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Best ever gingerbread men

Christmas is my favourite time of the year!! One of my favourite pre-christmas rituals is getting together with friends for a gingerbread baking party! All you need is a few good friends, this amazing gingerbread recipe, your favourite cookie cutters and toppings, and ample amounts of wine

It’s even more fun wrapping them up and giving them to people once they’re finished!! Remember that acts of kindness are also good for our wellbeing!!

I’ve used this recipe from Taste for several years now and everyone seems to love it, even people who insist they don’t like gingerbread!! The cookies are quite crunchy, not like the soft and soggy gingerbread you often encounter.

Ingredients:

125g butter, at room temperature
125g (1/2 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
125ml (1/2 cup) golden syrup
1 egg, separated
375g (2 1/2 cups) plain flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Plain flour, to dust
Decorations of your choice – I used smarties and ‘choc-minis’ from woolworths, and some little silver things (no idea what they’re called, but you can see them below). You could also ice with a piping bag if you’d prefer!

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper
Use an electric beater to beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Add the golden syrup and egg yolk and beat until combined. Stir in the flour, ginger, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Press dough into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest.
Place the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper and roll out until about 4mm thick. Use a gingerbread man cutter to cut out shapes. Place on trays about 3cm apart. Repeat with any excess dough.
Bake in oven for 10 minutes or until brown. Remove from oven. Transfer to a rack to cool.

When they’re cooled down, you can wrap them in cellophane party bags, and tie with bakers twine for the perfect Christmas gift.

So so delicious!! I accidentally ate quite a few….I’ve packaged the rest up in an attempt to stop eating them!!! Would you try a gingerbread party with your pals?

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Halloween Cookies

Australia is very slowly embracing halloween. I remember being about 8 years old, cutting two holes in an old sheet, smearing my mother’s blue eye shadow all over my face and traipsing over to my neighbour’s house, plastic bag in hand, shouting “trick-or-treat” at the top of my lungs. After my mother spending about 15 minutes attempting to explain the concept of halloween to my elderly neighbours, they finally relented, but sadly all they had were some apples and a bag of prunes. Not the magical haul of chocolate and lollies my 8 year old imagination had been dreaming of.

`These days it’s different – halloween is catching on…..so I decided to yet again embrace halloween (I might even destroy another perfectly good bed sheet to make a new ghost costume).

I saw this pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe on The Butter Half Blog, and had to give it a whirl!! In Australia, pumpkin usually is for savoury purposes….but I can certainly get on board with pumpkin flavoured desserts!!

The only change I had to make was the tinned pumpkin. In Australia, it’s really difficult to find canned pumpkin….instead I bought a butternut pumpkin and cooked and pureed it (which didn’t take long at all – just allow time for the pumpkin puree to cool before you start).

Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin (or pureed cooked butternut pumpkin)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 Celsius. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Mix together the pumpkin, sugar, butter, sour cream, egg and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed for about 1 minute. Add the baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt to one cup of flour. Add it into the wet mixture, thoroughly mix, then add in the remaining cup of flour. Pour in the chocolate chips until everything is well mixed.

3. Use a cookie scoop or spoon to drop a small mound of dough (about the size of a golf ball) on the cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes on 375°F. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then serve warm.

They’re pumpkiny….chocolatey…. what more could you want!? Do you love halloween? Who has a costume idea that’s not a sheet with two holes in it!?

Simply Delicious Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve been attempting to clean up my diet lately, and this means cutting back on the delicious, butter and sugar filled baked goods I’ve been baking all too often lately!!

I’ve done several dairy free recipes in the past, and was loving coconut oil as an alternative to butter!! This recipe takes it a step further, and is gluten free, as well as dairy free!! It also uses Coconut Sugar instead of refined sugar.. Coconut Sugar has lower GI than regular sugar so is a (slightly) better alternative.

It uses a mix of almond meal and coconut flour in the place of regular sugar, which gives these a crumbly and slightly coconutty flavour.

These cookies are simply delicious!! Thick and crumbly, and full of chocolate goodness!! I used this recipe from Ambitious Kitchen.

Ingredients:

1 egg, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 cup almond meal
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 pack dark chocolate melts – you can use dairy free chocolate if you’re keeping the recipe dairy free Coles stock a brand called “Sweet William” who make baking chips.
Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
In a large bowl, add add in beaten egg, melted and cooled coconut oil, coconut sugar and vanilla extract. (Please make sure your coconut oil is cool!) Next add in almond flour, coconut flour and baking soda, mixing well to combine and form a dough. Fold in dark chocolate chunks. You may need to use your hands to moisten the dough so that it sticks together well.
Use a cookie scoop or large tablespoon to drop dough onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Gently flatten the dough with your hand. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until edges are slightly golden brown. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and allow to cool on cookie sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finishing cooling. Makes 12 cookies.

