My friend Barb and her Ginger Kisses Recipe

Meet my friend Barb.  She's from the 80's I think, and not quite what she used to be.

Barb and I met at our local op shop a couple of months ago  and since then she has happily assisted with lots of lovelies like these Ginger Kisses for example.  Recipe below.

And yet, she doesn't like to oblige every time I ask for her help.  If I ask her to cream butter and sugar in the big bowl instead of the little bowl, she flings big chunks of my ingredients all up the wall and onto the floor.  At least I know her limitations... and sadly, she matches the decor of our kitchen.  One day we'll win lotto and get rid of the ugly gumnut tiles and green laminate.

Here is the recipe, I found it online ages ago and unfortunately don't know who to credit for it.  It's a goodie anyway.

GINGER KISSES

Ingredients

125g (2oz) butter

125g (2oz) sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 egg
225g (8oz) flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ginger
1/3 cup milk


Method
Cream butter, sugar and golden syrup. Beat in egg. Sift in dry ingredients, add milk and mix with a metal spoon. Place teaspoonfuls on greased trays. Bake 10 - 12 minutes at 200ºC.  Fill with mock cream flavoured with 1/4 teaspoon lemon essence.

MOCK CREAM FILLING
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sifted icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence/lemon essence

Method
1. beat butter and icing sugar to a cream

2. add vanilla/lemon essence, stir in well
3. sandwich between 2 Ginger Kisses.

Yum!!  Enjoy with a lovely cuppa tea.  : )

What a great day!

I've had the best day.  Cuggles! creations are selling quite well, I'm feeling productive, Toddler Cuggles has been entertained morning and afternoon with playdates and I got some great news about a friend this afternoon.

Been busy busy lately!  Here are my new boardies for little men which are in Handmade Heaven.  Sizes 1-2 and 2 - 3 so far.

I've also delived a batch of 'Ginger Cuggles'.  Packs of 4 are $2.50.  They're like ginger snaps but with that bit of extra 'cuggliness' about them.

Meanwhile amid the mad sewing and baking I had another briliant score at one of our fav op shops yesterday.  Toddler Cuggles now has a little table for drawing and doing playdough.  (Thanks Kylie for the cinnamon scented glitter playdough, also available at Handmade Heaven).  The table needs a good sand and a coat of white paint but is solid timber, well made, a great height for a little chair and was just ten bucks.  Bargain!

What a great day!  Just finished my cuppsy so off to bed.

Golden Cinnamon Biscuits

This biscuit recipe is SO easy I sometimes make the dough while cooking dinner.

60g butter
1/3 cup golden syrup
2 tblspns brown sugar
2 tblspns caster sugar
1 1/4 cups SR flour
3 tspns ground cinamon

Preheat oven to hot - 220 - 230 degs

Combine butter, golden syrup and sugars in medium heavy-based saucepan, stir over low heat until butter is melted, cool 5 minutes.

Stir in flour and cinnamon.  Roll rounded tspns of mixture into balls, place about 2cm apart on lightly greased oven trays, flatten with a floured fork until 1cm thick.

Bake in hot oven about 10 mins or until browned.  Stand biscuits 5 minutes before lifting onto wire racks to cool. 

Makes 30 - This is from Womens Weekly, Biscuits, Brownies & Biscotti (2003).

** I usually make double quantity of these.  You can put 1 quantity in baking paper, roll into a log, wrap again with foil and freeze.  Then when you take it out of the freezer it's really easy to slice rounds about 1cm thick and put straight into the oven so you have a fresh batch at your whim in about 10 minutes.

Bums, Bickies & Bargains

BUMS!  Fat little bums wear nappies, and sometimes you don't want the nappy to be the couture.  My very good friend and 'bestest' customer asked me to please make some nappy cover thingys for her 9 week old boy.  So, out came the butcher's paper, pens and tape measure, a couple of calico drafts then a final and bigger draft in pink gingham for my 18 month old and I'm ready to go.  So far I've cut out, finished edges and joined seams on the real ones.  Now just to do the elastic and they're done.  Here's the fabric I'm using on the right.

Bickies!  I borrowed this book from a friend, it was new and in very good condition when we left her home with it.

Then....

the wonder girl Toddler Cuggles found the book, and found a pen while I was washing up breakfast dishes.  She made a few working notes of her own.

This is the back cover.

This is the index.

She didn't stop there.  This child scaled furniture with a stealthy silence, the quiet really should have triggered my 'mummy alarm' to reach the book and same for the pen.  After drawing on every surface of our furniture and walls some time ago we had banned pens and offered pencils only but thought even they were out of reach.  Anyway, we'll be replacing the book.  Oh, and here are the result of borrowing it int he first place - Ginger and Rum BICKIES, not Cookies. : ) 

They're ok, but a bit sweet for my liking.  With 499 others to choose from in the book there's sure to be something more my taste. 

Speaking of finding things to my taste, I absolutely SCORED with my opping today.  It was the Salvo's at Bundamba that made me so happy. We got a pair of gum boots for Toddler Cuggles for 50 cents; a little Ralph Lauren dress for $4; some patterns for $1 each, including a knitting pattern for you if you're reading Liesa, Merry Xmas; a children's clothes pattern book $2 an etchascetch in good enough condition $2 and the bargain of the day?  A black sexy dress which I plan on wearing to a wedding this Saturday for.....$3 because it's Wednesday.  Tomorrow it would have been $12, and a bargain even at that.  No label but who cares, it fits and it matches shoes and bags I already own with no special stick on bra requirements or any such trivia.  Sold.  Here's some of my loot:

Well I've had my cuppsy and bath so off to brush teeth now and to bed.  So many things to do tomorrow!  Starting with scrubbing those gumboots!