Cookies 'n Cameras

My New Toy!!

I finally bought my dSLR on Saturday! Ended up costing me closer to $1,300 to get the flash card with it. The salesguy was trying desperately to get me to buy the whole package which would cost me about $1,700 - totally out of my budget. I hope I can make some good use out of it.. Still in the process of figuring out just how to use it, and hopefully I'll know enough to be able to take good pictures on our trip to Kalbarri this coming weekend.




Rob and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary this Sunday (28th August). I've taken some time off work, and we'll be taking a nice 4-day holiday up in Kalbarri, hoping to do lots of outdoors-y stuff like sandboarding, abseiling and horseriding. I am really hoping that the weather up north will be much nicer and warmer than Perth's winter weather.


Cookies

I baked some cookies/biscuits as well so that we have some treats for our trip (in addition to the timtams, m&ms and other junk we are bringing) and decided to try out my new toy.. I shot these pictures in 'idiot' mode (i.e. auto everything) because I don't know how to use the camera yet!

I baked three types of cookies: plain ginger snaps, ginger snaps with crystallised ginger, and my own version of Anzac biscuits (which Rob says doesn't taste like Anzac, but is yummy anyway).



Ginger cookies

Rob likes Arnott's Ginger Nut biscuits and the Butternut Snap, and I told him I'd try my hand at making homemade ones, but I can't find any recipes for Butternut Snap biscuits! So I settled for doing Ginger Snaps instead since there are so many recipes available on the net for
them (why are they called snaps??).

Believe it or not, I was looking at 3 recipes for the ginger snaps while baking - the quantities of the ingredients for each of these were quite different, so my recipe is essentially a modification of these three recipes to suit what I had in the pantry and to what I thought
was relatively healthy. These turned out softer than I expected - I expected crunchy biccies, mainly because of the name 'snap'. Honey suggested using less baking powder. Ah well, next time, I'll omit the baking powder and see if I can get a crunchier texture.

I am always amazed at how much sugar and butter these recipes use. I used less sugar in my recipe (about 20% less than what these recipes used) but the cookies were still quite sweet. Rob obviously likes it, being a sweet-tooth. The snaps recipe uses molasses, but I didn't
have any so I substituted that ingredient with honey. I won't have much use for molasses (Rob hates the stuff) so it would be a waste to buy it just to use it once or twice.

I made two batches with this recipe: plain and crystallised ginger. Verdict? I brought some up for my family, and most went for their second biccie. So it can't be that bad right? Rob says he likes it :)

Ingredients
125g butter
1 cup raw sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
0.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
0.5 teaspoon vinegar
3 cups plain flour
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
3.5 teaspoons ginger powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup crystallised ginger, chopped

Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Cream the butter and sugar. Add vanilla, eggs and honey and mix well. Sift the dry ingredients, adding to the wet mixture 1/3 at a time. Divide dough mix into two. For one half, mix in the crystallised ginger. Form dough into 2cm balls, flatten with the palm of your hand and place in a greased tray, leaving about 2cm space between each cookie. Will make about 36 cookies. Bake for 15minutes.





Oatmeal/sultana biscuits (a variation of Anzac biscuits)

Now apparently, Anzac biscuits are good non-egg recipes. But I wanted to use less butter which meant that a substitute binding ingredient had to be used. Eggs are a lot more healthy than butter, so I used an egg in this recipe. Also, instead of plain flour and baking powder, I used wholemeal self-raising flour. And of course, I used about 25% less sugar in my recipe - it was still plenty sweet (ask Rob). Most Anzac biscuit recipe uses golden syrup, but since I don't have that ingredient in my pantry, I used honey instead. Not quite sure what the purpose of (hot) water is meant to serve, but 3 recipes I looked at used water, so I decided to be a sheep and follow. Honestly? I don't think it matters if you have water or not.


Ingredients
80grams butter
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoon water
1 egg
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup coconut
1 cup wholemeal stoneground flour
3/4 cup raw sugar
1 cup sultanas

Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Place dry ingredients (oats, coconut, flour, sugar and sultanas) in a big bowl and mix. Place butter, honey and water in a bowl or saucepan, melt in the microwave or over the stove. Add the wet mixture and the egg to the dry ingredients and mix well. Place tablespoon-full size cookie dough on the baking tray (use another spoon to push off dough from the spoon onto the tray because the dough is quite sticky). Will make 24 cookies. Place in the oven for 15minutes. Enjoy!!