Clockwork Lemon

British Flapjacks

Oats are often used in healthy breakfast and snack-time recipes full of wholesome ingredients that you can feel good about. People see a baked good made out of a oats and think "this is probably good for me".

That's precisely what I thought when I was in England and saw an pile of oat squares for sale at a train station. My first tip that these bars were not necessarily meant for breakfast should have been that they were being sold along side chocolate bars and candy, but I was momentarily confused by the name on the wrapper so I wasn't focusing on the obvious "these are not good for you" clues. The oat squares were called 'Flapjacks" which is what we Canadians call pancakes.

(it gets more confusing, the pancakes in England were what we Canadians would call crepes so there was no good way to describe the stack-o-flapjacks I was picturing in my mind).

Anyways, it only took one bite - one delicious delicious bite - to realize that these sweet, buttery, oaty bars were obviously a treat, not a health food item.

 

And why shouldn't oats be the star of a dessert bar? They have so much more flavor than flour, a soft chewy texture, and when baked with brown sugar and butter they show us that maybe they have been waiting all this time to be turned into a decadent treat. These tasty morsels deserve a place alongside our rice krispie squares and lemon bars.

Anna Olson's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I suspect we all have people in our lives who hold the classic chocolate chip cookie as the perfect baked good. My dad is one of those people; whenever I tell him about the next recipe that I'm working on he suggests that maybe I make chocolate chip cookies instead. Not chocolate chip cookies with a twist, just the classic, basic, crispy-on-the-edges-soft-in-the-middle chocolate chip cookie. Why mess around with perfection?

So when Anna Olson's beautiful new book Back To Baking arrived on my doorstep thanks to the people at Whitecap Books I was originally torn as to which recipe to try out first..

Brush Embroidery Sugar Cookies

Although I often confess my love for decorating techniques that involve lots of finicky little steps and time consuming details, there's another category of techniques that I love even more: ones that are easier than they look. Brush embroidery falls squarely into that category, it looks complicated and time consuming, it seems like it requires advanced piping skills and years of practice. But it's not. And it doesn't. In fact, all of these cookies in the photos were my first attempt at brush embroidery. As long as you have the right tools and a bit of time set aside it's a very forgiving technique.

I'd first seen brush embroidery on some cookies on Pinterest. The pin didn't lead anywhere helpful and I wasn't even sure what it was called. Luckily, thanks to the magic of the internet all it took was a bit of poking around on Google and Youtube before I came across this video tutorial. It's such a straightforward technique that the video doesn't even need verbal instructions.

With Valentine's Days approaching I decided to draw up some pink, white, and gold designs to work from to give away as pretty, edible V-day cards. Then I baked up some heart shaped sugar cookies and whipped together a batch of royal icing.

Cranberry & White Chocolate Brown Butter Cookies

Brown butter cookies: soft chewy centers, crispy edges, and studded with hunks of white chocolate and cranberries.  They're the kind of cookies that you can accidentally eat an entire plate of when you meant to only have one. The kind that you think about during the day and hope that nobody ate them all before you could get home and have another. I blame the brown butter's toasty flavor and the addictive combination of textures.

A few months ago my friend Rachele and I had the idea to make cookies with white chocolate and cranberries in them, but the Christmas season swooped down on us and we never got around to finishing the recipe. Now that Christmas is over and a looooong prairie winter is stretching out ahead, it's the perfect time to hide out in my warm kitchen and bake cookies. 

Savory Cheddar Chive Shortbread

'Tis the season of cookies and Christmas baking: gracing the covers of every food magazine, piled high on platters at parties, stashed away in your freezer at home. I love cookies as much as the next person, but this sugar overload has me turning my back on chocolate, eggnog, and gingerbread in favor of  the salty side of the baking spectrum: savory shortbread.

Could this also be an excuse to cram even more cheese into my diet? Probably. But I'm telling myself that I'll give them away with bottles of wine as gifts. (If you receive a bottle of wine with no cookies then you'll know that these never made it out of my kitchen..sorry in advance).

 

Last time I made savory shortbread I couldn't wait to play around with different flavor combinations. I wanted to use this cheddar  because it's texture is so soft that it acts almost like butter in a recipe, and it's extra sharp flavor gives the shortbread a cheddary tang.

 

Chocolate Coated Peppermint Cookies

 

The past few weeks I've been busy busy busy making an obscene amount of Christmas cookies. If you happened to stop by my house you were probably greeted with a desperate "Help eat these cookies!" followed by "No! Not that one, or that one, or that one! Those are for photos! Only eat the ugly ones" (only the very best for my guests..)

The result of my cookie bake-a-thon were three Christmas cookie recipes:

1. Cinnamon shortbread with eggnog glaze: quick and easy for all those Christmas cookie emergencies

2. Painted sugar cookies: sugar cookies flooded with royal icing and painted with food colouring. Perfect for hosting a cookie decorating party. Who doesn't love little pieces of edible art?

3. Chocolate coated peppermint cookies: these were the most popular cookie of the bunch. I made batch after batch after batch and they have all been eaten up.. so I felt that it was only fair to share the recipe.

 

 

The cookies require a couple of extra steps but they are so, so worth it.

The first step is baking thin, crispy chocolate wafers. The wafers are similar to the ones used in homemade oreos but with the ratios of egg, flour, and sugar changed up.

Next, a creamy peppermint filling is made out of condensed milk, butter, icing sugar, and peppermint extract. This is pressed onto the little chocolate wafers and then the whole thing is coated in melted chocolate.