Do you miss your favourite treats from High Street food outlets, like Gregg's classic sausage rolls, or Café Nero vegan raspberry croissants?
Just the other day Eddie and I were discussing with a light note of nostalgia how wonderful the Krispy Kreme donuts are (chocolate with sprinkles are our favourites), and how much we miss them.
As Britain remains locked down, many people miss popping to their favourite High Street food outlets to pick up a delicious treat.
To keep the nation going during this time of culinary deprivation, The Big Bakes has pledged a new secret recipe each week to help Brits replicate some of the UK's most iconic High Street snacks at home.
This week one of tasks on Seesaw (homeschooling app) was to pick a recipe, cook a dish, take photos of the result and then discuss what's the best part about being a chef.
As soon as we read the task, I knew we had to try the recipe for Cookie Fries, as recreated by The Big Bakes.
Cookie Fries are basically choc chip shortbread shapes, served with dips.
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| Image credits: The Big Bakes |
With so many popular dishes to choose from, The Big Bakes asked baking fans for help whittling down the options. In response, The Big Bakes has created five online recipe tutorials of the most popular dishes, which are revealed each Wednesday.
These include:
- Greggs Sausage Roll
- Cookie Fries - Inspired by Disney
- Nando's Portuguese Tarts
- Millie's Cookies
Each video masterclass will offer an easy, step-by-step guide for people to follow at home, no matter what their level of experience. Lasting two to three minutes, the home baking videos will feature day-to-day ingredients and basic kitchen equipment, so everyone (including the kids) will be able to get involved.
In order to take part in these digital baking sessions, all people need to do is visit @Thebig_bakes on Instagram or Facebook, for a list of the necessary ingredients needed for the up-coming class.
The Big Bakes was founded in 2017 by Adam Chaudhri and Eloise Frank, who discovered a gap in the market for fun, accessible and affordable baking events, after taking part in a bake-off competition during a work away day.
With locations across the UK as well as online, the Bakes combine socialising, baking, and good old-fashioned fun.
Last week The Big Bakes digital co-baking sessions kicked-off with the Cookie Fries, inspired by the tasty amusement park snacks found in Disney, these chip-shaped treats have risen to legendary status almost overnight.
Now, The Big Bakes has released its secret Cookie Fries recipe, so easy to follow that even kids will be able to have a go.
Perfect for sharing, these chocolate chip cookies replicate classic fries and are perfectly shaped for dunking into your favourite sauce.
We decided to cut our cookies into diamond shapes rather than chips.
Cookies Fries (recipe courtesy of The Big Bakes)
For the Cookie Fries:
50g sugar
100g butter
150g flour
50g chocolate chips
For the dips:
20g mini marshmallows
1tbsp milk
2tbsp Nutella
2tbsp jam
Equipment:
Mixing bowl
Spatula
Rolling pin
Knife (adult supervision needed)
Baking tray with parchment
Microwavable pots for your dips
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
In your mixing bowl, start by creaming together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
Stir in the flour and mix until incorporated.
Fold in the chocolate chips and then turn your dough onto a work surface and knead until it comes together in a ball.
Roll the dough into a rectangle about 2cm thick and cut into your desired chip shapes or smaller rectangles.
Place onto your baking tray a few centimetres apart from one another and bake for 10-15 minutes until the edges go golden brown.
Leave to cool before eating.
We didn't have chocolate chips, and chopped half a bar of chocolate into small pieces.
When you're ready to eat your Cookie Fries, make your dips just before:
Combine the marshmallows with 1tbsp of milk and then microwave in 5-second intervals and stir until fully combined, stop when the mixture has liquidised.
Microwave the jam for 15 seconds and then the Nutella for 15 seconds, stir and then serve with your cookie fries.
We don't have a microwave, and used some of the Marshmallow fluff instead.
We also prefer Jim Jams to Nutella which has a staggering amount of sugar. We skipped the jam altogether, as it was just too much sweet stuff together.
These cookies are super easy, anyone can have a go at this simple recipe.
My guys loved them so much that we baked them twice in two days (we didn't do the dips the second time).
Eddie has submitted his report to the Seesaw app, and his teacher commented that she'd love to try the recipe too.
What have you been baking recently (that is, if you have some flour)?
Ohh yum! These look delicious. We've been baking every week and I think we need to give these a go.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kim, make your girls bake these cookies! :)
DeleteI love the recipe, especially as it has only 50g of sugar. Sometimes homemade biscuits have a lot of sugar and that is not healthy.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised by the activities they have to make. I imagine that Seesaw is in addition of regular school tasks. Although baking some biscuits can be transformed into a maths-chemistry kind of lesson, like thinking of ratios between ingredients and why a cake can rise or not. But parents need to be quite knowledgeable for that.
Thank you, Anca, they use several homeschooling apps like Mathletics, EdTed, but mainly Seesaw. It gives tasks on a big variety of subjects - maths, science, reading/writing, arts etc. With the cooking task he had to measure all ingredients, follow the instructions, etc. I remember having Home Science lessons (called Trud) at school, and cooking was my favourite subject. :)
DeleteAww, yes, I had Home Science at school too. I had no idea this is still a thing. I hated cooking at school, which is surprising considering that now I love cooking now. We didn't do lots of cooking though, but the teacher was telling us how to manage our money and that was interesting.
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