Pecan Molasses Lace Cookies

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I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

But there is always a quest for the best accompaniment to my, your, our péché mignon ­– which, believe it or not, literally translates into cute sin! Fresh fruit, crême Chantilly, chocolate or butterscotch fudge sauces…as far as your sweet tooth and imagination can go!

I made these oversized lace cookies to go with my chocolate sorbet, and they bring the perfect buttery sweetness and crunch to balance its rich and intense flavour. They are quick and easy to make. I just melted together butter, fancy molasses and sugar, and stirred in Madagascar vanilla extract, chopped pecans, and flour. I dropped the dough onto lined baking sheets and baked the cookies for 12 mins until golden brown. I left the lace cookies on the baking sheet for 2 mins, until cooled but malleable enough to handle, and I transferred them onto a rolling pin for shaping before cooling on the rack. Feel free to try and enjoy them with any other ice cream!

Ingredients for 1 dozen oversized cookies:

¼ cup butter

¼ cup fancy molasses

¼ cup crystallised sugar

¼ teaspoon Madagascar vanilla extract

½ cup pecans

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. In a small saucepan, stir together butter, molasses, and sugar over medium high heat, until melted.

3. Coarsely chop the pecans.

4. Remove from heat and stir in Madagascar vanilla extract, chopped pecans, and flour.

5. Line one or two baking sheets with parchment paper.

6. Drop the dough using a tablespoon onto lined baking sheets, leaving 3 inches between the mounds to allow the cookies to expand.

7. Bake the cookies for 12 mins until golden brown.

8. Leave the lace cookies on the baking sheet for 2 mins, until cooled but malleable enough to handle.

9. Transfer onto a rolling pin for shaping.

10. Cool completely on the rack.

Aniswood Cookies

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Still happily celebrating the return of Spring! Choke cherry trees and lilac are blossoming and their heady fragrances are attracting bees and wasps into our garden. I love waking up to the chirping of the sparrow and their chicks. I even surprised a couple of blue jays and cardinals playing underneath the arcs of water while I was watering the lawn.

Hard to do any cooking when the backyard is warm and inviting, but I made the quickest cookies in the world the other day.

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Simples comme bonjour!

18 mns flat, including baking! For these no-butter cookies, I just whisked all the ingredients together in a bowl and freshly grated aniswood bark into the batter. Yes, aniswood again. I just can’t get enough of this spice and, literally, I still have a bucketful to go through so no sense being stingy! Feel free to substitute with freshly ground fennel or anis seeds! Another point: unlike regular drop cookies, the dough is essentially a batter but do not fret! 15 mins in the oven and these cookies will keep your sweet tooth satisfied.

Ingredients for 3 dozen:

4 eggs

1½ cup sugar

1¾ cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon anis wood (Substitute with fennel seeds)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Mix eggs and sugar in a large bowl using a whisk.

3. Stir in the flour and the aniswood.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

5. Drop the disks of batter onto the lined baking sheet using a tablespoon.

6. Bake for 15 mns until golden.

7. Let cool on the baking sheet and store in an airtight container.

For other recipes using aniswood:

- Pain d'Epices

- Smokey Red Peppercorn Crusted Mahi Mahi on Sauteed Peas and New Potatoes

- Slow Braised Short Ribs

Almond Fruitcake Rum Balls

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Not sure about you, but I have been living Spring in full!

Witnessing the rebirth of my garden, watching every leaf, stem, and shoot turning into bud then flower almost overnight is such an invigorating experience!

Barely warming three weeks ago and, as we were busy raking the last remnants of winter off our yard, narcissi were blooming, peonies and daylilies were just poking out of the ground. Already then, I noticed that my ladybug friends were back on the budding birch tree.

One week later, the first tulip and crocus were opening their bright petals while the first chartreuse leaves appeared our rose bush.

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Very tempting to start any planting outdoors at that time, with the high risk of frost I decided for kitchen spring cleaning instead.

Perfect time to go through the pantry! I found a good chunk of Christmas cake– the best fruitcake ever, homemade packed with candied cherries, dried apricots and raisins, pecans (Note to self : Will have to blog the recipe sometime*). Adam and I LOVE this Christmas cake so much that we usually preserved it wrapped in plastic and foil, making last until Easter, lovingly basting it with dark rum or rye to keep it moist and germ-free.

