Kitchen Experiment #6: Salted Toffee Cookies

My youngest son has a sweet tooth. He does not appreciate majority of the savoury dishes I make but raves about my baking...that is, as long as I use one of his favorite ingredients -- chocolate, toffee, caramel, and peanut butter . Almost every day, as soon as I get home from work, he asks me to bake him some cookies. This is not a good thing because I barely have energy left to cook dinner, let alone bake some dessert. But today I gave in to his pleadings and baked him some salted toffee cookies.

Method:

I used the Hershey's Toffee Cookies recipe and added a sprinkling of sea salt (on my batch of cookies) to balance out the sweetness of the toffee bits. That way, I was able to come up with both a kiddie and adult version of the cookie.



10 minutes per batch was not that bad. My son waited impatiently, not taking his eyes off the blobs of cookie dough slowly melting away in the oven. He had to wait 10 more minutes to let the cookies cool down, asking every minute or two "Are they ready, Mom?"



It was worth the wait because it turned out moist and delicious.



Time for some cookies and milk ! He smiled a big smile with his front milk teeth hanging by a thread and uttered the sweetest "Thank you, Mom !" Now, that was worth staying up late for :)



Results:

Kitchen Experiment #4: Biscotti

I have a handful of biscotti recipes but the Americas Test Kitchen version is my holy grail. My favorite combination is pistachios and cranberries. The only problem is finding peeled pistachios here in Toronto. It is so hard to peel pistachios so I ask my boys to help (after thoroughly washing their hands) and promise them a yummy treat after their hard work.



Contrary to public perception, it is actually very easy to make biscotti. No matter how many times I make this treat without paying too much attention to measurements, they always turn out great. The only really tedious part is having to bake them twice -- the first time as loaves...



and the second time as strips ...



Then they turn out delicious ! Nothing is more satisfying than a cup of tea and some biscotti.



Results: