White Chocolate & Raspberry Dipped Cookies

You might remember back in May I told you I had been interviewed all about this blog and baking for a podcast on Podium.me. Well, today is the start of a new 3-part podcast series with me over on Podium, called ‘Lucy’s Recipes’ where I bake and chat through a different recipe each week. I am super excited about it, I really enjoyed recording it and it was a really fun new challenge. These white chocolate and raspberry cookies are the first recipe in the series and were a big hit in my house!As well as talking through the recipe for these cookies on this weeks podcast, I also chat about my future plans now that I have finished school. I haven’t mentioned them on here before as I was waiting until everything was confirmed and I had solid plans to announce. But since exams results day was yesterday here in the UK I can finally be sure of exactly what I’m doing for the next four years. At the start of October, I am starting cookery school! I know it will be a massive challenge going from a fairly relaxed Sixth Form schedule at school to an intense year of learning everything there is to know about food but I am so excited! In case you are interested, I will be doing this Leiths Professional Diploma for a year. After that, I will be starting a History degree at Cambridge in October 2014. This blog will of course keep going and I’m hoping to be able to write posts about my time at Leiths and updates on cookery school as well as my normal content, if people would be interested? Now, back to the cookies!This is my fourth white chocolate cookie on my blog and they are always super popular but I wanted to do something slightly different with this version. I adapted a Dorie Greenspan sable recipe, meaning that the cookies are super sandy and buttery. This was the first time I have used freeze dried raspberries and I really liked them – they are super pretty and their burst of intense raspberry flavour helps cut through the richness of the thick layer of white chocolate! At first, I wasn’t sure if these cookies would be too rich but judging by the speed at which the cookie tin emptied I think we managed! You can find the recipe below, and head over to the podcast here to listen to me chat through the recipe and discuss cookery school a bit more. I hope you enjoy!
White Chocolate and Raspberry Dipped Cookies
Ingredients: 225g butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
2 cups plain flour 250g white chocolate, chopped into small chunks freeze dried raspberries
1. Cream the butter and sugars in a stand mixer or with a wooden spoon until really light and fluffy.
2. Add the yolks and salt and mix until combined.
3. Pour in the flour and 100g of the white chocolate and stir until the dough comes together and looks uniform.
4. Shape the dough into a log and wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 3 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 180’C. Unwrap your log of cookie dough and slice into 1cm thick cookies. Place on a lined baking tray, leaving 1inch between them.
6. Bake for 15minutes until golden, then let cool.
7. Melt the remaining white chocolate in the microwave (stirring every 30seconds) or in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
8. Dip the cookies halfway into the white chocolate and place on parchment paper. Sprinkle some freeze dried raspberries over the white chocolate and leave to set. Enjoy!

Raspberry, Oat and Almond Bake

I’d describe this time of year as ‘muddled’. It’s definitely still winter, but there’s the occasional sign that Spring will soon come. Mock exams are here, whilst the real things are still a few months off yet feel just round the corner. I’ve applied to uni, but have to wait till August for the grades. I’ll finish school forever in June, but it feels scarily close. It's a weird limbo time of year and I think this bake suits that perfectly. It’s got the oats for a flapjack, texture of a crumble and jammy fruit yet somehow manages to be none of these things!I should have predicted this from its vague ‘bake’ title and lack of photo, but the ingredients list sounded to good to miss out on: marzipan, lots of berries, cinnamon, flaked almonds, a dash of honey – all good flavours combined into one tin. The results were hard to explain. Clearly, these flavours combined into something delicious that was impossible to stop eating and vanished in one weekend.The sweet marzipan cutting through the sharp berries, the almonds adding crunch, the oats a bit of sustenance. The problem was that it was impossible to know how to serve it as it was so crumbly! It was hard to cut proper slices of, yet still a bit more solid than granola. It was like a fruit crumble that was super heavy on the topping! I think it would make a delicious luxury brunch item, served unapologetically messily in bowls, perhaps with yoghurt? Don’t let its confusing nature put you off, the results are absolutely gorgeous and make up for whatever it lacks in appearance! You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Raspberry Panna cotta

