Tanya Burr's Milk and White Chocolate Cookies

Last night my sister and I spontaneously decided that we wanted to bake something so we brought out all the cookbooks, made a list and took a trip to Tesco today to collect some ingredients! She wanted to make Tanya Burr's Triple Chocolate cookies but I have made those before so I wanted to try something different. We decided to give her Milk and White Chocolate cookies a bash!

Baking a Cookie Cake!

We celebrated my sister's 15th birthday this week and as I had bought her concert tickets as her main gift, I wanted to find a creative way to give them to her. I think giving someone an envelope as a gift usually means money, vouchers, tickets etc. so I wanted to do something that would take her completely by surprise! I remembered a few years ago that she asked for a Cookie Cake and after realising how expensive it was to buy one (I had already spent way too much than I intended on her birthday), I decided to have a go at making one myself. I was extremely nervous that it was going to backfire but I was so pleased with the finish result!

It took very little ingredients to bake as I only used a standard cookie mix, some strawberry icing and a bag of M & M's! I started off by moulding the cookie mix (milk and white chocolate chips) into the shape of a circular baking tray to achieve the standard Cookie Cake size and shape. I then built the edges up a little to form as much of a circular outline as possible to make it look even.

I literally made this with without  a recipe so I baked it in the oven at 155 degrees until it looked baked (professional or what?). It was probably in the oven about 15-20 minutes, I can't really remember. It didn't bake aswell on the bottom as I had hoped but it was too much of a risk in burning the whole cake in order to achieve this as the top was very golden.

Whilst it was still warm from the oven, I arranged a bunch of a M & M's to spell out '15' in the middle. It looked very simple but effective I thought!

To finish it off, I piped small rosettes around the edge using a tub of strawberry flavoured icing that I pre bought from the supermarket. I didn't have much time as the only time I was able to bake the cake was early in the morning when my sister was asleep! I was kinda on edge that she would appear and catch me!

I presented my finished Cookie Cake in a white box with a huge pink bow on the top! I loved how it turned out and I was so chuffed with it. I put the concert tickets in an envelope and stuck them on the inside of the box which she didn't actually notice straight away like I had hoped! She actually didn't believe I had made it myself and thought I bought it from Millie's Cookies! So mission accomplished right? 

I hope you enjoyed this post. I have a good few ideas for new content over the next week so I'll be back soon! Hope you enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are :)

Tanya Burr's Triple Chocolate Cookies!

On Tuesday I baked some Triple Chocolate Cookies from Tanya Burr's new book Love Tanya! If you saw my guest post with Scot Blogger here, I included this book in my favourite things in January. I couldn't wait to try out some of the recipes as they look amazing. I'm more of a cake decorator than a baker by far so I was extremely pleased with myself that they turned out good! They taste amazing too. Here are some snaps I took as I was baking:

Baking Ingredients

Gotta have some tunes! One of my favourites right now.

Cookie Dough

My baking trays are quite small so I put 4 or 5 cookies on a tray to be avoid them merging

First batch out of the oven!

Baking is complete and most importantly a success!

Have you got a copy of Love Tanya? If so I highly recommend trying these out! They are extremely chocolatey but still very tasty. I'll be back again on Sunday with a new post which will probably be a review on season 2 of The Fall as I'm currently half way through the last episode! So. Good.

BLOGMAS DAY 15 - Mint Chocolate Cookies

Today I tried out making some mint chocolate cookies! I was inspired to make these from a Becky Crocker recipe (here) and due to the lack of ingredients available in the UK, I ended up making my own recipe up. I really wanted to try dying them green like in the recipe but our food colouring was 2 years out of date so I wasn't going to be using that! Here is my step by step guide to making my own version of mint chocolate chip cookies.

You will need Betty Crocker's Milk Chocolate cookie mix
 (quantity depending on how much dough you wish to make) and 1 box of mint Matchmakers 

Empty the cookie mix into a large bowl

Cut the Matchmakers into small pieces

Add the Matchmakers to the bowl

Add 2 tbsp of water per packet to the mix to form a dough. This was the recommended amount but not nearly enough for me to make the cookie dough so I just added water until the dough began to form.

Make the dough into balls and place on a baking tray. The cookies will expand when baking so make sure there
is plenty of space between each one

Put cookies in the oven at 190 degrees for 10-12 minutes

Leave cookies to cool for as long as necessary and then you can eat them!

Another king from today's advent calendar!

I hope you enjoyed today's baking post! I'll be back tomorrow with another gift guide.

Birthday Cheesecake.

A random visit to Tesco today for rabbit treats resulted in making a cheesecake! We spotted a spring baking tin and I decided as it is my Dad's birthday today that I would try and make him a cheesecake. He said he had never tried one before and he didn't want a birthday cake so a dessert was the next best thing. A few weeks ago, I watched a tutorial video on YouTube so I looked it up my phone and gathered the ingredients I needed whilst I was there. The recipe I followed is by Jim Chapman, you can find it here. I am no culinary expert so I'm surprised I got as far as I did!

Here are the ingredients I used: Plain Digestive Biscuits, Double Cream, Unsalted Butter, Soft Cheese (+ Philadelphia as I didn't have enough), Vanilla Bean Extract and 6 bars of Caramac. The recipe is for a Chocolate Cheesecake but I used Caramac at Dad's request. I also added chocolate chips as I was going along so these were not pictured. 

I started by crushing the biscuits in a bag before mixing them with melted butter to form the base. I then mixed the Double Cream and the Soft Cheese with a half teaspoon of Vanilla Extract. I also added three melted bars of Caramac before mixing it again. 

I removed 6 tablespoons of the mix into a separate bowl before pouring the mix into the baking tin and placing it in the fridge for half an hour. The recipe required double cream to be kept aside and this was to be mixed together with the soft cheese, cream and chocolate before being poured onto the top of the cheesecake. I finally melted the other 3 bars of Caramac before swirling it onto the top of the cheesecake (this could of been more successful!) and adding the chocolate chips.

I placed it in the fridge for around 5 hours and it was then ready to eat! Here is a photo of the finished cheesecake: