baking – 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.

Baking, Canada, Children, Desi, DIY, Eid, Food, Lifestyle, Pakistan, Recipes

Present-Surprise Sugar Cookies

July 29, 2015 No Comments

Since birth I have a little issue, a teeny tiny bug that always reined me towards the paths less travelled. I always found different things better. The price tag(read obstacles, hardships) was not the matter, never was. It was always the worth of that different thing for me that made me steer into that direction, regardless of the opposing forces.

Okay enough bragging Amber…

This Ramadan had been a very very busy one, thanks to my 18 month old little labbittt who has this unending, never tiring, not to mention unnerving energy to keep the chores coming in for me. I still managed to do doe crafts and test my skills.

Every year for Eid I try to offer my cake-shop customers something new, something unique, something different. It works for me both ways. One that my customers are happy to find goodies that are otherwise rare or entirely unavailable at other places. Second, I make extra batches and keep them for family and friends so they enjoy a different treat every time. And above all, I get to hear “My mom is the bestest baker with the bestest idea” and trust me nothing beats that!

So while I was on my mission to explore, create or remake something different, I sought help from Google Mamoo(Mom’s brother) As always Mamoo Jan did not disappoint me and brought me a horde of different images and recipes. But I was still looking for something different, yet easy because my baby-yes that says it all.

I had time constraint, plus the energy constraint as the hot summer fasts were about 17-18 hours long and for a person like me who misses about 70% of the sehris, it was a difficult task when mixed with other chores.

And then I struck gold. While I was going through the same colourfully designed cookies that are hours of back breaking labor and delicate crafting, I came across this amazing love-at-first-sight treasure box kind of cookies. The ones that are sure to spark excitement as they slide those little basked lids and smiles when they actually reach those candies tucked inside! Its a win!

You know Eid for Muslims is like Christmas for Christians. Damn I sound such mommy-like.Well, living in a foreign land, it sometimes gets really difficult for parents like myself to keep our children focused. They see all these glamorous and sparkling festivals like Easter and Halloween and Christmas-thanks to the Corporate cycle though. And we tell them, we celebrate Eid. Okay what is Eid Mamma? Oh that boring day back home where you spend the entire Chaand raat either getting Mehndi(Henna) done or just having fun on the streets, and then you offer Salah in the morning and then hit the sack for the entire day. Then wake up in the evening and go see some relatives or eat out etc?

Nay!!

We got to make sure that our Eid here is as sparkly and shiny as our neighbours Christmas or Halloween is. To tell them little minds that ours is a beautiful religion and it gives us all the more chance to celebrate all the beautiful festivals just like any other religion.

So we here, thousands of kilometres away from our roots, try to make every possible effort to make their faith strong and their identity positive, while still maintaining their innocence and happiness. Since I always tell them that Eid is like our Christmas, hence the presence of all the shiny wrapped presents and if not then something that is close. Which is why the thought of these baked beauties just made my day!

I replaced Skittles from the original recipe with jelly beans. I also had the chance of a life time to research Twizzlers. And boy am I happy. The Pull n’ Peel Cherry flavoured Twizzlers are to only OU Kosher, but are also approved as vegan edible candy.

I got small braided baskets from Dollarama and lined those with gold coloured paper. I placed the cookies inside and left it uncovered so when the baskets were handed over, the kids were actually jumping to explore whats wrapped inside the treasure boxes. Unfortunately I could not get proper pictures of the finished baskets but just this random one from my iPhone that I took to send to hubby and even that I forgot to send to him.

Recipe adopted with thanks from Erica’s Sweet Tooth

[yumprint-recipe id=’1′]

Baby, Baking, Food

The perfect cake for the perfect Little prince!

March 7, 2015 No Comments

Baking

High on baking….

March 21, 2013 No Comments

Its been quite some time since I last sat and scribbled something new…. Guess the weather is taking its toll on me….From the never stopping, ongoing, pulsating, vibrating, and exciting, not to forget hot and humid Karachi to the spine-chilling, cold, gloomy, quiet Toronto-the difference speaks for itself….Just sometimes one has to decide, based on not what the heart says (Yes in my case its sometimes) but what the mind says or better yet what someone, who is a piece of your heart, wants….for no rhyme or reason of your own!

394180_10152145979225296_1672886111_n — Karachi

526592_10152564771040296_1581650670_n — Toronto

Here I am braving the temperatures, way below the freezing mark, waiting just to be back….. And before I start again on Karachi, or some tweet distracts me or my phone rings, let me just stick to what I planned….

262120_216283918408968_3438204_n — One of the first fondant cakes: Made for a surprise bridal shower

I had never been a baking person…Never loved baked goodies, never felt like doing it myself…. And then I met this woman….who was high on baking…She WAS a friend…Mind the WAS! She would bring me amazing baked stuff, and would talk about baking all the time. She always wanted to join these cake decorating classes that another friend of hers had gone to, and she was all ga-ga about it.

Then one day she called and asked me to join the class with her. Infact she told me that I have to. Being the kind of friends we were and just to try it out, I enrolled for the class, shopped enthusiastically for the basics. Found out just days before the first session that she had to leave for UK because of some emergency. Without much of a choice, I attended the first session, only to fall endlessly in love with this new form of art, so much so that even after two years, I am still looking for new classes, new designs and an opportunity to learn!

555368_480844308619593_959234633_n — Alice in Wonderland cake and cupcakes

I remember the first time I baked a cake, it was over-baked, and hard and lacked this thing called “taste”. Same goes for the first cake that I iced and well “decorated”…. Duhhhhhh!!! Horribly sweet icing, unrecognizable pattern though I used a stencil to copy it and most of all-even I couldn’t tell if it was a circle or an oval shaped cake.

Well I got better at decorating out of my pure interest- And now I had this new issue: I was a soon-to-be pro at decorating but horrible at baking!

This time around though, I could not go to any school because of time and commitment issues. So I thought of giving it a try at home. And as Aristotle said “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

So I just practiced, not skipping a single opportunity to bake, treating everyone around with my baked goodies on birthdays, holidays, Eid, Christmas parties, Easter, and what not, even without being asked for it.

Well, it worked. It worked a great deal to help sharpen and improve my skills. And two years later, I bake, and I get paid, and I get paid fairly good. Good because I can buy new decorating stuff, try new moulds, indulge in expensive brands for ingredients and so on… I bought a pantry exclusively for my caking stuff, but now one entire room is already spilling and I need more space…My teacher always says “When you become a cake decorator, you become a hoarder.” And I guess rightly so. 5 to 6 different tools to make one single petal of a flower. Visualize for a minute those multi-tiered cakes and fancy cupcakes and then imagine the tools and material required for each.

Baking and decorating for me is now more of a passion. When I am busy, am all drowned in flour, tinted in colors and I work straight 16 to 20 hours, sometimes even more. But end of the day, its the result, that custom designed cake, that gives me the sense of owner ship of each master-piece. Makes me high-it does!