My Video Channel ! And Some Cafe Volcano Cookies (Video Post)

Cafe Volcano Cookies. Easy Meringue Cookies. Watch the video!

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So finally, my channel on You Tube is up! A new beginning, uncharted waters. Intimidating but so exciting! The channel is going to be basically about baking for beginners, an extension of the series here. An endeavor to reach out to more wanna be bakers and baking enthusiasts.  It  will take me some time to get comfortable with the camera ( I am terribly camera-shy!), but am am sure you will be with me in this journey as well. Go ahead and laugh at the first few videos, I hope I will laugh at them too when I learn to face it better! Please do subscribe to the channel for updates and don't forget to leave your comments for me. To celebrate the new beginning, here are some Cafe Volcano Cookies -  crisp-crunchy, coffee flavored meringue cookies loaded with nuts!

Incredibly easy cookies, hardly any ingredients,  almost no effort - I wasted no time in baking these! Now how difficult is it to stir together egg whites (no whipping!), toasted nuts, sugar and coffee, heat them for a minute and bake them?  I see you nodding your head and mentally checking your freezer for the nuts you could use. Well, you could use walnuts, pecans, almonds or even cashews or a mix of these.

What appears like a little masses of nuts barely held together by the sticky whites, magically puff up in the oven! They turn into 'higgledy, piggledy bumpy shapes' as Dorie Greenspan calls them. Well, who in their right minds will look for glamor when the toasty crunchy nuts, coffee and the crisp-crunchy meringue more than make up for it!

Thank God for coffee, the magical ingredient that adds so much flavor while cutting back on the sweetness of the meringue. I can't imagine appreciating these as much without the coffee, as otherwise the cookies would be cloyingly sweet.

From Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours , from here

CAFE VOLCANO COOKIES

The ingredients below will make a large batch, I quartered the recipe and baked two batches. Would suggest you do the same unless using a large oven. 

 Ingredients:  

Almonds - 1 cup (sliced, slivered or whole), coarsely chopped (read note) 

Walnuts - 1 cup, coarsely chopped 

Egg whites - 2 large / 60 grams

Sugar - 200 grams / 1 cup (preferably caster or granulated sugar ground fine)

Vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon

Instant coffee - 4 1/2 teaspoons

Method :

1. Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F.
  Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

2. Toast the nuts till fragrant either in the oven or in a skillet on the stove. Be careful to stir them frequently or they will burn. Transfer them to a plate, cool.

3. Take all ingredients including the nuts in a heavy saucepan*, this is very important. Stir well with a spatula to mix.

4. On low heat, keep stirring constantly till the mixture is just warm to the touch. This will take a minute or so. Do not walk away or stop stirring! Remove from the heat.

5. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of batter on the lined sheets, spacing them an inch apart.

6. Bake for about 15 -16 minutes rotating the pans half-way through the time. (Recipe specifies 20 minutes). The cookies are done when they look puffed , cratered, shiny and dry. Bake less than more, bake a couple of minutes longer if needed. Be careful not to burn the cookies.
7. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them remain on the sheets for 5 minutes before gently peeling them from the liners and transferring them to racks to cool to room temperature.
8. Storing: Kept in a cool, dry place at room temperature (they should never be refrigerated), the cookies will hold up for about 3 days. As with all meringues, humidity will make them go soggy and sticky.

Please note : I used 60 grams (1/2 cup) of cashews for 1/4 recipe and then 60 grams walnuts (1/2 cup) for another 1/4 batch. I made some with walnuts and some with cashew. Surprisingly the cashew ones tasted even better to me. Am going to making these with almonds next time. Hazelnuts shouldn't be bad either!

Eminently enjoyable cookies these are, can imagine it would be great crumbled over vanilla ice cream as well! Please do try these and let me know how you liked them.

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Cocoa Meringue Mushrooms - Welcome December!

December is the baker's favorite month of the year for very obvious reasons! Fruit mixing, fruit soaking and Christmas cake-bake-talk is terribly infectious, making me look forward to the season even more.  I normally tend to procrastinate forever about my Christmas baking, end up huffing and puffing to put up a post here before the season is finally over. This year however, I seem to be a tiny bit more organized as I find myself having more than one Christmas bake to post! 

