Category Archives: cookies

Piparkūkas

Latvian gingerbread cookies

In Latvia gingerbread cookies are very typical for Christmas. Around that time, every single house is filled with gingerbread cookie smell. In Latvia, you usually buy the gingerbread cookie dough and bake them at home, but living abroad this isn’t possible. So, for the third year in a row, I’m preparing my gingerbread cookie dough myself. I still don’t get the perfect consistency, but the taste and smell are better than the store-bought ones. Prepare your home for Christmas and bake some cookies!

piparkūkas

Yield: ca. 4kg of dough (which means – a lot of cookies!)

Ingredients:

400g honey
400g brown (or white) sugar
400g butter
1,5kg-2kg flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
20-30g of gingerbread spices: you can mix them yourself using cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, ginger, black pepper… or just buy a prepared gingerbread spices packet, for instance from Santa Maria (from Sweden)

Breton biscuits

3 Replies

Crunchy butter cookies from Britany

The “galettes sablées bretonnes” are typical french butter cookies made from butter, flour, sugar and eggs. The traditional shape is round and the tops of the cookies are usually brushed with the egg yolk, giving them a shiny and golden appearance. “Sablée” means sand in French, and refers to the sandy like texture of the biscuits. This is really a very easy to make recipe, and the result tastes very good.

galettes bretons

Yield: 30 biscuits

Ingredients:

200g flour
130g sugar
1,5 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
125g of salted butter (room T)
1 egg
1 egg yolk + 5cl of water

Raspberry financier

No butter, no flour oat cookies

Time to be healthy

Actually, I started to search for no flour cookies because my sister can’t eat any wheat products. Lately, it seems that there are more and more people close to myself that have some product intolerance. Thus, this recipe is dedicated to all my loved ones in that situation: Livija, Elina Evelina, and Marian. I’m offering several alternatives to prepare these cookies – just pick the one you can eat or that sounds better to you

no flour, no butter cookies

Yield: 20-30 cookies depending on size

Ingredients:

150g oatmeal
150g of mixed nuts & raisins of different kinds – select the nuts and proportion as you wish
1 medium size ripe banana or 100g of applesauce
1 egg or 2 tablespoons cornstarch (you may add some more applesauce/ banana if you use cornstarch)
100g of peanut butter
100g of sugar – you can vary the amount of sugar you put in, the more you put the crunchier and sweeter they’ll be

Three chocolate brownie

Brownies for chocolate lowers

Brownie is something between cake and cookie: crispy outside and soft inside….and a lot of chocolate! I’m a chocolate lover and these brownies with three types of chocolate are just delicious. Mm….enjoy!

three chocolate brownies

Yield: around 16-20 square brownies

Ingredients:

185g dark chocolate
185g butter
3 large eggs
250g sugar
85g flour
40g cacao powder
50g white chocolate
50g milk chocolate
50g walnuts

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

A tasty alternative to traditional chocolate chip cookies

I suppose that everyone knows the american-style chocolate chip cookies: crunchy outside and soft inside, combined with the wonderful taste of chocolate chips. To make these cookies a bit more healthy, I usually add oats and it actually taste even better. So, enjoy!

chocolate-oat cookies

Yield: around 15 medium size cookies

Ingredients:

80g minced oats
80g flour
80g butter (at room temperature )
80g brown or white sugar
60-50g chocolate chips or chocolate (I used dark chocolate chopped into small pieces )
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
optional: chopped nuts, raisins

Macarons (the Italian way)

What are macarons?

Macarons are all the rage now, and you’re sure to find them from Beijing to Rio. But, in case you haven’t come across them yet, here’s a nice picture:

two kinds of chocolate filling macarons

A perfect macaron has two almond-meringue pastries that have been cooked to be smooth and crisp, and the middle is filled with a cream, jam, or some other tasty ingredient (sometimes even something unexpected, like foie gras!)

Continue reading …

Biscuits à la cuillère or lady fingers

What is it used for?

Lady fingers are light and soft biscuits, roughly shaped like a large finger. They are usually used as the base for different desserts, for example, charlotte and tiramisu.

lady fingers – the base for tiramisu or charlotte

Yield: 30 lady fingers, 10-12cm long

Ingredients:

120g egg whites or 4 egg whites
70g powder suger
65g egg yolks – 3 egg yolks
40g starch
40g flour
some icing sugar for the top