S&S Bake: Cranberry Pecan White Chocolate Cookies

It feels like just yesterday when I was munching on last month’s snow flecked brownies, which were helplessly sitting on my dining table for 2 weeks, waiting for me to finish them and it is already time for the next bake. Unlike last couple of bakes, I baked this month’s Sweet & Simple Bake when I had guests over. So, this month my cranberry pecan white chocolate cookies disappeared in a day. Once we started eating, none of us could stop ourself. I liked these cookies better than the oatmeal chocolate cookies we baked back in march.

I followed the Cranberry Pecan White Chocolate Cookies recipe exactly as given. I had to bake them in 2 batched and the first batch I baked for 13 – 14 minutes, which were crisp and burnt. The second batched I baked for 12 minutes and were little soft, exactly how I like them.

Source: Sweet & Simple Bakes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Baking Time: 12 minutes
Yields: 3 dozen

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

• 150g Plain Flour
• ½ tsp Baking Soda (The recipe called for baking powder and I misread it as baking soda)
• ½ tsp Salt
• 75g Rolled Oats (Old fashioned)
• 125g Soft Butter
• 75g Dark Brown Sugar
• 100g Superfine Sugar
• 1 Large Egg
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 75g Dried Cranberries
• 50g roughly chopped Pecans
• 150g White Chocolate Chips

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 180oC/ 350°F/gas mark 4.
• Measure out the flour, baking soda, salt and rolled oats into a bowl.
• Put the butter and sugars into another bowl and beat together until creamy.  I used my hand electric mixer and then beat in the egg and vanilla.
• Beat in the flour, baking powder, salt and oat mixture and then fold in the cranberries, chopped pecans and chocolate chips.
• Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into a ball with your hands, and flatten it a little and then place them on an aluminium lined baking sheet.  I used 3 baking sheets but had t bake them in 2 batches, as my oven could take in only 2 sheets at a time.
• Bake them of  for 12 minutes.  When ready, the cookies will be tinged a pale gold, but be too soft to lift immediately off the tray, so leave the tray on a cool surface and let them harden for about 5 minutes. Remove with a spatula to cool fully on a wire rack.  Oven temperatures vary from oven to oven. So don’t go with baking time.

I wish my fellow S&S Bakers a very Happy New Year! I am suppose to post this bake on 2nd January but going ahead and posting it 2 days early as I will be away for the next 3-4 days. I won’t be posting any anything for at least 4-5 days.

Have fun and Wish you all a Happy New Year!

S&S Bake: Snow Flecked Brownies

This month’s Sweet & Simple Bake is Snow Flecked Brownies.  I am a chocoholic and ever since I saw the bake for this month, I was eager to bake it.  However, I was preoccupied with other stuff and could not bake it until this afternoon.  Even today, when I woke up this morning, I was not sure if I could bake these and hence,  decided to skip this month’s bake.  That decision did not last too long.  Me skipping chocolate?  No way….  I rushed to the store, picked up all the required ingredients and here I am with these lovely, yummicious brownies… And for me, anything made of chocolate is always yummicious .  I followed the recipe given here, except for the chocolate.  I could only find 300 gms of dark chocolate, so I substituted the other 75 gms with bittersweet chocolate.  Also, I did not dust my brownies with icing sugar, so I guess my brownies are not snow flecked…

Preparation: 15 – 20 minutes
Baking Time: 25 minutes
Yields: 3 ½ dozens
Source: Maria of S&S Bakes

S&S Bake: White Chocolate and Orange Cookies

It is the beginning of the month and time for yet another Sweet & Simple Bake.  This time is White Chocolate and Orange Cookies.  I followed the recipe as given and presenting you chocolate orange cookies right out of the oven.  I made them this evening.

The Original Recipe is here and I followed it exactly as given, with no substitutions what so ever.

Baking Time: 8-10 minutes
Yields: 3 Dozens (varies on the size)

S&S Bake: St Clements Drizzle Cake

Hello, everyone! I have been stranger to the blogosphere lately… I was in India for 5 weeks and got back end of August. Since then, I was a little busy with guests and also a bit lazy to blog….

Today I am here with this month’s (month of September) Sweet & Simple Bake: St Clements Drizzle Cake.

Chocolate Orange Drizzle Loaf Cake

This months Sweet & Simple Bakes is Chocolate Orange Drizzle Loaf Cake.  I was afraid I might not be able to bake it before the deadline tonight.  It came out very well and since I was running out of time, I cut the cake and took some clicks before the chocolate could set.  I followed the recipe given here.  The only change I made is I used the zest of 1 large orange and the juice of 1/2 orange.  My oranges were very big, so used half the required quantity.  Also, I used semi sweet chocolate chips instead of dark chocolate, as I had these in my pantry.  Maria & Rosie, thanks for this delicious bake.

Sweet & Simple Bakes: Vanilla Cupcakes

Phew… this time it took me 3 tries to get it right. This month, the Sweet & Simple Bake is Rosie’s Vanilla Cup Cake.  I usually don’t have any problem with the sweet & simple bakes recipes, but this time it was an all different story.   All three times, the cup cakes tasted greet.. the only problem was getting the perfect shape.  Culprit for my disasters, or should I say not so perfect cup cakes (in shape) is my muffin pan.  I have a 6 hole pan and this recipe yields 12 cup cakes.  So, I cleverly decided to use the 6 hole pan and my 12 hole mini muffin pan.  I assumed 12 mini hole pan requires equal amount of cake mixture as the 6 hole pan.  Oooh boy,  wasI  wrong.

