Haggis, Kidneys and Kievs. A Week of Meals 004

Week four of 2013 - A Stomach Odyssey brought us foods from around the world, exciting new ingredients and a rare food-fail.  How, what and why?  Keep reading as the answers lay within...

Friday - Haggis, Tatties and Neeps

Friday was Burns Night.  Not being Scottish in any way, shape or form, I nonetheless wanted to get in on the action, as I am a big fan of sheeps lungs boiled in their intestines, oh yes!  To go with the haggis, I made its traditional accompaniment, Tatties and Neeps.  There was some discussion on twitter about whether the Neeps in question should be Turnips or Swede.  I war reliably informed by someone what is an actual Scotsman that true Tatties and Neeps should contain swede, so with that rutabaga based question resolved, I whipped up a batch and t'was delicious

Saturday - Mole Poblano de Pollo (Chicken in Chili and Chocolate Sauce)

This was my recipe picked from a cookbook called 'A Mexican Celebration', full of festive foods from Mexico.  Predictably, I picked it because it sounded weird and wonderful, but I was worried that the chocolate that I got (80% cocoa solids) would still be too sweet when put into the sauce.  I shouldn't have worried because it turned out a great recipe - a little like a Mexican Korma.  If you are interested in making it, there's a recipe here that is very similar to the one I followed

Sunday - Chicken Kiev

Mrs Soup had a go at making the old 70's dinner party classic from a cookbook that I got way back when I was a student.  It was a first for me as I've only ever had those nasty ones that are made of mechanically reclaimed chicken.  Having them made fresh was a bit of a revelation, and I was impressed that the garlic butter staying in its meaty pocket during the frying process...

Monday - Kidneys in Sherry

A recipe from my Offal Cookbook "The Fifth Quarter".  Apart from Steak and Kidney Pie, I've never cooked kidney before.  Even after soaking in water and lemon juice to cleanse them, the kidney had an odour that could only be described as 'urine' or, as Mrs Soup put it "Like an old people's home" - an evil old people's home run by bad people , I should add.  There was at least one plate that wasn't cleared at the end of the meal, which is a rare occurrence, and I suspect that it will be a while before I try kidney on it's own again...

Tuesday - Thai Noodle Soup with Fish Balls

See the blogpost here

Wednesday - Chicken and Celeriac Stew with Harissa

This was a random, thrown together stew, using some veg from the veg box and the harissa paste that we recieved as part of a foodie pen pals box a while ago.  No dumplings with this stew, you may notice, and the Harissa was unexpectedly spicy, which almost overpowered the dish.

Chocolate Gateau with Rum and Hazelnuts - Happy Birthday Mr Soup!

Happy Birthday!

Today is Mr Soup's birthday, and in celebration we are having a slap up meal (in true Soup Tuesday style we're making it ourselves). Mr Soup is in charge of the meat as he'll make a much better job of it than me, but I am making pudding.


Now, everyone knows Mr Wallace is a big fan of the pudding, and when I saw his 'Favourite Puddings' book, I knew there would be some fantastic puddings in it, so onto my Amazon wishlist it went. Shortly after it landed in my Christmas stocking, and it's now our go-to for special occasions (the Soup Parents had rum-and-raisin ice-cream (p150) when they came round for dinner to much admiration!)

So when choosing a dessert for this evening, I handed the book to Mr Soup, and told him to pick whatever he wanted, and to my surprise (I was expecting something like a sticky spongey warm pudding), he went for a chocolate gateau with run and hazelnuts p84) (supposed to be walnuts, but I'm not a fan!).

Cheesy 80's sci-fi movie in the background.

The recipe was quite straightforward and in true Wallace style was absolutely delicious! The only thing I wasn't sure about is that the cake didn't have any cocoa in it, so came out quite a bit lighter than I expected. The icing more than made up for it in chocolateyness.

Weekly Bake-Off : Cappuccino Cake

Cake, we've missed you!

After a summer-holiday induced hiatus, we're back this week with the Weekly Bake-Off! This is a Good Thing, as there had been a couple of comments at work about it being a while since there had been cake!

As I'm now cycling to work, and a ride on a bike is not particularly conducive to cake-staying-togetherness, I made this on Tuesday evening to take in on the bus on Wednesday (after my Orange Wednesday movie night I prefer not to cycle home). The recipe for this week was Cappuccino Cake (p20), and it was very easy to throw together on a work night - the mix was made all in one bowl, and baked in 2 deep 20cm tins (I only have 1 deep tin, so did 2 batches, but I think just making 1 deep cake and slicing it would have worked as well).

