Pinwheel biscuits

By far my FAVOURITE biscuits I have ever baked. I have made them with a variety of fillings, nutella + almond meal works very well, adding cocoa to the biscuit dough is also nice.

(recipe from AWW cook - page 521)

Biscuit dough

1 1/4 cups self raising flour
100g butter, chopped
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon milk (may need more or less)


In a bowl, using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add flour and mix until crumbly (like bread crumbs). Add egg yolk, mix until combined. Add milk - enough to make it form a ball. Then take dough onto floured board and knead until it all comes together. Refrigerate 1 hour. Take out of fridge, roll into a rectangle. Spread filling onto it (all of the rectangle). Roll up on the long side, refrigerate for 30 minutes (makes it sooo much easier to slice). Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius (fan forced). Slice roll into 1cm pieces. Lay on lined baking tray, leaving room for spreading. Bake 20 minutes, transfer to wire racks to cool.


Fillings

jam

nutella

peanut butter

cinnamon sugar (spread a little milk onto dough rectangle first, so it sticks) - 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon.

Mangoes and cream croquembouche cupcakes

Mel's 26th birthday. I had NO idea what to bake. It had to be awesome, but silly me forgot to ask her what she wanted....PLUS no proper chocolate, mum only eats white.

Solution?

Mangoes and cream croquembouche cupcakes.

Cupcake = patty cake recipe + 1 can of sliced mangoes, pureed and added in.

Profiteroles

50 grams water
65 grams milk
pinch caster sugar
pinch salt
5o grams butter
65 grams self raising flour
2 eggs

Preheat oven 200 degrees celcius (fan forced). In a saucepan on low heat, combine butter, water, milk, sugar and salt and bring to the boil. Remove from heat, using a wooden spoon, mix in flour. Return to heat, mix for a further 2 minutes until mixture comes together and leaves the side of the pan (to cook out the flour). Remove from heat, allow to cool for 5 minutes. Add one egg, mix until combined. Add remaining egg, mix until glossy and thick. Spoon into a piping bag with a small nozzle (I used a flower tip). Pipe onto lined baking tray into small circles (leave some room for spreading). Bake for 15 minutes. Using a cake tester, pierce a small hole in each one, return to oven for 5 minutes to try inside out (turn oven off though).

Mango and white chocolate ganache filling

1/2 cup thickened cream
1/2 cup melted white chocolate
1/2 can mango slices, pureed

Add melted white chocolate to cream, using electric beater, mix until slightly thickened. Add mango puree, mix until combined. Spoon into piping bag with smallest nozzle. Push tip into hole in profiteroles and fill.

Once all the profiteroles are filled, melt more white chocolate. Spread white chocolate onto the top of the cupcakes. Dip profiteroles into melted chocolate and stack onto cupcake. Let cool at room temperature until hard.

They are soooooooo good!!

Choc-chip cookie dough cupcakes

Make half of the patty cake recipe (rainbow icecupcreamcakes). Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips, I used dark. Cook as per previous post.

(I made mini cupcakes)

Eggless cookie dough

1/2 cup wholemeal plain flour

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sweetened condensed milk

chocolate chips

In a bowl, rub butter into flour. Add brown sugar, salt and condensed milk. Mix until combined. You may need to add some more condensed milk if it is not coming together. Put half aside for frosting. Add chocolate chips to remaining half.

Cut the top off cupcakes, spoon on some chocolate-chip cookie dough, replace lid.

Frosting

50 grams butter

1/2 cup icing sugar

remaining cookie dough

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add cookie dough and cream until fluffy once more. Pipe onto cupcakes.

EAT!

Marshmallow Museli

I wanted to make something that was somewhat healthy but Freya, my niece, would eat. Result: homemade LCM bars, but with extra cereal.

Marshmallow Museli

1/2 cup rice bubbles

1/2 cup oats (toasted)

1/2 cup dessicated coconut (toasted)

2 weetbix, crushed

1/4 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

handful sunflower seeds

1/2 - 3/4 cup marshmallows

1 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter

Toast oats and coconut in oven. In bowl, put in all dry ingredients, including toasted ones, and mix. On medium heat, melt marshmallows and peanut butter. Add to dry ingredients, mixing fast as it dries quite quickly (If there is not enough 'wet', melt some more marshmallows). Spread out in a pan, I used a baking paper lined slice tray. Leave out on bench to set.

Pacman Biscuits

After spending a bit of time on google this week, I subconciously needed to do something pacman related. I also wanted to make more biscuits, but some ones with some different flavours. Homemade honey jumbles (from women's weekly - best of baking) came to the rescue.

Recipe

60g butter

1/4 cup brown sugar (recipe says 1/2 cup, but I used less as I knew the icing would be sweet)

3/4 cup golden syrup

1 egg

2 1/2 cups wholemeal flour

1/2 cup wholemeal self-raising flour

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon mixed spice

oven = 140 degrees fan forced

Combine butter, sugar and golden syrup in saucepan over low heat until sugar dissolves. Add everything else to saucepan, mix until combined. Knead dough onto floured surface until it is not sticky (note - this takes a fair while). Put in small freezer bag, refrigerate for 30 minutes. Get dough back out, roll and cut into rectangles (left over dough, I rolled into little balls, smooshed them on the baking tray = circles). Put in oven. 15 minutes

(If you want crunchy biscuits, set your oven at 180).

Take out of oven, let cool on wire rack.

Icing = icing sugar + water (failsafe recipe)

Put over biscuits and decorate (I used mini licorice allsorts cut into small pieces).

enjoy :)

Frozen rockets

Mum found these rocket ship ice-block holders at school, I obviously had to purchase them (I had seen them at Chalet at Gardo, but they were $25 there, these were only $10). What to put in them? Im not a fan of juice, so frozen juice rockets were not going to happen. So, out came the trusty women's weekly cookbooks - this recipe for frozen yoghurt pops comes from 'Super Diet', it makes eight, each is around 65 calories.

Recipe

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon powdered gelatine

1 1/2 cups frozen mixed berries, thawed
2 cups low-fat vanilla yoghurt (I used nestle diet because thats the one mum liked. Yoplait Forme is also pretty similar in calorie content).

Place water in small bowl (I used a coffee mug), add gelatine and mix well. Puree berries until smooth (you can strain it here to remove the seeds, I like crunchy so I didn't bother). Add berries and gelatine to yoghurt. Mix until combined. Pour into moulds. Freeze until solid.

If you have trouble getting them out of the moulds, run them under some cold water which will help release them.

(makes 8 at 64 calories each).

Cinnamon bun biscuits

Education psychology essay due next week = baking. I needed something healthy and yet different. I still have a number of anzac cupcakes, so I thought biscuits were needed.

I saw these on foodgawker:

http://http//www.ezrapoundcake.com/archives/4205

but had no cream, so decided to change them up a bit and make them healthier.

Biscuit

2 1/2 cups wholemeal self raising flour

1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups light evaporated milk + 1 tablespoon extra

Place dry ingredients in bowl. Slowly add milk, mixing until it forms a dough (you may need less or more milk). Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and roll out into a rectangle, about 1 cm thick. Brush the dough surface with the extra milk.

Cinnamon sugar filling

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

Sprinkle over dough. Roll dough up lengthways (using the long side) and slice into 1 cm thick round. Place onto cooking tray close together (do not leave a very big gap between each round, maybe 1 cm? Next time I am going to place them directly next to each other and see how it goes). Bake at 200 degrees for around 10 minutes. They will be crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

Yummy :)