A number of things!

I’ve got a few things to talk about today. First of all, yesterday my Dorie Greenspan book arrived!!!! I am so excited!! It is so much better than I had even hoped. I can’t wait to start participating in the Tuesdays with Dorie challenge!!

In the weekend my husband and I went to our dear friends’ daughter’s 1st birthday party. We were very excited as it was the first 1st birthday party that we had been invited to! It was a real celebration. I had Monique from Neak’s corner make Loula a little bracelet for her birthday and I also made these number 1 shortbread cookies. Unfortunately the photo is a bit blurry, but you get the idea!!

When I make shortbread for iced biscuits, I don’t use my buttery shortbread recipe that I have shared earlier. I make a much sturdier biscuit that seems to cope better with the rigours of both the icing process and being iced. This recipe doesn’t seem to soften as much as my other recipe for vanilla cut out biscuits. The ratio is 250g butter, 1 c icing sugar, 2 c flour and 1 c cornflour. It rolls out well and doesn’t need too much resting.



It was also my business partner’s 50th party in the weekend – a bit weekend for parties!! Today is his actual birthday and so I thought I would also make him some number cookies – these 50 shaped cookies.



The biscuits are quite a spicy gingerbread biscuit with a good dose of ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice as well as golden syrup. The blue icing didn’t turn out quite as blue as I wanted, but I think he will still like them.



And lastly, we are heading into fresh fig season!!! I love fresh figs. At our old house we had planted a fig tree and last year I got 2 or 3 ripe figs from it each day during the season (it was just a baby tree). I was so sad to leave it, but have found two fig trees in the neighbourhood, bit which really overlap the footpath!!!!! :0) One is absolutely abundant with figs, most will come ripe in about two weeks I think, but I collected about 6 figs on Sunday and another 7 last night. They are so good fresh that it would seem wasteful to cook with them, but tonight I think I might put some in a salad with reduced balsamic vinegar and goats cheese. Yum!