Recipe #25: Michael's' Butterscotch Crunch' Cookies

This is a basic chocolate chip cookie dough recipe altered to suit the flavour of butter scotch chips. If you don't have butterscotch chips where you live, substituting chocolate chips will create a tasty alternative.

Every trip we make to Canada, where butter scotch chip trees grow, we bring back enough bags of chips to last till our next visit, or we ask to have them shipped to us should we, 'God forbid', run out. We use a whole 300g bag of 'Hershey Chipits®' Butterscotch Chips in this recipe so have your toothbrush handy after your children stop bouncing around the room from the shear joy of including them in their diet.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup margarine

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

2 - 2 1/2 cups of sifted flour

1/2 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup medium brown sugar

2 tablespoons of Tasmanian Leatherwood honey [I can find this at Tesco but any other strong flavoured honey will do]

1 teaspoon of baking powder

A pinch of salt [when using unsalted butter]

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon [optional]

300g Hershey Butterscotch Chipits®

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350˚C

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, margarine, white & brown sugars until light and fluffy

Add egg vanilla and honey and beat for 1-2 minutes until thoroughly mixed

In a medium sized bowl sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder

Add the dry mixture to the wet in stages between mixing until dough is dense; not too soft or too hard

>Hint: The recipe calls for 2 to 2 & a half cups of flour so you can decide the consistency of your dough. More flour will vield a crunchier harder biscuit. Adding less flour will have the cookies melt and spread from the butter content. Place the dough on sheets with this in mind.]

Mix in the 'magical bag' of butterscotch chips

Spoon the mixture onto cookie sheets with a teaspoon

Place in oven for 10 minute or until golden

Remove from oven and rest on a cooling rack, for as long as you can, before scoffing one down!

Recipe #24: Marshmallow Filling

Use this sweet mallow between chocolate layer cakes or as lava flowing from a volcano as I did for Declan’s 8th birthday cake. It's way better than the store bought Fluff®

Ingredients:

1½ cups sugar

½ cup marshmallow [5 large]

½ cup water

2 egg whites, beaten stiff

Instructions:

Place sugar, water and marshmallows in a pan and heat to 215˚ F.

Continue stirring as it boils.

>Hint: Using a spirtle to stir hot sugar will be safer than a spoon as there is less surface resistance. *See spirtle image below

With a teaspoon, take a little of the syrup and drop slowly into cup of cold water. Repeat this until the drops stay solid in the water. When the sugar drops from the spoon into threads, it is ready. Remove from heat. Wait one minute while stirring.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks.

With a spoon, add the warm mixture gradually into the mixer [on high speed setting] while beating whites of egg. Continue beating until the filling is smooth and firm. [Be careful not to pour too much hot sugar into the egg white as you may cook the egg.]

Let cool off and spread between layers of cake or drizzle onto a graham cracker and cover with melted chocolate.

Spirtle & Spoon

Recipe #23: Italian Sausage

Joan has made sausages once in my recollection. They were fine but too much work for the amount of sausages that were produced. So she now buys them at a local Italian butcher. Making sausages is a trial and error exercise. You get better with practice.

People think you need to add filler like bread crumbs etc. to reduce fat but that will create a solid log and will not be too nice to look at nor eat.

Sausage making is a messy business. Always wash your hands or wear latex gloves to protect everybody you feed from germs.

Good luck!

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh pork shoulder have your butcher cut it in cubes [should be 40% fat to 60% meat]
1/4 cup of parsley,

2 teaspoons salt,

1 teaspoon sage { ? may be a wee bit strong}
1/2 teaspoon black pepper.

1 tablespoon anise seed ground with mortar and pestle

Cup of red wine to taste

2 yards of sausage casing.

Instructions:

Grind pork pieces into a large bowl

Add parsley, sage, salt, ground anise, pepper and a cup of wine.

Mix and refrigerate for about 3 and a half hours.

>Hint: Add black pepper, chilli pepper {to taste} also try adding sea salt to the anise seed in the mortar & pestle before grinding it altogether.

Prepare the casing:

Slip one end of casing over faucet and let warm water run through

Rinse casings well in several changes of warm water or white vinegar.

Let casing soak in warm water for 30 minutes till supple.

Feed mixture through sausage making device at a pace you can remain in control of sausage shape.

This makes about 8 big sausages so try it and then you can experiment with the seasonings.

Garlic maybe???