Gift in a Jar

I mentioned in my previous M&M Soft-Baked Cookie post that I've kept the green and red M&M for something else . Yes , I kept them to make gift in a Jar for the coming Christmas!

I think this makes a great gift for my loved ones , especially for those who bake . Place all the dry ingredients for the cookie recipe in the jar , top with lovely M&M , write a little sweet note and tie a ribbon . Your christmas gift is ready ! You could write a little note like this for example :

"Empty the jar in a medium mixing bowl , add in 50 mL of oil and 1 egg . Mix well , divide cookie dough and bake at 180°C"
                             

I'll be trying out another M&M Cookie Recipe with these green and red M&M soon . :)

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M&M Soft-Baked Cookie

Here's the first cookie recipe on Palette Avenue ! Decided on M&M since Christmas is coming and I wanted to do something colorful for the festive season .

I made mostly the large ones (50g each) because they are easier to manage . Do note that this recipe spreads A LOT so do space the batter way apart before baking . Otherwise the cookies will end up sticking all together . Alternatively , you could replace the butter in this recipe with shortening so it won't spread as much . Cookies are one of the easiest to bake in my opinion so try this out !

If you pay close attention to the pictures , there aren't any red and green M&M on the cookies because I have other plans for them ! It will be up on my next post .  ;-)

For the recipe that i'll be sharing , I placed the M&M on the cookie instead of mixing them in because I wanted them to be obvious instead of hiding inside the cookies . You could mix some in the batter and keep the rest for the topping too . For scooping of batter , I used an ice cream scoop for the big cookies so that it will turn out round , otherwise it will be oddly shaped like the smaller cookies in the above pictures which I don't mind at all .

Here's the recipe:

Yield: 12 big cookies / 60 small cookies

Ingredients:

• Brown Sugar - 2/3 cup (130g)    
• White  Sugar - 1/3 cup (60g)
• Butter - 2/3 cup (150g)
• Egg - 1.5nos (65g)
• Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp
• Plain Flour - 1 2/3 cup (210g)
• Baking Soda - 3/4 tsp
• Salt- 3/4 tsp
• M&M Chocolate - 1 cup (240g)

Direction:

Combine brown sugar , white sugar , butter , egg and vanilla essence . Mix till homogeneous before adding plain flour , baking soda and salt . Scoop 50 g of batter on baking tray and sprinkle with M&M .

Preheat oven to 180°C and bake for 12 - 15 minutes depending on your oven . Allow cookies to cool down before transferring them for serving or storing .


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Hazelnut Chocolate Brownie (Chewy)

To continue from my previous Blondies recipe post , here's the brownie recipe! This recipe gives a rich chocolaty and chewy brownie . It would go well with walnuts too!

The taste would greatly depend on the type of chocolate used . If you look at the recipe below , the chocolate is the main ingredient of the entire recipe! So don't save on the chocolate for a better flavor . Lower grade chocolate tends to give a . . . diluted chocolate taste I would say . If you could use Valrhona, that would be awesome in my opinion . Haha . 

Some brownies do come with frosting , i'll definitely try them another time with another brownie combination . :) This recipe would require you to melt chocolate under heat , so do be careful because they do get burnt easily . Alternatively , you could choose to either melt the chocolate in the microwave or the baine marie method to have a better heat control . Don't microwave it for too long though , it will get burnt too ! I'll usually do it 20 seconds each time under high heat mode , remove bowl to stir a little before continuing another 20 seconds and so on , till chocolate melts completely . 

However , for this recipe , I melted the chocolate under medium heat over stove . It's important to remove the pot from the stove every once in a while to prevent the chocolate from being over heated because once it is burnt , it is irreversible .  

Here's the basic brownie recipe for now: 

Yield: A tray of 13 inch x 9 inch

Ingredients:

• White Sugar - 1/2 cup (100g)
• Butter - 2 Tbsp (30g)
• Water, hot - 2 Tbsp (30g)
• Chocolate - 1 1/2 cup (225g)
• Eggs - 1 nos (55g)
• Vanilla Essence - 1/2 tsp
• Plain Flour - 2/3 cup (80g)
• Baking Soda - 1/4 tsp
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Hazelnut, chopped - 50g

Direction:

Combine white sugar, butter and water in a pot. Mix well and heat it up under medium heat over stove . Add in chocolate and stir gradually , removing pot from stove every once in a while . Stir until chocolate melts completely and remove from heat . Add in eggs and vanilla essence . In a separate bowl , combine the remaining dry ingredients except for hazelnut and add into the mixture. 

Lastly , fold in chopped hazelnut . Transfer mixture into a 13 inch by 9 inch tray . Preheat oven to 160°C and bake brownie for 18 - 20 minutes , depending on your oven .  After baking , allow it to cool for 20 minutes . 

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Weight Conversion (cups to grams) for Baking

I always prefer to use weight than cups when comes to baking because I find it more accurate. 1 cup of sugar could be 225g when taken by person A and probably 250g by Person B due to parallax error. So for the sake of consistency, it's always good to invest in a weighing balance.

I'll try to include both measurements in my recipes, however if I do not, do refer to the "Helpful Tips" - "For help in weight conversion" for help in conversion! I find that two websites extremely helpful for me, I hope it will be the same for you. A weight conversion table reference will come in handy when your you are all ready to bake but your weighing scale is down!

Cranberry Milk Chocolate Blondies

Just the other day I suddenly wonder what the difference between Blondie and Brownie is . So I decided to try out both recipes to taste it for myself ! Before this, I always thought "Blondie is like Brownie" like many people around me think but no idea to what extend though ! I found out that Blondie uses brown sugar as its' main ingredient for flavour while brownie uses chocolate . That's one difference !

For this Blondie recipe , I used a milk chocolate cranberry combination :

But of course , if you don't like cranberry or milk chocolate, you can always replace them with your own favourite ! I'm looking forward to try out other flavour combinations .

So after trying brownie and blondie , the difference is pretty obvious . Blondie is more cake like while brownie is more chocolaty. But of course , there are so many recipes available and some have tweak the recipes to suit their own liking and there's also " brownie-blondie " now. 

Here's the recipe:

Yield: A tray of 13 inch x 9 inch (1 cm height)

Ingredients:

• Dried Cranberry - 1/2 cup (60g)
• Unsalted Butter - 90g
• Brown Sugar - 100g
• Vanilla Essence - 2 tsp
• Egg - 1/2 no (30g)
• Plain Flour - 3/4 cup (90g)
• Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp
• Salt - 1/4 tsp
• Milk Chocolate - 1/2 cup (50g)

Direction:

Soak dried cranberry in 2 cups of hot water for 10 minutes . Drain and set aside . Combine unsalted butter and brown sugar, mix well . Add in vanilla essence and egg. Mix well before adding plain flour, baking powder and salt.

Mix well and fold in milk chocolate.

Transfer batter into a 13 inch x 9 inch tray . Preheat oven to 180°C and bake blondie for 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven . 

I'll be sharing the brownie recipe next, stay tune! 

Palette Avenue : All content and images belong to Palette Avenue . If you would like to republish or reuse any of the images or recipes, kindly link back to this post .