Caramelised White Chocolate, Pecan & Pumpkin Spice Cookies

I don’t understand why there’s a “season” for pumpkin spice themed dishes when delicious pumpkin puree is available (from a can) all year round. In honour of this recent discovery, I decided to make these cookies. I was influenced by a recipe on Bon Appetitwhich incorporated pumpkin and various spices into a cookie. However - I was very disappointed by the result: the cookies were mean and thin, with root canal problem-inducing sweetness, overly egg-y, and totally lacking in the promised pumpkin flavour.

So, I made my own to tick the 3 commandments of cookies:

-      Chewy

-      Molten

-      Thick

I radically amped up the amount of pumpkin, and reduced the sugar. I also added both white and milk chocolate, so that, upon baking, they caramelized, creating a sophisticated toffee flavour. The added crunch and maple-flavour of the pecans add some complexity, too.

NB If you would like a more savoury cookie, you could switch the milk and white chocolate for dark chocolate. And if you’d like to have a supply of cookies for emergencies, you can freeze the scoops of uncooked cookie dough and bake them when desired. 

Pumpkin spice cookies (makes 20-22)

Ingredients

150 unsalted butter, softened

80g light brown sugar

70g caster sugar

1 egg

40g pumpkin puree

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp cinnamon

1 ½ tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp mixed spice

220g plain flour

heaped ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

100g white chocolate + 30 g white chocolate for topping (I use buttons but you can chop up a bar or use chips instead)

50g milk chocolate, roughly chopped

50g chopped pecans, + 20g for topping

2 large baking trays, lined with baking parchment

Method

1)    Put the unsalted butter, light brown sugar and caster sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle, and beat until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). If doing by hand, beat ingredients together with a spoon. Add the egg, pumpkin puree and vanilla extract, and beat until full combined.

2)    Add the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mixed spice), flour, baking powder and salt to the wet ingredients, and very gently fold together until almost combined, leaving some flour still visible.  Add the chopped milk chocolate, white chocolate and pecans, and very gently fold them into the cookie dough until combined.

3)    Cover the bowl and refrigerate for minimum 1 hour and up to 24 hours (until you’re ready to bake the cookies).

4)   Preheat the oven to 180°C. Then. either using an ice cream scoop, or a tablespoon, scoop the cookie dough into 40g dollops. I weigh each one to make sure they cook evenly, but if you can’t be bothered just estimate. Roll each into a sphere between your palms to ensure that they bake into near-perfect rounds. Place on the tray leaving about 4cm between each so that they have room to spread when they bake. Then, into each sphere, press a piece of white chocolate and a piece of pecan.

5)   Place in oven to bake for 7-10 minutes, or until they are golden at the edges but still soft to the touch. Once they are removed from the oven, they will continue to cook on the baking tray so leave them to sit for a couple of minutes. Serve warm if you can’t wait, or keep them for up to 4 days in an airtight container. You can also freeze them in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

Sea Salt & Rosemary Focaccia (vegan)

Here is a recipe for a focaccia that is not a futon i.e. mean, hard and thin. It’s the emperor of mattresses: the dimples are deep, the texture is soft yet springy, and there is no scratchy dryness that a futon focaccia may have but, rather, a balmy olive oil-enriched crumb.

Having had a few scarring experiences with the brittle, mouth-desiccating, hard mats that parade as focacce (even in their Italian heartlands), this recipe is not only sublime but a protest against my negative experiences.

And while I’m singing its virtues, I have to stress that it’s ridiculously easy to make. Bread-making has such a bad press in terms of time, effort and skill required, but it is all a conspiracy to get you to buy the overpriced, chemical–laden, factory produced supermarket types. All you need to do is hang around a bit and the yeast does all the work for you. Total contact time with focaccia is only about 15minutes - the rest of the time is just a matter of rising or baking (or eating).

I make this with spelt which lowers the GI and adds a little nuttiness. You can play around with the toppings: rosemary is traditional, but you can add caramelised onion, parmesan, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, sage…whatever you wish.