Here come some Cocoa Meringue Mushrooms I baked a few days ago. I will have to confess I made these more for the festive feel, as otherwise I find meringue too sweet, but fun nevertheless ! Crisp and sweet, these cookies make a charming addition to your Christmas cookie platter or to decorate your Yule Log. The bonus, these can be made way ahead and stored airtight for a few weeks.

This recipe for Crisp French Meringue comes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible. She had baked a batch of meringue shells when a French pastry chef visiting her remarks that they are heavy. Torn between insult and curiosity, she learns from him that using superfine sugar and some powdered sugar makes for lighter meringue. She experiments to bake the lightest meringues! 

Ingredients: Halve the recipe unless you have an oven large enough. Remember to halve the ingredients as you follow the procedure.

Egg whites - 4 large - 120 grams 

Cream of tartar  - 1/2 teaspoon

Superfine sugar - 115 grams (please read note) 
Powdered sugar - 115 grams 
Cocoa powder : 2 tablespoons (optional)
Extra cocoa for dusting on top. 

Method : 

• Pre-heat oven to 100 C / 200 F. 
• Line a heavy baking sheet with parchment. 
• Sift the powdered sugar with the 2 tablespoons cocoa until uniformly blended, keep aside. 
• Keep a teaspoon of cocoa in a small strainer ready for sifting over the piped meringue. 
• Fit a pastry bag with number 3 round decorating tube. ( I have used my 1.5 cm plain nozzle) Poise it over a tall glass so it is easier to fill in the meringue. 
• Make sure the bowl, the mixer blades, the cups, spatula, the weighing bowl and just about anything you use here is really clean, free of grease and dry. 
• On low speed, beat the whites till frothy, then add the cream of tartar. Beat on medium speed while gradually adding 2 tablespoons superfine sugar. Do not rush adding the sugar. 
• When soft peaks form when the beater is raised, add 1 tablespoon superfine sugar and increase speed to high. 
• When stiff peaks are formed when the beater is raised slowly, gradually beat in remaining superfine sugar, beat until stiff and glossy. This reads like it will take a lot of but happens fast. So please do watch carefully as you beat. 
• Sift powdered sugar over the meringue, fold in using a slotted skimmer or a rubber large spatula. Fill the meringue into the bag. 
• Pipe domes in one tray and 'stems' in another. They don't need to look uniform or perfect (yay!). Smoothen any pointy tips with a wet finger or these may burn. 
• Sift the cocoa lightly over the caps. 
• Bake about an hour till dry and crisp rotating the pans halfway. I baked about 15 minutes more.  Do not open the oven door the first 3 quarters of the baking time to prevent cracking.
• The most reliable way to test doneness says Rose, is to dig out a small amount of meringue from the center with a sharp knife. If only slightly sticky, it will continue to dry at room temperature. 
• If not assembling the mushrooms right away, store them airtight. Can be stored 3 weeks at least. 

To assemble : Alice Medrich's way. Melt some dark chocolate (about 100 grams). Use a sharp knife to cut the tip of each 'stem' to create a flat surface. Place the caps flat side up on  a baking tray. Spread some melted chocolate, attach the stems. Allow the chocolate to harden and then store the meringue mushrooms airtight immediately. 

    

Please note : To make superfine sugar I have just processed granulated sugar till very slightly coarse. 

For making mushrooms and other figurines, Rose recommends using all superfine sugar ( 226 grams for the entire recipe) as it makes less fragile ones. I have used powdered sugar as mentioned above.

Do bake these if you love meringue or just for the fun of it!These indeed were light, but the meringue amateur that I am, can't say if they were light enough.

White meringue mushrooms look quite real in their imperfection. I took way more liberty and baked some really imperfect, rather unreal looking ones with cocoa! Just as I was about to begin, I realized the regular plug point I use wasn't working . With the bowl and my mixer finding just enough space between my wet grinder and the water filter, I was walking on egg shells as I went! Forgive me for not jotting down more details, but these should work fine even if they are not absolutely perfect. They will still be fairly light and festive of course.

So what are you planning to bake this season? Please do share your favorite Christmas recipes with me! 

Flourless Coffee Almond Cookies

After staying away from baked meringue in general, I am finally coming to the conclusion that I may like it after all!  I had tried pavlova ages ago and had not taken much of a liking to it. Since then I have been paying little attention to meringue based recipes.

