I found time to bake!

Hello hello! I'm still cooking, so I'm alive :-)
With Little Miss' arrival I have hardly been in the kitchen for more than 15 minutes at a stretch, during which I manage to cook some one pot wonder to keep the hard working husband (and myself) well fed.
So the other day I was mighty pleased with myself 'cause I baked this yummy fruit cake/bread. With Little Miss napping peacefully, I was surfing the Internet and generally looking at some recipe videos when I stumbled upon this. So easy! And I had all the ingredients at home, yay! So I baked it right away and when husby darling called out 'Honey, I'm home' that evening, I was super excited to serve him a nice big slice with some hot coffee. Of course, saving a couple of slices was quite a challenge as I'd already started gobbling up pieces of the hot bread, straight out of the oven! I say pieces because I had no patience to let it cool before I could make, how shall I say...civilised slices of it. So I just literally tore it off and popped the still hot pieces into my mouth. A serrated knife works best, by the way and wait it cools down before you slice it. If you want it to look pretty, that is. If you can't be bothered then just do what I did. I'm pretty sure you will :-) Okay, enough said. Here's the recipe. You don't really need to have a degree in aeronautical engineering or something to figure out that this recipe has five cups of something, duh! So here's what you need, a cup of each -

1. self raising flour (I only had plain flour, so I just added 2 tspns of baking powder to it)
2. sugar
3. milk
4. chopped fruits 'n' nuts (I used sultanas, cashews, almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds)
5. dessicated coconut

Actually, you only need about 1/2 a cup of sugar or so, but you know, '5 cups recipe' sounds too cute. I mean '4.5 cups fruit cake' would only sound silly :-)

So then, you sift the flour (and baking powder if you're using plain flour) into a large bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix well with a wooden spoon and pour the (rather thick) mixture into a loaf tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180deg (oven settings may vary) for about 40-45 minutes. That's it, really :-)

So go on, bake this super easy cake, cut a nice chunky slice for yourself, make a nice cuppa and sit back and enjoy! Ah, a blissful moment for me indeed!

I'm here!

Considering that I baked these cookies during Christmas last year, this post is long overdue...way too long! Well, what can I say? I've been so preoccupied lately that my dear little cooking blog has been totally neglected :(
I have been cooking though, more so now that I haven't blogged here for a while - what an irony! I wish I had had the patience and the enthusiasm to take pictures and journal all those recipes I tried and that turned out well. Well...I didn't, so nothing much I can do about it now. So I thought I'd slowly get back to blogging and decided to post about these cookies :)

Recipe Source: Nicko's Kitchen

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 200gms butter
• icing sugar + water + food colour (as desired)

Simply mix the first three ingredients to form a soft dough. Roll out into medium thick sheets and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a cookie tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180 deg C for about 20mins (check to see they don't over bake and burn).
Have fun decorating them!

It's 2011!!

Hello there! 2011 is here and I don't have any new posts on my blog!! Appalling! I need to focus and manage my time better...
Anyway, hope the new year has started off well with all of you.
I will be back soon!