Back on the Horse

I have climbed back out of the doldrums of baking unproductiveness everyone. Last night I knocked four recipes off. I can almost hear the crowd chanting my name. To be fair it was a team effort. I would like to thank my Mother for her supreme dish washing – for the first time ever some things were even washed before I had finished them, so I re-soiled them and they got washed again – Marvellous!

And then there was her skill at rolling biscuit dough into little balls – unsurpassed. Full credit to the Husband for assisting in this part of the operation, it was obviously taxing as the combination of this and his early morning under-house crawling saw him passed out on the couch by about 8.30pm. Conveniently before the dish washing commenced – coincidence?

So anyway enough of the dedications and applause – let’s get down to the cooking. Last night I successfully produced Date Loaf, Golden Syrup Cookies and Butter Kisses and Butter cream icing (for the kisses you understand). Everything received a high degree of praise today. Must remember not to set such high standards for myself!

Date Loaf – was apparently fantastic. I took half of this into work, thinly sliced and lightly spread with butter (thanks Mum…) and it disappeared at near record speed. Several people were even seen to partake in more than one or two (or three or four) pieces – you know who you are.

However there were a few hitches in its making and this is why the blog goes out after the baking is consumed. Do you ever get to the end of a recipe, put the mix into its tin, are just about put it in the oven and then think… it’s a bit odd that there was no baking powder in that? Hmmmmmm. In my defence it’s one of those odd recipe’s that Edmonds does sometimes where the ingredients are in with the method. So I had to scrape it out off the tin, off the paper liner, back into the bowl, chuck the baking powder in and give it a good solid mix. End result, surprisingly, was apparently fantastic.

Golden Syrup Cookies were by comparison a dream. Very plain cookies with a hint of golden syrup and ginger, the dough was rolled into balls by my competent team of assistants and then rolled in sugar. The resulting product was crunchy and sugary on the outside and still quite soft in the middle. The only issue we had was the lack of fan in my oven which sees me moving trays from one shelf to another every 5 minutes.

Butter kisses a similar story in terms of ease of preparation. The dough had to sit on the bench for a while due to the oven backlog but this didn’t seen to cause any issue. These were a little like melting moments or yo yo’s, made with icing sugar and sandwiched with butter cream flavoured with brandy (intended for Christmas cakes according to the recipe). Butter filled with butter – how could that be bad.

And on a final note - I was cheeky enough today to put a tip jar out at work to offset some of the costs of the project and I sincerely thank my colleagues for their generosity. Your obesity is my gain!