Valentine's Day Special #1 / No-bake fudgey Chocolate Peanut-butter cookies.

There are sometimes in life when Chocolate becomes a necessity. So much of a necessity that you consider getting a Continuous Ryle's Tube feeding of molten chocolate.

It could be post-breakup, especially when Valentine's Day and celebrity couples of amalgamated nomenclature and your late-teenaged neighbour flaunt their Two-Hearts-One-S***holeSoul status. It could be post-midnight, when all the shops selling candy (of the chocolate, not the substance-abuse variety) are closed. It could be post weddings of grandeur and younger cousins popping out babies; seats of higher-education or topnotch jobs gained. You're truly happy for them, but this gives you a fat nasty dose of Reality.

There's also another females-only situation.

Science recognizes this as the big M. Men may know this as a time in life where you've been forced to lie "you? Fat?! You're painfully skinny!" As for the women, I feel for you. I really do.

Apart from throwing back a couple of Meftal-Spas 500 and drinking black tea and doing your version of pranayamas, this is the only solution I have for you.

Load up on the carbohydrates, banish the bloat-inducing salt.

And by carbohydrates, I mean Sugar. Quite a bit of it. But there's also heaps of oats, peanut butter and milk, so it should cancel out, by the laws of Denial.

These No bake cookies require no oven. They require no eggs. They require no patience. And they taste bloody good. This is the closest I've got to Z's Fantastic Chocolate-Peanut Butter fudge, the ones I used to beg her to make (so good!) and not make (fattening). Of course, she would be outraged at the addition of oats.

This recipe is made out of pantry staples.

And if you close your eyes and add a little more salt, you can pretend these are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Yum!

No-Bake Fudgey Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies:

(Adapted from Food Network)

Ingredients:

1-3/4 cups white, granulated sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter (smooth is preferred, I used chunky)

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

3 cups oatmeal (instant oats)

1/4 tsp salt (optional)

Method:

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, whisk together the sugar, butter, cocoa and milk. Place the pan over high heat.

Bring it to a foamy boil, and let it boil for exactly one minute.

If it isn't nicely reduced and fudgey, boil for 30 seconds more.

Whisk in the peanut butter, vanilla essence, salt (if using) first.

Add in the oats.

If the mix is too runny, you can add a couple of tablespoons of oats. If it's too stiff, thin it out with a teaspoon of milk or peanut butter.

Place scoops of cookie dough onto a sheet of waxed paper or aluminium foil.

It will ideally set in its shape at room temperature, but if you live in Madras, refrigerate!

Things to do with the cookies:

Eat with milk for breakfast.

Eat by yourself in pajamas while watching one of Woody Allen's movies.

Pack them and give to your loved ones.

Invite a friend over and gossip/b**ch/polambify for hours over these.

Or if you have a boring life, you can chase random brats who steal your cookies and run out when you aren't looking.

This is Zaad's happy/hungry face. People say he takes after me.

You can easily halve the recipe and still get at least a dozen large cookies. Which will keep, wrapped in foil, for around a week in the refrigerator in a normal household and three hours in mine. There's just one niggling thought.

Please make it with Nutella and tell me how if it matches up to all my daydreams/fantasies.

P.S.: This post is dedicated to some skinny-yet-strong women:

Rad (who asked for egg-less); for Spica (who asked for more non-NEWT-y recipes); for Anisha L (cupcake liners and making me mildly famous!); for A, who would have eaten it with no regard to "calories-and-crap"; for Z, who made me fudge for the first time and for funding my two-Reese-cups-per day habit (for a whole week); for Sarbee (who likes her chocolate-laden cookies, but has no oven) and for Nigbe (who pretends to hate Valentine's Day, but is a closet romantic and the happiest when true-love stories do work out).

Blogoversary, Part Two/Salted Peanut, Double Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie. Whew.

Cookies. How I love thee.

And like all good things in life, it takes work to make the perfect batch. Well, not to make them, per se. Baking them in batches is tiresome. Whipping up and eating a bucket-load of cookie dough? Easy as pie.

