Quick and Easy Home Made Gifts

Harry had a very busy Sunday a couple of weeks ago as we had been invited to a second birthday party in the morning and a first birthday in the afternoon. In my pre Harry days I would have spent ages decorating little biscuits for my friends children, but with time being a bit more precious, these easy but still cute shortbread cookies were the quick version of decorated cookies.

A set of number shaped cutters are a great thing to have on hand to make quick and easy birthday gifts. These cookies were obviously for the two year old’s present. I simply made the shortbread in the number 2 shapes, whipped up a batch of royal icing (I whisk an egg white until frothy and then whisk in the desired amount of icing sugar – this kind of icing is less runny than glace icing and also sets to a nice thick consistency) and sprinkled over “boy” coloured sprinkles. The one year old party was for a girl and I made Number 1 shaped cookies and sprinkled them with pink sprinkles. In the past I have also made these for adult presents (a bag of 5s and 0s for a 50 year old, 3s and 0s for a thirty year old etc. Even just decorating the cookies with coloured icing gives some impact.

The Elusive Metro Chocolate Chip Cookie

Many years ago I tried a chocolate chip cookie in a café called Metro in Christchurch. It was the best chocolate chip cookie I had tasted – large chunks of chocolate, a texture that I guess is not crisp or chewy but is almost cakey, and large, oversized cookies. I remember at the time trying to re-create the metro cookie and I got pretty close – I even rang them at one stage to see if they would part with the recipe, but no luck!

Well, for her birthday I gave my sister a subscription to the foodtown magazine and she rang me a couple of weeks ago to say that a reader had written in requesting metro’s chocolate chip cookie recipe and they had printed it!! Hayley sent me through the recipe and it seems that the secret ingredient is not ground almonds as I had thought, but caramelised condensed milk. Now, I would never have guessed this, as whenever I have used caramelised condensed milk in cookies, I have ended up with quite soft cookies. Also, the cookies have a much higher ratio of flour than my usual recipe and less baking powder. The mixture is quite dry, but persevere with mixing that flour in. Nevertheless I faithfully used the recipe and I had them – the elusive metro chocolate chip cookie! This is one of the best. I also think that milk chocolate goes well in these cookies – usually I prefer dark chunks, but try milk chocolate in these.

Metro Chocolate Chip Cookies

250g butter
½ c sugar
2 tbsp caramelised condensed milk
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 ½ c milk chocolate buttons

• Cream butter, sugar and caramelised condensed milk
• Stir in flour, baking powder and lastly the chocolate
• Form large balls of dough and press down lightly with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15-18 minutes or until golden and firm

Variation on a theme

I love my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies – I think it is the condensed milk in them which gives them a delicious crisp but kind of soft texture. Using the chocolate chip cookie recipe as a base, there are lots of variations you can make. While I was on maternity leave I made a delicious variation using chopped dried apricots and cornflakes instead of chocolate chips (even as someone who doesn’t like dried apricots I loved these). Today’s recipe is a chocolate and coconut version.

These are the perfect biscuit for the tins – they freeze really well and while they are delicious, they are plain enough to be good for school lunchboxes (I imagine) and to have on hand as a good stand by. They are quick and easy to make, but their taste belies their easiness.

Speaking of quick and easy, our week day meals have become very quick and easy. I used to spend hours pouring over recipe books deciding what to make for dinner – often making two or three new recipes every meal time. Now that we have Harry, a lot less time is utilised doing this. While I still try and make tasty and interesting meals, they really have to be quick, as mealtimes are a busy time – I get home from work, breast feed Harry, feed him his solids, read him some stories, play with him and make dinner all at once. My husband does do a lot of the prep work which does help of course. An example was last night’s dinner – chicken cooked in a sauce made of ½ c sweet chilli sauce, 3 tbsp soy sauce and 3 tbsp fish sauce, served with hokkein noodles, steamed broccoli and chopped roasted peanuts – definitely delicious but less than thirty minutes to prepare.

Chocolate Coconut Cookies

120g butter
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp condensed milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ c coconut

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until firmish and golden

Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for some easy biscuits to make to take to a friends place. I didn’t have any chocolate chips (having a stay at home husband means that sometimes the chocolate chips are eaten simply as a snack!), so couldn’t make my good old favourite, chocolate chip cookies. Instead I found a recipe in Rachel Allen’s book “Bake” for these oat and raisin cookies. I also didn’t have raisins, but I did have sultanas and dried apricots, so I substituted those.

