The Cooking Ninja

What a summer we had this year!

Lucky for us, it wasn't too hot in Clermont-Ferrand but down South of France like Oraison or Montpellier where we spent 2 weeks, we felt like we were being baked. We could only go out in the morning from 8 am to 10.30 am. After that, the temperature started going up to 31°C or 33°C. By noon, all of us were already withering from the heat. We were so glad to head back to the house for a siesta before going out again at 4.30 pm. Even at 4.30 pm, the heat was quite unbearable. We went for lots of walks around the town, nearby villages, to the lakes and the seaside. By the way, the drive from Clermont-Ferrand to Montpellier is extremely scenic (I wish I had my video cam) and best of all, the highway is 'FREE' (very rare in France).

Since Monday, we are busy preparing everything for our kitchen to be redone, before we leave for Singapore tomorrow. Yep, we are leaving tomorrow and our luggages aren't even packed yet. Up till this morning, we were still out shopping for our kitchen table top. Talk about stress. Do we really need to do this to ourselves before we leave tomorrow? No, but what choice do we have - the guy who is going to redo our kitchen suddenly called us up 2 weeks ago saying that he can do our kitchen in mid September. We were overjoyed of course given the fact that in France, everything moves so slow especially in the renovation business - the craftsman are hard to get. If we missed this chance, we might have to wait for another 6 months before he could fix our kitchen. Everything is done in such a mad rush. I also learned from my significant other that we had to assemble the kitchen cabinet for the guy to put it in place etc, and that we also have to dismantle our present cabinet ourselves. There I was thinking that the quote the guy gave us included everything like it does in Singapore. Well, guess that's another culture shock for me. Pierre said 'Sure, everything can be done, one just need to pay for it and the price is an exorbitant one ! In France, manual labour is very expensive, that is why everyone tries to renovate their house themselves or with the help of connections and relatives.

I have to thank my parents-in-law for helping us and guiding us in buying all the necessary stuff and my sister-in-law for house sitting for us. THANK YOU!

Before departing for Singapore, I would like to leave you a great cookie recipe that is simple and easy to make. It doesn't take very long to whip it up and bake as well.

Chocolate-Nut Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 egg yolk
• 38 g or 1/4 cup soft brown sugar
• 74 g or 1/3 cup white sugar
• 150 g butter (softened)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 188 g or 1 1/2 cup self raising flour (sifted)
• 100 g dark and white chocolates tablets (chopped)
• some chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4).
2. In a big mixing bowl, whisk egg yolk, white & brown sugar, butter and vanilla essence together until it is light and creamy.
3. With a spoon (metal or wooden), fold in the flour, dark & white chocolates and chopped nuts into the creamy mixture until combined/
4. Take a spoonful of the dough and roll it into a ball in your hands.
5. Arrange the balls on the baking tray lined with baking paper. Make sure to space them out as they will spread during baking.
6. Bake them for 15 minutes or until crisp and lightly browned. Cool the cookies on tray for a minute or two before transferring them on the wire rack.

The Verdict

Surprisingly delicious and aromatic - it has a full nutty flavour, buttery taste, with delicious bites of mixed chocolates and not forgetting the presence of vanilla flavour as well - wow! Pierre and Little One couldn't stop eating them. In fact, they are fighting over who gets the biggest first. My friends said it is as good as Famous Amos cookies and that I should bake more and sell them from home.

Before this, I never quite succeeded in making chocolate chip cookies but this time around, they came out beautifully and delicious. I'm so happy.

Notes

The baking time depends on how hot is your oven. For mine, I discovered that my oven browns them pretty fast and I only baked them for 12 to 13 minutes. The more batches I made, the hotter my oven turns so either I lower my oven temperature or shorten the baking time.

As for the combination, leave it all dark or white chocolates if you like. Try different nuts or add raisins.

The weather has been acting weird for the past few days. We had weeks of very sunny spring weather and flowers were blooming everywhere, including the fruit trees in our backyard (we don't know what kind of fruit trees we have in our garden so that will be a surprise. ) Then suddenly end of last week, it started to rain for 2 days... and turned into snow.... gasp! Within half an hour, our garden was all covered with snow. The scenery was actually very pretty. Little One (LO) saw snow for her first time, and when the snow flakes hit her face and little hands, her expression was truly priceless ... It was like 'hey...what was that?' with a serious frown on her little face. We went on the balcony and let her play with snow. Since she never had snow fight before, I decided to gather a little snow ball and threw it at her ... hahaha ... she was like 'Mommy, why did you do that?' Sister-in-law joined in the fun and soon LO got the idea, however instead of her throwing her tiny snow ball at us, she threw it off the balcony. hahaha Apparently she enjoyed watching it falling down and making a splatter on the floor. Too soon, it stopped snowing and the sun came shinning and melt all the snow.

