Salty Peanut Butter Balls

I saw these Milk and Honey Peanut Butter Balls. As all the comments on that post indicate, you can pretty much put whatever you want in these 'raw cookies'. Here's what mine had:

1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3 cup golden syrup
1/3 cup unsweetened coconut
3/4 cup milk powder
1/4 cup oat flour
1 tsp vanilla

Yum!

Reflection

No editing here. I saw the plant reflection in my cup of tea (rosehip and hibiscus) and snapped it. That's the apricot and choc chip cookies in the background.

Apricot Choc Chip Cookies

When I saw this cookie recipe on the back of a packet of dried apricots I knew I had to make it. I've had really good luck with 'packet recipes'. My favourite peanut butter choc chip cookie recipe was found on the back of a brown sugar packet. My mum even has a cook book that has cut out recipes stuck to the blank side of every page (it's a very old book).

These cookies were great. They are crispy on the outside and soft and cakey on the inside. I made them quite large, the size recommended, and they held together really well. However I think that next time I make them (and I will definitely make them again), I'll make them just a little bit smaller to up the crispy edge to soft centre ratio, because I do like the crispiness.

I absolutely love dried apricots, and they work really well in these cookies. Their soft chewiness contrasts nicely with the choc chips. I also added a bit of cinnamon to the mix, which adds an extra flavour dimension.



I think this cookie stack looks like a monster, about to attack my rosehip tea!



Apricot Choc Chip Cookies

100g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup choc chips

1. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and creamy. Add egg and vanilla essence and beat well.

2. Add sifted flour, baking powder, and cinnamon and combine. Stir in apricots and choc chips.

3. Place tablespoons of mixture onto tray and press down to flatten. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 170 C.

White Choc Coconut Slice

I love white chocolate and coconut together, and have been wanting to make something combining these too for a while. So I 'invented' this white chocolate and coconut slice last week.

I basically reworked the standard caramel slice/any condensed milk based recipe. While it tasted really really good, it wasn't exactly what I had planned, so I was still a little disappointed. For the middle layer I wanted to mix coconut milk and egg whites with condensed milk and white chocolate. I already had the base in the oven when I discovered that my flatmates had used up BOTH my coconut milk and the communal eggs. I forged ahead anyway, and the middle was thankfully not too gooey. I'll try again to make it the way I planned, but not for a while I think. It was one hell of a sugar overload.

sev[en]circle

The moment I saw the sev[en]circle pattern, I had to make one. I love how it looks, and it really keeps my neck warm. For better drape, I think my yarn would have worked better with 5.0mm needles rather than 4.5mm. But that's not the pattern's fault.

I love it.

Sweet Polenta

Another random breakfast idea popped into my head a few days ago: sweet polenta. Obviously I'm not the first person to think of this (as a quick google will show), but this is what I did: I cooked it up as 1/2 cup each of polenta, water, and milk, plus a spoon of sugar, a handful of sultanas, and some powdered cloves and cinnamon. (I did have to add extra liquid though, as the polenta I used was a lot more thirsty than my usual brand).

A perfect breakfast! Polenta has plenty of protein, so it kept me going for ages, unlike the tapioca. It was also delicious, and freshly made it was a nice warm start for the cold morning. I made about two serves worth. I love to reheat set polenta with vegetable sauce for a fast dinner, but there's no reheating soft polenta (in my experience), so I'll need to experiment to figure out the perfect one serve amount, and see if it goes ok in the microwave too. This will defintely be a regular breakfast from now on.

The sultanas were lovely and juicy, and I'm sure other dried fruits will be really nice, such as dates and apricots, and nuts would be great too. Also, I kept the sugar amount low, because I intended to pour golden syrup all over it in the bowl. As you can see from the almost empty jar, golden syrup is very popular in this household.