Blackcurrant Thumbprints

Ok, I really need to do a better job of using the cookbooks that I have! I am so used to finding a recipe online and going with that. I had gotten this cookbook, Some of My Best Friends are Cookies, by Australian MasterChef winner Emelia Jackson. This book has fantastic recipes! Some of the ingredients are slightly different, so I have to make sure I am stocked with vanilla bean paste, hazelnuts, and those sorts of things.

This week I was determined to make something from this book. I had already ear-marked many recipes and I had some blackcurrant curd that I wanted to use, so this thumbprint recipe was the winner! The original recipe called for plum jam, but you could use any jam or curd that you would like. I also used a lemon instead of an orange, as I felt the lemon was a better accompaniment. 

These are different, with the addition of ground hazelnuts. I love hazelnuts and many recipes in this book calls for them, so I am happy. The recipe has you heat the curd/jam with a little citric acid, which I haven’t used. I looked online and it’s an acid, so I used a little lemon juice. Heating the curd helps it set; I was skeptical but it worked! This made about 20 cookies, and they are really picture perfect! They aren’t too sweet, but the hazelnut flavor shines through, so I am a big fan.

Blackcurrant Thumbprints
125 grams flour
100 grams hazelnuts, ground
½ teaspoon salt
120 grams butter, room temperature
60 grams sugar
Zest of one lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla paste

About 100 grams blackcurrant curd
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ground hazelnuts, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, add the butter, sugar, lemon zest, and vanilla paste. Beat on medium for two minutes, until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into balls, 20-25 grams each. Flatten the balls slightly and then make an indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb (or other device).

Bake for 10-12 minutes until barely browned along the edges. Once the cookies come out of the oven, press down to reshape the indentations. Allow the cookies to cool for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, make the filling. In a small saucepan, mix the curd/jam and lemon juice. Heat on medium until the mixture boils, and then boil one minute. Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool a minute or two. Carefully spoon the curd mixture into the indentation in the cooled cookies. Allow the filling to set before serving.

Recipe from Some of My Best Friends are Cookies by Emelia Jackson

Paradise Slice

I have waited and waited to make these bars! Any recipe with “slice” in the title usually tells me that the recipe originated in Australia or Scotland, and these bars are from Scotland. My friend was asking me about Scottish cookies, and while shortbread immediately comes to mind and maybe a few tiffin recipes, it is hard to think of other recipes. This recipe is from a Scottish blog, and I am really interested in exploring more of the site.

Another reason that I had to wait to make these was due to the fact that they used glacé cherries. When I order products from the UK, I often buy candied or glacé cherries, since they are so difficult to find in the States. I didn’t order anything this year, so I was at the mercy of American grocery stores, and they finally carried some glacé cherries. They are crazy neon red, but I figured mixed in with other ingredients they wouldn’t be quite so glaring.

These are interesting bars, or perhaps they are more of a dessert? You make pastry for the base, top it with jam, and then top it with a cherry, current, and almond flour filling. I don’t make pastry often, but I used to, so I have that down to a science. I used cherry preserves since the filling also contains cherries. The filling goes together well, although glacé cherries are very sticky. I baked them for 25 minutes then topped them with a generous amount of sugar, which partially melted into a lovely topping. These bars are great; a fabulous mix of festive flavors!

Paradise Slice
200 grams flour
100 grams cold butter, cubed
30 grams sugar
4-5 tbsp cold water
100 grams berry/cherry preserves

200 grams butter, room temperature
200 grams sugar
2 eggs
100 grams ground almonds
100 grams flour
120 grams currants
100 grams glacé cherries, halved
Additional sugar

Make the pastry: add the flour and butter to a food processor. Pulse until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and pulse to combine. Add about three tablespoons of water, mixing and adding additional water until the dough comes together. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Heat the oven to 390 degrees. Line an 8” or 9” square pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Remove the pastry from the refrigerator and roll it out on a floured surface until it is about ¼” thick. The pastry should roughly be the size of your baking pan. Place the pastry into the prepared pan and trim away any excess. You do not want the pastry stretching up the sides of the pan. Prick the dough with a fork, then cover with parchment and pastry beans.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden. Allow to cool partially before proceeding.

While the pastry is cooling, make the topping: in a large mixer bowl, mix the butter and sugar at medium speed to combine. Stir in the eggs. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the ground almonds and flour. Stir in the currants and glacé cherries.

