Category: desserts

Sweet Potato Sandwich Cookies

~ Sophie ~ 16 Comments

Are you all feeling the chilly weather? Finally the rain has taken over  and now days are filled with  either downpours or soft drizzle. It’s that time where you wonder whether it is still morning, because of the gloominess, until you look at the clock.  I am sure most of us wish we just stayed snuggled up almost all day( I do!).  It’s that  time that teas find their way in our daily meals.

So the other day, I had sweet potatoes left over from making katogo (recipe coming soon). The weather was cold and wet and I wished the house was filled with warm sweet scents and aromas. So we got cooking…err baking. These cookies have a sweet potato base in the middle and it is really really (really) good.  So while you are dreaming of having something warm to lighten up the gloominess, I suggest you get your sweet potatoes out, flour and all things nice and make these cookies. You will not regret.

What you will need:

Cookie dough

2 ½  C. Baking flour

½ Tsp. Baking powder

1 C. Butter/Margarine, melted

¾ C. Sugar

1 Egg

¼ C. Milk/Water

Sweet potato filling

1 C. Sweet potato, boiled and mashed

Juice of ½  Lemon

1 Tbsp. Sugar

1 Tbsp. Cinnamon

Pinch of salt

 

Method

Filling

In a bowl, Mix the mashed sweet potato with the lemon juice  till well combined. A paste-like consistency will form. Add the sugar, cinnamon and salt and mix well. Set aside.

Cookie dough

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together starting with the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar).

Next, add the wet ingredients (butter, egg and vanilla extract and milk). Keep mixing till the mixture is coarse but well blended and has formed firm dough.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough till thin (make sure it can still be lifted though).  On top of the rolled cookie dough, add the sweet potato filling and spread it out evenly half way on the dough. Flip the other half of the dough on top of the spread out filling and press firmly. Now, using a cookie cutter or glass, cut out the cookies.

If you are using an oven toaster, bake the cookies for 15 to 20 minutes or until they start turning golden brown and release a warm aroma. If you are using a regular oven, use the usual cookie baking regulations. If you don’t have any oven, you can pan bake them using this method. It works! Let the cookies cool down as they harden.

Makes 20+. Now that they are ready to eat, serve them with a warm cup of hot tea.

 

🙂

Sophie

 

PS: Forgive my lack of rolling a perfect shape. I am working on that!

 

20 Independence Day Recipes You Should Try

~ Sophie ~ 4 Comments

October 9I Have exciting news for you! 9th of October is around the corner! But first, how did September treat you? I hope well! Independence Day is approaching real soon! What are your plans? I don’t know yet but I am sure te day will be chaotic almost everywhere! I plan to spend my time cooking and hanging out. So while you are thinking of what to do, let me give you a head start with these 20 mouth-watering dishes you should be making! Click on the images to get recipes.

This Stir-Fried Posho

These Stir-Fried Bean Sprouts

This Creamy Dodo Pasta

These Bean Burger PattiesThis large Three-Flour Doughnut

These Simsim(Sesame) Coated Sweet Potato Balls

This Fresh Sauteed Corn

This Passion Juice

This colorful Ribbon Salad

These Cheesy Pea Samosas

Picked out something yet? Well, lets keep going!

This Lemon Iced Tea

This Breakfast Dodo Rolex

This Creamy Pumpkin Soup

These Icecream Biscuit Parfaits

These Brunch Pizza Sandwiches

These Sauteed Potato Wedges in Palm Oil

This Lemongrass Iced Tea

These Easy Rice Balls

This Papaya Slushie

And finally this Mango-Pear Pie

Now lets get cooking, shall we?

🙂

Sophie

Charcoal Stove Baked Bundt Millet-Choco Doughnut With Mulberries

~ Sophie ~ 6 Comments

Last year, I made a list of things I wanted to do more of this year in this post. Using yeast was one of them. And since the year is slowly coming to an end, I have exhausted one can of yeast and am thinking of buying another. That translates into a lot of baking (failed and successful) food (especially bread).

