Ice Cream Sandwich - Valentine's Day Special

Wish you all a very happy Valentine's day!!

Ice cream sandwich was a long time dream for me. I wasnt sure how it would work out and was not even sure if it will be possible to bite comfortably.

It worked out so well. The texture and look was stunning and surprisingly the cookies dint turn soft in the fridge and was super comfortable to bite along with the ice cream and eat :)

Bingo Success!!

Eggless Chocolate Cookies Recipe:

Ingredients:

All purpose flour (Maida) - 80 gms

Baking powder - 1/4 tsp

Baking soda - 1/4 tsp

Cocoa powder - 20 gms

Butter - 50 gms

Powdered sugar - 50 gms

Water - 1 tblsp

Method:

Sift maida, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder together.

Chop butter into small chunks. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Now add a tblsp of water to it and beat for few mins.

Add the dry ingredients mixture in two parts and beat in low speed until incorporated and rolls into a ball.

Now wrap the cookie dough in a cling film and refrigerate for 10 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Remove the dough from refrigerator. Sprinkle some All purpose flour on your working surface and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

Place the cut out cookies on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes at 180°C.

Let the cookies cool on wire rack for a while and store in air tight container.

Assembling the Ice cream sandwich:

Bake the cookies.

Place one cookie under side facing up on a plate.

Cut a small slice of ice cream of your choice and quickly cut the ice cream using your cookie cutter and place it on top of the cookie and sandwich another cookie on top and put it in the freezer for it to firm up.

Serve chill just out of the freezer :)

Lavender Cookies - Arusuvai Friendship Chain

As I have said in my previous post, I have made a lot of friends through this little space of mine. What just started as commenting on each others post went on to sending emails, exchanging phone numbers, visiting each other etc.. Now I proudly call a lot of them as my good friends for life time :)

One other interesting way to keep in touch and know more food bloggers was through what is called as "Arusuvai Friendship chain". The large gang of Indian food bloggers have formed this chain in which one would receive a secret ingredient from another :) Isn't that sounding super exciting!!!

Sayantani restarted the Arusuvai chain in November I guess and it has reached me now. Its quite a long time since I received my package from the super blogger Bombay Foodie. Simran was too sweet to send me a very rarely found ingredient in India - the Lavender. She also sent me a very touching letter and few tartlet molds as a gift :) Thanks you so much dear and hugs to you :)

Though I could identify the ingredient, I found it hard to get a perfect fool proof recipe to make. I really wanted it to come out perfectly since the ingredient was close to impossible to get additional or again just in case something goes wrong. :(

Extensive googling and suggestions from friends did help me to know more about the ingredient but somehow I managed to incorporate it in a totally different recipe. The cookies were so good and linzer cookies were so attractive to all. The flavor and smell of the lavender were so so so damn good :)

Lavender Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 1/2 cups (300 gms)
Powdered sugar - 1 cup (200 gms)
Unsalted Butter - 1/2 cup (100 gms)
Almond powder - 100 gms
Dried Lavender - 1 tblsp
Salt - a pinch
Milk - 2 tblsp

Method:

In a bowl mix the lavender petals with the sugar thoroughly. If you are powdering sugar, just drop in the lavender and pulse it along with the sugar.

Chop the butter into chunks and beat it with the sugar lavender mixture.

Now add the all purpose flour, salt and almond powder to it and mix well until everything comes together.

If you find the dough dry and crumbly, add 2 tsp of milk and mix well until it forms a soft dough.

Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.

Flour the work surface and roll the dough into a 1/4 inch thick sheet. Use cutters of your choice to cut out shapes. Place the cut cookies on the lined baking tray.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the tray with cookies in and bake for 12-15 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 12 minutes did is perfectly in my convection oven.

Enjoy the strong lavender aroma while baking :)

This quantity would make around 30 round shaped cookies.

Happy eating :)

To make Linzer cookies:

You will need one large cookie cutter and one small cutter of same shape and some jam.

Roll the dough and using a 2 to 3 inch cookie cutter (round, square, heart, etc.) cut out the dough. Place the cookies about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Use a smaller cookie cutter (1 inch) to cut out the centers of half of the cookies on the baking sheet.

