Recipes

Chocolate Chip Biscuits (or Cookies, if you must)

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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For some reason, we are not big chocolate chip biscuit makers in this household. This does not mean that we are not enthusiastic consumers of said comestible. I LOVE them and when the mid-morning or mid-afternoon hunger pangs hit at work I’ll often nip next door to the café and buy one.

I suspect the lack of home production stems more from the fact that we rarely have biscuits in the household full stop. However, last Friday afternoon Master 4 and I were off to a play date and I asked him what he wanted to take. Cue a search for a quick, simple chocolate chip biscuit recipe that wouldn’t require multiple trips to the shops.

Luckily (as always) UK’s Delicious came to the rescue with this recipe. For anyone cooking with a child, it’s easy (OK – we do have a stand mixer!) and they will love eating the mixture, shaping the biscuits and pressing in the chocolate chips. As you can see from the photo, four chocolate chips per biscuit is woefully inadequate!

These biscuits strike, for me at least, the right balance between crispy and chewy. I think that that’s down to the combination of caster and light brown sugars. Make sure you use a good quality vanilla essence as the flavour does really shine through (especially if you are mean on the choc chip count and also if the biscuits last a couple of days). If you’re going to beef up the chocolate content, then you could probably omit the vanilla altogether.

We’ve really enjoyed eating these and as they were super quick to do I’m sure they’ll be making more regular appearances in our kitchen.

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Chocolate Chip Biscuits

Ingredients

  • 100g unsalted butter, softened
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 100g light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or good quality extract, or omit altogether)
  • 165g plain flour
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp bicarb
  • chocolate chips - as many as you want!

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 150°C fan (170°C conv) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
  2. Cream the butter and sugars until pale. Add in the egg then the vanilla, flour, salt and bicarb. Mix until well combined and smooth.
  3. Take a tablespoon and form large walnut sized balls of biscuit mixture. Place them on the baking trays - well spaced as they spread a lot (they are easy to separate so don't be too worried about them joining up during baking) and press in choc chips. Four per biscuit looks like a lot when they're a ball but looks like nothing once they're cooked - so be generous rather than mean.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes - the biscuits will spread and start to pick up a hint of brown at the edges. Depending on your oven you may want to keep an eye on them from the 10-12 minute mark. In my oven - 15 minutes was perfect.
  5. The recipe will make between 16 and 20 biscuits. The biscuits do end up quite large but they are also quite flat so they are not like the biscuits you get in cafes that are often as big as your head.
  6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool ever so slightly before carefully moving on to racks to cool completely.
  7. Eat!
https://eatingadelaide.com/chocolate-chip-biscuits-cookies/

Hedgehog Slice

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Our local library invariably has a small display of books that are for sale. These are either former library books or (I am guessing) they are books that people have donated that the library has chosen not to add to its collection. That’s the only way I can explain why some have barcodes and some don’t. The books are always insanely cheap (20c for a paperback) and while the number and range available varies widely, it is always worth spending a minute or two perusing.

A month or so ago I picked up Basics to Brilliance: Slices Recipes, put together by Family Circle and published only a few years ago. For some reason, I have it in my head that now that Master 4 is at pre-school (and soon to be at school) slices should be a part of my repertoire. I don’t know why I think that – I’m not the type of parent who includes sweet treats in a lunch box and we certainly don’t have cake and friends all the time at home.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time poring over this book and even managed to induce some cookbook envy in at least one friend. Even though the book was only published in 2007 the recipes definitely have a slightly old fashioned feel to them. I’m not sure that had this book been produced in the 70s or 80s it would have been much different.

And that is a good thing – there’s a reason why classics are classics. Some things just work and taste good. And don’t need trend driven labels attached to them.

Last weekend we were heading to my cousin’s house for my aunt’s birthday celebrations and we were planning on taking a plate of charcuterie with us. However, a quick check meant my cousin requested something sweet and, on very limited time, I consulted the book and found the hedgehog slice.