With Easter being April this year, it was time to transform our fruitcake into rum balls.

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Wrong season for rum balls? Pas du tout!

Most recipes use graham crackers for their dough but why not recycle leftover fruitcake instead? Especially when all you have to do is to mix fruitcake crumbs with chopped nuts, cocoa, syrup, sugar and rum and roll the dough into balls.

The recipe I found in Canadian Living is so simple that you could use any leftover cake, including some of that spice loaf I made recently. I adapted it by replacing the pecans with unblanched almonds for which I doubled the amount. I also doubled the quantity of rum to make the dough more malleable, thus easier to roll, and easier to coat. The rum balls were firm enough after coating that I skipped the drying and refrigeration steps altogether.

I dove in right away: soft and sweet inside, crunchy outside…

Adapted from Canadian Living.

Ingredients for 1½ dozen rum balls:

2 cups almonds (I toasted unblanched almonds because their more earthy, richer taste)
1½ cup chopped fruitcake
2 tablespoons icing sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons corn syrup
¼ cup dark rum, preferably Madagascar rum

1. Toast almonds in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat until fragrant and light brown, tossing frequently to prevent them from burning.

2. Let cool to room temperature.

3. Chop the fruitcake in a food processor, pulsing to make fine crumbs, and transfer to a bowl.

4. Finely chop the toasted almonds using the food processor.

5. Add 1 cup of almonds to the fruitcake and transfer the rest to another bowl.

6. Stir in sugar, cocoa powder, corn syrup and rum to form a sticky dough.

7. Line a baking sheet with wax paper.

8. Roll the dough using one tablespoon of dough per ball. (Note: Rinse hands as needed)

9. Coat the balls with almond crumbs and place on prepared tray.

10. Enjoy ASAP (or refrigerate for up to one month if you can resist)

Sweet Black Olive Shortbread

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Le hasard fait bien les choses… So tasty I had to find a safe hiding spot for the tin!

Back from a three-day process engineering training! The gamut on operations, costs, efficiencies et al. Interesting, brain-twisting problems, but after being trapped in a classroom with only cafeteria fare for distraction, I just needed the buttery softness of shortbread cookies for comfort.

To make these cookies, I adapted Jamie Oliver’s recipe for basic shortbread without rolling the dough. It is very similar to the one I used for the vanilla sablés, without eggs or refrigeration step. Just like scones, shortbread comes in sweet as well as savoury flavours, ranging from chocolate and almonds, to rosemary and fleur de sel.

Why black olives? I was browsing through my fridge for a salty snack – a pickle, maybe, I stumbled upon my favourite Moroccan black olives from the Italian store and remembered about Pierre Hermé’s green olive macarons.

Bingo! Salty, but bold and creamy also…perfect flavour and texture to enhance my sweet shortbread. Just keeps me coming back!!!

Ingredients for 18 cookies:

2 cups cake or all-purpose flour

1 cup butter, diced and room temperature

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup crystallized sugar (instead of superfine, but pulverized using food processor)

2 tablespoons to ¼ cup greek-style Moroccan dry cured black olives

1. Cream butter and sugar using an electric mixer.

2. Sift flour and cornmeal into a bowl.

3. Pit and finely chop the olives, and stir into the flour.

4. Stir the flour mixture into the buttercream, until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

5. Preheat the oven to 300 F.

6. Line the bottom of a 9x9 inch pan with wax paper, and grease the sides with butter.

7. Press the coarse dough into the pan with floured hands (Do not worry if the dough is crumbly, because it will give the sablé texture to the shortbread)

8. Prickle the dough with a fork and bake for 50 mins, until lightly golden.

9. Let cool slightly and cut the cookies using a knife. (Similar to the sablés, the dough is soft to the touch)

10. Let cool completely before unmolding.

Lime Orange Mousse

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I would usually go for chocolate mousse, but this is my orange year!

