MW Honey Lemon Pistachio Cookies

Hi friends, hope you all had a wonderful time during Christmas, spend nice and valuable time with family and friends, baked lots of goodies. I also spent wonderful time with family. As you saw. I havn't posted any baked goodies so far, the reason, I don't own a baking oven here in Singapore. But I love to bake. The day before christmas,  my daughter suddenly asked me, "Mom, can you bake some cookies for me like you baked before?" "But we don't have any oven, dear, how I'll bake cookies?", I replied. Then she was quite disappointed with my answer. I felt very bad, so I thought to bake something in Microwave, which I totally resist to do. I don't know, I think I have some kind of phobia of cooking or baking anything in MW. But that day I just forced myself and thought to surprise her with some homemade cookies.
So I chose one recipe from my baking book and planned to give it a try in MW and crossed finger for good results, as I was making cookies in MW for first time, had no idea how the outcome will be. For my surprise the result was quite good, not as good as oven baked cookies, but if you don't have any oven I'll recommend to bake in MW. It was a good crunchy cookies, didn't get the golden colour like oven-baked ones but that's ok...and it took only 5 minutes. And the best part was my daughter liked it and she was so happy. I was relieved to see happiness in her eye again.

For those who are novice or amateur in MW cooking like me, I'm posting the recipe for them to give it a try and to come out of fear of MW cooking.......................


Ingredients : (recipe will make 20-24 cookies)
Honey : 1/3 cup
Fine Sugar : 1/2 cup
Butter/margarine : 1/4 cup (room temperature)
Water : 2 tblsp.
APF/all purpose flour : 2and 1/2 cup
Egg : 1 (beaten)Baking powder : 1 tsp.
Pistachio/almonds : 1/2 cup (chopped)
Lemon peel : 1/4 cup
Lemon extract: 1 tsp.

Method :

• In a medium sized saucepan, combine honey, sugar, butter/margarine and water. Stirring constantly, cook over low heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Cool to room temperature. 
• In a large bowl, blend flour, baking powder, pistachios and lemon peel. 
• Stir beaten egg and lemon extract into cool honey mixture. Stir honey mixture into four mixture little by little and mix. Knead to make a soft pilable dough, not too hard. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 1 hour.

• Take out and divide the dough into 5-6 big balls. Take each ball and spread out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into your desired shapes with cookie cutter.

• Take a microwave safe container/plate, grease it a little or place them on a waxed paper on MW glass tray.
• Microwave on medium high for 4 minutes. (My MW power is 1250 watt-time depends on the power level of your MW)
• The cookies should be just firm when done. It will be crunchy when cooled down. 

I made star shaped cookies with half of the dough and the other half I rolled into a log shape. Then cut into 1/4 inch round shaped cookies with a sharp knife.

Caution :

• Do not cut the cookies too thin. It will be burnt very fast.
• Do not bake more than 5 minutes. 
• Check every minute. You can't relax while baking in MW unlike oven. Stand infront of it and check thru the glass door.
  

So, give this a try..you won't regret............Happy holidays, everyone..................
Cookies are off to Mahimaa's Contribute your recipe : Cakes & cookies   event

Hurray !! Appyayan Turned One

Appyayan has turned 1 last Saturday. Yeah, April 18, 2008 was my first post and I introduced myself to this wonderful world of blogging. And this is my 71st post. I can't believe it's already been a year since I discovered blogging accidentally(had no idea before) and started posting my own creations.


I have to say, starting a blog is one of the best thing I have ever done...once started as a hobby has become a part of my life. I took care, I nurtured it as my own child. Not even a day passed, I havn't take a look at this blog at least for a minute. Through this blog, I made so many good friends who never forgot to encourage me and showered their love with lovely comments and feedbacks. I am inspired by them daily. I learned so many new recipes which I never even heard before. So I want to Say A Big Thank You to whole blogging community and food lovers. Thank you for supporting me, trying my recipes and encouraging me in every way......You are the fuel/energy source of my engine....Keep loving me, pls :-)
Through this blog I learned healthy way to make and eat food. Blogging made everyday cooking much more interesting...cooking and then clicking the food and posting it for whole world. I love every bit of it. More importantly, I came out of my phobia of Microwave cooking and made my first microwave cake. Thanks to my blogger friends, whose step-by-step instructions have forced my fear to flew away. So to celebrate my blog's 1st Birthday, I made Microwave ginger carrot cake from Dhivya's Cuisine.

And as a surprise to me, it was quite a nice experience. Now I'm going to explore MC more often. Thanks to Dhivya. I followed her recipe, only exception I made was instead of her butter cream frosting, I did Chocolate glaze on demand from my dear daughter, who was more excited than me (because of the cake, she loves cake!!) ...we did a nice family celebration by cutting and eating my first ever microwave cake.....................
For those, who don't know Appyayan is a bengali word that means to serve guests, I want to serve you with my kitchen experiments and continue showcasing my native cuisine i.e. Bengali cuisine.
Hey, how have you all liked the new look of APPYAYAN...........let me know