Sweet potato biscuit stars: a dairy free, egg free, sugar free weaning recipe

Sweet potato biscuit stars have been a hands down winner in our house this week - little mouthfuls of lightly spiced, naturally sweet biscuit are an ideal accompaniment to a midmorning beaker of oat milk, or as a pudding to go with some coconut yoghurt. Dairy, egg, soya and sugar free they are wildly simple to make, and for a bubba in his seventh week of a streaming cough and cold and his second week of cutting canines they were one of the only foods he didn't fling heavenwards.

I made these using the food processor, but a decent masher or ricer would mean they would easily make by hand. Similarly, I've used coconut oil but Pure dairy free spread, or Vitalite would work, as would gluten free flour. The biscuits keep nicely in an airtight tin, and I tend to view a portion as two of the little stars.

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Sweet Potato Biscuit Stars

by Penelope Reader October-10-2015

A dairy free, egg free, sugar free weaning recipe

Ingredients

• 150g Cooked Sweet Potato
• 180g Plain flour
• 60g Coconut Oil
• ½tsp Ground mixed spice
• ¼tsp Ground cinnamon

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160ºC 2. Line a cookie sheet with greaseproof paper 3. Peel, chop, and boil/microwave/bake your sweet potato. Allow to cool 4. Put the sweet potato into the bowl of your food processor (or mash thoroughly and mix the rest of the ingredients by hand). 5. Add the flour, spices and coconut oil to the food processor bowl and pulse until the dough comes together into a ball. 6. Liberally dust your worktop with flour, and roll out the dough until it is about ¼" thick. 7. Cut out the shapes, and put them on the lined cookie sheet 8. Briefly knead the leftover dough, reroll and cut out shapes. Repeat until you have used all the dough. 9. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. 10. Cool on a wire rack.

Details

Prep time: 10m Cook time: 35m Total time: 45mYield: 20 small biscuits

Whatever you do, don't turn your back while trying to take photos or this might just happen...

Chocolate chip and pretzel cookies

Salty and sweet is a thing. A real honest to goodness thing. I was out with my lovely sister and my genius nephew (true story) a couple of weeks back, we popped into M&S ostensibly for a cardigan and picked up an elderly lady (also true story) and some chocolate and caramel pretzel bites. We demolished them happily, as Noah napped and removed his socks in the back of the car. 

I went away that evening thinking about those sweets (what can I say? I need to get out more) and wondering if I could make those flavours work in a cookie. Pinterest threw up a few suggestions but as it tends towards American recipes I wasn't entirely sold on their ingredients. 

When Nigella Express came out I made her Totally chocolate, chocolate chip cookies a handful of times, whilst I love them, they are amazingly rich and sometimes the chocolate feels a bit headachey. Plus M can't eat dark chocolate as it makes him feel sick. So I needed to adapt the recipe and this is my adaptation of that

Chocolate chip and pretzel cookies

125g milk chocolate, melted (I used leftover Christmas and Easter chocolate)
150g flour
30g Cadbury's drinking chocolate (the one you make up with milk)
1 tsp bicarb
1/2 tsp salt
125g softened butter
50g white sugar
75g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
200g chopped up chocolate - a mix of white and milk
150g pretzels (about 2 handfuls) lightly crushed - reserve about 24 whole ones

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a cookie sheet with baking parchment
Beat the butter and sugar in your mixer (or with a hand beater)
Add the melted chocolate, egg and vanilla continuing to beat until well combined
Fold the flour, bicarb drinking chocolate and salt into the batter
Stir in the chopped chocolate and pretzels 

Using a tablespoon measure out big dollops (technical term) of cookie batter onto the sheet. Don't press them flat as the mixture spreads, so leave big gaps between the spoonfuls. I can fit about 8 cookies at once on a sheet. 
Top each ball of batter with a whole pretzel - just push it lightly into the cookie

Bake for 15 minutes - remove from the cookie sheet straightaway with a spatula and cool on a wire rack - this helps mine stay smooshy in the middle (which is how I prefer them). If you like your cookies crispy then cool them on the tray for 5-10 minutes first as they'll continue to cook using the residual heat from the tray. 

This mix makes at least 24 cookies and they keep in an airtight tin for up to 5 days. You can freeze the original Nigella recipe - but I don't think you could with the pretzels as they would go soggy. 

Just a note for the Guiders out there - I know that our girls would go mad for these - try doing them with teaspoonfuls of mix instead of tablespoons and you'll get - 2-3 times as many! As they're such a quick bake (and in smaller measures would be even quicker, 9-10 mins) they're ideal for a chocolate badge evening, or to be bagged up for a bake sale, father's day or mother's day treats... well the list is endless so I'll leave the reason up to you.