Spread the raspberry jam over the partially cooled pastry base. Spoon the topping over the jam, smoothing with a spatula as needed.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with additional sugar. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Recipe from Scottish Scran

Candied Fruit Cookies

Christmas Cookie #4! For those who read this blog regularly, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I like fruitcake. I often make some cookies that have fruitcake ingredients, and I now make a fruitcake bar cookie instead of a large Christmas cake, as it is a lot easier, and you don’t have the crazy-sweet icing to contend with. I saw these fruitcake cookies and liked them, but they used the red and green (American) candied fruit that you can find this time of year. I don’t like that, but I knew I could substitute something I did like.

This recipe called for 1 cup of the red/green candied fruit, but we rarely use candied fruit at all, instead use raisins, currants, dates, dried cherries, and that sort of thing. I did have some mixed candied peel from Marks and Spencer, so I used half a cup. I love currents and added those as well, to make 1 cup. The nuts were original to the recipe, and I do think they add a nice crunch.

I had thought about making a half a batch, and that would have been a good idea as this made about four dozen cookies. I’m not sure if it is due to the use of vegetable shortening, but these cookies are the most perfect looking treats that I have ever made! I love the flavors of the season: cinnamon, nutmeg, and the currants and candied peel add just enough sweetness. They aren’t over-the-top sweet and I prefer that. Use whatever dried/candied fruits you like, but don’t miss out on these!

Candied Fruit Cookies
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon all spice
1 cup vegetable shortening
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup candied mixed peel
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the four, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and all spice; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, combine the vegetable shortening, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix on medium until light. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix on medium to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture, about ½ cup at a time, until almost completely incorporated. Add the mixed peel, currants, and pecans and mix with a spatula until the dough comes together.

Scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, making about a 1 ½-inch ball.

Bake for 11-13 minutes, until very lightly browned. The cookies will bake a little more as they cool, so do not over bake. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Simply Whisked

Holiday Fruitcake Bars: 12 Days of Cookies Day 12

Merry Christmas! For Christmas Day, I’ve decided to make Fruitcake Bars. Fruitcake has a terrible reputation here in the States, but in our household, we always make Christmas cake, which is a fruitcake. I think many people dislike the candied fruit, and I don’t disagree. We don’t use candied fruit in our Christmas cake or in these bars; dried fruit is much better. This bar recipe uses quite a few ingredients, some that I had to stock up on. If you are unable to find certain dried fruits, you can certainly substitute for what you can find, just ensure that you use the same total quantity (5 cups).

I hadn’t initially planned on making these bars, but when we were in downtown Seattle at Thanksgiving, we stopped in the Dahlia Lounge Bakery and they had these one for sample. I was distracted and didn’t try them, but Tim did, and he thought they were great. He went online and found the recipe and I knew they would be perfect for Christmas.

The original recipe had you make these in one go, but I wanted to give the fruit some time to soak up the brandy. You barely heat the brandy and the add it to the dried fruits. The recipe had you let this sit until cool, but I waited until the next morning to bake the bars. I think that made the bars even better, but I am a big fan of fruitcake so perhaps I am not the best judge. These take a bit of time and energy, but it really isn’t Christmas in our house without fruitcake.

Holiday Fruitcake Bars

1 cup brandy

1½ cups dried tart cherries

1½ cups prunes, chopped

1 cup golden raisins

½ cup raisins

½ cup dried currants

2 cups flour

¾ teaspoon allspice

¾ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon cloves

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, room temperature

2 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

Powdered sugar

Heat the brandy in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a simmer; remove from the heat. In a large bowl, combine the dried fruits. Add the brandy and stir to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to steep overnight.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with parchment or foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture to the dried fruits and stir to combine. In a large mixer bowl beat the butter and brown sugar until well combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the remaining flour mixture.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the dried fruits and pecans with a spatula. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan. The mixture will be thick and heavy.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, rotating once during baking, until a toothpick inserted into the fruitcake comes out nearly clean. Cool in the pan for an hour and then remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack until completely cool, about an hour. Peel off the parchment and cut into bars. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

Recipe from Tom Douglas, The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook

Shortbread with Rum-soaked Currants and Orange

One of the most classic Christmas cookies is the Russian teacake. These are also called Mexican wedding cakes, nut snowballs, snowballs, or any other sort of name you can think of. I was watching a holiday baking show on the Food Network and the baker made a variation on the cookie using currants and orange. I thought that sounded great, and I went online to find a similar recipe and came up with this one.

