Two posts for one : Banana and Bacon cookies, Chocolate chip cookies

So I wanted to try Banana and Bacon Cookies (or biscuits as we call them locally). The family was less than enamoured of having their weekly biscuit potentially being something weird that they didn't like. So I ended up making Chocolate Chips Cookies too.

The process for the two is similar.

1. sift the dry stuff
2. cream the butter and sugar
3. add eggs
4. Add the dry stuff to the wet stuff
5. add the flavoured stuff
6. put on trays and bake.

But then.. this is Heston so some steps/ingredients are..special. 

Banana and Bacon Cookies

First step: cook your yummy streaky bacon in the oven. You only need 40g, which is actually less than one rasher. The recipe thinks 40g = 5 rasher. In hindsight, I wonder if this is a typo, and it should be 400g. My one rasher was 70g or so.  Anyway, on it goes.

 You then dice finely.

 Sift your dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, bicarb, salt, etc.

 Cream the butter and unrefined caster sugar.

 Both recipes use the unrefined caster sugar, and it's suppsed to be light and fluffly. It just never really got there, so I went for "as light as possible" instead.

 Eggs go in..

 Banana chips, not fresh banana.

 And they get chopped up.

 Then your bacon and banana goes into the dough. It says dough. But its really really wet. Not very dough like at all.

Bake away.

So that's them done. Kind of... ordinary looking.

Things I learned:

Not everything needs to be hugely complicated. And sometimes, my suspicions are right.

Verdict:

Well.. disappointing. If I am making bacon and banana cookies, I expect taste and/or noticeable benefit from the main ingredients.

You can hardly taste the bacon except as a slight saltiness when you bite into a piece. The banana chips worked well, but are not strong flavours, thought they did retain some bite which was nice.

I am considering now (in hindsight) making a second batch with 400g of bacon (which might actually hit 5 slices), on the premise the 40g listed amount is a typo and judge again. They weren't hard to make and I just wanted them to be a hell of a lot more interesting than they are. To be honest, they are bland. Not what I expect from Heston.

Guest opinions:

None. I am the only one of my family willing to try them. Anyone want to meet for coffee to try one?

Chocolate chip cookies

Now. This is Heston, so of course, you can't just grab a bag of choc chips, or even a block of dark chocolate and call it a day. You need to make your own choc chips. (Slight rolling of eyes). But I am game, and so is my keen 'apprentice chef'.

These chocolate chips are golden syrup flavoured. 

 You make the chocolate chips by melting you chocolate, and heating the golden syrup and cream.

 Mix them together.

 And pour them into a tray.

Then they get cooled for an hour and then chilled in the freezer for another 4 hours. It's becoming very clear that I really need to read. every. single. word. in his recipes when at the planning stage, because I missed the 4 hour freezing time until it was time to do it. As a result, we were pressed for time and ours were frozen for around 2 and half hours.

Which really wasn't enough. They had the consistency of good ganache. Sticky, not frozen solid.

We thought we might be able to help the process along by cutting them up into their lumps and sticking them back in the freezer for another 30 mins or so while we finished the other biscuits.

 Time to make the dough. As before..

Butter and sugar, then the eggs.

 

Add the flour (a lot more this time than last)

And the vanilla bean paste (quite a lot of this comparatively).  You can see this one was a LOT more dough like than the bacon and banana one.

Then add in the choc chips and mix.  I can't believe I forgot to take a photo of this bit. But.. the choc chips distingerated into long smears in the dough. I tried to keep them together but it was messy and I ended up with marbled mix pretty much.

Dough on to trays. Extra mix into the fridge between batches. I was really worried about the chocolate melting further.

The first batch were really disappointing. Messy, too big and the chocolate lumps just melted into nothing.

 The second and subsequent batches were better. I gave up trying to keep the chocolate lumps together and made the dough balls about half the size. Biscuits turned out nicely marbled. Pity that wasn't what I was going for! I do think chilling the dough between batches also helped a lot - to the point I think I'd make the dough, chill it for about 30 mins and then ball it up and bake.

 Things I learned:

• Read the damn recipe properly, and if it says chill for 5 hours, just suck it up and do so.

• Even mistakes can be tasty

Verdict:

• If you made the choc chips a day ahead, (or early the morning when you want to make them later in the day) they'd probably work a lot better.
• The flavour was really nice, and the mixed through chocolate was a hit
• Smaller (heaped teaspoon sized) was definitely preferable to the ice-cream scoped sized recommended. 

