Oh sugar! Oh honey-honey!

I'm going to start by saying if you are a fan of the biscuits honeyjumbles and are particularly attached to them in their traditional form, then you probably shouldn't read on. This is not a honeyjumble-fanatic-friendly post.

For those of you who remain, I'm going to tell you something horrific: honeyjumbles don't actually have honey in them. I discovered this when making them this afternoon. Golden syrup is the only vaguely honey-like ingredient. As the name was obviously inaccurate, I felt well within my rights to rename the faux-jumbles. Searching for a name wasn't difficult; we didn't have any golden syrup so I substituted treacle and this gave the biscuit dough a deep brown colour. A rather specific brown colour.

Flatmate #1: Walks into the kitchen and upon seeing biscuit dough slows dramatically. Asks suspiciously.'What are you doing there?'
Me: 'Making biscuits.'
Flatmate # 1: With relief, laughing. 'Ha! That's good, I thought you were kneading poo.'
Flatmate #2: Enters kitchen. 'Woah - you realise that looks like shit?'

The recipe calls for the biscuit dough to be rolled into a log shape. Just like so:

Clearly the only name for these biscuits at this point in time was 'Pooh Sticks'. Rather appropriate as it references not only the appearance of the biscuits, but also a game invented by a silly old bear that most likely would have gruffled these biscuits (that's Winnie the Pooh, for those of you who have grown out of bedtime stories).

For those of you who just scoffed at the inclusion of a children's book character as an authority for how damn tasty these biscuits are, I'll have you know that grown men fought over these biscuits. In fact, you can see for yourself (or not see, depending on how good your night vision is, as this was shot in low light).

You will need...

• 125g butter, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups golden syrup (I used treacle...)
• 3 1/2 cups plain flour
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbp fresh ginger, finely grated, or 3 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• splash of milk (use as required)

Icing

• 1 egg white, beaten lightly
  
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbsp flour
  
• squeeze of lemon juice (to taste)
  
• couple of drops of food colouring of your choice
• optional - flavouring*
  

The how-to...

1. Combine butter and sugar in a saucepan and stir over low heat until the butter has melted. Once the butter has melted, continue stirring and bring the mixture to the boil. Remove saucepan from the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

2. Sift in dry ingredients and mix to combine. Add a little splash of milk to help the process. Cover the mixture and leave it alone for two hours.

3. Preheat your oven to 160 degrees. Turn out mixture onto a lightly floured surface and knead. You want a smooth, well combined dough - if it is coming apart then add a couple of drops of milk to hold it all together and if it is too sticky add a little flour.

4. Shape the dough into a rough rectangle and cut into 8 equal pieces. Take one piece and roll it into a long thin tube shape. Cut this into six pieces, each approximately 5cm in length. Round the ends of each piece to make the biscuit shape (see first blog picture).

5. Line the biscuits up on a tray lined with baking paper, leaving a couple of centimetres between each biscuit so they can flatten out. Put in the oven for 12 minutes.

6. Whilst the biscuits are cooking, make up your icing. Combine the icing sugar, lemon juice, flour and egg white to make a thick icing paste. If you plan to add colouring/flavouring, divide up the mixture so that you can tint/flavour each portion differently.

7. Pull out the biscuits and let them cool on the tray. After 20 minutes, transfer them to a wire tray and ice them quickly before they are all eaten.

Makes 48.

*I'm always frustrated by coloured foods that taste nothing like the flavours that the pigment promises, so I've added a little vanilla to the white icing and rosewater to the pink icing. After some pestering from my flatmate about what colour the vanilla-flavoured icing should be - blue, according to him - I made some less traditionally coloured jumbles. The 'Science' jumble (green = peppermint) and the 'Malaria' jumble (yellow = brandy). So you can imagine how good this one tasted...

A feat of daiquiri proportions

It's wonderous what a group of over-confident drunks can achieve.

Look Mum, no hands!

You too can achieve this kind of science with the right amount of daiquiris. This recipe is a mish-mash of suggestions from a range of cocktail lovers and what was available in the cupboard.

You will need...

Fruit of your choice (mangoes or strawberries are the classics)
Lemon or lime
White rum (Bacardi or similar)
Dark rum (Bundaberg or similar) and/or Cointreau
Ice, and heaps of it
Sugar syrup* (or, a cube or two of palm sugar dropped into the blender each round works nicely)
Bitters
A sturdy blender

*250g of sugar into 500ml of water, stir over heat until dissolved, let it cool.

