Valentine’s Day is full of chocolate, roses and love. This holiday is also full of desserts. When my mom asked me to help her make a dessert for her work’s potluck, I knew exactly what I wanted to do: Hearts dipped in chocolate. And something that could make cookies even yummier? Raspberry. So I set out to create a cookie that would be worthy of falling head over heels.
Babycakes
COOKIES
YOU WILL NEED:
1 c. sugar
1 c. butter (softened)
1 beaten Egg
3 tbs. cream
1 tsp. vanilla
3 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
4 drops of red food dye (you can add more for a darker color)
PREPARATIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together and then add beaten egg until well blended.
3. Mix in the cream and vanilla until fully blended. You can mix in any food coloring you would like at this point to color the cookies.
4. Next add the baking powder and the flour slowly.
5. At this point you can see that my mixture was a bit clumpy and not coming together into a smooth mixture. This is due to the butter starting to get hard again and not fully allowing the mixture to come together fully. There is a simple fix, you do not need to add any more wet ingredients, all you need is to turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for a minute or two. This will warm up the butter, allowing it to melt some and form a smooth ball. Once you have the dough ready, wrap in parchment paper, wax paper or plastic wrap, whichever works best for you, and place in the fridge for roughly 2-3 hours.
6. After the dough has chilled, you can start to roll it out. I break it down into manageable portions and start to roll out to roughly 1/4 of an inch thick. I found that it worked easiest if you used a plastic, flexible cutting mat to roll on. You can either lightly dust the rolling pin with flour or you can place some parchment or wax paper over it and then roll.
7. Now it’s time to use cookie cutters to create your cookies. The plastic cutting board makes removing the cutouts a lot easier because you can bend it and peel the cookies off without breaking them.
8. Lay the cookies out on a cooking sheet (they do not spread so you can put them closely together) and place in the oven at 375 degrees. Cook for roughly 10-12 minutes but keep a close eye on them after 8 minutes. Watch for the edges to start turning brown, this means they are done. The thinner you roll the dough, the quicker they will cook and thus burn so be careful.
9. Place the cookies on a wire rack to cool while you prepare the chocolate coating.
Raspberry Chocolate
YOU WILL NEED:
20 dark chocolate pieces (I used Dove)
6 heaping tsp. raspberry preserves (seedless)
6-6 1/2 tbs. cream
Red Sprinkles for decoration
PREPARATIONS:
I read recently that for a thicker chocolate ganache you want to use more chocolate than cream and that if you want a thinner ganache add more cream. A side note: if you are looking to have a shine to your ganache, add a little bit of butter. You also want to pick a chocolate you personally like because the ganache will center around that. Because of this, I chose Dove Dark Chocolate bites.
1. Use a double boiler to melt the chocolate.
2. Meanwhile put the cream and raspberry preserve (I used heaping teaspoons because I love the flavor and wanted my chocolate to have a strong hint of it) into a microwavable container. Then heat it up for roughly 15 seconds but watch it closely. If the cream starts to boil, pull it out. The heat will help the preserve melt in with the cream and mix better.
3. Once the chocolate is melted, stir in the cream and raspberry mixture. If the mixture is too thick, add a little more cream.
4. Pour into a deep bowl. Place the bowl into the hot water to help keep the chocolate in a liquid state.
DIPPING THE COOKIES
Now the fun part! Dip the heart cookies halfway into the chocolate. I found it easiest to dip the cookie in the chocolate and move it back and forth to coat the chocolate evenly. You can use the side of the bowl to scrape off any excess chocolate. Dip the chocolate side of the cookie into the red sprinkles to coat the edges. Place the cookies back on the cooling rack so the chocolate can harden.
Enjoy and share with your sweetie!!
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