Cookies

chocolate wafer cookies

June 17, 2011

I’m pretty sure that everyone needs a basic chocolate wafer cookie recipe. They are vehicles for many things, including but not limited too:

1. Ice cream sandwiches

2. Bourbon Creams

3. Nutella

4. Ice box cupcakes

They’re not too sweet, these wafers, since they are generally intended to be eaten with all sorts of extra-sweet fillings. I like them that way. They’re crunchy, thin, chocolatey morsels of love.

You need this recipe on hand at all times, okay? Because, seriously who knows when ice cream sandwiches might be necessary in a life or death kind of way? That’s right, no one. No one knows that, so be prepared.

Chocolate Wafer Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 large eggs
  • 1/2 tablespoon milk

Directions

  1. In a medium sized bowl, sift together your flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt, then set aside. Cream the butter, vanilla, and sugar. Add the eggs and milk, and mix until combined.
  2. Sift in your flour mixture, and mix it slowly until it’s incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl down when necessary. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a flat disk. Wrap each disk in cling film (plastic wrap), and chill until it’s firm, about 1 hour.
  3. Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll your dough out on a floured surface. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut it into whatever shapes you like. I used mini glass jars, similar to small mason jars. If you’re making sandwiches then make sure each cookie has a match.
  4. Place shapes on a parchment-lined baking sheet; chill until firm, about 30 minutes. Remove from the refrigerator. Whack them in the oven and bake until just firm, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on baking sheet; transfer to a wire rack.

bourbon creams

June 1, 2011

Did your family have a biscuit tin or cookie jar growing up? If so then you’ll have had your favourites. The biscuits (cookies) that were your go-to pick; that you were so excited when you saw.

Bourbon Creams were my biscuit tin favourite. There’s nothing too fancy about them – they are basically two rectangular chocolate biscuits sandwiching a chocolate cream filling. Fancy or not, I loved them.

I could never just bite into them straight (unless I’d dunked them in a cup of tea or coffee first) but instead would nibble the top biscuit off and then scrape out the chocolate cream filling with my teeth. That was the good stuff. The last biscuit was just an afterthought at that point.

A friend of mine recently returned from her honeymoon in Scotland and brought back some supermarket brand bourbon creams (the original manufacturer no longer makes them so it’s all own-brands). I squealed. I hadn’t thought about my beloved bourbons in years and here they were.

Since there’s little chance of finding these beauties in the shops stateside I made some. They are a bit sweeter than the shop-bought kind but retain that satisfying crunch and snap of hard biscuits. The cream filling is lovely and rich – you’ll definitely want to break into them and scrape it all out – divine.

P.S. They’re kid-friendly: no actual bourbon involved.

Bourbon Creams

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 large eggs
  • 1/2 tablespoon milk
  • granulated sugar, to sprinkle

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt, and set aside. Cream butter, vanilla, and sugar. Add eggs and milk, and mix until combined. Add flour mixture, and mix slowly until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl at least once. Divide the dough in half, and shape each half into a flat disk. Wrap each disk in cling film (plastic wrap), and chill until firm, about 1 hour.
  2. Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll dough out on a floured surface, sliding an offset spatula under the dough to release it every few turns of the rolling pin. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut dough into small rectangles, about 1 inch x 2.5 inches, making sure each biscuit has a match to make a sandwich. Place rectangles on a lined baking sheet; chill until firm, about 30 minutes. Remove from refrigerator; use a fork to prick the biscuits with holes. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until just firm, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on baking sheet; transfer to a wire rack.
  3. With the underside of half the cookies face up, spoon chocolate butter cream to cover one side in a thin layer. Place matching cookie on top of butter cream, top side facing out.

To make the buttercream:

Ingredients

  • 2.5 oz good quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
  • 4 tbsp butter, at room temperature
  • 1.5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
  • 1 tbsp baking cocoa, sifted
  • 2-4 tbsp milk

Directions

  1. Melt chocolate in a double boiler and allow to cool to room temperature.
  2. Beat in butter until creamy.
  3. Add powdered sugar and baking cocoa.
  4. Slowly beat in milk 1 tbsp at a time until you reach desired consistency.

homemade oreo cookies

April 11, 2011

My first experience of replica Oreo cookies was on a dodgy bus in Nicaragua.

Dan and I were up at dawn to board a chicken bus to the capital, Managua where we were hustled off the bus (nearly losing our backpacks in the process) and left to pick up a waiting cab at the side of a (veryextremelyohmygod) busy road. The cab, which characteristically had no seat belts or doors that opened from the inside, took us on a crazy drive across town to the “bus station” where we awaited our next vehicle to speed us onto Leon.

Exhausted, sweaty, stressed out, and ready to be at our gorgeous hotel already, we were both silently questioning our decision to “rough it” and go cheap to get to our destination. Sometimes this kind of roughing it is fun…sometimes it is terrifying. This fell somewhere in the middle.

At the bus station as we sat waiting for our mini-bus to fill up with passengers, men and women came up to the windows selling snacks, drinks, and vigoron to hot, hungry passengers. Dan spotted coca cola and Oreo cookies in one woman’s overflowing basket of wares.

Never has he torn into something with so much vigour as those Oreo cookies. We each swigged cold coke and shoved one of the Oreos into our mouths, anticipating the taste of home, comfort, and normality. What we actually tasted was a weird, totally not delicious cookie. They were fake.

We laughed about it hysterically, as though it summed up everything about that little journey. It’s still one of those lingering memories that we laugh about now and I sense we will for some time to come.

These cookies are tasty but again…so not Oreo cookies. Dan put me straight about that immediately. That doesn’t mean that they’re not delicious chocolate wafer cookies with a rich vanilla-creme centre. It just means they’re not the same as Oreo cookies and I’ve finally learned my lesson. I’ll stop trying to replicate something that frankly cannot be improved.

Homemade Oreo Cookies

adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

For the chocolate wafers:

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar (I vote one – they’re pretty sweet with the filling otherwise)
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
  • 1 large egg

For the filling:

  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
  • 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

  1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
  2. In a bowl thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. Cut the butter into the mix and then the egg, combining well. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
  3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
  4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Beat vigorously for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
  5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Alternatively, spread with a butter knife. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

Makes 25 to 30 sandwich cookies

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