Sous Chef

Last week I attended a local cooking school called Cookalooks for a fun cooking lesson with my friend Karen. Together with 14 other ladies we enjoyed the hands-on morning where we covered  koeksisters, cherry tomato and basil tartlets, cupcakes with ganache icing and Dutch butter cookies.

Some time ago I shared the recipe for my all time favourite beat & bake cake, where you chuck all the ingredients in together and mix, this recipe is in the same mode, it just doesn’t get easier than this Belinda!!

Delicious, crisp biscuits, don’t be tempted to use anything other than butter. I made over 30 cookies, but it depends on how fat you roll the dough and how thick you cut it.

Dutch butter cookies

200g cake flour

150g softened butter

125g sugar

5ml vanilla essence

pinch of salt

some extra brown or white sugar for sprinkling

Heat your oven to 180C and grease a baking tray.

Using a mixer or a food processor blend all the ingredients together (except the extra sugar) until it forms a dough that looks like this….

Dust your worktop with a little flour and form the dough into a log, wrap in cling and place in your fridge for 30 minutes.

Remove from fridge and slice into rounds like the photo below….

Place on your greased tray, sprinkle with the extra sugar and bake until just going a little brown at the edges, keep an eye on them, it should take about 15 minutes.

Allow to cool and crisp up.

If you live in the Pietermaritzburg area and want to contact Cookalooks, phone Catherine on 033 3452434 or have a look at their web page here.