Comic Relief Baking with the Guides

Last week I posted the Activity plans for our unit's Comic Relief bake. We baked and decorated the cookies tonight and the girls have been sent home, tasked with raising as much money with them as they can! 

I thought I'd share the pictures of one of my activity plans in progress. 

As an update - two batches of biscuit dough made 70 biscuits (well 74, but I forgot about the last lot that were in the oven) 

Comic Relief cookies: Activity plan

We've got a new guide starting on Tuesday, and I always like to make sure that there's something interesting happening when we know we have a new girl joining us. Especially if she's not been a Brownie. If you're not used to Guiding coming face-to-face with 20 noisy and slightly hyperactive girls that you've not met before can feel a bit overwhelming, so it's good to know I've got something in hand. 

Of course it's Comic Relief next week, so my thoughts have naturally hopped to red nose based baking (come back tomorrow for fairy cakes) In order to get all the Guides done with a batch whatever we made had to be a quick bake  - these take 15 minutes in the oven tops. As always they're cheap to make - 1 batch should make enough for 2 patrols of 6-8 girls, so you should only need 2 sets of ingredients. If you've got more than 24 girls I'd do another lot. 

	For reference, Guides are aged 10 – 14 Break the girls up into Patrols/ groups of 6-8
Red nose cookies
Equipment: Round cookie cutter/ or a clean cup or mug Baking trays Greaseproof paper rolling pin Mixing bowl Electric beaters or strong arms Clean hands
Ingredients: 750g plain flour 250g butter (Basics/ Economy butter is perfect – but make sure it’s well softened) 250g caster sugar 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla essence/extract This makes about 30 cookies (depending on your cutter size) so should split between 2 patrols of 6-8 girls. I've done costings for 2 batches, working on the basis of 4 patrols.	If doing this with Guides it is an ideal Patrol cooking activity – they could do challenges to earn or win the ingredients. Or you could challenge them to do the most creative Comic relief themed icing
Instructions: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C Wash your hands Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy Beat the egg and add in Add the vanilla and beat again Add the flour in thirds beating well to combine Tip the dough onto a floured worktop/ a table Roll out until about 1cm thick and cut out as many circles as you can (with the cup, mug or scone cutter) before re-rolling the trimmings and repeating until you have used up all your dough Line your baking sheets with greaseproof Put the cookies on the tray and put them in the preheated oven for 13 minutes. If they’re not golden, then give them a couple more minutes.	Safety notes: Make sure that the girls are supervised in the kitchen.  And that they don’t leave you the washing up! For Brownies/ younger Guides – or if you have shorter meetings: You could make these in advance, and get the girls to ice and decorate them. You could even get rich tea biscuits and get the girls to decorate those if you don't have much in the way of space, time or kitchen equipment. Usual kitchen safety rules/ washing up apply.
Decorating ideas ·         Why not make glace icing, and use red food colouring to dye it red? ·         Or find the girls a selection of icing and coloured sweets and see what they come up with? Notes: You could always sell these as a fundraiser, I reckon you could sell them for 50p each – unless you’ve got some potential candidates for The Apprentice, in which case the sky’s the limit!  Costings - I've checked out on mysupermarket.co.uk and Asda is the cheapest, coming in at £6.02 for 2 batches which works out at 25p per head in a unit of 24 girls

Coffee and cake in High Barnet

How do you take yours? 

Until early last year I was a Caramel macchiato type girl; skinny, extra hot, with stroopwaffles please. And then I saw an infographic about calorie content of popular coffee drinks and had to have a rethink. So I turned to the Americano, a bit dull - but didn't have that sickly aftermath of the milkier drinks and is considerably cheaper. 

Now without wishing to mire my blog in economics and politics - it is relevant to note that the whole tax furore kicked off. I believe that everyone should pay their fair share of tax so was somewhat outraged at the tax evasion exploits of those major chains that populate our high streets. It didn't deter me completely, but was another nail in the coffin. 

A few weeks back I was in High Barnet and noticed a new shop Harris & Hoole. Inside it's steamy windows was a higgledy piggledy collection of battered chairs, some squishy sofas and huge blackboards showing calendars with events and activities (including baby yoga - how cool is that? I may need to borrow the nephew to try that out!) 