I'm not a big fan of cream for icing, but decided not to mess with the recipe - and am very glad I didn't! Flavouring the cream with coffee (no sugar added) made for a light, tasty, slightly bitter (to offset the sweet cake) icing without the heaviness I normally associate with cream cake. The cake itself was light and moist - this might become my go-to chocolate sponge recipe in fact.

Mr Soup is more of a savoury man but even he absolutely loved this cake - when I was getting ready to take it to work I was told to leave 2 slices for him! Everyone at work enjoyed it too - a very good introduction back into the Weekly Bake Off routine.

Foodie PenPals June

I can't quite believe it's the end of June already. This year is flying past, and this month in particular seems to have disappeared leaving me with the odd sense that I must have done stuff, but with no idea what!
This month I managed to get my Foodie PenPals parcel off in time, rather than having a mad dash at the last minute, and I hope my pen pal enjoyed her things (her post is up here if you want to see what I sent). The parcel I received arrived well before the due date, and was absolutely packed with things! As with last month's parcel it's given me some ideas for thing to put into my next parcel.

Look at all those goodies!

Teresa had shopped with both me and Mr Soup in mind, so there were some lovely savoury things - a chilli grinder which has gone straight into my nicely (recently) organised spice drawer; a box of barley groats, together with a recipe for a soup/stew using them (incorporating 2 of Mr Soup's favorite things - beer and beef, so it'll definitely get made!), some vegetable pate which will probably get cracked open to have with crackers this weekend when we're doing our regular Buffy/Angel marathon.

For me there were some dinky silicone cupcake cups (still to be used), vanilla pods (Mr Soup got very excited about these - I think creme brulee might be in our future...), some cherry liquorice (tasty and unusual - I think I prefer the taste of normal liquorice but have been wanting to try cherry liquorice since seeing Walter on Fringe munching on the stuff). Pineapple and papaya mix - which will be making it's way into a cake fairly shortly, probably as a substitute for candied peel as a variation. A carob/seedy/hemp energy bar which kept me going through a long day, and a strawberry and pepper chocolate bar, which was a very different treat - I've had chilli chocolate before and this balanced the pepper bite, sweet chocolate and slightly sour strawberry taste very nicely. I would recommend!

And finally some homemade granola, which went really well with yogurt, in Mr Soup's smoothies, and mixed in with my morning oats - it was gone in days!

Teresa also sent me a recipe for a lemon-curd sponge which has gone onto my list of things to bake (which seems to be getting longer rather than shorter even though I keep making things!)

I really enjoyed unpacking my parcel and can't quite believe how many things Teresa managed to fit in - Mr Soup and I were really spoilt! 

Dark Indulgent Chocolate and Cherry Brownies

This week's Weekly Bake Off choice was a chocolate and walnut brownie recipe. Not being a big fan of walnuts, I was initially just going to replace them with pecan nuts, and I'm sure that would have been a very nice substitution. However, I recently made some chocolate biscuits with sour, dried cherries in them, and they were probably the nicest biscuits I've ever made! So the choice was made - chocolate and cherry brownies it would be.

I halved the ingredients specified in the book after seeing just how much chocolate was involved - MB is not shy with the size of her bakes! I did a direct substitution for the walnuts, and used the same weight of cherries as I would have walnuts.

The recipe was fairly straightforward - I was a bit worried by the rather small amount of flour in the recipe, but the brownies turned out really well - they are a good moist bake, and the bitter cherries set off the chocolate very well (this may have been a bit too sweet otherwise I think). And even though the cherries are dried, they become moist during the baking. 

Opera Cake - Clandestine Cake Club Headingley

This is a cake for a Clandestine Cake Club event. The theme was 'Je Ne Sais Quoi - all things French' and after a bit of research, I decided to make an Opera Cake. This is the first cake recipe I feel I truly 'own' having adapted, merged and quite frankly, just winged it in places to create this cake (all based on the general principles of an Opera cake). I think there is a parallel that can be drawn with the work I used to do, in lab-based research. Once you understand the principles behind a protocol (or recipe) and why each step is there, that's when you can start to modify it for your own purposes. (Also for anyone familiar with lab work - if you can put together a Western blot, an Opera cake is, well, a piece of cake!)

