Vanilla-Peanut Cookies!

I love raisins so am always partial to any recipes that include raisins.

This cookie has everything healthy and tasty, from dry roasted peanuts, rolled oats, flaked coconut to raisins! The dough is a simple mix of plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, brown sugar, eggs and butter.

This is a big batch of cookies though as I have ended up with 71 cookies.

The Husband has pronounced them 'ok'.

Apricot & Carrot Cake with Streusel Topping!

Again from my beloved Leiths Baking Bible, I found this lovely fruity recipe.

The cake is baked out of three layers. The first layer is mixed out of flour, carrots, eggs, caster sugar, butter, milk and baking powder, the second is a layer of 140g chopped dried apricots and the third is the streusel topping mixed of ground cinnamon, pecans, brown sugar, plain flour and melted butter.

The cake turned out moist and tasty and I thought it was pretty good!

This weekend, the Husband helped by grating the 115g of carrots!

Pink Smarties Cookies!

Who wouldn't be cheered up by a cookie pink and yummy?

These pink Smarties cookies were baked on a Thursday night as my yoga class was cancelled. I got home early and decide to bake instead. (And yes, the irony is not lost on me!)

The pink Smarties were purchased at Christmas as I like most things pink! Smarties cookies are really easy to bake and also really cheerful.

I only baked half the recommended batch as the Husband wanted some chocolate and I wouldn't have any for him if I baked them all!

The 36 cookies were all eaten in a day by the Office.

Ginger & Banana Cake!

The Husband was given a choice last weekend as to what to bake - a ginger and banana cake or a chocolate ginger cake. The Husband is a huge fan of ginger, banana and chocolate so I suspect it was a difficult choice and to his credit, he asked if he could have a ginger and banana cake with chocolate icing! I decided that might be too adventurous so he just had to make do with a plain ginger and banana cake.

This recipe is again from Leiths Baking Bible, which I have to say is a fabulous book. It is also really easy to follow - the butter, brown sugar and treacle are melted together, the wholemeal flour, plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and ground ginger are all sifted together and the melted ingredients, milk and eggs are added before one large ripe mashed banana is also mixed in.

This cake was a huge hit and I got three requests for the recipe as well as a request for it to be baked again! Success!

Gooey Chocolate & Cherry Cookies!

Baking item Number 3 - Chocolate & Cherry Cookies! This is an old favourite!

This cookie is baked out of self-raising flour, egg, butter, light muscovado sugar, dark chocolate, white chocolate and glace cherries. By halving the recipe, I still got 36 cookies!

The Husband has declared them 'quite good'.

Fruit 'n' Spice Rounds!

This is baking No. 2 for this Chinese New Year eve weekend! To meet the Husband's challenge, I have decided that every floor will have a mix of two kinds of baking and everyone will be encouraged to wander around the building if they want to try something new!

This recipe is from an American baking magazine and very fruity! The sweet element is from the combination of dates and raisins baked into it. There is also ground cinnamon, ground cloves and walnuts in this cookie, so it is also great for a winter's day as quite comforting.

The Husband stated that there is too little icing and too cinnamonny but he ate two anyway!

Cranberry & Cherry Cake!

Happy Chinese New Year! This new year's eve weekend, the Husband 'challenged' me to provide baking for the entire Office to mark the occasion. He also kindly reminded me that the Office is now over five floors rather than four. I know it might be difficult to provide for everyone but at least a tray of baking per floor is doable, so it will be first-come-first-served!

The theme for this weekend is sweet and red! Red because it is an auspicious colour for the Chinese. Sweet because it is believed that eating sweet things during Chinese New Year celebrations will be representative of how your year will turn out and who wouldn't want a year full of sweetness?

This cranberry and cherry cake recipe is from Leiths Baking Bible. It is really simple with 75g of dried cranberries and 75g of dried cherries to dot it red and sweet!

The cake has gone down really well with the Team and the first treat to be finished out of three!

Butter Cookies!

I bought some Hello Kitty cookie stampers on holiday and was keen to try them out. Choosing a simple butter cookie dough, I set to work this weekend.

The cookies turned out really yummy and shortbready but the Hello Kitty stamps have not come out as clearly as I hoped on the cookies. If you look really closely at the cookies in the picture, you might be able to glimpse a Hello Kitty on them.

I think I just need to practise more!

Hermits!

The weather in Edinburgh was cold and windy after the new year, hence I wanted to bake something warming and comforting. This recipe is in one of my magazines and it sounded really tasty full of raisins, nuts, ground cinnamon, ground ginger and very little butter!

The sticky dough is rolled out into two 'logs' before baking as above and I just have to cut them up when they come out of the oven! They can called hermits because they can be kept for a long time and meant to be tastier after being 'matured'! However, I can't tell as they were all eaten in a day at the Office as honestly, they taste better than they look!

Chocolate Orange Bites!

First baking of the new year!

These were meant to be orange and chocolate cupcakes but I decided to make them a bit smaller to get more cakes. I then topped them with orange chocolate icing melted from orange cocoa butter buttons and little Christmas icing and chocolate decorations.

Comments from happy tasters - "Those cupcakes are like giant Jaffa cakes. Brilliant!" and "Nice and light, not too sweet nor too orangey nor too chocolatey. And the little dark choc decoration was a nice touch too both taste and visual."

Cranberry Nut Coffee Cake!

This cranberry nut coffee cake was baked in December pre-Christmas, hence the cranberry element.

The streusel is mixed out of brown sugar, butter, flour and chopped pecans. The cake is also sandwiched with dried cranberries and the same streusel topping. The cake turned out really soft and fluffy and also got rave reviews from the tasters.

It took 2 days to finish.

Oatmeal Chocolate Raisin Cookies!

This was a recipe gone wrong but luckily turned out to be surprisingly tasty. To give you an idea of how wrong the recipe went, the original recipe name was Double Chocolate Sprinkle Cookies. I omitted the walnuts and sprinkles and added raisins instead. The dough turned out quite dry as I did not process the oats and had to add a few tablespoons of milk as well to get the dough together.

As a result of all these changes, I hope I have made the cookies vaguely healthier! The 36 cookies were eaten in two days.