Cola Gingerbread Men for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap

My oh my, baking has been even more lacking.  Work is hard and distressing right now and not looking to get better any time soon, hence the sheer amount of not posting there has been.  Sorry.  But you don't want to hear about that, you're here for cookies!  Specifically, for cookie swap cookies!

I stumbled across the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap last year, after it had closed.  I was really disappointed as it looked like such fun!  So of course I immediately added myself to the mailing list so I would not miss out next time.

It wasn't until mid October that I began to wonder about whether or not the swap had opened up again.  I hadn't received any email saying so.  Some investigation revealed that yes, it had opened up, and that my email had ended up in the Junk folder.  A good thing I checked or I'd be sitting out this year too!  So I got signed up and then began plotting.

The idea for the cookies came from a book I was reading.  In the story one of the characters is a chocolatier but at one point it mentioned cola gingerbread.  Well, I was intrigued.  What an interesting idea and rather ideal for a festive gift.  Gingerbread is very Christmassy, as far as I'm concerned.  The cola is an added bonus as I have always felt that the Coca-Cola advert with the trucks and the song and the lights is the first sign that it is almost Christmas!  I don't care about what's on sale as soon as Hallowe'en finishes, it's not the festive season until Coca-Cola announces that the holidays are coming!

Anyway, I ended up having to experiment with this recipe for a couple of weeks as there was not an existing recipe for cola gingerbread cookies (that I could find).  So I was having to tamper with an existing recipe.  For my initial batches the shape held up but they caught very easily and the cola flavour was rather too subtle.  So I had to increase the amount of syrup to improve the flavour.  Unfortunately that meant the cookies spread.  Not such a big deal really, except that it meant I couldn't do my original idea for the final look.  Based on something I had seen on Pinterest, I wanted to have my gingerbread men hugging their cola bottles.  This was also part of the experimentation.  It worked well in the early batches but wouldn't in the later ones.  Flavour trumps aesthetics though for me so I just went with the spreading batches and used icing to attach the cola bottles to my little men.  Not quite as lovely but still rather cute.  The only other problem this caused was that packaging the little guys was a bit of a curfuffle as some of the bottles would come away from the hands.  I managed it in the end though and it seems they arrived fairly intact at their various destinations! 

And once my own cookies were away, the ones from the lovely bloggers who got me in the swap started arriving!  It was kinda fun to get mystery boxes of cookies.  I didn't eat any until the weekend though since the Hubby and I decided to pack them all up and take them to Glasgow with us as we were away for a shopping weekend.  You can see them in all their delicious glory in the pictures below.  From top to bottom: Cranberry, White Chocolate and Sea Salt cookies from Ellie of RovingLights; Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies from Kirsty of Ever So Sweet; and Oat and Maple Syrup Biscotti from Tina of The Worktop.  Thank you so much, ladies.  These were scrumptious and the Hubby and I thoroughly enjoyed them!

I am hoping my swapees liked their cookies just as much.  I can tell you that we certainly enjoyed eating the spares.  I'm not much of a fan of gingerbread and even I was scoffing them without thinking.  They're a slightly soft cookie which are not too hot.  The ginger and cola mix nicely, especially when you eat the cola bottle with the cookie.  Yum yum!

Recipe - adapted from Home Baking Biscuits and Cookies
Makes 36

• 350g/12oz plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 100g/3.5oz butter
• 175g/6oz light brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 4 tbsp cola syrup
• 2 tbsp golden syrup 
• Decorative sugar balls
• 36 cola bottle sweets
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• Cold water

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas Mark 5 and line a few baking trays with greaseproof paper. 
2. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger together in a bowl.
3. Add the butter in pieces and then rub into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
4. Stir in the sugar and then make a well in the centre.
5. Add the egg yolk, cola syrup and golden syrup and mix together.
6. Knead into a smooth dough.
7. Sprinkle a clean surface with flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm/0.25inches thick.
8. Cut out gingerbread men with a 10cm/4inch cutter.
9. Space out well on the tray as these cookies spread.  Create eyes and buttons by pushing the sugar balls into the dough.
10. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the edges are just starting to brown.
11. Remove and allow to rest on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
12. Once cool, mix the icing sugar with a little water to get a fairly thick icing.
13. Place a blob of icing on one of the hands of each of the gingerbread men and stick a cola bottle sweet to the blob.  Leave to set.

