One more week until the Easter bunny comes!! I don't know about you, but Easter, just like Christmas, is a very important time for me. So, of course i have to bake a BUNCH of stuff related to Easter to celebrate this holiday the nadzcrumbz way. I decided on making this first because i did a instagram story poll, where 77% of people said they wanted me to make this. Here's proof that i listen to my audience HAHA. Anyways, in case anyone wants to know what a cookie pod is, its basically a cookie in the shape of a mini cup that is filled in with anything (in my case, salted caramel, lotus biscoff, Nutella) and topped with chocolate as well as a mini easter egg! It supposed to look a but like a nest that an easter eggs is laid in, so its a pretty cute concept.
Name : Easter egg cookie pod
Description: Brown butter cookie cup filled with sweet, salted caramel, topped with white chocolate and a crunchy chocolate mini egg.
Flavour Rating: 7/10 (I personally would like it more if it was possible for the cookie cup to be softer/warmer but maybe that just because I like normal cookies more HAHA. nonetheless, a lot of people liked this so it still gets a pretty high rating)
Difficulty rating: 3/10 (it's a pretty simple thing to make, especially if you cut some corners and buy pre-made cookie dough/boxed cookie dough mix and caramel or other fillings. for me I made everything from scratch so it took a bit more time but you don't have to do the same)
Occasion: 1 week countdown to easter sunday
As you can see in the difficulty level rating, this is a pretty simple thing to make SO I highly suggest you guys to give it a go and celebrate a sweet easter this year! To make the process even more foolproof, I have consolidated the things that you should take note of (eg the things that I did wrong and had to fix), so get out your mixing bowls and start making this delicious treats ASAP!!
Browning butter
If you are planing on making these cookies from scratch, i would suggest to make your cookie dough a little bit differently. This "different" method is basically through a process called browning butter, where you melt butter in a pan until its milk solids separate and caramelise, giving it a golden colour and super toasted nutty flavour. Ever since finding out about the magic brown butter can do to a cookie, I cannot bring myself to use any recipe without them.
Don't worry too much though, because I am here to give you my tips so that you won't fail like I did the first time around.
As you can see in the photo above, the colour that you are aiming to go for is seen in stage 3. In order to be able to observe when it reaches this stage, I would suggest firstly using a low heat setting as this will slow down the process and provide a bigger gap between stage 3 and 4, reducing your chances of burning the butter. Secondly, I would suggest using a lighter coloured pan as this will allow you to to see the changes in colour of the butter better so that you can stop it as just the right time! In my case, I kind of screwed up the butter for this as it turned to stage 4, with the milk solids being black.
Now if you end up in the same scenario as me, with a burned pot of brown butter, don't be too worried because this mistake can be easily reversed. Simply strain the brown butter into another bowl, sieving out the burn milk solids and you end up with not burnt butter which can still be used. While this is not completely ideal because the milk solids are the things that give the brown butter its flavour, it is still better than having to throw away the butter, especially in this current economy and 9% GST.
Caramel
If you read the very first blog that I wrote (sticky toffee pudding), I also was challenged with making caramel and failed the first time. Strangely when I had to make the caramel for this recipe, I forgot that I had previously found one that worked out, so I looked for a new one and failed the first time around yet again. * facepalm *
For this new recipe, I heated both water and sugar together at the same time as it helps to regulate the heating and prevent the sugar from burning too fast at the start. Because of this, this recipe is not that problematic at the start, the real issue only comes right when you notice the sugar syrup thickening and turning more transparent. Right after this stage, it will start to bubble quickly and becomes thinner, turning darker with every second. If you don't take it off the heat early enough, it can go from a beautiful orangey-amber syrup to a black syrup in no time.
Initially, I was very careful when I was making this, taking it off the heat once I noticed that nice desired colour. BUT to my shock, it continued cooking and turning blacker even AFTER I took it off the heat.
Yeah, not glorious. But kinda cool, the moment water hit the caramel, it turned into a thick glob, then hardened into a candy. Except, it was one that did not look very delicious.
While waiting for my burnt pan to soak in hot water so that it could clear off the hardened black caramel, I decided to do a bit of research to find out why this happened. Google says that it was because the heat was too high or the syrup was just left there for too long. Furthermore, I was constantly stirring the mixture which I later found out forms crystals in the syrup, which makes it even easier to burn. I guess the key to making a good caramel is stopping the heating a bit earlier than expected. By this I mean that the moment you see it turn a light amber, take it off the heat and let the residual heat slowly turn it darker.
When I redid this little caramel experiment one more time, fixing the previous mistakes I made (lowering heat, swirling the pan not stirring it and taking it off the heat earlier), It didn't burn anymore!! Mission complete.
