Pink and White Choc Chip Cookies

Cookies- not much to say about them, cept they are perfect - in size, in crunchiness, in filling that snack spot...this list could go on. I like cookies in all flavours and sizes, but choc chip are at the top of the pile! I must admit, I have fallen in love with those stunning decorated cookies that Sweetopia and  Sweet Sugar Belle make. I will attempt them one day - but for now I will share my choc chip cookies with you!

  Anything that starts this way has to be good! Soft brown sugar...only one way to describe that...

Yip - that's the word! :) I had seen these pink Smarties (like M&M's) and thought they would make such cute "chips" in some choc chip cookies! They were some special edition thing - I wish I got a couple tubes while they were up for grabs! But I guess the colourful will be just as cute!

In addition to that gorgeous brown sugar, you will need some white sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla essence/extract, baking powder and some chopped pecan nuts (which you can leave out, I did for these ones and added some white chocolate chips instead).

You can use an electric mixer to combine all the ingredients together, but mix in the chocolate chips - in this case smarties and white choc chips - by hand so they don't break up. The pink and white look so pretty together *sigh*

Then place balls of dough onto a prepared cookie sheet. I used an ice cream scoop to measure out even sized balls of dough.

Then these yummy balls of dough get placed on the middle shelf of a 190'C/ 374'F oven, and get baked for about 8-10 minutes or until they turn golden brown. After taking them out of the oven leave them to harden for a couple of minutes on the cookie sheet before taking them off to cool.

The process from start to finish is pretty quick, and there are few dishes to clean making these a real treat!

They are very yummy crumbled into some home-made ice cream!

If you would like to give them a try, you can print the recipe here, or download a recipe card here.

What is your favourite home made cookie?

Chocmint Icecream

I love the chocolate-mint combo. I will have anything chocmint! From milkshakes to peppermint crisp! Yum! I really enjoyed the recent St Patricks day celebrations! Although we don't celebrate it here, I was so inspired by all the mint goodies! So thanks everyone for sharing them! After spending hours gazing at all those minty treats, I was craving something minty - and quick!

So I whipped up a batch of mint ice cream - without an ice cream maker (yes I would love one, but I would rather have a cupboard full of sprinkles and cake pop goodies - its all about priorities!) Not a hang of a lot goes into this ice cream - but what comes out of the freezer at the end of the day is IMPRESSIVE! Its inspired by a recipe I saw on Kevin&Amanda a while ago. It just takes some heavy whipping cream (just normal whipping cream for us South Africans!), 1 can condensed milk, some chocolate chips and some peppermint essence (and some green food colouring if you like)  Its really simple to whip together (literally - I know Carla is probably laughing her head off now - she appreciates corny jokes)

First I whipped the cream until it was nice and stiff (just before it turns to butter :) ) then I folded in the condensed milk, the mint essence (I used the clear peppermint essence) and a tiny drop of gel food colouring, and mixed it until the colour was evenly distributed.

Then, I added the chocolate chips (I used Cadbury Dark chocolate for this, but I would suggest using ready made chocolate chips rather)

and mixed it all in! Then I popped it into the freezer and about every 30 min (ok, ok, I only remembered to do it twice - it still came out airy and creamy!) I mixed it vigorously with a fork to break up the frozen bits. You can dig in as soon as it has completely frozen.

And that's all there is to it! Simple as that!

If, after reading this, you are craving this yummy treat, here is a printable recipe and a downloadable recipe card for you - although you hardly need it, its so easy to remember! You can make any flavour you like following the basic recipe - I made a butterscotch and vanilla bean ice cream at the same time and both turned out fantastic!

What flavour are you dying to try?

For an AWESOME double chocolate version - check out this post by Carlas Confections

Custard Slices

I like love custard. Warm custard over a warm baked pudding reminds me of home. I think it is a comfort thing. Custard slices remind me of home too. It used to be my responsibility, on a Sunday morning, to whip up a batch of custard slices for my family to enjoy after our morning church meeting. Back then, I would use cream cracker biscuits as the "crust"(if you can even call it that!) and make a custard with custard powder, milk and some cornflour to thicken it. But I decided to tweak the original recipe a bit (ok fine, a lot) for this batch.

 Instead of using cream crackers, I decided on using some ready-made puff pastry. I cut it onto rectangles, probably about 90mm by 70mm, but just because this allowed me to get 8 nice size rectangles out of the roll of pastry - the size is totally up to you. You could even cut out cute pastry shapes with a cookie cutter (which really appeals to me, but I just didn't have time for that with this batch). I brushed some beaten egg on the rectangles and baked them until they had "puffed" and had started to turn golden brown. I whipped them out of the oven and let them cool on the baking tray.

 While all of this was happening, I started on the custard. As I had mentioned, I had always made the custard part as per the instructions on the jar, but added some cornflour to thicken it. BUT then it came to me (after botching up a pot full of custard by being impatient overly eager,  I just kept adding a bit of extra powder when it didn't thicken quick enough. It turned out extra extra thick, you could mould it like jelly!) Why use extra cornflour, when you can just make a fourth option of  EXTRA THICK by adding just a teeny tiny bit MORE of that darn good yellow powder!

So that is just what I did!

Just one other deviation from the instructions (yes, I know, I do try follow them but usually get side tracked) instead of adding the sugar, I poured in a 1/3 of a can of condensed milk. YUM!

I made it using the microwave method, and from a thin milky mixture to a thick custard, it took about 7 minutes. Super fast and super easy!

While the custard cooled slightly, I turned my attention back to the pastry. I made an easy version of royal icing by mixing some icing sugar with some boiling water until a nice pouring consistency was reached and smeared it on the bottom half so the whole side was covered and then drizzled it over the top half.

Then I spooned the slightly cooled custard (although it was still pretty hot) into a plastic piping bag, snipped off the tip (no nozzle needed) and pipped the custard onto the bottom half of the pastry.

 Then I popped on the top half...

...and left them to cool and allow the custard to set before we gobbled them up!

I think the whole process took about 30min, not bad for a quick and easy treat!

I think next time I will try heart shaped custard slices! That little bit of extra effort always goes a long way!

I totally made this up as I was going along - so I have no real, set measurements etc, but these are, as far as I can remember the steps and measurements I used:


For the pastry:

1 roll ready-made puff pastry
1 egg
1 cup icing sugar
a little boiling water

• Cut the pastry into rectangles (or any other shape) keeping the numbers even (you need two per slice!)
• Brush with some beaten egg and bake at 180 degrees Celsius until just turning golden brown
• Make some royal icing by mixing a bit of water with the icing sugar, ONE TEASPOON AT A TIME, until you JUST reach a running consistency. (If you pour it, it wont be thick like gloop, but it wont just run either. It should slowly make a nice ribbon consistency)
• Cover the one side of the bottom piece of pastry with the icing 
• Drizzle some icing over the top piece of pastry

For the custard:

4 1/2 tablespoons Custard Powder
1/3 can of Condensed Milk
2 cups Milk

• Mix all the ingredients together 
• Microwave on high for about 7 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes
• When a thick consistency is reached, let it cool for a couple of minutes
• Pipe or spoon custard onto the bottom piece of the pastry
• Put the top piece on top of the custard and leave to cool for a few minutes
• Place in the fridge to chill for and hour and serve

Custard Slices Printable Recipe 

Download Custard Slices Printable Recipe Card