The ultimate biscuit

I'm on a mission, a mission from the FSM to find my ultimate biscuit, one that I can whip up whenever I feel the need. A biscuit that fulfils that need to have something with your cup of tea in the afternoon, that keeps well in the cupboard. I haven't make the same biscuit once this year because I keep trying recipes and none of them are quiiiiiiiite right. I feel like the goldilocks of biscuits.

Do you have a favourite biscuit recipe, point me in the right direction.

Happy Birthday Matt

Today is Matt's Birthday and I made him chocolate sugar cookies with peppermint icing and laid them out on the table to surprise him :) I used this cookie recipe and added 35grams of cocoa powder to make them chocolatey.

Cooking: Old School Recipes

I know that there has been a back to basics movement and people are seeking out classic recipes and I'm happy to tag along on that train. So I have this cook book that I remember using for pikelet recipes when I was about 9 years old and it's one of those fundraiser stylie cookbooks from the Yallambee Activity Centre in Deniliquin (near where my Aunty Colleen and Uncle Mike live).

I used to love makeing pikelets and one afternoon after school around about grade 5 I invited back some of the cool girls from school to my place. Mum wasn't home and I thought it would be a great idea to make pikelets. It must have been halloween or st pats day because we made them green. So I'm cooking away and being a smartarse and I say to one of the girls 'You have to put the handle of the pan in because it's dangerous when it sticks out, a little kid might grab it' and I smack the handle of the frypan and it spins around and collects this giant bowl of green pikelet mixture and flings it across the kitchen and we dissolve into fits of panicked laughter. At that exact moment my Mum walked in and I remember knowing that I was in the shit, probably not for making a mess because my Mum loved me being creative, but for cooking when she wasn't home (which was dangerous).

So enough of my tangenting. The point of my post is that I made these Orange Cookies. They're very tasty, although not quite orangey enough for my liking and they're very light, almost cakey. The delicious orange icing saves the day though.



The recipe is as follows incase you feel the urge.

2.5 cups plain flour
Pinch Salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 dessertspoon orange rind
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Additional icing sugar and orange juice for icing

Mix butter and sugar, add eggs and rind and beat until creamy. Stir in the flour, bakign powder and salt alternately with the orange juice. Lastly add chopped nuts. Drop teaspoonfulls about two inches apart onto a greased tray and bake until golden for about 11-13 mins at 200 degrees celcius. When cold frost with orange icing (made my mixing pure icing sugar with orange juice until a spreading consistancy is reached).

Cooking: Sugar Cookies (or Bikkie if you prefer).

Just got back from the maternal and child health nurse and the good news is that although Lucy has been sick she put on 1 kg in the last 4 weeks and the nurse said just keep doing what we're doing because she's doing fantastic.

I've been baking too. On the weekend I found the best cookie cutters and I tried some out on a sugar cookie recipe that I got from the The Splendid Table website, which is the website for a podcast that I absolutely love. If you're a foodie you should get onto it because it's amazing, the host Lynne Rossetto Kasper is a passionate food lover and she can talk about anything, her years of experience shine through when she takes random calls from people asking ANY food question under the sun and the road food segment of the show is an interesting listen because inevitably as an Australian I'm amazed at the weird junk food that they have in the U.S. as unearthed by Jane and Michael Stern (although it's not all junk food).

I have taken to keeping biscuits in the house that I've made because I've got a biscuit tin. A special tin that I got from my Nanna Rose's house when I went to her funeral. My Uncle and Aunty said to take something to remind me of her and I couldn't think of anything better to remind me of my Nanna than her biscuit tin, she always had biscuits or slices ready in her house for when people visited. Although I didn't visit her many times because we were often on the other side of the country or overseas when I did visit her as a kid I remember being very impressed by the delicious things she made.


Snails, Cats and Rocketships :) with M&M decorations