Micky bickies (OFFICE WARNING: naughty biscuit photo alert)
Waaay before we were good buddies, on our first trip to Disneyworld Florida, my fellow bloggers, the Disney 7 (well, the other 6), were most perplexed by the fact that any time anyone from Disney mentioned the ‘hidden Mickeys’ placed all around the resorts and parks, I dissolved into snorty cackling. It didn’t matter how much I tried. One mention of a mickey and that was it – my shoulders would shake… tears would spring into my eyes… It’s so much worse when nobody gets what you’re even laughing about.
The thing is, in Ireland a mickey is a… well, it’s a willy.
Hence, ‘searching for hidden mickeys’ brought a whole new mental picture to mind than gaily flouncing about trying to spot little mouse shapes.
Anyhoo, I digress.
Recently, I was the recipient of a very solemn phone call from school. Apparently the Death Wish Dude had been caught defacing another pupil’s book. Three of them were involved. The others being George (of George’s brownies fame) and another of the Dude’s buddies, a girl.
Reader, I was shocked.
He’s a silly bugger, but he’s a good kid. And I can’t imagine him doing anything malicious. I told this to the teacher. She agreed.
Apparently it wasn’t malicious at all:
The crime – this terrible crime that warranted a telephone call to his parents? He’d drawn a willy.
A willy.
It was all I could do not to laugh. However, I solemnly accepted that this behaviour was not to be encouraged, and promised to give him a stern talking to.
I did.
I said to him: ‘you tit’.
Anyhoo, this incident has set in motion a willy-themed madness in the Dude and his mates, culminating in his whipping up a little present for them in the kitchen last night. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…
The willy cookie. Or ‘cockie’ as it became known on Twitter last night. Or for you Irish people, the ‘mickey bickie’ (thanks to Aoife for that one).
His father took one look at it and said ‘blimey. If that’s what he thinks they look like he’s not been paying enough attention in biology’.
National Baking Week – thank you Asda!
So it’s National Baking Week (17th to 23rd October) and to celebrate, lovely Asda sent me a big, mahoosive parcel packed with all sorts of lovely baking kits. There were chocolate tray bakes, white chocolate chip cookies, toffee cookies, vanilla tray bakes and blueberry muffins and iced cookies (I hid the cheesecake brownie kit – that’s obviously just for grown ups).
When the slaves -sorry, cough, of course I mean children – came home from school, I set them to work in the kitchen to make me some cookies while I lolled around on the sofa drinking gin.
Here are the results. Impressive.
Look at his little face.
Slovenly motherhood result! Now they’ve proved they can cook, I am herewith giving up all my motherly duties to spend more time concentrating on gin consumption and sofa lolling.
Hic.
Freeze ahead brown sugar cookies
I made a batch of these the other day (the plain ones – these ones in the pic have actually got a dollop of salted caramel in their centre), and the Death Wish Child, somewhat of a cookie connoisseur, declared them to be the best cookie that I make.
‘What, these old things?’, I asked, surprised.
DWC: ‘Yup’
Me: ‘Not the double chocolate chip cookies?’
DWC: ‘Nope.’
Me: ‘Just these plain, boring fridge cookie things?’
DWC: ‘Yup.’
Me: ‘Not the home-made bourbons that we print ‘ARSE’ into?’
DWC: ‘Nope, these.’
And so, in that short conversation (he’s a man of few words, my youngest), it dawned on me. In the whole of my blogging career, a whole THOUSAND blog posts, I have omitted to publish one of the easiest, yummiest recipes in my repertoire. Shame on me.
These are the best cookies in the world, not only because they’re ridiculously easy, but because you can make double and keep the dough in the fridge, where it will happily last a good few days, but also because you can freeze these little suckers, to whip them out and bake them when unexpected guests appear, making yourself out to be breezily, carelessly efficient in the kitchen (even when the truth is, sadly, that the fluff underneath your sofa comes from a dog you no longer own *cough*).
