Peanut Butter Cookies, vegan or not

Yes, I know, 'cookies'. Never liked the word, but I take it to mean chewy biscuits, whereas 'biscuits' are crunchy to some degree. These are definitely cookies. Vegan recipe, with dairy alternatives in brackets.

Preparation takes about 20 minutes, baking 12 minutes or so. Oven needs to be at 180C fan, 190C otherwise, and a large baking tray ready, lined with parchment. This recipe makes 16-20.

Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
170g plain flour
75g demerara sugar
100g granulated sugar
1 tsp fine salt
1 tsp baking powder
50 Flora spread (butter-based spread)
100g peanut butter
60ml plant-based milk (dairy milk)
10 soft ready-to-eat apricots (from a pouch), snipped fairly finely - optional
16-20 peanuts, whole or halved, roasted or not

Method
1  Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well to make a dough, using
       a mixer, a wooden spoon, or just hands. Make sure all the Flora and flour
       disappear into the dough. 

2  Put individual tablespoons of the dough on the baking tray, a little apart, and
       press lightly to flatten a little. Push a peanut into the middle of each one.

3  Bake for about 12 minutes until they are turning golden. If your oven, like mine,
       can bake unevenly, quickly turn the baking tray around halfway through.

4  They will seem a little soft, but leave to cool and they become nicely chewy.

Adapt
Chocolate chips could be added, or substitute finely chopped dates or snipped raisins for the apricots. If the cookies don't need to be vegan, buttery spread could be used instead of Flora, and dairy milk.

Shortbread with (or without) Stem Ginger

Shortbread, the real thing - surely everyone loves it? Not difficult to make, and it lends itself to interesting flavourings. The option here is stem ginger (clue is in the title ...), but this shortbread without it is delicate and delightful too, I think.

This recipe takes very roughly 60 minutes to prepare including chilling, and about 25 to bake, allowing for varying ovens and depending on the size of your biscuits, as they say. Here's a very artistically posed picture of four made with the ginger:

(Well my great uncle was an artist. But not a cook.)

I like to make these small, about 5cm x 3cm, on a baking sheet but of course they can be larger and even hand-pressed into a square or round tin (for 'petticoat tails'). At the smaller size the quantity of dough makes 25 or so. Either way, the baking sheet or tin is best lined with parchment.

Shortbread with Stem Ginger
Ingredients
120g plain flour
55g semolina flour
60g caster sugar
120g butter, softened a little
4 pieces of stem ginger, chopped fairly finely

Method
1  Sift the two flours into a medium bowl. Add 50g of the caster sugar, the butter and 
         3/4 of the ginger, and blend together. Then knead the dough on a floured board 
         (or with dough hook) until smooth. Rest in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
2  Roll out or press the dough to a thickness of about 7-8mm, and cut into pieces of the
         size of your choice. Rectangles are traditional and easier to avoid waste than if
         you choose circles.
3  Place the pieces, a little apart from one another, on the baking sheet and prick each
         2-3 times with a fork. Press one small piece of the remaining ginger into the top
         of each.
4  Bake for about 25-28 minutes until firm and golden brown, watching carefully for the
         final few minutes.
5  Leave on the baking sheet to cool a little, then sprinkle with the remaining 10g of caster
         sugar. Cool completely and store in a tin.

No ginger on top of these

Variations
Instead of stem ginger, I fancy using dried lavender next time, since it's lovely in muffins and creme brulee. Not a fan of millionaire's shortbread, but a pattern of thin lines of flavoured icing piped over the biscuits could work well. Thinking strawberry, lemon or orange. Or, for special occasions (e.g. Easter), the biscuits could be a little bigger and have a name piped on each. To be dry, you could pipe 'biscuit' on them.

Pushover Wheat-Free Cranberry & Coconut Biscuits

They are what it says in the title!

With my long history of sporadic reaction to wheat, I know that if I go too far then my system will complain. Many years ago, self-diagnosed after 6m of medical tests, I then went totally wheat-free for a couple of years and was immediately well. Now I'm able to get away with most things in moderation.

Must have been too devil-may-care recently, as the intolerance is back and so, therefore, are the wheat-free ingredients. My first version of this recipe was with spelt flour - I think spelt is an early ancestor of modern wheat - and it caused problems. This is the adaptation using Asda's 'free from' plain white flour, and it worked very well. It is made from rice flour and potato starch. However, I would expect the recipe to work with straight plain wheat flour too.

The recipe makes about 20 biscuits. I've called it pushover because it's quite quick and involves no 'rubbing in' or 'rolling out and cutting'. Preparation should take 20-25 minutes, and baking 12 minutes or so. Cook on a baking sheet, either a good non-stick one or lined with baking parchment.

Wheat-Free Cranberry & Coconut Biscuits
The oven should be ready at 170C.

