Shortcake Cookies

Now that I've finished my Adventures in the USA series and it's now time for uni to start again (final year), there's several recipes that I want to share.  For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing recipes I've found in the June 2015 edition of the Tesco Food Family Living magazine.  The first of these recipes will be for shortcake cookies.  The original recipe includes a double cream, yoghurt and strawberry filling, but I decided to leave that bit out because my brother doesn't like strawberries (I love them though) and because I wanted to make this recipe vegan.  To do this, I swapped butter for Pure, a dairy-free vegan margarine that was recommended to me a few months ago when I was experimenting with recipes for chocolate Rice Krispie nests for a "Ladies Tea Party" at uni just after Easter.

Ingredients

(makes about 12 small cookies)
150g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
40g plus 1 tablespoon caster sugar
100g vegan margarine, such as Pure

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 160 degrees Celsius if using a fan oven / gas mark 4.
2. Measure out the sugar and margarine into a bowl and use an electric whisk to beat the two until smooth.
3. Work in the flour to make a dry dough.  Wrap in Clingfilm and chill for 20 minutes.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a long baguette-like stick.  Divide the dough into 12 approximately equal portions.
5. Use your hands to flatten each portion of dough to about 5mm thick.  Use an approximately 7cm/3 inch diameter cutter to cut a round cookie out of each portion.  Re-roll the scraps if needed.
6. Cook on a lined baking tray for 12-15 minutes until golden.
7. Leave to cool on the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
8. Serve with strawberries or banana nice cream.

Double Chocolate Cookies

This is rather late (it's now Sunday, not Friday), but I've had a more busy and interesting week than usual, and I'm now trying to catch up with everything before my next placement talk (where CVs and interviews will be discussed) on Tuesday morning.

This week, I've been attending some of the films shown at the National Media Museum's Media and Conflict Interchange as part of my Media Ethics, Compliance and Sustainability module.  The three films I saw, The Wind Rises (a Studio Ghibli film), Leave to Remain (a drama about young asylum seekers applying to stay in England), and Still The Enemy Within (a documentary about the miners' strike of 1984-85), were all excellent, and I'm looking forward to probably watching them again as I write my essay on them for my coursework.  I would definitely recommend these films even if you don't have to study them.

Also, at the end of last week, I took part in a 24 hour show performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  This means that auditions, all rehearsals, costumes and set-building were completed within 24 hours.  I only had 4 hours sleep (between 2am and 6am), and most of the rest of the time, we were rehearsing different songs (including the Time Warp) and running through lines (I was one of the four narrators), and most mealtimes were much later than I'd normally aim to have them.  In any case, it was so much fun with all my friends.  I'd have expected to have felt a lot more tired (I did just before bedtime though), but I think I'd had much more energy than usual because I'd taken a LOT of fruit, chocolate and other goodies with me.  One of those goodies was a packet of double chocolate cookies grabbed from Morrisons at the last minute.  I'd had to take a couple of beauties with me to one of the rehearsals due to the rest of my food being in a different part of the theatre.  The following recipe is a double chocolate cookie recipe from Susie Theodorou's Coffee & Bites.

Ingredients (to make 15 cookies)

225g (8oz/1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
225g (8oz/1 1/4 cups) soft light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
275g (10oz/2 1/2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (i.e. Bournville)
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
175g (6oz/1 1/4 cups) plain (bittersweet) chocolate (i.e. Bournville), roughly chopped
butter for greasing

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, 160-170 degrees Celsius fan-assisted, 350 degrees Fahrenheit, or gas mark 4.
2. Cream together the butter and the sugar until smooth and fluffy in texture and light in colour - it will be faster using either a food processor or an electric mixer.  Then, gradually beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) into a large bowl, then fold into the cookie mixture.
4. Fold in the chocolate pieces, using a plastic spatula to scrape well along the sides of the bowl to ensure that all of the ingredients are mixed together.  Chill the mixture for 20 minutes.
5. Grease 2-3 large baking sheets with butter.  You will have to bake in batches as the cookies expand a lot - 3 cookies per baking sheet.  Roll the cookie mixture into 15 golf-ball-size balls and place well apart on the baking sheets.  Press them down gently with the back of a greased spoon.
6. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes until the edges are firm, but the centres are still just soft when gently pressed.
7. Cool for a minute or two before transferring to a wire rack.  Serve warm or cold.