Cookies Pops - 4-Ingredients Bakes

Inspired by the book series, 4 Ingredients, created by Kim Mccosker, I am suggesting 4 ingredients as the theme for our bake-along with Lena, from Frozen wings and Joyce from Kitchen Flavours all for a simple reason to bake something nice and simple using just 4 ingredients.

Even the most simple and basic ingredients such as baking powder or salt is considered as one ingredients and so I reckon this can be quite an interesting baking challenge. To my surprise, I can actually find quite a lot of baking recipes with four ingredients but are these recipes really good? Honestly, I felt a little insecure baking with just 4 ingredients. Worst of all is I don't seem to be able to get rid of this magic number 4 off my head and so I went a little crazy associating with everything with the number 4! Here's how my 4-ingredients baking story goes...

I'm always a big fan of the Australian Country Women's Association (CWA). As what their books claimed, their recipes are "Traditional, Tempting, Tried and True". Naturally, with no doubt, I'm keen to bake four selected CWA recipes and I had baked all four recipes at once! These four easy bakes, each has four ingredients. No electrical mixer or food processor was required for these bakes and all were surprisingly made and baked within than an hour. Even I am amazed. LOL!

The four CWA recipes that I had baked are (1) Beatie slice, (2) Five dozen biscuits, (3) Prune slice (original name is Quick and Easy Biscuits) and (4) Jam slice (original name is Quick and Easy Slice). Amongst all, I reckon the recipe named "Five dozen biscuits" is the best. Then, I went a little crazy again transforming these "Five dozen biscuits" to cookies pops using this idea of four "ingredients" and four easy steps ...
 

This is what I did!

And, this is how I bake these very delicious cookies... So easy!.

Here are the recipes.  
(with my notes and modification in blue)

Five dozen biscuits from the book, Biscuits and Slices by Country Women's Association

These biscuits are called five dozen biscuits because the recipe can really bake up of five dozen (60) of these biscuit. I reckon that this recipe can make up to 200 biscuits in the size that I have made! They are extremely delicious because they literally melt in our mouths when we eat them.

500g butter or cooking margarine (I used butter)

12 tbsp sugar

1 x 395g condensed milk

4-5 cup self raising flour 

(I used 4 cup but add bit by bit of flour to form a workable dough and I didn't need 5 cup in total)

Preheat the oven to 190°C (or 160°C fan forced). Grease baking trays.

Mix all ingredients together, adding enough sifted flour to give a nice workable dough. Roll spoonfuls of dough into balls, placed on prepared trays and flatten with back of a fork

Alternatively, you can roll the mixture into a sausage 2.5-3cm in diameter, the cut into slices 5-10 mm thick. Bake for 15-20 min until crisp (I shaped my biscuits using this method).

Note: Using 1/5 of the recipe, I've baked 40 of these biscuits!

How I transform these cookie to cookie pops:

Things required:  

1. Cookies
2. Lollipop sticks
3. Royal icing (Recipe can be found in my previous Gingerbread House post)
4. Sanding sugars

Step 1: 
Bake some cookies - *giggles*

Step 2: 
Make royal icing and tint it with your food colouring. 

Step 3: 
Pipe lollipop swirl on each cookie and sprinkle sanding sugars on the swirl. 
Wait for icing to set.

Step 4: 
Pipe some icing at the back of the cookie and stick a lollipop stick on it. 

Cookie pop is ready to serve when the icing is set.

Here are the rest of the 4-ingredients recipes that I had baked: 

Beatie slice from the book, Biscuits and Slices by Country Women's Association

This oaty-nutty slice has a nice chewy texture. Out of my four bakes, I would think this one is the least fantastic. My only regret with this bake is that I've replaced the silvered with almond flakes and the almond flakes are not holding themselves very well to the slice compared to the silvered almonds. Other than this, I would say this simple innocent-looking slice is actually quite good.

3 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup silvered almond (replaced by almond flakes)

150g butter, melted.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan forced). Grease a slice tin.

Mix oat, sugar and almond in a bowl. Pour the melted butter and mix well

Place mixture into the prepared slice tin and bake for 15 min.

Note:Using 1/3 of this recipe, I've baked this slice in 10 cm x 20 cm loaf pan.

Prune Slice (original name is Quick and Easy Biscuits) from the book, Biscuits and Slices by Country Women's Association



With no doubts, I think this fruity slice is a great lunch box filer. Its slight toffee-taste and chewy fruit texture makes it really nice to snack in between meals.  

2 cup self raising flour

1 cup soft brown sugar

2 cup dried fruits (dates, raisin, etc) (I used prune)

230g butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan forced). Line a scone tray with baking paper.

Mix sifted flour with sugar and fruit. Pour melted butter slowly over the dry ingredients, stirring continually. Spread mixture over prepared tray and cook for 20 min. Cut into squares while hot, the allow to cool on the tray. Store in an airtight container once cold.

Note:Using 1/4 of this recipe, I've baked this slice in 10 cm x 20 cm loaf pan. 

Jam Slice (original name is Quick and Easy Slice) from the book, Biscuits and Slices by Country Women's Association

I just love this quickest and easiest way to make a jam slice. Nothing more to say!

230g butter

3 tbsp jam (any flavour) 

(I used the low sugar - 50% reduced blackberry jam and plus extra as toppings)

3 cup self raising flour

1 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan forced) Grease a lamington tin.

Melt butter and jam together in a small saucepan. Sift flour and sugar into a bowl and mix in the butter and jam. Place mixture in prepared tin and bake for 25 min.

Ice with plain icing when cooled (optional - I didn't do that).

Note: Using 1/4 of this recipe, I've baked this slice in 10 cm x 20 cm loaf pan. When the slice is baked, I spread 2-3 tbsp of jam evenly on the surface of the baked slice and bake it again for another 5 min.

Here's the picture showing all of my four 4-ingredients bakes.

Happy Baking
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