Biscuits Galore!

With my son off school with tendonitis, I have had an unexpected afternoonm of babysitting while he watches bad cartoons with is leg up.  As I can't bear to be in the same room as the cartoons, I banished myself to the kitchen with a view to making biscuits to cheer him up.  As I had a flamingo cookie cutter just begging for its virgin flight, I thought pink was the way to go.  I seem to be getting better at flood icing, with fewer wonky bits and was rather pleased with how these worked out.  Rather than tiny piping, I used an edible ink pen for the eyes and that seemed to do the job rather nicely and kept the glossy finish.

I was so pleased in fact, that I thought I would use some of the extra dough to make some little hearts as a practice for a work based Valentine bake sale.  Cute huh?

I thought I was pretty much iced out but there was still some dough nagging me from the fridge.  I have always been unable to resist a good nagging so eventually  gave in to the dough and made my first ever "cookie pops".  I have never really seen the point of cake pops.  Cooking a cake just to squidge it into a small ball seems a little like vandalism to me.  But a whole cookie on a stick, now that I can see the point of.  It was a bit of an operation making sure the stick was firmly embedded in the dough before cooking, but a gentle pressure on the top as I slid the stick in seemed to do the trick.  Not bad for a first attempt.

That was some gap!

Wow, can't quite believe that it is three months since I started my blog.  My baking enthusiasm has not waned.  There was a bit of a family crisis in October which has had some fairly long-term effects and although I still managed to find time to bake, I really couldn't fit in a blog too.  But, here I am, ready to have another shot.

Starting off gently, I have gone for bread today, based on a recipe from Paul Hollywood's "100 Great Breads".  A seedy loaf with sesame, caraway and black onion seeds on the outside and just a touch of fennel in the dough.  This is a loaf I have made a few times and love to take a couple of slices to work for breakfast in the morning.  Delicious with peanut butter and makes great toast!