Last step to making this caramel was just adding in the heavy cream, butter and salt. There is nothing complicated with this step, just wanted to share a video to show you what to expect once you add the heavy cream...so don't be alarmed.
Measuring ingredients
I think its safe to say that measuring ingredients is my least favourite part of baking because its such a technical thing. Like who would pick doing that over mixing it a pound of chocolate into your cookies, or taking your freshly baked cookies out of the oven and dunking it in a cup of milk. No one duh. That's why.... sometimes, i try to cut some corners to make this process less boring. What i mean is i usually add all the ingredients into the same bowl and just tare/zero the weighing scale after each different ingredient is measured. I feel that this just saves so much time (and ESPECIALLY DISHES BECUASE I HATE WASHING THEM), since you don't have to weigh ingredients separately, one by one. However, due to my strong dislike towards this process, i often try to rush this part.
And that's exactly what i did this time too. I added butter, then white sugar and brown sugar into a bowl one after another. BUT my laziness got the better of me and what was meant to be a gentle tilt of the brown sugar bag turned into a full 180 turn. So the supposedly 150g of brown sugar turned into 600g. Usually i keep a spoon near me so i can just spoon out the excess and put it back inside the bag but this time THERE WAS SO MUCH EXCESS. And because i put it inside a bowl of warm melted butter, it was dissolving so quickly. So i ended up having to take out some "wet brown sugar" (brown sugar which absorbed some butter already), and that probably added some more issues to this dough.
Lesson learnt. Don't be lazy when measuring ingredients.
Recipe
Ingredients :
Brown butter cookie cup (can be substituted with any other cookie recipe/boxed mix or pre-made dough)
200g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 butter + 1/2 tbsp extra
150g brown sugar
50g white sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
chocolate chips - measure with your heart (while most of the time when making chocolate chip cookies, you would want to use chopped chocolate for those delicious pools of chocolate, don't do so for these cookie pods because that will not provide them with the structure they need to hold all that caramel in place.
Salted caramel
200g white sugar
80ml water
190ml heavy cream (warm)
70g buttre
pinch of salt
Decoration
melted chocolate
Cadbury mini eggs
Instructions :
Brown butter in a light coloured pan until a golden brown and milk solids separate from the melted butter (you should smell a nutty aroma). Take off the heat and transfer to a glass measuring cylinder, adding back the 1-2 tbsps of butter until it reaches the 1/2 cup mark again. Then let it cool.
Whisk brown butter with white and brown sugar until combined once butter has cooled down.
Add egg and vanilla essence and continue whisking until light and fluffy.
In a separate bowl, combine all purpose flour, baking soda and salt (ensure that it is well mixed). Then add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, gently folding it in unitl almost combined (some flour streaks left)
Add chocolate chips and finish folding it through the dough. Then chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven at 180 degrees
Make the caramel by combining water and sugar in a pot, mixing them together until combined.
put pan on a low heat, swirling (not stirring) the pan around every once in a while. sugar syrup should first thicken and turn transparent, then thin out and start to bubble more furiously. keep a close eye at this stage as it will start to change its colour very fast. once you notice it turn a light amber colour, take it off the heat and let the residual heat bring it to a slightly darker darker colour (note that the darker the colour the more bitter the caramel will become).
When desired colour is achieved, add in the warm heavy cream and stir quickly.
Add in the butter and salt once the mixture starts to thicken and mix yet again. when done, leave the salted caramel to cool.
Brush a mini cupcake non-stick pan with oil, then press in cookie dough into the mould so that it creates a cup shape.
Put in the oven at 180 degrees for 8 minutes.
Once it comes out of the oven, cookie should still be a bit soft Use this opportunity to shape the cookie back into a cup (since it might puff up a bit during baking).
When the cookie is cool, take it out of the cupcake mould by slowly wiggling it in circles until it pops out.
Fill with caramel (or any other filling you enjoy) and place in fridge for 20 minutes to firm up
Once caramel is firm, melt chocolate and use a spoon to apply a layer of chocolate above the salted caramel. For the final decoration place a mini egg on each cooke pod and place in fridge for a short while again o lathe chocolate solidify.
Best eaten in room temperature or slightly warmed up! enjoy ((:
I hope that you get a chance this week to take some time off and bake these delicious treats for yourself! Remember, you shouldn't only take care of yourself when you have free time, you should make free time for taking care of yourself. And I believe that baking something sweet and enjoyign it fresh out of the oven is the best way to do this. Yet again, let me know in the comments if you do end up trying this out and feel free to ask me any more questions!!
xoxo
nadzcrumbz
sundayzcrumbz entry #3
recipe inspired from
コメント