Baking Day

We spent a day trying out some new recipes last week with some good and some not so good results! First up we made an old favourite - flapjack - knowing this always turns out good and we all love it.

India got quite excited!

India received a lovely recipe book from Pip over on OCE and we tried out a couple of recipes from there. We made sweet treat biscuits using cherries in the middle though you can use nuts also. These looked great and were easy for India to do too. They tasted very sweet but very nice too. Big thumbs up for them and they are going on my list for Christmas.

I made up some Honeycomb, now this melted lovely, we added the bicarb and it frothed really well - we were impressed. Tipped it into the really well greased tin (India did it, she used loads!) and it stuck in there! I ended up just bashing it into pieces to get it out of the tin so it was just a mess of broken bits and crumbs in the end. However it tasted just like cinder toffee, which is one of hubby's favourites and he ate the lot! I'm not sure on this, it definitely tasted good but how do I get it to come out of the tray better?

Peppermint Creams - now these I have also made before but not for a few years. I added some red food colouring once the dough was nearly done so the colouring was streaky rather that a solid colour - thought it may look a little more festive? This was something India could easily help with - which is why most of the creams are different shapes and sizes!!

Last of all we tried an Easy Fruit Cake from the Bero recipe book, which as most people in the UK will be aware is a bit of an institution here. It involved simmering the fruit first on the hob, which i've never done before.

It wasn't as nice as my normal fruit cake recipe and was really crumbly but it was certainly easy to do and didn't taste too bad. I don't think I will make it again.

Sweet Treats

200g Ground Almonds
100g Icing Sugar
100g Golden Caster Sugar
Grated Lemon Rind
1 Egg

1. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 160C
2. Mix all the dry ingredients
3. Add the egg and mix to form into a ball
4. Divide into about 12 small balls
5. Push a hole in the middle and place a glace cherry, a nut of choice or jam
6. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes