Tea party, the return!
It's been a good long while since elspethsheir last had one of her fabulous tea parties, and so for this one I kind of went all out. A little bit. You know. Not that this has ever happened to me before or anything.
Starting off with something savory, I've mentioned these oatmeal knots several times on my journal, mostly because I've baked them several times this spring. What amazes me about them is that they manage to be fairly light and non-crumbly in spite of using very little white flour - around a quarter, in fact.
Oatmeal Knots:
They work well as described in the recipe (although I tend to decrease the honey a little bit - to a 100 ml or so, which is still plenty and gives the bread a distinctly sweet taste), but can also be baked into loaves, which I find more convenient for freezing. Also, then you can make sandwiches, and hi! now I can tell you all about my new favorite sandwich filling, namely chicken salad with blue cheese.
Blue Cheese Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Yum. Actually, that's all I have to say about chicken salad with blue cheese. (OK, so it looks kind of... you know. TRUST ME when I say it is the best sandwich ever.) Here's the recipe:
50 g blue cheese
3-4 tbsp mayo (light or fat free is fine)
200 g or so cooked chicken (two boneless skinless breasts, for example), chopped/torn
2 small stalks celery, very finely chopped
2 small spring onions, chopped
lemon juice, salt & pepper
Mix together blue cheese and mayo to make a thick(ish) paste. Mix in chicken, celery and onion. Season with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
A note on using this recipe for bread, though: at least for me, the amount of dough makes a little bit too little for two pans of bread, and a bit too much for one. So either take about a third of the dough and make a few knots and bake those first while the bread rises, or fiddle around with the amounts. Yes.
OK, now to the sweet stuff.
Chocolate Chip Orange Walnut Oatmeal Cookies
I baked these chocolate orange walnut oatmeal cookies a few times a week while my dad was ill. I originally received the recipe from elspethsheir herself, and just... added orange zest and half a cup of chopped chocolate. (For a truly orgasmic variation, try it with orange chocolate. I'm just saying.)
You can find the recipe here. (I also sub about 110 g of butter for the shortening, since that doesn't really... exist... here.)
Bilberry Orange Walnut Oatmeal Cookies
And this is just another variation on the same theme, with dried bilberries instead of chocolate. Entirely the same recipe, but with chocolate you get this fairly thin and crisp cookie, whereas without it they're more chewy. Either way is nice, and basically you could use whatever combination of dried fruits and nuts that strike your fancy. Just don't tell me about the raisins. Ugh.
Chocolate-Caramel Sandwich Cookies
This, on the other hand... DON'T DO THIS AT HOME, guys. Either my candy thermometer sucks or the recipe does, because the caramel filling didn't set enough, and so I assembled my beautiful chocolate caramel sandwich cookies and put them in a jar overnight, LITTLE REALIZING that they were not done oozing. Cue a mess of sticky fudge at the bottom of the cookie jar.
It was good fudge, though. I'd flavored it with, you guessed it, orange.
Orange Cardamom Butter Squares
Are we sensing a theme here? I made these the first time for my Christmas cookie boxes, precisely according to the recipe. This time I skipped the frosting, which was cute but a bit messy and also unless you temper the chocolate it's going to be sticky and no-one wants the hassle. Well, I don't. (See also: they want you to sharpen the edges with a ruler. Good grief.)
So instead I doubled the spices and added the zest from one orange (confession: all this orange stuff is not because of a conscious theme or anything, it's just that organic oranges are sold in packs of four in this country, and if I'm shelling out for organic oranges, I'm damn well using every last scrap of them. So there. Anyway, orange + cardamom is an excellent combination.) which made for a very cardamomy and sort of subtly orange-y cookie that would probably taste great with the chocolate icing. (Coffee is overkill, and besides, you're having these with tea anyway. Right?)
To finish off: rooibos tea, from when I made the caramel cookies a few weeks ago and got carried away playing with the reflected plum tree blossoms.
No, wait. You thought I'd have a picspam without feline interruptions? Um, NO.
Minor is unimpressed by cookies in general and chocolate ones in particular.
Emi is unimpressed with my photo arrangements.
OH HAI WERE YOU DOING SOMETHING?