Under the glass display cabinet are a selection of sandwiches and cakes. The ubiquitous cupcakes were not making an appearance, but lots of loaf cakes, some cookies and the world's largest brownies (not Brownies).  We dashed in, securing a table and I ordered a latte, a cappuccino, a white chocolate cookie and a brownie. 

I was somewhat surprised to be handed what looked a little like a cross between a remote control and a mobile phone (M says to say 1990's vintage) We were told that when our coffees were ready it would buzz at as. Very high tech! And as we sat and read - a necessary part of  ensuring that coffees and teas are brewed correctly for the best taste. 

The coffee comes from the same people my last coffee based interaction was focused around: Union Roasted Like the workshop in Brighton, the focus is on single estate coffee that's in the main fairly traded (where it doesn't meet the fair trade regulations, it's still directly traded (click the link for details). 

The coffees were neither bitter, nor hot milkshakes, but much stronger and more flavourful than either of us are used to. Not that that's a bad thing - far from it, we both really enjoyed our drinks. The cafe was lovely and busy when we went in, the staff super friendly and chatty. We'll definitely be back. 

The white chocolate cookie was full of white chocolate chunks, and not flooby at all. Contrary to normal coffee shop offerings it tasted of butter, vanilla and white chocolate not leaving that oily film in your mouth. 

And now for my brownie. I should warn you that I have very high standards for brownies. I've been spoiled by Utterly Scrummy's confections and loathe loathe loathe the powdery, cakey, dry offerings that abound. In fact I almost never order them. This definitely was neither cakey nor dry - it was lovely, dense, fudgey and if anything? Slightly too rich and certainly too big. I can't believe it either. 

The baked offerings are made in house daily (I'm not sure if 'in house' is central and transported out to the cafes, or in each location) and come in a little cheaper than the high street alternatives.  

If you have a Harris & Hoole near you, I would definitely suggest a visit, a coffee (or a tea) and a cake. 

This isn't a sponsored post, I just really liked it this much.

Christmas Eve cookies

It's odd that on Christmas Eve I found myself rolling out cookie dough, baking and icing it. Obviously ensuring that Father Christmas has freshly baked goodies in the hope that this'll excuse my innate badness!

Christmas Eve cookies

250g unsalaried butter
250g caster sugar
1 egg
750g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract

Make sure your butter is really soft. I left it out on the worktop overnight.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
Beat the egg and add in
Add the vanilla and beat again
Add the flour in thirds beating well to incorporate
Tip what is now dough onto a floured surface and bring together with your hands
Split the dough into 2 portions, wrap each in cling film and put in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C
When the dough is chilled. Flour your surface before rolling out. I try to keep the dough in roughly a square by rotating the dough a quarter turn between each roll.
Cut out your shapes, we made stars. Keep bringing the offcuts together and re-rolling until you have no dough left
Cook on baking trays lined with grease proof paper for 13 minutes
Cool on wire trays

Glacé/ water icing

4 dessert spoons icing sugar
Splash water to make a runny paste
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Mix up a runny paste of icing and tip into a saucer
Dip each cookie into the icing so the top is covered and putting it back on the wire rack to dry

To make mine particularly Christmassy, I crushed up candy canes in my pestle and mortar and sprinkled it over the cookies

Christmas perfection. Apparently they'll be being left out for Father Christmas with sherry

Merry Christmas

Meal planning Monday: would anyone else like to do this for me?

Now, don't get me wrong, I love to cook. I write a food blog, that much is obvious. I am the woman who, 5 weeks in to a chronic migraine thought making 17 jars of marmalade was a good move. Today, this week, I just can't be bothered. Quite frankly my student diet of pasta/ marmite on toast for the whole week would be fine. If I weren't trying to be healthy. It seems even having a reason to be healthy isn't motivation enough to want to cook when you're flat out exhausted. It's obviously because I'm back at work and what's left of the gray matter is working again. But still, cooking? Eating? Meh! Not so much.

I think in part it comes down to that time of year as well, the fresh colours of daffodils, and crocuses aren't out yet, the days are getting interminably slowly longer, it's too cold, too grey, and I just feel bleurgh. Interestingly since leaving hospital I've been taking supplements and I'm hoping that they're going to start taking effect, but as anyone knows they need to be backed up by a nutritious diet. So, incredibly slowly and with much prevarication, here is this week's meal plan (deliberately styled to restock my freezer with easy midweek meals):

Monday: Spaghetti bolognaise, with cabbage instead of pasta for me

Tuesday: Chicken, leek, butternut squash and barley casserole

Wednesday: Butternut squash, chorizo and cannelini bean chilli

Thursday: Leftovers from one of the above

Friday: As M will be at his parents, probably steamed fish and greens

I'm seeing a friend who's a pescatarian at the weekend, so I'm not sure what I'm cooking. Or even if I'm cooking! I have promised M's parents a roast at mine (probably that pork shoulder again) on Sunday as they're helping to ready his house to go on the market.

