Earl grey tea cookies and truffle fries with parmesan

Earl greys cookies are lined up to report for duty

Today was a baking day. My first exam is 15 days from now and so far I have been procrastinating 2 days straight. Not good. Although... today has BEEN quite productive if at all in different ways. These days I really like baking cookies, they're so cute and simple, the process destresses me, and it makes me happy to see people happy when I give them and eat my cookies. Oh, and I don't pile on the calories. 'Happy days' as Jamie Oliver would say.

To explain the truffle fries, it started because a week or so ago ieatsweet and I were at Westfield on Pitt St. Mall where we ended up having Charlie & Co.'s truffle fries and parmesan. It costed us almost $20 and it dawned on us that we could make this our own! Sometime at the end of last week I got this message from ieatsweet that she already gotten the truffle oil and sent an invite for me to come bearing parmesan cheese and fries. Well, it didn't happen last week, but it did today. So to make your own truffle fries and parmesan? Simple, get these ingredients, oven bake the fries or fry depending your preference, drizzle the truffle oil, grate the cheese - and enjoy =D

Here's the recipe for the earl grey tea cookies:

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

2 tablespoons finely ground Earl Grey tea leaves, (from about 8 bags)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 (8 ounce) sticks unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest

Instruction:

1. Whisk together flour, tea, and salt in a small bowl; set aside.

2. Put butter, sugar, and zest in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low; slowly mix in flour mixture until just combined.

3. Divide dough in half. Transfer each half to a piece of parchment paper; shape into logs. Roll in parchment to 1 1/4 inches in diameter, pressing a ruler along edge of parchment at each turn to narrow log and force out air. Transfer in parchment to paper-towel tubes; freeze 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut logs into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Space 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.

5. Bake until edges turn golden, 13 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

This recipe is taken from Martha Stewart's book but is also available here. So far, I really like the earl grey cookies because it's so simple, yet so fragrant both from the tea and the orange zest. It also has a lightness to it that makes me less guilty than eating other cookies such as the dark choc sour cherry biscuits I made previously.

Awww... broken hearted cookie (for the record: I thought this was cute, despite ieatsweet's initial [or maybe still] disagreement)

For some lucky people, these little sweet hearts are yours to devour

Cooking lesson with i eat sweet

Sour Cherries Dark Chocolate Cookies Bourke St Bakery Style

One morning at the beginning of the semester, I managed to talk Cleony from i eat sweet to have a morning sugar rush at Zumbo. The story of my first ever Zumbo experience after a year living in Sydney would have to wait for another post. Then on the way home, somehow, I got talked into spending the day with her baking.... because I really suck at baking and she wanted to transform me one recipe at a time into a domestic goddess? Whatever the reason, I ended up making 2 recipes that day. Under close supervision of course.

The ingredients

So the first batch is Bourke St Bakery's sour cherries dark chocolate cookies, my favorite cookies of all time. I have been meaning to bake this well, August last year... Before you shake your heads, listen: I broke my foot last year in September, remember?

Cleony has the book with the recipe, but if you're interested you can access it from Almost Bourdain's blog. I was really proud with the results. They were really gooey on the inside. A perfect hybrid of brownies and cookies. I can't wait to bake the next batch. Must wait for the baking mistress to come back from her overseas travel though...

Piglet face muffins

Then, we tried out her new muffin pan which I brought back from Hong Kong. We decided to make blueberry muffin. Wrong decision!!! The blueberries burst during the process and deformed some of the piglets' faces.

Muffin piglets

Baking turns out to be fun, provided I have an expert beside me. At the end of it I had so many food I didn't know what to do. So some lucky people got some muffins and cookies.

Thanks Cleony for the flour, sugar, equipments, your time and patience ;)