Baking

Orange Cookies Recipe

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This is a variation on the oat, coconut and choc chip cookie, taking out the coconut and choc and using orange instead. I guess if you wanted orange and chocolate chip cookies, then leave the chips in 🙂

85g Granulated sugar

85g Demerera sugar

100g butter (at room temp)

300g Plain Flour / All purpose flour

1/2 tps salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

125g oats (you may need to add more if the mixture is a bit wet)

1 Orange – grate a bit of rind when needed, then use the juice of the whole orange

2 tsp of orange extract

60g choc chips optional

Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth (ish), add the egg, orange rind, juice and extract and mix. Then add the flour, salt and baking soda & powder. It needs to start binding like a dough, so if it’s a bit sloppy, then add a bit more flour (I didn’t weigh mine before adding, so went from 250g to 300g in the ingredients, but a bit more may be needed).

Once it’s binding well, add the oats by hand. Then put on a baking sheet and flatten out with your hand to about 1 – 2cm depth. Then use a cookie/biscuit cutter to get your desired shape and size.

Put on a baking tray either greased or on baking paper, and cook for around 10 – 15 mins or until going brown at 180 degrees.

(c) K Wicks

Orange cookies and cherry turnovers

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Turns out the oat cookie recipe works with orange, just a bit more flour and oats needed to compensate for the orange juice – i’ll update and post the recipe later in case anyone wants to give them a go. Also decided to get some cherries and make cherry turnovers, as they are a favourite. I haven’t had a cherry turnover since the ‘Nobody likes a mouldy turnover‘ incident with the local bakery.

But it inspired me to start baking more at home, so it turned out to be a good thing.

(c) K Wicks

Coconut and chocolate cookies recipe

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Definitely the new go to recipe for homemade cookies 🍪.

250g All purpose flour (plain flour in the UK)

1 tps baking soda

1tps baking powder

1/2 tps salt

100g granulated sugar

100g brown sugar

100g butter (at room temp)

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

100g oats

100g desiccated coconut

100g chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the extract and egg, mix well.

Add the flour, salt and baking powder/soda.

Mix in the coconut, oats and chocolate chips by hand. Shape either into small balls and flatten slightly, or flatten out the mix and use a cookie cutter. I did some more today using that method, and without coconut and chocolate for some, as coconut is not to the entire households taste 😉

Bake at 180c for around 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool, then eat them!

(c) K Wicks

Orange biscuits

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A small batch of biscuits – makes about 8.

90g all purpose flour / plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

60g butter

100g sugar

2oz fresh orange juice / zest

half an egg

Oven at 180°c – baking time 15 minutes (ish)

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Seperately cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg, orange zest and juice and mix until you have what looks like a horrible scrambled egg type mixture. Then add half the flour and mix through, then add the rest of the flour and mix well until you have a creamy looking dough and pop in the fridge for a bit.

I never usually let anything rest in between, but this time I did, having ruined the first batch with lemon a couple of weeks ago, and addressed an long standing issue I have with baking biscuits and them going wrong. Turns out impatience and ignorance were the culprit! No real surprise there for me. But I gave thought to what it is I get wrong, and there appeared to be a theme with these, they spread and don’t hold their shape. So, finally thought to ask the internet, and turns out it’s the butter being too warm obviously having been a room temp the whole time (or even melted first for choch chip cookies) and then being worked on and getting warmer. The trick is apparently to put in in the fridge or freezer for a time once you have made the dough, so it can solid up again. Makes sense know I now, and it worked, obviously. It’s my own fault as the video which I got this recipe from (linked at the bottom) clearly tells you to put it in the fridge, but you know how it is, sometimes we think we know best.

After creating small balls of dough, they are then rolled in icing sugar and placed on baking paper on a tray and into the oven. I’m going to see if tangerine’s work just as well for this later, and in ice-cream, so fingers crossed for more orangey snack and treats 🙂

(c) K Wicks

Here is the link to the YouTube vid where got the recipe and method, just swapped the lemon for orange.

Homemade bread

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Thought I would give baking bread a go by hand. A very quick method and was so easy it made me feel a bit silly for not realising it was this quick and simple to do.

350g bread flour

200ml warm water

2 tbsp sunflower oil

1/2 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp salt

Mix the water, salt, yeast and oil together. Then add the flour. Work together to form a sticky dough.

Place on a mat/surface with some flour and knead. This one required being rolled in on itself a few times after a short time kneading (like you would roll up a pair or trousers for packing), and pinched in where it joins.

Then place in a tray on baking paper and cover with a tea towel for half an hour to give it time to rise.

Then score down the middle with a knife to give it room to spread. Sprink with flour. Bake for 25 mins at 190 Celsius. (Halfway through take out and sprinkle or spray a bit of water on it).

Very pleased with this, it’s very tasty.

(c) K Wicks

Strawberry cheesecake

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I used my other cheesecake recipe for this, but reduced the ingredients slightly and swapped raspberries for strawberries.

