Cranberries + Macadamia Oatmeal Cookies

In the next few posts, I will be sharing a couple of my favourite cookies recipes, mostly the ones that I will make again and again and again for myself and my family. Today’s recipe is one of such; Oatmeal Cookies, except that today’s batch has some variation: Cranberries Oatmeal Cookies instead of the usual Raisins Oatmeal Cookies. The reason is simply because I ran out of raisins! LOL! Disclosure: I’m not the author of the original recipe. The original recipe was noted down by me many years back but I cannot remember where I got it from. The following recipe has been modified by me based on the original recipe.  

 

Makes about 50-60 pieces

Ingredients:

·       100 gm caster sugar

·       50 gm brown sugar

·       115 gm unsalted butter, softened

·       ½ tsp vanilla extract

·       1 egg (60gm)

·       110 gm plain flour

·       ½ tsp baking soda

·       ½ tsp cinnamon powder

·       ¼ tsp sea salt

·       180 gm raw rolled oats¹ (for this particular entry, I used baby oats. See note at the end for my review)

·       100 gm dried cranberries

·       100 gm chopped macadamia nuts 

I love eating these oatmeal cookies, knowing that compared to most cookies, these are full of healthy goodness!

 

Butter and sugars are creamed till light and fluffy

 

The dough will be stiff after all the ingredients are added in

 

Method:

1.     Preheat oven to 190^°C (fan on).

2.     Cream the sugars and butter till light and fluffy.

3.     Add vanilla extract and lightly beaten egg and mix well.

4.     Sift flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into the butter mixture. Fold lightly to distribute the flour mixture.

5.     Add oats, raisins and nuts and fold in. I usually use my Kenwood stand mixer at the lowest speed, with paddle attachment, to fold this as the mixture will be very stiff and folding by hand might be tedious.

6.     Using a cookie scoop (size 70), drop dough on lined baking trays.  Flatten² the dough balls with a spatula.

7.     Bake at 190°C for about 9 minutes. Monitor closely towards the end.

8.     Cool the cookies on the trays for about 1-2 minutes before transferring to cooling racks to cool off totally. Cookies will harden further and turn crispier upon total cooling.

 

 Notes:

1.     I usually use raw rolled oats for my oatmeal cookies but this time round I decided to try baby oats, thinking that the more broken up oats might give me a “softer” cookie compared to regular oats. It’s a big mistake: In fact the baby oats seem to absorb moisture more hence it gives me a drier dough. Nevertheless, it still yields yummy cookies but the regular oats give me even yummier cookies!

2.     As mentioned, baby oats will give me a drier and hence stiffer dough so when using baby oats, you have to flatten the uncooked dough on the tray as it will not spread much during baking. I didn't realise that until the cookies were baked, that's why you see the round round cookies here. LOL! On the other hand if you are using raw rolled oats, the spread will be quite a lot during baking. In fact I think I will skip the flattening the next round I make this with regular rolled oats.

Cinnamon Apple Pie Pops

Wow wow wow! It’s has been a good 3 years since I last had an entry into my then newly created blog! Talking about lack of perseverance and not following through with things, I must have topped it all! Yikes! Ok ok, for all my dear friends who have been active on Facebook, I’m pretty sure you are aware that I am very active on Facebook, given that it is the main platform that I get to connect with the “outside” world from my SAHM world at home. And of course not forgetting the big advancements that the smart phone apps have made during the past 3 years, which make posting and viewing on Facebook a breeze.

For those who know me, you will know what I have been up to. For those who don’t, I went on to have 2 more kids which made me now a mom of 3 very young kids! That’s what I have been busy with the past 3 years. During these years I have also went on to further explore my all-time hobby of baking and much to my pleasant surprise, received good feedbacks from friends and family who are daring enough to be my guinea pigs. J So much so that I decided to restart my blog and have entries on my bakes. On top of that, I have also discovered that the numerous house-keeping shows I have been following on the cable channels have created an interest in me on the search for more tips and hacks of cleaning and housekeeping. So today I’m picking up where I left off and my first post shall be a recipe post.

