Afghan biscuits and Golden Cinnamon biscuits - quick and easy baking

Afghan Biscuits & Golden Cinnamon Biscuits

It's overcast and cloudy here today so I thought it would be a good day to do some baking.  I had a little helper too!

I used the Afghan recipe from the Edmonds Cook book.  The Golden Cinnamon recipe is from the Australian Womens Weekly "Biscuits, Brownies and Biscotti" book.

I hadn't made the Golden Cinnamon Biscuits before but it is a great little recipe and makes 30 cookies.  It's one of those recipes for which you would probably have all the ingredients in the cupboard already.

I made afghans to use up some cornflakes.  My daughter always has great intentions when she chooses a new cereal, but the shine goes off it pretty quickly and she always goes back to cheerios.  So I was glad to use up 2 cups of the cornflakes and put them into something everyone would want to eat.

Here are the recipes:

Golden Cinnamon Biscuits

60 g butter
1/3 c (115 g) golden syrup
2 T brown sugar
2 T caster sugar
1 1/4 c self raising flour
3 t ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.

Combine butter, golden syrup and sugars in a saucepan.  Stir over a low heat until butter is melted.   Cool for 5 minutes.

Stir in flour and cinnamon.  Roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls and place about 2 cm apart on baking tray lined with baking paper.  Flatten with a floured fork until 1 cm thick.

Bake for about 10 minutes or until brown.  Stand biscuits 5 minsutes before lifting onto wire racks to cool.

Makes 30 cookies.


Afghans

200 g butter
1/2 c sugar
1 1/4 c plain flour
1/4 c cocoa
2 c cornflakes.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Sift flour and cocoa.  Stir into creamed mixture.  Fold in cornflakes.  Spoon mounds of mixture onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, gently pressing together.  Bake at 180 degrees celcius for 15 minutes or until set.  When cold, ice with chocolate icing and decorate with a walnut if desired.


Cookies in a jar - a yummy and thoughtful gift

I love making gifts in a jar, so for my afterschool class, I decided the students would make 'cookies in a jar' to give to someone as a Christmas present.  It's a lot of fun layering all the ingredients in the jar and then decorating the jar to make it look Christmassy.

I got this recipe from http://www.taste.com.au/ and it was a bit more interesting than the standard chocolate chip cookies in a jar recipes.  Enjoy!

 Abby's Cookies in a Jar
 
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Makes 24 cookies

Equipment

You'll need a 1L glass jar with a lid

Ingredients

Jar ingredients

½ c plus ¼ c (110g) plain flour
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1/4 t salt
1/3 c (75g) firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 c (75g) caster sugar
3/4 c (65g) rolled oats
½ c craisins (dried cranberries)
½ c white chocolate chips Extra ingredients for making cookies


125g butter, melted and cooled
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 t vanilla essence


Method

1. Sift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl. Whisk to mix.

2. Spoon the flour mixture into a 1L (4-cup) capacity glass jar.

3. Top with brown sugar, then caster sugar.

4. Add oats, then craisins, then chocolate chips. Seal jar. Give as gift.


To make cookies:

 Preheat oven to 190ºC.

 Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

 Empty jar into a large bowl.

 Add butter, egg and vanilla. Stir until well combined.

 Shape tablespoons of mixture into balls and place on baking trays approximately 5cm apart.

 Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, swapping trays halfway during cooking, or until edges are lightly browned.

 Turn biscuits onto a wire rack to cool.

 Serve.

A place for teachers blogs

I was just checking out my blog traffic and found a link to Interface Magazine.

If you are a teacher with a blog, check out http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/teacherblogs/ and add your blog. 

It's a great way to increase your traffic and get your blog seen by other teachers :)

Christmas Gifts for teachers - Chocolate Christmas cupcakes

 I'm a bit late posting this since it is now late January, but here are the gifts I made for my son's teachers at childcare this Christmas (2010).

I used a Donna Hay cupcake recipe (http://www.donnahay.com.au/) and decorated themwith green and red 'ready to roll' icing from Gilmours and silver cachous.  I love the really bright red and green colour.

