Noteworthy

I've made no pretenses about my organisational skills so far on this blog. Basically I suck at it. Everything happens at the last minute, but I usually end up pulling things off to a certain degree. I've also had to change the way I cook for the purpose of blogging. I was always a "cook by feel" type of girl, you know, a splash of this, a splodge of that a handful of something else and cook it until I think it's done... That doesn't really translate well when you are trying to give someone else instructions. So I decided over Christmas that I would take notes as I baked with weights and measurements, times and temperatures. Generally I love notebooks; lists make me feel more organised and I have a plethora of exercise books that I buy at the back-to-school sales for that purpose. So I took Christmas notes with the intention of blogging them (albeit after Christmas, as I was too last minute to get it done beforehand) and then when the time came for me to do it, I couldn't find them. I went through every notebook I could find and came up with nothing. Disappointed isn't a strong enough word for how I felt. My dear husband bought me a lovely new notebook, all hard covered and pretty, so that I would write in that one alone and wouldn't mix it up or accidentally throw it away.

Then, two days ago, I found it! Next to the sewing table with sewing notes on it too. I looked there! I know I did, but there it was. And so now I bring you Christmas (or any other time really) baking recipes.

Pfeffernüsse
These are a traditional European Christmas/winter biscuit that are usually full of spices and pepper. These are not. But they are still delicious. This recipe made a *LOT* of biscuits. They kept very well in an air tight container, but you could probably portion the dough and freeze. I used saffron when I made these as I thought there should really be at least one spice in it. Not sure if it really made any difference to the flavour, but it made me feel better about it.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (200g) Golden syrup
• 1/4 cup(100g) Rice malt syrup
• 1/2 cup nuttelex
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 4 cups (580g) Orgran plain GF flour
• 3/4 cup (170g) white sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar
• A big pinch of saffron threads (optional)
• 1 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup icing sugar for dusting

Method

1. Put golden syrup,  rice malt syrup, nuttelex and saffron into a saucepan, cook over a medium heat while stirring until it combines and goes a bit creamy looking. Leave to cool to room temperature.
2. Remove the saffron threads and stir in the eggs.
3. Put flour, white and brown sugars, bicarb and salt into a large bowl and add the syrup mixture. Mix until you have a nice dough. Cover and put into the fridge for about 2 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 165℃. 
5. Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and place on trays lined with baking paper approx 3cm apart. These do spread.
6. Bake for 10-15mins. The longer you bake them, the harder they are.
7. Cool on racks and dust with icing sugar.

Pfeffernusse front and centre. Spritz cookies on their right, iced biscuits at the back and meringues on the left

The spritz cookies are a recipe I found on Gluten Free Homemaker. These needed almost no tweaking to be failsafe. Simply omit the almond essence and substitute nuttelex for the butter. If you don't have the individual flours on hand, you can substitute the same quantity of Orgran flour and the results are pretty much the same. They don't need to be iced and if you don't have a cookie press you could always put blobs of dough on the tray. Equally delicious!

Happy Baking!