These cookies were delicious – they even tasted vaguely healthy because of the large quantity of oats in them. They had a very pleasant crisp but slightly chewy texture that I really loved. The original recipe had 2 tbsp of water in it, but I found I didn’t need that, so left it out. I would definitely make these cookies again and I can imagine when Harry gets older, these will make a great lunch box treat. And, if your husband doesn’t eat all the chocolate chips, they would make a great addition to these cookies!

Raisin and Oatmeal Cookies (adapted from Bake by Rachel Allen)

110g butter
110g sugar
110g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
250g rolled oats
110g self raising flour
110g raisins (or chopped dried apricots, sultanas or chocolate chips)

• Cream the butter and the two sugars. Beat in the egg and then the vanilla.
• Stir in the dry ingredients
• Place rough balls of the mixture onto trays and bake at 170c for 15-20 minutes

Decorated Shortbread

I have to confess that these are cookies I made some time ago (actually before Harry was born!) and never blogged about. They are some very simple biscuits made to look quite lovely (I think!) with a bit of easy decorating. These are the perfect cookie to give as a gift and they can be adapted to any situation.

The cookies are quite simply shortbread biscuits, cut into rounds, dipped in white chocolate and a royal icing flower popped on top. If I remember rightly, these particular shortbread had chopped pistachios through them (just add chopped pistachios to your favourite shortbread recipe). I used white chocolate to ice them (in fact white chocolate melts) as they leave a nice clean finish plus chocolate melts set really quickly and don’t even often dent like icing does, if you are packaging them up to send them. I did make the icing flowers which not everyone can do, but you can buy icing flowers from the supermarket now, or you can use other things to decorate – pebbles or smarties, other cake decorating embellishments, jaffas or other lollies, even just sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, these cookies would look great.

You could also colour the white chocolate. You have to be careful using other liquid with chocolate as it can seize, but I have had success with adding a little gel colour to white chocolate. Dipping the cookies is easy too – just dip them! You can use a palette knife to spread the chocolate on, but dipping works really well. I would love to know what other ideas you come up with.

Almost dairy free

I was looking through some recipes for something easy to bake a few weeks ago and came across this recipe for making chocolate chip cookies with oil rather than butter. I thought I would try them as an almost dairy free option (they would be dairy free if you left out the chocolate!). They were in a book by Sue Lawrence who won Masterchef UK a while back. When I bought the book some time ago, the masterched phenomenon had not reached NZ, so I didn’t really realise what a big deal it was. Now I would like to find out a bit more about Sue Lawrence.

These cookies are definitely not the best cookies I have ever made. They made me realise that the thing I like most about a good cookie is the buttery flavour. But these cookies would be a good thing to make for a dairy free friend (leave out the chocolate) or if you wanted to bake something but had run out of butter (as does happen sometimes). I used rice bran oil, but canola oil would be a good substitute. Don’t leave out the salt – you need that to bring out the flavour of the cookies

Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Sue Lawrence recipe)

1 1/4 c flour
¼ c cocoa
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1/3 c brown sugar
¼ c castor sugar
1/2c oil
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
2/3 c chocolate chips

• Whisk together oil, egg and sugars, then stir in remaining ingredients
• Place small mounds onto baking tray and bake at 175c for 15 minutes. Leave to cool on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack

Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

At the end of last year I bough a beautiful book called Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood. She writes beautifully and the book is a collection of recipes and stories. The recipes are eclectically gathered together, so you will find cakes and desserts in amongst recipes for savoury dishes. If I was going to write a recipe book, I think I would adopt this style and have the chapters assembled by way of occasion.

I actually haven’t made a lot of the recipes in the book yet, but one of the recipes that caught my eye early on was that for Milk chocolate and hazelnut cookies. The occasion rose to make the cookies last week when I bought a cake of milk chocolate for a school fundraiser. If I didn’t use the chocolate in baking, I was going to be in danger of eating the whole cake myself (and even though I try and convince myself that I need the calories for breastfeeding I really don’t!), so I took the opportunity to make these cookies.

I love these kind of cookies – I think it is the fact that they don’t have any kind of raising agent in them – that seems to make them more dense and crumbly, not too crisp and yet not too soft. The chunks of milk chocolate went perfectly with the hazelnuts and the vanilla hit was noticeable. I would definitely make these again.