Baking wise, I've got a salted caramel and chocolate brownie recipe to try out to take to a team meeting on Friday as a thank you for my colleagues who have picked up my classes while Mr migraine has left me indisposed. I also really fancy some dark chocolate so am going to make some triple chocolate cookies from a scribbled recipe I got at a Guiders weekend some years back. Far too good for Guides though! Although I suspect they would be an actual cure for any camp injury/ homesickness!

I'm also going to restart my starter. Mabel is sadly no longer with us, and in lieu of anyone having a starter that has a baby I could pinch, I shall start my own. Or something *vague*

Lunch wise, I really fancy a good soup but Riverford are sending me salady veg this week so it'll be homemade aubergine houmous and crudites.

Breakfast is still porridge, I am loving it and I think it's helping my calcium levels too as I have upped it from water to half and half water and milk. With a big dollop of unsweetened, stewed apples, a pinch of cinnamon and a sprinkle of dark brown soft sugar. I'm a happy bunny till lunchtime.

Well, I'd better do the online shop to get this lot started I suppose. D'you think M will do the ironing if I bribe him with a triple chocolate cookie?

Now, be sure to pop over to At Home with Mrs M to see what everyone else is up to

4th Friern Barnet Guides do... Random Bakes of Kindness (part 2)

 

So here we are again... part 2 of our ongoing series of Random Bakes of Kindess. Inspired by Vanessa Kimbell's idea earlier this year, Fourth Friern Barnet Guides will be baking, and blogging a bake each week for someone who has touched their life in some way; be it big, or small.

Today's bake was chosen and made by Maria (see below) and she gave it to Jade one of our other Guides. No words were exchanged at the giving, but these two are inseparable, lovely girls. Look at the pride here!

Maria chose to make Mocha vanilla latte cookies that she cut out into star shapes - what you can't see here is that she made small stars, and big stars too, some were vanilla, others coffee

1 sachet instant latte

1.5 tsp hot water

225g softened butter (again, Stork)



140g caster sugar

1 egg yolk lightly beaten

250g plain flour

1tsp vanilla extract

3tbsp cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees/ Gas mark 5

Make the instant latte powder into a paste with hot water in a little bowl

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg yolk.

Divide the mixture in half, beat the latte into one half, and add half the flour and salt into the mixture and stir until combined

Shape the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge (allegedly for 30-60 minutes, but we popped it in the freezer for half an hour - we only meet for 2 hours and need to clear up too!)

Beat the vanilla extract into the other half of the mixture, then add the rest of the flour and the cocoa powder and salt

Stir until combined and again shape the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill.

Unwrap both flavours of dough, roll out and cut out cookies.

Bake in a preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.

*Guides pictured have full photo permissions

Chocolate caramel shortcake

I know. It would seem I've finally run out of showtunes to link even somewhat tenuously to blog posts. I haven't allowed myself a Google, but this truly is a sad day. Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly (when the current muscle spasm and resulting painkiller consumption has passed I expect).

Recently I was digging through my cookery book pile; Nigella at the top, Jamie below, Gordon untouched at the bottom of the heap. When I came across a Christmas present from my sister The Cookie and Biscuit Bible. I had a vague memory of a blogpost from someone else about chocolate caramel biscuits so rifled through the book looking for said recipe (link to original post here) Pleased to see that the recipe required a family sized bar of Cadbury's Caramel Dairy Milk, I was a happy bunny - perhaps the Caramel bunny. Anyone remember her?

Anyhow, the recipe requires you to make a shortbread type biscuit, which you use to encase, ravioli style, a square of caramel chocolate. When baked the result is a gooey, chocolatey centre in a buttery shortbread.

Chocolate Caramel Shortbread

from The Cookie and Biscuit Bible.

150g self raising-flour

90g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

50g caster sugar

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large bar of caramel chocolate

Icing sugar and cocoa for dusting

Put the flour and butter into a food processor and process until you have fine crumbs.

Add the sugar, egg yolk and vanilla extract and process to a smooth dough.

Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough out fairly thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut out rounds using a smallish biscuit cutter.

