Jammy coconut mallows

It's no secret that I love baking and one of my favourite parts of baking is taking something old fashioned and easily bought in any shop and recreating it at home. For example I am always baking biscuits and lets be honest, unlike cakes and puddings, it is very easy to buy in good quality biscuits very cheaply, especially here in Britain, we love our biscuits here.
Custard creams, digestives and shortbread are firm family favourites and you can buy them in any corner shop but nothing compares to the real deal.

Flicking through this months Good food magazine I came across these mallow biscuits, a reworking on a old fashioned favourite. The original versions were a square shortbread biscuit covered in two rows of coconut dusted mini mallows with a row of raspberry jam running down the centre.
This recipe makes coconut biscuits sandwich together with jam and melted marshmallows, the biscuits are then rolled in jam and coconut, a new twist on a old favourite....a taste of my childhood.

Jammy coconut mallows

For the biscuits:
250g butter, softened
140g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
100g desiccated coconut
For the middles and coating:
about 175g raspberry jam
18 large pink and white marshmallows, cut in half across the middle
25g desiccated coconut

Heat oven to 190c/ gas 5.
Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla together with a pinch of salt until smooth. Fold in the flour and coconut to form a dough.

On a floured surface, shape the dough into a round, then roll to the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut into rounds using a 6cm cutter. Lift onto baking sheets, then bake for 14 minutes until light golden. Cool for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

To sandwich the biscuits, lay half out on a baking sheet, under-side up. Put half a teaspoon of jam on each one, and top with a piece of marshmallow, then bake for 2 1/2 minutes or until just melted. Remove from oven, then quickly top with the other biscuits, pressing down so that the marshmallow sticks them together and just oozes out.
Cool for 10 minutes. Put the coconut and remaining jam onto plates, dip the edges in the jam, them roll in the coconut.

These really took me back and boy, were they popular, more so with the adults than the children. These biscuits will be a regular in my biscuit tin

Half term baking - Valentine's cookies

It's half term here and with the weather looking decidedly bleak the obvious way to kill a few hours is with some home baking, Valentine's day is a obvious theme right now. Cut out cookies it was to be but the 'problem' with cut out cookies and children is that children love to 'play' with their piece of dough. It gets rolled, shaped, crumpled up, re-rolled, re-shaped and so on after a while it becomes tough and inedible - for the children - personally I don't eat the re-rolled creations, I simple admire the work of my little angels.
In my quest to find a good workable, child friendly dough I tried a much recommended one from Martha Stewart, her sugar cookies. This dough was great, I found it a little wet to start with and added a extra 3/4 cup of flour but apart from that it was a dream to work with. We started off with heart shaped cookies, moving onto champagne flutes - quite fitting for Valentine's day, before long my son was cutting out palm trees and flamingos - wishful thinking for a drab and dreary February.


Sugar cookies
from The Martha Stewart cookbook
Makes approx. 2 dozen cookies

2 cups of all purpose flour (I needed a extra 3/4 cup)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 pound butter, softened
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp brandy - I swapped for milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light; add the egg, brandy and vanilla and beat well. Add the dry ingredients a little at a time and mix until well blended
Wrap and chill the dough for at least 30 minutes before rolling.
Preheat the oven to 400f. On a lightly floured board, roll out one third of the dough at a time. Roll to about 1/8inch thick and cut out with cookie cutters. Put shaped on parchment-lined baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes. Do not allow to burn. Cool on racks.

Decorate as your children choose to do so.

This dough was incredible, very robust but still came out of the oven light and crisp, they went down a storm, a great recipe.

Melting moments

I had some sad family news this week and spent quite a bit of time looking back at my childhood, I got thinking of my paternal Grandmother, I spent a lot of time with her when I was younger and she was always cooking, always good old fashioned food, the stuff that warmed you on the coldest winter days. Her house always smelled of fruit cake, and when I bake fruit cake I am always reminded of her house.


These biscuits, Melting Moments are what we would bake together, I loved them as a child, in fact I still love them just as much now even though the are rolled in dessicated coconut and adorned with a gaudy red glace cherry.

