Yo-yo Biscuits

Oh, these are awesome! Beautiful sweet biscuits and a lovely sugary filling. Yum.

The 3 sets of shifting the flour and custard powder nearly broke my ageing sifter! But it made the biscuits so deliciously smooth.

Made these twice in the last week or so. Shared with the Dohertys (enjoyed by young and not as young alike!) and my parents and the family-in-law over the Easter long weekend. A joy to share.

Raspberry scones

I love scones and I love raspberries. But for some reason this recipe did nothing for me. The serving with added cream and raspberry jam did though. I felt like it was a wasted amount of raspberries and I would have preferred regular scones.

I do however wonder whether my raspberries were slightly unfrozen and caused issue in the recipe. The picture in the recipe book showed regular looking scones with raspberries dappled through, whereas mine turned purple from the breaking up of the raspberries as I folded them into the scone mixture and kneaded the dough as well. And how very sad: a sprinkling of icing sugar just makes things look less appealing...

They did not all get consumed, which speaks volumes about how un-special they were.

Next time I will make scones without raspberries and add the raspberries with the cream as an afterthought!

Small cakes

I made these for Megan's baby shower last week (congratulations on the arrival of Imogen Corinne Parker).

Very simple, quick and tasty recipe. Truly tastes like the ones Nanna used to make.

I loved the fact I could use the little silicone cupcake moulds I received from Mum for my birthday last year. They really looked terribly cute with pastel pink and blue casings and a little white icing on top.

Truly delightful.

Nanna biscuits

I even love the name of these biccies.

Even though I felt like I had some trouble making these and they all melded together on the baking tray in the oven, I loved these.

I enjoyed using my cute blue measuring scales to get the correct amounts of ingredients. I loved the fact these were so quick and easy to make and require so little cleaning up afterwards!

The ingredients were meant to come together as a dough, but they really didn't. Despite this fact, the end result was a sweet, buttery biscuit.

I ended up making two batches.

The first batch I made for my sister-in-law, the giver of the recipe book, who has been doing it tough lately, but has demonstrated an amazing strength, patience and perseverance. She is truly wonderful. I hope that the biccies have and will help her enjoy her down-time. Love you Leesh!

The second batch was shared with the girls, Bec, Tahlia, Kate, Erin and myself, on our roadtrip to Canberra. It was such a fun weekend, and I hope that whenever I make these little gems in the future, I will reminisce over the girlie weekend away! Love you girls!

The picture I've included is of the final biscuit (of some 32 I made) that I will enjoy with a cup of tea later on today.

All Together Cake

This was simply the easiest cake ever. Love love love it! These ingredients are all just from the cupboard buzzed together for 6 minutes and baked for 40.

The icing however did not come together as easily, and despite tasting buttery and sweet, looked positively gross on the cake and nothing like the picture in the recipe book! I added so much more dry ingredient to try and get it together, but the consistency of the icing was still rather vomity.

But with fresh whipped cream and some dollops of raspberry jam, it tasted amazing!

Next time, I will make my own butter icing.

Chocolate Rum Slice

Oh yum.

And the question from people was consistently, "Did you make this? It looks like you bought it." Snaps for me.

This one was fun to make. Starting with the processing of biscuits, cocoa and butter to make a tasty, salty base. Then the fun of melting down marshmallows, chocolate and rum to pour over the base which became a deliciously smooth centre. Finishing with whipped cream, which seems to have been a favourite ingredient in this recipe book, and shaved chocolate.

The photo really doesn't do it justice.

Enjoyed by new mummy Laurie, Gilly, Ben, Bec, Preston, Chris, Chris, Maxi, and a happy helping myself! Yes, that is a lot of pieces = bonus!

I will definitely make it again and again.

Banana muffins

Not a fan of these muffins.

The recipe may be fine, but my results were unsatisfying.

Firstly I couldn't work out whether to add butter in its normal form or melted; the recipe was slightly ambiguous.

Also, the oven heat must have been way too high, because the poor muffins were black on the outside and not well cooked on the inside. This meant that after having the best ones (the least burnt) fresh, the others tasted almost rancid on following days. Not fun.

Not pretty either, even on this pretty plate I received from a family friend, Grandma Ruth. Such a shame!

So I don't think I'll attempt it again, even though I suspect I may have to fine tune a few aspects to get a nicer result.

It's the first of my experiment recipes that I haven't been impressed with, and really, 3 great ones and 1 not so good, ain't bad odds.

Instead, the next time I have overripe bananas on hand, I will again make my Mum's beautiful banana cake. I love her cake, it's one of my favourite baked goodies that she makes. I have had amazing feedback from friends on it when I've made it, especially with an extra sprinkle of mixed spice!