To chase away this cold weary weather, baking is the way to go : filling up the house with cookie aroma - mmm... yummy ... this recipe is (heavily) inspired by my previous Choc-Hazelnut Scrolls.

Coconut-Choc Scrolls

Ingredients

• 234 g or 2 cups plain flour
• 50 g or ½ cup dry grated coconut
• 100 g butter (cubed)
• ½ cup caster sugar
• 1 egg (lightly beaten)
• 2 tbsp iced water
• chocolate hazelnut spread
• some extra dry grated coconut

Directions

1. Very lightly brown the 50 g grated coconut in a pan.
2. Place the grated coconut and flour in food processor bowl; add butter and sugar. Using the pulse action, press button for 30 seconds or until mixture is fine and crumbly.
3. Add egg and 2 tbsp water; process a further 20 seconds until mixture forms a dough.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 30 seconds or until smooth.
5. Roll pastry out on a large sheet of baking paper, to a rectangle. Trim any uneven edges.
6. Spread dough evenly with hazelnut spread.
7. Sprinkle dry grated coconut all over the hazelnut spread.
8. Using paper to lift dough, roll up from the long side in Swiss roll style. Wrap tightly in paper and refrigerate for 1 hour.
9. Using a very sharp knife, cut dough into 1 cm slices. Place it on biscuit trays with baking paper.
10. Bake at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

The Verdict

My sister-in-law took the first bite and exclaimed 'This is really good. Can I have the recipe please. Super yummy.' I was really taken by surprise and went : 'Really?' :O ... Pierre took one and didn't say anything ... he just chomped down another one, yet another. Little One was happily devouring hers. So I sank my teeth for my first bite... it is really good. Crunchy but not overly crunchy - a bit like shortbread. The coconut aroma just swamped my senses. I have to say the nutella or any chocolate spread goes very well with coconut.

Phew! Finally we have an Internet connection in our house! They sure took their time. We could have had it a week earlier if not for the telecom company which made a (stupid) mistake in transferring the line.

Our move was a nightmare to begin with. On the eve of finalizing the sale of the house, we were busy loading up all our stuff onto the rental truck when we got a call from the notary that the seller couldn't make it the next day to finalize the papers. Mind you, we had our fridge, washing machine, sofas, bed etc. and were nearly done when we got that call. It's not like we are moving to the next street - we are talking about a painful 8 hour drive across the country. Since we had to return the truck the next day 500 km away, we decided to go ahead as planned and try to find a solution with the sellers.

Sadly, we were too optimistic and they were too unreasonable, and it took a lot of phone calls between the two notary and the real-estate agent to convince them to let us unload our stuff in the empty house and stay there till the sale got finalised 2 days later. Despite signing all required documents, they became highly bitter about the whole episode (even though they were the one who created this situation) and made the official transaction a painful ordeal of complains that lasted 2 hours.

I'm so glad everything is over and we got our house. Now we have a lot of work ahead of us but the major stuff have to wait till Christmas is over!

This is the first thing I baked when we installed our brand new oven. My oh my, this oven is fantastic. It warms up faster than my old one that I had a hard time leaving behind in our old apartment. I found this interesting cookie recipe from Beach Lover's Kitchen and modified it a wee bit to my liking.

Banana Chocolate Chips Cookies

Ingredients

• 115 g butter (soften)
• 2 & 1/2 cups plain flour (shifted)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 over-riped banana (mashed)
• 1/3 cup superfine sugar
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips (can be replaced with dark chocolate chips)
• some ground nutmeg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 190°C (375 °F).
2. Beat the butter, superfine sugar and dark brown sugar until soft and fluffy.
3. Add in the beaten egg and whisked till combined.
4. Stir in the mashed banana and vanilla extract till well blended in.
5. Stir in the shifted flour and baking powder.
6. Add in the chocolate chips to the dough mixture.
7. Spaced out each spoonful of cookie dough on the baking sheet.
8. Bake it for about 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let it cool before storing it in an airtight container.

