If you are looking for a great gift and you love baking, why not give homemade cookies?  Who doesn’t appreciate delicious homemade cookies, especially if they know you took the time to bake them and lovingly wrap them in a beautiful gift box?  Specialty packaging stores carry gift boxes and gift wraps that will help you express your creativity and let your thoughtfulness shine.  For added flair, you can add a handwritten label: “Must eat immediately!”

If you’re wondering what types of cookies you should give, 3 types of cookies from our Easy Cake Recipes collection make an excellent selection.  These cookies are:

• America’s favorite – Chocolate Chip Cookies
• White Chocolate, Cranberry, and Macadamia Nut Cookies
• Dark and White Chocolate Chunk and Ginger Cookies

Cookies are fun to make, fun to give and yummy to receive. So make it your tradition by giving delicious homemade cookies as gifts to your friends and families.

Ginger in a cookie?  Even my eight year old didn’t let the ginger stop him from eating the cookies.  The sweet subtle ginger pieces combined with the roasted white chocolate chunks make these cookies a surprising delight from your standard double chocolate chip cookies putting them in the “gourmet” category.

From Easy Cake Recipes, you can now have delicious gourmet cookies baked in your own home from scratch.   These cookies are unbelievably quick and easy to make and you’ll want to keep them all for yourself!

Crystallized ginger is available and already chopped in the spice section of many supermarkets.  I used 43% cacao semi sweet chocolate chips and Lindt white chocolate.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Dark and White Chocolate Chunk and Ginger Cookies, makes about 14 to 16 cookies

Preparation Time: 20 minutes, Cook Time: 13 minutes per batch/sheet

1 2/3 cups bitter sweet or semi sweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup bitter sweet or semi sweet chocolate chips

½ stick unsalted butter

2 large eggs

½ cup (packed) golden brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

¾ cup self-rising flour

½ cup chopped crystallized ginger

 3 ½ oz high quality white eating chocolate (such as Lindt or Perugina), very coarsely chopped

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Stir 1-2/3 cups chocolate chips with butter in heavy small saucepan over low heat until melted and smooth; Cool 10 minutes.
• Beat eggs and sugar in large bowl until well blended.
• Beat in melted chocolate mixture and vanilla then flour.
• Stir in ginger and remaining 1/3 cup chocolate chips; let stand 10 minutes.
• Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies 2 inches apart.
• Press white chocolate pieces onto top of cookies diving equally.
• Bake one sheet at a time until cookies look puffed and slightly dry on top about 13 minutes.  Cool cookies on sheets.

Macadamia nuts are available already chopped in the spice or baking or nuts section of many supermarkets.  This convenience helped me reduce the preparation time of this recipe.  With the white chocolate chips already being sweeter, I used naturally dried cranberries instead of the sweetened cranberries found in the baking section of many supermarkets.  The natural sweets combined with the slight tartness from the cranberries, the salty crunch from the macadamia nuts partnered with white chocolate make these cookies irresistible.  I want to eat them all…

Or Easy Cake Recipes suggests that you give some away.  They make great gifts and who wouldn’t appreciate delicious homemade cookies such as these!

Recipe: White Chocolate, Cranberry, and Macadamia Nut Cookies – Makes about 16-18 large

Preparation Time: 20 minutes, Cooking Time: 15 minutes per batch/sheet

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature and/or softened

½ cup packed golden brown sugar

1/3 cup sugar

1 large egg

½ tablespoon vanilla extract

¾ cups dried cranberries

¾ cups white chocolate chips

½ cup coarsely chopped roasted salted macadamia nuts

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Sift flour, baking soda and salt into a bowl.
• Use an electric mixer, beat butter until fluffy.  Then add sugars and beat until blended.
• Beat in egg then vanilla extract.
• Add the sifted dry ingredients.  Beat just until blended.
• Stir in cranberries, white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts using a spatula.
• Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto prepared sheets, spacing about 2 ½ inches apart.
• Bake cookies one sheet at a time until just golden for about 15 minutes.  Cool on sheets.

