Not many pictures were taken, as, well… I was getting my hands dirty too, and having far too much fun to stop and step away even for a moment.

Butter and sugar was “squished” together, adding the eggs and vanilla made it too slimy for her tastes or Momma had to step in and help. All the flour and baking powder was added and a big ball of dough formed “just like play-doh.”

She rolled it out… I may or may not have been adding some pressure to the sides while she moved the pin back and forth *whistles and looks innocent.*

Then came the really fun part! Cutting them all out. Since we are who we are we have a whole shelf dedicated to cookie cutters, we picked some of the bigger,simpler shapes and let her loose! A star, a bear, cupcake, ice cream cone, flower, butterfly even a fleur de lys! You can tell she was a fan of the ice cream cone.

I had intentions of icing them, but time flew away. We managed some cupcakes which were a little more complex, she mostly held the spoon and “stirred” while I stirred, but they turned out beautifully, and then she squeezed the piping bag while I directed it when we decorated them.

Both the cupcakes and the cookies went down superbly, I had a fun time making them, and hopefully the kid did too!

What’s you’re favourite experience cooking with kids?

A highly technical two tiered cake with extensive piping, pastillage and gumpaste flowers.

A devils food cake with cocoa painting and modeling chocolate details.

And a sculpted cake of tea and cookies.

Enjoy!