spoon

Gift Week: Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Bits & Bobs

This week we’re focusing on homemade gifts, something to give for Christmas or Hanukkah (or any other holiday of your choice!) This is pretty good timing for me as this coming weekend I will be in the kitchen making tons of homemade gifts so they are at their freshest for giving!

Whenever I’m deciding what gifts to make I automatically think of sweet things: there are so many different types of biscuits, cookies, muffins, brownies, blondies etc to bake and these all make wonderful gifts. My young cousins would be furious if I didn’t include plenty of sweet things for them. But not everyone loves sweet things all the time. In my experience thinking of savoury things to include can be a bit of a challenge so I’ve tried to focus on the just as delicious savory angle this week.

Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti (from the ever wonderful Smitten Kitchen)

Continue Reading


The Great Food Blogger’s Cookie Swap

2

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Bits & Bobs, Desserts

Earlier today I posted the recipe I used for the Food Blogger Cookie Swap, Millionaire’s Shortbread. But I thought I’d give some link love to the people who sent me their cookies!

Fashioned by Grace sent some wonderful Cowboy Cookies:

Vaikai ir Vanile sent some delicious (and appropriately named) Crack Cookies:

And Chirky made Norwegian Delicacies, which I’d never had before but fell in love with:

 

They were all so delicious, I highly encourage you to pop over to each site and bake a batch yourself! Maybe not all in one day, but, you know, eventually!

If you want to play along next year, sign up for the swap.

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011

All images in this post are from the bloggers who baked them.

 

 

 

 

 


Blogger’s Cookie Swap AND Gift Week: Millionaire’s Shortbread

9

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Desserts

The Scots love their sweets. I mean, not as much as I do, but I’ll give them credit for trying. One of the most popularly Scottish sweets is shortbread. Everyone’s seen the tins or boxes with the red tartan on it. Shockingly, I actually don’t really like plain shortbread. I don’t know what it is, too buttery for me maybe. However, I LOVE Millionaire’s Shortbread, which is shortbread bars with caramel and chocolate. Can’t be missed. And if you add a little fleur de sel on there? Heaven in bar cookie form.

So, when I signed up for the Blogger Cookie Swap, I figured this recipe was the way to go. It says a little about our blog, and it’s delicious, and while it takes a little while, it’s pretty easy. And pretty. And packs pretty well. So Christina at Stracciatella, Esme at Chocolate and Croissants, and Carrie at Clever Mommas all received some Millionaire’s Shortbread and get to discover how deliciously disastrous it can be to your waistline. But that’s what Christmas is for! And the cookies I received were completely delicious too, I’ll post links to the recipes later!

ALSO this kicks off Gift Week on Double the Sugar! This year we’re looking at homemade gifts, because we’re skint! But we’ll also give you other gift ideas in each post, so stay tuned!

Continue Reading


Cheesecake topped chocolate brownies

3

Category : Desserts

We spent last weekend with Doug’s sister and her husband who brought their beautiful four month old daughter to visit. They also brought us a a 1kg bag of dark chocolate buttons. Have you ever seen a kilo of chocolate buttons? It looks a little something like this:

Continue Reading


Double the Sugar Con 11 – Raspberry Tart

Category : Desserts, Pie

Things have been a little quiet around the blog lately, but for very good reason. For the first time EVER, Shannon and Lucy cooked together. While we met in Edinburgh, and bonded over food at Cadbury World, we hadn’t really started cooking until after Shannon moved back to the States. And with life getting in the way, there hadn’t been a visit until this August. So, naturally, Double the Sugar Con 2011 was quite a feast! Things are back to normal now, so we’ll get back to our regular posting schedule, and share some of the delicacies with you!

