The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits used in this weeks challenge boats 128 pages of classic biscuits, old recipes without the flair and twist. It feels almost like a surrogate nanna – I never met my grandparents so never had the opportunity to learn from them in the kitchen.
One classic biscuit I love to death but have never made at home is shortbread. I have no idea why it took until now to make it, but I'm so very glad I did.
Home made is always amazing…
One of my favourite things after a massive feast is a warm drink to cleanse the pallet and help digest — or to at least trick yourself into feeling so.
I love making a little something to go with the warm drinks at a party. Chocolate dipped spoons are an often revisited idea, but my theme this Christmas was to try things I had never done before. Cue brainstorming session.
The result was a resolve to try edible garnishes. My first thought was to try mini gingerbread houses. But a) that would be overdoing the gingerbread-ness, and b) I couldn't think of a way to do it that wouldn’t take up considerable mug space and result in either half filled cups or soggy cookies.
In the end I decided to alter one of my favourite sugar cookie recipes and fashion another Christmas icon out of them: candy canes.
As if one attempt at making gingerbread for the first time wasn't enough for one Christmas, I decided to try it twice.
Last year I set the table with take home goody bags. I loved making them, but they were made last year when I was only working part time in between tertiary courses and actually had free time. They're also not the sort of thing you want to give away every year lest people find themselves with a stash of them. So I decided an edible take home bag was the way to go this year.
I also didn't have time to make napkin rings this year, and so the idea was for them to function doubly as placeholders.
This week's recipe comes from Women's Weekly's "Easy cakes and biscuits". They are just what they say they are: easy.
My boyfriend loves jam biscuits, and I for some reason have never tried to make any sort of thumbprint or jam drop biscuit before. So here was one to tick off the list.
Some time ago, my father picked up Family Circle's "Crazy for Chocolate" book for himself. Now, this is a rarity, as most dessert books he buys on his op-shopping expeditions are for me. I didn't see it for the longest time until one weekend he handed it to me to have a look through. He told me it wasn't great, that there was "nothing really decadent in there". It was in this moment my father was classified as certifiably insane. Not is it the greatest chocolate cookbook I have ever seen, it is right up there with my favourite desserts of all time. I want to bake this book from cover to cover, and I probably eventually will. He told me I could have the book, but I think he already knew I was not leaving his house without it.
Last night, I turned to it in an attempt to rid myself of some of the 7 punnets of strawberries my dad bequeathed unto me. I came across the following recipe and decided that it would be a suitable dessert for a lazy Sunday in: Chocolate Shortbread Stacks…
There are a myriad of uses for alphabet cookies. Children’s parties. Cake decorating. Teaching tools. Personalised edible gifts. Romantic messages for a loved one.
But really, who needs an excuse? I believe we never get too old to be above playing with our food!
For this week's challenge I baked from Murdoch Book's "Bake It".
This one was a gift from my boyfriend's brother and sister in law a while ago. It's your typical baking book with a difference: most of the recipes have some sort of twist from the old classics. This usually involves use of spices or various substitutes for flour, like polenta or semolina. They're definitely not your typical ingredients-you'll-find-in-your-cupboard type recipes, but they are nice to try something new! There are some ginger cupcakes I've been wanting to do for ages, which I was planning to do this week. But I haven't found time to grocery shop, so had no cream. So I've gone for the choc fudge cookie sandwiches instead.
A belated post, and a rushed one (I’m not keeping up with this challenge very well).
This week I turned to one of my most disliked cookbooks. This is one part of a 4 pack of Pilsbury’s “Cookies, Brownies and Chocolate Galore”, this one being the “Cookies, Brownies and Bars” book. Another op-shop find from my dad, and was chosen for this week by my boyfriend.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great looking things in here. But all recipes advocate using their brand, most of the recipes advocate using something that isn’t easily substituted.
I live in Australia. I can’t get most of it here.
Oh well.
But a cookie pizza? Cinch to sub.
Here’s for the final instalment of my Christmas bakerage 2010: the cookie tree.
This tree marks a pretty important milestone for me. See, this time last year I was failing with fondant. I couldn’t even get holy leaves to work for the cookie tree. So it had red berries and that was it. While this tree involves minimal fondant work, it reminds me of how much I have learned in a year. It also reminds me that I have so much more to learn, and so much more time in which to learn it. I’m forever getting frustrated at my ‘failures’, never happy unless it’s perfect (which it invariably never is). This reminds me that I haven’t been at this long; so here’s to a chin up and hopefully many more successes (or should it be less failures?) for 2011.
Stained-glass cookies are something I have been wanting to do for an age. I was never quite sure what theme I would go for, however. The one time I had seen them done was as targets. Covered in hundreds and thousands, which, I felt, completely cheapened the whole thing. No, my theme would be better.
…
Cue mind blank.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is just store the idea away and wait for inspiration to hit.
Or just a massive excuse to bake. Like Christmas.
Cakecrumbs 