I like to make a lot in one go and freeze the loaves sliced, so you can dip into them when you please. But if you want to make fewer, just halve or third the ingredients.

Recipe  - makes 3 loaves (or mattresses)

Ingredients

14g dried active yeast (2 sachets) or 25g fresh yeast

2 tbsp sugar

675ml lukewarm water

4 tbsp olive oil, for the dough + 3 tbsp for topping

1kg white spelt flour (or plain, if not available)

2 ½ tsp normal salt

1 tbsp coarse sea salt

4 sprigs of rosemary

3 x 25cm square cake/bread tins (or tins with the equivalent area), greased with olive oil

Method

1)    If using fresh yeast, cream it together in a large bowl with the sugar until it turns to liquid. Then, stir in the water and oil. If using dried active yeast, mix it with the sugar and water, and let it sit in a warm place for five minutes to activate. Then, stir in the oil.

2)    Into the wet ingredients, stir in the flour and salt –it should form a sticky, craggy mass. If you have a stand mixer, fit it with the dough hook and knead the dough for five minutes. If you are making the bread by hand, pour the dough on to a lightly floured board and knead until smooth and springy, so that it bounces back when pressed.  I like to use the dough hook for most of the kneading, take it out when it's almost done and finish by hand. 

3)    Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling film and allow to rise for about 1 to 1 ½ hours until doubled in size.

4)    Punch down the dough (so. much. fun.) and divide it into three. Stretch each piece of dough in its tin so that it is even in depth and reaches the sides (you may need to do a bit of pummeling to do this). Then, sprinkle over the rosemary and olive oil and dimple the dough with your fingers, pressing almost to the bottom of the tin. Allow to rise for a further 45 minutes to an hour until almost doubled in size. 

5)    Preheat the oven to 200C.  Then, sprinkle the breads with coarse sea salt, and place in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes, or until deep golden in colour and crunchy on top. Remove from the oven and place on a baking rack to cool. Best eaten on day of baking (which is usually inevitable as testament to their deliciousness). Or place in an air-tight box and freeze for up to 3 months.

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

Raspberry & Orange Financiers

Entremets, soufflés, macarons, choux buns - even making ciabatta, a two day process, which culminates in a dough whose tenacious elasticity has been known to reduce some people to tears - I’ve generally met their challenges.

However, hubris met nemesis a couple of weeks ago. I came home to the nutty toasted perfume of a new recipe my mom had tried out: ridiculously simple, five ingredient coconut wafers so thin you could see the sunset through them, so tender that they crumbled in anticipation of hitting one’s tongue, and so light and moreish that a second batch was immediately required in order to satisfy my family’s greed.

I duly crumbed, clumped, chilled, and sliced.  “Make them thinner,” my mom said. And I did, each slice crumbling into thousands of buttery coconut crumbs. I pressed them together and started again. And again. Unfortunately, it was only my patience that turned out thin, and the petulant three year old in me ended up scooping together the entire mixture and, from a height, throwing it down onto the tray.

Finally, I managed to get the fragments to coagulate by adding water. Things went more smoothly, but the biscuits, when baked, were slightly tougher, less flaky and less moreish than the original batch. Nevertheless, my brother took them to university. One of his friends, suffering from tonsillitis, reached into the box of biscuits, and in taking out one, touched many. The rest were binned, mostly due to the possibility of their having being infected with tonsillitis, but clearly not delicious enough to warrant risking it – a failure in my book.

After nursing my crumbled confidence for several days I swerved off the rocky path of coconut wafers to try my hand at financiers. I have always admired them - perfectly bite sized and innocent- looking with the flush of raspberry in the centre. They are also simple to make, requiring few ingredients, and turning out both delicious and delicate.

The history is much debated, but some say they were create by nuns of the Order of the Visitation and then adapted by a French baker, Lasne, to sell in the Parisian financial district where their almond content allowed them to keep well in the pockets of bankers. 

