Tag: cookies

Tinned Spaghetti and Oreo Balls, my (not so) secret vices…

When the weather is wild and windy and the rain is torrential, all you want is to be warm and dry and eating something hot and comforting. After swimming walking home from work tonight I felt a craving that had been dormant for years. My guilty secret.

Tinned Spaghetti.

I don’t know why I love it, I just do. I love regular spaghetti too, it’s just that sometimes I feel like tinned spaghetti with two slices of white bread slathered in butter. I feel my arteries clogging just typing this.

So I took this photo with the intention of showing how comforting and tasty this meal is. Im not really sure this picture conveys that. It looks more like spaghetti brains…

Now what is a comfort food dinner without comfort food dessert? Enter: Oreo Balls. Ive seen people call these Oreo Truffles, Oreo Bites but really, lets not pretend these are more elegant than they are. Ugly they may be, but AWESOME they also are. Anyone care to correct my syntax? They are also unbelievably easy to make. All you needs is some…

Cream cheese, chocolate and oreos. Really, thats all.

So you take your oreos (there were two packets in the box, you only really need to use one, and that means that you can munch on the other packet while you’re cooking. Yay!). Put them in a snaplock bag and bash them with a rolling pin.

Did I mention that this recipe is not only comforting but extremely theraputic?

Mix the oreo crumbles with the softened cream cheese (250g cream cheese to be precise)

Roll the mixture into balls and refrigerate until they are firm.

Roll them around in the melted chocolate, and wait until they are set. Or you could eat them all warm an gooey…

Now, I will admit that this meal is absolutely and unbelievably unhealthy. Elegant, it is not. Gourmet, it is not. Hit the spot? COMPLETELY. Now that my guilty secret it out in the universe, hopefully I can get you to spill yours! What do you love to eat but are embarrassed to tell anyone about?

The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie

I like to think of it as a sort of… occupational hazard, all the left over bits of chocolate blocks and chocolate chips etc that are the by product of my culinary conquests. Except that technically my occupation is teaching… but… well… nevermind. So I finally figured it was time to make use of all these chocolate offcuts that have been cluttering my pantry. And luckily for me (and mum!) I knew just the recipe to try.

I recently bought Nigella Lawson’s “Nigella Express” after falling in love wither her dvds. Nestled inside this gem of a cookbook is her recipe for what she calls “Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies”. I prefer the simpler description of “Ultimate Chocolate Cookie”. I have been known to completely disregard the measurements for chocolate in most recipes, and this is definitely a recipe where chocolate amounts are rules that are made to be broken. In fact, the only rule you need to keep in mind when making these cookies is this, repeat after me –

You can NEVER have too much chocolate

So with that mantra in mind, I mixed up the dough. I used a little bit of  Lindt, a few Chocolate Chips, a little bit of Nestle White Chocolate

and still something felt… unfinished.

so I added a few more snaps of dark chocolate. You know, for good measure!

And into the oven they go!

mmmm cookies and milk

In short, these are amazing. What more can I say?

The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie – Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s “Nigella Express”

Ingredients

125g dark chocolate

150g flour

30g cocoa

1 teaspoon bi-carb soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

125g butter

75g brown sugar

50g caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg (Nigella says this should be cold from the fridge)

minimum 350g chocolate chunks or chips (any mix of white, milk or dark)

Method

1. Melt the 125g chocolate

2. Cream the butter and sugars together and add the melted chocolate

3. Beat in vanilla and egg, then add the cocoa, flour, bi-carb and salt

4. Add the rest of the chocolate (feel free to go crazy here!)

5. I used a soup spoon to gouge hefty chunks of cookie dough but Nigella sings the praises of her ice cream scoop. Use whatever you like! I ended up making 18 (Nigella makes 12, but her cookies must be as big as my head to only get 12 from that mix!)

6. Cook for 18 (ish) minutes in an oven at 170 degrees celcius

7. Eat, eat eat!