Carrot Cake Cookies

Posted in cookies by a little Swiss, a little Canadian

Hello everyone, I wish you all a Happy Easter and a wonderful weekend!

These carrot cake cookies are super yummy, with a touch of maple syrup, cinnamon and cloves.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Yields: 25 large cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups butter melted
2 eggs
1 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup ground almonds
2 1/2 cups spelt flour
4 tsp baking soda
2 cups grated carrots
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt

-Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350F.

-Whisk together the butter and maple syrup, add eggs one at a time, add spices and salt.

-Mix in the carrots, then add the flour, baking soda and ground almonds. Stir until well combined.

-Drop by spoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving some space between cookies. The cookies will spread a bit.

-Sprinkle with some coconut sugar if desired.

-Bake in preheated oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.

(These pretty Easter eggs were made by my late grandmother who was a very talented crafter!)

Enjoy!

Ursula

17Apr2017

Swiss Carrot Cake

Posted in cake by a little Swiss, a little Canadian

I hope you all had a happy Easter! And we certainly can not complain about the longer weekend;) Here in Canada our kids do not have spring vacation like my nephew and niece have in Switzerland. So we take the extra two days off of course! Also the weather was pretty nice and warm on Easter Sunday.

We have been making a few treats, like these carrot cookies!

I will definitely make these again, these cookies were so soft and just yummy!! I used coconut sugar for sweetening. I might be posting the recipe another time.

This year I colored our eggs traditionally with onion peels.

But the grand dessert was our carrot cake. Now a European carrot cake is a bit different than a North American carrot cake. So once in a while I like to make it the way I grew up eating it. Also in Switzerland you decorate a carrot cake with Marzipan carrots and I made some “grass” also using Marzipan. Now here in Canada, because you can not buy the finished product, you will have to make your own “carrots” using plain Marzipan and food coloring. I was lucky that my mom brought those when she was visiting:) This is not the original recipe I have in my 1982 Betty Bossi book: Kuchen, Cakes & Torten, rather a bit of a lighter version with less butter and flour. I admit, I did use coconut sugar, which turned out beautiful. We really, really liked it! And it is a keeper all year long! Make it a day or two in advance, it will taste even better:)

Swiss Carrot Cake

240 g almonds, ground
300 g carrots, shredded
90 g butter, unsalted, melted
6 eggs, egg whites separated
230 g sugar
1 organic lemon, zest
dash salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp clove
60 g unbleached flour

-Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line the bottom of a 8-inch round baking pan with parchment paper. Grease and flour the sides.

-Cream together 100 g sugar and egg yolks. Add lemon zest, salt, cinnamon and clove. Mix in carrots, flour and nuts.

-In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff. Slowly add 130 g sugar then whisk again until shiny.

-Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the first batter and carefully mix under. Then add the rest. Mix in melted butter just until combined.

-Fill in prepared baking pan and bake for about 45-50 min, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely.

Decoration:

almond shavings (around 50g)
apricot jelly, or jam warmed and then strained through a sieve. Spread around cake then sprinkle the almond shavings on.
Marzipan carrots
green Marzipan (around 200g), roll out, in between plastic wrap, to cover the top. Then make some “grass”.
or plain marzipan and orange and green food coloring and some pistachios for the “carrot top”.
using a garlic press to make the “grass”
Some chocolate eggs

-You can also simply dust the cake with icing sugar.

If you never had a European style carrot cake you might want to give this a try;) just saying…!!

Enjoy!

Ursula

8Apr2017

Lemon Easter “Egg” Cookies

Posted in cookies by a little Swiss, a little Canadian

Happy weekend everyone!

After an other taste of spring weather craziness, we are hopefully done with snow until next winter! I am really looking forward to warmer temperatures and some more spring flowers blooming in our garden, for now only crocuses are blooming.

I found these fun “egg” cookies on the chefkoch.de website and just had to give it a try!!

These are so cute:) I really like the lemon curd filling that I found on texanerin.com, it is so refreshing! You could also fill these with apricot jelly.

My kids are maybe a little to old now for Easter egg hunt and such, but we are never to old for some little treats;)

Makes about 5 big and 10 small cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutters.

Lemon Easter Egg Cookies

150 g butter, soft
1 tsp organic lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla sugar
75 g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
150 g unbleached all-purpose flour
75 g cornstarch

-Whisk together butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and lemon zest. Add flour, cornstarch, milk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Lemon Curd (Paleo)

3 eggs
1/4 cup honey
zest of 2 lemons
1/4 cup refined coconut oil or unsalted butter
1/3 cup+1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

-Mix together eggs, honey and lemon zest in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat stirring constantly until it thickens, about 5-10 minutes.

-Strain and let cool completely. Store in airtight container (I used a mason jar) in the fridge for up to 1 week.

-Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

-Roll out the dough 2-3 mm thick, they will rise a bit. Cut out a even amount of egg shape cookies. I had one left over which I baked just like that and then was gobbled up by my daughter for “testing” of course:) Half of the cookies need a small hole, you can do that by taking a small circle cookie cutter or the round part of a piping tip.

-Bake in a 200C/390F preheated oven for about 11 minutes or light brown. Let cool completely.

-Spread lemon curd on half of the cookies. Dust the cookies with the hole with icing sugar or a cookie icing (lemon juice and icing sugar mixed together). Place two cookies together. Store in fridge.

–I used 1/4 cup honey for the dough instead the icing sugar–