The Substitute Kitchen

Coconut and White Toblerone Cookies

I’ve had this recipe for ages and kept meaning to try it but kept coming up against the white chocolate and how it’s hard to get the god stuff here. Today I had a brainwave in the supermarket- just use white Tolberone! They are soooooo goooooood.

Original recipe is here

Ingredients

200g softened butter

½ teaspoon vanilla essence

160g icing sugar, sifted

1 egg

260g plain flour, sifted with ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g shredded desiccated coconut

100g white Toblerone (1 bar)

How to

Preheat the oven to 170°C/340°F - if your oven is fan-forced preheat to 150°C/300°F.

Place the butter, vanilla bean paste, egg, and icing sugar in the bowl of your mixer and beat until light and fluffy.

Stir in the flour & bicarb in two batches.

Stir in the coconut and chopped up chocolate, making sure they are evenly distributed through the dough.

Roll a tablespoon of dough into a ball, place it on a baking sheet and press it down lightly. Leave some space around each to allow for spreading.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden with a crisp edge. Cool on tray before lifting onto wire racks.

Store in an airtight containers.This recipe made about 36 biscuits.

Simple and Rich Chocolate Brownies

Brownies are like chocolate-chip cookies- everyone has a special way of doing them and expectations of how they should taste. These are from my family’s recipe and bring back memories of dozens of birthdays, dinners and picnics. I’m biased, but these brownies rule! We use cashews because it’s the most available nut here. 

Ingredients

125g butter

185g dark cooking chocolate

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup plain flour

1 cup cashew nuts, chopped

How to

Melt chocolate and butter together over low heat or in double boiler (two pans stacked with water in bottom on first pan)

Stir in sugar.

Add eggs one at a time, stirring well and fast each time.

Add cashews.

Pour into greased and paper-lined pan.

Bake in moderate oven for 30 minutes. Cool and eat!

Chocolate Orange Cookies

This is definitely not for the sugar free/ wheat free people! Sorry Miss S… 

This recipe was inspired by Almost Bourdain’s Chocolate Sour Cherry Cookies but of course we don’t get the dried cherries here.

So the substitute for today is citrus peel (which we for some reason could buy) for the cherries. These cookies are seriously divine- perfect balance between chocolate and orange.

Ingredients

235 g (8 1/2 oz) dark chocolate (minimum 55% cocoa but I used 72%), chopped 

190 g (5 1/2 oz / 1 cup) plain (all-purpose) flour

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1/2 tsp salt

100 g (3 1/2 oz) unsalted butter

200 g (8 3/4 oz) soft brown sugar

2 eggs

85 g (3 oz) dried citrus peel

How to

Preheat the oven to 165C (325F / Gas 3).

Put the chocolate in a large stainless steel bowl and set over a saucepan of simmering water, making sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water. 

Note for chocolate picture- this stuff is black gold! Chocolate of this quality is sold at import good stores but is very expensive, so we hand-carry it in when we go overseas. 

Allow the water in the saucepan to boil for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and stir the chocolate while it slowly melts.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl

Note for the sugar and grater picture- we have to keep our brown sugar in the fridge here and it always hardens into a huge block that we then have to grate to use 

Put the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until pale (r) and creamy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure each is incorporated before adding more.




Add the dry ingredients in three batches, mixing well after each addition, then add the melted chocolate and mix until well combined.

Fold through the citrus peel. 

The mix can become quite sticky , so you may need to refrigerate it for 15 minutes before shaping the biscuits. Take 1 tablespoons of mixture at a time and roll into even-sized balls using two spoons.

Place the balls on baking trays lined with baking paper, allowing room for them to spread. Refrigerate for a further 30 minutes, or until firm. Bake in batches, for 15-20 minutes each, or until risen