Pie isn't all that easy, by the way.

Cookie dough is bonafide Easetown. It's a one bowl wonder. Make the dough, scarf down a third of it, bake a third, flash-freeze the remaining dough and bake yourself some piping hot monster-sized cookies whenever you want. Breakfast, post-gym, midnight television. Carry some for sleep-overs and become the most popular girl there.

I'm speaking from life experience.

Make these cookies. You know; for the sake of life experiences. Don't be scared of the salted peanuts and chocolate chips. It works on ten different levels.

I made mine from 3/4th of a big Cadbury's Dairy Milk Bar. Notice the white Toblerone? I'm not a fan of white chocolate, but it goes pretty well in this recipe. I've adapted this from Brown Eyed Baker, who has never let me down when I want something with peanut butter and chocolate in it.

Add a little extra if you're going to keep stealing and stuffing your face! I always do.

Peanut Butter-Oatmeal-Double-Chocolate-Chip cookies:
(makes 32 cookies)

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour (maida)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup granulated white sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup salted, roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup white or milk chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C  (350 degrees F).

Line a baking tray with aluminium foil or parchment paper and keep it aside.

In a big bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Keep aside.

In another bowl, beat together the butter, peanut butter, eggs, vanilla essence, white and brown sugar on Medium speed for around 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat until combined.

Fold in the flour mix with a spatula, until just combined. Stir in the oats and the nuts, give it a mix.

Finally, add the chocolate chips. 

Place the cookie dough  in the form of scoops on the aluminium foil (no need to grease), leaving around 5 cms between each cookie. If you're using unsalted peanuts, you could try sprinkling half a pinch of coarse salt over the cookie dough before baking. Make indentations with a fork, if you like.

Bake for around 10 minutes, until lightly brown.

See the overbaked brown one? Not as chewy! :(

Pull out, let it cool completely on the foil. Store in air-tight containers.

Do have a cookie hot out of the oven. Dunk it in chocolate syrup or make an ice-cream sandwich. Eat half a dozen for dinner. Do get a full fasting lipid profile. Kidding. Oats and dark chocolate should cancel out the butter, no?

Are any cookie-houses hiring PR people?

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Almond Cookies/These cookies rock (no pun intended) !

If you haven't had a scalding hot cookie straight from the oven on a rainy Madras afternoon, you haven't lived. Especially if you haven't had a scoopful (or few) of cookie dough before the official baking starts.

It's comfort food. Cookie dough from the bowl, cookie from the oven. It belongs in the league of Milk Bikis+tea, curd rice+mango pieces (not pickle), nombu-kanji+chutney, nutella+spoon. Comfort food.

However, cookies can be a bit tiresome if you have a tiny oven. You'll have to chill, scoop and bake in never ending  batches. It's worth it. Blind trust?

These cookies were made for a friend who lives in the UK and is quite a bit of a baker herself. What do you make for people like that, right? She can bake and she lives in London, which is home to all sorts of fantastic food (albeit pricey).

I knew I had to go all out. Make a humongous everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, All-American cookie which Rachel Allen with her poppy-seeds-and-orange-zest wouldn't Bake. I had to pull out the artillery: Coffee, chocolate, cinnamon. Yes, yes, and yes.

And I know I could've made an Indian dish, like naan khatai. But, I knew that she (and I, in my position, as taster, baker and kickass friend) would appreciate fudgey-mocha flavours more. It's all about her.

To make it homey, however, I used Cadbury Dairy Milk to make chocolate chips and Cadbury's cocoa powder.

Don't let the oatmeal in the cookie scare you. It gives a fantastic texture to the cookie, which is heightened by the toasted almonds and chocolate chips. Also, I know the coffee and the cinnamon seem like a mishmash of flavours, but you can't distinguish them as individual entities. They work surprisingly well together, giving an almost posh flavour and elevating these from Subway cookies to Gourmet cookies.

 Make it, please? These will freeze well, keep well in an airtight box, can be dunked into cold milk for breakfast (beats Weetabix). I'm sure they even do somersaults.

Double chocolate Oatmeal Almond cookies:

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

1-1/2 cups white sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp prepared espresso/coffee decoction

1-1/2 cups All-purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 cups oats

1/2 cup chopped almonds

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius.

Toast the chopped almonds slightly with some cinnamon. Take it off the heat and keep aside.

Blitz the sugars in a mixie/food processor for a few seconds... you don't want to them to be powdery, but not big granules either. I hand only demerara sugar instead of muscavado, so I used only 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 2 cups of white instead.

Beat the softened butter and sugars in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

I used the bitter espresso from my coffee pot. Yum!

Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then go on and add the vanilla and the coffee decoction.

Cadbury's cocoa powder is the bomb!

In another bowl, stir together the cocoa, flour, salt and baking soda. Mix well.

Fold the flour mix into the butter-sugar mix.

This smells like the Cupcake facepack from Lush. Dab it on, eat it.. Happiness.

Add in oats and mix well. The dough will be stiff.

Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips.

Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, so it's easier to handle. Scoop out little balls and bake on an ungreased foil/cookie sheet.

Take it out in about 10 minutes. Cool for a minute, then take off the foil and cool on a rack until it's at room temperature.

See the swirly C of Cadbury's Dairy milk? Double yum.

Try to not overbake the cookies. The difference between an awesome cookie and a burnt cookie is about 80 seconds. You can freeze the unbaked cookie dough in the form of balls, or store the baked and cooled cookies in an airtight bag/box at room temperature.

Recipe source: Hershey's.

Dig in. Unless you have a food blog and then you need to take obligatory photographs of cookies-and-milk even though you've never had neat milk since the age of 10.

Apple and Plum Crumble/The way the Crumble crumbles-Mmm...

I owe you guys this recipe. Some of you try the desserts I've raved over and send me a nice little thank-you note to wake up to (thank you). Some of you give me kick-ass awards. It makes the seemingly-easy-but-actually-tough job that running the blog is, worth doing.

My way of thanking you back is to virtually cater to your requests. Some of you have been asking me for vegetarian recipes, especially pastry. So I'm giving you one of my trustworthy, prized recipes.. a delicious Apple and Plum Crumble.

It has no eggs in it. Pre-requisite for any pastry in India, whose vegetarians are invariably non-eggetarians.

It has just over couple of tablespoons of butter. Nothing that'll you have to pant on the EFX machine for hours together to burn. Just enough for giving off the glorious buttery smell that is a pre-requisite for me to qualify as dessert. Maybe fifteen minutes at Resistance 6, tops, for a normal-sized portion.

And did I mention brown/demerara sugar? The kind that melts to form luscious, gooey caramel? This recipe has brown sugar in it. Screw the EFX.

All it needs is some ice-cream or whipped cream on the side. Just so each bite will have steaming-hot baked apple, crispy caramelized oats sizzling in the cold, cold vanilla ice-cream. Mmm. I'm sorry to go all Nigella on you; but it is just so freaking delicious.

Expect people to come haunt the kitchen. There's something about the smell of cinnamon wafting around the kitchen. Amortentia (the Love Potion in Harry Potter?) for me would definitely smell of cinnamon. Cinnamon, Kenzo's Tokyo and just a bit of Sterilium (the antiseptic solution). Too much information, huh?

Back to apples. Go buy 3 or 4 of them. Granny Smith (the green ones) would be tart and crisp, but if you buy Fuji/Washington/Pink Lady/Shimla, you could cut down on the sugar. And plums! The market is rampant with plums. Buy just a couple of them. They'll cook down into a nice, berry-ish sauce that you can spoon over the ice-cream. If you want to do all apples, just serve some more softened vanilla ice-cream on the side

I had only 2 and half apples, but it didn't work out too sweet or anything!

Apple and Plum crumble.