I bought Christmassy plates from Farmers (http://www.farmers.co.nz/) to put the cupcakes on, so the teachers had a lasting gift as well as an edible one.

The cellophane and silver string was from the $2 shop.  Gift tags were from Whitcoulls (http://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/).

Christmas Cooking - Ginger Christmas Cookies

My new afterschool class, "Christmas Cooking" started last week.  I have a whole range of different Christmas goodies to make in the coming weeks.

We started with Ginger Christmas Cookies - they smell wonderful baking in the oven and the uncooked dough is delicious to eat too!

Ginger Christmas Biscuits

Ingredients

• 70 g butter

• ½ cup (80g) brown sugar
• ¼ c cup (87g) treacle
• ½ t ground cinnamon
• ½ t ground ginger
• ¼ t ground cloves
• 1 egg
• 1 t vanilla essence
• 2 c (300g) plain flour
• 1 t baking powder


• Icing, to decorate

• Thin ribbon, to hang


Method


1. Measure the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

2. Place the butter, brown sugar, treacle, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in a saucepan and melt over a medium heat. Set aside.

3. Stir in the egg and vanilla essence.

4. Stir in the flour and baking powder until a smooth dough forms.

5. Divide the dough into 2 portions. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until firm.

6. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

7. Roll out 1 portion of the dough to 4mm thick between 2 sheets of baking paper.

8. Use Christmas cookie cutters to cut out biscuit shapes. Place on the trays.

9. Use the end of a piping nozzle to make a hole in the top of each biscuit (if you want to hang them on the Christmas tree)

10. Bake for 5-10 minutes or until golden and firm. Repeat with the remaining dough.

11. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

12. Decorate biscuits with icing. Thread with ribbon to hang on the Christmas tree.

Tips

• Make sure the treacle mixture has cooled before you add the egg, otherwise the eggs start to cook in the hot mixture and you will end up with scrambled egg through your cookie dough.
• Double the recipe to make more cookies.
• You can use golden syrup in place of treacle, even though treacle works really well.
• Place cookies about the same size on a tray together.  A small star will burn before a large angel is ready if they are on the same tray.

Jackson turns three!

My little boy turned three last week so I made him some special cupcakes to take to day care.

He was very pleased with them.  I did a mixture of chocolate and vanilla cakes with ready made white icing.  I made the colours by adding drops of liquid food colouring until the colour was right.

I would like to say I made the little figures on the top of each cake, but they were from the supermarket!

We had a little party at home and I made a rainbow jelly ring. I got the idea from Liss at http://www.frillsinthehills.com/.

I couldn't get all the same colours and flavours as they have in Australia so I had to improvise a little with what we have available here in NZ.  It was delicious and everyone loved it.

I used my tupperware jelly mould. I sprayed it with canola oil spray first but it came out so easily that I am not sure if I really needed to.

I served it with rainbow icecream cake :)



Slow Cookers - Love 'em or loathe 'em?

My niece said to her mother once, "Nothing but evil comes out of that thing" when referring to a slow cooker and I am starting to wonder if she is right!

I'd heard such great things about slow cookers that I decided to buy one.  I bought a great big 5 litre type that would be big enough to fit lamb shanks in and to serve a big crowd of people.

First attempt:
Grey meat and blood stains on the potatoes.  I cooked it over night and Mr Foodie Teacher said he woke up at 3.00 am and the smell of a casserole cooking at that hour made him want to be sick and he couldn't get back to sleep.  It tasted OK but there is no way I could serve up grey meat to anyone so into the bin it went :(.

Second attempt:  Family all afraid of what colour the meat was going to be this time.  I cooked it during the day this time to avoid making Mr Foodie Teacher sick again.  The colour looked much better this time around - added more beef stock and gravy type ingredients and left out the potatoes.  Taste was OK but to be honest, it's not the falling apart, beautifully tender meat I get when I use my cast iron casserole dish (and that cooks quicker too).

Third attempt:  Any suggestions???