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DATE & WALNUT LOAF…AFAM – a DATE with you & HotM 10
“Vegetables are the food of the earth; fruit seems more the food of the heavens.” Sepal Felicivant AFAM (A Fruit A Month) is a wonderful blog event which highlights different fruits. The event this month is being hosted by AkshayPatra and her fruit of choice is ‘DATES’. Golden opportunity for me to try the ‘Date & Walnut Loaf ‘ which I have been dying to try but have never quite got there. Last evening was a mad frenzy of date chopping & general confusion since I got to the event announcement late as usual! Huff Puff!!! Loaf was out of the oven last night, looking good, smelling great….& I couldn’t…
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LIME SHORTBREAD COOKIES…Stringing them along for Xmas!!
‘Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold.’ Judith Olney LIME SHORTBREAD COOKIES A variation of Orange Shortbread Fingers from the ‘Great Big Cookie Book’…an exciting book with over 200 recipes. A crisp, buttery cookie with a twang of lime! I used lime juice & rind to make this cookie; gave it a nice zesty/citrus flavour-FRESH!! Decided to go a step further later in the day, and sandwiched some with a chocolate ganache. This made it even more interesting, and a bigger hit with the kids. Here’s my version of the recipe which is a very simple…
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STAINED GLASS COOKIES…Hold ’em against the light!!
‘Cookies are made of butter and love’. Norwegian Proverb Festive, fascinating & delicious cookies! A cut-out cookie made out of my favourite basic sugar cookie dough. Then smaller bits are cut-out and filled with broken pieces of hard-boiled candy, and put in to bake. In a while you can see the candy melting beautifully into the cut-outs & the cookie baking to a perfect brown. I make these a couple of times in the winter months; in summer they tend to get sticky due to humidity levels being high. They involve an extra bit of effort, otherwise would love to make them more often! Ingredients: Butter – ¾ cup (room…
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ITALIAN CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES…food-as-a-gift for Christmas!
‘There’s nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with chocolate.’ Linda Grayson, “The Pickwick Papers“ Up, Close & Chocolicious! Italian Almond Chocolate Truffles… I had an old truffle recipe, which I played around with a bit, and made these for the first time a few weeks ago. These Italian Chocolate Truffles tasted divine, and make a lovely gift, especially after the dressing up. They are very easy to make & have an lovely almond flavour. I’ve made the little boxes with handmade paper & the magical glue gun. Once the boxes are filled, I wrap them in cellophane, add some ribbon & a little card, & they’re…
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BISCOTTI…The Great Italian Cookie!
“You’ll always make good food from great ingredients,but you will never make great food from bad ingredients.” Michael Chiarrello BISCOTTI in 2 TONES!! Here’s what I baked yesterday…BISCOTTI. It’s been on my mind for really long ever since I’ve been haunted by a picture posted on Group Recipes.This particular biscotti recipe is from Rogers page on Group Recipes which I have adapted to suit the ingredients I had available. The fact that the recipe uses olive oil & not butter won me over!! The recipe is a wee bit fiddly as it uses no butter which makes the dough quite sticky and squishy; but don’t let this put you off.…
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LEMON CAKE…Baked as a gift!!
“I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.” Madam Benoit LEMON CAKE sans sour cream… Made my ‘twisted’ & ‘tangy’ lemon cake again…keeping in mind Zlamushka’s ‘Spoonful of Christmas’. This was a gift for a friend, and looked very pretty when dressed up. Convenient to gift too, since it’s already in a ‘case’! This time I used something very interesting…‘Lemon Sugar’ that my friend got from Ukraine. They have these satchets of lemon sugar that are very citrusy and add a lovely tang and kick to the cake. This recipe made 2 nice loaves…so we had one too! Yippee!!…
