2012: Biscuits galore!

Happy New Year! A new rolling pin, spatula, citrus juicer, hand electric mixer, book of baking treats, and ceramic baking beans for Christmas heralds a lovely year of baking and cooking. During my two weeks off over the festive period I did hardly any baking, as I was just enjoying doing nothing. I did host a party over New Year and made a dinner of Steak and Ale Pie, Pork and Cider Cobbler, Mash and Carrots, followed by a gooseberry cheesecake - which were a steaming success, and the recipes may follow - if I can one day remember what I did.

But back to today, have tried again with Jamie Oliver's Ginger biscuits, which have come out beautifully, recipe here. However, I forgot the bicarb, and used 1tbs golden syrup and 1tbs treacle, as it is far too much faff to measure the sticky stuff. I also added some crystallised ginger. They are sill cooling but I am excited about the results!

Also on the menu, is Cottage Pie - no recipe yet as I haven't pefected the recipe....

New Year New Recipies!

With one thing and another I have been completely distracted from this - but now with a new year and new foody books, and a little less work - I can return to Culinary Deliciousness!

For Christmas I was given a Food Thesaurus. It's written by Niki Sergent and is brilliant! All flavours covered, and well written too. Recipes galore and all sorts of combinations to try out. And that's what I've been doing today.

I love cardamom, so I looked it up and saw that it might be combined with coffee - so I've made some muffins.

Coffee and Cardamom Muffins.

For a basic muffin mix make 9oz plain flour, 2tsp of baking powder, and 30z sugar. Then in another bowl whisk an egg and add 9 floz of milk. Add 3floz or 3oz melted butter to the liquid. Mix these together and pop into muffin cases. 200 deg C for about 25 minutes.

I added cardamon and coffee to this mix by making a little very strong coffee (I used a percolator but I'm sure istand or an expresso could be used). I took 6-7 cardamon pods and crushd in a pestle and mortar to get the seeds out. I crushed the seeds to a very fine powder and added them to the dry ingredients mix. Then I put the empty pods in the coffee to stew. When it was cool I added the coffee to the milk mix then went on as usual.

They came out of the oven after 25 minutes risen up and golden brown on top!


I also made triple ginger biccies today! Inspired by a recipe from Jamie Oliver but tweaked by me these come out like crunchy toppped gingerbread biscuits. I took the basic reicpe, flour, sugar, butter, ginger etc - but added treacle, golden syrup, stem ginger (preserved in syrup). Took 15 minutes in the oven and come out gooey and cool to a soft biscuit. Recipe needs some tweaking so watch this space for a recipe!