Milk chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies (from Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood)

80g hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
125g butter
100g sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 egg yolk
210g flour
140g milk chocolate, chopped

• Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla paste and egg yolk.
• Stir in the flour and then the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate.
• Roll the dough into a log, refrigerate for an hour, then slice into rounds (relatively thickly) and bake at 160c for 10-15 minutes

I am back blogging....

Well, it has certainly been some time since I last blogged. Life is certainly a lot busier being a Mum and now I am a full time working Mum as well, going to back to my role as partner in my law firm six weeks ago. We are lucky in that my husband is staying home to look after Harry. Harry is an absolutely adorable baby – he is such a good boy and is just gorgeous! We are very spoiled parents!!

I have been baking over the last few months and keeping up with most of the Dorie challenges, but finding time to blog has been hard. So, I cant promise that I will be a consistent blogger like I was, but I will try to blog a few times a week. One of the things I have been baking the most is my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies. These are the biscuits that were photographed in the article about bloggers which my blog featured in in the Sunday Star Times back in December. I love chocolate chip cookies and these are the perfect thing to be able to make very quickly and they also freeze really well, actually tasting pretty delicious from frozen.

My parents are coming to visit in the weekend and so I did a little baking last night, making the ever delicious chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t have any chocolate chips, so I used a 220g cake of energy chocolate, chopped which made the cookies delicious. If you havent tried this recipe, you must – I look forward to receiving your comments!

Nana’s chocolate chip cookies

240g butter
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk (I use an everyday tbsp to measure the sugar and condensed milk rather than a proper measuring one)
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ c chocolate chips or 220g dark chocolate, chopped

• Cream butter and sugar, adding in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 165c for 15-18 minutes
• Cool on racks

Handbag Cookies

This is a pretty un-Christmassy post of some little decorated cookies I made a while ago to thank a friend’s Mum for some wonderful knitting she did for our new baby. Christmas baking for me isn’t going to be the usual marathon effort given that my energy levels are not as high as usual (actually I usually just run on adrenalin and champagne this time of year, but of course neither of those things are good for baby growing!) and we have a wedding in Napier this weekend, which would usually be my Christmas baking weekend.

Anyway, back to the cookies. These are my usual shortbread cookies cut into handbag shapes. They are iced with pink tinted fondant and little royal icing flower. Cute and delicious. You could use the same concept to make Christmas themed handbag cookies for your girlfriends – make the handbags red and decorate with little gold balls.

Double Chocolate Cookies

A couple of issues ago there was a recipe in Dish magazine for double chocolate cookies. My sister who also subscribes to the magazine made them and didn’t rate the recipe that highly. I made them in the weekend and actually thought that they were really great. I did modify the recipe just a little to include 2 egg yolks rather than a full egg and 1 egg yolk. I made this recipe using white chocolate and dark chocolate buttons. They, of course, would be much nicer using real chocolate.

The butter in this recipe is melted rather than softened. I think this is what gives the cookies the great texture which is crisp but chewy at the same time. I think I might try these again with equal amounts of white and brown sugar which would hopefully still give the chewy texture but perhaps give a lighter colour to the finished product.

Double Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Dish magazine)

190g butter
½ c sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks
2 c flour
½ tsp baking soda
¾ c each dark and white chocolate chips or buttons

• Melt butter and whisk in sugars
• Whisk in vanilla and egg yolks and then stir in the balance of the ingredients
• Roll mixture into balls and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until golden

Cornflake Crunchies

I mentioned a couple of week’s ago that I had had a look through some of my Nana’s old recipe books. Last weekend I made these cookies from one of Nana’s books. They were called caramel biscuits in the book, but I am not sure that the title gives a very apt description of what they actually are.



The cookies are what I would call a good tin filler – they are delicious every day cookies, easy to make and the recipe yield is quite high. They are plain biscuits made more interesting with the addition of coconut and cornflakes. I also added cinnamon chips. Cinnamon chips aren’t available in New Zealand, but my lovely friend, Morven, bought me some on her recent trip to the States. Cinnamon chips have an interesting flavour – more of the kind of flavour you get from one of those cinnamon flavoured chewing gums rather than a spicy cinnamon flavour. They did go really well in these cookies though. You could substitute chocolate chips or even dried cranberries, raisins, sultanas etc for the cinnamon chips, or leave them plain as in the original recipe. The cookies will appeal if you like a crunchy cookie. I think I would re-name them cornflake crunchies.