In the tradition of easy cake recipes, here is a recipe that illustrates my idea of easy cake recipes.  The preparation time is 20 minutes maximun and really lives up to the above quote.

What I also love about this recipe is that you can easily turn it into a Sweet Lemon Loaf by substituting the orange zest with lemon zest.   The taste of orange is very subtle here and if you’d like to play up the orange flavor just add 1 teaspoon of orange extract to the recipe.

It is very important that you line the bottom of your pan with parchment paper as per the recipe.  I cannot tell you how pleased I was to see at the end that not only did I have less to wash up, but I didn’t even have to scrub my pan.  Parchment paper has to be one of the best inventions for bakers.

Once the cake is cooled, you can serve it plain or topped it with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with mixed glazed peel.

Try it out and share your thoughts.

Recipe: Sweet Orange Loaf

Preparation Time: 20 minutes, Cook Time: 40 minutes

 90g butter, chopped

¾ cup (165g) baker sugar

¾ cup (180ml) milk

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1 egg

1 ½ cups self raising flour

•  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Combine butter, sugar, milk an orange zest in medium saucepan, and stir over low heat without boiling until butter is melted.
• Cool for 10 minutes.
• While the butter mixture is cooling, grease 4 1/2″ x 8 1/2″  loaf pan, cover base with parchment paper. I used the Calphalon one shown below.
• Stir in egg and flour.  Pour mixture in prepared pan.
• Bake for 40 minutes.  Turn on wire rack to cool.

Here is your answer!  Make a clafouti!

“Make a what?” you ask.

A clafouti sometimes spelled clafoutis is a simple baked French dessert consists of a pancake batter and poured over fruit (traditionally cherries) and baked.  It originates from the town of Limousin in France.  Hey, if it’s French cooking, it counts as being fancy even if it is dead simple to make :-)

It is one my favorite simple desserts to make and everyone in my family loves it.  My husband loves it and whenever he wants a quick dessert, he would make this just using premade pancake mix, and it still tastes fantastic!  But you don’t need to use a mix – this recipe is super easy to make from scratch.

Recipe: Peach Clafouti, serves 6

Active Time: 10 minutes, Cooking Time: 50 minutes

825g can peach slices, drained (I like to use canned peaches but you can use any type of canned or stewed fruit)

1/3 cup all purpose flour

2 tablespoons self raising flour

¼ cup baker’s sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence 

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
• Grease a shallow ovenproof dish, place peaches in dish. I used the Le Creuset Stoneware Square Dish.
• Combine sifted flours and sugar in bowl, gradually stir in eggs, then milk and essence, mix to a smooth batter or blend or process mixture.
• Pour batter into dish over the back of a spoon. 
• Bake for about 50 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

After it is baked, this recipe has a more custardy texture to it and sets more as it cools.  It is best served warm, dusted with powdered sugar.  I like to indulge a little bit, so I serve mine also with sweetened whipped cream (just add some powdered sugar when you make whipped cream) or vanilla ice cream. Yummmmmm!

Try the recipe and share your thoughts here at Easy Cake Recipes.

Dutch Baby - picture of success

My son came home from a sleepover at a friend’s house and told me that he had Dutch Baby for breakfast.  I had not heard of Dutch Baby before.  So I asked him to describe it.  He said “it’s a pancake but not a pancake because it was all cooked in the oven”.  I wanted details being an inquisitive mom.  I found this description in Wikipedia:

 A Dutch baby pancake, sometimes called a German pancake, is a sweet breakfast dish similar to Yorkshire pudding and derived from the German Apfelpfannkuchen. It is made with eggs, flour and milk, and usually seasoned with vanilla and cinnamon, although occasionally sugar is also added. It is baked in a metal pan and falls soon after being removed from the oven. It is generally served with fresh squeezed lemon, butter, and powdered sugar or fruit toppings or syrup.

