Cookie Dough Truffles

Yesterday, we had 13 guests over (20 people in total) for xmas dinner (imagine cooking in a student house for that number of people!!).. Obviously i seized the opportunity and insisted we needed some little sweet things to pass around after dinner as none of us thought we would be able to fit a full dessert in..

I've made these a million times before (okay maybe just 3...) But these are quick to make and turn out delicious everytime :)

Made with condensed milk, i made an eggless cookie dough (nomming obviously all the way through).. chilled the dough for half an hour, rolled out into walnut sized balls, chilled in the freezer for 2 hours, before dunking them (messily, might i add, i'm impatient and lack in skill) in melted chocolate, and decorated with drizzled white chocolate.

my messy tray...

Unfortunately, because i'm a poor student, i constantly run out of ingredients, so traditionally, i didn't have enough chocolate to cover them all.. So what did i do? I melted milk chocolate with white. 

Err.. i dont think i'll be doing that again in a hurry!! especially if i need it just to coat stuff..

It tasted fine, but it became really thick and almost impossible to coat anything with :(.. i used my instinct and added a tsp of vegetable oil, and it made it slightly more workable and still tasted fine..

Still, not enough to cover all the truffles.. and my chocolate drizzling skills suck.

But that's okay because they're still delicious without the coating... 

I like to put the naked ones into vanilla ice cream :) like a cheaper cookie dough ben and jerrys ^_^

Naked or clothed, these truffles went down a treat... my little rustic looking things... 

Cookies & Cream Cake

I always bake my housemates cakes for their birthdays. But i always seem to be running out of time because of uni work and deadlines, so it's always the same.

Victoria sponge with buttercream and raspberry jam.

Don't get me wrong, i LOVE a good vicky sponge. it's just very samey. and it kind of takes the surprise out of the birthday cake. 

So i wanted to get a little creative!!.. i didn't really have a recipe for what i was doing, i just kinda went along with my experimental instincts, since they seem to have all been so good to me recently.

My friend Lizzie has a giant sweet tooth. 

So i thought what could be better than a chocolate cake??

Not just a chocolate cake.

But a chocolate cake with... Crushed oreos??...

And buttercream to be like regular cream...

And i'm soo very glad i baked this delicious dream!.

I basically made a basic rich chocolate cake mix with extra vanilla, and combined 3/4 packet of oreos crushed. (on hindsight, it probably didnt need these in the mix as you couldn't really taste them in there, but still it makes it look more interesting)... and baked..

For the filling, unfortunately, i ran out of butter.. So i made as much buttercream as i could, just a regular one with icing sugar and a dash of vanilla.. 

I added the sugar to taste as i wanted it sweet but not too sweet so that it could be more creamy for the cookies. Right at the last minute, before i frosted it on the cake, i lightly stirred in the remaining crushed oreos (carefully not mixing too much, otherwise the icing would have turned into an unattractive poo colour :(..) 

There was so little buttercream, i couldn't even frost the outside.. 

After standing back and looking at the measly amount of buttercream, i decided, that if I was the birthday girl, I'd want to cry at the stingy amount of frosting.... So i ran and threw open my cupboard and there was my big tub of Marshmallow Fluff winking at me in the face...

"It's so crazy" I thought "...That it might just work..."

I even used it as a glue to stick some white choc drops to the top, creating a loverly 22..

It turned out to be a brilliant last minute addition as it was easily spreadable, Lizzie LOVES marshmallow fluff and it was a fun little surprise in the cake. The only downside was that after an hour or 2 of waiting to be cut, the marshmallow started to melt and run (giant mess).

But again, we didn't care because soon enough, we were all fighting for the last piece.

The only thing i would change, is to possibly sub the chocolate sponge for a richer, more indulgent chocolate cake.. like devil's food cake... or like that AMAZING BRUCE BOGTROTTER CAKE from Matilda... Mmmm...

This was only because when i added the biscuits to the cake mix, it made it look like a fruit cake. Hm.

But what it lacked in presentation, it totally made up for in taste..  :)

Brown Sugar Shortbread

After rooting through a few blogs that i usually cry over (as my talent is not nearly anywhere near as amazing)... i found this awesome recipe from Bakergirl and started drooling over the keyboard and clawing at the screen...

i'm cool.

So yeah, anyway, i felt determined that those sugary buttery treats HAD to be mine. So after converting all the cups to grams (nightmare! why is it that the americans always have the best recipes?!!)... i had a good old stab..

Let's not compare now shall we :(..

Anywaysssss, what i noticed about the dough when i was preparing it was that it was MEGA CRUMBLY. 

Like, almost too crumbly to deal with- and i thought "Crap. Done it wrong already and there's only like 3 ingredients. Worst Baker Ever." And then had a look at the recipe blog again... She stated that her dad helped her out of this sitch... BUT HOW?! I don't have a Dad on call to help me solve a crumble crisis!

I got round it by being very gentle and moulding and rolling the dough out in small batches (hence, i had many round edged, rustic-looking pieces) and using the warmth of my hands to try and melt the butter in the dough to make it stick a bit better...

Ready for the oven...

 Here's one straight out of the oven... Nice and golden... I thought..

So i tried to be very nurturing over my shortbread and tried not to over-bake it or under-bake... I think I caught them just in time.. well, they looked that way...

But once the biscuits cooled down, they were actually a little hard.. Might have needed them in the oven a little less time then... Oh well. But nonetheless, still edible and lovely with a hot cuppa.

I got a little indulgent and decided to dunk them all half in milk chocolate... OMERNOMNOM.