Red Velvet Valentine's Cookies

Yeah Valentine's Day is over commercialised, slightly sickening and eye wateringly expensive if you really buy into it. But it's also an excellent excuse to bake some treats for you, your significant other, your friends - anyone really. Last year I shared some baking inspiration but this year I've got my very own recipe to share with you - Red Velvet Cookies!

 
The traditional red velvet cake is rich and dense, so to me that translates perfectly into a cookie. Of course, red velvet wouldn't be red velvet without tangy cream cheese frosting, and is there anything more decadent than an iced cookie? I think not. So the cookies are topped with beautiful layer of icing, and there's also some white chocolate chips hidden within the cookie. Because a cookie isn't a cookie without some chocolate chips.

Red Velvet Cookies

Cookies

290g Plain Flour

45g Icing Sugar

2tsp Corn Flour

170g Butter

200g Caster Sugar

1 Egg + 1 Egg White

1tsp Lemon Juice

Red Food Colouring

100g White Chocolate (chopped)

Cream Cheese Icing

60g Butter

115g Cream Cheese

320g Icing Sugar

1tsp Vanilla Extract

1. Beat the butter and the sugar together (on high if you're using a mixer) until light and fluffy

2. Whilst beating (on medium), add the egg, egg white, lemon juice and food colouring

3. Turn the mixer down to slow and add the flour and corn flour

4. Finally mix in the chopped white chocolate

5. Wrap in cling film and chill for at least two hours (this really matters!!)

6. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease and line a tray

7. Place your heart shaped cookie cutter on the tray and press a ball of cookie dough into the shape

8. When it's flattened, press it out and flip it over, so the flat side is on top

9.  Alternatively, you can just put little mounds of the cookie dough on the tray

10. Bake for 9 minutes, leave to cool on the tray for a minute and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely

11. For the icing, whip the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy

12. Add the icing sugar and the vanilla extract and mix until smooth.

13. Pipe the icing onto the cookies once they are completely cool

Cake Trails #3: Ginger and Rose Cake

Last week Eve and I visited Lovecrumbs, which markets itself as Edinburgh's only cake-only cake shop. You can read all about our visit here and if you look carefully in one of the pictures you can see on the menu the inspiration for this cake, "Rose and Ginger Cake, £3.20" (you can also see me standing awkwardly in the mirror). I think you can see their version in one of the snaps too, with pink icing and crystallised ginger on top.

Inspired by their menu, I decided to make use of the jar of edible rose petals that have been loitering in the kitchen cupboard for a while and whip up my own Ginger and Rose Cake. This bake coincided nicely with my Mum's birthday, and she was delighted to be presented with such a pretty cake.

Ginger and Rose Cake

Cake
225g Unsalted Butter
50g Soft Light Brown Sugar175g Caster Sugar4 Eggs285g Self-raising Flour3tbsp Stem Ginger Syrup3tsp Ground Ginger

Icing
300g Icing Sugar
90g Butter
3tbsp Rose Syrup
Edible Rose Petals (to decorate, optional)

1. Grease and line two 10" cake tins and preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5
2. Mix the butter until light and fluffy (as an aside, this is hard without a mixer and a crushed right hand - so the mixer I used for this cake is more commonly known as Dad!)
3. Mix in the sugar and then add the eggs one at a time, alternating with the flour and the ginger.
4. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden on top and a knife comes out clean.
5. Leave it out to cool, and then mix all the icing ingredients together. Pipe half the icing on top of one of the cakes and then put the other cake on top, then top with the rest of the icing. When I'm piping in the middle, I like to do a circle around the outer edge of the cake and then fill the middle in. It makes it nice and neat to look at from the outside.
6. Position the rose petals however you fancy.

Cake Trails #1: Mango and Coconut Cupcakes

Well it's been a little quiet around here recently hasn't it? I'd love to say I've just been so busy working hard on my real life that I haven't had time to blog, but really I've spent a lot of time under a duvet (seeing as there's no sand to stick my head in).

Luckily I've got a really nice project that has just started, and I am so excited to share it with you. My friend Eve over at Sam Loves Cake had the great idea of starting an Edinburgh Cake Trail. We are tirelessly hunting down the best cake the city has to offer. Eventually we'll have a little map for you to take a quick look at to help you work out where to get your next cake fix. Until we get a few under our belt though, Eve is telling you all about our visit, whilst I am baking about it instead. For every venue we visit, I'll be whipping up a treat inspired by something we ate, or something that caught our eye.

