Tuesday 20 August 2013

Been Baking!

For Christmas last year my wonderful husband bought me a subscription to Donna Hay's magazine. I have quite a few of her books and late last year I bought one of these magazines and cooked up a storm from it .. including the secret Santa Christmas present for work which was home made Raspberry Cordial (which is not only great mixed with water or soda water but goes great in a nice glass of bubbly). It's a great magazine that I enjoy getting in mail, it has great easy recipes and fantastic section with 10 meals in 20 minutes. But for me the best thing is the sweet stuff and this month I have been trying my hand at some baking from it.

The first thing I made was some Wagon Wheels. I love Wagon Wheels so the chance to make my own was just too great a temptation. I made a batch and they ended up being way too many for just Terry and I, so they went to work and were a great hit. I then dragged out Donna Hay's basics book and looked for her scone recipe. I've always been a bit afraid of scones so I thought that while I was on a roll I'd give them a try. Two batches have been made so far and while they taste great they are flat as pancakes. I'll keep practising, I think I know what I'm doing wrong and although Terry is complaining about the weight he's putting on from eating all these scones .. I think he's really loving having a treat every weekend.

Then today at work we decided to put on a bit of an afternoon tea for one of the girls 60th birthday. She keeps saying she doesn't want a big deal made about her but ya gotta do something for such a lovely person on a special day. Then when she heard about the afternoon tea she said I would have to make her some Wagon Wheels then she'd agree .. well how do you say no to that?

So after finishing work at 7:30pm I headed straight home and had a quick dinner, then started making my bikkies. The first thing you have to do is make up some biscuit dough. You know the one with lots of sugar and butter, and this recipe adds a couple of teaspoons of honey that just makes them yummy all on their own. After making up the dough you have to put it in the fridge for at least an hour. This isn't really a hard thing to make, it's just a bit fiddly in some parts and a lot of sitting waiting for things to cool. While I waited for the dough to chill I sat down and started writing about my prowess in the kitchen here.

After it's chilled nicely, the colder it is the easier it is to handle I've found, you roll it out and cut some round biscuits. I think I could have waited a bit longer but sheesh I wanna get some sleep tonight.




They only take 4-5 minutes in the oven then out they come and cool on racks til completely cold.




Next comes the fun ingredients ... jam (I used plum jam the first time, this time I only have some raspberry in the fridge) and Marshmallow Fluff. The Marshmallow is an amazing ingredient that is so sweet that even I cant lick the knife clean afterwards. But it tastes fantastic sandwiched in the biscuits and coated in chocolate. Once each of the biscuits is made into a sandwich with a generous smear of marshmallow and a good dollops of jam between them they are placed into the freezer for 20 minutes. More time to cool my heels.







The original recipe has three biscuits per wagon wheel but I found that just a bit too rich, this time I made the round a little bigger but only used two biscuits.





When they are pretty solid melt some chocolate, dark chocolate with a little bit of vegetable oil for the first lot.




Then the next half dozen get white chocolate. 




Pop them in the fridge and go to bed. All I have to do in the morning is put them in a bikkie tin and take them along to be devoured. As long as Terry and I can keep our hands off!

















Oh I had one biscuit left over and a bit of chocolate so I made Terry something special :)


5 comments:

  1. Yumm, don't those look scrumptious.....

    I too love scones and bake them quite a bit. I've never had trouble with flat ones though. Is your dough quite thick? I pat mine in a circle a few cm thick and cut them into wedges to bake. Some people scoop them and make drop scones.

    Try this recipe from my food blog. It is one of my no fail go to scone recipes and you can use other goodies instead of the chocolate chips such as berries or raisins or currents.

    http://trobairitztable.blogspot.com/2013/01/chocolate-chip-scones.html

    Instead of egg replacer just use 1 egg and use regular milk and butter/margarine instead of the vegan options.

    I also have a pumpkin scone recipe if you are feeling daring.....

    Did I mention I like scones? Those wagon wheels look pretty tempting though.

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  2. Thanks Brandy, looking at your scones I think that you may be right and I'm not making my dough thick enough. I have a recipe from the country womens assoc. cookbook (that just has to be fail proof) that I'm going to try next weekend.

    The wagon Wheels are delish and are all gone already ... I went to grab one at lunch time today and someone had washed up my bikkie tin ... :( I'm hoping there's one left at home for tonight :)

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  3. If your hubby is anything like my hubby - there are never goodies left at home. I made blackberry scones for brekkie yesterday morning. The batch made 6, he ate 3, I ate 2 and I stuck one in his lunch this morning. Yumm!!

    Let me know if you give scones another try and let me know if they turn out.

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    Replies
    1. Haven't had time to bake lately Brandy, the weather's been nice so I've been getting some quality time in on the bike instead. But hopefully over the holidays I will get the chance. Will let you know how they turn out.

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  4. Hi Brenda!
    Those chocolate biscuits look so scrumptious!!! I wish I could bake delicious treats like that! I was banned by my husband from any baking because I cooked a fruit cake that caught on fire and 'killed' our gaz oven... only now, more than a year later, we have realized that it isn't my cooking the problem but the baking paper we buy in morocco (it even caught fire in an electric oven! Dangerous stuff!) SO now I'm able to use the oven again I will try these bikkies!
    Hope you've had a good winter! Summer is coming to an end here :)
    Take care
    x
    Bel
    b-by-bel.blogspot.com
    (ps: thinking more and more about passing my motorbike license! Just a bit scared that I won't be able to hold the weight of the bike!)

    ReplyDelete