Honey and nut cookies

Now that my son is living at home, we seem to get through an awful lot of biscuits and cakes. I thought I'd start to make my own biscuits/cookies to fill the biscuit tin, so at least I know what's in them. I love most  American cookies as well as lots of great British favourites like digestives, shortbread, bourbon etc. so thought that in the next few weeks I'd bake a mixture.

With cookies, once you've found a good basic recipe, you can adapt it in many ways. When we lived in the US, my lovely neighbour gave me lots of her family recipes, including a basic one for cookies. This is it, adapted to UK measures and ingredients.

Oven 190C/375F/gas5. Grease a baking sheet or line with parchent paper or a silicone sheet.

Basic recipe

225g soft butter

140g caster sugar
1 beaten egg yolk

2 tspn vanilla extract

280g plain flour
pinch salt

Beat butter and sugar together in a bowl with a wooden spoon, then beat in egg yolk and vanilla essence. Stir in the flour and salt. Mix together to make a ball of dough.
Now you can either make the dough into a sausage shape and wrap in clingfilm and chillfor 30 mins or so, or roll out dough and cut into shapes. Bake on the baking sheet  for 12-15 mins till golden.

This is the basis for lots of other variations. I've tried and tested many over the years, and this is one of our favourites.

Honey and nut cookies

Basic ingredients as above plus:
40g cashew nuts [not salted], macadamia nuts or pine kernels, chopped
75g more butter
85g of a set [not runny] honey
85g icing sugar

2 baking sheets prepared as above.

Make the dough as above and from it take out tablspoons of the mixture and roll into small balls.
Put half of these on a prepared baking sheet and flatten a bit. Space out well.
Spread the nuts out in a shallow dish and dip one side of the rest of the balls into the nuts. Put these on another baking sheet, nut side up and space out well.
Bake at 190C/gas5 for 10-15 mins till a light golden colour. Leave to cool on sheet for about 10 mins then put on a wire rack.
Beat the 75g butter with the icing sugar and honey till nice and creamy.
Spread this over the plain cookies and put the nut one on top.
A nice treat to have with a cuppa; the honey buttercream has a lovely flavour.

Hazelnut sandwich

This recipe is supposed to have Romanian origins.

I've tweaked it a bit, substituting hazelnuts for the original walnuts, and making it a coffee cake, as I love the combination of hazelnuts and coffee. It's the filling that makes this different from the usual Victoria sandwich.

175g butter
175g caster sugar
175g sr flour
1 tspn vanilla essence
3 eggs
2 tbspns coffee essence [I used Camp] or you could use instant coffee dissolved in hot water

Filling:

100g ground hazelnuts
1 tbspn milk
1 tbspn rum
25g sugar

icing sugar for the top

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4

Grease and line 2 x 20cm sandwich tins

Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla essence and fold in the flour.

Divide the mixture between the 2 tins.

Bake for 20-25 mins till golden.

Leave to cool in the tins for about 5 mins then put the cakes onto a wire rack.

Filling - you can grind whole hazelnuts finely in a coffee grinder or, as I did, buy them ready ground.

 Mix all the filling ingredients together and use it to sandwich the 2 cakes together. Sift some icing sugar over the top.