They are elegant and dainty, slightly crunchy on the outside, the tender blond crumb perfumed with a slight orange tang and moistened by the burst of raspberry.  They do keep rather well and would bless a summer’s picnic.

Recipe:

Makes 30 (approx)

50g unsalted butter

50g plain flour

160g icing sugar

140g ground almonds

1/2 tsp salt

200g egg whites (6 large eggs)

1/4 tsp almond extract

zest of 1/4 orange 

60g raspberries (minimum of 30 raspberries i.e. 1 per financier)

 Very well-greased and flour- dusted 3 x 12 hole mini cupcake tins (with 2.5cm diameter circles)  OR 1 to be used 3 times

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a small pan over a medium heat. When completely melted, stir the bottom of the pan continuously until the butter turns a deep gold colour and nutty in aroma. Set aside to cool.
2. Sieve the flour and icing sugar into large bowl. Stir in the ground almonds and salt. Once combined, pour in the egg whites, almond extract, zest and slightly cooled butter and stir to fully combine. Cover the bowl and allow the mixture to chill in the fridge for 2 hours.
3. Preheat the oven to 180C.
4. Spoon the batter into the holes until each is two thirds full. Press a raspberry into the centre of each - the batter should rise to all the way to the top. 
5. Place in the oven to bake for 10-12 minutes or until light gold in colour. Transfer to a wire rack to cool (to avoid them becoming soggy) or devour immediately. 

Cinnamon Apple Crumble Pies

This is the cinnamon apple crumble pie 2.0. Tried, tested, and enhanced... Soft, crunchy, crumbly, fresh, sweet, and on the cusp of sour – the Gail’s Bakery apple crumble cake is what I crave.  It’s the ultimate winter treat, although I gaze longingly through the bakery window at them year-round.

I bought the Gail’s Artisan Bakery Cookbook a few months ago in the hope that they had divulged the secret of their signature apple crumble cake. They hadn’t.

As a result I’ve just had to develop my own recipe – more wholesome, with more cinnamon and less sugar, I’ve heard they may even be superior…

Ingredients

(Makes 15)

Pastry

320g (11.3 oz) wholegrain spelt flour

110g (3.9oz) icing sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

165g (5.8oz) butter, roughly chopped into cubes

1 large egg, beaten

Apple Filling

700 (1lb 5oz) grams of peeled, cored and coarsely grated Bramley apples (about 3 large apples)

70g (2.5oz) caster sugar

Crumble topping

80g (2.8oz) wholegrain spelt flour

45g (1.6oz) oats

45g (1.6oz) caster sugar

50g (1.7oz)  butter

2 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

15 hole muffin/cupcake tin, greased (usually they come in 12s, in which case you will need 2 x muffin trays

Method

Pastry

1. In a blender, blitz together dry ingredients. Then add in the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles damp sand. Pour in the egg and continue to pulse until the mixture clumps together into a dough. Avoid mixing it more than necessary.
2. Flatten the dough roughly into a disc and wrap in cling film or baking parchment. Chill in the freezer while you make the other elements.

Apple Filling

• Place all ingredients in a pan and stir over a high heat for about 5 minutes until the apple turns soft but some texture still remains.  Strain the mixture using a sieve, pressing down to get rid of excess liquid (about 250ml, which incidentally tastes like a delicious mulled cider).  Set aside to cool.

Crumble

• Place all ingredients in a blender and pulse until the mixture resembles damp sand.

Assembly

1. Preheat an oven to 180˚C.
2. On a floured surface, roll out the chilled pasty to a thickness of 0.5cm. Cut the pastry into circles with an area similar to that of the muffin tin holes (about 8-10cm), and press each circle in the holes. You may need to patchwork the pieces together.
3. Prick the pastry lining the muffin holes with a fork, and bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes, or cooked through and beginning to golden slightly.
4. Take the tin out of the oven and spoon 2tbsp of the cooked apple into each pastry shells. Top the cakes by spooning a few tablespoons of the crumb topping over each cake, patting it down and then sprinkling the rest of the mixture over.  I like to clump some of it together before scattering it over in order to add further texture and rustic appeal.
5. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until the crumble topping is golden and crisp. Serve hot or cold.