Cola and Cherry Cookies

 

Baking is seriously good for my soul I think.  It had been nearly a month since I last got a chance (or the energy) to bake something and once I managed to get myself into the kitchen and under way with this bake it felt wonderful.  I have not felt so great in quite a while.  There has been a lot of serious de-motivation going on.  Very serious.  Which then leads to brooding and lack of doing anything.  Not good.  So!  Nothing like a baking challenge to get your groove back, even if just some of it.

Well, being the second Thursday of the month, it is time for the Behind the Curtain Dessert Challenge!  The ingredients: Cola and Cherry.

Okay, so this time it wasn't entirely new territory for me.  I have done something with cola before, but not cherry.  However, I remember it being a very popular combination.  A lot of the cola recipes I saw back when I did the Float Cupcakes were cola and cherry.  And of course it is a flavour sold by Coca-Cola.  So I was up for the task of creating something with the flavours.

Since I have made cola cakes previously, I did not feel like doing that again for this challenge.  I wanted to do biscuits!  But how to combine the two flavours?  Why, by making sandwich biscuits.  I decided I wanted to make something similar to my Pink Freens, with a layer of flavoured fondant icing sandwiched between two biscuits.  I knew flavouring icing with jam worked rather well so that would be the cherry bit.  The biscuits would then be cola flavoured.  And since these would be coming out close to Valentine's Day, I figured I could add a little holiday twist by punching a heart shaped hole in the top for the pink fondant to be seen through.

Having made a decision I went looking for ways to make cola cookies.  My initial thought was to find a sugar cookie recipe that I could add the cola flavouring to (either in the form of actual coca-cola, or cola syrup).  Really though, this was overcomplicating things.  I did find a few recipes that involved boiling cola down into a syrup for flavouring but a lot of them recommended using Mexican coke, which has cane sugar in it for its sweetener and I wasn't sure how to go about acquiring that.  Plus there seemed to be mixed reviews on just how cola flavoured the final result was.  Ideally, I wanted something that made use of the cola syrup I already had (though in the end I had to buy a new one anyway since it was out of date) and used a good quantity of it because last time I used it the flavour did not come through very strongly.  And that is exactly what I found over at Sweet Hope Cookies!  Even better was the fact that this dough would not require any chilling time!  I love dough I can use immediately.

It was an amazing dough!  It came together wonderfully after a little trial and error with ingredient amounts (since I was halving the recipe and some ingredient amounts did not halve very easily).  It wasn't too sticky or too dry, it rolled great and it cut great.  It barely spread during baking and the end result was a cookie bursting with cola flavour!  

The fondant bit took a little longer to get right as I wasn't sure how much jam I needed to make a really nice, cherry flavour.  So I kept having the fiancé test it until he was satisfied.  Really I think it depends on the quality of your jam and how strong you want the flavour.  So the instructions in the recipe are to keep going until you are happy with the taste.  Of course, if you have access to cherry extract it will probably make you life much easier.

All in all, I thought these came out really well!  The fiancé calls them indulgent because they are quite thick biscuits but are not too hard or too soft and do not skimp on the fondant.  Plus they taste like cherry cola, which is what I was aiming for.

Recipe - makes about 18


Cookies - adapted from Sweet Hope Cookies

• 400g/14oz plain flour
• 1/3 tsp salt
• 1/3 tsp baking powder
• 115g/4oz butter
• 85g/3oz granulated sugar
• 85g/3oz light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 60ml/2fl.oz cola syrup

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line some baking trays with greaseproof paper (I ended up with about 5 lots of 8 cookies per tray but only own 2 trays of which I can cook one at a time so...tray number is up to you).
2. Sift the plain flour, salt and baking powder together into a bowl and set aside.
3. Beat the butter and sugars together until smooth and creamy.
4. Add the egg and mix in until incorporated.
5. Add the vanilla extract and the cola syrup and beat until well blended.
6. Add the flour mixture a little at a time, beating well after each addition.  Towards the end you may need to use your hands to bring it all together into a nice smooth dough.
7. Sprinkle a clean surface with a little flour and roll out the dough to 0.5cm/0.25inches thick.  Use a 6.5cm/2.5inch circular cookie cutter to cut out an even number of circles.
8. For half the circles, use a small, heart shaped cutter to cut shapes out of the centre.
9. Transfer cookies to the prepared trays and bake for about 12 minutes.  
10. Allow to cool on the trays before transferring to a wire rack.

Fondant Filling:  

• 200g/oz ready-to-roll fondant icing
• Smooth, seedless cherry jam
• Lots of icing sugar

This is a bit of a trial and error bit.  It really depends on your jam and if you are happy with the flavour.