Place one chocolate square on each cookie round and then lay a second piece of cookie on top. Pinch the edges of the dough together to seal and enclose the caramel chocolate.

See, it really does look like ravioli!

Place on a baking sheet and put in the fridge while the oven heats up.

Bake at 200ºC for about 10-12 minutes until just turning golden.

Cool on a wire rack and then dust with icing sugar and cocoa powder.

These disappeared remarkably quickly and didn't even make it to work on Monday. What can I say? They were just there every time we had a cup of tea!

Next time: If I can steal the camera from my boyfriend - sushi, if not then outdoor cooking with the Guides. Anyone for dampers?

A serious oversight on my part

For which I humbly, truly and sincerely apologise. I have had serious words with myself and as I type in the process of rectifying the situation...

Chocolate. Five and a half months of blogging (bloggage perhaps?) and not one post on chocolate. To my eternal shame. The odd passing mention when talking about the goodness that is cupcakes but that's it. And I'm a woman, as far as I'm concerned chocolate is a food group all by itself. As I said, my eternal shame.

However, as I type 6 of Nigella's Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Nigella Express) are in the oven. And they smell good. She says herself that they are "chocolatey to the point of madness" and she may be right. But Holy Hell the mixture was as close as anything I have ever tasted has come to a full on cure for all ills (patent pending). Now I do think Nigella's suggestion that you bake half and freeze half, is possibly the nearest thing to insanity I have ever seen in print, but then I haven't tasted one. Yet. The plan is to have 2 as pudding sandwiched together with some vanilla icecream I've found in the freezer (when I say found I do mean forgotten about otherwise ice cream doesn't last more than one Saturday night in this house). Seeing as I fully intend to be ensconsed in pyjamas and under a blanket by the time Pushing Daisies comes on I feel that a fabulously kitsch and retro ice cream sandwich may be the perfect accompaniment.

Going back to the matter in question (that was Chocolate in case my rambling had meant you've forgotten) I would just like to dwell, for a moment on the "chocolatey to the point of madness" quote. These cookies contain:

125g dark chocolate
30g cocoa
350g dark chocolate chips

In other words, thats a HELL of a lot. Not that I'm complaining, not me, not at all. In fact the only complaining going on here is that 18 minutes plus cooling time seems to be a very long time to wait for some chocolatey goodness. Not that I'm impatient, and checking the oven between sentences. Nope. 15 minutes.



I think I'll upload some pictures to distract myself from the fact that there's 12 minutes to go. Enjoy...

Batch Cooking. Or. The one in which Pen discovers the goodness that is tupperware and feels her age

I have earned my badge back this weekend!

As promised this weekend was filled with baking, and a variety of dishes all cooked, then promptly snatched away from interested parties to be frozen. Yes, I did overlook the fact that I also needed to eat this weekend... so you've guessed it yes, I was on the soup. Again. Really, I'm actually looking forward to the summer so that I can move onto salad; I currently swish as I walk. And not in a good way. Where was I? Oh yes, cooking for the freezer.

Aside from the fact that for me this type of cooking is what I do best, and what makes me feel most at home, as I mentioned in my previous post I was in desperate need of this. So on Saturday I went shopping, I had a list of things I wanted to cook, a list of ingredients that I didn't already have. Five hours later I returned with a pair of Converse, 2 new bottles of nail polish and some new clothes. Ooops! Not entirely to plan. So it was soup for dinner. Again. *sigh*

On Sunday we tried again, and this time I even made it to Tesco. Excited? I was. Well aside from the fact that I loathe supermarkets, but on this occaision it was a necessary evil. Finally I got home, stocked up with ingredients. Apart from a couple of key ones... like mince.... and half of the things I needed for the curry. It's at times like this that I love my storecupboard.

So, I made a vegetarian chilli - which has the dreaded aubergine in it. And is actually OK, very hot, but I've been tempering it with natural yoghurt. Low fat no less... 3 portions are currently in the freezer, 3 have been eaten for meals this week.

I also made some more bread, another wholemeal loaf. And, granola. Which I'm not at all impressed with. It hasn't gone into crunchy lumps like I thought it would, and is very sweet. Definately too sweet for breakfast. Although I have tried it. Twice. Just to make sure. Said granola is now cookies... and works much better as cookies.

Oh I also made life-changing soup, and have the ingredients (but sadly neither the impetus nor the tupperware) to make some carrot and celeriac as well. All in all a good weekend's work, and the pinny got an outing.

Clearly my personal development should include being able to write a shopping list with all the ingredients I actually need on it, and then being able to come back with those ingredients and not shiny things...