Nut Biscuits

We are travelling back to the 1930’s with the Bestway Cookery Gift Book.

The tagline reads:

“A book that will take you, step by step, through the Everyday Dishes to Delightful Experiments in high class Cookery!”

If that doesn’t inspire you what will?! 😁

This one starts with the filling first, a bit like eating your dessert before dinner, which is something that sounds good to me!

Cream 3/4 oz butter with 2 dessert spoons of caster sugar and stir in a tablespoon of ground Brazil nuts and a few drops of vanilla essence.

Now onto the main event – the dough..

Sieve 3 oz flour, 1 oz cornflour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Rub in 1 oz margarine with a mini blender if you’re feeling lazy (like me 😁), add one egg yolk and a spoonful of milk and water mix until it comes together as a dough.

Roll it out on a floured board into a thin oblong shape and spread it evenly with the filling. (Here’s something I prepared earlier moment.) Rolling it up like a Swiss roll and cut it into biscuit sized slices.

Pop them into a ‘fairly hot oven’ (I picked 180C) for ten to fifteen minutes.

They come out lovely and crunchy and a the taste is a lot like biscotti.

Do try it and let me know what you think 😉

Thanks again for visiting my little blog, hope to see you back again soon.

 

2023-06-17T17:29:21+12:0017 June 2023|Bakes, Bestway Cookbook, Biscuits, Vintage cookbook|0 Comments

Kenwood Cookbook – Coconut Macaroons

This bake is a well loved goodie in our family, it can be found in many cookbooks and the vintage recipes are definitely the best.

Going back to my Kenwood Recipe Book c1960 I will be baking something both my grandmothers made time and time again.

Todays recipe is Coconut Macaroons, and if you are looking for something simple with minimal washing up then this recipe is for you.

Laid out on my bench is: 3 egg whites, 2 teaspoons flour, 8oz sugar, 8oz desiccated coconut, vanilla essence (approx 1/2tsp).

Starting off with separating my eggs I beat the whites in my Kenwood mixer until stiff, (don’t throw the yolks away as I have the most delicious recipe using only the yolks – Let me know below if you would like this), lowered the speed to 2/3 and put in my flour. Next to go in was the sugar and I whisked that until it was glossy. Lastly I folded in the vanilla essence and coconut with a spatula.

You will have a lovely bowl of coconut gloss now, I used a paper lined tray for my baking so that I didn’t risk any sticking. I will need to head down to invest in some silicone sheets soon, with all this baking going on.

Drop spoonfuls onto your baking sheet and bake in a fan bake oven at around 160C or just below 180C if you are not using the fan, for around 25 minutes.

I got two trays of pretty decent sized golden macaroons, they have the right amount of crunch on the outside with a lovely chewy coconutty centre.

Hope you enjoyed this quick and easy bake, don’t forget to like and leave a comment if you would like my egg yolk only cake recipe.

2022-04-01T12:32:39+13:001 April 2022|Bakes, Biscuits, Coconut, Kenwood|0 Comments

School Lunches

Where on earth did the summer holidays go? I hear you wondering.

School is back and if you are anything like me, you will start off school lunches with a hiss and a roar, preparing and presenting your kiddoes with a perfect healthy lunch each day.  Then all the activities start back up and work and home life get mega busy again and things start to slide……..

I set aside some time on a Sunday to do a wee bit of baking for the school lunches and it always makes me feel better if they are going to school with something without hundreds of added preservatives in them.

If you simply don’t have the time for hours in the kitchen then I have found a couple of quick yummy recipies which always go down well with my lot.  You might recognise them as a couple of classics, one is taken straight from the good old Edmonds cookbook.

The first recipe is ‘Cheese Biscuits’, which are a delicious light little fluffy bite and the cheese gives them added calcium and protein, perfect for eliminating that soggy mid-day lunch cheese that has been sitting in their lunchbox in the heat.  And if you cut them into cute little shapes they will fit into their containers nicely and make the perfect little snack.

For this recipe we gathered together 1 cup plain flour, 1 tablespoon icing sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, a pinch of salt, 25g butter, 1/2 cup grated cheese (cheats tip: buy the ready grated cheese for an even quicker bake) and 3-4 tablespoons of milk.  If you like a little bite add a pinch of cayenne pepper to the mixture before mixing.

We sifted all of the dry ingredients into our bowl and cut the butter in (if you have a food processor, chucking it all in this to blend the butter in quickly is a fantastic speedy solution).  Then you just need to mix in the cheese and milk to form a stiff dough, this can also be done in the food processor or by hand.  Pop it out onto your floured board, roll out to around a couple of cms thick and get your coolest cutters out until you have used up the whole mixture.  They then go on a greased or lined tray, prick each with a fork to look like biscuits, then pop into a 200 C oven for 10 minutes until lightly golden.