This week it's Mango and Coconut Cupcakes, inspired by the decadent Mango and Coconut Cheesecake Eve tucked into at Mimi's Bakehouse in Leith.

Whilst we plough through this wintery January, a bite of these cupcakes is like a much longed for visit from a tropical breeze. Vanilla sponge with a mango centre topped off with coconut cream buttercream and another splodge of mango on top for good measure. They may look like fried eggs, but they are assuredly more decadent. Whipping them up couldn't be easier, and the coconut cream buttercream is a nice change from your usual buttercream.

Mango and Coconut Cupcakes

185g Sugar
90g Unsalted Butter
1 Egg & 1 Egg White
1tsp Vanilla Extract
200g Plain Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
125ml Milk

300g Frozen Mango

120g Butter
310g Icing Sugar
Half a Tin of Coconut Milk*

*This is a bit of a faff. You need to put the tin in the fridge over night, or for 8 hours before you want to make the icing, then open the tin from the bottom not the top. Drain off the thin coconut water (save it for a smoothie or something) then weigh out the remaining thick white coconut cream. You'll need half of the white coconut cream. Alternatively, I think in some places you can just buy coconut cream, but not in the tiny convenience shop by my flat!

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
2. Add the egg, egg white and vanilla extract.
3. Alternate folding in the flour and baking powder and mixing in the milk. I go flour, milk, flour, milk, last bit of flour.
4. Fill your cupcake cases and bake at 180oC for 18-20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
5. Leave to cool.
6. Defrost the mango and blitz until smooth in a food processor.
7. Core the cupcakes, either with a cupcake corer or just with a knife, and fill with around a teaspoon of mango, then replace the top of the cupcake.
8. Whip the coconut cream, then add the butter and the icing sugar. You might need a bit more icing sugar to thicken the icing if you're working in a particularly warm kitchen.
9. Pipe the icing onto the cupcakes or just use a palette knife, and then top with another dollop of the mango.
10. These cupcakes are definitely best eaten right away, but if you're saving them I recommend you keep them in the fridge or a very cool place, because the icing can get runny.

Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits

Now that it's FINALLY the 1st of December, it's definitely time to get the Christmas baking in full swing. I saw these beautiful stained glass window biscuits on Pinterest, and they really couldn't be easier to make. You can hang them in your window or on your tree, and add some homespun beauty to your decorations. Don't do what I did, which is realise you have nothing to hang them off and then spend an hour browsing trees online, when you really could have been doing other things!

Using Christmas shaped cookie cutters, you put a seasonal hole in the middle of your average biscuit. You then fill the hole with crushed up boiled sweets and bake. It only takes 8-10 minutes in the oven for the cookies to be cooked and the sweets to melt. Better yet, you can keep the inside cut outs and bake them too! They're perfect bite size biscuits, and you can keep them in a tin to serve with coffee over the festive period.

Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits
150g Butter
100g Light Brown Sugar
1 Egg
250g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tbsp Mixed Spice
1tsp Vanilla
Boiled Sweets

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and line your baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg.
3. Mix in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and vanilla until a dough forms.
4. Dust a clean work surface with flour and then roll out the dough until it's about 1cm thick.
5. Cut out the full cookie shape, and then the smaller one. (I used pre made cutters I got for Christmas last year, but you could easily make your own, or cut out shapes freehand if you're artistically inclined!)
6. Separate boiled sweets by colour, put them in a sandwich bag and crush with a rolling pin (this is harder than you'd think, and also I managed to break the sandwich bag and get little shards of boiled sweets all over my kitchen. Don't do that guys. Maybe put some kitchen roll over the bag before you smash).
7. Fill the gaps in the middle of the biscuit with the boiled sweets and then bake for 8-10 minutes.
8. Baking the cut out centres will only take 5-7 minutes because they're so tiny.

Sticky Toffee Apple Bonfire Cake

It wasn't my aim for this cake to match the leaves on the drive, but I think it's a beautiful comparison. When I was baking all I could think about was the taste of toffee apples and the smell in the air after Bonfire Night (I hope you're thinking about it now too).

It's deceptively simple, and because of the way the toffee is baked in the oven it won't break your teeth either. You just get that beautifully sweet, rich taste with chewier bits around the edges. You heat up some sugar and water then pour the glistening toffee over greaseproof paper in a round tin. It sets quickly - by the time you've made up the cake mix and sliced the apples it'll be cool enough to use.