Ingredients:

3 medium-sized apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 plums, stoned and sliced.
1/2 cup powdered white sugar
2 tsps all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

For the crumble:
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped (optional)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3-4 tbsps unsalted butter
Method:

1)Preheat the oven to 350 or 175 F.

2Slice the apples and plums and arrange them in slightly greased baking dish. Mix the white sugar, spices and 2 tsps flour. Sprinkle it over the apples+plums. Massage the sugar into the fruit.

3)Prepare the crumble:
In a small dish, combine all the dry ingredients.

Cut the cold butter into the crumble. Mix well with your fingertips so it forms sandy clumps. Spread it over the prepared fruit.

Note: You can also double the crumble topping if you're fond of sugary, crispy things.

4)Bake for about 35-40 minutes.

Recipe source: loosely adapted from various recipes on Allrecipes.com

The ideal way to serve would be to have it piping hot with vanilla-scented whipping cream or ice-cream. Not that it doesn't taste fabulous cold. I have it on good authority (that would be me) that if you should choose to hide a chunk in the vegetable crisper or Milk Chiller (who even looks there?), you'll have yourself a merry, little midnight snack.

Oatmeal-Raisin-Walnut Cookie/En Garde, Chocolat!

I'm extremely suspicious of people who do not like chocolate. I know, people who claim they looooove chocolate are dime-a-dozen; even confirmed connoisseurs can be easily found. But people who don't like chocolate? It's just not natural.

Even if you didn't, would you go around admitting that fact? You don't publicly admit "I don't like chocolate/children/Nature?", do you. I don't get it.

So when I have to bake for a chocolate non-lover, I make sure I do my homework. I search for that recipe that will help me forget the existence of cacao beans. It's hard, so I make sure I rope in my arsenal of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon.

Oatmeal-raisin cookies! I tend to make giant cookies, so I can have a cookie and wash it down with milk on those hurry-burried mornings where breakfast is not an option. Sometimes, I sneak peanut butter and chocolate chips into the dough. Or go down the spice route, incorporating ginger and orange zest, for a Body Shop Christmas-inspired cookie. Whilst I love chewy, soft cookies, when I give them to people, they think I'm an incompetent baker. True story.

So. I give you, a very basic crispy Oatmeal-raisin cookie, adapted from a popular AllRecipes recipe. Cookies are treacherous things; they flop quite often. This recipe is an easy entry into the wonderful world of cookies.

Oatmeal-Raisin-Walnut cookies.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated white sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (maida)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder.

1/2 a cinnamon bark or 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups Quaker Oats
3/4 cup raisins, steeped in hot water for 5 minutes and drained.

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Grind the coarse sugar with bits of cinnamon in your mixie just until it's gritty, NOT fine.

Cream the butter, the white sugar and the brown sugar until smooth.

Whisk the eggs separately. Or you can skip this and add the eggs straight.

Add it into the batter with the vanilla. Beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together the maida, baking powder and baking soda. Fold into the batter. 

Fold in the oats. Stir the nuts and raisins.

Don't over mix or use a hand mixer for dry ingredients. I can say this each time I do a baking post, and it still won't be enough to drive home the point... it took me several flops to accept this.

I usually wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate the dough for half an hour.

On a baking tray lined with aluminium foil (ungreased), drop a mini-scoop of ice cream shaped ball of cookie dough. Flatten it.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the edges are slightly brown.

Do a test run with the cookies. Just so you know how much they spread out or puff up, and more crucially, how long they take. If you bake for fewer minutes, you'll have chewy cookies.

Take them out of the oven. Cool them in their sheets for ten minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let them cool completely.

Store in an airtight tin. Or leave them unattended, so they can be gobbled up.

Tie pretty ribbons around them, so ideal for gifting. The non-pretty ones can be sandwiched with butterscotch ice-cream, frozen, softened, and eaten. Yum.



Freeze between sheets of butter-paper. Thaw for an easy
ice-cream sandwich!



