Clara's cookies (aka nutella filled cookies)

Clara, a good friend of mine from Spain, told me last time we met that she had tried this recipe (spanish only) but that she had swapped the chocolate chip cookies with nutella, and the results were amazing. She also told me that she had changed the method a bit to fill the cookies with the nutella instead of making a swirl or coating them with it. My cookies were not as good looking as hers but they were amazing too ^^ The trick appears to be to be generous with the nutella ;-)

This recipe yielded 16 cookies as they taste better if they're not too big.

Clara's cookies:

Ingredients:

100g brown sugar
40g white sugar
110g unsalted butter at room temperature
230g plain flour
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Nutella at room temperature

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Beat together the sugars with the softened butter till well mixed. Add the egg and the vanilla and beat again until you have an homogeneus paste.
3. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Slowly add the flour to the butter mixture until well combined.
5. Wrap the dough with cling film and let it chill in the fridge for at least one hour.
6. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it till it's around 5mm thick. With a cookie cutter, or something similar, cut round shapes from it. Gather the scraps of dough together, roll it again and cut additional cookies out.
7. Fill the cut out cookies with a teaspoon of nutella each and close them over it.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 8-12 minutes till they are light brown (be careful not to overbake them).
9. Remove he cookies from the pan and let them cool on a wire rack before storing them in an air tight container.

Chocolate chip yogurt cupcakes

(Sorry for the quality of the photo, I couldn't find my camera and had to take it with my phone).
Last year I discovered The Great British Bake Off thanks to a coworker and I've been looking forward to this year's edition ever since I finished watching all the seasons I missed. Now, every Wednesday, you can see me drooling in front of my TV and also eating something sweet to cope with all the longing for cakes and tarts and pies and...well, everything baked, that I get after watching all those gorgeous creations made by amateur bakers (not that I'm surprised that somebody can be so good without being a pro after following dailydelicious for so many years). In this state of mind I decided yesterday to bake some cupcakes so that I had something to go with the program ^^ The chosen ones were these cupcakes from Happy Flour basically because I already had all the ingredients except for the chocolate rice, that I substituted with milk chocolate chips.

This recipe yielded 8 cupcakes but between my boyfriend and I none were left this morning ^^U The cupcakes were really tasty and we specially liked the way the yogurt flavour mixed with the chocolate.

Chocolate chip yogurt cupcakes:

Ingredients:

60g white sugar
40g unsalted butter
110g all purpose flour
110g plain yogurt
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
60g milk chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 175ºC.
2. Sift flour, baking soda and baking powder together and set aside.
3. In another bowl, cream butter, salt and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Slowly beat into the butter mixture the egg and the vanilla essence until well combined.
5. Fold in flour and yogurt alternately until well combined.
6. Finally add the chocolate chips.
7. Line a muffin tin with paper casing and spoon batter into it until 70% full.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
9. Remove he cupcakes from the tin and let them cool on a wire rack.

Pear cake

Now, when the Christmas holidays are over and I'm stuffed with Christmas sweets, it's the time to think about eating healthy and slim down all the weight gained thanks to my mom's delicious cooking :-) But I still want to bake and eat cakes! That's why I chose to make this delicious fruity cake which relies on the natural sweetness of pears rather than using lots of sugar. This cake is moist, fragant and guilt-free (not that I ever feel guilty for eating anything delicious but...).

The recipe is an adaptation of this one. Basically, I skipped the lemon juice and the liquor and added some almond extract.

Ingredients:

30g white sugar
55g unsalted butter
75g all purpose flour
500g pears (gross weight)
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Melt the butter. Leave aside to cool a bit.
3. In another bowl, mix together the flour and the baking powder and then add the sugar.
4. Mix the butter and the eggs and then add the flour little by little to the butter, mixing well between additions.
5. Peel, core and dice the pears. Add them to the butter and flour mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into a non-stick muffin pan and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden (I made mine very thin to get more of them so they only stayed in the oven for 12 minutes).