Brown Butter Brioche Cinnamon Buns

When I was six I experienced peak cinnamon bun.  In the middle of a farmers’ market in Toronto I was handed a parcel wrapped in brown paper.  Inside was a glistening golden sticky buttery cinnamon swirl - a full face experience, and well worth it.  Ever since then I’ve been looking for one to mirror its spiced perfection, but my quest continues to this day.  To the untrained/inexperienced/non-cinnamon obsessed palate a cinnamon bun is just a cinnamon bun.  Wrong.

My gluttonous many-year quest has allowed me to sample the many different types:  there is the American gloopy, slightly under baked, doughy, cream cheese-coated type.  This can be found in a ubiquitous American chain (at particular low points during my degree I used to linger outside the Cambridge branch just to catch the cinnamon perfumed scent).

At the opposite end of the scale there’s the more refined flaky and French variety which is unsatisfyingly mild in terms of cinnamon flavour if you’re an obsessive like me.

Somewhere in between the two is the Nordic variety, cardamom and cinnamon infused, with a delicate dough (my trip to Norway this summer will be dedicated to experiencing as many of these as possible).

   My own recipe falls somewhere in the middle of the 3 varieties.  The brioche dough is soft and light on the inside and crisp on the outside, the browning of the butter in the filling adds a nutty richness, and the muscovado sugar makes the bun moister and adds greater depth of flavour than plain caster sugar.  As the buns cook, the sugar cinnamon filling caramelises slightly at the base adding a moreish stickiness.

Although the brioche dough requires starting the evening before, don’t let it stop you from making these.  They are, in fact, incredibly easy and quick to make.  It’s also rather lovely going to bed knowing that a cinnamon bun awaits you the next day…

Ingredients

Brioche

1 ½ tsp active dried yeast

3 tbsp lukewarm water

285g strong white bread flour

¾ tsp salt

40g caster sugar

3 medium sized eggs + 1 to paint the buns

115g cold unsalted butter

Cinnamon Filling

90g butter

160g light brown muscovado sugar

3 tbsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

1 round 9 inch tin, greased and dusted with flour

Method

1. In large bowl stir together yeast and water until the yeast has dissolved. Leave in a warm place for 5-10 minutes until the yeast is activated and the mixture begins to go slightly frothy.
2. Add in the flour, salt, sugar and eggs and mix until thoroughly combined and the dough is smooth and sticky. If you are using a Kitchen Aid, as I do, fit it with the paddle and mix.
3. Stirring continuously (or with the machine on a medium-high speed) add in the butter bit by bit, waiting until it is fully combined before adding more. Once the butter is fully combined, keep mixing until the dough is smooth and shiny. This will take about 8-10 minutes.
4. Placed dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover with cling film, and place in fridge overnight or for minimum 8 hours.
5. The next day make the cinnamon filling by placing the butter in a pan over a medium heat. Once it has melted, leave it on the heat for another minute until it goes golden in colour and has a rich, nutty aroma. Mix the sugar, salt and cinnamon with the butter to form a paste and set aside to cool.
6. Remove the dough from the fridge and, on a board dusted with flour, roll it out to a rectangle of roughly 30cm by 38cm and to a 3/4cm thickness. Spread the cinnamon filling evenly over the rectangle.
7. With long side of the rectangle closest to you (i.e. landscape as opposed to portrait), roll the dough from the long side to the other long side tightly, like a scroll. With the seam side down, slice the roll into 12 even slices. Arrange the slices spiral side up in the prepared tin, cover with a tea towel, and allow to rise for an hour in a warm place.
8. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. To give the buns a beautiful golden shine, beat the egg and brush a thin layer over them.
9. Place the tin in the oven and allow to bake for about 20-30 minutes until the surface is a golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. If it looks a little too dark early on in the bake, cover with tin foil. Once cooked, place on a wire rack to cool (or eat immediately).