Coconut Macaroons

Every bit as pretty as a French macaron.

I am thinking about entering into the macaron movement. Posts like these have been making me crazy and I feel like I need to try my hand at this biscuit that everybody says is so hard to turn out.

I know mine won't be 'perfect', whatever that means, but I don't care. And neither should anybody who has made failed macarons, because, and I say this with absolute confidence and certainty, there is more luck than skill in ensuring the perfect macaron. So there.



How do I know this without having made any myself? Well, OK, the 'absolute confidence and certainty' might be exaggerating a little, but in my defence, I have been to Paris more times than you have (well, some of you), and have eaten my fair share of macarons. And do you know what? Some of them were RUBBISH!

Is it just me who wants to take a bite out of that? Tell me it isn't.

You heard me, rubbish. If you want my honest opinion, more guff has been written about this biscuit than almost anything else in the world (except perhaps for that scandal involving Gordon Brown, Number 10 and the National Bullying Helpline - that took up a fair few column inches). Macaron recipes, like an awful lot of French patisserie recipes, are ridiculously overcomplicated, and you only have to look around the Internet to see that even when people follow the instructions to the very letter, they still fail. So when I make my macs (which will be next week - I have had one hell of a weekend, with no time at all for baking) I'll be doing it the 'I don't care about the rules' way. And if my macarons fail, well, I don't care. Like I said, you can go into any patisserie in Paris and still get bad macs. I'll be sampling Pierre Hermé's wares when I am in London on Wednesday too, so we'll see if his are any good. Though I'll probably cut him some slack even if they aren't; we share initials after all. It counts.

Now. Until I lived in France myself, which was before I became a food obsessive, the word macaron meant nothing to me. I would have thought you were talking about macaroons, my dear, macaroons.



You see, long before Parisian chic, there were English macaroons, which are nothing like their French cousins. They're made with coconut, they are bigger and they go so nicely with a cup of tea that you really wouldn't believe it. I think that's why we call them 'English' - I mean, it's hardly for the locally produced ingredients is it? 'Ah yes, some coconut from the New Forest, and almonds from Blackpool... You just couldn't make a good macaroon without our fresh, local produce, could you?'

Nice idea, but not realistic.

When I was growing up, there were three bakeries in my local town. Two of them were busy chains in prime locations, and one was independent. It was a bit of a mystery to me as to how the independent one stayed in business, because you never saw a soul inside, and I always thought the window displays were terrible. They were full of things that seemed really old fashioned and boring to me at the time, like jam tarts, shortbread (without a chocolate coating, à la chain bakeries), strange marshmallow-filled ice-cream cones (very seventies) and coconut macaroons with lurid red glacé cherries on top.

Little did I know that in adult life I would love the macaroon as much as I do.

That bakery shut down many years ago, and I always presumed it was through lack of custom, though later I found out it was because the gentleman who ran it passed away (and that, actually, it was an incredibly popular place, famous for its bread in the early morning, which explains why I never saw anyone in there after school).

I wish as a child I liked coconut as much as I do now, because I would have had one of those macaroons each and every day had I known what they could taste like. I have always hated glacé cherries, and that will never change, but they could easily have been picked off and binned. I'll never know if the baker's macaroons were any good, just like I'll never taste the famous bread, and wanting what you can never have is horrendous.

How can something so beautiful taste so awful? (I'm talking about the cherry, not the macaroon!)

Still, there's no point in regrets. The answer is to make macaroons! And OK, they might not be as glamorous as M. Hermé's (though I'm glamorous enough for all of us, so don't dwell on that too much), but they are easy to make and make the house smell like marshmallows.

Of all the things I have thus far made for Delicious Delicious Delicious, I think these are my favourite. Simple and beautiful, they just cannot be beaten. Make them. See. Everyone else will still be prancing on about the French ones, so your sweet treat of choice will afford you an air of mysterious, subcultural anti-cool. And wouldn't that be nice?

