Chocolate Candy Cookies

I made some peanut butter cookies the other day and topped them off with Hersheys Kisses. Yum and yummer!

You know the kind Im talking about. Theyre an oldie but a goodie and one I never get tired of.

Peanut Butter Kisses. Peanut Butter Blossoms. Whatever you want to call them they are hard to resist.

Its been a long time since Ive had these simple cookies, but I still feel the same excitement whenever they come out of the oven.

I mean look at these tempting little guys in all their melty, chocolaty topped goodness and try not to eat one. Just try.

Arent they a happy cookie?

And they are so easy to make. Roll the cookie dough into 1 1/2 inch balls.

And then roll the balls in sugar.

Bringing back any memories yet?

Bake. Let them puff up

And then press.

Push the Kisses into the cookies as soon as they come out of the oven.

The heat from the cookies, will slightly soften the chocolate and give the candies a wonderful glossy look.

And thats exactly the best time to take a bite.

Have a voice of reason nearby so you dont eat them all in one sitting.

You can also use the same cookie dough with Reeses.

Roll the balls again.

But this time press the dough into a mini muffin tray. Just leave enough room to place a peanut butter cup in the middle.

And bake.

And bite.

And try to behave.

And if you make cookies with both of the candies, just use some of the extra Kisses to decorate.

Heat them up in the microwave and use a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off to drizzle the melted chocolate across the tops.

You can bake them in the pan with or without liners. Whatever you prefer.

Or you can make them like the Kisses Cookies and just press them into the ball after they bake.

Either way, enjoy!

Chocolate Candy Cookies

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, slightly softened
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
Hersheys Kisses or Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, or both

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Sift flour, soda and salt with a wi! re whisk and set aside.
• Beat butter and peanut butter
• Add sugar and beat until fluffy.
• Add egg and vanilla.
• Add flour mixture and combine.
• Roll dough into 1 to 1-1/2 inch balls and then roll the balls in sugar to coat.

For Peanut Butter Kisses:

• Place rolled balls on parchment paper covered baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.
• Remove from the oven and press an unwrapped Hersheys Kisses candy into the center of each cookie.
• Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

For Peanut Butter Cuppies:

• Press rolled balls into the cavities of a mini muffin tray.
• Place an unwrapped Reeses peanut butter cup into each.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes.
• Remove. Let cool and then drizzle with chocolate if desired.
• Note: you can bake these in wrappers or directly in the pan.

Note: There are about 36 Reeses and around 70 Kisses in a regular size bag. I forgot to count how many this recipe will make, but if you go with Kisses, youll definitely have enough candies. Guess Ill just have to make them again. Darn.

I baked: French Brioche

Earlier this year, I made French brioche for the first time.Unfortunately, this recipe has been stuck in my drafts for ages -- not because it's not good (quite the contrary actually) but I just didn't get around to resizing the photos and hence forgotten. Anyway, I thought this would be a really great thing to make for Christmas Day breakfast / brunch -- imagine this, brioche freshly baked from the oven topped with a beautiful poached egg or scrambled eggs. Perfect!

Brioche is a classic French bread that is very rich and buttery with a dense texture (like Madeira cake). It is very good but not for someone who is on a diet since a lot of butter is used to make this bread.

Since we didn't have a brioche mould, we used a 23 x 13cm loaf tin as a substitute, which worked just fine. We also tried making some mini brioche shaped (you can watch how to make this on youtube) bread which looked a little like mini "turds".. lol. Anyway because they were so small, they were slightly overcooked. To make it easy for yourself, just use a loaf tin. You will need to start preparing on Christmas Eve if you want to serve this for Christmas Day since it needs a significant amount of time to rise.

Poached egg with freshly ground salt and pepper and sundried tomatoes with brioche

French Brioche

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

350g unbleached white bread flour (plain flour will work too)

1/2 tsp salt

15g fresh yeast

60ml (4 tbsp) lukewarm milk

3 eggs

175g butter, softened at room temperature

25g caster sugar

For the glaze

1 egg yolk

15ml (1 tbsp) milk

1. Sift the flour and salt together into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Put the yeast in measuring jug and stir in the milk.

2. Add the yeast mixture to the centre of the flour with the eggs and mix together to form a soft dough.

3. Using your hand, beat the dough for 4-5 minutes until smooth and elastic. Cream the butter and sugar together. Gradually add the butter mixture to the dough, ensuring it is incorporated before adding more. Beat until smooth, shiny and elastic.

4. Cover the bowl with lightly oiled clear film and leave the dough to! rise, i n a warm place, for 1-2 hours or until doubled in bulk.

5. Lightly knock back the dough, then re-cover and place in the fridge for 8-10 hours or overnight.

6. Lightly grease a 2 3/4 pint (1.6 litre) brioche mould. Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface. Cut off almost a quarter and set aside. Shape the rest into a ball and place in the prepared mould. Shape the reserved dough into an elongated egg shape. Using two or three fingers, make a hole in the centre of the large ball of dough. Gently press the narrow end of the egg-shaped dough into the hole. (Alternatively, if you're using a loaf tin, just place the dough into the tin)

Mini brioche -- what do they look like? You be the judge.

7. Mix the egg yolk and milk together for the glaze, and brush a little over the brioche. Cover with lightly oiled cling film and leave to rise, in a warm place, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the dough nearly reaches the top of the mould.

8. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 230C. Brush the brioche with the remaining glaze and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 190C and bake for a further 20-25 minutes, or until golden. Turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

When it first comes out from the oven, it may look a little shiny and "hard". But after it has cooled, you can cut the loaf and should find that the texture is dense and buttery (almost like a Madeira cake).