The Verdict

The banana flavor is somewhat surprising to find in a cookie form, and the texture is soft inside but solid on the outside. Overall a delicious treat I must say

Notes

A very over-riped banana is needed to bring out the banana flavour of this cookie. My recipe isn't very sweet so it will appeal to people who aren't too much into cakes and desserts, but there's nothing stopping you from adding more sugar if you want so.

Thanks for all your well wishes. We are all back to our robust health, with a little bit less weight to boot (whoohoo !).

This past week, we have been doing nothing else but packing, packing and more packing. We have sold off our home in Nantes to begin a new chapter of our life in another city. Little One has been very busy helping me packing the books, DVDs, clothes etc. She even helps to hold the box together for me to tape it. What a great little helper!

Our Internet connection will be cut off this weekend and I won't be able post a new recipe until a week or two after. In the meantime, I leave you this delicious cookie recipe.

Triple Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with Peanut Butter Filling

Preparation: 15 minutes
Baking: 15 minutes
Makes: 36

Ingredients

• 120 g plain flour
• 120 g cocoa powder
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 120 g dark chocolate
• 120 g milk chocolate (cut into 1 cm pieces or small pieces)
• 120 salted butter
• 300 g sugar
• 3 eggs (beaten)

Filling

• 150 g peanut butter
• 50 g powdered sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 170°C (340°F)
2. Melt the dark chocolate with the butter in either microwave oven or bain-marie.
3. Let it cool down before adding the sugar, then stir in the eggs.
4. Add the flour, the baking powder and the cocoa powder.
5. Make sure the mixture is well mixed before adding in the milk chocolate.
6. Scoop a teaspoonful of the paste and roll it into a small ball between your palms. Flatten it slightly on the baking tray leaving about 5 cm between 2 cookies.
7. Bake it for 12 to 15 minutes. Let it cool on wire rack.

Peanut Butter Filling

1. Mix peanut butter and powdered sugar well together
2. Spread some peanut butter filling onto one side of the cookies and sandwich it with another cookie. Press it lightly so that the cookies stick.
3. Serve it with a cup of coffee or as dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

The Verdict

For all chocoholics and peanut butter addicts, this is THE cookie for you. It's a rich and sinful treat, a strong chocolate flavor that feels almost like bitting a chocolate bar, with a soft peanut core. Yummy!

Notes

Be careful not to overcook them, or else they'll be too hard (although still delicious). 14 min was a bit too much for me, so you might want to keep a watchful eye on your creation.

I love butter. When I was a kid, I used to spread a big chunk of butter on my white bread and savour every bite of it. The best spread is white bread with a thick coat of butter and sugar. Heck, I was even guilty of just eating a plain square of butter on it's own. Yummy... hahaha... well that was back then... now when I see a kid doing the same as I did back then, I cringe in horror - images of choked artery come to mind. Could it be that I have been over-exposed to health commercials aired on TV?

Anyway it still doesn't stop me from indulging myself once in a while - old habits die hard. Sometimes I would sneak a big slap of butter on my bread with a little jam during breakfast - whenever Pierre isn't watching or else he would give me a long lecture on cholesterol and all. I remember once he caught me eating a slice of bread with butter coated with peanut butter on top with a horrified look on his face that goes 'Are you really going to finish that!'

And of course without a doubt, my all time favourite cookies are butter cookies. My first taste of butter cookies were those Danish Butter Cookies (those famous blue round tin). It was a great treat when I was little as these cookies were imported and very expensive back then. It's funny how a great luxury back then has become a common treat today.

I have made these almond butter-cookies about a month ago after seeing a beautiful photo of it in a local monthly magazine but never got around to write about it.

Petits Sablés aux Amandes

Preparation: 20 minutes
Baking: 30 mins + 1 hour (refrigerator)
Makes: 30 (approximately)

Ingredients

• 250 g flour
• 2 eggs
• 50 ml liquid cream
• 120 g salted butter (soften)
• 120 g sugar
• 30 almonds
• 11 g baking powder

Directions

1. Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl.
2. Whisk eggs and sugar in a big bowl, add in the butter while whisking non-stop until it is creamy.
3. Add in the flour mixture and knead it with your fingers.
4. Form the dough into a ball and place it in a cool place for 2 hours or refrigerate it for 1 hour.
5. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F- gas mark 4)
6. Flour your work table and roll out the dough to 1 cm thickness.
7. Cut them out into about 30 rectangles
8. Place half of the quantity onto the baking tray lined with baking paper.
9. Place an almond on top of each rectangles and brush the surface with liquid cream.
10. Bake them for 15 minutes.
11. Let the biscuits cool on the wire rack.
12. Cool off the baking tray under running water and then put the rest of the batch of rectangles in the oven.
13. These shortbread can be kept for 5 or 6 days in an airtight container.

