Coconut Crusted Salted Caramel Cookies

I follow a great blog called Taking on Magazines written by "the Mom Chef" who is actually Christiane. Its a great blog with loads of delicious recipe ideas. Please check it out right now - I'll be here when you get back. :)

Any way, a while back she posted the recipe for these amazing cookies and I pinned it to try later. Later finally came when I made them a couple weeks ago. They were such a hit!!! Devoured eagerly and quickly that I barely had time to snap a couple of pictures. You've gotta try making them they are absolutely delicious and easy to make. In fact they might be fun to make with your kids if you have them - the kids could help with rolling them into balls and rolling them in the coconut (or nuts if you choose). It would be a fun kitchen project to take on.

Coconut Crusted Salted Caramel Cookies
Recipe adapted from Taking on Magazines

Ingredients:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• coconut for rolling
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 1/2 c water
• a few drops lemon juice
• 1c whipping cream

Method:

1. First make the caramel sauce. Put the 1 2/3 cups of sugar into a very clean saucepan. Gently pour the water oer the sugar and add the lemon juice. Place pan over medium high heat with the lid on. Bring to a boil and let boil with lid on, removing and replacing the cover every so often. When all the water is boiled off, the sugar will be boiling with big bubbles breaking on the surface. The bubbles will gradually get smaller as the temperature rises. Remove the lid and pay attention now. The sugar will change colour - when it reaches a nice gold/ amber colour, remove it from the heat - don't let it get too dark or it will taste burnt. Add the cream carefully (it will bubble and steam like crazy). Have a wooden spoon ready and stir until well blended. Set aside to cool and thicken up a bit.
2. Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
3. Beat together butter with 1 cup sugar until smooth and fluffy. Beat in vanilla.
4. Add the flour a little at a time, then add the salt. Beat to combine.
5. Roll dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Dip each ball in the egg, then roll in coconut to coat. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Press to flatten a bit, then use your thumb to make an indentation in the center of the cookie. Repeat with remaining dough.
6. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Repress indent with your thumb and then bake for another 9-10 minutes or until golden. Let cool on wire racks.
7. When completely cooled fill indentation with a little of the caramel sauce, then sprinkle with sea salt.

 Yep, so that is all!! I am writing this to share with you while enjoying bacon rolls - like cinnamon buns, but savory!! Recipe to follow on world bread day - 3 days left! Can you wait that long?!

Happy Baking my Friends!

Decadent Desserts Class with Tina Bacon

About a month ago I had the opportunity to attend a baking class called Decadent Desserts at Well Seasoned. The class was put on by Tina Bacon, owner and founder of the Pink Spatula. Tina is a fantastic pastry chef and creates the most amazing hand crafted marshmallows I've ever tasted (peanut butter ripple marshmallows anyone?!! - try that in a s'more!!). Check our her website for beautiful photos of her dessert offerings and where to find her hand crafted marshmallows.

During the class we made Individual German Chocolate Cakes (pictured above), oreos (pictured below), burnt sugar ganache mini tarts, and butterscotch pots de creme topped with dark chocolate pudding. It was an ambitious evening full of delicious, calorie-laden treats, handy tips and great recipes. Tina kindly allowed me to share the recipe for the burnt sugar ganache mini tarts with you (thanks Tina!!). I made them at home again yesterday to make sure the recipe turned out as well under my hand as Tina's professional hand and sure enough, it was a slam dunk!! Delicious and addictive. :)

First step for these delicious little guys is to make the miniature sweet tart dough (makes about 32 mini tarts):

Miniature Sweet Tart Dough
Recipe by Tina Bacon

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 3/4 cups (12 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
• 5 1/2 tbsp (2 1/3 oz) sugar

Method:

1. Cut butter into small cubes and set aside.
2. In a small bowl stir together egg and vanilla with a fork.
3. Measure flour, sugar and salt into a food processor bowl. Pulse together a few times to combine. Add butter and pulse till it's the size of rice. While still pulsing, slowly pour egg/ vanilla mixture through tube and mix just till it begins to form a dough. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead a couple times to form a smooth dough.
4. Portion all of the dough first using a 1 1/2 - 2 tsp measure. Next, roll all the dough into balls and place in a miniature muffin pan (see photo below). Form into tart shells using either a tart tamper or your fingers to form a thin, even crust.
5. Bake in 350F oven for about 10 minutes or till edges are golden. Allow to cool in pan 10 minutes, then place tart shells on a rack to cool completely. Store airtight. Can be frozen.

Burnt sugar ganache tartlets made by Tina in her class

 Next up, make the burnt sugar ganache. Please note that I have adapted this recipe slightly - it originally called to make the caramel using the dry method, but having had a couple of really bad experiences in the past with this method, I opted instead to use the wet method. :)

Burnt Sugar Ganache
Recipe from Tina Bacon (Tina adapted the recipe from Pierre Herme's Faubourg Pave)

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups (305g) chopped dark chocolate
• scant 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 4 tsp unsalted butter
• pinch of fine sea salt
• scant 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups (12 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method:

1. Place sugar in a pile in the middle of a saucepan. Carefully pour water in around the pile of sugar. Over medium high heat, gently and carefully stir the water and sugar mixture until the sugar is dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, stop stirring. Let it bubble until it reaches a nice golden brown colour and remove from heat. Stir in first amount of butter and salt until melted. Add cream (careful - it will bubble like crazy and puff up), stirring well. Return to a boil, remove from heat.
2. Pour half of caramel over chocolate, stir to create ganache. Stir in remaining caramel till smooth. Set aside to cool till only slightly warm, about 10 minutes. Beat butter till malleable. Gently stir small amounts at a time into ganache with a wooden spoon till smooth. Don't use a whisk for this part - you don't want to incorporate air into this mixture.