Doughnuts have been on my to-make list for as long as I can remember. I wanted to make them so badly because a.) They don’t require baking and that is a win for me because baking does intimidate me sometimes (sometimes) and b.) They still require yeast which means I can put the yeast to good use. So with much excitement, I dived into making doughnuts blindly (Recipe inspiration from here) that by the time the dough was ready, I realized I didn’t have any oil for frying! Panic set in because the thought of throwing away perfectly good dough just because there was no oil for frying was disturbing and downright wrong. The dough was continuing to rise and the sugar was breaking down. The toaster oven came to the rescue. I threw (not literary) the risen doughnuts in the toaster not expecting anything really mind-blowing because I had it in my head that good donuts are fried. After a few minutes (Around 10) the most amazing scent wafted throughout the kitchen. When they were removed from the toaster, they were fully baked (and burnt at the bottom) and they had the most delicate and softest texture ever! You can imagine how floored I was because normally, things I try out for the first time don’t usually work out. These doughnut were eaten in less than 30 minutes even with the burnt crusts. The next try, I was carefully not to burn them (AKA mastering the art of baking in an oven toaster!) and they came out even much better.

After several oven toaster baked doughnut successes, I was curious to use the traditional method (which, by the way, I also included in the above mentioned list) where we bake using a charcoal stove and two aluminum pans. Interestingly, I had a bundt pan that I used only a couple of times. I thought it would be a good idea to put it to use. And voila! This is how this gigantic doughnut came to be. Are you ready to make some doughnut(s)? I am.

What you will need:

3 C. Wheat flour

½ C. Millet flour

½ C. Chocolate powder

1 C. Milk

2 Large eggs

¼ C. Vegetable oil

¼ C. + 2 Tbsp. Sugar

2 ¼ Tsp. Yeast

¼ Tsp. Salt

Method

Doughnut Dough

In a clean bowl, add warm milk (Warm enough for the yeast to rise). Stir in the sugar and mix till it dissolves. Add the yeast and stir well. Cover with a towel and set aside for five minutes. Crack the eggs in a separate bowl and whisk well. While whisking, add in the oil little by little till it becomes thick. In a separate larger bowl, add the wheat flour, millet flour, chocolate powder and salt and mix well. After five minutes (when the milk-sugar-yeast mixture starts becoming frothy) add the oil-egg mixture and mix well. Add the liquid mixture into the flour and use your hands to form a dough. Knead the dough till it stops sticking to your hands. Leave the dough in the bowl and cover with a towel and let it sit for 40 minutes.

Oven Prep

Light a charcoal stove. Get two large aluminum pans (They have to be large enough for the cake/bread pan to fit in). Put ash in one pan (about two inches of ash). Put the pan with ash on the stove and cover than pan with the second pan. This is the ‘preheat’ moment.

Chocolate syrup

½ C. Confectioners/Icing sugar

½ C. Chocolate powder

¼ C. Water

Mix everything together and set aside.

After 40 minutes, the dough will have risen. Punch it and knead for a minute. Divide the dough into 8 equal balls. Get your baking pan and coat it with butter/margarine then lightly dust with flour. Place the dough balls in the pan and cover the pan to let the dough rise for another 25 minutes.

After the dough has risen for 25 minutes, gently place the baking dish in the pan (the one with the ash in it) on the stove. Cover with the second pan. Let the doughnut bake for 20 minutes (don’t open the pan at this stage). After 20 minutes have passed, get hot charcoal from the stove and place it on top of the covering pan making sure they are in the center of the pan. Let the doughnut bake for another 25 minutes before removing it from the stove. After 25 minutes, remove the covered pan from the stove and let it cool down for about 10 minutes. Remove the doughnut from the pan and let it cool down completely.   Serve with the chocolate syrup and your favorite drink!

 

🙂

Sophie

 

PS: Original recipe from The Pioneer Woman. I added a few changes.

PPS: Don’t burn yourself!

PPPS: (The last one!) If you have any questions about charcoal stove baking, leave them in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This post is part of the monthly link up party Our Growing Edge. This event aims to connect food bloggers and inspire us to try new things. This month is hosted by Hannah from Love The Little Bakery