The how to...

Wash and chop the tops off the strawberries. Best to do this all in one go at the beginning, particularly if the bartender plans to join in the drinking.

Half fill the blender with ice. Add two cups of fruit, the juice of half a lemon or lime and palm sugar or a splash of sugar syrup. For the alcohol, it should be one part dark rum or cointreau to two parts white rum. It's really up to you how strong you want it, as a guide, we used six to eight shots of alcohol per blenderful. Dash in some bitters and blend.

Serve and repeat. You'll know you've had enough when there is a visible sediment-like build up of strawberry seeds at the bottom of the glass. Or when you start tunelessly belting out Beatles songs, adjusting the lyrics where you see fit.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago, I put up a post about hangovers and suggested cures. Having now truly experienced this agony, identifiable by intermittent groans interspersed with 'I will never drink again - Ever', and listening to my flatmate reverse-daiquiri in the backyard for two hours, I can now personally vouch for the soft drink method. I'm not a soft drink person, but I highly recommend the lovely organic NZ brand, Phoenix. They make caffeine-free cola and a really delightful ginger beer.

P.P.S. Mutant strawberry.

The 'Magic Garden' killer

Over the weekend, another potted herb plant passed away under my (apparently negligent) care.

My green thumb only seems to operate sporadically, at best. By seem freak of chance the mint is plentiful and the rosemary is thriving, the chives continue to shoot skyward and the cat grass is well attended by the kitten (what other marker of success could there be for cat grass?). Yet the basil (who up until death received as much attention as all the other plants, I'll have you know I spread my negligence equally) rather suddenly shrivelled up and died.

I'm yet to try to grow flowers, unless you count a brief love affair with the science experiment-cum-educational toy, 'Magic Garden,' as a child [For all of you who just squealed/wet yourselves with nostalgic delight, you can relive the cherry blossom glory. Magic Garden is still around! You can buy it on the internet, here, and I'm guessing also at any kid-oriented science store].

Magic Garden was the ultimate in kitsch for the nineties child . You mixed water with crystals and poured the liquid over a cardboard tree, and a couple of hours later the cardboard branches would 'flower' (some brightly coloured powdery substance that clung to the branches, apparently non-toxic) and you would have a miniature cherry tree. All together kids, in hushed and reverent tones: 'Science'. Simple, you would think. Not for this Godzilla. I went storming in with my fat kiddy fingers and prodded the thing, and all the flowers fell off and disintegrated.

But I digress. This latest lamentable loss - what will lasagna or homemade pesto be without basil! - makes me think that now is not the time to upgrade to flower growing. I'm not sure where this potted philosophy stems from, but I've always thought that responsibility is best taken on in stages. The logic goes something like this...if I can keep pot plants alive, then I can have a pet. If I haven't killed the kitten in the next decade, then I might be an okay human-mother too. Flowering plants seem the next step up from pot plants. Unfortunately I seem to have gotten a little ahead of myself, having adopted a kitten when I am still not sure how it is that I am doing in the herbs. Watch out, pussycat.

Fortunately, my neighbours seem rather more adept at the whole gardening bit so you and I can get our flower fix this Spring by taking a peek at other people's blooming success (with not a trace of bitterness or garden envy)...

An entire wall of orange flowers. Rather greedy really. They've probably taken up the entire allowance of flowers per postcode. Clearly the reason that my plants are dying.

A bit flirty really, a splash of colour peeking over the fence. I bet they are hiding all of their best blooms on the inside.

One in three.

While the cat's away, the vegetables will play

Things that my vegetables did last Saturday night...

1. First, they started on the boutique beer.


2. A little tipsy, they started making faces at each other.


The lemon took things a little too far. Turns out lemons are angry drunks.



3. Then things really escalated.

The zucchini and capsicum got a little close (the lemon, pointy teeth and all, was left out). They manoeuvred themselves into some complex positions (aided and abetted by the Kiwi who has been hanging out on our couch for six weeks).



Said Kiwi calls this, in hushed and reverent tones, 'Science'.

After this series of misdemeanours, the vegetables have been condemned to be roasted and blended into a delicious wintery soup. Sentence will be passed down later this week...stay tuned.