Cooking

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Peanut butter cookies…don’t mind if I do!

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A colleague of mine has a birthday this week so I thought that was a good excuse to get some baking done this weekend. I do think I’m reaching the point where I’m enjoying the baking bit more than the eating, as while the dough was chilling in the fridge for a couple of hours, I had time to make some fudge cupcakes too!

Anyway, back to the cookies!

I remember making these with my Mum when I was little, pushing the little fork cross-crosses on the top and waiting for them to cook.

If you want to have a go you’ll need:
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225g peanut butter (I used crunchy but I think smooth would also work)
115g butter
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
115g brown sugar (I used some brown and some demerara)
100g caster sugar
2 eggs

Firstly, take two bowls. In one, mix the flour, baking powder and salt. You can sieve it if you feel the need.

In the other bowl, beat (or get your husband to do it as I did) together the peanut butter, butter and vanilla extract. Then add the sugars and eggs to this bowl. Beat together until smooth.

Next, add the flour to the wet mix. You may need to do this in stages. Then once everything is mixed, split the mixture in half and form into balls, wrap them in clingfilm and chill in the fridge (while you have a cup of tea, relaxing bath, or if you’re like me, make some cupcakes!)

After at least 2 hours, take the wrapped mixture out of the fridge and form into smaller balls – I got 22 out of this mixture.

Place these on a baking tray (I didn’t grease or line mine and they didn’t stick at all) and use a fork, dipped in flour, to make criss-cross marks on the top of each ball to flatten them down.

Then pop them in the oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes.

They should be lovely and golden when they’re done. Leave them to harden up a bit on the trays before moving them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies should keep well in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

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Lemon curd *warning, this is addictive*

I recently made some macarons (or maybe that’s macaroons?) which turned out to be an awful lot easier than I was led to believe from watching the Great British Bake Off!

mmm macarons!

mmm macarons!

To fill the centres I used homemade lemon curd, which again seemed RIDICULOUSLY easy to make. To be honest I was left wondering why I’ve never made it before. So much so that I thought others may like to make it!

If you’d like to give it a go you’ll need:
3 lemons
140g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp cornflour

Firstly put the zest and juice of all the lemons in a pan over a low heat, then add the cornflour and mix to dissolve. Then add the sugar and stir until it’s all combined.

Once that’s done you can add the eggs. Give them a bit of a whisk first, then add them to the lemon mixture.

Then increase the heat to medium and stir constantly while it thickens. It takes less than 5 minutes. I thought it was never going to happen and then suddenly it was lovely and thick.

Once it’s nice and thick you can put it in a jar (it makes enough for one jar) and once cooled it can be stored in the fridge for about a week – if it lasts that long in your house, it doesn’t in mine!

See, easy or what? Enjoy!

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Snowflake biscuits

Shock horror, we have run out of stars! Elliot helped me make some star biscuits way before Christmas and has been asking for them ever since.

Today I pulled out my trusty biscuit recipe to make some more and thought I’d mix it up a bit by adding some Citrus Spice Sugar – we got this at Waitrose for another recipe at Christmas and had lots left over. It makes the biscuits taste wintery!

If you’d like to try them for yourself, you’ll need:

90g butter
100g citrus spice sugar (or regular caster sugar)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt

Mix the butter and sugar together until it is pretty creamy
Add the egg and vanilla and beat
Mix the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture
Mix until it forms a ball

Wrap in clingfilm and chill for an hour (or if you’re impatient like me put it on the freezer for about half that time)

Roll out to about 1/2 cm thickness and then use cutters of your choice! We chose snowflakes and stars today.

Bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees) for 8-12 minutes

Once cooled, ice if you feel like it. Then eat (maybe with a nice warming cup of tea!)

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Gingerbread

My grandmother always had cake in the house, either fruit cake, Victoria sponge or gingerbread. It is one of the main things I remember as a child.

As I now have her handwritten recipe book, I’ve been enjoying making some of these memorable treats – the gingerbread especially. The recipe is over on my other blog!

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An autumn apple cake

I’ve just posted the recipe for this cake on my other blog which is where I am noting down various bits of my family history.

The recipe comes from a handwritten recipe book belonging to my grandmother – this recipe was written in by my great-grandmother, Carolina Cecilia Margaret Selwood (nee Hartigan) who we all knew as Nannan – apparently my uncle as a child couldn’t say Grandmum so said Nannan instead and the name stuck through the generations! I was lucky enough to know two of my great-grandmothers and have memories of visiting my Nannan and squeezing oranges for her. If they were blood oranges we were always allowed to have the juice ourselves!

Anyway, check out the Apple cake recipe over on my other site (there’s a link on the right of this page) – it’s really yummy! Perfect for autumn day munching squirrelled up on a sofa somewhere.