Continue Reading


Bourbon-Cherry Brownies

1

Category : Desserts

Like many things, baked goods are better with booze. Either to accompany them or as part of the recipe, you really can’t go wrong. I particularly like using booze in frostings, they can add a lot of flavor, and has the double benefit of not being able to boil off, so you still feel a little naughty when you’re eating cupcakes with booze frosting (doubly so if you’re having that cupcake for breakfast, don’t worry, I won’t tell). But a close runner up to using booze in frosting is soaking fruit in alcohol. Typically you see wine being used for this purpose, and for this recipe, a nice red or a port would be delicious. But I made these brownies on Independence Day, so to add a dose of Americana, I went with bourbon. Specifically I went with Woodford Reserve, as that’s the bourbon we tend to keep in stock, but really, it’s up to you and your preferences. And of course, you can make this recipe just as easily by omitting the booze.

One small note: when I use fruit to infuse booze, I use fresh fruit, but when I’m infusing the fruit with booze, I use dried fruit. Either way works, really, but starting with a dried fruit means it’s absorbing the alcohol instead of replacing natural juices with alcohol, so I find you tend to keep more of the flavor in the fruit and just add booziness to it. But fresh cherries work just fine too, and if you’re omitting the alcohol, fresh is the better choice. Soaking overnight seems like the best plan.

Also, it bears mentioning that combining bourbon and chocolate in this way might make people fall in love with you. Bake at your own risk.

Continue Reading


Secret Ingredient Chocolate Mousse

4

Category : Desserts

I don’t normally go for vegan recipes. I can skip the meat, but a lot of times the ingredients used in place of the animal by-products aren’t as healthy as people make them out to be. This recipe, however, is vegan as well as all-natural. There aren’t any chemicals or substitutes or artificial flavors. The obvious ingredients are cocoa and sweetener of your choice. The secret ingredient, however, is after the jump.

Continue Reading


Banana and Chocolate Muffins

3

Category : Desserts

Banana bread is one of my favourite things. For a while I bought bananas specifically so I could leave them to age so I would ‘have’ to make banana bread with them. This week I cut out the aging process and bought a bag of rather ripe bananas for the ridiculously small cost of 50p from our local greengrocer.

I have sung the praises of The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook before but I don’t think I’ve actually shared a recipe from this book yet. I am lazy so I have replaced the suggested chocolate icing with chunks (and rather large chunks at that) of dark chocolate.

These are, to echo the welsh, lush. There is the lovely moist banana and the chunks of chocolate which are always welcome. They are great with a cup of tea and I was craving them all day at work. Continue Reading


Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (in a jar)

1

Category : Desserts, Pie

A tragedy was brought to light when I lived in the UK. I was watching…some food show, I don’t recall what it was, something with Gordon Ramsey I think, when he proposed that for dessert, the dish be something that, from the way he was making it sound, was unheard of. I thought it would be something flashy, some unusual flavor combination that I never really would have thought of, and I’m not sure if it would work or not. But what he suggested was combining strawberry & rhubarb in a dessert dish. Guys, why hasn’t Britain figured this out yet? They’re in season at basically the same time, you put both of them in similar desserts (pies/crumbles/etc). The sweetness of the strawberries blends perfectly with the sour of the rhubarb. And they look quite lovely together. In the States this is one of the more standard pies. It’s not quite as common as apple or cherry, but particularly in late spring/early summer it’s a fairly common sight.

This week I’m making pie-in-a-jar. It’s delicious, it’s actually slightly easier than normal pie, and it’s infinitely more portable. It’s very easy to make in advance, just pop the lid back on and throw it in the fridge or freezer and bake it later, or bake it and then refrigerate it.

Continue Reading


Royal Wedding Cupcakes

2

Category : Cupcakes

The Royal Wedding is just days away and all over the papers and the 24 hour news channels. Surprisingly an offer of free union jack cupcake cases brought out the patriot in me. (Available from Lakeland who I am not sponsored by. I just wish I was.) So I made the most British cupcake I could think of: a mini victoria sponge cake with jam and buttercream icing. And just for good measure I iced them in red, white and blue (or more accurately dark pink, cream and blue!)

Continue Reading