Sticky Toffee Pudding Cookies

While studying abroad in Brighton, England, a good friend and I became addicted to a British dessert served at our favourite vegetarian restaurant, Wai Kika Moo Kau. The dessert? Sticky toffee pudding.

It was a small bread-based pudding, like the texture of a warmed brownie, served with toffee sauce. It was delicious. We asked for a recipe but there was none to be given, they were an ordered food, not house-made, so we wrote down characteristics and ingredients we thought we could taste, and the owner of the restaurant wrote down the ingredients on the box; we were mostly right, we only missed the preservatives. Still, that wasn't enough. When I got home I knew I had to re-create this food for my friend, or at least the flavour.

Buttery, brown sugary, and date-studded, these are best served warm.



Sticky Toffee Pudding Cookies

Ingredients:
1 c unsalted butter, softened
1 c dark brown sugar + 1/4 c reserved to coat outside of cookies
1/4 c dark corn syrup/golden syrup
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract

2 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder

2 oz finely chopped dates

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
   
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder.
   
3. In a large bowl, beat butter and 1 c dark brown sugar together. Add dark corn syrup, eggs, and vanilla extract. Beat until well incorporated.
   
4. Gradually add dry ingredients. Blend until even and smooth.
   
5. Place in freezer with scooping spoon for approximately 15 minutes – this dough needs to firm up to be rolled into balls.
   
6. Set aside a small dish with about 1/4 c dark brown sugar – the reserved sugar – for coating. Scoop dough balls out with a teaspoon and drop onto non-stick cookie sheet.
   
7. Lightly press dough balls down. Top with light dusting of brown sugar.
   
8. Bake for 8 minutes (at 0 sea level).

Enjoy!

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies

I should just move to the south, I think. There's pretty much nothing I love more than southern cuisine, including (especially?) the regional peculiarities and delights. This is one reason I am a huge fan of the Red Velvet Cake.

Somehow that delightful southern dessert has made its way into the spotlight pretty recently – I've seen it popping up a lot in the last couple years, and now it seems every restaurant or bakery you patron offers their variation on it. This is, of course, good and bad; it's become a bit of a Red Velvet crapshoot.

I'm lucky to live just a couple miles from Phoenix's award-winning "Best Red Velvet Cake" winner, Lo Lo's Chicken and Waffles. It's enough to compete with the best I've had while in the south. It's amazing.

But… it's time to make a confession: I hate cake. Red Velvet Cake is pretty much the only cake I like, and it really has to be dense and moist for me to attempt to eat it (luckily, Lo Lo's is!). And what's the alternative, cupcakes? The frosting-to-cake ratio always makes me a little queasy, especially the more upscale the cupcake shop, where there always seems to be an icing competition going on; the greater the mountain of instant-diabetes piled on the top of a good-sized hunk of denser cake does not determine a better cupcake and, frankly, I think it downplays the deliciousness (and star!), the cake part. Now that everyone's churning out their own version it's easy to find it, but they often miss their mark. That's why I played with this recipe a bit and tried to make something combining my favourite parts.

A friend asked for a Red Velvet Cookie of some sort for her birthday. I knew I wanted something that was a nod to the original but played more to the proportions I liked: 1/3 frosting, 2/3 Red Velvet. I wanted to work with a different texture and still keep it portable. I wanted the tang of the cream cheese frosting (don't even talk to me about Red Velvet if you're a buttercream fan… it has to be cream cheese base! I'm a purist!). I wanted a bastardized (but delicious!) version of one of the southern comfort classics. It's more portable and digestible -- it's small but still filling and completely over-indulgent. That's how these cookies came to be.





Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies

COOKIES

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt


1 cup superfine/bakers' sugar
1 cup of unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
2 Tablespoons buttermilk

2 Tablespoons cocoa powder (heaping)
4 Tablespoons red food colouring

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
   
2. Mix the dry ingredients, the first group of ingredients. Set aside.
   
3. Cream first group of wet ingredients, the soft butter and sugar. Add the egg and buttermilk after it's creamed. Blend well.
   
4. Add the third group of ingredients to the other wet ingredients; add cocoa powder, slowly. Be careful, if you add it too fast or blend it too quickly you will be breathing this stuff in. When it is well incorporated, add the red food colouring to the creamed mixture. The 4 Tbl is an approximation; I had a small bottle of colouring and simply added the whole thing, the point is to make it very red. Blend well.
   
5. Add the last ingredients to the wet mixture. To do this, combine the baking soda and vinegar in a small dish and mix well until the reaction is done (Science experiment in the kitchen! Anyone feeling the urge to papier mache a volcano?). Add the vanilla to that well-mixed paste. Combine the mixed vanilla, vinegar, and baking soda into the wet bowl. Blend well.
   
6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ones.
   
7. Form teaspoon-sized balls of batter and roll into small balls with your hands. Squash the ball down a bit with the ball of your hand before popping the baking sheet into the oven.
   
8. Bake for 7 minutes.
   
9. Allow to cool.
   
10. Layer frosting (recipe following) between two cookies and eat!
    

FROSTING (Thanks, Pinch My Salt! I'll only ever use your recipe, it's the tangiest!)

Ingredients:
16 oz. cream cheese (2 packages), softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter (one stick), softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Cream together cream cheese and butter until smooth.
   
2. Blend in powdered sugar, salt and vanilla extract into creamed mixture.
   
3. Turn mixer on high and beat until light and fluffy.
   
4. Use immediately or refrigerate, covered, until ready to use. If refrigerated, the frosting will need to be brought to room temperature before using (after frosting softens up, beat with mixer until smooth).
   

Enjoy!