'Festive' Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

We were gifted with a huge bag of craisins (i.e. dried cranberries) a while ago. My mind immediately started racing with possibilities for its use: cranberry and white chocolate chunk cookies, plumped up with rum for a fruit cake, and...well, the cranberry and pistachio combo is always a good one! Particularly during the festive season. I mean, just looking at these red and green-studded shortbread rounds conjures up images of Christmas-time.

The most fiddly part in the recipe is making sure the dough doesn't break apart when you slice through the pistachios. Once the dough is made, it is rolled up into logs, wrapped in cling film, and chilled in the fridge for an hour or so, until hard. It is then sliced into discs approximately 1cm thick, arranged onto a baking tray, and stashed into the freezer for a final firming-up. The reason why it is so important to have the dough frozen solid before baking is because of the high butter content of these cookies. If you try baking these right after making up the dough, the cookies will spread and you'll end up with palm-sized mounds, instead of nice shortbread rounds.

I think these would look lovely packaged in clear cellophane bags tied up with a golden ribbon, to be given as party favours or used as table settings. I simply cannot get over how pretty the colours are!

Recipe for Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

Makes 22 cookies, approximately 5cm in diameter

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (or 175g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup shelled pistachios
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1. Make the dough by stirring together all the ingredients, until a soft dough forms.

2. Divide the dough in two portions. Roll each portion into a log, and wrap each log with cling film.

3. Place the logs into the fridge and chill for an hour, or until solid.

4. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Don't put the baking rack too close to the top, because your cookies will burn!

5. Take logs out of the fridge, and slice into round 1 cm thick. Put the dough rounds on a lined baking tray, and stash that away in the freezer for around 15 minutes, or until the dough is frozen solid.

6. When ready to bake, take the tray out of the freezer and put into oven immediately. Bake for 13-15 minutes. Don't wait for the cookies to brown, otherwise the colours won't be as pretty.

7. When done baking, take tray out of the oven. Allow cookies to cool on tray for 5 minutes, before transferring cookies onto a cooling rack. Let cookies cool completely before packing it away in an airtight container (that's if you don't eat them straight away!). Cookies will keep in an airtight container in a cool part of the house for around 5 days.

Skinny Nutty Biscotti

Happy Monday, y'all! I, too, am susceptible to the bout of blues that follows a sensational weekend spent having fun with friends and family, and absolutely dread the prospect of returning to the tedium that is "real life" (read: the weekdays). However, I am a firm believer in the maxim, "fake it till you make it". Perhaps a sense of genuine enthusiasm towards hard work and having to make an honest living will naturally follow my presently ersatz cheer. One can only hope.

In the meantime, how about a few of these Skinny Nutty Biscotti to go with your morning cuppa on this dreary Monday? I call these "skinny" for no other reason than the fact that it rhymes with "nutty" and "biscotti", and I happen to be teaching poetry analysis to my little protégés at the moment. I have no idea if these are low-calorie or "good for you", but I suppose the use of only egg whites may be a point of attraction for some. I personally find the notion of "healthy" desserts to be absurd. Eat your no-frills meat and vege during the week, and splurge on the good stuff on weekends. Why bother with the fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free substitutions? Honestly!

So that's my little Monday morning rant. Anyway, it just occurred to me that there's actually a better reason to call these "skinny"; look how thin the slices are! I've been on the look-out for the longest time for a biscotti recipe that produces the paper-thin (okay, cardboard-thin) cookies I've seen sold in Italian delicatessens. Prior to these, the biscotti I've made have been the chunky ones (see: these). And whilst they were crunchy and delicious dipped in coffee or tea, I do love how refined and delicate these Skinny Biscotti look:

I've adapted the recipe I found here to include quite a few different nuts. How many can you spot? 

Ready for the answers? We've got: macadamias, pistachios, walnuts and cashews, oh my! :D

Worry not about trying to slice through the nuts after the first baking. Learning from my disastrous attempt at slicing bread fresh out of the oven, I left the biscotti loaf to cool overnight before slicing it the next morning. My serrated knife made short work of the loaf, and within minutes I had a pile of beautifully spotted, soft slices of biscotti to return to the oven to crisp up. Do keep an eye on these around the 20 minute mark during the second baking because, as you can see from the picture above, these brown around the edges quite easily. And you wouldn't want to sully that pale, white canvas, studded with flashes of green and cream, would you?

Recipe for Skinny Nutty Biscotti


Adapted from the recipe found here


Makes 25-30 biscotti, depending on how thin you slice it


Ingredients


4 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
100g caster sugar
120g all-purpose/plain flour
2 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
50g roasted or raw macadamia nuts
50g roasted pistachio kernels
50g roasted cashews
50g roasted or raw walnut kernels


Method


1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Line a loaf tin with non-stick parchment paper.


2. Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until fluffy, and soft peaks form. Slowly add the caster sugar, tablespoon by tablespoon, and whisk until stiff peaks form.


3. Sift in the flour, and stir gently to combine. Add in the canola oil, and fold gently into the batter. Add all the nuts, and stir in.


4. Pour mixture into the lined loaf tin and bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the surface is light brown.


5. Remove from oven, and allow to cool in tin slightly before placing on cooling rack. Allow to cool overnight, or for 5 hours at least.


6. The next morning (or whenever the loaf has finished cooling), preheat oven to 120 degrees Celsius (250 degrees Fahrenheit). Cut the cooled loaf into thin slices, around 5mm in thickness, with a serrated knife. Place on lined cookie trays and bake in preheated oven for 30-45 minutes, flipping the biscotti over halfway through. The biscotti are done baking when they feel dry and crumbly to the touch, but may be slightly soft and springy. Do not let them brown.


7. Remove from oven and cool completely before serving. Biscotti are great for dunking into a steaming cup of coffee or tea. Store in an airtight container to keep the biscotti crispy.

A (very SPECIAL) pound cake

A few days ago, I attended the 2012 Food Bloggers' Picnic, organised by Grab Your Fork and Chocolatesuze. I feel slightly embarrassed admitting just how excited and honoured I was to have been invited. Although I've had this blog for over a year now, I'm still slightly hesitant to introduce it to people as a 'food blog', simply because I see it more as a mish-mash of random tid-bits from my life. But since I was invited, I bloody well was going to attend! I spent the week leading up to the even brain-storming what I wanted to bring, and decided on some form of cake. A few more clicks around the net for inspiration, and I came up with...a pound cake!

How was that for an anti-climax? In one moment of madness, I did consider whipping up this awe-inspiring meringue and mango construction that I saw on the cover of one issue of Delicious magazine. And then the voice of reason took over - I mean, whipped egg whites and fresh fruit in the humidity of the Australian summer? It's a virtual recipe for disaster (pun intended!). But the pound cake - good, ol' trusty pound cake with its dense, dense crumb and seemingly interminable shelf life - was perfect for the occasion by contrast.

Not that there's anything wrong with vanilla, or chocolate, or even orange and poppyseed, but since this was to be a very SPECIAL picnic, it was obvious I had to deviate slightly from the well-trodden path. I did this by substituting the butter in the recipe for browned butter, an ingredient that seemed all the rage a while back but has somewhat disappeared from the foodie scene lately. In addition, I incorporated some stewed apple into the batter, and topped it all off with cream cheese frosting spiked with real maple syrup.

What is "browned butter"? The "browned" bit refers to the fact that the butter is heated until the milk solids and butter fat separate, and taken off the flame when both components acquire a nutty aroma, and a deep, oaken-brown hue. It is also known as beurre noisette. In this case, "noisette" (literally: "hazelnut" in French) obviously derives from the scent of roasted hazelnuts that appear when the butter is done browning. 

Solidified browned butter, bearing a striking resemblance to a golden iceberg!

When I took my first bite of the cake at the picnic, my heart sank in disappointment. The crumb was very dry, and for all intents and purposes, it appeared that I had over-mixed the batter. The saving grace was definitely the cream cheese frosting. The maple flavour was not prominent, apart from adding sweetness, but the soft, sweetened cream cheese mixed with a dash of cinnamon made me want to lick the whole surface off of the cake.

Tasting a slice of my cake at the picnic.

HOWEVER, when I tasted it again the next day, when I took over some of the leftovers (and trust me, there was a lot) to a friend's tea party, the cake was unbelievably moist. Whereas the previous day I'd been reluctant to finish even that tiny square I cut for myself, I couldn't help but go back for forkful after guilty forkful at my friend's party. My theory is that the time it spent chilling in the fridge overnight somehow helped it to develop moisture, or because that first slice I tried at the picnic was an edge piece, and was dried out from being in contact with the cake tin. Whatever the reason was, I was wrong to dismiss this recipe. I only hope that some of my fellow bloggers got to try a bit that was closer to the middle :D

A visibly moister crumb. Picture taken the day after the picnic, two days after baking.

Before I move onto the recipe, I would like to direct your attention to the pattern over the frosting. Pretty, is it not? It's obvious that I used a stencil for it, but did you know that I carved out the stencil by myself? After I copied down the pattern by hand from a picture I saw on the internet? Without tracing paper? Okay, okay, I'll stop bragging. I am awfully proud of it, though.

Okay, so moving onto the recipe! There are quite a few separate steps, but they're all very straight-forward. Hopefully you'll find this tutorial useful, and have a go at making this (very SPECIAL) pound cake yourself! Click the "Read More" link below for a full tutorial on making the cake.