Cornflake Crunchies

120g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tbsp condensed milk’
1 egg yolk
½ tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ c coconut
1 c cornflakes
½ c cinnamon chips, chocolate chips or dried fruit of your choice (optional)

- cream butter and sugar
- Beat in condensed milk, then egg yolk and vanilla
- mix in remaining dry ingredients
- roll small balls of mixture into balls, place on tray and flatten with a wet fork
- Bake at 175c for 15 minutes or until golden

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

After watching Bill Granger’s tv programme on Food TV, I have started using his books more and more. I have all the books, buying his first book, Sydney Food about 8 years ago and then buying each new book as it issued. Watching his programme reminded me of his simple but sophisticated approach – good clean flavours presented in a modern way.

Last week I wanted to bake some cookies for my cousin’s children, so looked in one of Bill’s books and found a recipe for peanutbutter chocolate chunk cookies. What I liked about these cookies is that they mostly relied on the peanutbutter for the fat content – there was very little butter in them. What I didn’t like about them is that they took half of a king size cake of dairy milk chocolate and in the week since I baked them I have nearly eaten the rest of the bar, which isn’t like me at all. Normally I can leave the chocolate in the cupboard mostly untouched!

I don’t think these cookies are as tasty as the ones I made from Baked! a couple of months ago, but they are a good everyday standard and great for kids as a lunch box filler.

Last night for dinner we had an interesting dish from the latest Diana Henry book. It was oven roasted fish which you top with a dressing made from anchovies, lemon juice, parsely and olive oil once cooked, and serve with a side of cannellini beans pureed with garlic, sautéed onion and lemon juice. It was really yummy. We had it with baked Maori potatoes (the variety that are purple inside) and green beans, blanched and then sautéed with garlic, almonds and lemon juice. A fairly easy mid week meal.



Peanutbutter and Milk Chocolate Cookies (Bill Granger)

150g brown sugar
40g butter
5 ½ tbsp peanut butter (I used crunchy)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
155g flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g milk chocolate

• Cream butter, peanut butter and sugar
• Beat in egg and vanilla
• Mix in flour and baking powder and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten slightly
• Bake at 190c for 10-12 minutes or until golden

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

It was time in the weekend to bake for hospice again. I made my Dorie challenge for tomorrow as part of my baking for hospice and then I made these 5 spice cookies. These plain little cookies are actually absolutely delicious, a real situation of don’t judge a book by its cover!

The cookies are really easy to make. The recipe is one of Fiona Smith’s from Cuisine and you can find it here. The recipe says to rub the butter into the four mixture. I actually used my preferred method of creaming the butter and sugar, adding the egg and golden syrup and lastly the dry ingredients. I also left out the cyrstallised ginger, mostly because I don’t like it all that much. I also only used 2 c flour – 2 ½ would have made my mixture too dry. Once the dough is mixed, you simply roll into a log – I tried to give mine squared off edges, chill, slice and bake.



The result is very crisp, deliciously spicy cookies. I left mine to cool on the tray which gives an extra crispness to gingerbread style cookies. These are nice by themselves, but especially delicious with cheddar cheese. My husband had some with quince paste and cheese but I thought just cheese was just perfect.

Belgium Biscuits

It was my parents’ wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago. One of my dad’s favourite biscuits is Belgium Biscuits, so I thought I would make Belgium biscuits with a twist by cutting the cookies into heart shaped for their wedding anniversary.

Belgium biscuits are spicy thin, crispish cookies sandwiched together with raspberry jam. You make the dough, roll it out thinly, cut into shapes (traditionally scalloped edged rounds), bake and then join together with jam. One side of the finished cookie is iced and then sprinkled with raspberry jelly crystals (you do that bit before the joining together).

The recipe I usually use to make Belgium Biscuits is one handed down from my great Aunty Jean. It is a great recipe with a dough that is easy to roll and cut. As I like to make different recipes, I thought I would make the recipe from ladies, a Plate. I was actually a bit disappointed with the recipe. The recipe has a higher ratio of butter and sugar than my usual recipe which made it very soft to work with. I refrigerated the dough before using, something I don’t normally do with Aunty Jean’s recipe. The cookies actually spread quite a bit on the tray so I re-cut them once they had cooled as they had completely lost their heart shapes. The finished cookies were a bit softer than I like and were quite buttery. Mum and dad said that they really enjoyed them, but I am going to stick with Aunty Jean’s recipe which I have given below as I think you will like the result better.

