Cookies and cake

Back to work again after a very busy weekend; two birthday parties, a trip to a local country park (and that was just for munchkin!) followed by a Father’s Day celebration.

I decided to make some cookies for munchkin to bring as a treat on her outing, so made her White chocolate and cranberry cookies.

Ingredients
125 g soft unsalted butter
125 g caster sugar
2 tbsp condensed milk
175 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
100 g white chocolate, cut onto chunks
40 g dried cranberries

Method
1) Preheat oven to 150C
2) Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy
3) Beat in the condensed milk, then add the flour and a pinch of salt
4 ) Stir in the chocolate chunks and dried cranberries
5) Roll into walnut sized balls and place on a baking sheet
6) Flatten them slightly then bake for about 25 mins, or slightly longer if wanting crisper cookies
7) Cool on a rack, then enjoy!

I also made hubby his favourite cake – Coconut cake, in honour of Father’s Day.  I adapted the recipe slightly to see how it would work without the traditional vanilla sugar in the icing, as it is quite unusual outside the Nordic countries, and I’m happy to report it works just as well! I had originally posted this recipe in my Easter baking post back in April, but here is the revised recipe.

Ingredients – Cake 
2 eggs
200 ml sugar
200 ml flour
2 tsp baking powder
100 ml boiling water

Icing
75 g butter, cubed
100 ml caster sugar
1 tbsp icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yoke

Decoration
Desiccated coconut

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 175ºC
2) Grease and line a tin
3) Cream eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy
4) Add flour, baking powder and the boiling water
5) Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean
6) While the cake is baking, simmer the butter, sugar, egg yolk, icing sugar and vanilla extract on low heat while stirring constantly until thickened
7) Spread the warm icing over the warm cake
8) Scatter desiccated coconut over the cake

This is a very popular cake in the family so half of it was gone by the time I manage to take a picture of it!