Cookie #6 Speculaas (The Netherlands)

These biscuits have been a favourite of my father’s for years. I actually ended up trying two recipes. One I have had for years from a friend’s mum but it uses too much butter for a Queensland summer and although I put the pastry in the fridge to firm up, it didn’t hold the impressions of the cookie stamps. They still taste amazing which is why I’m posting the recipe but would be better suited to a biscuit that didn’t have a patterns stamped on top.

"Normal" cookie cutters? Pfft, nah, not in this kitchen!

These cookie cutters were bought a couple of years ago to make cookies for my dad.

Mexican wrestling mask cookie stamps courtesy of my co-worker's wife.

The second round of biscuits I made that had less butter in them and held the stamp better came from joyofbaking.com, a favourite baking site of mine and the link to the recipe is here.

Speculaas recipe

Ingredients
225g plain flour
1/2 t baking soda
170g butter
140g brown sugar
3/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t of each ground nutmeg, cloves and allspice
1 1/2 t milk
pinch of salt
finely grated lemon rind from 1 lemon

Method:
Sift dry ingredients, rub in butter and add brown sugar.
Add milk to make a good kneading consistency (I didn’t need this in Queensland summer heat)
(Optional middle step necessary for me in the heat: wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 mins)
Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake at 180˚C for  20 mins.
Best eaten: With a cup of tea but they are lovely by themselves too.

Cookie #5 Beer Cakes (Serbia)

This recipe comes from the mother of a friend at work. Apparently this recipe is used when the Serbian orthodox are fasting for Lent. Eggs and dairy products are on the no-go list so the oil and beer act as rising and binding agents. When the cookies are fresh out of the oven they are soaked in a sugar syrup which sweetness them and adds some moisture as well. I’ve never made cookies like this and it was pretty fun and they’re also pretty delicious.

INGREDIENTS

400g flour
200ml oil
100ml beer
1 level teaspoon baking powder

SUGAR SYRUP
200g sugar
100ml water

METHOD
Mix together the flour, oil, beer and baking powder , wrap in clingfilm and leave in the refrigerator for 1/2 hour.
Make the sugar syrup and leave to cool.
Tearing off small amounts about a teaspoon in size (mine were about 15g each) roll into small balls.
Roll into cylinders and then shape in to crescents.
Place on a tray lined with baking paper and bake in a pre heated oven at 180 deg for 20 minutes or until a very light golden brown.
The cookies need to be dipped in the sugar syrup for about 40 seconds while they are still piping hot.
Roll soaked cookies in desiccated coconut.

NOTE: The cookies must be put in the syrup while they are piping hot. If they are too cool they won’t absorb the syrup properly. If you don’t soak them for long enough they will be too dry and for too long and they’re fall apart. That said, I tested mine and soaked them for anything between 20-50 seconds and they were all delicious and fine. I turned the oven off and left most of the cookies in it to stay hot and soaked them in batches of about 5. They cool down quite quickly so if you leave them out, by the time you get towards the end of the cookies, they’ll be too cool.

Best eaten: with a cup of tea. These cookies improve over a few days.

Cookie #4 Turtle Cookies AKA The Official Red Deer Cookie (Canada)

For my cookie from Canada I chose the Turtle Cookie or Caramel Surprise Cookies. Apparently they’re the official cookie of Red Deer, Canada. (Who knew?) I came across them on this blog.

The official Red Deer page is here.

“The search for an official Red Deer cookie was initiated in 1994 by Mr. Alain Favre, a local potter/former chef. Mr. Favre was a member of a network of Red Deer Artists called the P'Artisan Society, which hosted an annual …The five judges agreed unanimously that the winner was Darlene Blair of Trochu, Alberta with her family recipe for Caramel Surprises. Darlene Blair says her tasty, chewy Caramel Surprises are representative of Red Deer as "Biting into this cookie is like visiting Red Deer - You'll get a pleasant surprise." One judge was noted to comment, "It fits Red Deer's motto: A Delight to Discover."

Essentially these are chocolate cookies with a Rolo in the middle of them. Main problem in Australia today? It seems they don’t sell Rolo rolls anymore, you can only buy Nestle slabs of the stuff. So I did that and chopped it up. Personally, I’d like to try these with a jersey caramel or something similar in the middle of them (more caramel, less chocolate) but these are a tasty cookie and they went to down very well. The cookie has an almost brownie-like consistency.

You can bake these cookies as a ball on a sheet or you can put them in muffin cups which helps to stop them spreading which I would highly recommend.

Muffin cups = nice shaped cookies, balls on a sheet = what happened on the right. ;-)

INGREDIENTS
1cup butter creamed
1cup white sugar
1cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon soda
2½ cups flour
¾ cup cocoa
1 cup pecans, toasted and finely chopped
40 rolo chocolates
40 whole pecans
caster sugar (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS
1.    Toast your pecans, first
2.    Cream white butter and sugar together until fluffy; add brown sugar, and continue to cream until fluffy
3.    Add two eggs, one at a time; continue to beat
4.    Add vanilla
5.    Sift together dry ingredients over wet ingredients, add finely chopped toasted nuts; combine well
6.    Roll a ball of dough around each rolo chocolate or preferably around some homemade caramel; roll each ball in caster sugar.
7.    Place in mini tart pan, push a pecan on top and bake for 10-12 minutes at 180˚C
8.    Sit on cooling rack, still in pan for 7 minutes, losses edges gently, and flip pan to release cookies (They will be very soft, so wait 10 to 15 minutes to move them.

Best eaten: by themselves. These are chocolatey and rich and don't need a cup of tea of coffee with them.

Cookie #3 green tea cookies (Japan)

So. Green tea cookies. I have to be honest, I’m not the hugest fan of green tea. I have a pretty open-minded taste palette but I also don’t expect to like every cookie that I make on this journey around the world.

For me, the cookies tasted good at the start but I didn’t like the aftertaste which was rather, for lack of a better word, plant-like. They have a great texture though and not everyone had my reaction.

This recipe came from a friend of a Japanese friend I knew from fencing way back in the day. Thank you Chie and thank you Chie's friend! :-)

Ingredients
(makes about about 25 cookies)
40g butter
40g vegetable oil
50g castor sugar
150g plain flour
10g matcha powder*
1/3t Vanilla essence
40g dark chocolate ships

Pre-heat the oven to 160℃.

Method
1. Put butter, oil, sugar, and vanilla oil into a bowl. Stir them until it gets smooth and white in colour.
2. Sift four and matcha powder with a sieve. Stir them into the butter mix.
4. Add chocolate chips and mix them roughly.
5. Place on an oven tray into circles roughly 3cm in diameter.
6. Place cookies in the oven and bake them for about 25mins at 160℃.
Note: Press a centre of a cookie to check. If it’s firm, it mean the cookies are done!
7. Remove from the oven, and cool them completely on a wire rack. The cookies are still fragile when they are warm, so be careful when you place them on a wire rack.

Best eaten: with a cup of tea. They're a drier biscuit and a cup of tea might help with any aftertaste issues as well :-)

*Use real matcha powder, not green tea powder. Also, for my personal tastes this was a bit much matcha so I would reduce this, maybe to half. I don’t think it would change the consistency.