I've been wanting to do some baking again... I usually try and have some form of biscuit/cookies in the house at all times but haven't for about a week now, so thought that yesterday was the day to tackle this job again. And I had come across this yummy sounding recipe in TWO different magazines (both published (?) by Pick 'n Pay) so thought... mmmm yes I will attempt to make .... HERTZOG COOKIES.
BUT... then the wheels seemed to fall off. I got out the ingredients and started on the measuring and mixing only to discover I didn't have enough coconut... all processes stopped while I roared off to the shop down the road to buy some coconut.... armed with only R20 in my pocket and needing at least 400g of coconut... boy was I in for a surprise!
This first packet of coconut I saw... 200g... was.... wait for it.... R30! boy oh boy now what! Anyway further down the shelf there was a different brand of 200g coconut but no price! So I picked up 2 packets and went to pay... scanned the first one... R6.95... much more like it... so bought both packets and off bake home to bake some more.
Next saga.... making the pastry. The recipe said 50ml sugar and 25ml butter... cream this, add in 3 egg yolks and then 500g flour. Use 10ml milk to make into a stiff dough. Well I did just that and all I got was lots of flour in a bowl and not much dough... even added in extra milk... no difference. SOOOOOOOO then I looked up in a different recipe book on how to make shortcrust pastry and low and behold totally different proportions! So added in some extra marg and it seemed to make an okay sort of pastry.... boer maak a plan... was not going to through that all away.... not already having adding in 3 egg yolks!
Well then I did the topping... beat 3 egg whites add in the sugar and then the 500g coconut.... in the end I only used the 400g I bought... it seemed to be a heck of a lot of coconut for the amount of egg white, but I'm following the recipe!
Now back to the dough.... roll it out, cut out the rounds and put them into the muffin / cupcake / pattypans.... by the time the tray is full and I want to add the jam, the pastry has shrunk! First tray got done just like that but each one afterwards, I rerolled each circle of pastry, then stabbed it with a fork before added in the jam and a heaped spoon of coconut topping.
In baking the recipe says "bake till the meringue puffs up"... well THAT didn't happen either!!!! We just got lovely browned coconut topping.
Oh and to top it all the recipe says "makes 24".... well I got SIXTY!
So, verdict..... very BUM recipe... one to blog about and then bin!
Family verdict.... mmm these are yummy Mommy. So reckon it wasn't a TOTAL flop! We ended up having about 10 between us all last night for pudding!
Here's the original recipe:
Here's my result:
And here is a
link if you want a better proportioned version... which definately sounds more like it will work!