Brown Sugar Cookies
125g butter, softened
150g dark brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
50g oats
So, just cream the butter, then add the sugar and beat together until it’s light and fluffy. Add the egg, then beat again until creamy, then the vanilla. Finally, stir in the flour, then the oats and stir until it’s all combined.
Dollop the mixture in tablespoonfuls onto a baking sheet.
To freeze ahead: at this stage, you can pop the whole tray into the freezer until they’re solid, then bag them up and keep them in the freezer for the efficient bit at a later date. If you want to be really posh you can roll the dough up in a cling film sausage, chill, then slice before open-freezing:
To bake, they’ll need about 10-12 minutes at 180 degrees/gas 4, a couple of minutes more from frozen.
Go to it, then troops. Remember, we’re going for breezily, carelessly efficient, with absolutely no first degree burns.
Chocolate, oat and apricot cookies
One of my golden rules here at English Towers 2 (and there aren’t many, in fact, I think that’s the only one – oh no, hang on, there’s the no saying ‘eurgh’ at the table… oh and then there’s not referring to one’s wedding vegetables as ‘nads’ – I hate that…) is that everyone has to have breakfast. I will never complain if I’m asked to cook poached eggs and toast first thing in the morning (which I often am) as I’d so much rather they ate something. Sometimes it’s just a biscuit or a slice of toast and a quick mug of hot chocolate (oh, there’s another golden rule – there’s a 5 marshmallow limit to each mug).
But here’s the rub: if they’re going to eat biscuits, or worse, force down a cereal bar first thing in the morning, wouldn’t you rather that you had: a) some control over the contents and b) the chance to sneak in some healthy stuff, even if it’s covered up by the taste of chocolate? Yes? Here, then, are my ‘not very healthy but better than a Weetos bar’ breakfast (or anytime) cookies:
You’ll need:
125g butter
150g dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla paste (or extract, never essence)
150g flour (make it wholemeal if you like)
50g oats
50g chocolate, chopped
Handful dried apricots, chopped
So cream the butter and the sugar until it’s light and creamy.
Then add in the egg, beating well, and then the vanilla paste:
Chop the chocolate:
then gently stir in, along with the flour and the oats…
and the apricots (chop finely first):
Blob the hideous-looking mixture onto a non-stick baking tray (a dessertspoon per cookie is about right):
…and bake at 180 degrees/gas 4 for about 12 minutes. They’re better when they’re still a bit soft in the middle.
Store in an airtight container. They’ll last a couple of days (what am I saying? they’ll last about ten minutes). Serve as a last resort ‘oh Mum, I don’t want any breakfast’ kinda thing with a glass of milk or a hot chocolate.
Arsebiscuits!
My sister in law (who is a sweet, gentle creature) once told me that many moons ago, during a lovers’ tiff with my brother, she was so cross she took the tomato sauce bottle and wrote ‘SHIT’ on the kitchen floor in ketchup. You see? Naughty words are a form of therapy. And with this in mind, laydees and gentlespoons, I bring you the arsebiscuit.
I’ve been banging on about them for so long, and have now persuaded so many of my Twitter followers to rush out and purchase arsebiscuit kits (nope, I’ve no idea why they don’t do them on Amazon.co.uk either), I thought I’d better crack on and get you all a good recipe upon which you can work out all that existential angst (or just write rude words).
Here we go then:
100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
200g plain flour
30g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Firstly, preheat your oven to a measly gas 3/160 degrees. Make sure you have either a well-greased baking sheet or a sheet of Bake-o-glide, as these buggers will stick if you let them.
Now, beat the butter and sugar really well until it’s pale and fluffy. Then beat in the golden syrup (remember, dip the spoon in boiling water first):
Sieve all your dry ingredients, then work them into the butter mixture with a fork (don’t use the processor, you want crisp, snappy biscuits, not concrete).
This does make quite a crumbly dough, but remember you’re going to mess it about with your hands, so be patient, it will come together.
If you’re using the bake-o-glide, you can roll and cut straight onto it, otherwise, you’ll have to be brave and make your biscuits then transfer them to your baking sheet with a spatula.