At Delicious Delicious Delicious, we take our desserts very seriously.
We know you have a choice, and thank you for saying 'no' to the cherry.

The recipe is adapted from one by Nigella Lawson, which I have made about five or six times in total, and each time I change it a bit. I don't add cream of tartar, use more almonds for a firmer texture and flavour the macaroons with pandan extract (not exactly traditional, I know) because I love it with coconut, but you can go her way if you like.

Coconut Macaroons

You will need:

250g dessicated coconut
75g ground almonds
2 egg whites
100g sugar
1 tsp pandan extract/vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Mix the almonds and coconut in a large bowl.
2. Whisk the egg whites in another bowl until they reach the soft peak stage, then slowly and gradually, still beating, add the sugar until you have a glossy, white meringue with stuff peaks.
3. Fold the nut mixture and extract into the meringue using a metal spoon.
4. When the two mixtures are combined, use your hands to make 8 small coconut mounds on the baking sheet. They won't spread much, so you can space them fairly close together.
5. Bake for 15 minutes, though they may need 20; when done, they will be golden coloured and dry on the outside.
6. Cool on a wire rack. Top with cherries if you must. Melted chocolate would be fabulous too.

St. David's Day

I feel so bad.

I didn't have time to make anything even remotely themed for the occasion, as I have been really busy doing other things. Not limited to ironing, hoovering and laundry.

I am making some sugar cookie dough later on though, for an exciting biscuit-related project that I have been asked to partake in - I always like a challenge - and so will still be making dragon cookies anyway. But I wanted you to see this, if you hadn't already.

Look at what Sanjana made with her prize! Rainbow coloured Welsh dragon cookies. I feel envious of both her skill and the fact that she has cookies to eat now and I don't. Sanjana - I think they are amazing. And this is your virtual pat on the back from me.

Happy Belated Saint David's Day to all of you. Or as they say round these parts, Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus!

Re-Inventing the Lamington Day Three: Sugar and Spice Lamingtons

(In which Mr. P takes inspiration from an unexpected email.)

A week or so ago, I was trying desperately to come up with as many interesting and different flavour combinations for lamingtons as I possibly could. Possibly, the time would have been better spent doing the ironing or going to the dry cleaners, but since you only really ever get to set yourself a 10-day lamington challenge once in your life, I figured I'd indulge myself while I had the chance.

And then I had an email from my cousin Ally, who has been working for a German firm in Munich since September. She said she loves reading Delicious Delicious Delicious (which made me blush), and also, would I please consider posting the recipe for Snickerdoodles, because she remembers us making and eating them when we were kids (and I will do that soon, Ally, I promise - after the lamingtons!).

And that's when it hit me: Snickerdoodle lamingtons!

Martha Stewart made Snickerdoodle cupcakes (I have taken the decision always to capitalise the word 'Snickerdoodles'), and I remember thinking that they were about as far from exciting as you could get - just cinnamon sugar dusted sponge. But Snickerdoodles, like lamingtons, are rolled and coated; they are like cousins. And how appropriate!


The white chocolate ganache (if I can call it that!) on these keeps everything creamy and moist, but I decided to get a bit more spicy than is traditional with actual Snickerdoodles. These contain cardamom, cloves and cinnamon, but the star anise you see in the photos is just meaningless food styling. Anise lamingtons? Ich denke nicht!

Sugar and Spice Lamingtons

1/2 quantity Mr P's Lamington Base
300g white chocolate
100ml double cream
200g dessicated coconut
2 tsp ground cinnamon
6 green cardamom pods, seeds ground (1 tsp)
3 cloves, ground (1/2 tsp)

1. Slice the cake as needed, and brush off any crumbs.
2. Melt together the chocolate and cream, then cool slightly.
3. Mix the spices and coconut in a shallow dish. Dip the cake first into the chocolate mixture, and allow excess to drip off before rolling in the spiced coconut.
4. Set aside to dry on a wire rack for a few hours before eating.

