Nutella Oat Cookies

Hello blog, I am back!

After, wow, 7 months, I decided that I still needed my creative outlet. So here I am, hello :)

I have been travelling a lot and despite staying in Airbnb's most of the time, the closest I've gotten to an oven is one time when I was trying to make baked camembert, and baked it to its slow cheesy death. So I stayed away after that.

But I'm back with some oaty nutella cookies, because a good friend of mine gave me my very own personalised jar of nutella for a housewarming present (see the photo? That's my name! You know when you were on a school trip and everyone bought a key ring or a pencil with their name on it? Well, that was me, like, never). 

So, I didn't want to open it the jar for longest time but in the end, my sugar cravings got the better of me.

I'd like to say that I shared the cookies around the office...but, you know what, somehow it just didn't make it that far :)

So, whilst writing this post I've realised that, whilst very factually correct, I have rather unimaginatively named this post 'Nutella Oat Cookies'. Therefore, other names that I think may be appropriate are:

- Mushy Smushy Chocolatey Goodness Cookies

- Make Friends Instantly Cookies

- Your Dentist Has A Field Day Cookies

- You Know You Want To Give Me That Promotion Cookies*

What do you think?

*may not actually help you with that promotion. 

Gingerbread House

Dear Santa:

I've made a gingerbread house. Do you like it? I promise to be good and not eat it all in one go.

So, can I have a real house for Christmas? Pretty please?

***

Have a great week and Merry Christmas! You can see below step by step of how I made it =)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Oreo Brownies

You really, really, have to try this.

There are cookies. And then there are Oreos. And sometimes there are brownies. 

But this is a chocolate chip cookie AND Oreo AND brownie mash up cookie cake thing. Can't get any better than that... especially if you've finished your degree! (As an Economist I'm making the simplyfying assumption that I've passed them.)

Yep, I've finished my degree! That's pretty scary stuff. 

....Why hello there Real World, are you ready for me??

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Lolly Log Cake

Over dinner in hall the other night:

Me: "Oh, you said your sister knits hats? Is that what she's wearing in that picture?"

N-: "Yeah, she knits hats for herself."

A-: "Haha, that's like Hermione, she knits hats for house elves!"

Me: "No no, N- said that his sister knits hats for HERSELF, not HOUSE ELVES."

A-: "I know, I wasn't talking about his sister."

N-: "Well, I'm glad we cleared that up."

Completed unrelated to anything I'm making, but this is just to showcase... my stupidity?

Oh dear, exam week isn't looking good.

Also, if you are at Cambridge University, have exams, and are within cycling distance from me (sorry Girton/Homerton College people... and I may give preference to Economists, seeing as I feel your pain and all), then I will deliver a slice of this to the pidgeonhole of the first 6 people to comment :) (on the blog, or on facebook, but if you do both that doesn't meant you get two slices!)

If you don't have exams, well, you can make your own :p

Valentine's Day Biscuits

The biscuits aren't red, 

And the icing isn't blue,
But they are still sweet,
And you can bake them too :)

Though the biscuits can go soggy,
The icing can stick,
I made them fresh today,
So you better eat them quick!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Bretton Butter Cookies

Possibly the most beautiful thing in the world? Apart from my face, obviously.

Okay, seriously, they look nice, and it’s pretty simple to make! You can’t go wrong really, AND you can eat the dough. It’s a win win situation.

Birthday card recipe no.7: Chocolate Digestive Biscuit Cake

Just looking at the ingredients makes me feel like my arteries are thickening. Emma didn’t specify how many people this cake was meant to serve, which is a dangerous step. What if the person who I made this for thought it served 2? Oh, but it’s okay, because I get to eat some along the way; and spare them some ;) Besides, if I use dark chocolate, it will help ‘lower blood pressure and have antioxidant effects’, which will TOTALLY cancel out the whole artery-thickening thing. Obviously.

Birthday card recipe no.2: Alice and Sam’s Beautiful Banoffee Pie

One fateful day, when we were minding our own business, fixing pipes, digging things up for no reason – you know, the usual – when we saw the village chief strolling along our direction. What did he want us to do now? More taps and standpipes? Or worse, a showerhead? No, he came bearing gifts (well, a gift), and – lo’ and behold – it was fresh fruit! (something we had not seen in a very long time). And not just any kind of fruit, it was a plant of about 20 or so mini Borneo bananas. They were brilliant, they were slightly brown, but most importantly, they were A BAKING OPPORTUNITY.

I have to say that this baking opportunity was missed by me due to other commitments (probably hair plaiting), but Sam and Alice did a great job given our rations. Despite the ‘offee’ part not coming out quite as expected, we all had a lovely dessert and an even lovelier sugar induced night of singing, charades and (eventually), sleep. Here’s the exact recipe that they used:



Making this at home was pretty easy to do, and didn’t take long. It also gave me an excuse to buy biscuits and condensed milk. Okay, I have to confess, that is why I choose to make this recipe next. It did not disappoint.

I started by making the base, adding some crushed pecans because I accidentally overestimated a ‘spoonful’ and the mixture was slightly too buttery.



Making the toffee required some research, however. “Boil the condensed milk to create yummy fake toffee!” was slightly vague on how exactly to go about doing that. Do I pour it into a pan and heat until bubbling? Or do I stab some holes in the top and boil the tin in some water for 10 minutes? Well, it definitely wasn’t the latter, because that’s what we did in Borneo and toffee (even the yummy fake variety) was not the end result.

A quick search of google then told me that I had to boil the unopened tin of condensed milk for 3 hou- 3 hours?! Oh dear, that was a lot of waiting around time dangerously near the freshly replenished tin of biscuits. It had to be done.

So I waited….






And I waited…






And I waited…. and voila! Yummy fake toffee!


Surely the biscuit base had to have set by this time. So I began to pour the toffee on top…



Except that it didn’t seem to want to pour. Or drop, or dollop, or just come out of the tin. But then, I realised, I wasn’t in the jungle anymore and had access to electricity (and namely a microwave)! All I had to do was heat it up and then surely it would pour faster than you can say ‘tropical rain’.

                                    

I was wrong. 2 minutes in the microwave only made it go bubbly and smell like feet (I am still unsure of how that happened). I guess it was time to use the trusty spoon and stir it. Damn technology.

Now, for the last part, shedding out a thousand pounds and a 14 hour flight to get some bananas was probably a tad excessive, so I had to make do with British bananas instead. Actually, they probably weren’t even British. But anyhow, I only had to walk 5 minutes to buy them, which was a pretty good improvement on the previous time span.

And this was how it came out!

 

From mess tin or ramekin, this recipe proves that banoffee pie is accessible to all crockery, and is a very versatile recipe. A case of ‘don’t just try this at home, try it in the jungle too!’.



Lesson learned today: Don’t microwave condensed milk made toffee. Unless you have a foot fetish.