Baking for the in-laws

My husband has been project managing our new house for the last seven months, but is back to work today. We still have a few tradesmen floating round the house, so my in-laws have come up for the week to keep an eye on them. Which gave me the opportunity to do some baking, as a good daughter in law always has some nice treats in the tins!

I thought I would make something from my new Allyson Gofton book, Bake, and one of the first recipes that appealed to me when I first flicked through the book was for Persian Rice Biscuits. The biscuits resemble yo-yos or melting moments, but are made entirely with rice flour and are flavoured with rose water and ground cardamom. The cookies are joined together with a butter cream icing flavoured with rose water. The result is delightful, melt in your mouth cookies which I imagine would be perfect with a cup of coffee (I don’t drink coffee, so that is why I am imagining). These wee cookies would make a wonderful gift.

Last night I made lamb shanks for dinner and I did them differently to normal, using a recipe from Dish magazine. You make a paste of Dijon mustard, honey and soy sauce, smear on the lamb shanks, bundle the lamb shanks into individual parcels using baking paper and string and bake at 150c for 3 hours. I love lamb shanks when the meat is just falling off the bone, so I cooked mine for closer to 4 hours. They were delicious and the clean up was really easy as all the mess was in the paper. We had them with mashed buearegard kumara and broccoli with cheese sauce.

Persian Rice Biscuits (Allyson Gofton – Bake)

250g butter
½ c icing sugar
2 c rice flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tbsp rose water

• Cream butter and sugar,. Then mix in rest of ingredients
• Roll into small balls and flatten with a fork.
• Bake at 160c for 15-20 minutes until firm and light golden
• When cold join together with buttercream icing made with butter, icing sugar and a few drops of rose water