The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits & Nana’s Biscuit Tin

There’s a recipe book that graces the shelves of many in Australia, The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits, and like, mine, I’m sure they are well used.

The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits – Ever reliable recipes

When I was a child, my nana, Elvie McDonald, would bake up a storm, filling biscuit (cookie) tins with a variety of biscuits, to be gifted to each of her adult children’s families.  We all had favourites, for me it was her melting moments, others loved her gingernuts, others, Anzacs, and so on, and it was a sad day when the last of your favourites had vanished from the tin.  When the tin was empty, it would be returned to nana, and she would use it to store her baked goods in throughout the year, before beginning the cycle again.  While I don’t have one of her large biscuit tins, I do have a smaller tin,  and use it to, fittingly, store my biscuit cutters in.

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Never Say Never!

I work with kids, now that’s something I thought I would NEVER say! Me working with kids – nup, my sister, Jan, was the teacher, not me!

Well, somehow that has changed a little, and, every now and then I work with kids in the kitchen. This Halloween morning we cooked together again – I’m pretty sure that you can guess what the theme was for that day…  Yes, Halloween….

It’s all about Halloween…

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A “Beautifully Blended Family” Christmas

I’m not quite sure why time seems to get away from me, but it does!

The lead up to Christmas was, as I recently said to someone, frantic!  There were cooking classes/knowledge sharing sessions to deliver throughout the region, cooking for a local café to be done, trips to Melbourne for family gatherings, an unexpected medical issue, hampers to prepare and get into the post for family up north, gifts to purchase and our preparations for our contributions to the Christmas Day Family Feast!

This year in the Christmas hamper I included a few new items, coffee liqueur, flavour bombs/simmer pot pouches and a new biscuit (cookie).  The coffee liqueur was a recipe given to me by a host at a B&B in central France, the flavour bombs/simmer pot pouches were made up of my dehydrated citrus, some spices and a little candied ginger (I think that I will dehydrate ginger for them in future), and the new biscuit is based on a commercially available biscuit available here in Aus, but made using a recipe from my mum’s recipe book.

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