Don't forget to Re-Invent the Lamington! Deadline 26 January.

Mushroom Cookies

I remember consoling myself when I found out that Father Christmas wasn't real, that at least there was still the Tooth Fairy. Then when Mum told me, in the same breath, that, actually, she wasn't real either (the Tooth Fairy. Of course my mum is real!), I was really fraught. All this took place in the bathroom by the way. Strange, the details you remember. She had yellow rubber gloves on and was cleaning. Again, my mum, not the Tooth Fairy.

The biggest shock of them all though, which has haunted me for a great many years (and get ready if you don't know, 'cause this is big), was discovering that BETTY CROCKER IS NOT REAL.

I know. I'm sorry. The shock. The horror. But it's the truth. You need to face it. On the bright side, there's a bad joke in there somewhere: 'What do Santa, the Tooth Fairy and Betty Crocker have in common?' Ha.

I just didn't get it. How could nobody write the greatest cook book in the world?

That's this book, unless you didn't know
where I was going with that... And that's a first edition!

I don't want to dwell too much on the negatives; we must pull ourselves together. The fact is, you still get Christmas presents without Father Christmas, the money for teeth has kept coming to all the children in my family with or without fairies, and you can still bake Betty's cookies, even if someone else wrote the recipes for them because Betty herself was just made up by cold and calculating company executives.

Now, quite aside from reminding ourselves that there is no Santa, all of this is very seasonal. Honest! My Mum had Betty Crocker's Cooky Book when she was younger, and now I have it (one word: Theft). And there's a recipe that I have wanted to make from it for years and years and years. And years. It is for Chocolate Crinkles and it is on page 23, right next to the recipe for Snickerdoodles, which we made lots when we were children.




Now you may ask why I haven't made these cookies before. Well, there are two reasons. And here they are:

1. The recipe makes 6 dozen cookies! That's about 3 million more than I need.
2. The recipe contains vegetable oil. That's fine for carrot cake, but the idea of using it cookies makes me feel a bit sick. Tell me you don't feel the same.

But then recently, when I was looking through the Cooky Book, it occured to me that if you are the type who makes cookies to give away at Christmas (and I am), having 6 dozen of them made in one sitting is pretty good going. You can see where this thought led.

But there was still the problem of the icky-sicky vegetable oil. What to do? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's what I did: I allowed myself to be inspired by Betty 'I'm not really real' Crocker, but decided to see what Martha 'I'm real and can be held accountable if the cookies are horrid, just like when I was held accountable for lying about a stock sale and had to go jail' Stewart had to say on the subject. Turns out that Martha makes the same cookies, only she adds more chocolate (hurrah), doesn't use oil (swell) and calls them 'Chocolate Crackles' instead (not sure about that one).

This is irrelevant though, because I have named them Mushroom Cookies. This is because when we were making them, Mr. Other P, who sometimes joins me for a bit of kitchen ker-plutzsky, especially when I offer to make him a Snowball if he does, said that they looked like mushroom tops. He was right; they do, and I am now dying to make them in different colours, so that they look like toadstools. Don't even try to tell me that you too don't want to see that. I will consider it my sacred duty to do so, and report back.

He has a point, no? Mushrooms.

Because it's the Season of Good Will and all that, I have taken it upon myself to metricate Martha's recipe (and alter it, slightly, to use the sugar that I had in the house). Consider it my gift to all non American cup-measuring mankind; just call me 'The Martha Metricator'. (I love Martha. She's fierce!)

I didn't get 6 dozen cookies by the way, but that's because I made them big. I think we got about 50. Cookies, not dozen. And they were chewy and rich and tasted GORGEOUS!