If you use small cutters these can make quite a few, trust me, your kids will love them!

Our second recipe I’m sure all of you will be familiar with, is Rice Bubble Slice.

The ingredients for this are all placed into a medium size saucepan, making sure you leave room for the rice bubbles to be stirred in at the end.  They are 115g butter, 4 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of honey.  If you don’t fancy taking out a mortgage at this stage for the honey you can substitute for golden syrup and it works just as well, just maybe reduce the amount of sugar to around 3 tablespoons to avoid it being too sweet.

We just melt these ingredients until they are golden and bubbly and take off the heat and stir in 4 cups of rice bubbles.  Pat the mixture flat into a rectangular brownie tray which is lined with baking paper, makes it much easier to remove later when it’s ready to eat.  Pop the tray into the fridge until it is set and all you need to do is slice it into squares to eat.  Easy as that!

I hope your family enjoys these little treats and I would love to hear your suggestions for some quick lunchbox bakes.  Thank you for joining me again and please come back again to visit soon.

Baking with Kids – Valentines Cookies

Here’s something for you romantics out there, a quick and easy piped shortcake biscuit for Valentines Day.

I chose this one as I had my two helpers joining in today and it was a simple little recipe with only…..3 ingredients!  How does that work I hear you ask? Easy as pie, and the result is delicious (I have that on good authority from my two favourite helpers).

We start out with our trusty Kenwood recipe book, circa 1960 and our 3 ingredients; 4 oz Margarine/Butter, 4 oz Plain Flour and 1 oz of icing sugar.

 

My trusty helper number 1 put the butter into our warmed Kenwood mixer bowl and set it to speed 2 until it was pale and soft. Then helper number 2 stepped up and sifted the icing sugar and flour into the bowl (because he makes the least mess, lol).

When the mixture was combined to a soft dough we put it all into a piping bag with a large star nozzle. I took over at this stage as it needed quite a bit of power to squeeze out onto the tray and I had been working out just for this purpose, kidding.

(more…)

Mrs Beeton’s Adventure Dessert Biscuits

These dessert biscuits are fantastic for Holiday treats in the lead up to Christmas!

 

Halloween is over and I am definitely one of those Christmas fanatics – so bear with me here.

My latest bake is a lovely soft biscuit with a outside crunch and as Mrs Beeton says “With whatever the preparation is flavoured, so are the biscuits called, and an endless variety can be made in this manner”.  So go with whatever flavour your little heart desires – today I chose ground ginger to add to my biscuit batter to get everyone in the Christmas spirit.

As per the usual routine I started off with my ingredients set out ready to go.  The recipe needs; 1 lb Flour, 1/2lb Butter, 1/2lb Sifted Sugar, the Yolks of 6 eggs and flavouring to taste.  If your mind is blank as to options for flavouring here are some ideas – Cinnamon, Lemon zest, Currants, Ground ginger, Cocoa powder…let your imagination soar.  If you are feeling fancy, make half and half different flavours!

Soften your 225g (Yeah I know, it’s a lot!) of Butter and beat it vigorously until it resembles cream instead of butter.  I used my mixer for this so as not to wear out my arms this early in the bake, haha.  Then I added in the flour “by degrees”, which is just really a posh way of saying ‘a bit at a time’ until it is mixed in.  Then in went the icing sugar and the flavouring, and followed up by your lovely egg yolks (previously beaten until light and frothy).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your mixture will end up a soft dough, but still be able to be moulded with your hands into tablespoonful balls.  This mixture made 5 trays of cookies, but you can reuse your trays after removing the cooked biscuits if you don’t have a neverending supply of cookie trays.  Grease and flour, or line them with baking paper – the reusable type is a fantastic save for the environment, it may be more expensive to start with, but in the long run it is worth it.

The cookies need to go into a ‘slow oven’ for around 15 minutes, making sure they don’t gain too much colour (don’t burn them – it does not add to the flavour, haha).  I put my oven at around 160 degrees Celsius and this worked well.

The average cost back in the day was apparently 1s, 6d to make these and you will get around 4 dozen biscuits out of the one dough.  This is why it is such a fantastic recipe to make and gift for Christmas, or pop it on the table to let the gannets help themselves as my family did.  I started out with 52 and now have one plateful left, that’s how moreish they are.  I think they would look super cool decorated with some red or white royal icing and a cherry on top.

I hope you enjoyed this bake and I hope you come back to visit me again soon.  I am over the moon with this fabulous new website and have to credit Yellow Banana Design for all their hard work.  Remember if you are a fan of YouTube also this recipe will be up to view on there very soon under Sweet Sensations NZ.

 

 

 

2021-11-10T09:04:39+13:009 November 2021|Bakes, Biscuits, Makes, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook, Vintage Kitchen, Xmas|0 Comments
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