This Clandestine Cake Club meeting was held at The Bowery in Headingley, and was quite a bit smaller than the last event I attended (I'm sure the truly horrible weather contributed to several cancellations, but an evening with coffee and cake in a snug coffeeshop was perfect!). 6 cakes, and 8 people in total meant we all got to try each cake, so I didn't have any regrets about being too full with 10 cakes still to try this time!

The spread of cakes - a cake version of a Tarte Tatin arrived still warm a few minutes after I took this picture, bringing the total to 6 cakes. The quite unusual Dan Lepard fig, red wine and honey loaf was probably my favorite, though the profiterole cake was lovely, and the other chocolate cakes were both gorgeous!

Opera cakes are quite impressive, and I was rather surprised by how easy it actually was - each individual element is something most people who bake will have made before, and assembling it is not as fiddly as you might think - the trick is in cutting the edge off the cake at the end, leaving a lovely neat profile, and eliminating untidy edges.

Don't be put off by the long list of ingredients/elements of the cake - the syrup and buttercream can both be made while the sponge is baking, and the ganache is very quick to make too.

Chocolate/almond sponge

4 eggs
220g butter
220g caster sugar
55g ground almonds
165g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
4 Tbsp cocoa powder

Spoon a thin layer of the mixture into a greased, lined square/rectangular cake tin. You want this to be about 5mm thick or so - I used about 1/3 of the mix in a 10 x 6.5 inches (25x16cm). Try to get the top as smooth as possible, and the layer of batter as evenly spread - otherwise you will end up with a wonky cake! Bake at 180ºC for about 8-10 minutes - once the top looks cooked, you're probably about right - keep an eye on it and use a toothpick to check. I only have one tin the right size, so cooked the 3 layers one after the other, and that worked well. Once you take a layer out of the oven, use the greasproof paper to lift it out of the tin, and leave on a wire rack to cool.

Coffee syrup
150ml caster sugar
150ml water
2 heaped teaspoons instant coffee

Boil sugar and water together in a pan until the sugar has dissolved, add coffee powder and allow to cool. Reserve a little syrup for the buttercream.
Turn the cooled sponge layers over and remove the greaseproof paper, then pour the syrup over the sponge layers - the better coverage you can get the better.

Didn't quite manage to cover the entire cake - pretty pattern though! I'd turned the cake over, but left it on the paper to catch any run-through of syrup.

Coffee buttercream
150g Icing sugar
150g Butter
3 Tbsp Coffee Syrup

Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl. Add a little of the coffee syrup until the buttercream is the right flavour for you. Allow to cool in the fridge for a bit if too runny to spread on the cake. Put your first layer of sponge onto your serving plate (if you're serving it as a whole cake). Spread about half the buttercream over the sponge, and place the second layer on top of the buttercream. This is the fiddliest part of the process, and it helps to have someone else on hand to help if you're stuck with both hands full of cake and need something positioning! Spread the rest of the buttercream over this layer, and then place the final layer of sponge on top.

At this stage it looks a bit messy - not to worry though! Use the buttercream to get the layers as level as possible.

Chocolate ganache
100g Chocolate
45g Salted Butter
A few Tbsp smooth apricot jam, heated

Melt chocolate and butter together very gently in a double boiler (I use a plastic bowl that fits loosely over a pan of hot water without touching the water). Spread a thin layer of the heated apricot jam over the top of the cake, to ensure the ganache spreads evenly. Once the butter and chocolate are melted, stir together gently, allow to cool slightly, then pour over the cake. You may need to spread the ganache a little to ensure you cover the top of the cake completely. Dont' worry about drips down the side being untidy - this will be fixed in the next step!

Put the cake in the fridge for a few hours to allow the ganache to set.

Heat a sharp knife (preferably something like a butcher's knife) by running under some hot water. (Repeat between cuts). Slice off the edges of the cake, to leave a clean edge (you could cut into individual portions at this stage if required). Transfer the cake to the serving dish, and keep refigerated (in a sealed container if necessary) until about an hour before serving.

The final product! I think for presentation in the future I would do individual slices, which looked incredible (none survived long enough to photograph...).

And then sit back and enjoy all the compliments on your cake! 

Double Chocolate and Sour Cherry Biscuits

In the absence of the Weekly Bake-Off for a week, I decided to take the opportunity to make some biscuits from one of my other Christmas presents - The Boy Who Bakes' cook book.