Easy to make, and easy to eat!!! Perfect for your gluten free and dairy free pals too!!! Do you have a favourite paleo recipe?

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cookies

Peanut butter and chocolate is a seriously delicious combination!! I recently made these chocolate dipped peanut cookies with pretzels, and now am on the peanut butter bandwagon (sorry to all our peanut allergic friends!)!!

I used this recipe from a Cup of Jo. The recipe is by Abbey Rodriguez from The Butter Half! It was really simple and I had these ready in under 30 mins!! The only thing I changed was adding a sprinkle of sea salt (why not!?).

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter
3/4 cups butter
1/3 cup water
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups oats
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup white sugar (for dipping) and sea salt for sprinkling
1 bag dark chocolate melts

Method

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat sugar, peanut butter and butter until fluffy. Blend in water, egg and vanilla.Next, add oats, flour and baking soda. Mix well. Shape the cookie dough into 1-inch balls. Place them on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar (wet the glass, then dip in the sugar!!). Add a sprinkling of sea salt. Bake 10 minutes.

While cookies are baking, boil a small saucepan of water. Sit a heat-safe glass bowl on top of the saucepan and melt the chocolate (make sure your bowl does not touch the water). Stir constantly until smooth.

Remove cookies from oven and top each with 1/2 teaspoon of chocolate. Allow them to cool and set for 10-15 minutes.

These cookies were loved by both adults and babies alike!! Whilst they’re not exactly health food, the addition of oats makes them slightly more nutritious (I tell myself these things…).

Enjoy!!

White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Cookies

If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve been on a cookie bender the past few weeks….Sydney weather has been horrible, so what better to do at home than to bake cookies!! I’ve never been a massive white chocolate fan, but these cookies are seriously amazing…the white chocolate and macadamia combination, along with the saltiness of these cookies is just divine!! So divine, that I’m about to deliver a batch of these cookies to my neighbours before I eat them all!!

I used this recipe from Donna Hay, but made a couple of tiny tweaks including the addition of greek yoghurt, and chilling the dough for an hour before baking.

Ingredients

150g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (175g) brown sugar
¾ cup (165g) white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
1 tablespoon greek yoghut
1½ cups (225g) plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking powder, sifted
½ teaspoon table salt
250g white chocolate, chopped
150g macadamia nuts, chopped

Method

Place butter, brown and white sugars and vanilla in an electric mixer and beat for 8–10 minutes or until pale and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the egg, beating well to combine. Add yoghurt and beat through.
Add the flour, baking powder and salt and beat on low until a dough forms. Fold through the chocolate and nuts.
Chill dough for one hour. Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F).
Roll 2 tablespoons of the dough into balls at a time and flatten slightly. Place on lightly greased baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper, allowing room to spread. Bake for 15–18 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on trays before serving.

And that’s it….pure deliciousness!! They also remind me of the cookies you get at Subway!! Is anyone else a closet Subway cookie lover!?

Nutella Stuffed Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

Say what!? Yes, that’s right…these are chocolate chip cookies, made with brown butter, STUFFED with Nutella (and sprinkled with sea salt!). !@#$, what a cookie!!

I’m sure they’re worth the equivalent of a day’s worth of food in calories, but they are so darn delicious they’re worth it.

Being the new year, I’ve been attempting to stick to healthy eating…yoghurt and berries for breakfast, salad and tuna for lunch….but tonight it was cookies (hell, and wine!) for dinner…what a meal!!!

This recipe was taken from the blog Ambitious Kitchen, and what a fantastic recipe it was!! I also used a tutorial on how to brown butter from the same blog and found it really easy (I’ve tried other ways in the past and this method worked really well!!). My last attempt was in my brown butter cake recipe! You can make brown butter in advance and store it in the fridge also. Brown butter is seriously the bomb….try it on toast, try it drizzled on steak….even better, try it in cookies!! Enough about the joys of brown butter, here’s the darn recipe!!

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1 jar of Nutella, chilled in refrigerator
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Method:

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. The butter will begin to foam. Make sure you whisk consistently during this process. After a couple of minutes, the butter will begin to brown on the bottom of the saucepan; continue to whisk and remove from heat as soon as the butter begins to brown and give off a nutty aroma. Immediately transfer the butter to a bowl to prevent burning. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
With an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Beat in the egg, yolk, vanilla, and yogurt until combined. Add the dry ingredients slowly and beat on low-speed just until combined. Gently fold in all of the chocolate chips.
Chill your dough for 2 hours in the refrigerator, or place in freezer for 30 minutes if you are super eager, although I cannot promise the same results if you do this.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
Once dough is chilled measure about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the dough ball very thinly into the palm of your hand. Place 1 teaspoon of chilled nutella in the middle and fold dough around it; gently roll into a ball — it doesn’t have to be perfectly rolled! Make sure that the nutella is not seeping out of the dough. Add more dough if necessary. Place dough balls on cookie sheet, 2 inches apart and flatten with your hand VERY gently. (Really only the tops need to be flattened a bit!)
Bake the cookies 9-11 minutes or until the edges of the cookies begin to turn golden brown. They will look a bit underdone in the middle, but will continue to cook once out of the oven. Cool the cookies on the sheets at least 2 minutes. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Remove the cooled cookies from the baking sheets after a few minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.