So, basically, it’s a cross between a pancake and a popover.  That sounds easy.

We went to have brunch at the local Pancake House and I noticed there was a Dutch Baby on the menu.  OK, now I really had to make it.

There are so many recipes for Dutch Baby on the Internet; I didn’t know which one I wanted to try.  By chance I was flicking through Gourmet magazine, issue April 2009 and eyed the words Dutch Baby.  I was so excited to find that the recipe was included and what was more the preparation time was only 10 minutes.  Scanning the recipe, it fitted my idea of easy cake recipes.  I had an ideal Dutch Baby recipe I could try.

I followed the recipe but was so disappointed!  I was sure my face looked like one of those sad emoticons.  My Dutch Baby didn’t look like any of the pictures I had seen and I was pretty sure the texture wasn’t supposed to be that chewy either!  The expression “flat as a pancake” was coined definitely for my first Dutch Baby attempt. Not to be defeated, I tried the same recipe again (it was such an easy and truly quick recipe) – sadly with the same result. 

The 2 pictures below are proofs of my disaster.  At this stage, I was even more frustrated but more determined to have a successful result because:

• I was really curious as to what success would look like and taste like.
• The recipe I had used was really easy.
• The ingredients were simple and plentiful in my kitchen.
• I had bought a cast iron skillet (called for in the recipe) specifically from Sur Le Table for this recipe.

Not to be defeated yet again, I rang a friend for her Dutch Baby recipe.  I broke my own rule and stayed longer in the kitchen and made yet another Dutch Baby.  My third attempt was well rewarded (or third time lucky?) The result was awesome!  And there were left over eggs for my husband to make his poached eggs.

I served mine with lemon juice and powdered sugar; my daughter had hers with butter, maple syrup and berries.  Or you can serve it with jam.

If you’d like a change from pancakes or French toasts for breakfast or brunch Dutch Baby or Dutch Baby pancake is a wonderful alternative – it is delicious with dense egg-y cake texture and fluffy edge, it is a triumphant combination of simple ingredients on hand in most kitchens and lastly it’s a true easy cake recipe.

Here is the recipe that I used to give me the success that I expected – it got puffy while cooking.

Recipe: Dutch Baby, serves 8 – 12

Active Time: 10 minutes, Cooking Time: 20 minutes

1 stick butter

6 eggs

1 ½ cup whole milk

1 ½ cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

• Put butter in an 10-inch cast iron skillet (I used the Lodge Logic 10-Inch Chef’s Skillet)in middle rack of oven.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
• In blender, mix eggs for a minute and then alternately add flour and milk (in 3 batches).  Add nutmeg and cinnamon to the batter.
• Add batter to melted butter and return skillet to oven.  Bake until puffed and golden brown, approximately 20minutes.

Notes:

1. If 1 stick of butter seems excessive, you can use less.  Make sure that the skillet is coated with butter.
2. If you don’t have a cast iron skillet, you can use an oven proof frying pan.
3. Make sure that the oven is hot and the skillet is hot enough.  Sizzling butter is a good indication.
4. The Dutch Baby looks strange after baking. It puffs and curls up near the sides of the pan. This is normal.
5. Dutch Baby is more eggy and dense than a traditional griddle pancake.
6. Serve the Dutch Baby while it’s warm.
7. This is a very filling, so start with a small piece.

My family’s and friends’ eyes lit up as I brought out a plate of these cupcakes with their simple cream cheese frosting and their equally simple yet delightfully tempting decorations. 

I’m mad about The Australian Women’s’ Weekly cookbooks and their recipes.  In the covers of everyone of these cookbooks boast this statement “…where every single recipe has been triple tested by the Australian Women’s Weekly Test Kitchen to guarantee your success first time every time”.  I put this to the test.

Below are 3 recipes for cream cheese frosting I made and used in my cupcakes as seen in these pictures.  The frosting is just perfect for my taste.  Each recipe makes enough frosting for 12 standard cupcakes.  I used French vanilla cupcakes.