:D :D :D
Phew. Happy tea partying, guys! Make sure to check out the main post for a roundup.
Starting off with something savory, I've mentioned these oatmeal knots several times on my journal, mostly because I've baked them several times this spring. What amazes me about them is that they manage to be fairly light and non-crumbly in spite of using very little white flour - around a quarter, in fact.
Oatmeal Knots:
They work well as described in the recipe (although I tend to decrease the honey a little bit - to a 100 ml or so, which is still plenty and gives the bread a distinctly sweet taste), but can also be baked into loaves, which I find more convenient for freezing. Also, then you can make sandwiches, and hi! now I can tell you all about my new favorite sandwich filling, namely chicken salad with blue cheese.
Blue Cheese Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Yum. Actually, that's all I have to say about chicken salad with blue cheese. (OK, so it looks kind of... you know. TRUST ME when I say it is the best sandwich ever.) Here's the recipe:
50 g blue cheese
3-4 tbsp mayo (light or fat free is fine)
200 g or so cooked chicken (two boneless skinless breasts, for example), chopped/torn
2 small stalks celery, very finely chopped
2 small spring onions, chopped
lemon juice, salt & pepper
Mix together blue cheese and mayo to make a thick(ish) paste. Mix in chicken, celery and onion. Season with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
A note on using this recipe for bread, though: at least for me, the amount of dough makes a little bit too little for two pans of bread, and a bit too much for one. So either take about a third of the dough and make a few knots and bake those first while the bread rises, or fiddle around with the amounts. Yes.
OK, now to the sweet stuff.
Chocolate Chip Orange Walnut Oatmeal Cookies
I baked these chocolate orange walnut oatmeal cookies a few times a week while my dad was ill. I originally received the recipe from elspethsheir herself, and just... added orange zest and half a cup of chopped chocolate. (For a truly orgasmic variation, try it with orange chocolate. I'm just saying.)
You can find the recipe here. (I also sub about 110 g of butter for the shortening, since that doesn't really... exist... here.)
Bilberry Orange Walnut Oatmeal Cookies
And this is just another variation on the same theme, with dried bilberries instead of chocolate. Entirely the same recipe, but with chocolate you get this fairly thin and crisp cookie, whereas without it they're more chewy. Either way is nice, and basically you could use whatever combination of dried fruits and nuts that strike your fancy. Just don't tell me about the raisins. Ugh.
Chocolate-Caramel Sandwich Cookies
This, on the other hand... DON'T DO THIS AT HOME, guys. Either my candy thermometer sucks or the recipe does, because the caramel filling didn't set enough, and so I assembled my beautiful chocolate caramel sandwich cookies and put them in a jar overnight, LITTLE REALIZING that they were not done oozing. Cue a mess of sticky fudge at the bottom of the cookie jar.
It was good fudge, though. I'd flavored it with, you guessed it, orange.
Orange Cardamom Butter Squares
Are we sensing a theme here? I made these the first time for my Christmas cookie boxes, precisely according to the recipe. This time I skipped the frosting, which was cute but a bit messy and also unless you temper the chocolate it's going to be sticky and no-one wants the hassle. Well, I don't. (See also: they want you to sharpen the edges with a ruler. Good grief.)
So instead I doubled the spices and added the zest from one orange (confession: all this orange stuff is not because of a conscious theme or anything, it's just that organic oranges are sold in packs of four in this country, and if I'm shelling out for organic oranges, I'm damn well using every last scrap of them. So there. Anyway, orange + cardamom is an excellent combination.) which made for a very cardamomy and sort of subtly orange-y cookie that would probably taste great with the chocolate icing. (Coffee is overkill, and besides, you're having these with tea anyway. Right?)
To finish off: rooibos tea, from when I made the caramel cookies a few weeks ago and got carried away playing with the reflected plum tree blossoms.
No, wait. You thought I'd have a picspam without feline interruptions? Um, NO.
Minor is unimpressed by cookies in general and chocolate ones in particular.
Emi is unimpressed with my photo arrangements.
OH HAI WERE YOU DOING SOMETHING?
:D :D :D
Phew. Happy tea partying, guys! Make sure to check out the main post for a roundup.