Big Fat Cookie

You may have noticed that there really seems to be a lack of knitting on my blog. I seem to have slightly lost focus, but it also because I have been working on a new pattern since the start of 2015. It is taking so much longer than I expected. So until that is done, here is a bit more cookery ....

I thought you might like to see what I came back to find the other day. She hadn't baked it, but my daughter had prepared this enormous cookie. She used this Millie's Cookie recipe, just leaving out the chocolate chips, and came up with the design herself. The letter cutters were from Santa, but he got them from Tiger. I took the photo below to try and show the scale. Despite its huge size the cookie still disappeared incredibly quickly.

Seaside Biscuits (Our Signature Bake)

Our favourite TV programme at the moment is "The Great British Bake Off". The week before last they had a small section on Aberffraw Biscuits, a traditional biscuit baked on the Island of Anglesey in North Wales, and shaped in a scallop shell.

So, because we have a few scallop shells handy, we decided to have a go at making our own version.

My white scallop shells were just too big to use as biscuit moulds. They were bought at a fishmongers in Southwold, when we were on holiday once. So we decided to use a smaller black one that my husband found on a beach in Cornwall.

So first we made a standard shortbread. We didn't have any wholemeal flour, so used 200g of butter, 300g of plain flour, and 100g of caster sugar.

First cut up the butter.

Then mix the flour and sugar.

Then rub the butter into the dry ingredients.

We kneaded our dough into a ball, and then rolled it out.

Then we cut around the shell.

 My shell was too flat to put the dough in, so we pressed the shell as hard as we could into the dough.

I was a bit worried that the markings would disappear when cooked. But all was fine.

They looked great on the baking trays.

We also made a few round biscuits, for which I had another plan.

For the round biscuits I made a very simple stencil from a piece of paper, and we sprinkled icing sugar to turn them into sand dollars. If you don't know about sand dollars, see my previous post in September. Some people call sand dollars sea biscuits.

Our final plate of seaside biscuits looked very appetizing, and melted in the mouth. The scallop biscuits were quite large, so I am on the look out for a slightly smaller shell to mould them in next time.

Pavlova Day

How to have a lovely day in the school holidays.

First we went out  to our local fruit farm and did some picking of raspberries and strawberries.

Then there was the baking of the meringue. I have to say I can not take much credit for this. The only bits I did were to help separate the egg whites, clear up the dropped egg from the kitchen floor, and the oven part. But the rest was done by Frankie, as I was fiddling around with some knitting pattern, as is my way these days.

Forgot to take a photograph before we had cut into it, which is a shame as it did look very good.
 

Anticipation is half the enjoyment.

That is one happy boy! 

This is the recipe copied into Frankie's recipe book. The only difference is she made one big pavlova, instead of individual ones.