You will be sandwiching two cookies together and there will be a small window in the top cookie so you can see the jam underneath.

Bake the cookies as said above.

Meanwhile take the jam(I used black current) in a sauce pan and heat in low flame until it becomes slightly thick.

To assemble - place the cookies with holes on a plate and dust some powdered sugar over it.

Apply 1/2 tsp of the jam on top the base cookies and sandwich it with the sugar coated cookies.

Tips:

The cookies are crisp and apt for tea time.

While making linzer cookies, its best to assemble them just on the day of serving so that it doesn't lose its crispness.

I'm happy to send this post as an entry to Food Palette purple event :)

Written by: Nithya
Send in your queries by clicking here.

A Winning Moment - Oats Cookies

Competitions always help me boost my spirit and the winning moments challenge me to keep the spirit going on. :)

Yesterday was one such occasion that made me feel good about what I am doing :)

The popular brand Saffola had challenged a contest on cooking with Oats.

After rambling for a long time with mom and few friends of mine, I decided to go for "Oats cookies" as my entry to the contest. :)

The contest comprised of a quick quiz on oats as the first round, slogan writing contest as the second, a 10 min vegetable carving contest as third which was followed by the display of our prepared oats dish.

“The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.” - Geoffrey Gaberino

True to the saying, I have always tried only to give my best in what I do and don't expect the results.

Fortunately my hard work paid off and I won the contest under all the categories. :)

Won the first place for vegetable carving and first under the oats sweet category.

And my slogan "Vote is for a healthy nation! Oats is for a healthy human!" won the third place too.

I also bagged the over all title "Miss Saffola Oats Queen 2011" and was crowned by the renowned cooks Mrs. Mallika Badrinath and Chef Damodaran.

I was on cloud 9 and it would remain in my memories as one of the best moments of my life :)

I made this oats cookie house for decoration and this center piece was the special attraction to my entry.

Ingredients:

Oats - 1 cup
Brown sugar - 1/4 cup
All purpose flour - 3 tbl sp
Butter/cooking oil - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Chocolate chips
Raisins

Method:

Grind the oats and brown sugar separately into a fine powder.

Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until it turns smooth and creamy.

Mix the powdered oats, salt and all purpose flour together and gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Now flatten the dough into a smooth disk shape with your hand and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill the dough for 15 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Take out the dough and pinch off equal little bits of dough and roll them into smooth balls. Press them a little flat with your palm. Now dip a fork in flour and press it slightly on the biscuits to get the tine marks on top giving it a decorative look.

Place them on lined baking trays.

Oats has the ability to puff up hence remember to leave enough space between each other when you place them on the tray.

Place the tray with cookies and bake for 15-20 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 18 minutes did is perfectly in my convection oven.

Cool them on the wire rack for a while and enjoy eating :)

This quantity would make 15 medium sized cookies.

Tips:

I made 4 variations of oats cookies for the contest.

* Added chocolate chips and chopped raisins to the dough and made cookies.

* Sandwiched two cookies by applying melted chocolate or chocolate butter cream or nutella and made creamed cookies.

* Salted cookies(White ones in the below picture)

Ingredients:

Oats(powdered) -1 cup
Oats(whole) - 3 tblsp
All purpose flour(maida) - 1/3 cup
Butter - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1 tsp

Follow the same method as above and bake salted cookies :)

Written by: Nithya
Send in your queries by clicking here.

Shortbread Cookies & a reason to celebrate

The Christmas celebration mood is on and I am just enjoying it to the core. I have been getting a lot of baked goodies from friends and craving for more and more :) That too after the Mega Chennai Bloggers meet, I have got a lot of energy to bake and celebrate :)

I also have one more reason to celebrate the day. :) My blog, Fourth Sense Cooking has crossed 100000 hits :)

I would take this occasion to send a lakh thanks to all the visitors of my blog, if not for you all I would have never tried to cook or blog :P I swear! The encouragement in the form of comments, hits, mails and calls make me so cheerful about the whole thing and I enjoy presenting it for you all :) Keep lending me your support and wishes always :)

So here is my second post of Christmas treats - The simple and ever versatile shortbread cookies :)

Ingredients:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 1/2 cups
Corn flour - 1/2 cup
Butter - 1 cup (Room temperature)
Powdered sugar - 1/2 cup
Salt - a pinch
Vanilla essence / Almond essence - 1 tsp

Method:

Sieve the dry ingredients(All purpose flour, corn flour and salt) and keep it aside.

