Chocolate Cinnamon Squidgers

I asked Max what his favourite baked treat of mine was. "Ooooh. Chocolate cinnamon birthday cake! No, maybe your lemon-honey cookies! Um, wait, that chocolate banana cake. Or maybe the Chocolate Cinnamon Cookies? Nope, too hard, I can't pick one". Well, he can't pick one, but here's one of his picks!

Chocolate Cinnamon Squidgers

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar (not packed)

1 large egg (free range please)

4 ounces melted semi-sweet chocolate

1/4 cup golden syrup (or light corn syrup)

1 3/4 cups white flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoons cinnamon

handful of dark chocolate chips or chunks

sprinkling of white sugar*

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. While this is going on blend the brown sugar with the butter. Once thorougly blended, add the egg and stir in. Now add your melted chocolate (some of which will adher to the side of the saucepan: this is to enable you to wipe it off with your finger and taste for quality assurance purposes) and golden syrup. Blend dry ingredients and add to the moist. Stir thoroughly to combine and then toss in chocolate chips or chunks. Shape the cookies to the size you like and dust with sugar. Bake for 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from the oven and let cool a minute or two before transferring to your wire rack. If you're rushing around, trying to get kids ready for school the cookies will take advantage of this and fall apart if you try to move them too soon. If you're trying to get ready for work on top of this they will chuckle evilly while falling through the racks. So go away, do something else productive and reappear in a couple of minutes to slide them over.

* note on sugar: I have recently discovered that on the coast our white sugar is cane sugar. Cane sugar, unlike beet sugar, is for some mad reason processed using animal bones to bleach it. Or something. At any rate, former beings are used in the processing of sugar in Vancouver. Ewwwww! So now I'm using organic sugar (not processed this way) and brown sugar (and hoping that's not processed this way) and hoping this weirdness abates at some point. Being a vegetarian (not vegan) baker is tougher than it looks! Not mountain-climbing tough, for sure, but a little salt with the sweet. Having said that I'm appreciating Max moving me over to deeper thinking about my almost 3 decades of veggie habits. We're also rennet-free now and gelatin free with vitamins (never thought about that one: again, ewwww!).

Vietnamese dinner for 3

I'm going off topic, branching out to savouries, carried away by the extreme moreishness of tonight's dinner. We had Japanese food the other night for dinner and I had tempura batter left over: googled it and some internet people claim the Vietnamese eat tempura. Well, if it's on the internet it must be true, right? What to eat when you take out the meat? Eat this, baby, eat this!

Jasmine rice: you can figure this out by yourselves. Just make sure you wash, wash, wash the rice first. If you don't have jasmine rice, make plain old white, I won't tell anyone. I threw in a few snowpeas once I figured the rice was done and left the lid on for them to steam.

Peanut Sauce:

this is crazy-good. It's great that you might have lots left over, put it on steamed veg, eat it with crudites, mmmm.

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp cilantro

2 tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp soya sauce

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp chopped ginger

1 1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

1/2 vegetable oil

Whiz all this up in your whizzer of choice. (I use a tiny counter-top whizzing thing and it does the job brilliantly).

Tempura dipping sauce:

1/3 cup mirin

1/3 cup soya

Boil very briefly in a saucepan and pour in a little bowl for dipping.

Vietnamese Tofu:

1 package of firm tofu (or medium firm, throw caution to the wind!)

2 cloves of garlic

5 tablespoons soya sauce

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 bulb of lemongrass, fresh as you can find (should feel somewhat pliable)

Take the tofu out of the container and wrap gently in a piece of paper towel. When it's dry, cut into long, thinnish strips.

While the tofu's drying a little, chop up the bottom of the lemongrass, the bulb part and a bit of the green. You'll have to take off at least one of the outer layers of the lemongrass unless it's super, big-city fresh. Chop it up pretty finely and put it in a mortar. Add the chopped garlic and grind, grind, grind. Or throw it in a machine if you like making noise and washing up stuff. Put it in a bowl or pan and add the other ingredients. Add the tofu and let marinate for about an hour. When it's good and soaked, fry it up. There's plenty of oil in the marinade so no need to add more. Turn that heat up high, slap a lid on and turn the slice over when they are browned. Serve with all the nice goo from the pan (which will mostly have cooked away).

Tempura:

1 egg

2 cups of water

2 cups of flour

Mix egg with water, then watery egg with flour. Heat vegetable oil really high (then I usually turn it down just a smidge, but keep an eye on your tempura and judge accordingly). When the oil's nice and hot, dip your vegetables (we always have sweet potatoes or yams, carrots, broccoli, peppers, and onions are also nice) in the batter. Carefully (this stuff is Hoooot) drop into the oil. Stand there watching it a while. Think your thoughts, don't take any phone calls. When it's browning a tad, turn it over, cook a wee bit more. Take it out, put some more in. Let the stuff that's waiting on a paper towel cool down a bit then give it a test bite. Mmmmm.

Yummy, gooey, crunchy, soft contraband

As part of my saving money and decluttering drive I've realised I need to keep better track of the groceries we've already got on hand (so back you go, redundant package of black sesame seeds). We were needing something yummy, gooey, crunchy and soft and I unearthed a package of sliced pecans I'd semi-forgotten about. Mmmmm, these could become pecan squares I thought to myself (I was feeling a bit flaked out, if you'll pardon the pun, from the recent pie-making so didn't go to chocolate pie-crust pecan pie, which, of course, was my first mental stop on the pecan goody train). These turned out Gorgeous, just Gorgeous!! As I slipped them into the oven I realised Max could not take them to school as the school is nut-free. Ah well, better make him some Chocolate Spice Cookies then. Fortunately we were sent one heck of a wind storm which knocked out power to the school, giving us a chance to eat Every Last Pecan Square and me a chance to make the Chocolate Spice Cookies.

Pecan Squares

For the Shortbread base:

3/4 cup of butter, softened*

1/2 cup brown sugar (not packed)

2 cups white flour

scattering of chocolate chips (optional!)

For the gooey pecan top:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar (not packed)

1/3 cup honey

2 1/2 cups (roughly) pecans

2 tbs cream (ran out of cream, used milk, seemed fine to me)

Making the shortbread: blend the butter and sugar thoroughly, then add the flour till combined. Put the dough in a lightly greased 8 by 8 square pan (or thereabouts) and press. Bake the base until firm, about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees, until firm and lightly browned. When it comes out, if you like, scatter the chocolate chips about straightaway.

Making the pecan topping: While the shortbread base is cooking, chop the pecans if not already chopped (though why you'd buy whole pecans for a recipe indicating chopped is beyond me: ergonomics, bakers, ergonomics!). Melt the butter slowly (burned butter seldom being a good idea) and stir in the brown sugar, honey and cream. Remember how hot this is and do not touch it, even if it does look really good. Simmer for a minute, stirring a little. Stir in the pecans, Bob's your uncle. Pour the pecan ooze over the base and pop it back in the oven. Given that the base is already cooked it's a good idea to put it on a cookie sheet so that the base does not overcook. Maybe tent the top with tin foil so that it doesn't over-brown. cook till most of the filling is bubbling and then whip it out. Let it cook, significantly, and then ... ooooooh :)

* recipes almost always specify unsalted butter, but it costs more and in my possible ignorance I figure that if recipes asking for unsalted then always ask you to put salt in the recipe, well, I'm skipping the middle man here and just using regular old salted butter. If you really like unsalted, or understand the mysterious behind buying unsalted and then putting salt in the recipe, well, it would be about 1/2 tsp of salt back in. But I don't see the point really.