Spring Butterfly Biscuits

Last week I got a lovely surprise email from Nessa at Nessa's Family Kitchen to say I had won a set of butterfly cookie cutters in the prize draw she ran to celebrate her Irish Blog Award (Best Newcomer Award). Big congratulations to Nessa for her well deserved award! So my parcel arrived with the cutest cookie cutters and I wanted to use them straight away. These biscuits are a bit of fun really - I'm certainly not going to win any prizes for my icing skills! - but I thought they were very spring-like and the fact I made them on this sunny day also added to that theme.

For the actual biscuits I used a basic biscuit recipe from none other than The WI Book of Biscuits which my Mum has had since I was little. While leafing through the book I noticed that all the WI members in the village had written their names by their favourite biscuit recipe which I guess was their speciality bake. I wonder if you dared to bake someone else's recipe was it baking sheets at dawn?! I managed to find an unclaimed recipe - it is actually one for 'Alphabet Biscuits' which I've adapted for these butterfly versions. I iced them with some thick royal icing with a little bit of red, yellow, blue and green food colouring added in for the pastel shades.

The Recipe

225g plain flour

150g butter

50g caster sugar

1/4 tspn cinnamon (I didn't put this in mine)

pinch of salt

1 tbspn water

1. Preheat oven to 180c.

2. Rub the butter into the flour to the consistency of fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, salt and water and knead the dough.

3. Roll the dough out thinly and cut with biscuit cutters.

4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes then allow to cool before icing.

Rosemary & Pepper Oatcakes

I was lucky enough to spend most of Friday afternoon hosting an afternoon tea at The Soho Hotel, in the name of work. Their sandwiches, cakes and scones were delicious - the eclairs being the stars of the show! I was still a bit caked out when I came to getting my cookbook out this morning. So, I decided to bake something savoury today and found this recipe for oatcakes in a copy of Feel Good Food magazine. I love oatcakes, especially with a really good cheese and chutney, but have never made them before. I added some chopped rosemary to the recipe as I thought it would go nicely with the black pepper and have some in my window box not being used enough! I bought some lovely Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire cheese to go with them from Good Taste, a newly opened and much needed deli up the road.

The Recipe

50g plain flour

150g oatmeal (I used coarse)

2 tspn ground black pepper

1/2 tspn salt

fresh rosemary cut into small pieces

125g unsalted butter, diced

milk, to glaze

1. Heat oven to 200c, gas 6. Grease a baking sheet. Put all the ingredients , except the milk, in a food processor and blend until the mixture starts to bind. Add 2-3 tbspn cold water and mix until it forms a firm dough.

2. Roll the dough out thinly on a floured surface. Use a pastry cutter to cut out rounds. Place on the baking sheet and brush with milk before sprinkling each one with some extra salt and pepper.

3. Bake for about 15 minutes until just beginning to colour. Leave to cool on a wire rack.