Speedy Rosemary Sugar Cookies

I read this recipe by Sally's Baking Addiction for sugar cookies, and decided to make something very similar for my mother, who is a rosemary aficionado.  The cookies are super soft, smell strongly of rosemary, and are just fine without any topping-- though I think they're much prettier with the icing.
My take on the recipe takes less time than Sally's, because I skip the long chilling of the dough.  But do bear in mind that my kitchen is freezing-- if you are in a warmer house, you may want to chill the dough for an hour or so before baking the cookies, to avoid excessive spreading.





Ingredients:

For cookies:

♕1 stick / 115g unsalted butter at room temperature
♕3/4 cup / 220g white sugar
♕1 egg
♕1 tsp / 5mL vanilla extract
♕1 Tbsp / 3g rosemary leaves
♕2 tsp / 3g baking powder
♕1 1/2 cups / 190g white flour

For frosting:

♕3/4 cup / 100g powdered sugar
♕2-5 tsp / 5-20mL milk
♕1 tsp / 5mL vanilla
♕2 tsp / 2g rosemary leaves
♕1/4 tsp / .5g dried lemon zest

Procedure:

♕Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.
♕Beat butter until it is light and fluffy.
♕Cream sugar and butter, then stir in vanilla extract and egg.
♕Add rosemary leaves and stir until smooth.
♕In a separate bowl, combine baking powder, salt, and flour.
♕Mix dry and wet ingredients.
♕Roll dough into little columns, about half the size of your index finger, and about 1 inch/2cm diameter.
♕Place these dough columns far, far apart on the cookie sheets-- you'll end up with about 10 cookies per sheet.  The column shape makes the cookies tall and fluffy, not flat, as they spread out.
♕After rolling all of the dough, place the baking sheets in a cold place.  Fridge, freezer, or cold outdoors (covered, of course!)
♕Set oven to 350˚F / 180˚C.
♕Bake cookies for eight minutes.  They will be white when you take them out.
♕Let cool on sheets for about five minutes, then transfer to cooling rack.


Make the icing:
♕Combine powdered sugar, lemon zest, and rosemary.
♕Stir in vanilla extract, then add milk until everything is just smooth.
♕Immediately drizzle over cooled cookies and let harden for seven minutes.
♕Serve!

Walnut Scones

This is a recipe for simple walnut scones.  The dough can be very quickly assembled, and is not too sweet, but rather rich.  The scones kind of look like biscuits, but I'd like to think that their taste and smell make up for that discrepancy.  If you wish to make them look more dessert-like, you could sprinkle the dough with large-grain sugar, like turbinado, or cover in an icing (such as a glaze made from a few spoons of milk and half a cup of confectioner's sugar, with some lemon zest).
These can be served warm or cold, and the given proportions yield about 16 medium sized pieces.

Ingredients:
♕2 cups / 290g white flour
♕4T / 50g white sugar
♕0.5 t / 3g baking soda
♕0.5T / 5g baking powder
♕Dash salt
♕6T / 85g cold butter, cubed
♕1.25 cups + 1T / 250mL cream
♕0.5T / 5mL vanilla extract
♕0.5 cup / 60g walnuts, crushed into pieces 1cm or smaller

Procedure
♕Preheat oven to 425˚F / 220˚C.
♕In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients and combine well.
♕Add in butter cubes, and mix well either with a large wooden spoon or with very clean hands.
♕Gradually stir in cream and vanilla extract.  Stop mixing once dough becomes evenly moist.
♕Stir in walnut pieces.
♕Drop scones in circles on a parchment-covered baking sheet, or cut into triangle shapes.  Make scones approximately the size of a deck of cards.
♕Bake for 15 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through the process if you have poor convection.
note: you will probably have two batches of scones.

Orange and Walnut Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread cookies are rather simple to make.  This recipe has a subtle nutty aroma, and the sort of orange you select for zesting strongly influences the final result's smell.  If you have no turbinado sugar, you can easily substitute white sugar, but I also recommend adding a couple pinches of shaved dark chocolate to the batter.

Ingredients:

♕1/2 cup / 120g butter, unsalted, at room temperature.
♕190g / 1.5 cup white flour
♕1/4 cup / 55g turbinado sugar
♕10 walnut halves, ground
note: you want the largest pieces no larger than 3mm
♕zest of one small, aromatic orange
♕1 t / 3mL vanilla extract
♕Approximately 30 walnut halves
note: or more, depending on how thin and small you cut your cookies

Procedure:

♕Combine butter, zest, and sugar.
♕Mix in chopped walnuts flour, and vanilla and combine until dough is homogeneous.
♕Roll the dough into a tubelike shape and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
♕Preheat oven to 375˚F / 190˚C.
♕Cut the dough into thin cookie slices.
♕Top each cookie with a walnut half.
♕Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway if you have poor convection.
♕Allow to cool, and serve.

Healthier 15 Minute Sundaes

 

I realize that most sundaes take approximately three minutes to assemble, so this recipe's main selling point is that it will clog ones' arteries slightly less than a sundae made with all store-bought components: The fats are healthy saturated type, the sugar can be modified (white granulated, honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, or even stevia can all be easily accepted by the recipe).   Most importantly, the flavors compliment each other very well.  I was very happy after eating this.

