Fudgy Flourless Chocolate Cashew Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

All of my taste testers agree, these fudgy flourless chocolate cashew cookies are GOOD. Better than good. We thought they were fabulous. Crunchy on the outside and wonderfully chewy in the middle. And as long as there are no nut allergies to worry about, your gluten-free friends will love them too.

With Thanksgiving nearly upon us, I chose the theme "quick last minute cookies" for this month’s Creative Cookie Exchange. I don’t know about you, but aside from the traditional pecan pie, desserts always take a back seat to the main course and sides at my house. As my elder daughter says, "Thanksgiving is All About the Sides!" When extra guests show up and that pie won’t stretch far enough, whip up some quick cookies.

While these cookies are easy to put together and bake, I am also delighted to tell you that, once baked, they freeze and thaw beautifully, making your life even easier. You are welcome!

Fudgy Flourless Chocolate Cashew Cookies

I named these for the nuts I had on hand, but please feel free to substitute whatever you have in the cupboard. If your nuts aren’t roasted and lightly salted, toast them in a dry skillet and add one half teaspoon of fine sea salt when you sift the sugar and cocoa powder together. The salt is absolutely essential to balance the sweetness of these fudgy cookies.

Ingredients - for 2 dozen big cookies or 4 dozen small ones
3 cups or 375g powdered sugar
2/3 cup or 53g extra dark cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark.)
1/2 cup or 95g mini dark chocolate chips
5 1/3 oz or 150g lightly salted roasted cashews, chopped roughly
3 large egg whites

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your cookie sheets by lining them with baking parchment or a silicone mat.

Sift the powdered sugar and cocoa into a large bowl together.

Add in the chocolate chips and chopped cashews, saving a couple of tablespoons of the cashews for topping, if desired. I always like to add nuts to the tops of baked goods if there are nuts inside because 1. They look nice and more importantly, 2. They are a warning to those with nut allergies. No bad surprises.

Whisk your egg whites for a minute or so, just to break down the proteins. Pull your whisk out occasionally and let the egg whites drip off. You’ve beaten them enough when they no longer drop off in glops but drip smoothly. I use a small whisk and a measuring jug for this step, which makes the egg whites easier to pour into the other mixing bowl.

Pour the egg whites into the sugar/cocoa bowl and stir with wooden spoon or hard silicone spatula till they are well combined.

You will think that there are not enough egg whites, but just keep stirring. This batter is super stiff.

Using a 2-tablespoon or 1-tablespoon scoop (depending on whether you want big or small cookies), spoon the thick batter onto your prepared cookie sheets. Mine was a 2-tablespoon scoop.

Sprinkle each mound with a pinch of the chopped cashews, if you saved some.

Bake one pan at a time in the middle shelf of the oven for 12-14 minutes for the big cookies or 11-13 minutes for the smaller ones, or until the cookies are cooked on the outside edges and just set in the middle. Do not over bake!

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing them from the pan with a thin spatula.

I highly recommend serving glasses of ice cold milk with these fudgy flourless chocolate cashew cookies. A match made in heaven.

Enjoy!

Check out the other quick last minute cookies, my Creative Cookie Exchange friends are sharing. Such a small but delicious group this month!

• Easy Slice and Bake Lemon Shortbread Cookies by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Fudgy Flourless Chocolate Cashew Cookies by Food Lust People Love
• No Bake Cheesecake Bites by A Baker's House

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

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Thai-Style Pumpkin and Shrimp Stir-fry #FishFridayFoodies

This healthy Thai-style pumpkin and shrimp stir-fry is super quick to the table, with enormous flavor. With or without the shrimp, it’s a satisfying meal. But add the shrimp. You won’t regret it.

I’d been hearing about this recipe for a while before I finally got to taste it for myself two years ago. It’s a favorite at my elder daughter’s home where both she and her husband know how to make it without consulting a recipe. I get the impression is in regular rotation, when their favorite kabocha squash is in season.

