Attention to detail is not one of my strengths. My talents rather lie in big picture thinking, day dreaming and doodling in notebooks about what might be. Active reading and listening are things I do for work although I admit there are times when I have not paid enough attention then. Training as a professional coach has made me conscious of such behaviours and makes me concentrate hard. It’s an exhausting business I can tell you.
Time and time again my lack of focus and concentration can get me into a right pickle. Never more so yesterday when my baking prowess was completely undermined by slack attention. Disaster was averted but frankly I can do without the hassle having raised the expectation in this house that afternoon tea at the weekend in this house is accompanied by some tasty sweet treat.
So what’s my heinous crime you might wonder.
Erm, it helps if you read the recipe. Not just the list of ingredients but the whole recipes. That way you can work out whether you have the time to complete the full baking operation and indeed if you truly have all the ingredients you need.
If I had read my recipe for Dark Ale Fruit Cake I’d have known that it needed over three hours to cook and since afternoon tea time was in less time than that I was going to need a time machine to fix that problem. But not to worry, I had an equally scrummy recipe from this months NZ House & Garden magazine for Almond, Cherry and Cranberry cookies and I knew that they would only take a few minutes to rustle up.
So here’s what you do.
Cream butter and sugar till light and creamy. Add almond essence and beaten egg. Then add the dry ingredients.
So that will be flour and baking powder, right. Not.
That will be gluten free baking mix you need. What! First, gluten free is not something we do around here (although probably could benefit from) but more importantly what the heck is the gluttons substitute for gluten free baking mix?
It’s at this point that I know for real I am a fraudulent food blogger. Someone who actually doesn’t know how to construct a cookie recipe. Opps!
Fear not. We live life in the fast lane here and through caution to the wind. Cue flour and baking flour and cross fingers.
So having just made up the recipe I found myself with 14 balls of cookie dough. Nothing for it but to chuck them in the oven and see what happens.
Not a bad call I don’t think. Now these cookies don’t look anything like the picture in the magazine but they tasted oh so good. A little more cake like than cookie like but that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention and read the recipe in detail.
No harm done. These sweet bundles were very much enjoyed and I’m determined to find a way of making them for real. And by that I mean using a recipe that will turn out cookies like the recipe should. If I manage that I’ll be sure to share the recipe with you all. And if you know what the missing ingredients should have been, be sure to let me know.
In fact, there’s a prize in it.
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What should go with 100g butter, 100g sugar, 1 egg, 50g cherries, 50g cranberries, half teaspoon of almond essence to make the perfect cookie?
They look rather tasty. Especially after all the hard work outside. Re the recipe, I don’t do much baking and struggle with biscuits usually only making them at Christmas but I would have thought you need plain flour & no baking powder for biscuits.
PS No big shocks in Strictly tonight.
Wow thats looks yummy 🙂
Im forever having to alter recipes – as we dont eat flour or sugar (low carbers rather than gluten intolerant). I often substitue Ground Almonds for flour – it just needs more baking powder for lift and always use Splenda as a sweetner.
For biccies or cookies – I would have thought 50g Flour and 50g ground almonds would do the trick – though obviously I would just use all almonds.
Ground almonds dont even change the texture of cakes and bickies that much.