Baking up a storm!

When Australia's Biggest Morning Tea rolled around this week I decided to get my baking-pants on and donate some cookies to the morning tea that was held at my shopping centre. It was a late night Thursday bake-athon with not one, but THREE new recipes! So hang in there folks, it's a bit of a long post!

Recipe #28: Maple-Pecan Cookies

When I initially mixed this batter it was extremely dry - I swear I followed the recipe to the letter, but for some reason it seemed like there was just WAY too much flour in this one. In the end I added a little more melted butter, as it was pretty much the only 'liquid' ingredient other than adding half the bottle of maple syrup (imagine it though...!).

Eventually I got a 'rollable' consistency - with nearly 50% more butter than the recipe specified... I must be getting my measurements horribly wrong somewhere. I mean, in this book, all butter measurements are in cups. CUPS? Butter comes in a block! Do I chop it up until it mostly fills a cup? Or do I melt it to get a cup of liquid butter? Which then means I need to wait for it to solidify before I get any creaming action going with the sugar. Nigella, I don't understaaaaand!

The 'raw' cookies - pretty much the same as the cooked ones!

Anyway, in the end all it meant was that the batter had a very stiff consistency, which resulted in quite a crumbly, dry cookie. Kind of like shortbread actually. Which I really liked. I don't think they were supposed to be super crumbly, but man they tasted good. I love me some maple-syrup!

Chris' verdict: 4/5
(His second favourite, my favourite)


Recipe #29: Coffee and Walnut Splodge Cookies

I had to 'borrow' the jar of instant coffee from work for this recipe. I was extremely spoiled by the lovely Mr. Moyer last Christmas with a fancy-pants espresso machine. What a guy! Since then I have become a big-time coffee snob and haven't had anything other than fresh coffee in my house. And I certainly wasn't going to go and BUY instant coffee just for one batch of cookies! (Even though I often find myself buying a whole jar of rose water, or a huge-mungous bag of polenta, just for one recipe). But instant coffee? Pfffft!

 Taste-testing and mixing. That's what I call multi-tasking!

Cheap coffee aside (I thought about using a wee bit of freshly brewed coffee, but turns out this recipe calls for dry, powdered coffee), these smelt freakin' amazing all the way through. And you don't even have to get your hands dirty - just scoop 'em out and drop them on the baking tray.

Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

And you know what? I have never been a big fan of walnuts, but I have to admit they just added so much more to this recipe. The texture of the nuts alone in these cookies was incredible, and the sweetness of the nuts was the perfect compliment to the light coffee flavour. Loved 'em.

Chris' verdict: 3/5

Maple-Pecan Cookies and Coffee & Walnut Splodge Cookies

 Recipe #30: Lemon Gems


Last, but not least - some delicious lemony goodness. They look amazing in the book. They smelt amazing in real life. They tasted pretty damn good too.


I decided to make my lemon curd from scratch for this one, and while that was cooking, and between constantly checking the oven for the endless trays of cookies (I think I ended up with about 9-10 trays of cookies by the end of the night), I whipped up the batter. I was given another vague "1/2 a cup, or something" butter measurement to work with, which again resulted in a rather dry, crumbly texture, making them a lot like a lemon-scented shortbread.

Whisking up some fresh lemon curd

 Little 'pockets' to fill with lemon curd! Chur!

The hero of these cookies really was the lemon curd. It gave them a bit more of a kick with the extra flavour, and balanced out the dryness of the cookie. Without the curd I don't think these would be something I'd make again, but with it = pure awesome.

Chris' verdict: 5/5

Misson: complete! Time: about midnight. Cups of tea consumed: three. State of kitchen: apocalyptic. Chris: snoring quietly on the couch.