What better to cook than cookies............

Leah's friend came over yesterday, so we baked some cookies together. You are supposed to use chocolate chips for the recipe, but I used mixed fruit instead.

Here is the recipe.

4oz butter or margarine

2oz caster sugar

3oz soft brown sugar

8oz plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, beaten

4oz of choc chips (white and brown) I used mixed fruit instead

set oven for 180 degrees and grease 2 baking sheets

cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

add egg a bit at a time, along with the vanilla extract.

sift the flour and baking powder together over the mixture and stir in with a metal spoon. Stir in the fruit.

using 2 spoons, place the mixture on the baking sheets, wide enough apart to allow for spreading whilst cooking. makes 15 cookies.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden, moving around in the over after 10 minutes for even cooking if necessary.

Leave on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack for cooling.

Enjoy!!

Mmmmmmm.......................pizza!

On Thursday Richard went out for a curry, so I thought I would treat Leah and myself to pizza, except we were going to make it ourselves.

I made a recipe for basic dough courtesy of Jamie Oliver, but halved it using about 500g of flour.

We let the dough prove until double in size (about 40 minutes or so)

and in the meantime got our toppings ready (can you see my hot chillies hidden in there?). Not a great choice, but all I had in the fridge!

Once the dough was rolled out I covered it in my tomato sauce (made earlier using passata, olive oil, carrot, celery, onion and garlic all whizzed up together)

then added my lovely toppings.

Here is Leah's finished cooked one,

and mine!

And as I had had some dough left I made a nice little loaf.

Yummy, yummy, yummy!!

Some yummy baking

This morning Leah and I were watching a new CBeebies programme called 'I can cook' and on there they made some yummy Melting Moments (you can download the PDF from the recipes)

I had all the ingredients in the cupboard so I decided that Leah and I should make some, for something different to do.



here she is creaming the butter and sugar together.....

.... and beating the egg....

.and licking her fingers after rolling in oats and getting ready to bake!

The finished article - VERY tasty!!

Baking some yummy cookies!

For some very strange reason I decided to bake some cookies with Leah this morning at 9am!

I was pleased with them and they are very tasty :o) They contain almonds, so I made sure the praline was in small pieces so Leah doesn't choke on them, unfortunately I like them more than her.

Here is the recipe anyway, in case you'd like to bake them.

For the praline

3oz sugar

1 oz of flaked almonds

for the cookies

60z plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

4oz butter or cooking margarine, softened

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp water

first you have to make the praline. Put the sugar and almonds in a heavy based saucepan and put on a medium heat until sugar has melted and turned a golden colour.

Pour onto a greased and lined baking tray and leave until cold. Once cols break into small pieces and put in a polythene bag. Bang with a rolling pin until the consistency you want to be in your cookies.

Pre heat your oven to gas mark 3, 165 degrees.

Sieve the flour and baking powder together and put aside for later. Cream the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract.

Add the flour and water alternately and mix until smooth. Once to this stage stir in the praline.

Put rounded teaspoons of the mix at 5cm/2inch intervals onto a well greased baking sheet.

bake for 16-20 mins or until brown at the edges.

remove from oven and leave on the baking tray for two minutes, then remove fully onto a wire rack for cooling.

The recipe should make about 36 depending on the size cookies you make.

Enjoy!

Ta-da and uh-oh!!

Hmmmm, well they don't taste bad, but they need to be a little sweeter - I will see how Leah finds them, or else the birds will be in for a treat!

What to do with a pumpkin??

Since Dad grew Leah's pumkin for the Harvest Festival Church service, I have had a pumpkin sitting on the side in the kitchen waiting to be turned into something - but what? Its not massive, but is still large enough to feed the 5000 with pumpkin soup, so for the time being I have decided against that idea.

As for pumpkin pie, I remember having it one Harvest time and I really didn't like it, so that idea is out the window too......

... then into my inbox pops an e-mail from Organix for a recipe for pumpkin muffins! Yes, something new to try - albeit for children, but hey, we are all young at heart and Leah can give them a try!

So off we popped to the supermarket this morning to buy a few of the ingredients I had run out of (or didn't have such as wholemeal flour and maple syrup) and with some luck, managed to get them all (except maple syrup - a summer product so I was told so is out of stock - but substituted with maple sugar instead) and headed of home to bake.

Currently they are just finishing off and Leah is asleep, so in roughly 10 minutes I can put my feet up with a nice cuppa and a pumpkin muffin! Just hope they taste as good as they smell (will post some pictures when they are out of the oven).