I ate quite a bit of the dough and the crumbly bits. The chocolate-hating girl these were baked for did call me mental when I told her on PMS-days I eat Chocos for breakfast and Nutella on Wholegrain bread (healthy, but the Nutella kills any little gram of healthiness that remained) for lunch. Justifies the stealing.

Yummy Granola. Yes, it exists.

I've been on so many Bridget Jones' type of cleanses, I could write a book on them. Well, a post at the very least. And if you've read Bridget Jones, you know how the cleanses end. Not the dead-drunk bit; the other one which ends with her diving into a box of chocolates (in recent times, it has been Milano for me).

The worst one was after giving my tenth boards. A and I decided to go on one of our many joint diets. This one allowed a piece of toast, black coffee-no milk-no sugar, a boiled egg (carrots for her, the lucky Vegetarian hippy) et-very-little-cetera. We stayed on it for 4 hours (actually, I think she did three-quarters of a day). She now works out like there is no tomorrow (hippy to Yuppy) and I dream/eat/write about food. You can refer to Freud to see why we've evolved differently.

Still. There are clothes to fit into. So when I feel like a pro-health, smartass Doctor, I whip up a batch of this granola. It's one step above edible: it's actually delicious. Nothing like the sawdust blocks ("thins") Nature Valley makes. Yes, I'm only talking about the Indian made ones. Yumbars are decent, but I'm not throwing 200 bucks on cereal bars. I'm sure sane people would agree (say Hey!). Quaker Oats makes amazing cereal bars, but I guess my foreign relatives/friends don't love me enough to keep me afloat. Hint, hint.
Horlicks and RiteBite were what fuelled me through Internship year, but they're slightly too sweet and have enough calories to swap for a bar of bittersweet chocolate. What would I choose?

The chocolate. And this granola.

The writing in blue is the actual recipe. The rest of it is my incessant chatter.
This Granola.

Ingredients:

2 cups oats

1/4 cup chopped walnuts or almonds

1/4 cup raisins or figs

4 tsps Peanut butter

4 tsps Honey

Method:

Warm peanut butter and honey in a double boiler, until it's smooth. I use Skippy's Super Chunky version, because creamy, homogenous peanut butter is for wusses and babies. Honey, plain old Dabur will do. This is a budget recipe, after all.

That's the consistency you want. It gets there pretty early, so keep on eye on it unless you want unusable peanut caramel (Yum. Delicious mistake).

And that's my extremely un-fancy bain-marie. Mum still does not trust me with the fancy cookware. I don't argue, because she's got good reason to, and I'm almost never in the mood to hear her extended list of my past sins/crimes. Good times.

In a bowl, mix together the oats and chopped nuts. Pour the peanut butter+honey mixture and stir until completely combined. Do not add raisins or figs at this stage as they burn pretty fast.

 Oats, Quaker I'm a slave to, but I saw Saffola on sale the other day, and it is pretty decent. Again, it doesn't have to be a snooty brand since it's just going to get cooked. I used raisins, chopped figs and almonds in mine (altogether, fitting snugly into a half-cup). Substitute the dried fruit with prunes if you want it super healthy. Or skip it all, and add chocolate chips to the final mix (after all the cooking is over).

Spread the mix on a ungreased foil-lined tray. Shove it into a preheated oven (I used 175 degrees C) for roughly 15 to 20 minutes.

Whilst the oven does its thing, I pop on some coffee and look forward to relaxing.

Unfortunately, my sister and nephew have other plans.

No, it's not a paranoid Michael Jackson thing; I'm not trying to protect their identities or whatever. I'm just trying to prevent Grevious Bodily Harm under my supervision.

By now, the smells of burning coffee and just-about-right granola waft out of the kitchen.

While still warm, add the dried fruit. Allow to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

I pour the whole thing into a Ziploc bag and stash it in my bag for emergencies. I manage to invent quite a few and polish it off in a couple of days; I've got a family who helps with the eating. And if you're not on health kick, throw in some M & Ms for colour. I didn't miss them though and not missing chocolate-coated candies is the best compliment I can bestow on this humble recipe.