Guest opinions:

My daughter's friend enthusiastically told me they were the best chocolate biscuits she'd ever had. Even allowing for small person hyperbole, they were very happily enjoyed by the family. Husband is slowly eating his way through them. Daughter negotiating for them to go into her lunches.

I'll call that a win and consider making them again - this time with properly chilled choc chips!

Millionaire shortbread

So I was looking for a simpler dish to make after the big lunch, and thought some biscuits would do nicely.

My self-proclaimed 'apprentice' was keen, especially after seeing the chocolate covered picture in the book.

So, I acquired the goods and sat down this morning over my breakfast coffee. Which is a good thing, as this is another recipe with a lot of "chill for X hours" in it. That and the butter seems to be a theme.

Steps to be taken:

1. Make shortbread 
2. Make caramel
3. Sandwich together
4. Coat in chocolate

Sounds easy when I write it like that, doesn't it? Four easy steps. This took a large chunk of the day - not a recipe you can just knock up. Also, the caramel takes the longest to set, so I made that first.

Let's see...

Making caramel

Ahh... scary real caramel to be made. I even needed my candy thermometer - for the first time I think ever.

Warm up your double cream.

Melt together your sugar, butter (of course), salt, glucose and milk. Once it's all melted you just whisk it until it hits 155 degrees. Easy right?

Start stirring..

Still stirring..

 Still stirring...

 Yep... Need to periodically change hands to recover..

Finally getting a bit brown... this took ages. And it started to get really heavy and hard to stir. I may have even broken into a sweat. Well, a ladylike glow anyway.

 Ha! That's more like it...

 Off the heat and in goes in the warmed cream..

 Mmm... sticky caramel goodness.

 Poured into the tray and ready for the 4 hour chilling..

Small person was disappointed I wouldn't let her eat the sticky stuff from the whole saucepan. (She got the spatula). It was pretty tasty.

Making shortbread

So  The caramel is chilling in the fridge, time to make shortbread.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. I skipped the salt because I picked up the wrong butter at the shop (despite the special trip to get it... I managed to pick up the salted, not the unsalted butter. Sigh.)

 

Cream your butter and raw caster sugar..

 until fluffy.

 Add in the egg and olive oil. This uses olive oil for a lighter flavour. I only had the fruity kind of olive oil, but will buy the lighter style of olive oil next time.

 Looks good to me... bit soft though.

 Hmm. The dough was super soft. I almost added extra flour I was kind of worried about it. I thought since it was going to get put in the freezer for 2 hours it would firm up.

 (..Insert Scooby hands..)

So it's 2 hours later. Time to go into the oven.

 Yep, no cutting out here, whole giant biscuit goes in for 20 minutes or so. I like this lazy approach.

 Once it's just out, you cut it up and then let it cool. This was very neat way of making perfect shaped biscuits.

 Time to get the caramel out and make matching sized bits of caramel. It's about 3-5 mm thick.

Now for the messy bit. I forgot to take a picture of  me melting the chocolate and of them all lined up assembled before covering in chocolate.. but  this was pretty much what happened.
It was pretty messy, and more like icing a large number of small cakes than the artful drizzling the photo in the book promised, but we got there.
We were a little short on chocolate (I bought 200g block, not 250g) but all except one got covered.

 Into the fridge to set.

 And time for dessert!

 Inside.. caramel meets shortbread slathered in chocolate.

Things I learned from this recipe:

• Buy the unsalted butter. Yes, they were right next to each other, but still. 
• Use "light" flavour olive oil. After making the dough, I could still tasty the olive oil (though it was gone on cooking).
• Making caramel from scratch is kind of scary and more physically demanding than I would have guessed. A long time standing up and an awful lot of bicep building (muscle power really not my thing).

Verdict:

Yummy, though more hassle than I was anticipating!  They are pretty fiddly. More a special occasion biscuit than a "have some for guests" biscuit.

I can't shake the feeling that I spent many hours making a nicer version of those cheap toffee chocolate biscuits. Good though. Possibly nostalgic.

Guest opinions:

Only one 'guest' has tried one so far. His opinion is "too busy for him". As in, too much going on. He did note he'd happily eat the caramel and shortbread separately though. 

I found them quite nice. The caramel has just the right amount of give, and the shortbread is soft but not too crumbly. The dark chocolate sets of the sweetness of the caramel nicely.

Next: I'm thinking maybe another meal is in order?