When I asked for a recipe for flour less cookies, the Google Gods directed me to Purple Foodie's Flourless Hazelnut Cookies. They looked so delicate and pretty! No butter, no oil, just whipped egg whites, sugar and ground nuts. Not intimidating like French Macarons, so not much to lose! Shaheen's description of their aroma makes you feel like scrounging around for some hazelnuts, but then good quality ones are not so easy (or cheap!) to find. So almonds it would have to be. If there are going to be almonds, can coffee be left far behind? 

It would weigh on my conscience if I did not mention that there is a possibility I may not got these the way they are meant to be. Having never baked macarons, I realized half a cup of almonds and a fourth of cup of sugar are quite a bit to be folded into the whites of one egg. Though you can't possibly fold in the nuts and sugar without deflating the whipped whites to some extent, am not sure how much of it is alright in these cookies. 

But I am going right ahead and posting these as I found the cookies quite light, nutty, tender-crunchy and delicious!  Even assuming my cookies are not quite there, the results you can get can only be better! 

Apparently, these Italian cookies are called Brutti Ma Buoni literally meaning, “Ugly But Good''!  

Below is half the recipe on Shaheen's blog.  Please do double the recipe if you can bake them all at one go.

Recipe from here, original recipe here .  

Ingredients: (made about 20 cookies or so)

Whole Almonds -  75 grams / 1/2 cup ( or hazelnuts, lightly toasted and skinned, you could also try walnuts, read note)

Granulated sugar - 50 grams / 1/4 cup / 4 tablespoons

Instant coffee - 1 1/4 teaspoons (or orange zest)

Egg white -  30 grams / 1 large white

Powdered sugar - 1 tablespoon

Cream of tartar - a tiny, tiny pinch (about HALF of 1/8 tsp)

Vanilla extract - 3/4 teaspoon

Flaked almonds - 1/2 cup

Method:

1. Preheat to 160°C/325°F. Line two baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper.
2. Put the whole almonds in a plastic cover, close and bash with a rolling pin to break them into uneven pieces. This will help you grind them fine without getting them oily.
3. Pulse nuts, coffee (or zest) and sugar in a food processor or the smallest jar of your mixie until finely ground. Short 10-15 second turns, 2 times at the lowest speed will be good. Be sure not to overdo this as you need this to be like fine meal, not clumped up nuts and sugar. 
4. Make sure your bowl and beaters for whipping egg whites are squeaky clean.
5. Beat egg whites on low speed till you seem it foaming. Add the cream of tartar and beat on medium speed (3 on hand mixer) till you see traces of the beaters on the whites. This will look like shaving foam now. Add the powdered sugar slowly and continue beating on medium speed till stiff peaks form. When you raise the beaters slowly, the whites will stand up straight and not droop right away. If you are not there yet, continue and check after about 10-15 seconds. Be wary of over whipping as it will make the whites go dry.
6. Using a silicone spatula, gently fold in the nut mixture into the whites ( I added in two additions). If adding vanilla or any other flavoring, you can add now when you fold in the nuts.
7. The mixture looked quite heavy but foamy. Is this how it works in this recipe?? The moment of tragedy when my dreams of baking French macarons were completely shattered!
8. I made cookies with half tablespoon batter each leaving about an inch space in between the cookies. They spread as they bake. Gently drop almond flakes on top of the cookies. Rap the baking sheet a couple of times over the counter.
9. Bake for 22-24 minutes. The cookies will feel firm all over. If the center is softish, bake a couple of minutes more. Cookies which feel softish in the center will have chewy centers.
10. Cool the cookies on the tray for about 5 minutes. Store airtight. 

Please note: 

1. Blanched or un blanched almonds make a difference to the color of the cookies, since I have used  coffee I have used them as is.

2. If adding coffee or  zest, add all at one go when you grind the nuts. Repeated addition of flavoring and grinding repeatedly however briefly makes the nuts turn oily. 

3. Shaheen has reduced the sugar from the original recipe, I have added one tablespoon more and this was just fine with the coffee. Please alter the amount of coffee to taste. 

4. Reading recipes for French macarons, folding in nuts into the whites seems to be acceptable. So no concerns on that count. 

Pretty or not, perfect or not, I loved them the way they turned out, am making these again!