Belgium Biscuits

160g butter
160g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp golden syrup (you could leave this out if you are in the US and it is hard to find)
180g flour
160g cornflour
1 dsp cocoa
1 ½ tsp each mixed spice and cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp baking soda

• Cream butter and sugar and then beat in egg and golden syrup
• Mix in dry ingredients.
• Roll out dough thinly (5mm thick) and cut into rounds or desired shapes
• Bake at 180c for 14 minutes
• When cold, ice half of the biscuits with simple icing made with icing sugar and water (I like to tint mine a pale pink) and sprinkle with raspberry jelly crystals
• Join an un-iced base to an iced top with raspberry jam

Caterpillar Cookies

It was my cousin’s three year old son’s birthday a couple of weekend’s ago. I made these cute little caterpillar cookies to take along to the party. And the kids actually ate them. I often think that kids just eat the icing off cookies, but they do seem to like shortbread biscuits. These caterpillars have got a good ratio of icing to biscuit I guess.

I haven’t blogged about “what we had for dinner” for a while, and I know that some of the people that read this blog like to know easy week night meal ideas. Last night we had free range pork chops which I marinated in maple syrup, olive oil and Dijon mustard and then roasted on top of slices of fresh pear. To go with it I roasted red onions and kumara (my favourite kumara is by far the orange kumara which has a much softer and sweeter flesh when cooked than the purple), then tossed them with balsamic drizzle (a Telegraph Hill product which is balsamic vinegar reduced until it becomes sticky, sweet and caramelised), crumbled feta cheese and baby spinach leaves. I don’t like pork chops, but my husband does and he loved these. I ate more than my fair share of the kumara salad though, as kumara is one of my favourite things.

I bought the organic kumara from the Takapuna Sunday market which has fabulous produce. I try and go every second weekend but have been a bit remiss lately and I think that last Sunday was the first time I had been in a couple of months. For about $20 I bought mandarins, broccoli, organic garlic, organic kumara, red onions, rosemary, parsley and apples. I also bought a jar of the most wonderful peanutbutter from a man who normally sells it at the Nelson farmers market. I hope to see him at Takapuna again.

Pressed Cookies

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago and I felt like doing some baking. I suddenly remembered my cookie press which my parents in law gave me to me for my birthday some time ago. It’s been packed up for a while with having moved, built etc. Pressed cookies are not a huge thing in New Zealand so the only recipes I have seen for them have been on the internet, and also a whole ago there was a recipe in Cuisine magazine. I dug out the appropriate cuisine magazine and made these little pressed biscuits.

It was quite a frustrating experience as the bottom of my cookie press kept unscrewing as I was pressing – I’m not sure that I had it on tightly enough. It took me about 20 minutes to press one tray of cookies, and I only made little flowers as unscrewing the bottom to put in different discs was a bit of a mission. The whole experience was a little like running a marathon (well, a half marathon in my case – I haven’t attempted the full distance yet) – during it you think, this is so awful, I’m never doing this again, but when you see the finished results (pretty, light, slightly spicy chocolate cookies) you think it wasn’t so bad and I will try this again soon!

On Monday night I was home alone and made my old stand by which I had in the past when my husband was more regularly away for business – corn soup. The recipe is based on one from Bill Granger’s first book, Sydney Food and is essentially ginger, spring onions and corn (I use frozen) cooked in chicken stock and seasoned with soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine and sesame oil. I love it. The flavours are incredibly clean and fresh and it takes only about 10 minutes from start to finish to make – the perfect home alone meal.

Chocolate Pressed Cookies (adapted from Fiona Smith recipe in Cuisine)

175g butter
½ c sugar
1 egg yolk
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp cocoa
½ tsp mixed spice

• Cream butter and sugar, beat in egg yolk and vanilla
• Then stir through dry ingredients
• If you have a cookie press, follow the instructions to press the dough into pretty shaped cookies. If not, either roll into a log, chill and slice or roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 180c for 15 minutes

Chic Shortbread

Just a short post today – I made and decorated these handbag and shoe cookies for a work colleague’s birthday. They still didn’t turn out quite as perfectly as I would have liked, but that’s probably because I don’t practice enough. The shortbread do taste delicious though!

