Peanut Butter Honey cookies

I baked these cookies ages ago and never quite got round to writing the post. But here we go.

It’s hard choosing what cookie to make from the cooky book, there are so many that look so good. I did the good old “flip the book open and see where it lands” thing and landed on these. They are the most disgusting looking things to create, and a complete pig to roll, but they did taste very good. So good that the husband’s work colleagues were begging him for the recipe. Mine remained mostly silent. Guess where the cookies are going in future?

Anyway, these cookies are made with butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter, eggs, flour, baking powder & soda, salt and peanuts.

Ingredients

First, you mix the butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter and eggs together into a really unattractive looking gloopy brown mixture. The amount of peanut butter in here is frankly amazing. I put nearly the entire huge pot in. If you’re feeling middle class you can use some of the no added fun stuff. I used proper American style, smooth and packed with sugar.

Peanut butter, lots of.

Gloop

Next all the dry ingredients and the nuts go in. And this is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong….

Oh the recipe book is straight forward and easy enough, makes it sound like a doddle. Not for me. First, you shape the dough into a strip 10×2.5×1.5″, wrap it in greaseproof paper and chill for several hours. I was rubbish at making the rolls and must not have made them thick enough. Because when I tried to chop them and bake them I ended up with this….

Bad cookies

Tiny, burnt, rubbish. I suppose they could pass as biscotti. Burnt biscotti.

Bah. My first proper cookie disaster.

Luckily, I had plenty more dough. So I rerolled it and made fatter sausages. And then I squished them after cutting to make them a good size. It was a pain and has put me right off making these kind of cookies. Drop cookies are so much eater. Or cookie cutter ones. But mostly drop, I love the laziness.

Anyway, the final cookies ended up looking quite good and were very tasty. Extremely nutty and a good honey tang. All’s well that ends well.

Good Cookie

Finished product

Canadian Oatmeal Cookies – the reveal

After an hour in the fridge I rolled the cookie dough out and used a little cup thingy to cut it into circles. Really must get cookie cutters at some point. Top tip here, when you’ve done your first cutting out and reroll the dough to cut again, put some flour on the board. If you don’t your cookies will stick and it’ll be a ‘mare getting them off again.

Cutting the cookies

Now, Betty Crocker says this recipe makes 3-4 dozen cookies. I am beginning to think that Betty either (a) makes stupidly small cookies, or (b) can’t count. I made 18 cookies. Of a standard cookie size.  I’ve noticed this overestimating of cookie production in her other recipes too. So if you’re following one of the recipes, beware.

In a deviation from the recipe, I sprinkled the cookies with a little vanilla sugar before placing them in the oven (180C) for 12 minutes. The result:

Canadian Oatmeal Cookies

Now the testing. Good crumbly texture, mixture of crunch and softness.  Nice oaty taste, not too sweet, and not at all greasy,  the vanilla sugar works really well. These are good cookies, really good. I want another.

Hang on, this reminds me of something. What is it? What have I made? I know these cookies. Wait, it’ll come to me…

YES! That’s it! Ladies & gentlement, we have made a … HobNob. Jolly good show. Only these taste even better than HobNobs. These are going to become a Betty Cooky staple.

Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread

The second cookie making enterprise has been delayed due to holidays, but we’re back and baking. This week’s recipe is Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread. You can see it at the bottom of the cookie jar in the picture, and on the right on the plate. The cookies with the bright pink sugar are Egyptian Rose Leaves and will be appearing as cookie of the week in the future. I’m not quite sure where to get the pink sugar from though, is food colouring of that brightness still allowed?

Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread

Anyway, Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread is the subject. It’s a simple recipe requiring butter, brown sugar, vanilla, plain flour, bicarb of soda and rolled oats. This one has no eggs, so could be converted for the vegans among us. Although I’m not convinced by the idea of vegan margarine in shortbread. But then I’m of the view that all margarine is the work of the devil.

Ingredients

On to the recipe. First, you mix your butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy. I’m not sure how this is meant to go fluffy, so I setttled for creaming it and hoping for the best.  Next, mix your flour, soda and oats together and stir into the the butter mixture.  Or, if you’re me, just chuck it all in with the creamed sugar & butter separately as you can’t be bothered to wash up more than one bowl.

Cream butter & sugar

Now I’m afraid we have to wait. The mixture needs to chill for 1-2 hours. It then gets rolled out so it’s a quarter inch think on a floured board and cut into 1.5 inch squares, or ‘fancy shapes’ as Betty Crocker suggests. I do not have cookie cutters as yet, so squares might be in order. Or maybe a circle. Finally, bake on an ungreased sheet for 10-12 mins at a moderate heat.