I’ve made it with red kuri squash and pumpkin, but the original recipe says that you can also substitute delicata, acorn or butternut as well. I could be wrong but I think yams would work too. The slightly sweet flesh with the savory fish sauce, fragrant garlic and spicy peppercorns make this dish very more-ish. This is truly a dish that is more than the sum of its parts.

One more thing, I like to leave the skin on squash and pumpkin. It’s my favorite part. If you are concerned that your pumpkin skin is too thick and might not be edible because it’s tough, slice off a small piece and boil it in a little water for about 5-6 minutes. If it turns tender, you don’t need to cut it off before cooking. Remove any blemishes, but otherwise, cut the pumpkin into pieces, peel and all. If it doesn’t turn tender, by all means, cut it off.

Thai-Style Pumpkin and Shrimp Stir-fry

This recipe is adapted from the original at Thai Table, an excellent source for information about Thai ingredients, travel, and, of course, recipes. If you love Thai cooking, you need to check it out. If your pumpkin is a bit larger or small than mine, don't worry. It will still turn out just fine.

Ingredients
5 cloves garlic
1 slightly overfilled teaspoon or 4g black peppercorns
2 lb 2 oz or 965g whole pumpkin (1 lb 13 oz or 825g after seeding, with peel intact)
3 tablespoons canola or other light vegetable oil
2 cups or 480ml water
5 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
8.5 oz or 240g peeled, cleaned shrimp

For garnish: chopped cilantro
Optional: crushed red pepper

To serve: Steamed rice

Method
Cut your pumpkin in quarters and remove the seeds, scraping the inside clean. If you need to remove the skin, set each quarter on its side and cut the skin off. If not, simply cut off any hard spots or blemishes.

Cut the pumpkin in bite-sized pieces and set aside.

Using a mortar and pestle, grind the peppercorns and garlic together into a smooth paste. In a small bowl, combine the fish sauce and the sugar, stirring till the sugar dissolves.

Heat your wok over a high flame. Add in the oil, closely followed by the garlic pepper paste. Cook the paste for just a minute, stirring continually, until the garlic starts browning.

Add the pumpkin to the wok, stirring to coat it with the garlic and pepper.

Pour in the water and stir again.

Cook for five minutes or until the pumpkin is tender and the water has almost all evaporated. Add in the sweetened fish sauce and stir again.

When the fish sauce has been absorbed by the squash, toss in the shrimp.

Cook minute or two more, until the shrimp are pink and cooked through. Add crushed red pepper to taste, if desired, and sprinkle on some chopped cilantro.

Serve over steamed rice.

Enjoy!

An InLinkz Link-up

Would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas.

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Île Flottante Floating Island Bundt #BundtBakers

A fun and easy twist on the original French dessert called îles flottantes, this floating island Bundt features meringue baked in a Bundt pan, served with fresh fruit and crème anglais, a pourable vanilla custard.

This month our host for Bundt Bakers is Lara from Tartacadabra and she posed an interesting challenge: Recreate a French dessert or pastry using a Bundt pan. Make sure you scroll down past my recipe to see what everyone else made.

Île Flottante Floating Island Bundt

The original Îles Flottantes are made by poaching meringue in water or milk, then serving them in custard. In this adaptation, we bake the meringue in a Bundt pan. So much easier and, if you ask me, more impressive as a holiday or dinner party dessert.  Possibly my favorite part though, is that you don’t have leftover yolks, which so often happens when making meringue. The crème anglais, aka pouring custard, takes care of that!

Ingredients - to serve 6
For the île flottante:
4 large egg whites, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
pinch salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon or 125g superfine (caster) sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the crème anglaise:
1/3 cup or 75g extra fine (caster) sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
pinch salt
2 cups or 480ml whole milk
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoons butter

To grease a 6-cup Bundt pan:
2 teaspoons canola oil

Optional for serving: your choice of berries or fresh fruit. I used a mix of blueberries, raspberries and golden berries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physalis_peruviana

Method
Preheat oven to 375°F or 190°C. Brush your Bundt pan with oil, and invert onto a paper towel so any excess oil can drain off.

