Amber Makes – Amber Hasan

Amber Makes, Baking, Christmas, Dessert, Eid, Festival, Food, Lifestyle, Recipes

Raspberry thumbprint cookies

June 23, 2020 No Comments

We love baking; we bake just when we can and we bake when we can not. The baking is usually slower in summer because we like cooler things like smoothies and trifles to beat the heat, but we make sure that there is always a jar of home-baked cookies in the pantry, regardless of the season.

By the way when I say we, it myself and my little ones.

They just need a go ahead from mommy to start, even when one cant stand the oven heat in the house.

I accept I would totally do that in search of a good, sweet cookie.

Though I baked a lot of cakes when I used to bake professionally, but I am not really a cake person. I am a cookie person, I love cookies.

This recipe is the first one for cookies that I tried. I found it online many years ago and kept a printout in my recipe book. Then I misplaced that recipe book. Even frantically searching online out of my cravings, I could not find the same recipe. I tried few other recipes but they were all either too floury or not sweet enough.

Until two years ago, I found that recipe book and I found this lost treasure of a recipe.

We bake these cookies around Christmas and Eid to send to our friends and family. And these are loved by everyone.

These are rich, buttery and sweet, with just enough tang of the raspberry jam. The coconut adds more texture and a little crunch in the flour base.

PS: I would love to give credit for this so if you do know/find the link, please reply in the comments section

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 stick unsalted butter
1 1/4 c. sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
raspberry jam

DIRECTIONS:

1- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour with the coconut, baking soda, and salt. In a standing electric mixer fitted with a paddle, or using a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter with the sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg yolk and vanilla, scraping the side and bottom of the bowl. Beat in the dry ingredients at medium-low speed. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

2- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Position the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and bake for 12 minutes. Make a dent in the cookies; fill with jam and bake for about 10 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

RECIPE NOTES:

Though the recipe calls for a total of 22 minutes of baking time, I bake for 8 minutes, then make dents, fill in jam and then I bake an additonal 5 minutes. Once the cookies cool down, the texture is perfectly balanced between soft and chewy. These tend to get hard if over-baked, so as always less is better.

These cookies never lasted in the pantry for more than a week so I am unable to tell you how long these will stay good.

The dough seems to get difficult to handle and the cookies flatten out when it stays on room temperature for a while. I take out in portions, roll while it is still cold and hard and then take out more.

Amber Makes, Baking, Canada, Children, Christmas, Dessert, DIY, Family, Festival, Food, Recipes

What I made for Christmas giveaways

December 21, 2015 1 Comment

So I had been sick, really sick for past so many days. I do not even remember since when. I finished two rounds of antibiotics but got sick again two days later. Then someone in the family told me to get some anti-allergy, and I found relief in my kids Benadryl syrup. No I still did not get to sleep, but it definitely helped. By the way I was wondering, why are OTC anti-allergy medicines are so expensive?

On another note I missed a birthday and so many days of productivity.

And then last Tuesday I realized schools are closing for holidays and I haven’t got any thing for teachers for Christmas. I like to create gifts and presents myself. It gives those things a personal touch I feel.

But there was neither time, nor energy or brain to shop or plan. So I Googled and found this amazing thing- White chocolate peppermint pretzels.

Took only three ingredients, about 3 hours and some mason jars that I had bought some time back. And yes a lot of fight and struggle with my macho number 3 as he was constantly trying either to pull down the chocolate bowl or break the pretzels.

Just sharing the recipe-Its a great activity to do with children as well (Hint hint winter holidays)

[yumprint-recipe id=’2′]

I had a couple while I was still making, it tasted that good:)

A little piece of twine, a handmade chalkboard greeting card and a piece of gold lace-Voila!

Amber Makes, Baking, Children, Crafts, Dessert, DIY, Food, parenting

Ice-cream themed summer birthday

November 1, 2015 1 Comment

I have often seen child number 1 being the most angelic, most well mannered, well behaved one, while number 2 is usually an opposite. It is not because I am child number 1 but because even my children are like that.

My first born is the first born of both the families so she has always been a blue-eyed baby. Plus she is the most well mannered baby I have ever come across. It is not because she is mine, but I have always gotten compliments about her, to the extent that my friends would ask me for advise on how to get theirs as disciplined and behaved.

Of course I know no magic, number 2 and number 3 are a proof.

Number 2 was/is a loud baby (just like her mother). She is a Mini-Me. Care free, easy going, easy moving, distracted, extremely loving and super intelligent. When outside, both number 1 and number 2 are known for their manners, etiquettes and behaviour. But she likes to be a baby at times, and after number 3 even more.

She is the only summer baby in the family, so we always have greater and better chances to plan and celebrate her birthday. But for past couple years we could not. I was travelling on or around her birthday so we would just cut a cake and give presents, but then there were occasions and that too very often, when she would come to me with those puppy eyes, and huge pout and say “Am I not your daughter? Why do I never have a birthday party? Why do I not get to invite my friends? Etc etc etc”

Being the crafty mom that I am, I’m always on the look out for stuff, cheap stuff that I could use for little, unnecessary stuff. About a year back, I had seen some nice chevron and damask patterned stuff at the local craft store in the clearance section and boy it was a treasure for about 20 bucks. So I had been thinking of using that stuff towards her party; to make her happy on a budget. But it just happened, like it always does, that few days before I set the party, I happened to visit the store again. And something caught my eyes. It was a paper ice-cream cone garland, from summer stuff. I just loved the colours and put it in my trolley for a mere $2.75. That ice-cream cone garland just turned everything upside down.

I came back home and dived deep into my magic closet where I keep all the left over papers, cards, glitter, paints, glues, mod-podge, pom poms like Mr. Maker. And I came out successful. A whole bunch of goodies that were gonna keep me busy for a whole lot of days.

I made the invites out of the card stock that I had saved. Glitter, markers, paper fasteners, pom pom balls were all part of the project.

Since the weather was great, so I planned a backyard party with everything in the party to do something with summer and candy and ice-cream.

The Pizza cones: That actually matched the total ice-cream theme (Recipe here)

The Fruit Punch: Just the simple orange juice with some honey added for sweetness, and reusable plastic ice cubes

The Ice-Cream: I did not get a chance to take the picture of ice-cream itself but I used three different flavours from President’s Choice: Sprinkle Party Cake, Rainbow and Galactic Swirl (All Kosher Certified) The toppings were marshmallows, cherries, sour jelly beans, and mini m&m’s.

The Mango smoothie: A little sprinkle goes a long way, and so it did help attract the young guns to that healthy nutritious smoothie inside.

The party favours: I chose these super cute gum-ball machines, that were an instant hit with the girls. Of course there were these little fights over who wants the pink (Which obviously everybody did) but it was manageable.

The Watermelon jello: Who does not like jello? That too when it is made in a watermelon shell and looks like watermelon slices!

The cake: I had decided to go for a seven layered rainbow coloured cake with vanilla buttercream for the inside. And had two different themes in mind for the decoration. But then I left it blank, like a canvas and kept some edible decorating markers on the side so the guests and the host could decorate it themselves. It was one of the biggest hit of the party. everyone so excited as to when we were going to decorate the cake.

The girls had an amazing time decorating it. Though it was a bit difficult for them to run the markers through the soft fondant but hey, cooking and baking and decorating for them is such a fantasy right now at this age!

I couldn’t have thought of a better idea than to hide colour inside the cake so when she cuts it, she is as happy as this rainbow:)

Not a very good quality picture but this is how the table looked like.

Happy reading… Do post your comments in the section below!