Camembert and Sour Cherry Pastries

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Okay, so I know that I'm almost three weeks late. But I've just been so busy keeping my New Year's resolutions...*it's times like these I think I need a sarcasm font*

Considering one of my goals was to blog more, maybe you can tell that I'm not doing so well in the keeping-resolutions-department. However, absence makes the heart grow fonder or something, right? So really my laziness is a blessing in disguise to you guys :D

But enough about me - how about you guys? Did you have a nice Christmas and New Year? Unlike me, have you been able to actually begin to keep your New Year's resolutions so far? And would you like to learn how to make the most amazing camembert and sour cherry pastries? (Of course you would. Good answer.) Originally, I was meant to upload this as a finger food idea for a New Years Eve party idea...but that didn't really work out somehow. My suggestion is to just throw another party in honour of these pastries because they are just the cutest.

Anyway. I hope the next 49 weeks of your year are amazing and wonderful and everything else that people say on New Year's. Also, just a reminder that Christmas is in 340 days...

I'm so sorry. I'll stop now.

Kenz x

Camembert and Sour Cherry Pastries

2 sheets of puff pastry, thawed
Approximately half a round of camembert cheese
1/4 to 1/3 cup of unsweetened cherry jam - you could also use whatever preserves are usually served with cheese, if you wanted to
1 egg, beaten together with 1 tablespoon of milk
Sea salt

1. Cut each sheet of puff pastry into 24 rectangles. If you prefer larger or smaller pastries, then you can change the size to whatever you fancy - just make sure that it is an even number, so that each pastry has a lid.
2. Lay half of the rectangles on a baking tray. Brush with the egg mixture and lay a slice of camembert - rind and all - onto the rectangle. Top with a small teaspoon of jam and cover with a pastry lid. You may have to stretch the lid a little so that it fits over the top of the cheese-and-preserves.
3. Crimp the edges with a fork, or a fancy pastry crimper if you have one. I don't. Brush each parcel with more of the egg wash and sprinkle with sea salt.
4. Bake at 190C for 12 - 15 minutes, or until golden brown. I was a leetle bit impatient and so some of mine weren't quite brown enough. They can be served both warm and room temperature; if they're not all eaten in one sitting (which would surprise me greatly), they should be stored in the refrigerator.

I hope you enjoy!

 

Double Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookies

Do you know what the best thing in the world is?

No? You give up?

Eating one of these cookies, warm and straight out of the oven, after not having eaten for 40 hours.

Yeah. I can see you drooling already and I'm only three sentences in.

(Just in case you were wondering I was giving up food and talking for the 40 Hour Famine I wasn't just starving for fun. It's also not too late to head on over to my page and donate some money - www.40hf.com.au/cookie_kenz - $40 can feed a family of six for a month, you know...)

Anyway, the point of this post is really just short and (deliciously) sweet: these cookies are crunchy and chewy on the outside, warm and melty on the inside, and full of peanut buttery, chocolate chunky goodness.

You're welcome :)

Double Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookies

115g of butter, softened
1/2 cup of peanut butter (I used crunchy, but I'm sure you can use whatever you want)
1/2 cup of caster sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
1 cup of flour (I started off with one cup, but found it to be a little too wet, and ended up adding about another 1/4 of a cup)
1/2 teaspoon of bicarb soda
1 1/2 cups of chocolate chunks (I chopped up dark and white chocolate, mainly because we didn't have any chips left...)

1. Beat the butter and peanut butter until pale. Add the sugars and beat for about a minute, then add the egg and vanilla until combined.
2. Stir in the flour, bicarb and chocolate until combined. If it's too wet, add up to another 1/4 cup of flour, or refrigerate for 10 - 15 minutes.
3. Scoop spoonfuls onto baking trays lined with baking paper, and bake at 190C for 9 - 11 minutes (depending upon how chewy or crunchy you like your cookies).
4. Leave to cool on wire racks.

(The cookie was so warm and gooey that it just fell apart, haha)

Muffins

Yo.



So are you ever baking, and have the sudden realisation of how much butter you just put into that bowl of icing? Or pour a couple of cups of sugar into the fudge and wonder, "Is this stuff seriously all that great for me?"

I'll admit it, those thoughts don't come around very often. Generally, I'm more that happy to use a couple of blocks of butter for croissants, or pour a container of cream into the caramel sauce. However, I stumbled across this recipe a while ago and I was intrigued by the ingredients...or lack thereof. Since then, I've been refining and perfecting the recipe to my taste and am super excited to present it to you :D

Let's get cracking!



Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of plain Greek yoghurt
2 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarb soda
Flavourings: this time, I did raspberry and white chocolate  in one batch, and apple and cinnamon in another. However, you could very easily change the recipe to add blueberries, mashed bananas, chocolate chips, macadamias...whatever your little heart desires! ;)

1. Line your muffin tins with foil or silicone liners - paper just doesn't seem to work very well with this recipe. If you don't have foil or silicone, then just grease the baking tins well with butter or oil.
2. Put all of the ingredients excluding your flavourings (eg, raspberries and white chocolate chunks) into a blender or food processor and and process until the oats are smooth. The mixture will be quite runny, but if you let it sit for ten or so minutes, the oats soak up the moisture to make a thicker batter.
3. Stir in the flavourings. I had about 1/2 cup each of raspberries and chopped chocolate for one half of the batter, and then finely chopped up a green apple and added a teaspoon of cinnamon for the other half. They were both delicious!
4. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins and bake at about 175C for 25-30 minutes.

  

Good Morning! | A Breakfast Post

Mornings on weekends. I don't know...there's just something relaxing about them; well, apart from the obvious yes-it's-the-weekend-I-don't-have-to-go-to-school-and-work-so-instead-I'll-just-sleep-in sort of reason. Although, in my reasoning, you have to wake up early to enjoy a sleep in.