Navel oranges, enormous crates of them, invaded our grocery stores this winter and spring! There is so much more to oranges than your daily breakfast juice. I have been enjoying every ray of sun from each section, simply tossed in fruit salad or in a spinach and strawberry salad.

After orange meringues, why not give a try to orange mousse. Just like for a hollandaise, the challenge of this dessert was getting the orange-yolk mixture to thicken over the double-boiler, but with patience, the result was well-worth the effort. The thicker, the better! This much lighter and healthier fruit version of the French classic makes a perfect, refreshing dessert, especially with one or two vanilla sablés.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

2 oranges

1 lime

1 cup whipping cream

1 tablespoon triple sec

½ cup sugar

1. Separate the eggs.

2. In a small bowl, stir together egg yolks, orange and lime zests, orange and lime juices, liquor and sugar.

3. Place the bowl on a double-boiler and gently whisk for 10-15 mins, until smooth and thickened. (Note: The yolk mixture should coat the back of a spoon.)

4. Cool to room temperature.

5. In another bowl, beat the egg whites using an electrical mixer until firm peaks form and fold into the egg yolk mixture.

6. Using an electrical mixer, whip the cream until soft peaks form and fold into the egg foam.

7. Refrigerate for at least 4 hrs before serving. (Tip: You can also make the mousse one day ahead)

Madagascar Vanilla Sablés

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After trying the pain d’épices, I was trying to remember all my favourite childhood snacks. Of course, sablés and palets bretons were one of them. Sablés and palets are the French shortbread cookies from Normandy and Brittany. I hope to find a recipe for palets; in the meantime, here are my sablés. Just as buttery as the Scottish cookie, their texture is slightly sandy, hence the name. Unlike other shortbread recipes, I thought that Madagascar vanilla would be perfect to enhance the delicate, nutty flavour of this cookie. Simple and delicious.

Ingredients for 3 dozen sablés:

1 ½ cup cake or all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons cornmeal
1 vanilla bean
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (Note: I make my own vanilla extract by letting the beans soak in dark rum. This method also helps preserve the vanilla beans, preventing them beans from drying)
1 cup unsalted butter, diced and at room temperature
1 cup icing (confectioner’s) sugar
2 egg yolks
1 pinch of salt

1. Sift flour, cornmeal and sugar into a bowl.

2. Cut the butter into the flour mixture, until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

3. Separate the egg yolks into a small bowl.

4. Slice the vanilla bean, scrape the vanilla seeds onto the yolks, and lightly mix in the extract with a fork.

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5. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture using a wooden spoon until obtaining coarse dough.

6. Divide the dough into two portions and transfer onto parchment paper.

7. Press and roll each portion into a 2 inch-diameter log using the parchment paper.

8. Refrigerate for at least 2 hrs (overnight if possible).

9. Preheat oven to 340 F.

10. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper

11. Once the logs are chilled, cut the dough into ½ inch discs using a serrated knife. (Tip: If the dough is crumbly, slightly pat the dough and put back into the fridge)

12. Place on baking sheet spaced 1 inch apart and bake for 10-12 minutes until just lightly golden on the edges.

13. At this point, the cookies are soft to the touch. Let cool on baking sheets until firm.

Chocolate Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

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Please, please! Make my favourite cookies, this time!

Which ones?

Well, I think that we can all relate to this piece of conversation!

I think that we just don’t want to admit it, we all love cookies! I like baking them, but I like eating them too. Truth be told, pleasing your loved ones is the best catalyst for baking cookies.

Everyone has a favourite cookie! Oatmeal cookies! We got oats, raisins and chocolate! Just for that! I know that, for the purist, I am missing chopped walnuts or pecans here. Well, I just wanted my buttery treats soft and chewy but you are most welcome to add nuts for crunch. Because, I was in spicy mood, I also decided to incorporate spices from my pain d’épices recipe into my cookies.

Ingredients for 4 dozen cookies:

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoon vanilla

1½ cup flour

1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cloves

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup Thompson raisins

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars using an electric mixer, until fluffy.

2. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

3. In a small bowl, mix flour, baking soda, salt and spices.

4. Incorporate the flour mixture to the buttercream.

5. Stir in oats, chocolate chips, and raisins.

6. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

7. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper.