Adding butter to the flour for the pastry dough

 To assemble your tarts - pour burnt sugar ganache into each tart until full. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Allow to set up. Enjoy!

Dough balls waiting to be formed into tart shells

Baked tart shells (my at home attempt)

Burnt sugar ganache tarts (my at home attempt)

This was a fantastic class and I would highly recommend attending any of Tina's baking classes at well seasoned. You'll learn a lot and get to sample loads of delicious food along the way (remember, calories don't count on cooking class nights).

This post has been linked up with Whatcha Baking Wednesdays over at Cajun Sugar Pie.

Happy Baking my Friends!

Ginger Lemon Girls' Brownies with a Twist!

This is my very first time participating in the Secret Recipe Club! For those of you who haven't heard of the Secret Recipe Club, its a group hosted by Amanda of the blog Amanda's Cookin. Each month, bloggers from all over are given a blog from which they have to select a recipe to make. The key? Your assigned blog is to be kept a secret until the posting date! How cool is that?!

This month I was assigned to the blog Ginger Lemon Girl hosted by Carrie. Carrie has a blog full of delicious gluten free recipes! I'm not a gluten free baker, so the world of gluten free ingredients is definitely a new one for me. Thanks Carrie for giving me the chance to experiment with gluten free recipes. I chose to make Carrie's brownies, with a twist of my own.

I made brownies filled with and drizzled with salted caramel sauce.

Double Chocolate Brownies

Recipe adapted from GingerLemonGirl

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups almond flour

1 cup macadamia flour (make your own - grind macadamia nuts in your food processor until smooth)

1/4 cup cocoa

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 cup sugar (white or brown)

1/4 cup grapeseed oil

2 eggs

1/2 cup + 2tbsp applesauce

1 tbsp vanilla

half recipe of salted caramel sauce (below)

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray a 9x13 inch pan with non-stick cooking spray. Whisk all dry ingredients (except chocolate chips) together in a large bowl. In another bowl whisk together all the wet ingredients (except the caramel sauce) and stir into the dry ingredients. Transfer half of the batter to the baking dish and spread into an even layer. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on rack for 20 minutes.


2. While the brownie cools, make the caramel sauce. Spread salted caramel sauce onto baked brownie layer. Dallop remaining batter over the caramel layer and carefully spread into a nice even layer. Sprinkle with the semi-sweet chocolate chips. Return to preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes until cooked through.


3. Let brownies cool and serve drizzled with additional caramel sauce.

Salted Caramel Sauce

Recipe from Tracey's Culinary Adventures

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar



• 1/2 cup heavy cream



• 1 tbsp cold unsalted butter



• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Method:

1. Add 1/2 cup water to a small saucepan. Gently add the sugar to the center of the pan; it will mound in the center. Cover the pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, uncover and insert a candy thermometer. Continue cooking until the mixture reaches 300F and is just starting to develop some colour, about 15 minutes.


2. Reduce the heat to medium and continue boiling until syrup is amber in colour and reaches 350F, about another 5 minutes. Meanwhile, bring the cream to a simmer in a small saucepan.


3. Remove the caramel from the heat and add about 1/4 of the cream. It will bubble furiously, so be careful. Continue stirring until bubbling subsides. Add remaining cream. When it stops bubbling, whisk to incorporate and stir in the salt and butter.

I really enjoyed my very first Secret Recipe Club and am so excited to have been paired up with such a great (and healthy) blogger like Carrie. Do stop by and check out her blog - it will be worth the look! Thanks Amanda for hosting a great blogger event and to Carrie for introducing me to gluten free baking.
If you want to check out some of the other bloggers that participated, check out the blog hop below:

The Daring Bakers Challenge - May 2011 - Marquise on Meringue

Is it just me or do these months seem to fly by faster and faster? Things here are busy... so busy I almost forgot to post about my DB challenge until my friend reminded me yesterday!! Its so weird that I almost forgot because I am super duper excited about how this challenge turned out. It was so perfect and looked really pretty plated too.

The May 2011 Daring Bakers Challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this dessert comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

What a challenge! Some of the components were familiar, but the marquise was not. For those of you wondering what chocolate marquise is, it is pretty much the best thing ever. For those of you who would like more of a description than the best thing ever, it is cube of spicy, creamy chocolate that you serve up on a beautiful pillow of sweet meringue. Then drizzle with salted caramel sauce and crisp candied pecans (with a hint of spice). Its absolutely lovely! It is a bit of work - there are many components, but all can be made up separately so you don't feel like you're going crazy trying to do 50 things in your kitchen at once!!!

You can find the recipes here. I would recommend using the 1/2 or 1/4 batches because this makes a huge portion of Marquise that I would not recommend consuming in one sitting. ;)

Please note that I didn't enjoy the tequila caramel sauce at all. I used a recipe for salted caramel sauce from a blog I have mentioned a time or two - Tracey's Culinary Adventures. She used the caramel sauce to fill brownies with and also to make salted caramel cheesecake bars. Both recipes looked super delicious! If you have a chance, do drop by her blog to check out the never-ending stream of deliciousness that she tends to post!

I would definitely recommend taking on this dessert one weekend when you need something exciting to do! Thats what I do when I need some excitement - I try out a recipe that will dirty every dish in my kitchen and that will really challenge my culinary skills. My hubby's verdict on the dessert was that it was delicious and I was "allowed" to make it again (despite the dirty dishes he had to clean up the next day on his day off!!!)!

So thank you Emma & Jenny for a fantastic challenge this month! It was great to have some fresh and new ideas come to the DB challenges, particularly a dessert that so many members had never heard of, let alone attempted. I learned a lot this month and had a great time doing it!

Stay tuned for some great posts this weekend!

Happy Baking my Friends!