I suddenly thought of these biscuits today and knew they would be a perfect way for my son and I to spend half an hour together in the kitchen.


This recipe comes from the essential 'Be-ro' cook book, my Granny wouldnt have been without it.

I must say though that my Granny's original Be-ro book, which I inherited from her, saw better days long ago, I bought a updated version last year and found the Melting moments recipe had changed, the addition of half a egg was wrong and completely disappointing, these biscuits should be crisp and buttery not cookie like which was how the egg made them, after much searching, god bless the Internet, I have found, supposedly, the original Melting moments biscuits.



Here is the recipe, cook them, you'll love them:

5 ounces soft butter

3 ounces caster sugar

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence or 1 tsp of vanilla extract

5 ounces of self raising flour

desiccated coconut

glace cherries

Heat the oven to 180c/ gas mark 4. Grease two baking trays.

Cream the butter with the sugar until very light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla essence or extract.

Stir in the flour and mix well.

Roll walnut sized pieces of the mixture into balls and toss in dessicated coconut.


Cut each glace cherry into quarters, a quarter for each melting moment.


Place on baking trays, flatten slightly and place a small piece of cherry on each biscuit.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown but NOT dark brown.




This egg less original version of the recipe was perfect, these shortbread-y biscuits are crisp and melting, they instantly took me back to my Granny's kitchen.

They are perfect for children to bake too, my son loved tossing them in the coconut and would have polished off the tray of biscuits if I'd let him.

Rather amusingly, when trawling the net for the original recipe I found that these biscuits have a cult following. Try them!

Tea and biscuits, milk and cookies

Tea and biscuits

Tea and biscuits, sometimes in life only this will do, I suppose that sounds very quaint and English but it is true.


Ask anyone, they all have their favourite biscuit for tea, either to eat along side a cup of tea or a good biscuit to dunk, (for the record, mine is a good old digestive) these biscuits aren't so good for dunking but nevertheless they are fantastic tea biscuits, I suppose I like them so much because they remind me of my Dad's favourite biscuit the 'Hobnob'.

At first bite I wasn't too impressed with these biscuits, but they are seriously addictive, they are quite robust but light at the same time, and they contain lots of oats so they are practically health food, if only.

This recipe comes from Rachel Allen's 'Food for living'













Oaty shortbread

275g oats
100g plain flour
150g caster sugar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 level tsp salt
25g butter, softened.

Preheat oven to 180c
Whiz oats in a food processor until they are quite fine
Add the remaining ingredients and whiz until the dough comes together.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a thickness of 5mm.
Cut into shapes and place on baking trays.
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden and slightly firm
Transfer to a rack to cool.

This will make around 40 biscuits, they keep very well, if you can bear to leave them alone.


Milk and cookies

Chocolate mint cookies
A favourite with my children, chocolate mint cookies from Nigella Express.
Chocolate and mint, a match made in culinary heaven. My kids love them as they taste just like those lurid green Aero bars that I don't like them eating. These are a breeze to make and were decorated by my daughter.

The cookies are chocolate chip cookies and the mint comes from a icing glaze, having made these before I knew that I'd up the amount of mint extract for a more pronounced flavour. I also didn't make up for the extra liquid in the icing with more icing sugar, going for a sticky glaze instead of a hard set icing.

Chocolate mint cookies

100g soft butter
150g light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
150g flour
35g cocoa powder
1/ tsp baking powder
200g dark choc chips
Glaze:
75g icing sugar
1 tbsp cocoa, sieved
2 tbsp boiling water
1/4 tsp peppermint extract (I used 1 tsp)


Preheat oven to 180c
Cream butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla extract and the egg.
Mix the flour, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl and gradually beat into the cream mixture.
Finally fold in the chocolate chips.
Using a rounded 15ml tablespoon measure, spoon out scoops of cookie dough and place on a lined baking sheet.
Bake in the oven for 12 minutes, cool slightly before moving to a wire wrack.
Put the glaze ingredients into a saucepan and heat until combines.
Using a teaspoon, zig - zag the glaze over each cooling cookie. (We poured over the cooling cookies, lol.)
Makes about 26.

My kids love these with a glass of milk as a after dinner snack.