Note to self: don’t try and transport panna cottas. It proves rather stressful. I had to transport these, precious glasses and all, on a car journey to my Granny’s as I was providing the dessert at lunch. They were placed in a shoebox, wrapped in tissue paper, padded with tea towels and strapped in to the car with a seatbelt. Probably unsurprisingly, they and the precious glasses got there unharmed but perhaps next time I’ll stick to cake!I was inspired to make these after having these from M&S and loving the combination of rich creamy panna cotta and bright raspberries. I’ve made a vanilla pannacotta before, so I chose to combine the two layers of the supermarket version into one delicious raspberry panna cotta. I was nervous this would be too bouncy and jelly-like in texture because of the two sheets of gelatine, but I needn’t have worried as they set nicely but still stayed delightfully creamy and rich. The results were summery, absolutely chock full of raspberry flavour and a really pretty shade of pink. The recipe is from Nigel Slater’s fruit volume of Tender, but it can also be found here. You don’t taste the rosewater, it’s just there to stop the raspberries being too tart, although I suppose you could up the amount to make it a key flavour but I wanted to let the raspberries shine on their own. Enjoy!

Raspberry Almond Cake

I’m back! Schoolwork and weeks of important exams, followed by a much needed holiday to France and then a computer switchover have meant I’ve been away from not just my blog but reading others too, so I’m looking forward to catching up on all the delicious things I have missed. May was clearly quiet on my blog, but I’m back with a delicious summery cake to resume my June blogging.One of the best things about summer is the fruit – strawberries, raspberries, cherries, blueberries and peaches and more. So much of this is perfect just eaten as is, or only manipulated lightly – such as marinated strawberries in an (always rich but addictive) Eton Mess. If I do bake with it, the flavour of the fruit still needs to be the main star and this cake does exactly that with its thick layer of jammy raspberries in the centre.The original recipe is called Bakewell Cake, just as anything with almonds and fruit is so often labelled Bakewell Tart style. Regardless, it’s really simple to make as all the ingredients other than the raspberries are whizzed together at once – which means it is dangerously easy to have an addictive cake in record time! The cake also works well with frozen raspberries, so it can be a staple right all year round – even when warm summer days can feel a long way away. Enjoy!

White Chocolate & Raspberry Cookies

I wrote quite a deep, honest starting paragraph for this post. Then I looked at it and figured – this post is about a cookie. An almightily delicious and irresistible cookie yes, but a cookie nonetheless. So whilst there maybe a time for deep opening up, today I’m keeping it simple (I have a very delicious post coming up towards the end of the week) and just saying: you really must make these cookies.I don’t know how I originally came across this recipe as it is, rather embarrassingly, from the Carnation website. I have had the recipe saved for ages and every time I checked my ever growing list of links stored in my Recipes to Try file I’d remember them and remind myself to make them. Then I would promptly forget. Until one very rainy day last week when I got a huge craving for these – so much so that I was willing to go out in the rain to buy condensed milk, the key ingredient for these cookies as it ensures their really soft centres.These are rich – because of the sweet melting white chocolate and the rich dough – but that doesn’t stop them being moreish. Plus, the raspberries are nicely tart and if it’s pouring with rain in the middle of July then who doesn’t deserve a delicious cookie?! Or three. The actual dough was very quick to make but the repetitive process of making all the balls of dough, flattening them and adding the halved raspberries does take a little time. Beware – these cookie spread a lot. For my first batch (luckily only four or five) I made normal sized little balls of dough and the cookies turned out huge: over saucer sized. The recipe makes a lot but that really will not be a problem because like I say, they are very addictive. There will be fights over who gets the biggest one, trust me! Enjoy :)