Yeasted Almond and Sea Salt Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie

Inside our flat there is a seven-foot tree held in position by the ceiling. This year we chose a sparing selection of fancy shmancy £4-a-pop John Lewis decorations instead of 100 glittery baubles from the Pound Land.  The tree is leaning slightly to the left, but I suppose that’s what happens when you invest in something real. 

Baking cookies in a cake tin won’t add a touch of all spice to a Christmas baking repertoire, but it does add a barely cooked doughy middle to the modest sized batch this recipe yields. I think that adding some ground cloves or cinnamon, or a warming combination of both elevated with some fresh nutmeg, could work beautifully, especially if you’re finally in the festive spirit (festive spirit = continuous spice trip in the month of December). Let’s not forget that cookies are a bribe the kids might use on Santa so he doesn’t disappoint them with a lump of coal.  Not to be ageist, but the heaps of sea salt, whole nuts and bitter chocolate in this cookie tray bake are all adultly ingredients too.

My favourite recipe for chocolate chip cookies is the New York Times adaptation of Jacques Torres’ recipe, which is made with bread flour. Since discovering it, all of my cookies have had bread flour in them because it gives a chew, and a slight sturdiness on the outside that is difficult to forget. 

To amplify the bread-like flavour I used yeast as the raising agent and chilled the tray overnight, maturing the fermentation like this created a surprisingly subtle yeastiness. Bicarbonate of soda is fine to use as a replacement, but I’m sick of accidentally adding too much bicarbonate and ending up with a batch of soapy baked goods. Using fast acting yeast eliminates all possibilities of that, and it creates a crispy and crackly top layer caused from the swollen air pockets that rise to the top of the cookie overnight. Yeast and bicarbonate of soda both produce carbon dioxide that helps the cookie rise in the oven, but I much prefer the characteristics of bread in my cookies instead of, say, Imperial Leather.

Yeasted Almond and Sea Salt Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie

Makes 8 large pieces or 16 slithers.

Ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter
• 125g light brown sugar
• 2 pinches sea salt
• 1 tsp coffee extract or brewed coffee
• 1 egg
• 200g strong bread flour
• ½ tsp fast action yeast
• 100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 50g almonds, roughly chopped

Method

1. In a small saucepan brown the butter on medium heat. Let the butter sizzle in the pan for a few minutes, keep an eye on it as it burns really quickly, you’ll know it’s browned when it starts to smell nutty. Pour the butter in a large bowl and leave to cool slightly. Add the sugar, salt and coffee extract to the butter and stir to combine then crack in the egg and briefly whisk.
2. In a separate bowl stir together the flour and yeast and add to the butter mixture. The mixture will be a little wet. Fold through the chocolate and almonds. Dump the dough into an 8-inch round cake tin and use the back of a spoon to gently press into the tin. Tightly wrap the tin in cling film and leave in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight. Once you're ready to serve the cookie, preheat the oven to 200˚C/fan 180˚C/gas 6 and bake for 18 minutes, or 14 minutes for a gooey middle. Cookie lasts for 3 days if covered.

Waitrose might have nailed gingerbread this Christmas, but they also have a lovely collection of chocolate cake recipes on their website. I made their ganache covered red-velvet-like layer cake and filled it with tangy freeze-dried strawberries, which was dense and hit all the right choco-spots. You can find the recipe here, along with lots more chocolatey goodness.

Love Em xx

Pistachio & Chocolate Biscotti + A Giveaway

mbakes turned three last month! We’re nearly out of the annoying toddler stage and hopefully; the recipes aren’t as clumsy anymore. Pair the diabolical explosions of sugar I used to post back in ’12 + 13 with my nighttime flash photography, and it makes me want to cry and murder every cupcake on the planet. 

