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 :)