knitting neels

It is hard to believe that only last Saturday, I baked gingerbread men with my nephew! Inspired by how unmessy baking can be if you’re smart about it, and by that new cookery show I’ve been banging on about, I decided to try out some recipes from that little cookie book I picked up whilst in the states.

Where I live has always been a student house so imagine my surprise when I found not one but two wire cooling racks! It helped dampen the disappointment of having to cook everything on tin foil in roasting tins… not idyllic but it worked. I took a walk to Tesco and stocked up on some basic essentials. Does this make my student house a home now? 😀

So what did I bake? First up, some flourless peanut and chocolate cookies. Here’s a recipe identical to the one I used. They are super quick. I used some Sun Pat peanutbutter and a tin of peanuts (courtesy of Lidl) and threw in a bag of chocolate chips. You roll them up into little balls and they spread out into thick, crunchy biscuits as they cook. They took about 40 mins to make and bake them so if you’re looking for a quick gift or snack, give these guys a go. If you put in peanuts like I did instead of a different type of nut, they will be very peanutty.

While they were puffing up nicely, I made some Biscotti. Biscotti is a type of Italian biscuit that is really hard and made for dunking in your coffee or hot chocolate. I like the fact that you can put almost anything you fancy into them. I put in whole almonds and raisins, but the recipe I’ve linked to there suggests chocolate chips. I think pistachios and little apricot bits would be lovely too. The best thing about this recipe is that you don’t use any butter at all! The dough turns out quite stiff. You cut it in half, mould each half into long logs and bake them for about 20 mins. After they cool, you cut them into slices and bake the slices for a further 20 minutes. This makes them really crispy. Yummy! They are the business.

Lastly, and mostly out of curiosity, I made some oatmeal, raisin and coconut biscuits. These had two packets of Stork in them so I think I’ll give them away to some unsuspecting soul. They did turn out yummy though. Here’s a similar recipe. I would have preferred to use less flour and less butter than I did, but they still taste great (with that much butter, anything would taste good).

Sadly, I have no pictures, but I gots to tell ya, baking on a chilly Saturday afternoon is a lotta fun! Oh, and you know… I got my lemons and limes and orange-lemon-lime juice is just as good as I imagined it.