Bolinhos

My sister makes the best bolinhos and everybody simply loves them.They make for a great tea-time treat and work well even for a snack.

The best bolinhos recipe

Ingredients: 
2 ½ coconuts (preferably freshly plucked) grated, taking care to avoid the skin.

½ kg sugar

½ kg semolina

5 cardamoms, powdered or a few drops of vanilla essence

9 egg yolks

½ tspn salt

½ glass water

 
Method:

• Slightly roast the semolina and keep it aside to cool.

Slightly roasted semolina kept for cooling

• Make a syrup with sugar, water, salt and cardamom powder/vanilla essence, boiling it till you get a thread like consistency. 

Preparation of sugar syrup for the bolinhos

 

 

 

Boil sugar syrup for bolinhos to thread-like consistency

• Add grated coconut and mix, once the coconut is cooked, turn off the flame. 

  

  Grated coconut added to the sugar syrup for bolihos

• Keep this mixture to cool.
• When completely cooled, add egg yolks and the cooled semolina.
• Mix well and keep overnight.

  

  Bolinhos mixture kept overnight

• Next morning, shape the mixture into balls, flatten and put cuts with a butter knife.   
• Place on a buttered and floured tray and bake at 200C till golden brown. 

  

  Bolinhos ready for baking

Owl Cookies

Owl Cookies Recipe

I saw a picture of the Owl Cookies on the Net and simply liked them. They are said to be sold at the Borough Market in London. They are a great treat for kids and you can make them for your child's birthday party. I read that they are shortbread cookies but I used a Foundation Biscuits Recipe.

Ingredients :
24 Chocolate chips
12 Almonds
Foundation Biscuits Dough 

Ingredients for owl cookies

Method:

• Once the dough is ready, you may roll it out onto a flat board to half inch thickness.
• (I made mine about 1/4" thick and got 12 owls but realized that it would be better to make it even thicker so that the almond would sink in better.)
• Using round biscuit cutters, cut one large round and two smaller ones for each owl.
• Using a little water, fix the eyes and almond in place.
• Press in the choco chip cookies pointed side down.
• Lightly flour a baking sheet and place the cookies on it.

  

  Owl cookies ready to go in the oven

• Preheat the oven to 200°C.
• In my convection microwave, the first batch got done in 10 minutes and the second in 8 minutes. (If you make the Owl Cookies thicker, they will probably take a bit longer) 

  

  Owl biscuits on the cooling rack

Foundation Biscuits Recipe

This Foundation Biscuits Recipe is from a Biscuits and Cookies pocket book I had bought eons ago for just one buck while I was browsing through a book sale while at University.

Ingredients:
8 oz. (224 gms) plain flour
1 level tspn. baking powder
1/8th tspn salt (skip this if you use salted butter)
4 oz. (112 gms) butter
4 oz. (112 gms) sugar(powdered)
a few drops of vanilla essence
1 egg, beaten

Ingredients for Foundation Biscuits

Method:

• Sift flour, baking powder and salt.
• Powder the sugar.
• Cream butter and sugar.
• Add essence and most of the the egg gradually.
  
• Add flour and mix to a stiff consistency.
  
• Add the rest of the egg if necessary.
• Turn out on to a lightly floured board, knead lightly. The Foundation Biscuits Dough is ready.

  

  Foundation Biscuit dough

• Roll out thinly.
• Cut into required shapes and place on a greased tray.
• Preheat oven to 200°C.
• Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

This Foundation Biscuits Recipe is used to make the Owl Cookies.