Cranberry and white chocolate cookies

I just started my three week Christmas holiday (I'm writing this on Friday night, and schedule it to be published early on Saturday morning). I can't remember the last time I would have three weeks off work. Possibly not in ten years, possibly never. In about four hours we are heading off to the airport to go home to Finland to spend Christmas with friends and family. I will be exhausted when the alarm clock goes off, I'm even contemplating just staying up all night.

The weeks leading up to today have been chaotic, both me and the Culinary Consultant have been working long hours, so everything else has been pushed aside. No proper cooking, no house cleaning, very little crafting and certainly no time to plan what to pack and very little thought about Christmas presents. This year we will make do with very few presents. And I don't mind at all! There has been several difficult times this fall, but everyone has made it through and all I want to do is take it easy, do nothing and just enjoy the simple things. Cook nice food. See friends. Spend time with family. My only regret is that my baby Sis, who is doing a wonderful job on her first year as a medical doctor, can't join us this year. 

I am just sitting on the sofa, writing this while the Culinary Consultant (who has to stay awake tomorrow morning for the two hour drive to the airport) is sound asleep upstairs. I'm really tired too, but at the same time I'm so wound up about travelling tomorrow (oh wait, correction, later today!) that I can't really sleep. I keep going over things in my head. Did I really pack everything I need (most likely not, but it won't really matter) and did I really put the passport in my bag (yes, it was there the last seventy-two times I checked, so I'm sure it's still there). Is my phone charged? Yes. Will I remember to pack the phone and the charger tomorrow morning? Yes, because I never go anywhere without my phone. That's pretty much what is going on in my head at the moment. Oh and that little nagging voice saying I should be in bed, and that I will regret this tomorrow morning. No wait, correction again, later this morning. 

I better get on to today's recipe. I had some leftover cream cheese that just "had" to be used up. And when the Culinary Consultant went digging in one of our kitchen cupboards he found a bag of dried cranberries. So it wasn't so much we wanting cookies as it was divine intervention I think. I used this recipe from a blog called Gimme Some Oven. I didn't make any other changes to the recipe apart from halving it, as I thought two dozen cookies should be enough.

Cranberry and white chocolate cookies (makes about 24):
For the cookies
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I used less as I always think recipes use too much salt)
115 g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used 1/2 tsp vanilla paste)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup cranberries

For the frosting:
115 g cream cheese
1/4 cup white chocolate chips, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
1 cup icing sugar

For the topping:
finely chopped dried cranberries
small chocolate chips or melted white chocolate

The howto:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F). Mix the flour, soda and salt. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugars using an electric mixer. Add the egg and vanilla and keep on whisking. Gradually add the dry ingredients, and mix until batter is smooth. Gently fold in the chocolate chips and cranberries. Wrap dough in cling film and chill for at least an hour.

Place tablespoon sized dollops of the dough onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet, well separated as the cookies expand quite a lot when baking.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Bring cream cheese for the frosting to room temperature.

When cookies are completely cooled, prepare the frosting. Using an electric mixer, mix the cream cheese with the melted chocolate. Make sure the cream cheese is at room temperature, otherwise the chocolate will solidify. Add the vanilla. Reduce the speed of the mixed and incorporate the icing sugar. Spread onto the cooled cookies. Decorate with cranberries and white chocolate.

The verdict:
These cookies were very sweet. If you don't like very sweet cookies, don't make them, or alternatively just exclude the icing. But if you do like very sweet things, you will love these. And the tartness of the cranberries does cut the sweetness a bit. Needless to say, these disappeared very quickly from our kitchen, I can't imagine who could have eaten a huge batch of cookies in just a few days... They are so pretty with the red cranberries on the white frosting, very Christmas-y and perfect for the season.

Blueberry and white chocolate tartuffins

I think fall is really starting to rev up. We had our last day of summer last Friday, and then the weather changed quite noticeably. The evenings are cold, and it's cold getting out of bed in the morning. I know it's nowhere near to how cold it will be, but this is the first time I feel I want to snuggle up in my fleece robe in the mornings, and not change into work clothes at all. The car is cold in the mornings, and it only gets warm by the first big roundabout. In just a week I have gone from blasting the A/C on maximum cool to maximum heating. Leaves are turning brown, the tomato production has dwindled down and I doubt there will be much more red tomatoes coming. Time for that last batch of green tomato chutney. We did get four big tubs of tomatoes on Sunday when we picked everything we could find, and made a gigantic serving of tomato sauce for the winter. My dahlias are still going strong in the garden, the only colourful spots left along with a few flowers on the fuchsia. The pics below were taken on Monday this week, in the pouring rain. Although leaves are starting to turn rather colourful as well. It's definitely time for something cheery in the kitchen department to counteract all the fall sadness. I know there are a lot of people out there who love the change of seasons and the colder, crisper air but I'm not one of them. From now on it's just going to be cold, dark, miserable and dreary until it's spring again.

