Baking Biscuits

I woke up to a pretty miserable morning here in my part of the world. It was cold and drizzly. I had plans to go to a great second hand market that runs every Sunday as hubby offered to let me venture on my own, minus my little girls. Despite the weather, I went and it was lovely and quiet. I was able to take my time and browse through the many bargains. I was after some clothes to be able to wear to work and out and about. I bought 2 great woolen skirts; one was a very dark purple which just needs a new zip, the other was a tweed pattern and my third item was a nice cream summer dress with blue spots all over. I got all 3 for $25 and all in great condition, looking nice and vintage :)

The cookie jar was looking fairly empty so I thought I'd bake up a batch with my daughter. She loved it. The recipe is from Rhonda's blog, here. I bet you have most of the ingredients yourself....

Ingredients

500g softened butter
1 cup of sugar
1 tin of condensed milk
5 cups of self raising flour (plain or wholemeal) I've made both and are both great

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius.

Start off by creaming the butter and sugar. You can do it by hand or with an electric mixer. I do it by hand cos I'm too lazy to get out my mixer and why not save some electricity in the process!

Once it's nice and creamed, add the condensed milk and mix it well. Then add your flour and combine well. I start off mixing it with a wooden spoon and then get my hands in to make sure it's all combined.

Line some baking trays with baking paper. Take heaped teaspoons of the batter, roll into a ball and flatten slightly with your thumb. You can add any toppings you like. We added some cinnamon sugar, hundreds and thousands, lemon curd and chocolate. You could also add nuts, jam, anything you have on hand.

Then bake in the oven for around 15-20mins and let them cool.

Lemon curd topped biscuits baking

My little helper :)

It filled my cookie jar!

There were actually too many for the jar....they won't last long :)

Growing Garlic Update

So I planted my garlic cloves as you've seen in my previous post and all was going along reasonably well. The garlic was growing and I thought I'd just keep tending to it and harvest at the end of spring.

My grand father in law was over on the weekend and he was happy with my garlic BUT they he said they needed more room for the bulbs to develop. So I took the 89 year old's advice and replanted my garlic.

My garden has these awful native shrubs. Well they aren't awful, but for someone who generally only likes to grow food I can eat, it took up my growing space! So I got the saw out and started cutting back big time! I've decided I'm going to hack them all back to the trunk and grow my veg around it. Landlord can't get cross for that...I'm keeping their plants but just not letting them grow!

His advice was to plant them directly into the soil and have about a hand spand's width between each shoot. I took those tips on board, covered it with mulch and scattered some lemon slices around to keep the cats away! No joke, it's only been a couple of days and they have increased it height. :)

The new garlic patch