9. To poach an egg, fill a frying pan with 4cm barely simmering water. Break each egg into a cup and lower into the water. Cook for approximately 2 minutes (you will know when the egg white has set). Use a slotted spoon to remove. Serve immediately. (This is poaching eggs the Delia Smith way which works very well for me)

Brioche on its own tastes fab! Or for something extra decadent, slather on some more homemade butter. Eat first, worry about weight gain after the festivities :P

This would definitely make a great breakfast / brunch for Christmas day.

Scrambled eggs on brioche works too

Or just top it with some sundried tomatoes

Runny yolk on brioche, delightful.

For full set of photos, click here to view.

Croquettes.

Whenever there are leftovers from dinner i.e either boiled chicken or deep fried fish.

There will be croquettes for breakfast.

Scrap off the deep fried fish's flesh.
Mash boiled potato
Add in chopped spring onion and coriander leaves
A sprinkling of salt and pepper.
Mix it thoroughly and roll into balls.

Cooked in the oven at 230 c until golden brown and it's ready to serve.

Croquettes-golden brown-fragrant and full of textures.

Pineapple Hotel Steakhouse @ Kangaroo Point

I am alive!


After stressing about how we were going to pack everything up in our unit, getting it insured, whether the removalists will come, where to park our car over Christmas, I am glad it is almost all over.


Most of the stuff is now packed in boxes, I have just paid for insurance, confirmed that I can have a parking space over Christmas at my apartment and reassured myself that the removalist is no con job.


Apart from that, we have been visiting all our favourite joints at any available opportunity; once a week of the tonkotsu ramen in Sunnybank and lots of Korean Fried Chicken.


It was not only last weekend that we said to ourselves, "hey it is our last weekend in Brisbane, yes we are kind of broke but shouldn't we try some more new places?".


So we did.


After flipping through the Entertainment Book which is well seasoned, we decided to steak out at Pineapple Hotel.


Pineapple Hotel is one of those "hotels" that actually doesn't have accommodation but is a pub / steakhouse / pokies bar. With a display of various cuts of beef in different sizes, it got us salivating.


I decided to order the signature cut, the 700 gram T Bone which was gigantic.

At AUD 40, it was not cheap but having the buy 1 free 1 deal, it was a bargain at AUD20. A steak this size at the butcher will cost you close to that. However, it wasn't perfect.

Mine didn'! t come w ith any garden salad despite the description on the menu. However I wasn't really in the mood for green leaves and I was pretty sure the waitress would have obliged to give me some. Slight oversight.

I guess the problem I had with the steak was that it didn't have enough char on it, probably due to 2 things; the grill wasn't hot enough or there was NO seasoning on the steak. Although not just exclusively to Pineapple Hotel, I find that a number of places just don't season their steak before going on the grill, is it an Australian habit?

That said, the meat was cooked according to how I want and I might have made a mistake ordering butter instead of a sauce since the steak wasn't seasoned.

If I had to go for steak at a "hotel", I am afraid there are a few places that are a notch better than this namely Caxton, Norman and Breakfast Creek.

However if you like your steak au natural with no seasoning, this is the place for you, especially if you can get hold of an entertainment voucher.

Address and contact details:

Verdict: 3 stars out of 5 stars. I am afraid the steaks here are not my cup of tea.

Meat & Fish Balls Soup

Meat & Fish Balls Soup

You must be wondering what has happened to me?

Why suddenly blogging so many food during this month?

Well, I wanted to finish blogging all my recipes that has been

hyphenating inside my PC before end of this year and

soon I will be going to 3 countries for holiday with my family.

First, you have to boil the dried anchovies soup (click here for this recipe).

Once your anchovies soup is boiled, pour in your

favourite meat balls, fish balls and etc. Let it boil.

Once the meat or fish balls are floating on top,

that means it is cooked. Then turn off the fire

and serve. Taste it, if not enough of pepper or salt,

then drizzle in some.

Pour in some chopped spring onion.

Serve with rice.

Adults and children sure will like to drink this.

!

In the Kante Cellar

In the Kante Cellar

Deep in the cellars of the Fruili based winery Kante. In the picture is Goran Kante, the winemaker of this excellent Italian estate. This image forms part of a series of wine related photographs published every Sunday; imaginatively titled The Sunday Wine Shot.

Spittoon.biz - A UK Wine Blog - We Spit... So You Can Swallow

Dried Anchovies Soup

Dried Anchovies Soup

Instead of chicken soup, you can use this

Dried Anchovies Soup (Kong Yee Chai Tong in Cantonese)

as your soup base for noodles soup, vegetables soup and etc.

Very easy to make, if you have made extra,

you can frozen it for another day to use.

2 cups of Dried Anchovies Soup - wash and drain.

(if you purchase whole dried anchovies, please take out

the bones and inner stuff)

Heat up 1 cup of cooking oil.

Once heated up, pour in the dried anchovies and

stir fry until slightly brown......not overly brown,

if not your soup will be bitter.

Then pour in water.

Let ! it boil for 1/2 an hour.

After a while, impurities will be floating on top,

scoop it out and boil further. Taste it and add

pepper and salt, if prefer.

Swtich off the fire.

Well, isn't it is easy to boil?

Dried Anchovies Soup (Kong Yee Sai Tong in Cantonese)

I use this soup quite often for my noddle soup, vegetables soup

and etc.