When I saw these blueberry tarts on The English Kitchen I couldn't resist.  They simply looked so delicious. However, I wanted to take them into work, and I don't have enough tart tins to make many tarts (and I wanted to make mine a bit smaller anyways), so I decided to make them in muffin tins instead. So they became tartuffins. I also decided to add some white chocolate in here. You know, just because why not. I didn't use the pastry recipe in the original post, I used my favourite pastry here. But I'm sure whichever pastry you use, they will be fabulous. I made one serving of the pastry and doubled the filling to make about 16 of these babies. 

Blueberry and white chocolate tartuffins (makes about 16):
For the pastry (recipe stolen from The Purple Spoon):
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
225 g unsalted butter
1/4-1/2 cup ice cold water

For the filling (double amount if you make the full serving of pastry above):
45 g unsalted butter
90 g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1/2 tsp vanilla (I used vanilla paste)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
90 g plain flour
a few handfuls of blueberries
another few handfuls of white chocolate chips
(3-4 tbsp apricot jam)

The howto:
Start by preparing the crust, as it needs to sit in the fridge for a while. Using a pastry cutter or your hands, rub together the flour, salt, sugar and butter until it resembles coarse sand. Add water until it forms a non-sticky dough. Wrap in cling film and let rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour while you prepare the filling.

For the filling, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the egg and keep on whisking. Mix all the dry ingredients and fold into the batter. 

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F). Roll the pastry on a floured worktop, and use a cutter or large glass to cut out circles. Line your muffin tin with the pastry and add the filling. Sprinkle with blueberries and white chocolate chips. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the filling is golden brown and has slightly risen. The original recipe had a final step of melting the apricot jam, and brushing it over the tartuffins, but I skipped this step. 

The verdict:
My colleagues certainly didn't complain when I took these in to work, and they all disappeared in a more or less flattering length of time. The one reason I might make these in small tart tins next time is that you get a larger surface area, and therefore you are able to get in more blueberries as they really are the key to the deliciousness. The more blueberries, the more moist and delicious your bakes will be. The white chocolate adds a lovely sweetness and I would certainly not leave it out. I have to admit I was a bit lazy and didn't quite roll the pastry thin enough, so there was a bit too much pastry to filling in each tartuffin, again supporting the idea of making them in the shape of tarts rather than muffins the next time. But all in all, as a solution to the problem of not having enough tart tins, this worked really well I think. I do love a great pie crust, and I can't resist muffins, so combining the two seem to make perfect sense.

Rhubarb, ginger and white chocolate muffins

I started my blogging career with a trio of muffin recipes. Lemon and white chocolate, rhubarb muffins and Quality Street muffins. For a while it looked like I should have called the blog InvisiblePinkMuffins. Since then the muffin recipe frequency on the blog has taken a nosedive. Time to do something about that! I wanted to make an extra special muffin to take with me to work to celebrate my birthday last week. And everyone knows the way to pimp up a muffin is to add more goodies into them. Fresh rhubarb form the garden was a must, it's only rhubarb season once a year. Some white chocolate and candied ginger for a bit of sweet and spice. And maybe throw in a zesty icing, just to make sure there's enough things going on.

For the recipe, I went back to my trusty basic muffin recipe from Kinuskikissa (the Finnish baking blog I've mentioned a time or two or seventeen...). What can I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, it's such a quick and easy one bowl recipe. Muffins are also perfect to take along somewhere. You can leave some of them with your friendly ladies at reception, and take the rest along to your office. You can't do that with a cake. You can also try out a few in advance at home just to make sure they turned out good enough to take to work. With a cake all you can do is hope for the best. And if you really plan it right, you actually make one and a half times the recipe which means you have plenty of muffins to take to work *and* to have several left to snack on at home as well. Sneaky!