I had originally planned to make macarons, but wanted something quick and easy for Friday evening and so settled on the Double Chocolate and Sour Cherry biscuits instead. The recipe was fairly straightforward - both melted chocolate and cocoa go into the batter, making it extra chocolatey, and then chopped chocolate and the dried, sour cherries are stirred in, so the final result is a very chocolatey biscuit with chunks of sour cherry, which compliments the sweetness of the chocolate. The batter is spooned onto the baking tray, and spreads a bit as it's cooking, resulting in beautifully big, lumpy, rustic looking biscuits (I like my biscuits to look like they're full of chunks of chocolate)!

The taste did not disappoint, and I will be making these again. They took less than half an hour to make, and were good enough for any company, so could be good emergency bake, though I'd probably never have enough chocoloate in the house so they would need a trip to the shops! Despite making only half the mix, it made 15 biscuits, and we still have a few left at the end of the weekend (due to extreme self restraint). 

Weekly Bake Off - Jammy Swiss Cakes and Clandestine Cake Club

I've fallen a little behind with blogging, but with 2 bakes last week, I had to prioritise!

First was the inaugural meeting of the Pudsey and West Leeds Clandestine Cake Club - this was organised by Sharon Clarkson, and on seeing that the places were going fast I signed up for both the first March meeting and the May meeting (this one booked up in about 2 hours!). Since I didn't sign up to take a guest, and apart from Sharon (twitter friend), I didn't know anyone I was a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have worried - after turning up with my American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake a bit early, the evening went incredibly well. I was stunned by the number of cakes, and will have to go to future meetings with a strategy of only eating the smallest sliver of each to get a taste! One of the best things about the evening (apart from all the new cakey people I met) was at the end of the evening we all piled our cake tins up with leftover cakes - thus benefitting Mr Soup (who had been a bit grumpy about me making cake he wasn't going to get to taste!).

The event made the Yorkshire Evening Post, but I'm really looking forward to the article in a local magazine where the reported/photographer took pictures of all the attendees with their cakes - a far better image of the spirit of the event!

And so on to my Weekly Bake Off entry for this week - Jammy Swiss cakes. The recipe uses apricot jam, but with the vast surplus of homemade jam in the house, I decided to use (my homemade, delicious) blackcurrant jelly and strawberry jam instead. These little cakes wouldn't have caught my eye normally, but I'm very glad I made them. Piping the mixture into the cupcake cases took a bit of work, and negotiation with the piping bag (my nozzles are really for icing and were a bit small for the thickish batter), but once they were cooked, they were little melting parcels of deliciousness - not too sweet biscuity base set off nicely by the jam (they remind me of Viennese whirls). Mr Soup reckons they are a way to his heart, so I'm keeping this recipe on the top of the pile! And despite my rather wonky piping, they did look very pretty once baked and jammified...

Weekly Bake Off : Divine Chocolate Birthday Cake

Well, my birthday is still a couple of weeks off, but I had no objections to the choice of cake this week for the Weekly-Bake-Off. In my opinion, any recipe that has a 300(ish) grams of chocolate, 6 eggs, sugar, almonds and coffee, can't go wrong!

I used a mix of dark and milk chocolate to get an average cocoa solid percentage of about 42%. Having watched Heston Blumenthal's chocolate masterclass episode a couple of weeks ago, I treated my chocolate gently. I was a bit concerned about the recipe's instructions to add the coffee directly to the melted chocolate (Heston's demonstration of how chocolate seizes when water is added to it had me panicking a bit!), so I instead added it to the choclate/almond/eggy mixture as I folded that together. I didn't make any other changes to the recipe, and baked it for exactly 50 minutes, with only a quick peek at about 45 minutes.

The top seemed a bit crispy and had risen slightly lopsided, so I trimmed it, flipped it upside down and iced it that way up.

I only had salted butter for the icing, but that turned out to be A Very Good Thing (again, Mr Blumenthal had mentioned that salt accentuates the taste of chocolate), and the icing has a lovely, super chocolately taste, as well as being beautifully glossy. I'd decided to use some fresh cherries to decorate the cake, and dipped these in the melted chocolate (before the butter was added) and set them onto baking paper to set slightly. Once the chocolate icing was poured onto the cake, I placed the cherries - I'm very pleased with the way they look like they're half immersed in a chocolate sea!

The cake tastes wonderful, has a good, dense texture and is very indulgent. I'll be making this again when something special is called for. This first picture was taken with my phone's camera.

A better resolution one was taken once the camera's batteries were charged, but by that point quite a bit of the cake was missing! I stored the cake in the fridge, but would suggest before serving taking it out and letting it come to room temperature as the texture of the icing is much nicer.