Aaaaand then there’s Jane Hornby, she’s been writing recipes professionally for 15 years and her new baking book What To Bake & How To Bake It came out recently. If you have years of recipe writing under your belt and a whole book containing mostly quintessentially British recipes within, that’s enough to draw me in. The glorious book might be aimed at the amateur baker, but there's no harm in adding a collection of stable recipes to your collection (15 years = stable recipes, okay?). WTB&HTBI felt genuine, much more so than a book by a celebrity chef, whose home economist likely thought up/tested the recipes and then stuck a coy image of said celeb chef on the front cover to push the sale of copies, isn’t that annoying? 

What’s the USP, I hear you ask? (You’re not asking this), it might be the photography, which kind of reminds me of Ikea. Each recipe (there’s 50 of them, including pumpkin pie and JAFFA marble cake) comes with beautiful overhead step-by-step photographs from start to finish.  This recipe for pistachio chocolate chip biscotti is an adaptation from the pistachio and fig version in the book, every recipe in here is meant to be simple, so I chose the simplest of the lot, to see how good Jane’s ‘simple’ was, and my oh my, Jane’s simple is simply delicious, crunchy and not at all eggy. 

To celebrate three years, Phaidon have kindly offered two copies of What To Bake & How To Bake It for me to giveaway. To enter, follow the instructions on the rafflecopter below. You can only enter if you live in the UK, don’t hate me!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pistachio & Chocolate Biscotti

Ingredients

• 200g unrefined caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting and rolling
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• Zest of 1 orange 


• 100g shelled pistachios 
• 100g dark chocolate chips

Method

1. Grease and line a large baking tray with baking parchment. Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F. 
2. Put the sugar and eggs in a large bowl and whisk for 1 minute, until the mixture is frothy and pale, then whisk in the melted butter. 
3. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt then dump over the eggs. Use a spatula to fold together to make a dough. Add the zest, nuts and chocolate and stir into the dough using the spatula. 
4. Scatter a generous amount of flour on the work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Split the dough in two and dust each one with more flour. Shape and lightly pat each piece into an 8-10 inch sausage, taking care not to overwork. Gently lift each piece onto the baking tray, bake for 30 minutes then leave to cool on a wire rack and reduce the oven to 160 C / 320 F.
5. Use a serrated knife to slice into 1cm pieces, then spread the cookies on the lined baking tray and bake for another 30 minutes, turning them over half way through baking so both sides are golden. Cool the biscotti on a rack, or eat warm, they'll last for 2 weeks in a cookie jar.

Love Em xx

No Churn Tahini Ice Cream with Mulberry Molasses

It’s been a long and unexpected break from blogging. One that, lets be honest, I should have wrote about before making the rude exit.  I’ve learned that real-life panic settles in roughly two months after finishing all of the studying it’s possible to do in the UK before exhausting your loan options. 

My pre 9-5 panic made me avoid blogging (that, and a bit of laziness). So I’ve got oodles of admiration for the women whose blogs I read (and have grown friendships with), the ones who have impressive careers and beautiful blogs as well as recipes that make you wish you could live forever just so you can carry on eating (cringe, but so true).  

My family were the route cause of these tahini ice cream “half” sandwiches. Being away from blogging has meant extra time to dip flatbreads in mixtures of mulberry molasses and tahini, and then finally giving up and placing the jars on the table for potential (frequently occurring) top ups.

The sweet pungency of Mulberry is softened with tahini paste, as its stirred, the whole thing comes together as a fruity, nutty, runny sauce called Pekmez. Just as the ripples in Halva are made with mulberry molasses, so too is the topping for these tahini ice creams – it’s a good way to keep the flavours distinct, and it’s good for eliminating one or the other, if the sight/sound of one freaks you out a bit.

Pecan Chocolate Chip Blondies

I purchase an irrelevant (read, near invisible) quantity of flour made from ground nuts or dehydrated coconut. I also find it really difficult to substitute grainy sugar for agave syrup in recipes and come out the other end with risen and delicious goods. A few weeks ago I bought chia seeds and soaked them in almond milk overnight with a bit of sweetened coconut - in the morning I was close to throwing up.  