Just a note, the original recipe gives volume measurements in deciliters (100 milliliters) which is the normal volumetric unit of measurement for recipes back home. I have converted to approximate cups and weights using online calculators and I believe they should be close enough to work but have not tested so use at your own risk. Don't blame me that the cup measurements are quite whacky!

Rhubarb, ginger and white chocolate muffins (makes 12):
150 g butter
150 ml or 2/3 cups minus one tbsp or 128g sugar
2 eggs
400 ml or 1 2/3 cups minus one tbsp or 260 g all purpose flour 
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
150 ml or 2/3 cups minus one tbsp  milk
3-4 tender spring stems of rhubarb
50 g white chocolate chips
3-4 pieces of candied ginger

about 250 ml or 1 cup icing sugar
zest and juice from 1 lemon

The howto:
Bring the butter, eggs and milk to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (392 F or gas mark 6). Using a handheld electric mixer, whisk together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Keep whisking and add eggs one at a time. Add the flour, baking powder, vanilla paste and vanilla paste and mix once or twice. Add the milk and only mix enough to bring the batter together, careful not to over mix. Finely chop the rhubarb and ginger, and fold it into the batter. Divide into 12 muffin cases. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

After removing the muffins from the oven, let them cool for a few minutes while making the icing. Put the icing sugar in a small bowl, and add lemon zest to taste (a whole lemon will give a very mouth puckering zingy icing, use less if you prefer a more subtle flavour). Add lemon juice until desired consistency, you can add a bit of water if needed. Put into a piping bag and pipe a zigzag pattern on the muffins. If you don't have a piping bag, just make your icing a bit more runny and use a spoon to drizzle over the muffins. The muffins keep quite well for a few days in an airtight container if needed, but are best on the day of baking.

The verdict:
I think the combo of rhubarb, ginger, white chocolate and lemon worked very well. Although the muffins are quite sweet, the zestiness of the rhubarb and lemon counter the sweetness very well, and the ginger brings in some nice, spicy flavours. They seemed to go down a treat with the colleagues and I really enjoyed them. This is such a perfect easy and quick recipe that gives perfect muffins every time. 

Last minute Valentine's fudge

V day is just a few hours away. It's a day you either love or hate. Or like me, really don't give a toss about. Last year, V day turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Although I didn't know it at the time, it turned out to be my last date with someone I thought I was going out with. So I decided me and V are done.

However, I made the strategic error of going into HobbyCraft a few weeks ago. I just love all sorts of crafts, back in the day when I still had a real life and a home, I used to make fusion glass jewellery, like the ones in the picture below. I also love to knit. And in HobbyCraft, I got that crazy overwhelming feeling that I really want to be creative again. What better to create than Valentine's cards. Back home, Valentine's day is not branded quite as strongly as a lovers day, but more of a Friendship day, you give Valentine's cards to your friends and actually the Finnish word for Valentine's day is Friendship day. In theory I like that thought much more than the whole lovers day it is in the UK and US. Obviously I realise that ultimately, it's just a day for selling us cards, chocolates and roses we neither need or can afford. But I decided instead of buying stupid ready made cards, I'll make my own! Never mind the fact that it probably ended up costing me at least twice the price of ready made cards, but I really enjoyed getting to do something with my hands. Obviously, the cards didn't turn out quite as elegant and sophisticated as they were in my head. To be quite honest, my cards looked like they were made by a three year old. But when it comes to anything hand made, be it cards, confectionary or cakes, it's always the thought that counts. That's what I keep telling myself. So I'm very proud of my cards and I sent off some to my family the other day, hoping they will arrive in time.

Some fusion glass jewellery I made a long time ago.

I couldn't quite stop with the cards though. I thought, for my best friends I would also make some home made sweets. Nothing too elaborate, just some simple recipes I pinned ages ago but haven't gotten around to try. One of them was a two ingredient fudge, which takes all of about two minutes to whip up. Seriously, this is one of the easiest things I have ever made, so if you feel like you really should make something for Valentine's, but can't quite make yourself put any effort into it, this recipe, which I stole lovingly borrowed from Cookies & Cups, is super simple and quick. If you have a cute little heart shaped cookie cutter you can make sweet little fudge hearts in no-time. Obviously, if you don't have a cutter, you can make fudge squares, it's still home made fudge, and that's what counts.

