Ultimate Cookies

My journey is infinite. My journey is endless. My journey is eternal.

During my journey, I've searched and searched for the ultimate cookies recipe, but my quest is not over. I will continue my journey to find even more ultimate recipes, always more ultimate ! I will bake cookies until my very last breath, to give them to my friends and see the joy of eating cookies on their face. I will never stop, because my journey will never be over.

My journey is endless ... The journey for perfect ultimate cookies is eternal !

For 25 ultimate cookies

- 100g butter
- 200g sugar
- 1 egg
- some vanilla extract
-  a good pinch of salt
- a quarter of a baking powder packet
- 200g flour
- 60g biscuits
- 100g of chocolate (I love using white chocolate)

To make the ultimate cookies, you must :

- pre-heat your oven at 180°C
- vigorously mix the soft butter (not melted) with the sugar, then add the egg, the vanilla and the salt and mix again
- add the flour and the baking powder and mix
- crush the cookies and add them to the mix
- finally, add the chocolate cut in small bits
- makes small balls of dough on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes at 180°C. At the ultimate minute, you'll know it's time to take the cookies out of the oven when the base of the cookies have started becoming a bit brown (but the cookies must remain not too baked, for their ultimateness to be effective).

It's ready ! I let you guess what you have to do next with those ultimate cookies ..

For once, those are not pictures of the same cookies described here. I never got the chance to take some pictures of those delicious cookies. I eat them first. Sorry for that. Those pictures are really from this recipe (no English version yet ...), which is also not too bad, if you want to know !

ULTIMATE TIP : for cookies that are always even more ultimate, you can add pecan nuts, macadamia nuts, cranberries, well, almost anything that you can think about, as long as it's delicious.

Apple cake

The apple cake is, for me, the basics of cakes (even before the chocolate cake !). It's pretty easy to bake, but so good ! What takes the longest it to cut the apples (but sometimes we gotta do some efforts to get what we want, right ?). This recipe is perfeclty moist, the apple bits are mostly on top of the cake (because I cut them in small pieces and not in big ones) and they make a nice layer of deliciousness on top. Here is the recipe !

 

Heat the oven at 175°C.

This recipe is good for one enormous cake (or two medium ones, or a big one and a smaller one, or ... well you got what I mean :) I made the one you see on the photos plus a smaller one with those proportions)

- 3 big apples
- some lemon juice
- 250g butter (softened, so take it out of the fridge a bit in advance)
- 160g sugar
- 2 sachets vanilla sugar
- 1 sachet of baking powder
- 425g flour
- 150 ml milk
- 5 eggs (medium/big)
- a bit of salt
- a bit of cinammon

The steps :

- Peel and cut the apples in small bits. Put some lemon juice on them.
- Mix together the softened butter, the sugar, the vanilla sugar and the salt
- Add the eggs and mix
- Add the milk and mix
- Add the flour, the baking powder and the cinammon
- Finally, add the apples to the dough, mix a bit and pour everything in the cake form

Bake for 40 minutes (or more or less depending of the shape of your cake form)

After the cake has completely cooled down, you can add a bit of icing on top :

- 65g of icing sugar
- 10g os lemon juice

Add lemon juice or sugar to adjust the consistency. Then, pour the icing in zigzags on top of the cake. (You can also double the proportions and cover the whole cake, but I think the lemon would cover too much of the cake taste.) It's ready !

Enjoy !

Delicious lemon (or orange) cake

I made this recipe fro the first time a few months ago and I think that since that moment, it has been the recipe I have used the most ! It´s a really delicious lemon cake, where the acidity is balanced by a good amount of sugar (no ! don´t run !). The texture is really perfect. You can easily remplace lemon by orange and have an equally perfect orange cake (which is a bit more surprising than a lemon cake !). The recipe comes from  La Cuisine de Bernard (in french) and here is my version of it :


For one delicious cake

- 200g sugar
- 1 packet vanilla sugar
- 120g melted butter
- 3 big eggs
- 150g flour
- 100 ml lemon/orange juice
- the zest from a lemon or an orange (bio is better)
- 1/2 cc baking powder
- a pinch of salt

The recipe is quite simple. Mix and add, in this order :
- the melted butter, the sugar, and the vanilla sugar (don´t overwhip it, just mix it a bit)
- the eggs
- the floud, baking powder and salt
- the lemon/orange juice and zest

There is one thing to pay attention to if you want to obtain the right texture, which is thick and moist (but not too much either) : don´t whip too much, specially when mixing together the butter and sugar.

I usually put a bit more lemon juice than the original recipe. I don´t always have the time to zest the lemon/orange, so I sometime don´t put any in the recipe (although then, the cake can taste a bit too sugary, so I put more lemon juice).

It´s really good when you replace the lemon juice by orange juice, but the taste is a bit less pronounced. So I use sometimes Grand-Marnier (an orange liquor) : 80 ml of GRand-Marnier and 20ml of lemon juice (for acidity).

I recommend using a round pan, and not a rectangular one : with the round pan, the cake will be flatter and will bake more evenly, when the cake will most probably be overbaked in some parts in the rectangular pan. I use a 28 cm diameter form and I bake the cake for 35 minutes at 170°C.

When the cake has cooled enough, pour some topping on it :

- 130g icing sugar
- 25 ml lemon/orange juice or Grand-Marnier

Version à l'orange

I use sometimes lemon juice for the topping, sometimes orange juice, sometimes liquor, to vary the flavors. You can totally use a lemon topping for an orange cake, it will be delicious !

You can decorate with some thin zests, candied orange/lemon ...

Enjoy !