Ingredients:

♕1.5 cup / 355mL whipping cream
♕3T / 45mL brewed coffee no sugar
♕1.5T / 25mL vanilla
♕5T / 70g coconut oil, solid
♕5.5T / 30g cacao powder
♕1/3 cup+ 3T / 90g+40g sugar (separated)
♕2-5 bananas
♕Optional: pineapple, berries, raisins, nuts, or even more bananas for topping

Procedure:

♕Put a large metal bowl and the beaters to an electric mixer into your freezer.
♕Brew some coffee, make it strong.

♕Microwave coconut oil to melt it.
♕Mix in cacao powder and 1/3 cup / 90g sugar, and stir until homogeneous.  Set aside, it should be more or less fluid.
♕Once the coffee and chocolate sauce is done, remove the metal bowl and beaters from the freezer.
♕Allow 3T/ 45mL coffee to cool while you pour the cream into the bowl.
♕Whip the cream, starting at a low speed and ending fast.  Near the end of the whipping process, add vanilla, coffee, and sugar.
♕Slice your bananas.
♕Into three or four large serving glasses, layer banana, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream.  Top with other things, if you so wish.  The chocolate should become solid soon after being poured.


♕Serve immediately or after refrigerating, with coffee or strong tea.

Rhubarb Fool

There are lots of recipes for fruit fools, and to complicate things further, some people even spell fool "foole".  But regardless of spelling, as a rule, fool(e)s are easy to make successfully.

Ingredients:

♕ 1.5 lb/700g rhubarb stalks
♕ 1/3 cup+1 T+1t/70g+15g+5g cane sugar
♕ 1/4 cup+1T/80g+25g honey note: if I had real maple syrup, I'd use that instead!
♕ 1T/15mL good vanilla extract
♕ just over 1/2 cup/125g whipping cream
♕ 5 strawberries, sliced

Procedure:

♕ Place a medium-large mixing bowl, preferably metal, and a mixer attachment into your freezer.
♕ Cut your rhubarb into 1 inch/2cm long bits
♕In a pot, cover rhubarb and 80g honey + 70g sugar with boiling water.  Stew on medium-high heat for 3 minutes.
♕ Remove 3/4 cup/220g rhubarb, approximately, from the water and set aside.  Pour off any liquid that you can, but do be gentile with the cubes, as you do not want them to become a stringy mess.
♕ Continue to stew remaining rhubarb for about five more minutes, then use a colander or sieve to separate the matter from the liquid.  With this batch, do not worry about preserving the chunks, they will become mash and that's alright.  Drain the liquid as well as you can and place the rhubarb into a bowl.  Stir in 25g honey. 
♕ Make the whipped cream by getting your frozen bowl and mixer attachment, pouring the 125g of cream into the bowl, and whipping for approximately 7 minutes.  Start on low speed and gradually increase it, adding vanilla and 15g sugar (cane if you like rough texture, plain white or powdered if you want smooth whipped cream) just before the cream begins to form peaks.  Be careful not to overwhip!
♕ Spoon about half of the whipped cream into the mashed rhubarb, mix, and place on the bottom layer of your serving bowl.  Top with sliced strawberries.  Place unmashed rhubarb on top of that, and dust with 5g sugar.  Garnish with remaining strawberry slices, and whipped cream. note: if you have rum raisins, I suggest breaking them out for this recipe as well. 
♕ Refrigerate ASAP


♕ Done!

Apple Charlotte

Looking up "apple charlotte" in English yields recipes that look like a mix between an apple dumpling and an apple pie.  This recipe, instead, is for a Russian apple charlotte.  Russian charlottes are less dense than American ones, and also have a more simple flavor profile.  The current ingredients are not 100% authentic, since Russian charlottes usually don't have yoghurt or sour cream, instead opting to neutralize the baking soda with vinegar.  I hope to make a few more versions of this recipe with different fillings as well as different dough composition.

In this recipe the ratio of dough to apple can be adjusted easily.  The given proportions are for an apple-heavy dish, maybe a 5:1 ratio.  The current dough is very eggy, almost like challah.

Ingredients:

♕ .75kg apples of moderate to low sweetness, like granny smith, golden delicious, and/or gala
♕ 1 cup/150g flour
♕ 1/2 cup/60g sugar
♕ 1 t/5g baking soda
♕ 1/2 cup/60g sour cream or yoghurt
♕ 3 eggs
♕ 1.5 t/7mL vanilla extract

Procedure:

♕ Preheat oven to 350˚F/180˚C
♕ Get a cooking vessel, like a bundt pan or a deep dish cooking tray.  Grease it and coat the inside with breadcrumbs.
♕ Peel and core the apples.  Slice into very thin sheets.
♕ In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients, and before adding apples, stir in the two wet ingredients.  Stir to make a dough, stopping as soon as it is homogeneous.
♕ Place the cut apples on the baking vessel, leaving space between the slices to let the dough go between them.
♕ If you wish, push raisins into the dough, or garnish with nuts or spice.
♕ Bake for 30-40 minutes.  Once the top has browned nicely, remove from heat and let cool under a cotton cloth.
♕ Serve warm or cold.  Since it's Valentine's Day, I melted some chocolate and used that to trace designs on the top.