Recipes

by

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!)

20130120-130423.jpg

by

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!

by

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.