Weekly Bake Off - Devil's Food Cake

I recently discovered a fantastic online community challenge - the Weekly Bake Off. This is a weekly challenge to bake a recipe (announced on a Monday) from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes. Unfortunately I found out about it halfway through December, during the break for the Christmas holidays, so had to wait till the New Year to participate. (Though after receiving the book for Christmas I couldn't wait, and did make one recipe from a previous Bake-Off - Meringue roulade.)

This week's recipe was Devil's Food Cake. Since it was my first bake, I decided to stick (almost) exactly to the recipe. The cake part was fairly straightforward - when mixing the butter/sugar mix with the dry and wet ingredients I was a bit worried that the texture was quite runny (started off almost moussey). I added a heaped spoonful of coffee to the cocoa but kept the liquid volume the same - next time I'll add more as I could taste coffee in the batter, but not really in the final cake. I did need the full 45 minutes to cook them, and the texture of the sponges when they came out of the oven seemed very light and fluffy. My cake tins are closer to 25cm than 20cm, so they were a little thin.

The icing was the most exciting bit of this bake - I've never made American frosting before (in fact I didn't know it existed - the recipe does remind me of Italian meringue - anyone know if there is a difference?) Despite that I did alter the recipe slightly - added a pinch of cream of tartar, and a little vanilla extract the sugar syrup. This gave me a chance to try out my new sugar thermometer (I was really spoilt this Christmas!), and I'm pleased to report it went fairly smoothly. Mr Soup helped pouring in the syrup, and we both ended up splattered with sticky meringue (so much so that we stuck together after a hug!). The instructions said to ice the cake quickly as the mixture sets quite fast, but I think I would have had a better result waiting for a little while for it to start getting a little stickier. (or perhaps it was because I hadn't got the mix stiff enough?)

So here is the final product :

As you can see, the icing was a bit runny and slid a bit - not too much, there was still a good thick layer on top, but nothing like the picture in the book! It set crispy on the outside, but stayed gooey underneath, so after slicing it the next day, it oozed down even more (though not as much as it looks in the picture - the top layer of cake is the same thickness as the bottom). I think the mixture probably needed to be whipped even stiffer, or perhaps the sugar syrup needed to be slightly hotter.

Final verdict on taste - the icing was a bit too sweet for my taste, but had a lovely sticky marshmallowy feel. The cake itself was gorgeous - lovely and light and chocolatey. I'll make this again, but will probably use a different icing - probably a coffee flavoured one!

Chocolate and Orange Meringue Roulade

I was extremely lucky to receive a copy of Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes this Christmas, and can't wait to join in the Weekly Bake Off! While perusing, I came across a recipe which has already been covered by the Weekly Bakers, and with some leftover egg whites and double cream in mind, I decided to whip up something based on the Raspberry Meringue Roulade (pg 175, and see the Weekly Bakers' fantastic looking versions here).

For my version I halved the mix, added some cocoa to make a chocolate meringue, and used homemade marmalade mixed with cream for the filling.

Considering this was thrown together in 5 minutes and the only things I measured accurately were the caster sugar and the baking tray (to ensure I was using an appropriate size to get the thickness right), I'm amazed by just how well it worked...

Here is the meringue just after it came out of the oven - it puffed up nicely :

And here is the freshly rolled roulade :


According to Mr Soup, it looks rather like a sand worm from Dune :

This is being served as dessert this evening with our traditional (3rd year running!) New Year antisocial celebration where we stay in, drink bubbly, eat snacks and watch trashy action movies! Happy New Year to you all - I hope you're doing something equally enjoyable (to you) to see in 2012! We'll be back in the new year with all sorts of excitement - pasta machine (responsible for the leftover egg whites), tagine dish, jam thermometer and various cookbooks were discovered under the tree this year, so there will definitely be more than soup on the menu!

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap (and Blog Hijack) - Chocolate and Ginger Biscotti

Well, here it is - the recipe inspired by the event which prompted a blog-takeover! I spotted this event when it was mentioned by one of the many food blogs that I read (my apologies that I can't actually remember which one). I immediately checked out the main page, and was rather disappointed when I saw that it was open for US residents only - but then read a little further and found that enough UK people had signed up for me to participate - the only problem was that I didn't officially have my own blog - though I had already contributed the technical (cooking!) side of a number of recipes for Mr Soup.

A quick chat with Mr Soup, and with a promise that I would write more than just the cookie recipe (and that he could partake of the cookies arriving in our postbox!), and we were A for Away.

