Caramel Shard Cookies

I requested John Whaite's 'John Whaite Bakes' as one of my Christmas presents and was lucky enough to receive it. Yesterday was a day to bake cookies and after trawling through some recipe books I remembered spotting this one and decided to give it a go. I will be honest and say I wasn't 100% happy with how they turned out. I'm not sure what quite went wrong (although I suspect it's either baking them for too long or making them too small in size) but they still taste ok. They are crunchy rather than chewy in texture. The recipe is supposed to make 20 however I only managed to make 17.

Ingredients:

Caramel:
100g caster sugar
3 tablespoons water

Cookie dough:
200g light brown muscovado sugar
150g salted butter (room temperature)
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod (or 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract - I used vanilla extract)

Method:
1) Begin by making the caramel. Place the sugar and water in a pan and stir to mix them. Then place the pan over a high heat and allow to boil without stirring it again. After about 5 minutes the sugar will start to turn amber in colour and the bubbles will become smaller (you need to be paitent - it will happen). Pour onto a baking sheet and leave to solidify for at least 10 minutes (I lined my baking sheet with baking parchment).

2) Then make the cookie dough. Beat the sugar and butter together until pale in colour and lighter in texture using a freestanding mixer or an electric whisk. Add the remaining ingredients and mix by hand into a stiff dough (I started by using a wooden spoon but then had to use my hands). Place to one side.

3) Break the dried caramel into small shards (I used a rolling pin to do this) and add to the cookie dough. Stir or knead the shards into the dough until they are well incorporated. Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4) Preheat your oven to 170C / Gas 3.
5) Divide  and roll the dough into 20 small balls. Place these, well spread our, on baking sheets. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cookies are baked and have turned golden brown around the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

6) Enjoy with your favourite hot drink. 

Double Chocolate Shortbreads

Now these are supposedly meant to be shortbreads...however I would disagree. The texture is more of a crumbly biscuit rather than a buttery, moreish shortbread. They are perfectly tasty (although perhaps lacking in depth of flavour) and the perfect accompaniment to a cup of coffee while catching up with a friend (as I discovered today when I managed to scoff three of them - oops!) but do not embark upon making them thinking that you will create traditional shortbread.

I made these as I was visiting one of my friends who is allergic to egg - shortbread seemed to be the perfect option. I considered lemon, chocolate chip and espresso choc chip but found this BBC Good Food recipe which seemed easy enough to whip up quickly this morning. I managed to make 20 biscuits from the mixture.

Ingredients

175g butter (softened)
85g golden caster sugar
200g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
100g chocolate chips (milk or dark - I used 100g of dark chocolate that I chopped into small bits)

Method
1) Mix the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon. Stir in the flour and cocoa, followed by the chocolate chips (you might need to mix it together with your hands at this stage - I didn't).

2) Halve the dough and roll each piece into a log about 5cm thick. Wrap in cling film and chill for 1 hour or for several days (It can be frozen for up to 1 month).

3) Heat the oven to 180C/160C/Gas 4. Slice the logs into 1cm-thick rounds, transfer to a baking tray lined with baking parchment and bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool on the tray.

Happy baking!