In a bowl of your electric mixer, beat the butter until smooth and creamy for about a minute. Add the sugar to it and beat until smooth and creamy. Pour the vanilla extract and beat just once. Gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Now flatten the dough into a smooth disk shape with your hand and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill the dough for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Sprinkle some All purpose flour on your working surface and roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle.

Use your cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

Place the cut out cookies on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 13 minutes did it perfectly in my convection oven.

Let the cookies cool on wire rack for a while. Initially the cookies might feel a little soft and crumbly to touch but it will harden as it cools down.

Store in air tight containers.

Light, crumbly and melt in the mouth short bread cookies is ready to eat :)

Enjoy making and happy eating :)

For the Tree:

Since I don't have various sizes of star cutters, I cut out different sizes of stars on a paper and placed it over the rolled dough and cut along the outline with a knife.

Mix one tsp of icing sugar with just few drops of water to make it into a paste.

Once you get around 10 gradually increasing sizes of star cookies, just apply a few drops of the sugar paste on the largest star cookie and stick the subsequent sized cookie on top of it. Go on doing the same until you complete stacking the tree :)

Decorate the tree as you like. I applied a drop of the sugar paste on the ends of the cookies and stuck sliver sugar balls :)

You can even simply sprinkle some sugar powder to give it a snowy look :)

For Almond finger cookies:

Replace the vanilla essence with a tsp of almond essence and follow the same recipe as above.

Roll out a large 1/4 inch circle and sprinkle some ground almond powder on it and just press lightly to fix it with the dough.

Press 1/2 inch lines with a scale or knife to make groves and do the same on the other direction with the measurement of 2 inches to make finger sized cookies.

Bake, allow it to cool and then break them out to separate the cookies.

Tips:

Add cocoa to the same to make chocolate short bread cookies.

You can use instant coffee powder too for flavoring.

You can dip the cookies in melted chocolate.

You can also add few tsps of orange juice or lemon zest to make different flavors. :)

Written by: Nithya
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Choco Vanilla Spiral Cookies

The foodie in me freaks out when I come across some interesting recipes. And it was at this recipe that I lately got too excited about and could not wait to make them.

Choco vanilla spiral cookie is the most exciting looking cookies according to me. Found a nice step wise explanation of making this cookies in Edible garden blog by Nags. She is simply awesome at what she does. I totally got impressed and immediately set to bake it in my own style by adding a pinch of my creative twist to it :)

The recipe is pretty much the same with just a small change of adding a little more of sugar to the cocoa dough since I like my cookies a little more sweeter.

Get set go for an exciting cookie experience :)

Ingredients:

For the vanilla dough:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 1/2 cups
Unsalted butter - 1/2 cup
Powdered Sugar - 1/2 cup
Egg yolk(beaten) - 1/2
Vanilla essence - 4 drops

For chocolate dough:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 1/4 cups
Unsalted butter - 1/2 cup
Powdered Sugar - 2/3 cup
Egg yolk(beaten) - 1/2
Unsweetened cocoa powder - 1/4 cup

Method:

To make the vanilla dough, first bring the butter to room temperature and beat sugar along, till it incorporates well. Now beat in the egg yolk and vanilla essence.

Add the sifted all purpose flour to it and combine with hands until everything comes together. Do not over beat. Just combine until it forms a soft dough. Cover it with cling film and keep it aside.

To make the chocolate dough, beat butter and sugar together and then add the egg yolk to it. Now add the cocoa powder and mix well without lumps. Finally pour in the all purpose flour and combine till it rolls into a soft dough. Cover it with cling film too.