I’m not busting the balls of healthy eating though, a few weeks ago I posted a recipe for ice cream made of dairy free milk sweetened with a natural liquid sugar and filled with the chewy, somewhat inedible remnants of steeped cocoa nibs. When it comes to putting these ingredients in the oven so that they meld together to produce something physically and sensually similar to a brownie filled with refined sugar and cocoa butter, sorry, white chocolate, I seriously struggle. And yet, dairy ruins my bowels but coffee is dishwater without cow's milk.

Even though I cant bake with flax seed, I have an obsession with Whole Foods, which is massively inconvenient because I live in the annoying bit of London where the closest you’ll get to Whole Foods is Holland and Barrett. A few weeks ago I was taken on a tour of London’s flagship Whole Foods store in Kensington, it had three floors and the moment I walked in I could have sworn I was in a huge retail park in a remote bit of land somewhere in New England. 

After the tour I peered over their chief baker Angela’s shoulder for an hour whilst she iced cakes in that classic, slightly retro decorative way you’d find on sheet cakes that only exist in America/Australia (why?). We spoke endlessly about the pastry at Whole Foods, (whilst I was excited, she was probably cringing) and surprisingly, she tells me that their healthier alternatives are the least popular sellers in the store, apart from the chia seed pudding (god knows why). This little snippet of information stays with me until later, when my lovely tour guide and the woman I moan to about the lack of Whole Foods in my part of town, tells me how people often misinterpret the company as only selling health foods when in fact they're all about selling quality organic food. 

My point is, you don't have to be a health conscious hipster, or have diet restrictions, or be a hipster pretending to have diet restrictions, to enjoy Whole Foods. The wheat flour selection is just...just... Yes. 

So I've made these incredibly indulgent, almost-too-buttery blondies to celebrate dairy, wheat and too much sugar, even though it gives me a bad stomach because a) I'm stupid and b) the health alternatives at Whole Foods don't sell in smaller numbers for no reason (in London, that is). 

* I was not paid to write this. I approached Whole Foods myself and asked to bombard their kitchen and write about them, cos I love it.

Pecan Chocolate Chip Blondies 

200g quality white chocolate

160g unsalted butter 

325g caster sugar 

130g plain flour

3 eggs

50g toasted pecans, roughly chopped

100g milk chocolate chips

Sea salt and dried rose petals for sprinkling

Notes: the cocoa butter content in white chocolate is what makes these blondies crazy chewy and dripping with moisture because of the additional fat alongside butter. You can easily use 120g unsalted butter instead of the full amount but they won't be AS moist, but I think that's okay. 

Preheat oven to 170C/gas mark 3. Grease a 12 hole muffin tray with butter, or ditch the greasing and use non-stick silicon muffin trays, as the brownies will brown more evenly in silicon. Another option: line a 13” by 9” brownie tray. 

Put the chocolate and butter in a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted. Take off the heat and let cool slightly. Add the sugar and stir, then add all of the flour and beat until a paste forms, then add the eggs, one by one, stirring vigorously after each addition. Fold in the toasted pecans and chocolate chips. Use an ice cream scoop to distribute the mixture into the muffin holes, or spread mixture evenly across brownie tray. Optional: sprinkle with salt and dried rose leaves. Bake for 35 minutes until the top is crispy and flaky. 

Love Em xx

Nigella's Nutella cake

I feel like I should rename this blog ‘mbakes with chocolate’. 

EVERYTHING has chocolate, I’m sorry if you’re getting sick of it. Am I trying to assert my femininity by using it? Dear god I hope not. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, I have visions of rubbing chocolate into the pores of my face and I fear it may actually be cheaper than my Lancome ‘Tient Idole Ultra’ (what?) – which makes it all the more feasible and non-weird. 

I polished off a poor man’s Magnum and a crème egg half an hour before falling into sleep induced coma yesterday. It may or may not have been my lowest point, albeit the moment I forgot how to write a good sentence.

This cake is definitely an ode to Easter, it would be perfect as an alternative to simnel cake or hot cross buns if you’re gluten intolerant, but I’d risk it for a bite of these fried hot cross donuts. 