So just roll your dough out until it’s about 1/2 cm thick, pushing the edges in with your fingers until you get a rough rectangle.
Now you can let rip with your lettering machine, or just use biscuit cutters to make shapes (if your children aren’t quite at the ‘SHIT’ biscuit stage), or even just a knife to cut them into squares.
Bake for about 15 minutes. They obviously won’t change colour much but will be firmer to the touch.
For your delectation, I produced for you (insert fanfare):
The ‘tidy your room or else’ biscuit:
The ever-popular ‘shut your face’ biscuit:
Or maybe you prefer the brevity of the ‘shut up’ biscuit?:
Sadly, the ‘oh shit’ biscuit cracked a bit, but somehow this adds to the overall message:
…the Englishmum.com biscuit:
And sadly my actual ‘arse’ biscuit didn’t come out very well:
First one to provide photographic evidence of selling these beauties at the school fete gets a prize.
Oaty chocolate chip cookies: not a diet option, admittedly
Ah, the Easter hols. Don’t you just love them? Being a total heathen, I’m not particularly interested in the religious stuff, but hey, copious amounts of chocolate, fluffy bunnies and not having to get up to take the kids to school? Bring it on. This morning, then, found me pottering in the kitchen and doing some severe damage to my chocolate chip cookie recipe. I know, I love a fiddle. I just can’t help myself. Actually I think this one’s much better than my original - posted back in 2006 (can you believe that?), but see what you think:
125g butter
150g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g flour
50g oats
100g chocolate, chopped
So cream the butter, then add the sugar and beat together until it’s really light. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again until pale and fluffy. Stir in the flour until it’s just combined, then add the oats and chopped chocolate:
Dollop the mixture in spoonfuls onto a baking tray. I used an ice cream scoop to make really massive cookies, but if you’re not such a disgustingly greedy pig, you could make smaller ones.
Bake at 180/gas 4 for about 10-12 minutes. Don’t overcook them as you want them really lovely and soft in the middle. Serve while still warm with a nice cup of tea.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of yummy stuff, pop over to the Daily Spud’s gaff, and check out her amazing sticky toffee pudding recipe - try it and die of happiness. Here’s my attempt, which was happily scoffed on Sunday:
There. If I haven’t succeeded in gumming up your arteries completely by now, I must be damned close. Enjoy!
Bourbon biscuits: homemade heaven in a little chocolatey sarnie
Right, so. Enough of this doom and gloom. As self-elected President of Chocolate for Ireland, I prescribe a healthy dose of feel-good… erm… fattening stuff. Here, then, to cheer you all up, is a big fat stack of Bourbons. This is adapted from an old Mrs Beeton recipe so it must be good.
First, then, grease and line a baking sheet, or use the wondrously fantastic non-sticky stuff that is Bake-o-glide. Preheat your oven to gas 3/160, grab your Homer Simpson apron (woo hoo!) and roll up thy sleeves.
You’ll need:
100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
200g plain flour
30g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
and for the chocolate creamy stuff:
100g butter
150g icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp vanilla extract
First, then, beat the hell out of the butter and sugar until it’s lovely and light and fluffy, then beat in the golden syrup (dip the spoon in boiling water first).
In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, cocoa and bicarb together :
and then carefully mix it into the butter and sugar with a fork, and then dive in with your hands. Bring it together into a slightly crumbly dough and roll it out (here’s where the Bake-o-glide comes in, you can roll it directly onto the sheet), pushing the edges straight with a knife, until you’ve got a rough rectangle about 1/2 cm thick.
Now gently cut the rectangle in half right down the middle and put it on your baking tray:
Bung it into the oven for about 15 minutes (it won’t change colour but will just feel firmer to the touch). When you take it out, gently cut each strip into fingers:
Leave them to cool while you make the creamy filling stuff by beating the butter until very soft, then carefully adding the sugar, cocoa and vanilla (watch out for low-level icing sugar clouds here). Beat it until it’s lovely and smooth and then sandwich your little bourbons together generously with the filling.