The excitement started when I received my matches - 3 new blogs to read, and suddenly the realisation that 36 cookies needed to be baked - luckily all the same recipe.

My matches were Bob at Foodie Bob's Blog (@FoodieBob), Sarah at Zenzeroni (@zenzeroni) and Julie at Angler's Rest (@JulieGoucher).

In the interim I'd seen a competition by Nelly over at Nelly's Cupcakes using Hotel Chocolat chocolate coated almonds (competition now closed) to make biscotti and I was intrigued both by how easy the recipe seemed, and the endless possible ingredients!

A few experiments later, and I decided on chocolate biscotti, with crystallised ginger and chocolate chips (chocolate and ginger is one of my favourite combinations - only slightly behind chocolate and coffee, chocolate and nuts ... see a pattern emerging?), and for a final touch, white chocolate drizzles. So here is the recipe :

Triple Chocolate and Ginger Biscotti

200g flour
75g cocoa
150g caster sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
sparse 1/2 tsp salt
3 large eggs (if you don't have large eggs, it's worth using 4 - beat them together and use slightly less than the full four - one of my trial runs didn't rise enough when I used too little egg)
1 1/2 tsp ginger syrup (I used stem ginger preserved in syrup and used the syrup - if you use crystallised ginger instead, just use some vanilla extract instead)
85g chopped preserved ginger
50g chocolate chips

Sieve and mix the dry ingredients, ginger and chocolate chips together. Beat the eggs with the ginger syrup/vanilla essence and mix into the dry ingredients. The mix should be slightly stiff and not wet.

Form the batter into 2 logs on a greased, lined backing tray, and bake at 180ºC for 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a cooling rack :

Once the logs have cooled enough to handle, cut them into slices a bit less than 1 cm wide, and lay these out on a lined baking tray.

Pop them back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes (you'll need to judge this - too short and the biscuits will be a bit chewy, too long and they'll be a bit too hard - depends on how thick you've cut them too).
Again, let them cool on a rack, and once they are cooled , melt some white chocolate in a double boiler (I use a mixing bowl that fits into a pot with the bottom suspended about halfway down the pot). Then use a spoon to generously drizzle the white chocolate over the biscuits. Let it set, melt the chocolate again if necessary, flip the biscuits over, and drizzle the other side.

This was a wonderful experience, not least because of the yummy biscuits I received. The sense of connection with six other people, knowing the care that went into choosing a recipe, baking, packing and sending the biscuits off was really special - I honestly can't decide if I enjoyed receiving or sending them more. Luckily I don't have to choose because I think it was the combination - receiving my biscuits in the post made sending the one's I'd made out that much more meaningful and fun!

My first batch of biscuits - Lebkuchen from Michelle at 'A Mum who loves to bake' were waiting for me when I got home from a particularly stressful and busy day at work. Mr Soup was away for work, but when I opened the parcel and saw the beautiful biscuits that had been made for me and sent with such care it turned my day around! They were lovely, beautifully decorated and I particularly enjoyed the slight touch of lemon which set of the spiciness beautifully - I can understand why she had to make a second batch for her children!

The second batch arrived on a Saturday, and were just perfect for an afternoon cup of tea after a big shop. I love peanut butter biscuits - and these from Amy at the Weekly Bake Off were fantastic - I don't know why I've never thought of adding chocolate chips to peanut butter biscuits, but I will be from now on!

My final batch of biscuits arrived when I was at work, and I got an email from Mr Soup telling me that there was a Christmas-y parcel waiting for me - I couldn't wait to get home and see what was inside. These were perhaps the most well packaged parcel I've ever received! It was a bit like playing pass-the-parcel with layers and layers of bubble wrap - but the 'present' a the end was definitely worth it - 2 lovely parcels of 'Nutella cookies' - hazelnut biscuits dipped in chocolate and chopped nuts from Helen at Bakery Cottage. Mr Soup took one parcel off to work where they were very happily received. (The bubble wrap has already been used for wrapping Christmas presents!). Helen was also responsible for our first Christmas card of the year - a lovely start to the festive season.

We have been promised (!) that the Cookie Swap will happen again next year - I will definitely be participating again, and looking forward to connecting with another 6 wonderful people. If you're keen to join us, you can sign up here, and maybe you'll be getting some biscuits from me next year! A big thank you to the organisers, Julie and Lindsay - it was a blast, and if you need help organising the UK side of things next year, I'm happy to help!