Breakfast smoothies!

I love breakfast. And I also love smoothies. Its like.. an unbeatable combination. Banana and strawberry are my fave flaves. I also love going to cafes and discovering new flavours, like lime smoothies. What are some of your fave flaves?

Ingredients: to serve 2

1/3 cup oats, pre-blended to a fine powder
1/2 cup milk (I used vanilla soy milk, but regular soy or even regular ole cow’s milk would be fine.)
2-3 generous dollops of organic raspberry yoghurt (note: the brand i used was not very sweet.. so if you use quite a sweet yoghurt, then maybe cut back on the maple syrup or honey. just taste it when you’re done and adjust to your own liking.)
A splash of maple syrup just to sweeten it (or you could use honey)
1 medium sized ripe banana
1/2 punnet – 1 punnet of strawberries, hulled and washed
optional: diced rockmelon (adds a bit of sweetness and i just looove melon.)

Prep all your ingredients (by which I mean, wash, cut, dice, blend, etc.)

Pop all the ingredients into the blender. You could even throw some protein powder in now.. you know. If you’re into that kind of thing.

Give it a bit of a whizz. Taste it to check the sweetness.

Pour it into a glass and top with a strawberry slice.

Drink it with a friend, lover, spouse or mother, but above all, enjoy!

xoxo

Christine <3

It’s a difficult thing to find a Really Good Cookie Recipe. There’s usually one problem – too crispy, not soft enough, too many choc chips or not enough. My ultimate cookie is a soft, dense cookie. Chewiness will also not go amiss. Oh-so-slightly crispy at the edges but gorgeously soft and dense in the centre.
Probably one of the best cookies in the world come from Subway, but I almost never allow myself to buy them since I discovered they were 200 calories a pop (and seriously, who can resist that three cookies for $2.50 deal? come on people, i don’t have that much self control).

These aren’t particularly chewy, but they are certainly dense, soft and crispy. Love, love, love them. I was passed on the recipe from my friend Niwa, can be found here. The original recipe is for white chocolate macadamia cookies, but i’ve made these with regular choc chip with same success – it’s a great basic cookie dough.

Ingredients
2 1/4 C plain flour I once made these cookies without adding baking soda. They were far better with the baking soda – too dense.
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C white caster sugar
3/4 C butter, room temperature – (important for creaming)
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla essence/extract
1 cup nuts (pecans or macadamia) – I used macadamias
1 1/2 C white chocolate, chopped - I used 1 cup of white chocolate chips

Preheat your oven (180 C) and line a baking tray with baking paper or a baking mat. In a dry bowl, mix together flour, salt and baking powder.

Cream butter and sugars with an electric mixer or with a wooden spoon and some serious elbow grease. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy.

Add flour, cup by cup at a time. I always use a wooden spoon for this step, otherwise the flour shoots everywhere with the electric mixer. Flour + cookie dough on the walls = not good.

Fold in your chocolate chips and chop nuts.

Add nuts to the dough.

Macadamia nuts are hard to chop.. I find they have a tendency to shoot everywhere if you’re not careful. I tried bashing them in a ziplock bag, but I broke the bag. Haha. If you have a good solution for macadamia-bashing, let me know your tips and tricks!

Tip – leave in the fridge for 30-60 minutes to harden the dough. This makes it easier to shape into round balls and according to some, makes the dough denser when baking. I have no idea what the connection is, though. Feel free to share, if you know!

Shape tablespoons of dough into balls and place on tray. If you checked out my previous post, you may have halved the choc chips.. if you have, use the reserved amount to decorate cookies with. If not, just chuck in the oven and bake away away.

NOW LISTEN UP, BECAUSE THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART.
DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM YOUR OVEN. DO NOT DO IT.

The best way to get good cookies is by WATCHING THEM LIKE A HAWK. Too many times I have walked away from an oven in boredom, only for a few minutes, seriously and I’ve paid the price with sad, sad burnt cookies. It’s just so annoying buying good ingredients, putting it all together only to get screwed up results. Trust me. I’ve been through the heartbreak and I don’t want you, dear reader, to go through the same pain. It happened during PMS one time and I nearly cried.

Okay, getting a bit emotional here.

Back to the recipe.

In a hot oven, these tend to bake for about 10-15 minutes. When in doubt take them out earlier rather than later, because cookies tend to firm up quite a bit outside of the oven. You should take them out when they are only just beginning to brown on the edges. But never take too long because you have no idea how much burning is going on underneath the pretty white surface if your oven isn’t the right temperature. Trust me on this. If you get it right, the results are super delicious.

Cool on a wire tray and eat one warm with a glass of milk. It is pure magic – the combination of melted chocolate, crispy, soft cookie and cool milk. You’ll love this one.

xoxox

- Christine

If you want tips on how to freeze cookie dough, check out my previous post, here.

The Joys of Freezing

I love chocolate chip cookies. I would probably make them more often if I didn’t know how much sugar and butter and chocolate went into them. Another deterrent is getting all the ingredients – butter (usually one of the first ingredients to go in my boyfriend’s household and at home. i just loove my butter. Chocolate chips are also annoyingly expensive. I’ve found that in the past that there’s almost no point in buying the Coles No Brand cooking chocolate chips. They are AWFUL. So I always spring for the good brands, but they’re something like $4-5 AUD per CUP of chocolate chips. It seems so wrong, since you can buy good quality blocks of eating chocolate for about half the price. Something is wrong here, people. I seriously need to find a baking/chocolate warehouse and stock up somewhere cos these prices are killing me, man! Nothing will keep me from my chocolate chips… Anyway, moving on.

One of my fave tips for cookies is freezing half the dough I make from a batch of cookie dough. I roll it into a long roll and then wrap it in clingfilm and freeze. Whenever you want cookies, simply slice and bake. It’s so awesomely easy, it’s like buying the Aunty Kath brand from Coles. Except cheaper. and A Million Times Better.

Cookie dough at your service, sir.

One problem I used to have with my chocolate chip cookies, years ago, was a minor presentation problem. I love cookies, but I love pretty cookies. Everyone knows that the best choc chip cookies dazzle you with the little chips twinkling prettily through the cookie dough, like this. My cookies always turned out a bit like this, with the cookie part covering the chips completely. Sure, they still tasted good, but I wanted perfection, dammit. Cookies never look like that when you buy them, or on the front packet of cake mixes. Almost all cookie recipes instruct you to fold all the chocolate chips into the dough. I started reserving half the chips to dot over the top of the cookies…. and success. Pretty cookies! yay!

Naked cookie dough. Oh noes! Cover us with delicious chips, mister!

Ahh, that’s much better.

Yay! Cookies. OMOMOMOM.

THE END