Right now the mixture is chilling, so we’ll see how it turns out later. Happy baking!

Mix in flour & oats

Chill for 1-2hrs

Birthday

As a holding before the next cookie making, here’s a cupcake instead. It’s my birthday on Tuesday and so R made cupcakes to celebrate. Chocolate cupcakes made with the family Ultimate Chocolate Cake recipe, the first time it’s been turned into cupcake form. Also plain cupcakes made with a traditional Victoria sponge recipe.

Iced with chocolate or vanilla frosting, then covered in sprinkles and rose petals. And very good they were too.  Well done to R!

Cupcake

Cupcake

Fudge Meltaways – the reveal

And now for the moment of truth. May I present: the fudge meltaway.

The book version

My version

Ok, clearly mine are nowhere near as neat as the book, but they don’t look too bad. This lot went to R’s office to be judged. The verdict? Very sweet but very tasty. They are tooth achingly sweet, there’s a lot of sugar in there. I wondered about doing  a version adding peppermint essence to the fondant. You’d end up with a homemade Viscount, which would be ace, and it might cut through the sweetness nicely. I also think the sugar in the base could be excluded and that would help as well. Some of the tasters suggested using milk chocolate rather than dark. The recipe does call for unsweetened chocolate, but you could use milk. I’d probably try and use a darkish milk though, Green & Blacks over Dairy Milk, as I personally think it needs some edge to counter the fondant.

So that’s it for the first great cooky experiment. Next week we’ll go again and this time I’ll pick something that uses the oven!

P.S. No I don’t know where the fudge comes into this recipe either. Don’t think about it.

First recipe – Fudge Meltaways

So here we go with the first cooky recipe.  It was difficult to know what to start with.  I considered just starting at the beginning, but the first recipe involved cold coffee and apple sauce and I really wasn’t convinced.  If only because I wasn’t sure how to get hold of American style apple sauce in the UK.

I decided to let someone else choose the first one and passed the book to my husband.  Who, being contrary, chose a fridge bar rather than a cooky. No cooking involved, which I guess is good for a Monday night.  We start with a Fudge Meltaway.

Fudge Meltaway recipe

Ingredients: Butter, unsweetened chocolate (or 70% Green & Blacks in this case), granulated sugar, vanilla, beaten egg, graham cracker crumbs (digestive biscuits make a UK sub), dessicated coconut, chopped nuts, some more butter, milk, icing sugar, vanilla, and some more chocolate.

Ingredients

At this point I am sceptical about these cookies. But here we go.

The biscuit crumbs, a little chocolate, sugar, egg and nuts get stirred into melted butter and used to line the base of a tray. And here we do my traditional deviation from the recipe. As not only did himself choose a ‘cooky’ that isn’t a cooky, he also didn’t realise it had coconut in and hates coconut. So no coconut. Next time I’m picking the recipe.

Melting chocolate and butter

Nutty, chocolatey biscuit base

The base goes in the fridge to chill and we’re on to the topping.  In true American style this is sugar and butter and not much else.  Mmmm, health food. Butter, a tiny bit of milk, and a ton of icing sugar is mixed together with some vanilla. UK baking fans, what the Americans call confectioner’s sugar is what we call icing sugar.  At least it better be because that’s what I used.  The resulting frosting (for that is what it is) gets spread on top of the chilled biscuity base and back it goes into the fridge to cool some more.  I’ll be honest, it’s not the neatest topping you’ll ever see. If I’m going to keep up with this baking lark I’m going to need a palette knife.

Frosting

Finally, more chocolate is melted for the topping.  The recipe said 1.5ozs. I duly melted this and it looked like nothing, so I just threw the rest of the bar of Green & Blacks in.  You don’t want to skimp on the chocolatey topping surely? Pour that on top of the chilled frosting, smooth it out as best I can, and then back in the fridge to chill a little before slicing.  You’ll have to wait until later for the great unveil, I’m doing real time posting here!

The project explained

Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book is an institution in my family. It’s the one we pull out when we want to make chocolate chip cookies or snickerdoodles. But the rest of the many cooky recipes lay neglected and untried.

Until now. Now I am on a mission to try out the cookies and I will be documenting my efforts here. Prepare for a parade of classic drop cookies, frankly insane bright green shamrock cookies, and lots more.

And if you want to see the original, it’s available from good bookshops.  Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book