And yes, I know it’s easier to buy packet ones, but think of the satisfaction of making something better than Mr Tesco. These amounts will make around 20 biscuits (I divided my dough into two batches as my bake-o-glide wasn’t big enough). So that’s 19 for me and one for the dog, then. Result.
In which Little Miss Lovely makes girly pink muffins and biscuits
So as you know, I don’t get much in the way of girly conversation here at English Towers. I think the nearest we got was the recent discussion about whether that pathologist in CSI:Miami is really a girl at all (oh come on, her name is Khandi). Anyhoo, so Mr and Mrs Lovely were away for the weekend and we happily volunteered to cover a shift of looking after the little Lovelies yesterday afternoon. Little Miss Lovely and I decided to have a girly afternoon in the kitchen while all the boys killed zombies or whatever they were all doing crowded around the X-box. First of all we made pink muffins. I mean really pink muffins: pink sponge cake, pink royal icing and lots of pink bits and bobs on the top. After that we made biscuits, then we made chocolate chip biscuits, and then we smothered all them in icing and pink bits and bobs too.
At one stage Middle Lovely wandered in, and quite fancied joining in but no. He was firmly instructed that this was a girls-only baking session and any argument was followed by an instruction to talk to the hand by Madame, who was concentrating (tongue out) on a particularly difficult bit of pink glitter addition.
You know the drill on the muffins by now, but here’s the low-down for Little Miss Lovely’s rather lush biscuits.
250g butter (best at room temp)
125g icing sugar
375g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
Teeny pinch of salt
This is best done with an electric whisk, but you can do it the old fashioned way if you’re a bit of a martyr. So first beat the hell out of your butter until it’s lovely and soft. Next, sieve the icing sugar into the butter and mix well. It’s best not to whizz it at full power at this stage unless you want your kitchen looking like an icing sugar bomb has exploded. Then sieve in your flour, baking powder and salt. It’s best to switch to a metal spoon now. Mix it all together gently until it starts to come together, then dive in with clean hands and squish it all together until it forms a dough (have patience, it will).
Now roll the dough into a sausage shape, wrap with clingfilm and chill until firm. Then just slice it up into about 1cm slices and bake on a baking tray at 180/gas 4 for about 15 mins. The biccies won’t spread too much so don’t cut them too thick or they’ll be like bricks. If you like you can add about 100g chopped chocolate (or chopped nuts, lemon zest, sultanas, whatever) to the mixture too.
Then just allow to cool and either ice (we used royal icing turned a delicious pink with a little red food colouring), dip in melted chocolate, or eat them as they are. Pink glitter is, obviously, optional.
My bestest chocolate chip muffins. No, really.
So we woke up this morning to the wonderful smell of baking. ‘Mmmm’, I thought, ‘I love baking in the morning’. Then, ‘that’s strange, though’, I thought after that, ‘I’m baking and yet I’m still in bed’. Of course, it was the smalls in the kitchen: Head Chef #1 was knocking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, ably assisted by his slightly grumpy Sous Chef, #2. And very nice cookies they were too, except… ‘they need a bit more butter’. ‘What?’, says #1, ‘why? They seem perfect to me’. ‘Meh’, says I, ‘I just think they’d be nicer a bit more buttery. Whose recipe did you use?’. ‘Yours’, said the little sod, with just a small hint of triumph.
But that’s the thing about cooking, you see. Nothing’s ever quite perfect is it? Take my Bounty Cake. I was so pleased with the result, I thought I’d try and make a chocolate version, but when I replaced the coconut with cocoa, the result was all horrible and powdery. Back to the drawing board then. So anyhoo, no, you’re not getting the cookie recipe just yet as it obviously needs a bit of tinkering. Instead, I’ll let you into the secret of my chocolate chip muffins. I make hundreds of these, often for breakfast. My thinking being that I’d rather have my children eating something homemade in the morning, than some fat-soaked cereal bar, the ingredients of which I don’t even understand, let alone approve of. The recipe for these, then, has been tinkered to death, and I’m pretty sure it’s foolproof:
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g granulated sugar
50g muscovado or dark brown sugar
2 eggs
100g butter, melted
125ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate, chopped
So get your oven on to about 190 degrees, gas 5, and put a dozen of those little paper muffin cups into a muffin tin. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarb together, then stir in the sugars.