The Nutella cake is very rich in flavour and every scant forkful is as decadent as the next. Perfect reasoning for massively underexposing the photographs! You can can taste the darkness, yes?

This is a proper adult’s cake, by the way. We gave a hefty slice to my eight year old cousin and I could almost feel her dismay when she clocked on to the (sweet) bitterness. Oh, to be young.  Happy Easter!  

Chocolate Rum Éclairs

Éclairs always remind me of our “female” family gets togethers. Auntie A is on her way round, then maybe auntie B will follow suit an hour or so later and she’ll bring the custard tarts from Tesco’s whilst we might provide the fresh cream and jam doughnuts from Morrison’s. Auntie A will be pouring the stovetop Turkish Tea into our tiny glass vessels in abundance and there will always be a whiff of brewed cloves to be smelt in the air. 

There’s nothing wrong with sharing and enjoying something sweet and mass packaged whilst having a good old moan from time to time, don’t you think? 

Most of our teatime favourites have one thing in common and that’s sweetened whipped cream, with added gelatin to help thicken and plump things up a bit and worryingly prolong its shelf life.

Sickening, really, how processed cream can taste so damn good.

But it’s the beginning of April, dissertation deadline is looming so I’m steering clear of processed cream, hoping it will promote– a ‘can do’ attitude (still cant do). 

The filling in these éclairs isn’t made with coconut milk residue. Make them with a cream with the highest fat content you can find, sugar and a touch of rum to round off the sweetness. It’ll take you back to the best bitching session you’ve ever had with your family.

Passionfruit and Lime Curd

Life is a bit hectic at the moment, which might explain the silence around here this week. We’re in the middle of moving to a new flat. I think you might agree that this is can be the most stressful few weeks in life. Moving an oven, beds, sofas, boxes upon boxes of kitchen utensils (I’m that kitchen equipment hoarder person) and other unbearably heavy objects through the most unrealistic spaces is on the horizon and it’s going to hurt.

I hope you’ll be patient and the next time I post I promise it won’t be a condiment. Saying that, this stuff disintegrates on the tongue and has the silkiest feel, shortly followed by the strongest kick of citrus I’ve ever experienced. It thickens up pretty quick, and you wont want to browse through your phone whilst you whisk away because you might just be mesmerised by the most beautiful shades of yellow melding together in the pan.

Passionfruit and Lime Curd

Ingredients

• 3 passionfruits
• 3 large eggs
• 75g caster sugar
• Juice of 4 limes, zest of 1
• 75g unsalted butter

Method

1. Place the seeded pulp of the passionfruits into a food processor. Pulse 3 times to loosen the seeds from the pulp and then pass through a sieve into a small bowl, set the seeds aside for later. 
2. Add the eggs, sugar and juice of 4 limes to a small bowl and mix to combine. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the passionfruit pulp and egg mixture to the saucepan, then whisk continuously until thickened - around 2 minutes. As soon as the mixture thickens, continue whisking whilst it bubbles away for 1 minute. Take the curd off the heat and stir through the lime zest. 
3. Let cool for 5 minutes and then add the passionfruit seeds, you can leave this step out if you don't like the seeds. If the mixture is lumpy pass it through a sieve. Pour into a sterilised jar, let cool and refrigerate until set. Lasts for 5 days.

Love Em xx

Silver Dollar Pancakes with Nutella and Raspberries

Most of you may have heated up the non-stick pan by now, but for those 9-5ers who would rather spend the extra hour in bed instead of mixing flour and eggs together before sunrise, I want you to make my rack of hot cakes tonight.  

The name of these has everything to do with the size of the pancakes, they’re tiny rounds, making up about 4 mouthfuls to be precise (I have taste tested this). Of course, you could make bigger rounds, but its Pancake Day so we’re going to celebrate by giving our plates some height. 

A silver dollar pancake is usually made without buttermilk because its meant to be a small and light little gesture. So if you’re a skimmed milk fiend, these would be perfect. 

