It has been a while since the last time I’ve posted a dessert on this blog. I really don’t know what happened. I still love sweets and desserts. As a matter of fact I act like a little kid every time I hear the ice cream truck (it’s more like a converted VW bug, I’ll  take a picture of it soon) from my favorite heladeria, cremeria chalco, that comes to our neighborhood every Tuesday. Also, every week when we go shopping to our local tianguis, I never fail to buy gorditas, galletas and tostadas de nata (cream paddies, cookeis and tostadas). So why haven’t I been making more sweet goodies?

Read the rest of Baked Figs in Rompope Sauce

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Dessert, Easy recipes, Figs, Mexican ingredient, Rompope

Read the rest of Another Summer

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments |
Post tags: Blackberry, Cantaloupe, Ice cream, Roundup, Summer food

Read the rest of Baked Pears with Rompope Sauce

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Dessert, Easy recipes, Mexican ingredient, Rompope

Read the rest of Guava and Lime Cheesecake

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2011. | Permalink | 19 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Easy recipes

It’s almost Christmas! And though this year I won’t do anything for it, I can still share with you some last minute gift and baking ideas. My mom should’ve been a pastry chef. She enjoys (no, she LOVES) baking and preparing sweet treats so much that you can see it on her face when she’s creating something new. Last week I made some rompope cookies for them and she didn’t want to be left out so she made these cookies that she called garabatos (scribbles). Apparently there is a commercial cookie that looks just like this one, but since I haven’t bought a package of cookies in this country for years, I’m really not familiar with them. But the preparation is very simple and I am pretty sure they taste a thousand times better than the commercial ones.

Garabatos cookies
Makes 12 3″ cookies

The ingredients:

For the filling:

• 2 TBSP instant coffee
• 1 TBSP cream
• 300 gr chocolate

For the cookies:

• 1 cup butter at room temperature
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 pinch of salt

For the drizzle:

• 1/4 cup chocolate

The how to:

1. In a small pan over low heat mix cream and coffee and stir constantly until it blends perfectly. Set apart.
2. Melt chocolate over double boiler and when it’s perfectly melted remove from fire.
3. Add the cream and mix well. The chocolate will brake and form lumps. Keep mixing until it can be worked with.
4. Mix butter, flour, sugar and salt at medium high speed in a standing mixer.
5. Roll out the dough over a lightly floured surface. Using a 3″ cookie cutter cut rounds of the dough and place them on a greased baking sheet.
6. Bake at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes and let them cool before forming the garabatos.
7. Turn half of the cookies upside down and spread about 1 TBSP of the chocolate on them using a pastry bag. Place another cookie on top and press with your fingers very lightly to seal them together.
8. Melt the rest of the chocolate and drizzle over the cookies. This is what gives these cookies it’s name, scribbles…

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Are you ready for the holidays?
¡Buen provecho!

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Chocolate, Christmas cookies, Cookies, Easy recipes

I’ve seen it everywhere in Mexico. We eat it as a cereal. We make sweet bars with it called “alegrias” (joy) and even use it for moles and other sauces and drinks. But I never really stopped to think about it. For the longest time I even thought amaranth seeds and sesame seeds were the same. Oh how mistaken I was!

Amaranth is a cosmopolitan genus of herbs with approximately 60 species recognized around the world. In Asia, Africa and the Americas it is used as leaf vegetables, cereals and ornaments. One of the great things about amaranth is that it has the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development and support sustainable land care.

However, the best thing about amaranth seeds is that they are delicious. Especially when they are made into sweet treats like these no-bake cookies that my mom prepared last week. They are perfect to give away for Christmas. People will be intrigued and delighted with them.

I do not have the recipe for them right now, but they are very easy to make. All you need is amaranth seeds and chocolate chips. Melt the chocolate chips and start mixing it with the amaranth seeds, just enough to make them stick together. If you add too much it will get too hard when it dries up. Use a cookie cutter to give them the form you want and viola, no bake amaranth and chocolate cookies for your friends and family.

I’ll ask my mom for the recipe and if you want it leave a message so I can send it to you.

¡Buen provecho!

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2010. | Permalink | 35 comments |
Post tags: Chocolate, Christmas cookies, Easy recipes, Mexican ingredient

Can you believe it’s December again already? It looks like just a couple of months ago when I was baking up a storm in my kitchen in Ohio. Last December I went crazy cooking and baking cookies and cakes that I gained more than 10 pounds from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

Unfortunately, this year I don’t think I’ll be able to bake much because of the “ecological” oven and the lack of space in my tiny kitchen. That’s why I want to take a look at some of the cookies I’ve posted over the years on this blog and give you the links so you can save/make/look at them.

Let’s start with these rompope cookies that I just loved! At least I need to make these again for my family:

The next ones are these chocolate-peanut butter snowballs which recipe I got from RecipeGirl.com. They are so festive and delicious:

At the same time I made shortbread cookies and chocolate chip and pecan chunk cookies that I took to a friends party. Just thinking about it is making me sad… hehe:

The following cookies were surprisingly good (I don’t like caramel that much). I got the recipe from Kat’s blog for these Salted Covered Chocolate Caramel cookies and I served them with some champurrado. Oh that was SO good:

I posted the recipe for these polvorones de naranja almost 4 years ago, WOW. These are some of my mom’s favorites and with good reason:

These pumpkin cookies were also posted 4 years ago. I got the recipe from Jill’s blog and I remember they were good, but I’d have to make them again just to double check I liked them (which I’m sure I did):

These orange cookies are very special to me because they were some of the first recipes I photographed with my DSLR. You can see that I was still not very good (not that I’m good now) at food photography, but this one got very good reviews and made me want to learn more about this interesting area of photography:

Wow, so many recipes and memories! Writing this post made me homesick and melancholic. But it also made me want to get in a kitchen and start baking. Hopefully soon I’ll have my own place with a working oven, hehe. But for now enjoy these cookies and ¡Buen provecho!

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Christmas cookies, Cookies

Read the rest of Pumpkin Roll

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Easy recipes, Pumpkin

Read the rest of Spiced Pumpkin Pie

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments |
Post tags: Pie, Pumpkin, Spices

Read the rest of Yule cookies!

© Ben for What's Cooking Mexico, 2009. | Permalink | 29 comments |
Post tags: Baking, Celebrations, Cookies, Food events, Peanut Butter