1. Knead the icing on a clean surface dusted with icing sugar until it is nice and soft and easy to mould.
2. Put 2-3 tbsp jam into a saucepan and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until it has thickened.  Allow to cool slightly.
3. Flatten the icing out slightly, place the jam in the centre and add 2 tbsp icing sugar.
4. Fold up and knead to spread the jam throughout the icing.  Add more icing sugar if necessary to make the icing less sticky.  You want to get back to how it was before you added the jam.
5. Taste the icing.  If you think it needs more flavour, repeat steps 2-4 until you are happy with the result.
6. Roll out the fondant to just less than 0.5cm/0.25inches.  Cut out circles using a 6.5cm/2.5inch cutter.
7. Turn the biscuit circles without the holes in upside down. 
8. Place a fondant circle on top of each biscuit and then cover with a holed one.  Squeeze together gently to bind the cookies and icing so they do not fall apart.

 

Cola Float Cupcakes

This bake was a flavour experiment.  The idea came from a recipe for cola cupcakes in  Hummingbird Bakery: Cake Days, though I didn't actually use that one for mine.  I just took the idea of using cola syrup for flavouring.  So yes, the original idea was for cola cupcakes.  I wanted to try and take it further though and make them cola float cupcakes.  Cola floats, for those who do not know, are a drink of coca-cola, with a scoop of ice cream on top, usually vanilla.  It can be strange but is also quite delicious.  Hence, cake versions.  The cola bit would be the cake obviously, but the 'ice cream' was really where my experimentation lie since I thought it up by myself, no inspiration from anywhere.

Having made ice cream, I know that one of the main ingredients is custard, as well as cream and your flavourings.  But how to make a custard flavoured cream that was nice and pipe-able.  Add too much of a wet something to whipped cream and it tends to collapse, at least in my experience anyway0.  Then it hit me: custard powder!  So that's basically what I went with: whipped double cream, with custard powder and vanilla extract.  It was surprisingly effective.  The fiancé and I think it tastes almost like a Mr. Whippey ice cream (a slightly firmer version of the ice cream you get from an ice cream van).

It took me a while to find cola syrup.  Later on I was browsing through a Nigella book and saw she also had a cola cake recipe, which used actual coke, but I had my syrup by then.  I admit I got it somewhere I would not have expected, and that was Argos.  After much searching, I concluded I was going to have to buy syrup meant for those Sodastream machines, the ones that make fizzy drinks at home.  But the bottles seemed to be at least £8 wherever I looked, which was a bit much for an experiment, and that's not even considering postage.  Then I found it on Argos, via Google.  Only £4 and was free delivery.  Well, I jumped on that offer and it arrived in time to make them for the fiancé to take to Dundee tonight.  Yay!

So what did my willing testers think?  Well, it was mixed results.  The fiancé and one of his friends liked them.  The fiancé also really enjoys the cream topping.  Someone didn't like the cream.  They didn't quite taste cola like though.  It was sort of there but not very obvious, which is weird because I used twice the amount the Hummingbird recipe did.  The icing was very cola-y though.  I figured this one would be an acquired taste though.  I don't like cola flavoured things (except actually Coke) and so I didn't want to try.  So that's fair enough.    

Recipe - Makes 12

Cakes:

• 140g/5oz butter
• 140g/5oz caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 170g/6oz self-raising flour
• 2 tbsp cola syrup

Cola icing:

• 55g/2oz icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp coca-cola

Vanilla 'Ice Cream' Cream

• 284ml/10fl.oz double cream
• 1x 75g/2.6oz packet instant custard powder
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract 
• 12 cola bottle sweets to decorate

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cases.   Use dark cases to look more like cola floats, or red for a striking contrast.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. 
3. Add the cola syrup and beat in. 
4. Add the eggs one at a time, and beat until fully incorporated after each addition. 
5. Sift in the flour and fold into the mixture.
6. Spoon into the cases, trying to distribute the mixture equally and making sure to fill the cases 2/3 of the way up.
   
7. Bake for about 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. 
8. Leave to cool on a cooling rack.
9. Make the cola icing, by mixing the coca-cola and icing sugar together.  Add the cola a little at a time to get the right consistency.  You don't want it too runny but you want to be able to spread it easily.
10. When the cakes are cool, top with a thin layer of cola icing.
11. Make the 'ice cream' by first whipping the double cream to stiff peaks.
12. Add the custard powder and vanilla extract and fold into the cream.  The custard powder will make the cream stiffen a bit more.
13. Put into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle and pipe a nice swirl on top of each cake.
14. Top with a cola bottle sweet.