The Verdict

Not as buttery as I was hoping, maybe because I was a bit too generous with the flour. Pierre thinks they are just nice, but would go for just an half-almond on top as a whole one for every cookie is a bit too much. Otherwise it goes nicely with our 5 o'clock cup of tea and stays fresh in a sealed container.

Notes

I must have over-whipped the egg and sugar (it was fluffy and creamy) before adding the butter because with the said amount of flour, I couldn't get it to form a dough. It was a sticky mess so I had to add more flour to get it to form a dough.

I have made these cookies many times but I never really given much thought on the chocolate nut spread I used on it till Pierre asked me that day 'Do you know how Nutella came about?' 'No. I don't think there's anything interesting about it. It's just some modern invention.' Pierre: 'You should look it up. You'll be surprised.' Now that got me curious. So, here's some history lesson for you and me.

Nutella®, in its original form, was first created during WWII by Mr. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company. At that time, there was a shortage of cocoa due to rationing, so Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are plentiful in the Piedmont region of Italy (northwest), to extend the chocolate supply. The original version of Nutella spread was called pasta gianduja - pasta means obviously paste, and gianduja is the name of a carnival character famous to the region, a character that can be found in the first advertisements for the product. This original form of Nutella was actually made in loaves and wrapped in tinfoil, so it could be sliced and placed on bread for mothers to make sandwiches for their children. But many children would throw away the bread and only eat the pasta gianduja! So Mr. Ferrero altered the product into a paste that came in a jar, that could be spread on the bread as well. This then became known as supercrema gianduja because it was a spread-able version of the gianduja. Supecrema gianduja was eventually renamed "Nutella" in 1964, with the origin of the word being "nut" and the "ella" giving it a soft ending. So now you know.

Choc-Hazelnut Scrolls

(taken from Biscuits & Slices)

Preparation: 25 minutes
Baking: 15 minutes
Makes: 35

Ingredients

• 250 g or 2 cups plain flour
• 63 g or ½ cup ground hazelnuts
• 100 g unsalted butter (chopped)
• 125 g or ½ cup caster sugar
• 1 egg (lightly beaten)
• 2 tbsp iced water
• ¼ cup chocolate hazelnut spread

Directions

Using food processor

1. Place dry ingredients in food processor bowl; add butter and sugar. Using the pulse action, press button for 30 seconds or until mixture is fine and crumbly.
2. Add combined egg and water; process a further 20 seconds until mixture forms a dough.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 30 seconds or until smooth.
4. Roll pastry out on a large sheet of baking paper, to a rectangle of 25x35cm. Trim any uneven edges.
5. Spread dough evenly with hazelnut spread.
6. Using paper to lift dough, roll up from the long side in Swiss roll style. Wrap tightly in paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. Cut dough into 1 cm slices, wiping blade of knife between cuts. Place on biscuit trays with baking paper.
8. Bake at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Using hand

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, ground hazelnuts and sugar together. Then add in the diced up butter.
2. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is crumbly (like sand). To make sure that all butter are rubbed in and there is no big lumps left, scoop some mixture into your hands and rub it in a rubbing motion.
3. Make a small well in the middle, pour in the egg and iced water. Mix the dough mixture with your hands until it forms a ball of dough.
4. Then follow steps 3) to 8) same as above.

Conclusion

As Nutella is very tasty (this reminds me of the scene in Joe Black where Brad Pitt was licking deliciously his spoon), it is a nice base for these cookies, making them rich in taste and flavour. Great tea treats.

For that extra punch: crunchy and nutty flavour in every bite - I added some chopped hazelnuts into the recipe and an extra 20 g (approx) butter. It turns out very good and exactly what I wanted. We both love this modified recipe.

Regarding the spread, don't go over zealous with it or else you would have nutella spilling all over (although it was finger-licking good) and will have a hard time slicing the dough. Don't make the same mistake as me. I gave an extra dose in mine because Pierre complained that I always spread too thin a layer. When I had to slice it, aïe yaï yaï, what a mess! In the end, I had to use dental floss string to cut the dough. That saved the day.

Note

You can use ground macadamia nuts in place of the hazelnuts.

The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.