Many slice recipes are a bit time consuming because you have to deal with layers. Not so the hedgehog and it has the bonus of being a refrigerator cake – no oven and perfect if you are wanting an activity to do with a small child. If you are really pushed for time then you can skip the ganache topping.

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Hedgehog Slice

Ingredients

    hedgehog
  • 125g unsalted butter
  • ½ cup caster sugar
  • 125g plain, sweet biscuits (I used a plain shortbread)
  • 1 cup walnuts
  • ½ cup coca powder
  • 1 egg
    • ganache
  • 125g dark chocolate
  • 30g unsalted butter

Instructions

  1. Line a 20cm square tin with foil. If you only have a larger tin - don't worry. The hedgehog mixture is very thick and will stay in one part of the tin.
  2. In a pan, heat the butter and sugar until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved.
  3. Lightly crush the biscuits. Put them in a freezer bag and give them a gentle beating with a rolling pin.
  4. Chop the walnuts. I did this in the food processor - you want them reasonably chunky so with a knife would be fine.
  5. Lightly beat the egg.
  6. Once the sugar has completely dissolved, reduce the heat to low and add the biscuits, cocoa and walnuts. Stir well and then remove from the heat.
  7. Allow to cool a little and then mix the egg through thoroughly.
  8. Pour into your pan and flatten off. Put in the fridge to set.
  9. Once the hedgehog is set (this will only take half an hour to an hour), make the ganache. Melt the chocolate and butter together (in the microwave for speed and ease) until smooth, allow to cool and thicken slightly and then spread over the hedgehog.
  10. Using a fork, create a wavy pattern if desired.
  11. Refrigerate again. When ready to serve, cut into squares. It should make around 16-20 pieces.
  12. Best served straight from the fridge.
https://eatingadelaide.com/hedgehog-slice/

Salt and Pepper Squid

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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We have a philosophy when buying new household gadgets – particularly kitchen ones. If we think we need something we will invariably buy a cheap version of whatever it is to test out how much we do actually need it. The idea is that if said thing breaks within a year then we get a replacement under warranty and if said thing breaks after a year we have an idea whether or not we should invest in a more serious version of the gadget.

This is great in theory. In practice, what happens is that we buy a cheap or moderately priced thing, we use it and it lasts forever. Our coffee machine was £50 – eight years and two countries later, it is still motoring along very nicely. Another great example is the cheap deep fat fryer. It’s a house brand model from one of the cheaper department stores and while it doesn’t get the beating the coffee machine does, it is used regularly (and loaned out regularly) and is yet to miss a beat. $30 well spent.

It has been over a year since we visited salt and pepper squid, and this time we used a recipe we got from a That’s Life bonus magazine. Unfortunately the recipe doesn’t appear to be online.

I prefer the flavours in this approach – much brighter, more complex and with more depth. We deviated from the recipe (of course) because there were some ingredients we didn’t have (either at all or readily to hand) and we turned it into a one step process.

I think a great way of working next time would be to use the spice mix here, but take the egg white and rice flour approach of the previous attempt. We just need to convince my uncle to catch us some more squid …

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Salt and Pepper Squid

Ingredients

    Spice Mix
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 2 tsp ground white pepper
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • ½ tsp ground ginger
  • ¼ tsp turmeric
  • ¼ tsp chilli powder (you may wish to amp this up)
  • squid
  • cornflour
  • salad to serve

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in the deep fat fryer.
  2. Please the cornflour and spice mix in a plastic bag and give a good shake before either tipping into a bowl and coating the squid or putting a couple of pieces of squid into the bag and shaking. If you do put the squid in the bag, don't put lots of pieces in at once, otherwise they'll just clump together.
  3. Fry the squid in batches. Drain on kitchen towel and keep warm in the oven while you cook the remaining squid.
  4. Serve immediately with sliced fresh chilli for decoration.
https://eatingadelaide.com/salt-pepper-squid/