Ingredients

130g demerara sugar
80g melted butter (20 secs in microwave, or in a pan)
270g wheat-free flour (plus a little for shaping later)
2 tsp baking powder (should be wheat-free - usually are)
Half tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
25g dried cranberries, snipped if larger than a pea
50g desiccated coconut

Method

1  Place the sugar and melted butter in a large bowl and beat well - either with a wooden
       spoon or using an electric mixer.
2  In another bowl thoroughly mix the flour, baking powder and salt.
3  Beat the egg, vanilla and milk into the sugar/butter mixture.
4  Add in the flour mix with the cranberries and coconut and mix gently to form a soft
       dough. Make sure the cranberries are evenly distributed.
5  Using hands, roll pieces of the dough into spheres about the size of a ping-pong ball
       and place them on the baking sheet with gaps between of about 4cm as they'll 
       spread a little. Flour your hands from to time if the dough is sticking. Flatten the 
       biscuits a little with the back of a fork, leaving tine marks.
6  Bake in the centre of the oven for about 12-13 minutes but check after 10. The edges
       should be turning golden and the tops starting to firm up.

Chocolate chips - white or dark - would work well here (if they're wheat-free), perhaps with cranberries but not maybe with the coconut. Lemon would be worth a try, too: perhaps omit the milk, berries and coconut and add the grated zest of 1 large lemon and all of its juice at stage 3. That would make slightly fewer but very interesting biscuits!

A Bit of Baking - Crunchy Pawprint Biscuits

For a change, a quick piece about my favourite biscuit recipe. These remind me of the prints left on soft surfaces by cats, hence the name. The recipe is based on, and adapted from, one from Biscuits by Miranda Gore Browne, although the name is my own.

Hettie

The quantities given make about 20-22 biscuits. Preparation takes 15-20 minutes, and baking 12-15. It's easy to manage, and needs no 'rubbing in' of butter with flour. The oven will need to be at 175C, and two baking trays should be ready, lined with parchment.

Pawprint Crunchy Biscuits
Ingredients

160g butter, warmed until just melting
160g caster sugar
Half teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten lightly
150g plain flour plus a separate teaspoonful
35g desiccated coconut
75g jam (strawberry is good) or marmalade

Not the best pic, but there were only
these two left by the time I took it!

Method
1  Put the butter, sugar and vanilla extract into a medium bowl and beat well until mixed
          to a very even consistency.
2  While still beating the mixture, add in the egg. Stir in the 150g of flour and coconut and
          mix to a soft, sticky dough. If it's very wet, mix in another level tablespoon of flour.
3  Place balls of the dough (about the size of a walnut in its shell) well apart on the baking
          trays.
4  Dipping your thumb into the extra flour each time (to avoid sticking), make a deep dent 
          in each ball, then fill the dents with the jam or marmalade.
5  Bake for 12-15 minutes until the biscuits are golden - keep an eye on them because
          they will quickly overcook around the edges. 
6  Once cold, keep any left over in a tin - they last well like that.

Lemon Drizzle Squares and Easy Peanut Biscuits

Here's my definitive recipe for lemon drizzle squares soaked in a sharp lemon syrup, and one for peanut biscuits. Both are easy to make, but while the biscuits are, as it were, a piece of cake, the squares may need a little effort if you are beating the ingredients by hand.

Lemon Drizzle Squares

I make these so that each square is about two bites, and this quantity of ingredients makes 20-24. They can be frozen if (by chance) there are any left over. The recipe fits a baking tin about 4cm deep and base 24x17cm; it should be fully lined with baking parchment.

Ingredients

150g butter (room temp), chopped into small pieces

150g caster sugar

2 free-range eggs

100ml milk

150g self-raising flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

juice and finely grated rind of 2 large lemons

80g granulated sugar

The oven should be at 170C if fan type, otherwise slightly higher, and shelf in the middle.

Method

1  In a large bowl, beat the butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy, without lumps. 

        (Best with an electric mixer but can be done by hand with a wooden spoon.)

2  Beat the eggs into the mixture gradually. Don't worry if it looks slightly curdled.

3  Add the milk and beat again until well mixed.

4  Stir in the flour, baking powder and grated lemon rind.

5  Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin and smooth over.

6  Bake for about 25 minutes until golden. (It's ready if a skewer inserted into the centre

        comes out clean.)

7  Meanwhile, in a bowl mix the lemon juice and granulated sugar. 

8  When the cake is ready, leave it in the pan and prick all over the top with the skewer,

        maybe 40-50 times. Give the juice/sugar mix a stir and drizzle it over slowly so that

        it seeps into the cake.

9  When cool, cut into squares of the size you want. They may be a little gooey!

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Peanut Biscuits

These are quicker and easier to make - the recipe is for about 16 biscuits. As long as they are completely cooled, they can be stored in a tin. A large baking tray, lined with baking parchment, is needed and maybe a smaller one too, as they have to be spaced apart so they can spread during cooking. 

Ingredients

75g demerara sugar

100g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

50g soft butter or spread such as Flora

100g peanut butter (preferably crunchy type)

50ml milk

160g plain flour

50g chopped plain chocolate (optional but nice)

The oven should be at around 180C for fan type, otherwise 200C. Shelves not too near the top.

Method

1  Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix them thoroughly (a wooden spoon 

        should be OK), making sure the butter is well distributed.

2  Mix in the chocolate pieces if used.

3  Take pieces of the dough about the size of a walnut shell and place on the baking tray,

        leaving maybe 6cm between them. Flatten slightly.

4  Bake until the biscuits are golden but don't allow them to darken or the chocolate

        pieces to burn - this may take 15 minutes but check after 13.

5  Slide the biscuits, still on the parchment, onto a wire rack to cool.

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I hope you enjoy reading about these treats and - especially - eating them!

Thanks for visiting.