White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie

After gaining confidence with the Muesli Bar have now started getting my hands dirtier (literally) with baking. I've done a few "projects" in the past with ready made mixes where there is not much to measure or play around. Baking with everything from scratch is a whole new ball game.
So here it comes the 2nd experiment - White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookie. Took "inspiration" from a few internet recipes each had their own twist and ended up making my own twist. The idea was to make a nice soft chewy cookie.

Ingredients (measures are for reference only - feel free to change as you choose)
1) Butter - 200 gms

2) Flour - 200 gms
3) Brown Sugar - 2 cups (in fact I did a mix of brown sugar and raw sugar as recommended in one of the recipes)
4) Macadamia nuts (diced) - 150 gms
5) White Chocolate bits - 150 gms
6) Egg -2
7) Baking Soda - 1/2 teaspoon
8) Vanilla Essence - 1 teaspoon (not in picture)

Oven Temperature - 150 deg (tried 175 deg as some website recommended - ended up making a dark chocolate chip cookie instead of white chocolate)

Method
1) Soften the butter to a texture that would be easy to blend.
2) Beat the eggs and keep it separate.
3) Mix the softened butter, sugar, vanilla essence and egg using a blender on high speed until it becomes a nice smooth creamy texture.
4)  Add the flour (most of it) and mix it in. You can use a blender I found using my hands more effective. It has it's own side effects (your fingers become very lickable ;-) ).
5) Add the white chocolate bits and macadamia nuts at the end and mix it evenly.
6) Make small 2 inch diameter balls out of this mix and lay them out in a baking tray lined with baking paper. (Tip: You will need a slightly wet palm to do this)
7) Flatten the balls a little bit. The idea is to get to a shape of a cookie without stretching it too thin.

Ensure you have sufficient space between the cookies as they expand horizontally while they bake.

As you could see I could do only 6 cookies at a time. In a way this helped me experiment a bit.

8) Place the tray in the oven with a timer for about 12 minutes.  This again is an experiment and may vary based on the type of the oven and the temperature you had set in. As always use your nose to figure out when to stop.
9) After baking take the tray out from the oven and let it cool for 5 - 10 minutes before you remove the cookie out of the tray.

Fresh - warm - chewy and soft White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie - ready.

p.s.: It took about 3 attempts to get to some "presentable" and "edible" state. It either became too dark or bent and crumbled before I could take it out of the tray.



Happy Cooking!!
C

Muesli Bar

Few weeks ago I checked back into this blog and realized it has been almost a year since I had a post. Not a good sign at all. Had to come up with something really quick to revive this. So here it is my first baking recipe. Muesli bars used to be a standard snack in my bag for a long time. Not many snacks can be as filling, healthy and tasty as this one.It somehow went out of circulation in our pantry for a while. Recently it came back alive as a snack that Nandha liked at pre-school. They actually made it at his pre-school as a cooking activity and hence came back home with it's recipe. He was quite thrilled to know that we could actually make it at home. So here we go...

Ingredients

1) Rolled Oats - 3 Cups

Ingredients

2) Flour - 1 cup (a little less if you prefer a more chewy texture)

3) Sunflower seeds - 1 cup

4) Pumpkin seeds - 1 cup

5) Sliced Almonds - 1 cup

6) Dried fruits (pick your choice of apricots, cranberries, raisins) - 1 cup

7) Desicated coconut - 1 cup

8) Butter - 150 gms

9) Brown Sugar - 1 cup

10) Honey - 1/2 cup

11) Egg -1

Process
(0) Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees.

Dry and wet ingredients together

1) Melt the butter on a low flame along with the brown sugar and honey. Once melted give it a quick boil and let it to cool down.
2) Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and create a well in the center.

Give it a good mix

3) Pour the beaten egg, and the cooled down syrup and mix it all up. (A good time to get the kids involved as needed).
4) Once mixed spread the mixture out on a tray lined with baking paper. Even the mixture out using the back of a tablespoon.

Mixture on the tray

5) Bake it in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes.




Now this could be a hit and miss with the temperature and time. After a few experiments I've now started relying on my nose to tell me when to stop the baking. Take the tray out when the smell is just perfect - usually about 20-25 minutes.

Baked Muesli Tray

6) Leave it to cool for a few minutes.
7) Cut them up into blocks of your preference in size.

Home made Muesli Bar ready!!

Some may like it crispy...some may like it chewy....play with the flour and honey as you need it.

Happy Baking!!

C