In another bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork, then add the melted butter, milk and vanilla, whisk briefly to combine them, then pour this into the dry stuff. Add the chocolate, then remember the golden muffin rule: mix as briefly as possible until everything is just combined.
Put a spoonful in each paper muffin thingy, then bake then for about 20 minutes or so, until they spring back to the touch and they’re a lovely golden brown.
Give them a try. Oh, and feel free to burst my bubble if they’re a horrible failure for you, though. Nobody’s perfect, eh?
Cookie Frenzy: stealth health
Watch out – here’s yet another post with absolutely nothing to do with moving to Ireland. Nope, nada. Well, I did buy the ingredients here, does that count?
Hope #2 doesn’t read this, but after my recent success of hiding a handful of sultanas (soaked in hot orange juice then chopped finely) in my latest batch of chocolate muffins, I set about expanding my stealth-health (ooh I like that) repertoir by turning my hand to cookies.
My first attempt was to use my usual old cookie mixture (I like this one because you can make loads of dough, bung it in the fridge, then even hubby can spoon boulders onto a baking tray and hey presto – instant silence), whilst surreptitiously adding a small amount of chopped dates. This mixture was from one of my home economics books from school (complete with spelling mistakes (‘caster suger’ being the most unforgivable) and has been with me ever since, so no copyright issues there then.
When mixed with small pieces of chopped chocolate I thought the dates were well hidden, but funnily enough it was #1 that noticed them and his comment only just escaped #2′s ears (which would have been a disaster – once he knows I’m tinkering, the usually gaping mouth is clamped firmly shut) by a quickly applied, and somewhat floury, hand across his startled mouth: ‘yes they’re lovely aren’t they, don’t talk with your mouth full darling, there’s a good boy’.
All went well until – disaster! Turning the cookies out I burned one of my fingers and – shock horror! – my new, beautiful white nail. Actually, the damage was not too drastic and there’s just a little sunken hole in the middle of my nail, so undeterred (must happen all the time to Nigella) I pressed on. Not a bad result, but they were a bit hard – okay when first out of the oven but by the time they were cold you needed better teeth than I’ve got to break through. Back to the chopping board then (see what I did there?).
Couple of batches later and I’m onto a winner. I hereby proudly present my recipe. Give it a go. Oh and by the way I know it’s very verbose (one of my Mum’s words there I think), but I hate it when people put stuff in recipes and don’t explain why. It’s very annoying:
4oz butter
4oz granulated sugar (for crunch)
4oz muscovado sugar (nice toffee flavour)
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (don’t know why, always seems to be in cookie recipes)
7oz self raising flour (started with 8 but makes the mix a bit dry)
100g white chocolate, chopped into big lumps
2oz almonds and 2oz dates (or raisins), whizzed in food mixer so they’re undetectable
2oz porridge oats (healthy eh?)
Anyhoo, cream the butter and the two sorts of sugars in your fabulously large and shiny stainless steel food processor (oh, not got one? Obviously not as fantastic a cook as me then, ha). Then add the egg and the vanilla. No, I don’t know why. It smells nice though. Stir in the flour and the chopped up chocolate. I started off using plain, but white goes really nice and gooey, although doesn’t mask the dates quite as well. I whizzed the dates and almonds until they were quite fine then added them and the oats into the mixture. It does get a bit hard to mix, so beef up those pecs at the same time. Cookery tips and fitness too – what a blinder! Blob spoonfuls onto a baking tray (I got 3 lines of 3 cookies on my tray – they do spread a bit but not too drastically). This mix is quite dry and tough, so don’t shape them or anything, they just melt into nice big fat yummy cookies. Oh, at 180 degrees/gas mark..em..don’t know, for about 10 – 12 mins. Don’t overcook them, they need to be chewy in the middle. Then feed to offspring, whilst silently congratulating yourself on your deviousness.