Recipe: Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

30 g unsalted butter, softened

80 g cream cheese, softened

1 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions:

• Beat butter and cheese in small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
• Gradually beat in sifted powdered sugar.
• Put a dollop of cream cheese on each cupcake.

 Decorating Ideas

I topped mine with blue berries.  However you can use any pretty berries on yours – they all look delightful.  Pile the berries on or just use a single berry, it’s your cupcake!

Recipe: Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

30g unsalted butter, softened

80g cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind

1 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions:

• Beat butter, cheese and lemon rind in small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
• Gradually beat in sifted powdered sugar.
• Put a dollop of cream cheese on each cupcake.

 Decorating Ideas

I topped mine with walnut pieces as seen in the picture.  Again the berries would look just as delightful.

Recipe: Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

60g unsalted butter, softened

160g cream cheese, softened

2 teaspoons coconut essence

3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions:

• Beat butter, cheese and coconut essence in small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
• Gradually beat in sifted powdered sugar.
• Put a dollop of cream cheese on each cupcake.

Note: This recipe makes more cream cheese frosting because the decoration for this recipe uses more of the frosting.

Decorating Ideas

You will need 1 cup of flake coconut, toasted.  Remove cases from your cupcakes.  Spread cakes with cream cheese frosting, including the sides.  Coat the cupcakes with oasted flake coconut and top each frosted cake with a raspberry.

Thank s to The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbooks, I had success the first time round and was able to reproduce the same result again and again.  I’d like to share with you this experience because their recipes embrace my ideas of easy cake recipes with amazing results.

In the tradition of easy cake recipes, here is the simplest frosting you can make – the flavored whipped cream.  Try sweetening whipped cream with a little powdered sugar and adding a few drops of vanilla essence, or citrus essence, or cooking chocolate powder.  Honey and maple syrup make good flavorings, as do liqueurs such as Cointreau an orange liqueur.

 Recipe: Basic Flavored Whipped Cream

This recipe frosts up to 16 standard size cupcakes.  I rather like my whipped cream a little sweeter so I would add 4 tablespoons of the powdered sugar.

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

• In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium-high speed beat the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla until firm peaks form.
• Top each cupcake with a spoonful of whipped cream.

Variations to the Basic Vanilla whipped cream

Cointreau Flavored whipped cream

• Follow the basic recipe and substitute the vanilla extract for 2 teaspoons of Cointreau.

Note: Instead of Cointreau you can use Grand Marnier also orange flavored liqueur.

 Chocolate Flavored whipped cream

• Follow the basic recipe and add 2 tablespoons cooking chocolate powder.

Note: You can add liqueurs to this by adding 2 teaspoons of the desired liqueur.  Cointreau works well with chocolate whipped cream too.  You may want to try adding Kahlua or Tia Maria both of which are coffee flavored liqueurs giving the mocha flavor to your whipped cream. 

I’m partial to the liqueurs in whipped cream; they really do turn an otherwise simple frosting to a mouth-watering one.

Decorating Ideas

As you can see from my pictures, I used very simple decorations on the whipped cream – sliced orange and shaved dark chocolate using a vegetable peeler.  It is also very fun to decorate cupcakes, so just let your imagination lead you.

The word ‘cookie’ appears to come from the Dutch word “koekje or koekie” and refers to a small cake.  Cookies are one of the fastest and easiest things to make.  They come in many different shapes, sizes textures and flavors.  Cookies are now eaten any time of the day – coffee/tea breaks, as a snack, for dessert, and even given as a welcoming gift. 

Cookies are called biscuits in the U.K. and Australia; in Spain they are called “galletas”; in Germany they are called “keks”; and in Italy they are called “biscotti”.  Every country has its favorite.  In the United States and Canada it is the chocolate chip.