Not long ago I made my first cake pops using the cake pops pans from Nordic Ware and was pretty excited to create pretty pops for upcoming parties but to my great dismay that didn’t really turn out well; Baking the pops was easy, it was meddling with the candy melts to coat the pops that proved to be a pain. It certainly wasn’t as easy as you see in YouTube. Maybe I overheated the candy melts, maybe there wasn’t enough shortening added, I don’t know. In any case after a couple of failed attempts, it killed my enthusiasm in making cake pops again. Besides those cake pops tasted horrible when coated with the candy melts. In the end I was left with 2 Nordic Ware cake pop pans and a bunch of unused lollipop sticks. That was also when I found out I can make pie pops with those sticks! (Yes, my pop pans will still be white elephants until I find another use for them) Hence, the idea of making pie pops! I bought a set of heart and star shaped pie pop molds from Tovolo and today I used the star to make my first pie pops!

I needed a pie recipe simple enough (read: less risky) to get me started on pie pops and I decided to use a sweet pastry dough recipe from Martha Stewart and the filling comes from Divas Can Cook.

I started off with the dough because that requires chilling. I mixed all the dry ingredients together and unlike my usual SOP, that wasn’t any sifting as we will be using the blender to blend all ingredients together.  

Sweet Pastry Dough (adapted from Martha Stewart's Pies & Tarts)

makes 9 pie pops

Ingredients:

• 188gm plain flour
• 25gm caster sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 113gm unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 tbsps cold water

 

 

 

1.       Mix all the dry ingredients together

2.       Cut chunks of cold hard butter and toss it into your flour mixture. There is no need to bring the butter to room temperature for this recipe. We want the butter to be cold.

 Anchor is my current favourite brand of butter

 

3.      Put the whole mixture into your blender or food processor if you have one, I didn’t have one so I used my small blender. Pulse the mixture till you get coarse breadcrumbs-like texture. DO NOT over mix. Add the yolk and water and pulse till the dough comes together.

 

 Crumb-like texture is what we want before adding the liquids
 

 

Cling wrapping your dough properly is important to ensure that it doesn’t dry out in the fridge

 

4 .    When the dough comes together, stop the mixing, transfer to cling wrap, make a disc and chill it for minimum of 30min.

 

 

Cinnamon Apple Filling (adapted from Divas Can Cook)

Ingredients:

• 2 green apples
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• ½ tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp cinnamon

 

Then I went on to mix the filling. The filling is rather easy given that no pre-cooking is required. Just skin the apples, cut into TINY (you will need these to be really tiny in order to fit into the pops) cubes and soak them in water to prevent oxidation. Get ready your sugars and drain the water from the apples.  Sprinkle the sugars and corn starch on the apples and set aside.

 

 

   

  

Assembly

 

Things you will need:

• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutter
• Lollipop sticks
• Flour, for dusting
• Pastry brush
• Beaten egg
• Brown sugar
• Baking tray and
• Parchment paper

For this, you will need to prepare your table or workbench for rolling the dough. Get ready a small bowl of flour for dusting and a beaten egg for egg wash and dipping the lollipop sticks. The lollipop sticks must be set on the table too.

 

 

 



A rolling pin with thickness guides is a very handy tool, especially in rolling pie dough

  

1.     Preheat oven to 180C.

2.     Flour your countertop generously (trust me, this one you want to avoid the dough from sticking to the bottom).

3.     Roll out to desired thickness. For this recipe, I rolled it to 4mm. Yes, it is on the thicker side but I want to play safe for my first pie pops.

4.     Cut out your pie pops. I’m using a pie pop mold from Tovolo but if you do not have one, any round cookie cutter will do. Use an offset spatula to lift the cutouts if the dough sticks to the bottom. Dip your spatula in flour if needed.

5.     Place one cutout of the pie pop onto your lined baking tray. For my case I put it into my floured mold.

6.     Dip your lollipop sticks into the beaten egg and place it on top of the 1^st cutout, with the tip in the middle of the cutout. Press lightly so that the stick sinks into the cutout but not too deep till it cuts through.  

7.     Spoon your apple filling onto the dough.

8.     Cover with 2^nd cutout and use a fork to crimp the edges.

9.     Repeat till you finish the dough and filling

10.  Brush beaten egg on the pie pops and use a toothpick to poke a few holes on the top. Sprinkle brown sugar on the tops.

11.  Bake at 180C for about 15-20min or until golden brown. Let cool on tray before holding the pops upright.

 

 

 

 

Dipping the stick in egg before placing it in the pie pop ensures that the pop does not slip off easily after baking

 

 

The end result is a buttery crumbly pie crust that melts in your mouth! The filling is a bit on the tangy side more than sweet so for those who has a sweet tooth, you might want to add more sugar. I will also mash some of the apples the next round to make some applesauce and mix it into the filling.