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So this is one of those things that I heard about from Decay, because it was something he'd had when when he was living in Scotland, and it was always something that we'd get if we happened across it some place, like at one of the stalls at the Foster Market, or wherever we might be.  It popped up on a Hairy Bakers episode of their "Mums Know Best" series, and I'd done some half-hearted searches for a recipe that I could work with that wasn't one of those that tell me to just cook it til it turned a particular shade of subjective beige.  And then Ms Not So Humble Pie took it on, and the game was on!  

The texture is kind of hard to describe - it's kind of like a very smoothly grainy fudge, and it's not chewy like caramel might be.  I've made two batches so far (and am onto batch #3 now), and it's definitely given the guys in our helpdesk team a bit of a sugar rush through the day!  Now that I'm re-reading the recipe, I realise that I've never actually started off with melted butter - I've always just let it melt at the start with the mixing of the cream and sugar and milk - what's that about having to read something 8 times before it really sticks?   

This was actually a cake I made for Mother's Day afternoon tea with my parents, except that it ended up being for after dinner instead, which is fine by us (:  No pics of a slice by itself because it kind of all got eaten - half that night, and then we took home a quarter (which went to work), and Mum and Dad and Stirfry Ninja had the other quarter.   Despite having a meringue top, this wasn't super crazy tooth-achingly sweet - the apple spice cake underneath was moist and I think the contrast between the layers helped each other out a bit.  This cake actually had you just grate the apples without peeling them, which is fine if your grater can handle it without getting caught like ours did occasionally. I got the time to make this (and some other stuff!) because X was out at a footy game with Decay and LTO, but it made a lot of stuff to wash up because it used both the stand mixer and the electric whisk and a bunch of bowls, and stuff.

OK, despite the appearance of two almond and cranberry things in a row here, it's not actually a theme.  You see, on the weekend, we had a trip to Costco (as a guest of LTO), and despite me seeing a big bag of dried blueberries for a pretty good price given what I've seen the price to be for a small tublet, I chose not to buy it this time around, because if I'm going to buy it I'll need to make good use of it, and I didn't think I was quite ready for the half kilo of commitment.  So I didn't buy the bag (although I did buy a 1.5kg slab of unsalted butter), but I probably will at the next trip to Costco when hopefully it'll be a weekday rather than a public holiday weekend, and my sense of not being able to work out who is going where and at what speed is alleviated somewhat by hopefully slightly sparser crowds.  Anyway, I went flicking through one of my cookie books this morning to find something to fulfill my weekend baking quota, and came across a recipe for blueberry and almond cookies.  I had cranberries still, so I did a straight swap, and the dough was together pretty quick.  X sampled quite a lot of the dough while I was shaping the cookies (15g balls, for those keeping track), and enjoyed a warm cookie once they were done too (:

One of our workmates brings over his mother's lemon squares to share with the office every now and then, and it seems that they have become a bit of a bargaining chip for all number of things.  This being a Wednesday, I went flicking through another cookie book, and picked out  something that I had all the ingredients on hand, and threw it together while X was eating breakfast.   Or .... eating the peanut butter, and jam, off a piece of toast. 

These turned out with a nice texture, but I think the lemon I used was a bit lacking in lemony flavour - if I'd thought about it while I was mixing up the filling I would've put a dash of lemon essence in at the same time.  A bit of vanilla essence in the base probably wouldn't hurt either!

I'd seen these being made a while back on Poh's Kitchen and thought that they might be something worth giving a shot, seeing as the little puffs involve milk/water, butter, a dash of salt, some sugar, some flour, and some egg, and they could be used as a vehicle for any number of fillings, dulce de leche being one that came to mind, because of the jar of fair dinkum made by a geniuine Argentinean dulce de leche in the fridge, which came about from offering my workmates in the office an Alfajor (which reminds me, I haven't actually done a proper post on *those* yet either!), prompting some reminiscing from one particular workmate who offered to bring in a jar of the home made stuff for me to try. 

Anyways,  first attempt at these little puffs didn't quite work out, given the reading, and re-reading, and forgetting of recipe steps while also trying to wrangle some recalcitrant cookie dough into shape in an attempt to recreate chocolate coated alfajores at home, the puffs didn't really ... puff, so they were about the same size after baking as they were when they went into the oven.  I gather  the issue here was that I didn't let the flour-butter dough ball cool down sufficiently before the mad beating in of the eggs, so the resulting dough was kind of ... smooth but drier/firmer than expected.  I also had some battles with the disposable piping bags, and should've just given up on piping and made spoonfuls onto the tray instead.

This time, I waited a few minutes before I added the eggs, *and* I broke out the electric whisk to help it along, because I didn't feel like incurring another blister on my hand from the frantic wielding of the wooden spoon on the first attempt. Piping this time was slightly more successful with just a zip lock bag, but they still tried to fail me when I attempted filling a few of the finished puffs with some dulce de leche ... I guess I was lucky in that it only spilled out onto my hand, and not all over the floor and on my clothes and stuff (:  What was salvageable was transferred into another disposable piping bag, which *also* decided to leak slightly, which has led me to conclude that the solution to this is to just get a proper piping bag already! 

This is actually a picture of the second batch of these honey biscuits I made last week - the first batch were made on a Tuesday afternoon home with X (recuperating from the sniffles), and were just about all gone by Wednesday.  I made another batch of the dough when I was home for lunch on Thursday, and got them ready for the oven after X was in bed for the night.  In between running X to daycare in the jogging stroller, being late to work on top of being rea-ended in the car on the way to work (only paint scratches), driving back home again with work laptop so that the awnings on our house might finally be finished (not yet!), and then driving back to work after filling up with petrol and picking up some lunch to have at my desk, I found out that the box I'd brought in of these honey biscuits, had pretty much all disappeared by the time I got my laptop set up to continue work from home in the morning, not even 30 minutes from when I left the office to head home - apparently, they all got a bit of a taste for these biscuits.  Can't say I blame them, X has got the same hankering!  Good thing they're easy to make, because I think I might have to make more!