You can arrange the apple slices however you like, I went for something traditional but I was thinking about it afterwards, and you could probably make some nice images and patterns. The cake mix is thick and honey coloured, and fills the cake tin right to the top.

While the cake is in the oven the toffee melts, turning the apples the colour of autumn leaves and caramelising the top of the cake. I can't stop looking at the shine of the toffee on the apple slice below!

Luckily, this can be whipped up in no time, so there's still time to get on the table for the 5th

Toffee
200g Caster Sugar
3 Tbsp Water
2 Large Apples

Cake
225g Salted Butter
150g Light Brown Sugar
75g Caster Sugar
1/2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
4 Eggs
225g Self Raising Flour
1/2 Tsp bicarbonate of soda
60ml Milk

1. Grease your baking tin and line with greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 180C or Gas Mark 4
2. For the toffee, put the caster sugar and the water in a pan and heat on high, making sure NOT to stir at any point.
3. When the sugar has melted and is golden remove from the heat and pour into your prepared tin.
4. Slice your apples and arrange them on top of the toffee.
5. For the cake mix the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract.
6. Sift the flour and the bicarb in, and then fold the mixture together.
7. Add the milk.
8. Place the cake tin on a baking tray to catch any melted topping, then bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
9. Immediately flip out, watching out for any burning topping (I needed that advice and didn't get it. Sadface.) and leave to cool. Serve with extra thick cream for a little added indulgence.

Letter from America: Cookie Brownie Chunks

A little preemptive chat before we get to the real meat of the post. Whilst I was on holiday, I was trying to think of a few ways to perk up the food side of my blog. It's really why I started the blog, but I've been finding it difficult to focus on, for a variety of reasons. I'm hoping that by taking a series approach, I can plan in advance, and be a bit more reliable in providing recipes for you lovely lot. I can then also slot in stand alone recipes whenever it takes my fancy. Does this sound like a plan to you? I hope you're all nodding fervently right now, because that is the plan! So, onward with the post! 

My first recipe series is Letter from America, and will be full to bursting with recipes inspired by what I ate in the last three weeks (if you missed it, you can find out a bit more about my holiday here, here and here). We're looking at five recipes, and the first is Cookie Brownie Chunks, a thick layer of chocolate chip cookie topped by a thinner layer of brownie.

This isn't based on anything I at specifically, more on an observation I made. If Americans like something, and they think it'll go with something else they like, they'll bring it together in a glorious, if slightly bizarre mash up. Prawn tempura in a sushi roll. Oreo cream in the middle of a doughnut dipped in icing and Oreo crumbs. Chunks of brownie replacing the chocolate chips in cookies. 

This last one got me thinking about the combination of cookies and brownies - certainly not unheard of, very popular on pinterest, but not something I'd really considered previously. A bit of research indicated that tradition dictates a thin layer of cookie topped with a thick layer of brownie, or even brownie topped with raw cookie dough. But brownie is a much stronger flavour than cookie, much more overpowering. So I switched the two around, and using my go-to cookie and brownie recipe, produced these bad boys. And they really couldn't be easier!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can find the recipe I used right here, but I swapped the 150g of raisins for 150g smarties, because I was going for completely over the top indulgence and fun to look at. In hindsight, next time I'd go for extra chocolate, because the smarties didn't provide the pleasing pop of colour I was looking for, and so didn't really improve the bake.

When you've made up the cookie dough, just press it into the bottom of a greased and lined tin. the one I used was 8"x8" and about 2" deep. leave to chill in the fridge until you have made your brownie mix.

Brownies

200g Dark Chocolate (broken into pieces)

175g Unsalted Butter

300g Caster Sugar

25g Light Brown Sugar

130g Plain Flour

3 Eggs

Melt the chocolate and the butter together, then add the sugars. Fold in the flour, and finally add the eggs one at a time.

This is my go to brownie recipe, I talked about it in more depth over at Scot Bloggers a while ago. This is double the amount you'll need, so I would make all of it and then just make some normal brownies too. It's a win win situation really.

So, pour half the brownie mixture over the cookie dough, and then bake at Gas Mark 6, or 200°C. I wanted them fairly solid so I could slice them into chunks and take them places, so I baked them for 45 - 50 minutes. If you're serving it as a dessert with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream (I wholeheartedly recommend this) then bake for more like 35 minutes, so the brownie is still all melty in the middle.