8. Drop the cookie dough using a teaspoon onto the lined sheets. Make sure to leave 2 inches in between the mounds, because the cookies will flatten and spread upon baking.

9. Bake for 10 mins.

10. Cool on the baking sheet for 2 mins then on a wire rack.

Orange Meringues

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Custard-based recipes like ice-creams, crême brûlée, and tiramisu mainly require egg yolks, and you always end up with extra egg whites. One way to use up leftover whites is to make soufflé - and I will hopefully be able to share my taro root soufflé with you very soon! If you need to satisfy your sweet tooth and are not up to the challenge, a simpler way is to make meringues. Meringue cookies may seem intimidating for any beginner, but as long as you start with water- and grease-free utensils and bowls, these feather-light cookies will be a breeze to make!

Ingredients for 3-4 dozen cookies:

5 large egg whites (Tip: Make also sure that no yolk has slipped into your bowl when you separate your eggs !)

7 ounces icing sugar

Zest of 1 orange

1. Sift the icing sugar to ensure that there will be no lumps and zest the orange.

2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites using an electrical mixer until firm peaks form.

3. Slowly add the sugar while keeping the mixer on to obtain glossy peaks.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

5. Line baking sheets with parchemin paper.

6. Gently fold the zest into the whites and transfer into a freezer bag.

7. Cut one tip of the bag and pipe the whites onto the lined baking sheets, keeping about one inch between the cookies.

8. Bake for 1 hr, making sure not to open the oven door during the first 30 mns. (Tip: Try to bake all the cookies in one batch prevent the meringues from falling)

9. Let cool on a rack to room temperature.

Ginger and Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cookies

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Once again, I had to make something to satisfy my chocolate craving. Thinking back at the chocolate recipes that I have posted so far, I saw that I completely forgot to mention chocolate chip cookies! I love cookies and if you are like me, you will like yours extra decadent, moist and – most of all, with as much chocolate as they can hold. If you are desperate for chocolate fix, you will not be disappointed by these treats. The candied ginger adds extra-special sweetness and warmth to these brownie-like chocolatey cookies! Delish!

Ingredients for about 3 dozen cookies:

1 cup room-temperature, unsalted butter

1 cup crystallized sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1-2 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2 tablespoons buttermilk

1¾ cup all purpose flour

¾ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup chopped walnuts

½ cup chopped candied ginger

¾ cup dark chocolate chips

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter, sugars and vanilla using an electric mixer, until fluffy.

2. Beat in the egg, then the sifted cocoa and the buttermilk.

3. In a small bowl, mix flour and baking soda.

4. Add the flour mixture to the chocolate buttercream.

5. Stir in ginger, chocolate, and walnuts.

6. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

7. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper.

8. Drop the cookie dough using a teaspoon onto the lined sheets, leaving 2 inches in between the mounds.

9. Bake for 12 mins.

10. Cool for 2 mins before removing from the baking sheet.

Chocolate Orange Biscotti

Ingredients for 2-3 dozen Biscotti:

2 cups all purpose flour

¾ cup cornmeal

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon orange liqueur

2 tablespoons candied orange and lemon rinds

1 cup chocolate chips

1. Whisk the flour with the cornmeal, baking powder and salt in a small bowl.
2. Break the eggs in a large bowl and add the sugar.
3. Beat the eggs-sugar mixture until pale yellow and fluffy and add the orange liqueur.
4. Add the dry ingredients into the egg mixture and stir vigorously using a knife to give a soft and sticky dough.
5. Add the candied rinds and the chocolate chips. Let stand for 5 mns.
6. 
7. Preheat the oven to 325 F and line a large baking sheet with parchemin paper or foil.
8. Divide the dough into two and transfer onto the lined baking sheet.
9. Moisten your hands with water and shape the dough into logs.
10. Bake the logs for 35 mns.
11. Cool the lights brown logs for 5 mns and cut the logs into ½ in. slices until a serrated knife.
12. Arrange the slices on the lined baking sheet and bake for 25 mns.
13. Cool the browned biscotti on a rack and store in an air-tight container.