While I don’t typically think of Russian teacakes as a shortbread cookie, they are as they contain no eggs and no leavening. We’re so accustomed to shortbread being a flat cookie that is shaped in a mold that we forget that they can be shaped in other ways too. I wasn’t sure if these would turn out as perfectly round as the traditional Russian teacake, but I figured they would be just as tasty either way.

The recipe does require a little preplanning, as you need to soak the currants in rum for a bit before making the cookies. You also chill the cookies for a short while before baking, to help them keep their shape. Other than the soaking and chilling time, the dough is easy to make, and a lot less crumbly than shortbread dough can be. They did keep their shape fairly well, so I was happy with that. The rum and currants in these are great holiday flavors, and the orange takes it over the top!

Shortbread with Rum-soaked Currants and Orange

3/4 cup currants

1/2 cup rum

1-1/2 cups butter, room temperature

3/4 cup powdered sugar

2 1/4 cups flour

1/3 cup cornstarch

1 tablespoon orange zest

Powdered sugar

In a small bowl, combine the currents and rum. Allow to sit for 2 hours. Drain the currants.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and powdered sugar on medium until light.  With the mixer running on low, gradually beat in the flour and cornstarch. Stir in the drained currants and orange zest.

Shape the dough into 1” balls and place on the baking sheets. Chill the shaped cookies for 20 minutes before baking.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until the cookies a very lightly browned along the edges. Roll the cookies in powdered sugar while still warm.

Recipe from Thrifty Foods

Sedgemoor Easter Biscuits

Ok, so I am a little late with the Easter baking, but I really wanted to make these cookies! Sedgemoor is in Somerset, England, which is where most of my husband’s family lives. I showed this recipe to my husband and he said that they are like Shrewsbury biscuits, which I have made before. There are a lot of similarities certainly, but just enough different that I wanted to give them a try. I thought it odd that the recipe for a British cookie comes from the New York Times, but so be it.

I did a couple of slight changes to the recipe. The original recipe called for the cookies to be rolled out, which is traditional. In reading the comments on the website, one person commented that they had made this into a slice and bake cookie. I don’t roll out cookies all that frequently, and it makes quite the mess, so I opted for that route. I do think that the cookies would have been too sticky to roll out. Even after refrigerating overnight they were still a little sticky. I also used regular all-purpose flour rather than a mix of flours.

Soak the currants in brandy (or Grand Marnier in my case) at least an hour. The longer you leave them, the better! Mine soaked for a day and a half and they were lovely. They smelled a little like the Christmas cake my husband makes, as it also contains alcohol-soaked dried fruits. The original recipe said to bake these for 25 minutes, but that seemed too long. I baked mine for 15 minutes, then added just a touch more. The less you bake them, the softer and crumblier, whereas mine are a little crunchier. I just glazed mine just once, as that seemed enough. British cookies aren’t as sweet as American cookies, and the currants have a wonderful natural sweetness. I really love these; buttery and sweet.

Sedgemoor Easter Biscuits

¾ cup dried currants

2 tablespoons brandy (or fruit juice)

1-1/3 cups + 1 tablespoon flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter, slightly softened

½ cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg, beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup powdered sugar

4 teaspoons milk

½ teaspoon vanilla

In a small bowl, combine the currants and brandy. Stir, and allow to sit for at least an hour.  

In a large mixer bowl, combine the flour and salt. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the mixer bowl. Mix on medium until crumbly. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the sugar mixture to the mixer and mix on low. Add the egg, vanilla, and the currant/brandy mixture. Stir on low until the dough comes together. 

Shape the dough into a 2-inch diameter log and wrap in plastic wrap. Alternatively, shape the dough into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

If you have shaped the dough into a log, slice into ¼” slices. Or roll the dough about ¼” thick and cut into rounds. Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned and set. The baking time will vary depending on the thickness of your cookies.

Just before the cookies come out of the oven, whisk together the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla in a small bowl to make a glaze. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, brush the cookies with the glaze. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5-10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. If desire, brush again with glaze once the cookies are cool.

Recipe from The New York Times