Dominica Malcolm

I came up with this recipe when I wanted to make use of my new electric oven, and I couldn’t decide between a pizza or cookies. So I asked on Facebook, and someone suggested a cookie pizza. I attempted just that, and ended up with a cookie with the texture of a pizza-base. It might sound odd, but it’s a bite to be tried! I’ve had a few people ask me for the recipe already, so now it’s time to share the complexities of just how I made this interestingly-named cookie.

Ingredients
15g dried yeast
2 tsp honey
300mL lukewarm water + 200mL room temperature water
500g bread flour + 1 cup bread flour
1 cup brown sugar
160g glace cherries
1 cup cocoa powder
2 cups caster sugar
170g chocolate chips

Method
1. Blend yeast and honey in a bowl. Stir in lukewarm water. Leave for 5 minutes (until foaming).

2. Sift cocoa and 500g flour into large bowl. Add brown sugar. Mix well.

3. Make a well in the flour mixture, and add yeast mixture to well. Stir in together. Add the rest of the water and mix until combined to create a sticky dough.

4. Knead in caster sugar, 1 cup at a time. Mixture should become like cake batter. Set aside for 30 minutes.

5. Pre-heat oven to 170°C

6. Sift and mix in 1 cup flour to make batter thicker. Add chocolate chips and cherried, and mix well.

7. Spoon approx 1-2 tablespoon sized portions of the mixture onto greased cookie tray, leaving a few centimetres between each cookie. Bake in the oven for 20 mins.

Ingredients
8x 10cm square puff pastry sheets
3 medium bananas, peeled
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp cinnamon
50g flaked almonds
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup corn flour

Method
1. Mash bananas in a bowl. Add vanilla, sugar and cinnamon and mix well. Mix in almonds, then mix in corn flour.

2. Add mixture to small saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sauce thickens or begins to stick to the pan (don’t let it stay too long or it will burn!)

3. Turn off heat and allow mixture to stand until thick/no longer watery.

4. Spoon mixture into a line in the middle of the pastry squares. Roll them up and place them on an oven safe tray (I prefer to line it with aluminium foil).

5. Bake in 180°C oven for 20 mins, or until pastry is puffed and slightly brown.

It’s the last day of May and I haven’t met my personal quota for posts made this month, so I thought I’d better think of something quick.

One interest I’ve developed over the last few months that I never really thought I’d be particularly keen on is cooking. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting recipes I’ve come up with since January. One of the items Jeremy suggested for me to include on my list of “101 things in 1001 days” was to cook one new recipe a week. Early on in the year I slightly modified that to an average of at least one new recipe a week, because I was enjoying it so much, I was averaging two new recipes a week.

There are a few reasons my interest in cooking has grown so much over the past few months, and it’s not because I’ve been “forced” to through this goal. I actually really enjoy both the feeling I get when I taste something wonderful I made, whether it’s from a recipe from a book or the Internet or something I came up with myself, and the satisfaction of knowing my effort is appreciated. After years of having so many interests but never feeling like I was “good enough,” to be considered talented in those areas, finally I have something I almost always get complimented for, be it from my husband, family, or friends, depending on who I’ve cooked for. And most of the time the whole process comes naturally to me. Even when I make a mistake, the recipe still usually turns out all right. While it feels really easy for me, I know that’s not something everyone can do. Sometimes people following the recipes to the dot still manage to stuff up somewhere. For that I’m grateful for so few mistakes that have mattered.

However, after a while into the year, I sort of forgot my goal of one new recipe a week for a little while; too distracted by other things. I was well ahead of my goal, but determined to try to catch up on myself again last week, and attempt another cooking item from my list – make my husband a 5 course dinner. This was quite a feat, as I had to cook all afternoon, just about, to create and add 5 new recipes I had never made before. I’ve since heard people surpised at the fact I made a soufflé, not realising people consider it to be a difficult dish to make. Actually it turned out perfectly.

The meal went as follows:
1. Grated Courgette & Potato Soup
2. Watercress & Ricotta Soufflé
3. Boiled Beef & Carrots, with Yorkshire Pudding on the side (2 recipes)
4. Apple Batter Pudding
5. Cheese Platter (no recipe here)

This is something I am so incredibly proud of, I felt the need to record it for historic reasons.