Anyway, this particular morning, we had leftover buttermilk from something (goodness only knows what), so mum and I colab-cooked buttermilk pancakes (colab meaning she made herself gluten-free and I made my brothers and myself normal pancakes. For gluten free, hers were pretty good).

This is a really easy recipe (not that pancakes are especially hard), and it sort of changes every time we make it...blueberries one week, raspberries next, buttermilk or vanilla or I think once even choc chip...hmm. I should do that again.

So yeah. Here's the recipe:

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes:

(Feeds about four extra hungry people, or six relatively normal appetite-d people)

1 cup of self raising flour

Pinch of salt

2 tbs of caster sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup of buttermilk

1 tbs of melted butter

Vanilla extract

(Approx. 1/4 cup of extra regular milk because buttermilk can be very thick)

1. Put the flour, salt and caster sugar in a medium bowl. Mix to combine.
2. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs. Stir until it's sort of a thick paste/until there are no lumps. Lumps are evil...
3. Add the buttermilk gradually, with the melted butter and vanilla extract until combined. Now this is the only "tricky" point: if the batter is to thick (if it drops off the spoon really slowly), add a tablespoon of regular milk at a time until it is thin enough to pour.
4. Fry on a preheated and buttered frying pan until small bubble for on top of the pancake. Flip over and cook until brown on the other side.
5. Spread/drizzle with your topping of choice. Some of my personal favourites are: butter and maple syrup; jam and cream (like pikelets); bacon, whipped cream and maple syrup--don't judge me! :); and I'm sure most people would put bananas and blueberries or something on their pancakes, but I can't stand bananas so I'm not going to suggest that.

Other variations of this recipe can be such as-

• Plain pancakes: omit the buttermilk and use regular milk.
• Oat pancakes: weird as this might sound, oat pancakes are soo good and much healthier for you. Add 2/3 cup of rolled oats to the flour at the beginning; however, when extra oats are added more milk must also be added. Oats make the mixture really dry!
• Berry pancakes (blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, etc.): add 1/2 - 1 cup of berries once all liquid has been added.
• Choc chip: add 1/3 - 1/2 cup of choc chips to flour at the beginning...maybe these should be eaten as dessert pancakes?
• Gluten free pancakes: umm, basically just use gluten free self raising flour (or plain gluten free flour with 2 tsp of baking powder). I tried one of mum's and I couldn't tell the difference between GF and regular. Seriously.

What are your thoughts on toppings? Or variations? Or pancakes? Or...what are you thinking in general?

Happy Mothers' Day!

Well, the title says it all. Happy Mothers' Day! I hope that all mothers out there have had some sort of special breakfast/lunch/dinner/chocolate/food.

If you haven't given anything to your mum yet, try these cookies that I made this morning. They're easy, really quick and so versatile! I just decorated them with a simple lemon icing, but you could use any icing, or any filling that you think would work :)


Sugar Cookies

• 125g of butter, softened
• 1/2 cup of caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Line baking trays with paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, beat until combined. Sift flour and baking powder over butter mixture and stir until combined.
3. Roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper until 1/2 cm thick. Cut with cookie cutters (I used hearts, for mothers' day), place on trays and bake for 10-15 minutes. Decorate as required :)

For my icing, I just juiced 1/2 a small lemon, and added enough icing sugar and a few drops of red food colouring; but really, you can do whatever takes your fancy. 

Makes between 40-60, depending on how big your cutters are.

Rainy Days | {Easy-as Chocolate-chip Cookies}

Yup. How clever am I? Two posts in under two weeks? I should pat myself on the back (only I won't, because I hate it when anybody says that to me. I mean, seriously: pat myself on the back?). But, yeah. Anyway. I really am trying to post a lot more often on my blog; I feel so bad when I see it, just sitting up on my bookmarks bar, getting all dusty because I never click on it. You may have already noticed that I have a bit of a new look; and I am also currently trying to create a badge for my site. If  anyone has any suggestions for a sort of tagline or something, that would be great :) Either leave it in the comments, or email me at raspberries.and.cream.blog@gmail.com

Anyway, back to the actual cooking. I made theses cookies a few days ago, intending to photograph them and put them up here, but then I realised that my family had eaten them all and it was a bit late to take a photo of them (the cookies, I mean. Not my family). So I made another batch, just for you guys! But seriously, they are so easy and so versatile. I have changed the recipe so many times, it's not funny, You can add any time/mixture of chocolate, nuts, M&M's, caramel-stuff, whatever. Although, when I was younger I tried to add marshmallows...yeah. That didn't work out so well. Anyway, I am really enjoying myself, typing this out and eating cookies on a cold rainy day, so I'd better let you have the recipe so that you can do the same!

{Chocolate-chip Cookies}
125g of butter, melted
1/2 cup of firmly-packed brown sugar
1/3 cup of caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp of vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups of self-raising flour
1 cup of choc bits (it's meant to be dark choc bits, but with the ones I made I didn't have enough dark ones so I used white ones. But that still wasn't enough, so I chopped up a block of chocolate. See what I mean about versatile? Basically, just add one cup of stuff, whether it be chocolate, nuts, raisins, whatever. Your decision)

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
2. Put the butter and sugars into a bowl, mix until combined. Add the egg and vanilla, beat rapidly for about 30 seconds. It sort of goes smooth and shiny and a bit thicker--this was my own discovery :)
3. Add the flour and choc bits (or "filling"), and stir until combined. Roll tablespoons or so of the mixture into balls, place on baking trays (well apart, they spread), and flatten with a the back of a spoon or your hand.
4. bake for 10-13 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool on baking trays.

And that's seriously it! Sooo easy :)

My picture sort of failed because it's night time... :\