Ingredients:

150g digestive biscuits

50g melted butter

170ml double cream

60g caster sugar

300g cream cheese

125g fresh strawberries

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

These will be the speed version – a more detailed cheesecake approach is here for the Raspberry Cheesecake recipe I have used for a few years, which started as blueberries so really, whichever fruit you choose is good.

Crush the biscuits, melt the butter. Mix them.

Then put into the paper lined tin and press down, put in fridge.

Then mix the sugar and double cream together until super smooth and silky. In a separate bowl soften the cream cheese. Then add the creamed sugar and vanilla extract. At this point I blended about 80g of the strawberries and added to the mixture – folding everything through to make sure all mixed.

Add the creamy fruity mixture on top of the biscuit base and evenly distribute to the edges. Put back in fridge. Is ok after a couple of hours, but for best results leave overnight. Then I add fresh cut strawberry when ready to serve.

As we won’t eat the whole cheesecake at once, I dress each piece with strawberries when ready 🙂

It was rather delicious and makes me wonder why it took me so long to make one!

(c) K Wicks

Orange ice-cream recipe

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I really liked the sound of this, so decided to give it a go after watching a run through on YouTube. I will share the link at the bottom of this post so you know how it is done and where I got the recipe. How it should look versus how it turned out!

Ingredients:

50ml fresh orange juice

500ml milk

100g Sugar

250 ml double / whipping cream

Orange essence

The black cherry juice wasn’t used in this one, but is there to show will be tried next. This recipe gets you to make your own condensed milk from scratch to make the ice-cream, which is the consistency you want when making the base. But I believe you can use a can of pre made and start from that point.

From scratch – heat the milk and sugar together and bring to the boil, then reduce heat, and reduce the mixture by about a 1/3, stiring and checking the viscosity. When happy with it, take off the heat and allow to cool completely, stiring while it does.

Then stir in the orange juice and mix well. Get a seperate bowl for the cream, and whip it for around 30 seconds, then pour in the orange mixture, add a teaspoon of orange essence. Whip together until as soft peaks (orange colouring can be used if you want it to be colourful).

Put into a dish and put in the freezer to set, will be good to go after about 8-10 hours. I wasn’t sure I had pulled this off, as my mixer wasn’t working that well and I used a fork for the last bit, reaslising I was probably removing most of the airation. It wasn’t soft peaks at all, and seemed rather runny. So in the freezer it went, as I thought it would be good to taste it still and see where I could improve it.

It was a actually a good fail in my opinion, although not like the one in the tutorial video, it is extremely tasty and smooth. I’m excited to try cherry next, and give orange another go, maybe using colouring this time. We’ll see how it goes.

(c) K Wicks

Here is the link for ‘Hands Touch’ on YouTube, where I saw the recipe and method, so you can check out the method as I know my instructions can be quite brief, and this deserves to be shared, it’s awesome –

Cherry cream filled chocolates

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So, same method as the previous recipes for orange creams and strawberry creams, but I halved the recipe again so I stop building up a stockpile of cream fillings!

Thought I would be fancy this time, and try and get some gold stars in, realising after they would be enveloped by chocolate.

For the filling i used black cherry concentrate, and a few drops of vanilla. The cherry doesn’t as well i would have liked it to, and I used a good 5 teaspoons of it. Great colour though.

Then, to be super special, I thought i would put a few drops of the cherry juice inside each chocolate before sealing them. On reflection I should have made a small nook in each, as as soon as it was done, I knew it would seep through the chocolate.

But they turned out ok, and has hints of cherry rather than a blast of flavour like the others.

(c) K Wicks

Homemade Strawberry cream filled chocolates

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So, making Orange filled chocoloates wasn’t enough and I now have the bug for making cream filled chocolates. I decided to go for strawberry, with a plan to send some as a gift to my grandpa who adores chocolate and said feel free to post them to him anytime. Say no more…

Same line up as the orange (although at the last minute decided to use a star mould), and used strawberry syrup for the filling. And a pinch of edible glitter, because you know, its christmassy.

I halved the recipe again from the first one, so –

Ingredients

half a cup of double cream,

200g of sugar

100-150g of dark chocolate

Soaked together, then heated to 240f, and a whole tablespoon of corn syrup. The consistency was much sticker and more toffee like for this one, then let cool (adding a small amount of butter and turning over first). Then i mixed in the strawberry syrup, leaving some streaking through (and the glitter). Around 80g of chocolate melted for the mould, then in the freezer for at least 10 minutes too set before you add the filling.

Chocolate moulds filled with strawberry, melt the rest of the chocolate and then cover each splace, smoothing over with a pallet knife if really bumpy, and back in the freezer to chill, then in the fridge.

Proper tasty, and I also made some orange shells yesterday with the left over orange filling to have a variety to send.

And now they are boxed up ready to be sent tomorrow after buying a few boxes and little cases for them to stop them sliding around in the dividers. I am rather pleased at how they look and am pretty sure I won’t be buying certain brands again. I’ll be making lemon ones at the weekend hopefully so we’ll see if this is a fluke, or if I’ve got the knack 😉

(c) K Wicks