To make the meringue, first put your kettle on to boil.

Sift the cream of tartar into the egg whites with the pinch of salt. Beat them at a medium speed until soft peaks form.

Add in the sugar one tablespoon at a time, gradually turning the beaters up to high as you add the sugar. Beat on high until stiff glossy peaks form then mix in the vanilla extract.

Put your Bundt pan into a larger baking pan. Spoon the meringue into the oiled Bundt pan, making sure to fill all the corners and crevices.

Put the pans into your preheated oven and pour boiling water into the outer pan till it reaches about 2 inches or 5cm up the side of the Bundt pan.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the meringue is puffed and golden brown. Set on a wire rack to cool for about 30 minutes. It will be very tall when you first take it out and then it will shrink. This is normal.

Turn the meringue out onto a serving plate and chill until ready to serve. I turned mine out onto a cling film lined wire rack then transferred it. Save yourself an unnecessary step and go straight to the serving dish.

The Crème Anglais aka Pouring Custard
I make this the same way I make homemade vanilla custard for banana cream pie, except I stop cooking it when it’s still pourable. You can see those instructions and step-by-step photos in this post, so I won't add them all in again here.

In a 2-quart saucepan (don’t turn the heat on yet!) mix sugar, flour and salt. Stir in milk and vanilla paste and whisk until smooth. Make sure you get ALL the lumps out before turning on the heat.

Over medium heat, cook the mixture, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken and begins to boil gently (about 10 minutes). Boil one minute. Remove immediately from heat and set aside.

In a small mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks with a whisk, while drizzling in about half of the hot milk mixture. Quick beating and slow drizzling are essential so that you don’t end up with cooked eggs.

Slowly pour the egg mixture into the saucepan, stirring rapidly to prevent lumping. Occasionally, scrape the saucepan with a rubber spatula.

Over low heat, cook, stirring constantly, until the custard just coats the back of a spoon. It should still be pourable. Add in the butter and stir till it melts completely. If there are any little lumps, you might want to put the custard through a sieve before putting it in a heatproof vessel and covering the surface with cling film. Put it in the refrigerator to cool.

Pour some custard around the outside of the floating island before bringing it to the table.

Serve a wedge of île flottante – floating island Bundt with crème anglais and fruit.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Lara for hosting Bundt Bakers this month. I loved this creative theme! Check out the other très magnifique French desserts we’ve made into Bundts:

• Almond-Brown Butter Bundt Cake by Katin špajz
• Baba Rum Bundt Cake by Merce's Cake
• Brioche Bundt Cake by I love Bundt Cakes
• Bundt Cake Quatre-Quarts Breton by Patyco Candybar
• Chez Panisse Almond Bundt by Sweet Sensations
• French Opera Bundt Cake by Tartacadabra
• Île Flottante (Floating Island) Bundt by Food Lust People Love
• Quatre-Quart Bundt Cake by Sneha's Recipe
• Tarte Tatin in a Bundt Pan by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Tropézienne Bundt Cake by Patty's Cake

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme or ingredient.

You can see all our of lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about #BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

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Cranberry Lardy Cake #BreadBakers

Traditionally, this British afternoon teacake is made with raisins, sultanas and/or currants. My cranberry lardy cake is studded with dried cranberries, but fear not, it is amply filled with the requisite lard and sugar, for a properly respectable British teatime treat.

This month my Bread Bakers are baking up yeast cakes, a subject that required some research on my part. I came up with a list of possibilities, mostly from old English recipes, to be honest. Before the days of chemical rising agents, like baking powder, the most reliable ways to get a cake to rise was either to add eggs or yeast.

Lardy cake caught my fancy because, as previously mentioned here, I have a weakness for caramel. When baked up properly - that is with plenty of lard and sugar! - the bottom turns into a crunchy caramel. As the cake is flipped for serving, you end up with a gorgeous caramel top. Who can resist that?

