Brandy Snaps

Another fun snack from the website of Martha Stewart.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter 
• 1/3 cup sugar 
• 1/4 cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup

Here's the directions.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, combine flour and ginger with a whisk. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar and golden syrup; cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until sugar is dissolved.

Mixing till dissolve

Remove from heat; stir in flour mixture.

Adding the flour mixture

Using a 2/3-ounce ice cream scoop, drop three level scoops of batter onto prepared baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake until flat and golden brown, about 10 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Remove from oven and let cookies cool just slightly until firm, about 2 minutes; place each cookie over an inverted drinking glass or wrap around the handle of a whisk, using your hands to press and gently shape. Let set 30 seconds. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Repeat process with remaining batter. If cookies get too cool to shape, return them to oven for a few seconds until softened.

Wrapped around a wooden spoon handle

Cookies can be stored in a single layer in airtight containers at room temperature up to 2 days.

These are very tasty even though they contain no brandy!

Meringue Swirls

The fever for making desserts has not passed from our home. The latest recipe is meringue swirls, taken from the fabulous Martha Stewart's website.

Ingredients

• 3 large egg whites, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
• Large pinch of salt
• Large pinch of cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest
• Gel-paste orange food coloring

The first task was to zest an orange.

Carefully crafting a key ingredient

The eggs needed separating as well, another new skill acquired by our daughter.

Making egg whites

Food coloring was another chore. We own a bunch of basic colors but not orange. So we had to mix yellow and red.

With the ingredients ready, we started to cook. Here are the directions!

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl. Add vanilla bean seeds. Put bowl over simmering water in a pot. Stir for about 3 minutes until sugar dissolves and mixture is warms. Add salt and cream of tartar.
   
   

   

   Mixing the first ingredients over hot(ish) water



2. Beat with a mixer on medium-high speed until stiff, glossy peaks form and meringue is mostly cooled, about 7 minutes. Beat in zest.
   
   

   

   Tasting her work



3. Using a small paintbrush, paint three stripes of food coloring inside a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch round tip.
   
   

   

   Adding stripes (they look awfully red)

   
   Fill bag with the meringue mixture. Pipe 1 3/4-inch circular shapes 2 inches apart on 2 parchment-lined baking sheets. As you finish piping each shape, apply less pressure to pastry bag, and swirl the tip off in a circular motion.
   
   

   

   Making the cookies



4. Bake meringues until crisp on the outside but still soft inside, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Our results were mixed. They taste great but the swirls are barely visible and we did have some separation at the bottom of the cookies. Our bakers report that next time they will: use more food coloring, paint the coloring on the bag right before filling the bag with meringue, and beat the egg whites until they are even stiffer. Still, not bad for a first try.

Top view

Some separation

Still tastes great

One Ingredient Challenge: Eclairs and Puffs

Part of an ongoing series of cooking from scratch. That is, we cook something from basic items that don't have multiple ingredients (e.g. store-bought spaghetti sauce includes all sorts of spices and maybe other stuff too; we'd start with tomatoes and individual spices and add them together to make our own sauce). See other challenges here.

We have been watching a lot of The Great British Baking Show  (actually known as The Great British Bake Off in the UK). A recent episode featuring eclairs inspired us to try a home version. In the following photos you can see who in the family is the biggest fan of this show and who was the driving force behind this challenge.

We used the pastry recipe found here (thanks Martha!).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, plus possibly 1 large egg white, if needed (we didn't)

Directions:
Boil the butter, sugar, salt and one cup of water in a medium saucepan. Using a wooden spoon, quickly stir in the flour.

Adding flour

Stirring

Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, about three minutes until a film forms on the bottom of the pan.

Cooking over heat

Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until slightly cooled (about one minute). Raise speed to medium; add whole eggs, one at a time, until soft peaks form when batter is touched with your finger. We had a non-electric mixer:

Adding eggs

Testing for peaks

If peaks don't form, lightly beat remaining egg white and mix into a batter a little at a time until it does.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Transfer the pastry mix (called Pate a Choux) to a pastry bag with a 5/8-inch plain tip. For puffs, pipe dough into 2-inch rounds about 1 inch apart.

Making puffs

Gently flatten the pointed peaks with a moistened finger, rounding tops to ensure even rising. Bake until puffed and golden brown, about 25 minutes. The profiteroles should feel light and airy. Remove puffs from oven and transfer sheets to wire racks to cool completely.

Cooling completely

For eclairs, pipe the dough in 3 1/2 inch lengths on the parchment-papered baking sheets. Smooth the tops and brush with egg wash as for the puffs and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Raw eclairs - we did 6 inch lengths, whoops

We made a simple whipped cream filling instead of bothering with a creme patisserie.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream, chilled
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we used our own homemade.  Single ingredients!)

Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla on low speed until frothy and the sugar has dissolved. Increase the speed to high and continue to whip until doubled in volume and soft peaks form.

What to do with any leftover cream (though you probably already knew to do this)

We were too tired to attempt a chocolate glaze by this point, so we just melted some chocolate chips in the microwave. Please don't tell Martha.

Filling with cream and covering with chocolate

A cook's privilege

Finished product