Triple ginger white-chocolate cookies

Okay, I have a confession to make - I might as well be up front about it. I hate white chocolate. I think it's far too sweet and it isn't even proper chocolate. Another confession: I've kind of gone off chocolate bakes in general, although I did like my orgasmic brownies. More to the point, everybody else liked it a lot more, so they disappeared very quickly. 

The problem of the day was there was half a bar of white chocolate in my cupboard that had been there for absolutely ages - possibly even years, because I can't remember the last time I used white chocolate in anything! Still, I didn't want to throw it away because I'm stingy like that. 

I was toying with the idea of making a white chocolate and raspberry something but wasn't sure what that should be - apart from the small matter of not having any raspberries in the house. My husband tried to convince me to let the white chocolate be and make ginger nut biscuits instead. I make a really mean spicy ginger nut biscuit that he loves, but I wasn't in the mood because they're quite labour-intensive. Also because I didn't want that white chocolate sitting around for a single moment longer. So, as a compromise, I finally decided I would make cookies with ginger AND the white chocolate. And that is how these cookies happened. 

My husband thought the cookies were lovely. Some friends who popped by also thought the same, so they went back home happily accompanied by a dozen. My husband was happy, my friends were happy. I tried a cookie myself and I thought it was ok (considering it contained white chocolate). Still, I was happy too, because no more white chocolate in the house... and no more coming in ever if I have a say in it! 

Recipe for: Triple-ginger white chocolate cookies



Ingredients:

2 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp ginger powder
2 tbsp chopped stem ginger
225gm plain flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 large egg
150gm butter
100gm light brown sugar
50gm dark brown sugar
150gm white chocolate, chopped into small pieces (or use white chocolate chips)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Method:

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and the vanilla and beat until well combined.

2. Now add the flour, grated ginger, nutmeg and ginger powder to the bowl and mix with a wooden spoon until it comes together in a dough. Fold in the chopped stem ginger and the white chocolate until they are evenly distributed. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, as it will be too sticky to work with otherwise.

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. While the oven is heating, form walnut-sized balls from the chilled dough and place 1.5 inches apart on a baking sheet lined with non-stick foil. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. (The time will vary a little depending on your oven - mine is a fan-assisted oven.) If you have to bake the cookies in batches like I did (because I only have one baking sheet that I actually like), remember to keep the dough refrigerated between bakes so that it doesn't soften too much.

The cookies will be quite soft at first, so leave them on the tray for 2 minutes before carefully removing them to a wire rack to cool completely. They will crisp up as they cool.

If you like your cookies crisp around the edges but softer in the middle (I do), take them out of the oven after about 8-9 minutes. My husband likes them crisp so I baked his for the full 10 minutes.

End-of-the-line chocolate banana marble cake

If I were a house-proud, kitchen-efficient, recipe-perfect kitchen goddess who knows exactly what’s in her larder/pantry down to the last half-teaspoon and thus plans or even creates new recipes to finish up comestibles according to their expiry date, I would probably be terminally ashamed to know me. Luckily I’m not a kitchen goddess, so I’m not really ashamed of me, and only mildly embarrassed to admit to having a kitchen that is cluttered with bits and pieces of various things that are nearly-but-not-quite at the end of their edible life.

Once in a while, though, I manage to finish off a couple or three items in one recipe – usually cakes, because they’re fairly forgiving of odd additions so long as you get the flour-leavening-fat ratio reasonably right. This cake is one such. I call it an end-of-the-line cake because its ingredients are pretty much all end of the line - very overripe bananas, the last of a tin of cocoa powder, a couple of tablespoons or so of chocolate chips, some nuts, some buckwheat flour and some very lumpy dark brown sugar.

In hindsight, I should have used that dark brown sugar elsewhere (or maybe even just fed the dustbin with it - the effort I had to expend to break down the damn lumps... honestly!) because I was supposed to be making a marble cake.

As you would expect, marble cakes look their best when they have a light-coloured and a dark coloured portion. Using dark brown sugar for the batter made it quite dark… and then adding the cocoa to part of it made it darker still, so that the marbling was not exactly what you’d call visible. Dark and darker isn’t really a contrast.

*sigh*

Oh well, non-domestic non-kitchen non-goddess proposes, and God(dess) - possibly Domestic, possibly not - disposes...

Luckily the cake tasted good even if it didn’t make the mark on the fair-and-pretty factor.

Recipe for: Chocolate banana marble cake


(That shadowy effect on the wedge of cake isn't a shadow - it's the cocoa-dark portion! So much for marbling...)

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups AP flour
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup oil
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 small overripe bananas, mashed
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
6 tbsp Greek yogurt
2 tbsp chopped toasted nuts
2 tbsp dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup cocoa powder

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C/350F. Spray 7" square pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2. In a big bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.


3. In another mixing bowl, combine the oil, sugar, and bananas.



Beat until combined.

4. Add the eggs and vanilla to the mix and beat.



5. Then mix in the yogurt.



6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and fold in.



7. Spoon half the batter into the greased pan in dollops.

8. Add cocoa to the remaining batter in the mixing bowl and stir until just combined.



9. Spoon chocolate batter in clumps around the pan, leaving some lighter colored spaces.



Sprinkle the nuts and choc chips over the top of the batter. Use a knife to swirl the batters together, taking care not to mix them too much.

10. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until tester comes out with just a few crumbs attached.

Cool cake in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes before removing the cake. Cool completely before cutting.