Nerves and Down Under Cookies - Mucked Up

I love being in the kitchen. I love cooking. I find it so hard to let go and not be in the kitchen when there is cooking to be done. So hard that I made dinner, of sorts, for Poppy and Stephen twelve hours after Tilly was born. Sure, it was just a bowl of pasta with some tomato sauce I had made in a hormonally charged fit of nesting a couple of days before but I still couldn't just sit back and let Stephen do it.

I love it when someone else cooks. It doesn't happen very often. And, even then, I feel awkward and anxious when there is nothing to help with in the kitchen. I have certainly never sat on our window seat and watched someone else cook.

So, I worry what will happen over the next month as I try to stay clear of the galley and let the very capable chef, who cooks for my husband all the time, cook for me and the girls. Will I be beside myself with nervousness or will I relax and enjoy it for the break it is?

I have lots of things planned for here while I am away. I have a few food posts squirrelled away and a favourite stuff page and other things I read page in the works. I am also going to try to read Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection more than two pages at a time.

And, maybe I'll have some amazing food experiences to share, who knows.

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In the meantime, I have done it. I have mucked about with the much revered ANZAC cookie recipe. I will no longer refer to it as an ANZAC cookie in its mucked up form, because it quite clearly isn't. There may even be a law in Australia and New Zealand about mucking about with it. So, from now on, it will just be a recipe for Darn Good Oatmeal Coconut Cookies With Anything I Choose to Throw in.

The first, and so far only go, I had involves walnuts and raisins. They are just as good but a little nuttier and I love the taste of just starting to caramelize raisins. Very, very nice on a rainy afternoon with a hot cup of tea.

I used a little less coconut than I did in the original and I found that they needed a couple minutes longer in the oven than the plain ones but that may just be due to my thermometerless gas oven.

Darn Good Oatmeal Cookies With Walnuts and Raisins

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats (I used old fashioned)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut 

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

125 grams (1/2 cup) butter

3 tablespoons golden syrup

2 tablespoons water 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350º.

Mix flour, oats, sugar, coconut, raisins and walnuts in a large bowl.

In a saucepan, bring butter, golden syrup and water to the boil. Add the baking soda and   then mix into the dry ingredients.

Roll into walnut sized balls and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Flatten the balls with the back of a spatula.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Comments

[sweetsalty kate]

We miss you already. Tried to call this morning but you were already on your way. Have a good month - and make it a fast one, willya? Wait. That's selfish. Make it slow and calm and child-friendly and enjoy someone else's cooking, and hopefully sun, but not too much.

We'll get the market all stocked for you, and we'll get Quaker Island ready. Summer will be all set for you when you get back.
xo