Mushroom Cookies

You will need:

225g plain chocolate
225g plain flour, sifted
30g cocoa, sifted with the flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
115g butter, at room temperature
225g sugar (180g muscovado sugar, 45g granulated white sugar)
2 eggs
80ml milk
granulated sugar
icing sugar

1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a basin of hot water. Allow to cool. Make yourself a Snowball. It's Christmas, and you'll want something to drink while making these.
2. Cream the butter and sugars until smooth and light. Then add chocolate and the eggs, and mix thoroughly.
3. Add sifted flour and cocoa, as well as the baking powder and salt. Add the milk. Mix well. Chill the dough for an hour or so. We left it over night. Don't worry. You can have another Snowball tomorrow.
4. Set the oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Put some granulated sugar in a bowl, and some icing sugar in another.
5. Roll pieces of the dough into balls the size of a walnut, and then roll them first in granulated sugar and then icing sugar. Place well-spaced apart on baking sheet, and bake for 14 minutes.
6. Cool on a wire rack. Pack and give away, if you can bear to.

Black Sesame Madeleines

Yesterday, when I was rummaging around in my box of cake tins in the spare room (which I am quite sure is not where the majority of people keep their cake tins, but sadly, I am without a choice in the matter - we have terrible condensation at the back of our kitchen cupboards, and until we get the problem sorted, I won't put anything in them.), I came across the madeleine tin that I bought for about three Euros in a French hypermarket donkey's years ago when we went to stay in Dave's cottage.

I am loathe to say that it was a waste of money, but the fact remains that I have only ever used it twice.

My first thought was to put it in the charity box. We moved house recently, and as such, the thought of hanging on to anything I don't need fills me with dread. I hate having too much 'stuff'. When we move, it all has to be either sorted out and given away anyway (not a fun way to spend a weekend) or moved with us (ditto).

But then I came to my senses. It's only a madeleine tin; it's tiny! And rather pretty. And I like madeleines. So then I decided that since we were having friends over for dinner anyway, pudding was going to be madeleines. You see? No need to throw away any bake ware at all.

Now. The first time I made madeleines, I just followed the recipe that came with the tin. It was a terrible mistake; they were awful. Really dry and tasteless. So the next time, I decided to try a Nigella Lawson recipe for madeleines flavoured with rose water, and it worked brilliantly.

I couldn't resist getting my teapot out for these pictures.
It's from Tokoname, near Nagoya, an area famous for pottery.

We were going to have Japanese food for dinner though, so I wanted to change flavours a bit. I'd made some green tea ice cream already, and so decided that black sesame would be a good flavour for the little cakes to go with it. Especially since the sesame seeds on my shelf were the only vaguely Japanese ingredient I had to use for dessert. Soy sauce madeleines didn't sound quite so inviting...

So the flavour was sorted, but I didn't have a recipe. Which brings me rather conveniently to something else.

Recently, I've started to dislike following other people's recipes. I'm beginning to feel like I have been cooking and playing with food long enough that I don't need to, which is actually quite liberating, especially when it comes to making cakes and baking - I used to do EVERYTHING by the (cook)book. Now I usually just take inspiration, as opposed to instruction, from food writers. I'm not trying to make myself sound like an incredible cook - I am just being honest with you. Nigella (my favourite of them all - that woman knows deliciousness), anyway, has always admitted to doing the same.

So for these madeleines, I followed her method, but not recipe: I added more flour, more sugar and less butter. This wasn't because I thought they would taste better. I just had an unsteady hand with the dry ingredients, and didn't have quite enough butter to follow her recipe exactly, as I had to keep some back for something else (Christmas cake, as it happens).

I have to say that they were very good. Grinding the sesame seeds really helps make their flavour stronger, and gets rid of any gritty texture, which I wanted, obviously, to avoid.

I think madeleine making might become something of a habit, you know: there's something really exciting about making cakes that only take 4 minutes to bake. It's rapid fire baking!

Give them a try. Or, if you make some other crazy flavours, do let me know how they are. Unless you decide to go with the soy sauce...