Two ingredient easiest fudge ever (from Cookies & Cups):
1 jar (16 ounce, 450 g) strawberry frosting
12 ounces (340 g) white chocolate
heart shaped or any other sprinkles

The howto:
Melt chocolate either in the microwave or in a water bath. Mix with strawberry frosting. Spread in an oiled or clingfilm lined pan and allow to set in the fridge (anything from half an hour to over night). Cut using a cookie cutter or knife. Give away in a pretty box, along with a note of why you think the recipient is lovely!

The verdict:
If there ever was a recipe that can't fail, this is it. Well, as long as you are patient and don't melt the chocolate too fast so that it burns. I have to admit, this was the first time in my life I bought ready made frosting, and I can't say I found it all too appealing. But once mixed with the white chocolate, it turned into a nice fudge to my surprise. The fudge is really sweet though, so if you are not a world class carboholic, consider yourself warned. One of the nice things about this recipe is or course that you can easily adapt it by replacing strawberry frosting with vanilla or chocolate frosting to make different flavoured fudge very easily. 

Easter-y lemon and white choc muffins

This Easter turned out to be a baking and cooking cornucopia at the InvisiblePinkUni house. I am currently experiencing some sort of muffin madness, I bake them in any flavour you could possibly imagine. And yes, it goes badly with dieting, I'll tell you that much. I did haul my rather sizeable butt out on a 12 k run this morning to compensate a bit. Of course, if you want to make the muffins a bit less hazardous to your health, you could just leave out the buttercream, they are sufficiently heavenly without it. But my principle is, if you are going to sin, better go all the way. There is always tomorrow for dieting.

I have stolen the muffin recipe from a Finnish baking blog Kinuskikissa (that loosely translates to Caramel Cat). It is, in my humble opinion, probably the greatest baking blog out there in cyberspace. Of course, if you don't speak Finnish you might be at a bit of a disadvantage... Maybe give google translate a try? So the muffin recipe is adapted from this one for Daim muffins. (By the way, if you don't know what Daim is, I suggest you buy a bar of it next time you are in Finland or Sweden). 

Ok, so on to the actual recipe. This makes 6 large or 8 medium sized mounds of awesomeness.

75 g   butter

65 g   caster sugar

1         egg

25 g   Whittard's lemon meringue hot chocolate

115 g white flour

1 tsp  baking powder
           grated zest of one lemon
           lemon juice from one lemon
70 ml milk
           white chocolate
           lemon curd


Buttercream
60 g   butter
125 g lemon flavour icing sugar
30 g   Whittard's lemon meringue hot chocolate dissolved in a very small amount of hot water


The howto:
1. Preheat oven to 225 C.
2. Beat together butter and caster sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg.
3. Mix dry ingredients with the lemon zest, and sift into the butter/sugar/egg mix. This is where you should, in theory, carefully fold the mixture using a spatula. I just mix for a few seconds with the electric mixer... 
4. Add lemon juice and milk and mix.
5. Spoon some batter into muffin moulds or a tin (I prefer silicon moulds), add a square of white chocolate, about half a teaspoon of lemon curd and then top with more batter. Leave room in the moulds, as the mixture will rise quite a lot in the oven.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until they look done. 
7. Beat softened butter until fluffy, add icing sugar and hot chocolate mix a little at a time until buttercream is soft. When you think it's done, just beat it some more.
8. Pipe buttercream onto muffins when they have cooled.


Each muffin (if you make 8 from the recipe above) is approximately 340 kcal (16.6g fat, 44.4g total carbs, 2.9g protein). Please note that the calorie contents are estimates only, and will vary depending on the ingredients you use. If you are as obsessed with calories as I am, I suggest you do your own calculations based on your specific ingredients. 

Verdict:
I loved the combination of lemon curd and white chocolate, if you are not into excessively sweet things you shouldn't be reading this blog... just kidding. You might want to leave out the white chocolate and just enjoy the fresh lemon curd on it's own. Also, I found the buttercream to be a bit too much, next time I think I will make the muffins plain without it. I used Silverspoon lemon flavour icing, and would not recommend it to anyone. How it was supposed to be lemon flavoured, remained a mystery to me. I think you are much better off using regular icing sugar and adding in some grated lemon zest and lemon juice. Never going to use that stuff again. That said, I don't think I will have a problem eating the cupcakes, I just think there is room for improvement. Which is brilliant, as it gives me an excuse to make there some other time. Hope you enjoy them too.