The 98th Bake: Lemon Biscotti
This year I have decided to save money on coffee purchases. I worked out we may spend triple figures each year buying coffees sometimes daily. Well that’s a lot of money, so I have purchased a Delonghi Expresso machine, using only fly-buys points! Lots of good coffee and savings. It all adds up, bank fees, etc. This was brought to my attention by a book I am reading and would highly recommend called the Barefoot Investor https://barefootinvestor.com/ An amazing insight into how better to manage your finances and plan for your future, quite a fun and light read, as well as enlightening.
Biscotti in a jar for later
This recipe wasn’t hard and neither was the biscotti. Homemade biscotti is quite different to bought biscotti, it doesn’t break your teeth and is very moreish. Here’s a recipe that looks just as good as the one I made https://owlbbaking.com/lemon-biscotti/ To make the biscotti I beat the butter in a mixing bowl until
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These look good and easy, she laughs behind her hand. Well, I have never made macarons so we will see. I had 4 egg whites left over from my last bake so I needed a recipe to use them up. It was going to be Mary’s Neopolitan Baked Alaska which looked scary and daunting so luckily I found these instead. They are made with ground pecans giving them a “wonderful flavour that becomes more intense as the macarons age” Well we may never find that one out the rate my daughter is eating them! I went to the opening of a Kombucha bar on Saturday. “NewLeaf” very chic, selling only kombucha, very original. And it’s so good for you. Very interesting tea flavours of macha, gunpowder green tea and Sri Lankan Black tea to name a few, all on tap. Go try it at their taproom 
It’s the start of November and I have made it to 80 bakes, 2/3 the way there to complete my 120 bakes, amazing. Can’t believe how fast these bakes have gone, but it has involved pedal to the metal that’s for sure. Fun though. Always good to be trying something new. I will miss this when it’s done, though I can’t see myself ever giving up trying new bakes!! Hope not anyway. This bake, was snuck in around dinner time, seems to be a theme lately. Dinner was done, salad and tortilla wraps with re-fried beans, stir-fried chicken, caramelized onion and mushrooms, so I had time to bake. 🙂 I was surprised at the amount of grated root ginger in the recipe giving them a delicious ginger taste. The treacle syrup added even more flavour. They turned out tasting like ginger nuts, though chewy. Mmmmmmm. I mixed together 
It’s time to make crackers!!! I haven’t made crackers before, except the pumpkin seed ones from 
Having been to Ypres and seen the cemeteries and the trenches, it was a very moving experience, especially as my husband’s Grandfather fought there. “From the utmost ends of the Earth, New Zealanders came the furthest and lost the most” was quoted on the day. Auckland War Memorial Museum sees the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day at 11am on 11 November 2018. Currently crosses cover the grass field in front of the museum in remembrance of those who died. We will remember them.
I made these double chocolate crunchy cookies next. The recipe was beside a photo of the carrot cake, so I hadn’t noticed them before now. The interesting thing about these biscuits is that they had melted chocolate in them so they turned out to have the look and texture of brownies, but with added cornflakes, they had the crunch of afghans. Your mind whirled between the two biscuits trying to figure them out!! Trying new things is always fun. I have just returned from a trip to Bali which turned into a research trip (as well as a holiday of course) for my current novel. 
The food was fantastic. We did a cooking class in Ubud and made several traditional dishes, like Be Siap Mesanten Kare Ayam (Chicken in coconut curry). I would highly recommend Paon Bali Cooking in Ubud. It was fun, informative, very tasty and the host was charming. 
Well that sounds interesting and easy though it doesn’t involve bread! Hmmmmmm. But it does involve ALOT of peanut butter!!! Must be good. I hauled out all the jars of peanut butter I had accumulated, different flavours and types, smooth, crunchy, Pics and Deluxe Chia & Flaxseed!!! Hmmmm, how did I end up with so much peanut butter. I think it was at markets, I ‘m a sucker for buying new and interesting products, especially artisan varieties. I’ll give anything a go. Anyway, this recipe has alot of it so all the better. I mixed the peanut butter, with 
Well who would have thought I would have got here, half way, the 60th bake out of 120 from The Great British Bake Off, Big Book of Baking!! Phew, long journey, long way to go. Feels like a marathon, not an unpleasant one though. I was about to whip up a quick 
When your life involves writing, reading, editing – everything to do with screen time, let alone social media, having concussion and being told to do nothing for 48 hours is like a prison sentence. I couldn’t watch TV – that’s apparently the worst thing you can do because the blue light is very stimulating for your brain. I couldn’t bake – unless I didn’t have to read a recipe! (well I didn’t read a recipe for the 
I will make biscuits. These digestives look easy. The ingredients are amazingly healthy, oats, bran, wholemeal flour and then of course comes the brown sugar and loads of butter. The dough was so soft and held together beautifully enough to roll out and I used the cookie cutter to cut large round biscuits just like the bought digestives. They were rich, buttery and decadently healthy…