Black Sesame Madeleines

You will need:

1 tbsp black or white sesame seeds
40g butter, plus a little extra to grease the tin
1 egg
50g caster sugar
60g plain flour, sifted
icing sugar

1. Lightly toast the seeds in a dry frying pan. Cool, crush in a pestle and mortar and set aside. Melt the butter, cool and set aside.
2. Using an electric hand mixer, cream the egg and sugar for 5 minutes. It will triple in volume.
3. Add the flour, and fold in gently.
4. Now pour in the cooled melted butter, and crushed sesame seeds. Mix together gently and then leave the mixture to rest in the fridge for an hour.
5. Remove the mixture from the fridge and let stand at room temperature for half an hour. Pre-heat the oven to 220°C.
6. Brush the madeleine tin with melted butter. Using a tablespoon, put some batter into each shell-shaped indentation, and bake in the oven for about 4 minutes. Keep an eye on them though - you may need to give them less time.
7. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 18 madeleines

Almond and Macadamia Nut Cookies

I have been meaning to write about these forever. They are one of my favourite cookies. I say one, because anyone who tells you that they only have one favourite cookie is simply not being realistic. One? Please.

How could these not be your favourite?

Everybody and their dog seems to like chocolate chip cookies, and while I would never turn one of them down (well, would you? Didn't think so.), I don't think chocolate is really where it's at when it comes to biscuits and cakes. It's nice. Don't get me wrong. But it's not the best thing in the world. I'm not trying to style myself as one of those über trendy-types, who fashionably claim not to like chocolate unless it's dark and has at least 70% cocoa solids when I say that. (And for the record, fashionistas, you aren't fooling anyone.) I just think that chocolate is best when it's a piece of chocolate. Turning it into, cookies, or cakes, or even ice-cream, seems unnecessary. It doesn't improve it. *

Not everybody shares my view though. So I have dutifully added some white chocolate to today's recipe to try and please the chocoholics, who would otherwise feel that they were missing out. But, really, the star players here are my favourites... The nuts! And so, without further ado...

You could add even more...

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...

These are my Almond and Macadamia Nut cookies. And you should make some.

I think the greatest thing about them is the texture. Soft, and chewy, with chunks of almond and whole macadamia nuts, they make a seriously satisfying pick-me-up with a cup of tea at around four o'clock. Not that that's how I eat them. Usually, when I've made cookies, they go from jar to mouth, before the tea has even brewed. Unless we've company. Then they go on a nice plate.

I know macadamias are the most expensive nuts (although the price of pecans also has to be seen to be believed - who buys them? Do they remortgage beforehand?), but they are also the most delicious; I love the waxy crunch. I think you'd miss them if you left them out, but you could play with this however you like otherwise. Substitute walnuts for the almonds; use peanuts instead, or, and I can't believe I didn't think of this before, crumble in a Mr. Tom bar (my love for Mr. Tom has been detailed elsewhere - Mr. Other P and I will drive to get one if we have to).

It's a strange feeling to wax lyrical about a recipe you made up yourself, but these really are sensational. And they make a great gift, as once baked, they'll keep in a jar for a whole week. The nuts help to keep everything nice and moist.

The unbaked dough is more than perfectly edible as it is!

Some notes:

• I flavoured them with maple extract, because I have some from a trip to America; vanilla would be fine, cinnamon would be insanely good.
• Bake them for longer if you prefer crisp biscuits. 15 minutes should do it. I like them under-baked, so stop at 9-10.
• Using dark and light brown sugar gives a nice flavour, but at the end of the day, sugar is sugar. Use what you have!
• I wouldn't mind if you added 75g dessicated coconut.
  

* The one exception to this that I know of is double chocolate chip cookies, which have dark, bitter cocoa mixed into the chocolate chip-studded cookie dough; I accept that in that case, culinary nirvana is more than achieved.