The first time I baked the cup cakes, I forget to get the mini cup cake liners and I used the medium  cup cake liners.  That messed up every thing and also I over filled the batter/dough in the 6 hole pan.  When the cakes came out of the oven, my cup cakes tin looked like pancake pan…  But the cakes were delicious.  So, I decided to bake them again for perfect cupcakes, with correct cup liners for my mini cake pan.

Are these cupcakes or pancakes?

The second time, I was certain I would get perfect cakes.  But no luck again.  I again over filled my pans, both the 6 cup muffin pan and the mini muffin pan.  Yet again, when I removed the pans from the oven, I had pancakes…  Then I realized that my assumption that 12 mini cupcakes would  require same amount of dough as the 6 regular cupcakes was wrong.  In fact, it requires less dough.

When I baked them again today, I used 2 ramekins and 2 small heart shaped  pans also, and got the perfect shape.  No more pancakes…  Altogether, I had 6 regular cupcakes, 12 mini cup cakes, 2 cups cakes in a ramekin and 2 heart shaped cakes.

The cakes were so good that I ate most of the cakes myself, even though the shapes were not so  perfect (cup cakes first 2 bakes). I must have put on at least 2 lbs this month, eating so many cup cakes…  I did not have time to prepare the icing and decorate the cup cakes and hope Rosie would accept my entry.  Rosie has the recipe for the cup cakes and the icing on Sweet & Simple Bakes.  These cakes are moist, spongy and yum yum that one can’t stop eating them.  Thanks Rosie for this recipe.

Update:
I could not see those cupcakes without any decoration. So went ahead and decorated half of the cup cakes and the heart shaped cake. Can find the recipe for the icing here.

Love those cupcakes. Are they tempting? Those are as delicious as they look… I am finding it very difficult to resist eating them…

White & Brown Chocolate Chip Cookies

I followed the recipe on the packet of Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies.  The recipe called for semi sweet chips but I used combination of semi sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips.  I made ½ the recipe that was on the packet.

Total Time: 25 minutes
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Baking Time: 8-10 minutes
Yields: 2 – 2½ Dozens (This is an approximate count. I did not count)

Oatmeal & Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is my second recipe from the Sweet and Simple Bakes. Every month, Rosie and Maria give a recipe and we need to bake it by the first of next month and post it on our blog. I baked their Vanilla Apple Cake, which was simply delicious and this month it is Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here is my bake for this month, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. The recipe for the cookies is on their site. I followed their recipe with a few substitutions. I will list the original recipe and, italicize and bold the substitutions I made.

Savory Corn Muffins

One day, as I was blog hopping, I stumbled on to Dorie’s Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins recipe. The recipe looked interesting and the muffins looked delicious. I bought all the ingredients to bake the muffins and then I saw Suganya’s Spicy Corn Muffins. Her recipe yields 6 muffins, which was perfect and also this recipe calls for only 2 tbsp of oil. So I went ahead baked Suganya’s Muffins yesterday, with a few adjustments. I liked the muffins and Mr.U, being a carnivore in the house, was reluctant to even taste them. So I eat two for brunch, as soon as I baked them. I eat a heavy lunch with left over Biryani and payasam from previous day. I was so stuffed and wanted to skip dinner. Then I again, I knew very well that if skip dinner, I will wake up in the middle of the night and munch on cookies or candy. So I eat two more muffins for dinner. I have the other 2 in the fridge, which I will munch on later in the day.

Here is the link to Suganya’s recipe for spicy corn muffins.  I made a few adjustments to the recipe and I will list Suganya’s  recipe and will strike out the ingredient that I changed the measures for and italicize the measures that I used.  I didn’t use the cheese.

Total Time: 25-30 minutes
Preparation Time: 5-10 minutes
Baking Time: 20 minutes
Yields: 6

Vanilla Apple Cake

Rosie and Maria at Sweet and Simple Bakes have a baking event, where they post a recipe for a bake at the beginning of the month and we have the whole month to bake the goodie and put it up on our blog.  This is something similar to Daring Bakers, only difference being, these bakes are simple and we can post it any day during the month.  This is a nice baking event for those of us who are interested in baking.  For the month of September, it was Vanilla Apple Cake.

The original recipe is here.  I followed the recipe as it was given with a few substitutions.  I will post the recipe and for all the ingredients I substituted, I will italicize and bold it.

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Bake Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 250 gm / 9oz Unsalted Butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
• 250 gm / 9oz Golden Caster Sugar (or normal caster sugar) or Superfine Sugar
• 4 Eggs, beaten
• 250 gm / 9oz Self-Raising Flour
• 1 Vanilla Pod, split, seeds removed and reserved or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 small Bramley Apples or Granny Smith, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
• 2 tbsp Demerara Sugar
 or Sugar
• ¼ tsp Ground Cinnamon

Preparation:

• Peel, core and cut the apples into wedges.
• Pre-heat the oven to 350F or 180C/fan 160C/gas 4.
• Butter a 9 inch springform pan (I couldn’t find a 8 inch pan in the stores near by).
• Beat the superfine sugar and butter together until the mixture turns pale and fluffy. This should take about 5 minutes.
• Add the eggs, flour and vanilla seeds, then beat together quickly to make a smooth batter.
• Tip into the prepared pan, then lay the apple wedges on top, poking them halfway into the mix. Don’t worry if the apples appear crowded – they’ll shrink as they cook.
• Sprinkle with the Sugar and cinnamon and bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean and the sponge is risen and golden.

I baked fr 1 hr 5 minutes and I burnt the cake a little. Oven temperatures vary, please check 50-55 minutes into baking, for the doneness of the cake.
• Leave to cool for a few mins, then release the pan and cool the cake completely on a wire rack.