Cranberry Lardy Cake

My recipe below is a combination of a couple I found on the internet from The Happy Foodie and Hobb House Bakery. Check out this YouTube video to watch one of the Baker Brothers make their version. That first link is actually the one that gave me the idea to add cranberries. The recipe called for crimson grapes, which I’d never heard of. Cranberries, on the other hand, I keep always on hand.

Ingredients
For the dough:
3/4 cup or 175ml warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 oz or 7g dried yeast
2 1/4 cups or 285g strong white bread flour plus extra for kneading
Scant 1/4 cup or 50g lard
Pinch flaky sea salt

For the lard and sugar filling:
1 cup or 225g caster (very fine) sugar, plus extra for the pan
1 cup or 200g lard, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 65g dried cranberries, plus extra for decorating, if desired

Method
Mix the yeast into the warm water with one teaspoon of the sugar. Set aside.

Measure the flour, salt and lard into a big bowl and use a pastry cutter to cut the lard into the flour.

When the yeast mixture has started to bubble up, pour it into the flour bowl and mix all the ingredients together.

If you are using an electric mixer with a bread hook, knead the dough for 10 minutes. If not, sprinkle a little flour onto a clean work surface and tip the dough out of the bowl onto it. Knead the dough for 15 minutes. Once you have a smooth and elastic dough, pop it back into the bowl and cover it with cling film.

Leave the bowl in a warm place for the dough to rise to twice its size or for 1 hour, whichever comes first.

Meanwhile make the lard and sugar mix by creaming them together in a mixer or with a wooden spoon.

Prepare your 8 in or 20cm round nonstick baking pan by coating it with 1/3 cup or 87g of the lard sugar mixture. Use a rubber spatula to spread it over the bottom and up the sides. Sprinkle an extra tablespoon of sugar over the bottom.

When it’s risen, gently press the air out of the dough and form it into a ball. Pop it on a well-floured work surface and use a rolling pin to roll it into a circle about 15 in or 38cm across.

Divide the remaining lard/sugar paste in half. Use a spoon to distribute one half over the dough circle. Use a rubber spatula to spread the paste over the dough, leaving a small margin of dough around the sides uncovered.

Starting on one side, fold the dough towards the middle. Continue until till all the sides are folded over. (See the first five photos below.) Again, this video shows the method so much better than words can explain.

Let the dough rest for a few minutes, then roll it out again to a 15 in or 38cm circle. Spoon the other half of the lard mixture over the dough circle. (Photo 6 above) Spread it with the rubber spatula. Now sprinkle on the cranberries.

Repeat the folding process till all of the sides have been folded in again. Place the dough in the prepared pan.

Cover loosely with cling film and leave the cranberry lardy cake to rest and rise for two hours. It doesn’t really rise very high but it does fill the pan.

When your two hours are almost up, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Bake the lardy cake for 45 minutes, covering the top with foil if it starts to get too brown. Remove the pan from the oven and leave to cool for just a few minutes.

Leave it any longer and you may find that the caramel will stick to your pan, even it it’s nonstick. If this happens to you, use a blunt knife to ease it off the pan so the whole cake will come out in one piece.

If necessary, return any pieces that stayed in the pan to the top of the cake. Or just eat them. I cannot tell you how wonderful this crunchy caramel is! It's the perfect topping for the yeast cake underneath.

Sprinkle with tablespoon or two dried cranberries to decorate, if desired. Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month's Bread Bakers host, Archana from The Mad Scientist Kitchen. Check out the other recipes our fellow bakers made for the yeasted cake challenge:

• Almond Stollen from Baking Sense
• Baba-au-Rhum from Ambrosia
• Chocolate Babka from Sneha's Recipes
• Cranberry Lardy Cake from Food Lust People Love
• Drozdzowe from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Hartford Election Cake from All That's Left are the Crumbs
• Orange Yeast Cake from Cooking with Renu
• Yeasted Lemon Cake from Gayathri's Cookspot
• Yeasted Orange Cake from The Mad Scientist Kitchen
• Yeasted Pound Cake from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Yeasted Transylvanian Cinnamon Sugar Cake from Sizzling Tastebuds

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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