Raisin & Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies!

This was a weekday treat for the office as we received startling news that a colleague was leaving. To cheer up the team, I went through my recipes for something tasty and quick and anything with chocolate is always a good choice. These cookies turned out to be more crispy than I expected but it was still quite tasty. A single batch turned into more than 40 cookies which filled up a good-sized biscuit tin. It took 2 days to finish and the Husband sneaked a couple home at the end of the day!

Honey, Cinnamon & Pine Nut Shortbread!

I wanted to bake something vaguely healthy over the weekend and thought this recipe with rice flour, honey and pine nuts look quite delicious. Note I said vaguely healthy as the butter content is quite high! It turned out not as crumbly as shortbread but quite caramel-like in the middle. The pine nuts were pressed onto the shortbread dough at the end and caster sugar was then sprinkled on top. The Husband really liked it and pronounced it 'different'. This 20 piece baking was eaten in a day!

Orange & Clove Snowballs!

This was the other treat I baked over the weekend. A colleague of mine was having his wisdom teeth taken out and to make him feel better, I found a soft cookie recipe that is meant to make cookies that will melt in your mouth without chewing. These cookies are really soft and crumbly and the smell of cloves was quite distinct. I did not mind though as the kitchen smelled fabulous while they were baking. This took 2 days to finish.

Raisin & Cinnamon Biscuits!

The Husband came wandering into the kitchen this afternoon and asked, "Did you only bake a loaf today?" That was my cue that he wanted something to snack on. So I found a new, quick and simple biscuit recipe and set to work after dinner. It only took me about an hour to come up with a batch of 40 biscuits.

Not surprisingly, the Husband came wandering back to the kitchen as the scent of cinnamon filled the apartment. He picked up a biscuit and immediately pronounced that since it is a biscuit and not as substantial as a cookie, he can have more than one. The next time I knew, 7 biscuits have vanished in 5 minutes. I assume he quite likes them even though he said they were 'just ok'.

These biscuits have been rated 4.4 out of 5 and I suspect will take another day to finish.

Honey Cake with Honeyed Almond Crunch!

This was a recipe I found online and I was quite keen to make it as I am quite a fan of honey-nut crunch. There is 160ml of honey, 85g of ground almonds and another 85g of flaked almonds in this loaf, so you can guess it could taste like honey-nut cereal crunch baked into a cake.

The honey in the cake smelled delicious while baking in the oven but the dough did take 30 mins longer than stated to bake. After the cake is done, another 30ml of honey is drizzled over the almonds to coat them and then back to the oven for another 5 mins before the final drizzle of another 60ml of honey.

This cake turned out to be quite moist and honeyey. It has been rated 4.6 out of 5. I think it went down really well as it was finished in a day!

Bunny Blobs!

I bought a bunny cookie cutter specially for Easter baking but I did not get a chance to use it for baking until the Sunday after Easter weekend. I found a new cookie dough recipe that uses sour cream and that requires chilling. It was unusually warm for Edinburgh so the dough 'cooled' down really quickly which made cookie cutting quite tricky. Of course it did not help that I included chocolate chips and raisins to the dough that made cutting more difficult but I really wanted to add them to make the cookies more yummy.

I did not count on the bunnies 'mutating' in the oven though to become bunny blobs! At least the Husband did ask me if they were meant to be bunnies before he ate a couple.

They turn out to be quite soft chocolate chip and raisin cookies which I quite like but the Husband was not that keen.

These blobs were finished in a couple of days.

Creme Egg Muffins!

This was a recipe that I found on one of my favourite websites and have been waiting ages for Easter to arrive as that is the only time of the year when mini creme eggs are available.

This is an interesting recipe as the mini creme eggs are baked with the muffin dough and did not melt at all in the oven. If you pull some dough over the mini egg when you place the mini egg on top of the dough, the dough puffs up and cover the mini egg completely as you can see in the picture.

This is actually a really nice surprise when you bite into the muffin as you would not be expecting anything inside!

I gave 4 to my brother-in-law and family and the Husband's niece and nephew seem to really like them. Another 2 was given to the parents-in-law, I ate one and the reminder 5 were taken to the office, where they were well-appreciated.

I have bought another 4 bags of mini eggs on sale to bake them again!

Choc-Cherry Lollipops!

I had a stash of glace cherries that I brought on sale, so I was looking for a recipe that will use as many glace cherries as possible. I also wanted to include chocolate as it was for Easter Monday, which is usually a holiday but not for hardworking Scottish companies!

I found this recipe and it was a surprise hit with the Husband and the office. Most people found it quite cute that the cookie was on an ice-cream stick, just like a big lollipop.

The cherries and chocolate pieces are meant to be pushed into the cookie dough after each cookie has been rolled and pressed into a round on the baking tray. I did not realise how well the cookie will spread when baking which is why the cherries and chocolate bits look so sparse on the cookie. Lesson learnt meant subsequent batches have more cherries and chocolate bits than before.

The recipe also stated it will make 30 cookies but I am quite sure I ended up with at least 50 cookies on sticks.

Cookies on sticks were finished in a day!

The Chocolate Cake Winner!

And this is the chocolate cake winner! As you can see, this is the chocolate raisin sandwich cake decorated with sugar butterflies and sugar stars! This cake also kept really well as even 5 days later, it was still quite tasty!



And the birthday cake all lit up! I was really glad that my friend was really impressed with the cake when he came to pick it up as I think he did not expect me to have decorated it as well.



And the happy birthday girl!



And here she is tucking into her chocolate cake!

Photos reproduced with kind permission from her parents.