Now refrigerate both the doughs for half an hour.

After half an hour, roll both the doughs into a flat rectangle of 1/4" thickness on a transparent plastic sheet. If you are not able to roll them into a rectangle shape, just trim the edges and make them into equal sized rectangles.

Now comes the tough part. Lift the chocolate layer and place it on top of the vanilla layer showing just 1/4" of the vanilla layer on top(This will help you get a clean swirl when you roll it)

After placing it, gently start rolling the layers until you form a log. Now cover it again with cling film and refrigerate for half an hour. This will make the dough firm and will be easy to cut.

After half an hour remove it from the fridge and cut them into slices of 1/4" thickness.

Preheat the oven at 350°F or 180°C.

Place the sliced cookies on a baking tray and bake for 10 - 12 mins. Check after ten mins to note if the vanilla part has turned into light golden color.

If done, remove the cookies and let it cool on a wire rack for ten mins.

Choco vanilla cookies is ready to eat :)

This quantity should make around 28 large circular cookies according to the source recipe. But since I experimented various patterns of small sized cookies, I could make 70 cookies out of the dough ;) Oops :)

Enjoy eating the zebra cookies :)

Note:

Freak out with the shapes. You have a lot of scope to create interesting stuff because of the two contrasting colors.

• I tried triangle shaped swirled cookies by pressing the dough on three sides and then cutting them into slices. :)

• Pressed them firmly on four sides to make square swirl cookies. :)

• Made a semi circle by pressing one side of the roll and then slicing. :)

• Layered white and brown alternatively to make circular layered cookies. :)

• Mixed both the doughs and made marble cookies. :)

• Rolled the dough into sheets and cut out heart shape using the cookie cutter and layered the chocolate heart over the vanilla one to make double layered heart cookies. :)

• And also made independent vanilla and chocolate cookies. :)

No wonder all of them tasted the same and yummmmmmmy :)

I am happy to send this post as an entry to Pari's "Only kids delight" event.

Written by: Nithya
Send in your queries by clicking here.

Iced Sugar Cookies - Valentine's day special

Wish you all a very Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!!!!!! :)

Though there is nothing much for me to do with this day, I really cant let my blog starve on a happy day when there is a lot of celebration around. So I am celebrating the love for my blog and the love spread all around me.

Love you mom and dad. Love you all my friends. :)

The A and P are my Sis and Bil :)

I was badly looking to bake something and was also wanting to make some heats. So was googling for a while and found this simple yet interesting cookies in Deeba's lovely blog. If you have not visited her blog before, do it right now. She is just too amazing in everything that she does.

I dint make much of changes in the recipe but would still post it here.

Ingredients:

Butter - 3/4 cup
Castor sugar - 1 cup
Egg - 1
All purpose flour(Maida) - 2 1/2 cups
Salt - a pinch(avoid this if your butter is salty)
Almond essence - 1 tsp
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Method:

Beat the butter and sugar till fluffy and light. Now add the salt, vanilla essence almond essence and beat for 30 seconds. With a spatula mix in the beaten egg. Finally put in all the flour in one go, and gather together to make a firm dough. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes in wrap.

Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness and cut with assorted cookie cutters. Preheat the oven to 190deg C. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown.

Remove from oven and let the cookies lay on the sheet for a minute. Let the cookies cool on the grill for a while.

This recipe makes approximately 8 dozen 1 ½” small cookies.

For the icing - I simply used icing sugar mixed with just enough water to make it thick and flowing. Add the required food color and drizzle on the cookies as you like. Be creative and have fun.. :)

Iced sugar cookies is ready to eat.. Its yummm and absolutely attractive for kids. :)

Note: You can dip the cookies in melted chocolate and make it taste and look interesting too. :)

This is a cute card that my brother-in-law gifted to my sis today. :) Was happy to see a cute valentine couple at home. :)

My festive mood is always reflected by my Kolam design in the entrance. So here is my valentine's day kolam. :)

I am happy to send this to Priya's "Heart's for St. Valentine's day" event

Written by: Nithya
post your queries to fourthsensesamayal@gmail.com