As an immigrant to the Unites States, I became obsessed with making the chocolate chip cookies.  I love the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and definitely the taste, they are so more-ish and very portable because I can take them anywhere with me.  I tried many recipes out there and they are easy to make, however I’m a busy person, I don’t want to have to measure out the ingredients and beat the butter.  The Nestle Toll House cookie recipe is one of my favorites and I was introduced to the recipe by a friend.  But as yummy as they are, the recipe made more cookies than I usually wanted and took up more of my time that I was willing to spend.  So I decided to look for good packet mix as an alternative that I could supplement with my own ingredients to produce the home-made flavor without requiring time and effort.  There were so many packet mixes on the supermarket shelves I was almost overwhelmed.  Through trying each brand, I’ve found one that definitely fits my requirements for “easy” without compromising on taste.

My secret to home baked chocolate chip cookies is the Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix!  It produces very comparable result to my other favorite recipe, Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. This cookie mix has become one of essential items in my kitchen pantry.  I can have freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in 20 minutes; the preparation time is about 7 minutes and the bake time is about 10 minutes.

I also like to add other items to the basic mix to get variety.  One of my favorite added ingredients is half a cup of plain oatmeal (as seen in the picture).  Try adding these ingredients:

-          ½ cup walnuts

-          ½ cup of dried cranberries

-          ½ cup of chopped macadamia nuts, or

-          ½ cup of chopped macadamia nuts, ½ cup of dried cranberries and ½ cup of white chocolate chips.

Now that you know the secret, impress your family, guests and friends with these delicious home baked chocolate cookies using a pre-made cookie mix as your secret ingredient – an example of easy cake recipes.  They may even nick name you Betty Crocker ;-)

I really enjoy baking, but I’m also really busy.  Sound familiar?  So when I’m looking for an easy cake recipe, these are the things I keep in mind:

The preparation time

Believe it or not, a great cake takes 20 minutes (or less!) to prepare.  I check the preparation time listed with the recipe, and if it’s too long, it’s not for me.  What I’ve also learned the hard way is that just because the person who wrote the recipe can do it in 20 minutes, that doesn’t necessarily mean I can.  So I always read the recipe right to the end so that you’re not surprised by calls for a 3 hour refrigeration time or one important ingredient that is not in your kitchen, or some special skill or technique that I don’t know and haven’t time to master.

 Are the directions easy?

When I pick up a recipe, if the directions look like an essay then I move on.  The layout of the directions should be itemized in steps, and the terminology should be clear. 

The mixing method

I love to bake but absolutely loathe the washing up especially at the end when I realize I have used every pot and pan in my kitchen.  Easy cake recipes should allow me to place all the ingredients into one bowl or a saucepan, mix or stir them all together, and then cook.  Here are some of the mixing methods that I have used for my easy cake recipes.

                One bowl method – Scrumptious chocolate cakes are undeniably everyone’s favorite but this method is not limited to chocolate cakes.  I like to combine all the ingredients in just one bowl and use an electric mixer and at the end feel accomplished I have whipped up that cake.  A variation to this method is to use a blender or food processor to mix the ingredients together.

                Packet mixes – Who can honestly say they can tell a difference between eating a cake made from packet mix or fresh ingredients?  I have made many cakes using packet mixes and with success.  People even asked me for the recipes and I would say “Duncan Hines Deluxe Moist Carrot Cake mix”.  They thought I was joking!  Using packet mixes, half of the preparation is done and it is simple to supplement different basic packet mixes, adding your own touch by simply adding your own filling and decoration.

                Saucepan method – You can mix an amazing variety of cakes in a saucepan, without any bowls or mess.  The cakes have moist textures and any fruit ingredients are plump and succulent.  And there’s a bonus – lots less washing up!

                Spoon method – All you need is a bowl and a wooden spoon to create a stirring success with any cake.  Some of my most popular creations have used this method.

So, who said baking a cake had to be a time consuming task?  With easy cake recipes, you can have it all – bake a cake, eat it and spend time doing other things you enjoy doing.