These are the kinds of pancakes, that, when you give them their first flip, you can see them elevate and then fall back down ever so slightly. That’s the raising agents in the self-raising flour doing its magic, which is crucial here if you want an American style pancake. Which, lets face it, is the only pancake that should be legal on Shrove Tuesday. 

As for every other day of the week, or when you’re strolling down the high street, a crepe from the crepe man with the life size jar of Nutella will do. 

I’ve glued my pancakes together with a slither of Nutella and finished them off with raspberries, below an even thicker slither of Nutella and not least because it looks visually appealing. But because the tartness of raspberries (because they’re so blatantly not in season) contrasted with sweet, sweet and satisfying hazelnut spread works bloody wonders. 

Pancake pairings by other bloggers that you should seriously consider:

Cocoa Nib and Coffee Syrup Pancakes by Sarah from The Vanilla Bean Blog (she went there). 

Cinnamon Pancakes with Coconut Cashew Cream by Sophie from The Cake Hunter-uhuh-uhuh

Honey and Oat Pancakes by Izy over at Top With Cinnamon

Speculoos aka Cookie Butter Pancakes by Hannah from The Littlest Bakehouse mmmmhm

Read on to get the recipe

How To Make A Perfectly Round & Thick Brown Butter Chocolate ChipCookie + Recipe

We’re nearing the end of autumn and I’ve yet to post edible shades of orange on here.  You should know that I purchased a mini pumpkin today. I am probably going to place it on my windowsill and stare at it for a week or so, occasionally wondering whether it’s worth sacrificing the plump beauty of a good old pumpkin.

I am basically just sitting here all year round, baking the wrong things at the wrong time.

This disorder stretches across my entire culinary life e.g. lentil soup in the summer was a staple for mama and me. But when is the right time to bake chocolate chip cookies? They seem to somehow stumble into my diet every other day so yeah…NOW IS THE RIGHT TIME.

Sure, the internet doesn’t need yet another cookie recipe to add to its vast collection. So I thought I’d carry out a few geeky ‘measurement tests’ (is that a thing?) to try and give back to the internet what I think its missing: exact cookie dough measurements for perfectly rounded, thick and nonetheless; chewy chocolate chip cookies.

After three attempts and a whole batch of oval cookies, this is what eventually worked:

Mould raw cookie dough into cylinders that are 2.7 / 3 cm wide and 3 cm long. The cylinders should weigh 34 grams, this will give you a cookie that is at least 3 mouthfuls before it disappears. Of course, you can repeat this process 28 times because this is how many cookies the recipe yields.

Speaking of the recipe, the lovely Nora from Buttercream Fanatic has a foolproof recipe (cookie queen cookie queen) that I have used as the base for this recipe. To give the cookies an extra depth of flavour/nuttiness I browned (burned) the butter, if you think I’m going crazy, you can read about the process here. You would think that this would eliminate the ‘thickness’ of said cookies, but if you pop the dough in the fridge for long enough, the butter re-solidifies, leaving you with a cookie that is none other than effing delicious, 28 times ;).

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies

1 cup (215g) light brown sugar

1 cup (225g) unsalted butter, melted and browned
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 1/4 (280g) cup plain flour
1 1/2 tsp cornflour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup (150g) dark chocolate chips

Makes 28 small cookies

Method

Add the brown sugar to a large bowl and pour over the melted butter. Mix to combine. Lightly beat the eggs in a small cup and pour into sugar mixture. Mix until just combined. Toss in the flour, cornflour and baking soda and stir until a thick dough forms. The mixture will be warm from the melted butter so cover and set aside for 15 minutes. Fold in the chocolate chips once the dough is cooled. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 3 hours/overnight.

Preheat oven to 180 C. Weigh out 34g of dough and shape into a cylinder. The cylinder should be roughly 3 cm long and 3 cm wide. Repeat the process, placing each cylinder of dough in the fridge whilst you make the rest. Place on cookie sheets 3 inches apart and bake for 12 minutes. Let the cookies rest on the sheets before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies last for 3 days.

How do you shape your cookies before they hit the oven? Love Em xx