Zestful Eats

Spritz cookies are cookies that have to be pushed thru a cookie press or piped out. You can buy a cookie press for pretty cheap nowadays from any baking goods store or big supermarkets.

Chocolate Spritz Cookie
Makes 7-8 dozen cookies.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups (or 284 g) butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C.

2. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars at medium high speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla.

Creaming the butters and sugars together

3. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add flour mixture gradually and beat well.

This is how the dough looks like after 1/3 of the flour

4. The dough should be soft but not too sticky. It should have a mousse-like consistency. Using a spoon, put cookie dough into cookie press or piping bag. Press cookie dough onto cool ungreased cookie sheets.

Pressing out the dough using the press

5. Bake at 375°F/190°C. for 10-12 minutes. Remove from sheet and cool. Store in airtight container at cool room temperature for several weeks or freeze for two months.

Nicely packed cookies

I stumbled upon this blog of recipes by Aunty Yochana the other day while I was blog surfing and came across this recipe for Brownie Biscuits. Now I know you’re thinking like what?? but think of it this way. Brownies are made of chocolate and nuts..now imagine that in a biscuit. Yums! So I saved the recipe.

Last nite, I couldn’t sleep and so as usual I decided to bake. I peeked into my fridge and found that I had all the ingredients. So at 5am, I proceeded to bake my biscuits.

Brownie Biscuits

200 gm. Butter
180 gm. Sugar <– I used castor
1 egg
100 gm. Walnuts or Cashew nuts <–  I used walnuts + almonds
1/2 tsp. cinnamon powder
320 gm. Plain flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
50 gm. cornflour
20 gm. cocoa powder
Some almond flakes or sunflower seeds for decoration
Some beaten egg for glazing

Method:

(1) Cream butter and sugar till sugar dissolves.

(2) Add in egg and beat till well mixed.

(3) Add in blended walnuts or cashew nuts, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and cornflour. I just measured everything in the measuring scale all together. Less washing.

(4) Blend into a dough. Rest for 10 mins.

(5) Roll dough between two sheets of plastic and then cut out using cookie cutters. I recommend using greaseproof paper instead of plastic wrap because its very leceh to use plastic.

(6) Place cookies on tray, glaze with beaten eggs and then sprinkle some almond flakes or sunflower seeds on top. If you’re lazy like me, don’t need to glaze & put almond flakes.

(7) Bake at 170C for about 15 mins. or till cooked.

(8) Cool cookies before storing into containers.

I forgot to take pics of the baked biscuits so here’s the pic from Aunty Yochana’s blog. Its quite nice, not too hard or too soft. Very easy to do also. Perhaps would be superb with chocolate chips. More chocolate makes everything better.

Got this recipe from Martha Stewart and made it for a friend’s birthday. Its really really nice and dense and chocolaty! Don’t be lazy to cream the butter and sugar well. I used ready made frosting (betty Crocker) and rice sprinkles to frost the cake.

Makes  round cake roughly 2 inches x 8 inches. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

170g butter
3/4 cup cocoa powder + some extra
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar (I used castor sugar)
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract (I didn’t have extract so I used vanilla flavoring and seeds of 1 vanilla pod)
1/2 cup sour cream

1. Butter pan and line with greaseproof paper. Butter it again and coat the pan with cocoa powder.

(step 1) Pan coated with cocoa (Step 2) sifted dry ingredients

2. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Don’t be lazy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Then add in vanilla & beat.

(Step 3) Adding in the vanilla (Step 4) Cake mix

4. Add in the flour mix and sour cream in three batches. Don’t put it all inside terus. Mix well in between batches.

5. Pour into pan, tap pan to remove bubbles. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Check if the cake is done by poking it with a chopstick and if it comes out clean, then its done!

6. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes then take out of pan, peel off the paper and cool it on a wire rack.

7. Frost and decorate!

Left: Cut up cake. Right:Cake decorated with chocolate frosting and hundreds and thousands (I doubled the recipe)