Easy Peasy

I have always loved cooking and especially baking. By the time I left university I already owned a few cook books – mostly Australian Womens Weekly books and some of those fundraiser type cook books which since then have become some of my most prized possessions. I have also always loved watching cooking shows on tv – although up until the last 8 or so years these have been few and far between. I probably didn’t realise how serious my addiction to cooking was until my husband (to be at that stage) and I bought our own place – a small one bedroom apartment above the bike shop we owned at the time (push bike, not motor bike!). The apartment was brand new and having my own kitchen, that no-one else would ever cook in, after six years of flatting, was bliss.

At that time the celebrity chef thing had not quite taken off, but in New Zealand we had Jo Seagar, the cook who unashamedly used copious amounts of cream and butter in her somewhat traditional New Zealand cooking and who coined the phrase that her cooking was “easy peasy”. I remember feverishly writing down the recipes as I watched the programme. She started publishing books as well with titles such as “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble darling”. I had three of Jo’s books and at the time I loved them as the recipes were indeed “easy peasy” and used simple ingredients to get great results.

The next few years celebrity chefs were the thing and I got lost in the world of Jamie, Nigella and others. But, I have recently gone back to looking at my Jo Seagar books. I actually have her two most recent books, based on recipes cooked in her cooking school and café which she has in Oxford in North Canterbury. I have been there once with my mother and grandmother. And Jo is back on Food TV – I watch her shows on Saturday afternoons. I still much prefer the style of Annabel Langbein, Ruth Pretty and other NZ food writers, but Jo Seagar, is still worthwhile having on your shelf. I made these triple chocolate oat cookies from one of her more recent books and it is a winner.



Triple Chocolate Oat Cookies (from Jo Seagar Cooks)

250g butter
¾ c sugar
3 tbsp condensed milk
½ tsp vanilla
1 ½ c rolled oats
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¾ c each chopped white chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate (I just used a mixture of white chocolate and dark chocolate chips)

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in condensed milk and vanilla
• Stir in dry ingredients and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 180c for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden

Housewarming Houses

My friends moved into a new house a couple of weeks ago and so over the weekend I made them these little gingerbread houses as a house warming gift. I am not so good at cookie decorating if I don’t have something to copy – so these houses are a little dull. I couldn’t seem to find any pictures of fairly basically iced house cookies – only really fancy ones that I wouldn’t have had a hope of being able to copy. If anyone has seen any cute easy to copy gingerbread houses on the internet, can you please post a link as a comment to give me a head start next time I have a friend move house!



Saturday night was a rare night at home for us with nothing on. I made a really delicious home made pizza for dinner before we settled down to watch the tour de France go through Andorra – this was so much fun as we followed parts of the tour de France five years ago and spent a couple of nights in the gorgeous principality of Andorra. I made a basic tomato sauce for the pizza by reducing a can of crushed tomatoes with some red wine and then mixing in some crushed garlic, salt, pepper and a little sugar. I topped the pizza with roast pumpkin, olives, crumbled feta and parmesan. It was delicious.

An Old Favourite

When I was a child bran biscuits were always a staple in our house. Mum didn’t make them, but there was a wonderful bought bran biscuit that came in a yellow packet – I think the brand was kohi or something like that, which tasted pretty home made. I am not sure if you can still get them or not. As children we used to eat them with butter or with cheese. Sometimes I would eat them with peanut butter, as I pretty much love peanut butter on anything – pikelets, wine biscuits, crackers – anything!

Home made bran biscuits are really easy to make and are the perfect thing to have with cheese if you have guests coming over. I made bran biscuits a couple of weeks ago as a pre-dinner snack when some friends came over. They are easy to make – just mix, roll, cut out and bake. I like to make mine into rectangle biscuits, but you could cut them into rounds or whatever other shape you wanted to make. I served these with blue cheese and my home made quince paste (I had run out of blue cheese by the time I took the photo). They are delicious and if you haven’t tried them before, you should!

Last night for dinner we had boneless chicken thighs which I stuffed with breadcrumbs, sage and cottage cheese and wrapped in streaky bacon (loosely based on a recipe from cuisine magazine), with steamed cabbage tossed with fresh mint and roast kumara. Very delicious, but quick and easy.

Bran Biscuits (from the Edmonds book)

125g butter
¼ c sugar
1 egg
1 c bran flakes
1 c wholemeal flour
1 c plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

• Cream butter and sugar, beat in egg
• Stir in remaining in ingredients
• Roll out dough thinly, cut into shapes and bake at 180c for about 20 minutes