And that’s it….pure deliciousness!! Can you think of a way to increase the calorific content of already delicious foods by stuffing them with even more delicious foods! The possibilities are endless!

Calories aside, these are the best cookies I have ever eaten!!

Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies with Pretzels

I love baking (and yes, eating!) cookies around the holiday season (actually, around all of the seasons!)!! Usually it’s the classics for Christmas time, like Gingerbread and shortbread, but this year I thought I’d try something different. I’ve never tried peanut butter cookies before, but how could peanut butter and cookie not just be the most delicious combo ever!!

I saw this recipe and had to give it a go, but combined the recipe with this one!! These cookies were easy to make, and completely delicious, and to make things even better, you then get to go and dip the little beauties in molten chocolate and coat them with pretzel crumbs. I knew today was going to be a good day!

Ingredients:

butter, softened
½ cup smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
230 g(1¼ cups) brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
185 g (1¼ cups) plain flour, sifted
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 pack dark chocolate melts
1 bag pretzels

Method

Place butter, peanut butter, brown sugar and vanilla into a mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer beat until light and creamy.
Add egg, beat until well combined. Stir in sifted flour and bicarbonate of soda. Mix until a soft dough forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 170°C.
Roll mixture into 2.5 cm-sized balls. Place onto baking paper-lined trays, allowing room for spreading. Lightly press down onto each cookie with a fork.
Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool on trays.
Once cookies cool, melt dark chocolate in a bowl over simmer water on the stove (make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water)
Dip cookies into the chocolate, then crumble pretzels over the chocolate

All that’s left is to eat them!! Luckily this Christmas, I got a new bike (pictured here) and can work these off!!) What are your favourite cookies?

Chocolate Freckle Cookies

Nothing says party time like sprinkles!! Dash and I are off to a two year old’s birthday party, and decided to make some cookies to bring along. Unfortunately Dash is still too little to eat these yet, but I’m sure they will become a favourite as he gets older!!

These were nice and easy, and the dough can be made in advance.

I used this recipe from Mums in the Mix.

Ingredients

125g butter, softened
¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1½ cups plain flour
¼ cup self-raising flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
200g dark chocolate, melted
⅓ cup hundreds and thousands

Method

Beat butter, sugar and egg in small bowl with electric mixer until combined. Stir in sifted dry ingredients, in two batches.
Knead dough on floured surface until smooth; roll dough between sheets of baking paper until 5mm thick. Cover, refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees or 160 fan-forced. Grease oven trays; line with baking paper.
Cut rounds from dough using a circle cutter. Place on oven trays.
Bake for about 12 minutes, and cool on wire racks.
Spread tops of cookies with chocolate; sprinkle with hundreds and thousands (I found it easiest to put hundreds and thousands on a saucer and just dip the cookies straight in it). Set at room temperature.

Serve with a glass of milk for optimum deliciousness!

Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies

It’s a cold and rainy winter’s day in Sydney….what better to do than to bake cookies!! I also suggest baking cookies in the following situations:

When avoiding doing work
When avoiding cleaning the house
When avoiding study commitments
When avoiding going to the gym!!

One of my first blog posts in 2013, was a recipe for Tollhouse cookies, one of my all time favourites!! Today I decided to try something different, with the addition of oats….and these babies were delicious!! Easy to make (and too easy to eat *hangs head in shame*). Whilst these aren’t exactly health food, the addition of oats makes them lower GI than regular chocolate chip cookies.

I used this recipe from BBC Food Network:

Ingredients:

150grams butter (room temperature)
100 grams caster sugar
80 grams tightly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour (250 grams)
1&1/4 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bi-carbonate soda
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 packet milk or dark chocolate chips

Method:

Pre-heat over to 180 degrees celsius
Line baking trays with baking paper
Cream butter and sugars together with an electric mixer. Add egg and vanilla and continue to beat with mixer until light and creamy.
In a second bowl, combine flour, bi-carb, baking powder, oats and chocolate chips
Gradually add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and beat to combine.
Roll cookies into 2cm balls, and space 5cm apart on baking trays
Bake for 8-10 minutes
Transfer to a wire rack for cooling

Don’t forget to enjoy with a glass of milk!!

dress - Yumi Kim

lipstick - Mac Pink Pigeon