The Baking Bug

I’ve been bitten by the baking bug…. I made these two recipes at the same time, as it was the first time I was trying them out I used half of the amount for each ingredient (although I’ve listed the full amount here). It was quite time consuming and I was in the kitchen for about 2-3 hours. The end result was what you see in the pictures, as in all I baked is in the pictures, when my mum saw the fruit of my labour she wasn’t impressed her exact words were “is that all of you’ve made in all that time!!”(English-Punjabi translation of course!). I kinda felt the same, I was exhausted from being on my feet for so long and all I had to show for it was two plates of biscuit things. However the proof of the pudding is in the taste so to speak and once everyone had tried them, attitudes were changed! We also had a few relatives around that day and I had favourable feedback from them too, so I will definitely be making them again!!
My personal favourites were the cream cheese spirals but the almond biscotti’s were liked by quite a few too.

Cream Cheese Spirals

225g/8oz butter
225g/8oz cream cheese (I used Philadelphia because we already had it in the fridge!)
225g/8oz plain flour
2tsp of sugar
1 egg

For the filling

115g/4oz of finely chopped walnuts (I actually used peanuts as that was what we had in our house!)
115g/4oz of brown sugar
1 tsp of ground cinnamon

• Mix together the butter, cream cheese and sugar, sift over the flour and mix until combined.
• Gather the dough into two equal balls and wrap each in cling film (loosely) and place in the fridge to chill for half an hour.
• In the mean time mix all the filling ingredients together and put aside
• Preheat the oven to 190 C/375 F/ gas mark 5, and grease two flat baking trays
• Use one ball at a time, roll it out into a circle, use a large plate as a template and cut around the edges with a knife
• Brush the surface with some egg and sprinkle the filling mixture evenly over the circle
• Cut the circle into 8 segments (like a pizza)(if you want smaller ones you could do 16 segments) and starting from the outside of the circle roll each segment towards the middle to form the spiral
• Place on the trays, brush with egg and sprinkle with sugar, bake until golden brown for about 15-20 mins...et voila!

Italian Almond Biscotti

200g/ 7oz whole almonds
215/7 ½ oz of plain flour
90g/3 ½ oz of sugar
Pinch of salt
½ tsp of bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
Some egg for brushing onto them before putting in the oven (I used left over from cheese spirals)

• Preheat oven to 190 C/375F/gas mark 5, grease two baking trays
• Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and bake until lightly brown, when cooled grind 50g/2oz of them in a food processor and coarsely chop the remaining ones.
• Mix together the flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of soda, and ground almonds in a bowl. Make a well into the centre and add the eggs stir to form rough dough and knead it further until it is well blended.
• Mix in the chopped almonds
• Divide the mixture into three equal parts and roll into logs about 2.5 cm in diameter. Place on one of the baking trays, brush with eggs and bake for 20 mins.
• Remove from the oven and lower the temperature to 140 C/275F/gas mark 1
• With a sharp knife cut the logs at an angle, so you end up with slices about 1 cm thick
• Place the slices back into the oven and bake for another 20 mins....et voila!

Also i made myself a banana split, it's not really baking, it was for purely indulgent purposes, i felt quite sick at the end of it....

you take a banana, cut it in half, put some freshly whipped double cream on the top, put some halaal marshmallows on top of that and drizzle some melted chocolate...et voila! (for the third and final time)