Almond and Macadamia Nut Cookies

You will need:

125g butter
150g soft light brown sugar
25g soft dark brown sugar
2 eggs
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp maple extract
100g raw macadamia nuts
100g raw almonds
150g chocolate chips, white for preference (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Chop the almonds, but leave the macadamias whole. Toast the nuts in a hot frying pan until golden brown. Set aside to cool.
3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars until smooth and fluffy. Add the extract and eggs. Mix well.
4. Sift together flour and baking powder. Add the salt and sifted ingredients to the egg mixture and combine thoroughly. Fold in the cooled nuts and chocolate chips.
5. Using an ice-cream scoop (as always), drop small mounds of the mixture on the baking sheet. Leave plenty of space for the cookies to spread.
6. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown at the edges. Cool on the sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
7. When cool, keep in a biscuit barrel, tin or jar.
   

Halloween Cookies

I'm getting a bit Halloween crazy this year. Considering I'm actually going to be at a concert on Saturday night though, and won't be celebrating by dressing up either, I am giving myself free-reign to do some Halloween baking a tad early.

And more importantly, last year, there was a November sale of Halloween-themed cookie cutters in Rossiters, and I have been waiting a whole year - a whole year - to use them. But I think the wait has been worth it. I had such fun making these! Although, actually, I think I could have made the faces look better. But I'm not going to beat myself up over it. Life is too short for that.

Now, whether you celebrate Halloween or not (most people in Britain see it as a nuisance) is up to you, and I don't mind if you have no intention whatsoever of making cut-out cookies this weekend (although you should). But I'm putting these up here because I think my method of decorating them is the best of all.

I've tried doing it the proper way, as described by Peggy Porschen in her books (which incidentally are the shizzle when it comes to cake decorating - she makes you want to put glitter on everything), beating egg whites and icing sugar to get just the right consistency of royal icing, then adding colour, piping an outline, filling it in, etc. etc... And you know what? It was exhausting. And I hated the results. I couldn't do it neatly enough, because I'm rubbish at piping (A case in point: the faces on these biscuits!)

So when it was my sister's birthday, I changed track and came up with this method to make some New York-themed cookies. And I'm not going back.

The point is, anybody can colour and roll fondant icing. And if you use the same cutter you used to cut your cookie to cut the fondant, you'll have a perfectly sized piece of icing to top it with. Foolproof. There is no need to bother with piping at all.

It's important to use the right biscuit recipe. And that recipe is Peggy Porschen's. It's perfect because it doesn't spread in the heat of the oven, so your fondant cut-outs fit their cookie bases like Cinderella's glass slipper. Her recipe was in the Daily Mail, so I am not going to feel bad about putting a link here. You can still buy her book if you want to!

So here we go. Mr. P's renegade method for cookie decoration. Enjoy! And if you've decorated some cookies for Halloween, please leave a link to them. I'd love to see. Happy Halloween!

You will need:

baked cookies, plus the cutters you used to make them
ready made fondant icing (or marzipan - you get a brighter colour than with fondant)
food colouring paste - available here
icing sugar
jam
sprinkles, tubes of squeezy gel icing and the like (optional)

1. First of all, knead your fondant icing with some food colouring (go easy at first - it's strong). Marzipan will give more vivid colours than icing, but some people don't like it (weirdos). When you're happy with the colour, roll it out on a surface sprinkled with icing sugar. You can make it as thick or thin as you like.
   
2. Wash and dry your cutters if you haven't done so (they might still have crumbs of dough on them - not desirable). Cut as many shapes as you need.
3. Then, heat a few spoons of jam (any flavour) and a few spoons of water in a pan, and pass it through a sieve. This is your glue.
4. Brush the tops of the cookies with jam glue, and carefully place the icing cut-outs on top. Press down gently.
5. Decorate as you like! If you have any annoying white icing sugar left on the surface of your fondant icing, brush with a little boiled and cooled water to dissolve it.

(For the pumpkins, I made some green fondant icing and used the cutter as a template to make stems. But then I remembered I had some green sugar, so used that instead with some more of the jam glue. You are limited only by your imagination! Get busy.)