The Lazy Sunday Cookie

There is nothing quite like stepping out of the shower at ten past five on a Sunday afternoon and being greeted by the smell of cooling chocolate cookies. I think that's exactly what Sundays should be about.

Yes, I admit it, I did not get out of my pyjamas and dressing gown until after five pm today. And it was wonderful. I'm afraid the day just did nothing to encourage it. We did the hard stuff yesterday. We spent time in the garden, taking our lives in our hands skidding around on the wet slippery decking in order to re-mulch soil and clear up the winter carnage in the vague hope that it won't be long before we're planting and making new veg plans. Then N went out to see some dear friends who have been coping with much tougher battles, while I held the fort here.
It was a late late night, and so when we stumbled out of bed this morning, foraged for food (which seems be somewhat lacking this weekend - how can we have found ourselves without tinned tomatoes, olive oil, and bread in one fell swoop, along with the only vegetables in the house being celery (eurgh!) and a lone aubergine!) and guzzled enough tea to rouse us (thank goodness there is always milk and tea bags!) we discovered it was time for the match, and then it was time to make cookies, and then and only then, was it time for showers.

But the cookies, oh, the cookies! I have just polished off two with another cup of tea, and am worried that if I return for a tea top-up another couple of cookies might disappear. They were a whim. I was going to be good and not bake (yeah, right) and then I was going to be slightly good and make carrot cake, because at least that uses vegetables. But by the time I fished out the recipe and started poking around our cupboards I realised that we were missed more than a few ingredients, and suddenly grating carrots seems like too much effort.

So I decided to make some cookies. I have many many cookie recipes, and two are my standard "go to" plan depending on the specific type I am looking for (the first is a "cakey" plain cookie with chocolate chips, my second a more "cookie" cookie which will handle almost any addition and has a lovely almost caramely base). In the end I used neither. As I was admiring the mess of the baking cupboard a bag of hazelnuts caught my eye, and in a flash I was online digging out a Nigel Slater (who else?!) recipe I'd spotted last week.
They came together in a flash, baked in less time it took to throw them together, and boy did they smell (and taste) amazing. They are slightly crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. They are the epitome of the lazy Sunday. You still have time to make them, go on....

Soft Sunday Cookies (I am renaming them this as it seems very appropriate)

100g dark chocolate, melted
38g soft unsalted butter
112g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
vanilla extract
25g hazelnuts, lightly toasted and ground (coarsly, not too fine)
75g Self raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180C, line two baking sheets with either parchment or silipat stuff.

Cream the butter and sugar together, and then beat in the egg and a dash of vanilla extract. Then add the hazelnuts, flour and chocolate and combine well. If you're doing this in a mixer don't forget to scrap down the sides.

Place dollops of the mixture onto the baking sheets (I used about 2tsp dollops and got 14nice sized cookies) Bake for exactly ten minutes and then remove from the oven. Allow to rest on the sheets for about five minutes, until they stop being too soft to move, then carefully transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

They will be slightly chewy/crisp on the outside and nicely soft in the middle.

p.s. Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments about the marmalade. I'm so pleased that I might have inspired some people to have a go making it themselves. However, I'm probably not helping my business prospects as now everyone will be doing it no-one will buy mine, oops! Seriously though, I hope you're all having as much fun with it as I do. There will be more preserving to come believe me!

Peachy

I've become rather addicted to scones recently. I've started using them as my go-to breakfast option when we don't have any bread. I think it's because the cricket season makes me want high tea with scones and strawberry jam. There'll be plenty of time for that later in the summer, so at the moment I'm doing a bit of experimenting.

We don't have an indulgent breakfast every week, but probably once a month I decide it's time to celebrate a lazy Sunday with a spot of baking.

Another reason that I decided we should have scones was because I was desperate to try one of my newest jam recipes. Yes, it's that time again, I've started on the preserving kick! I had a flurry in January with the marmalade season, and then a few chutneys got tried, but then I tailed off a little. Partly because there is less fruit around at the tail end of winter, but mostly because I ran out of jars! However, good friends of ours recently - and very kindly indeed - donated their kilner and preserving jars to us. With two little ones now they rarely have time to watch children and boiling sugar, so things were handed over to me. How lovely is that!Remember I alluded to a big project coming up? Well this jam may well be part of it, and I wanted to test it, and more importantly I wanted the resident North London Kitchen taster to try it. What better way to do that than to have it on fresh hot scones.So I whipped up a batch of sour cherry and vanilla scones and we ate them in the sunshine topped with my new peach and mango jam. I'm not sure which went down better, the scones or the preserve!I won't share the jam recipe just yet, but I do recommend the scones. They are light and fluffy and a little too indulgent for breakfast, so call it brunch and no-one will notice!
Sour Cherry Vanilla Scones: Makes 4

4 oz of Self-raising flour
1 oz cold butter
3/4 oz sugar
1tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
handful dried sour cherries.
Cold milk.

Preheat the oven to 200C, line a baking tray.

Put the flour, sugar, soda and tartar in a bowl and combine. Then rub in the cold butter. Add the sour cherries, and then the vanilla, and enough milk to just make a dough (probably about a tablespoon, or a little more). Roll out the dough - but not too thin, as it won't rise much, so bare this in mind. I make mine pretty thick. Cut our four rounds. Place on the baking tray and bake for 1o mins. Rest for as long as you can hold out, then cut and top with your favourite jam.

Sunday pub lunches...

...are so deliciously lazy and indulgent.

Dedication to the cause (Or, bread and books)

We spent our lazy Sunday yesterday pursuing one of our favourite pastimes: buying books. There is something so wonderful about browsing in book shops, and I must admit that N and I do it very well indeed. So well in fact that seven hours can slip by with us barely noticing. Opps!

We returned to the flat very smug indeed with a bag full of lovely purchases, and the smell of secondhand bookshops lingering on our clothing. However, there was no incentive to cook (too many books to look at) and certainly no incentive to bake bread. We ordered a curry and settled down with the taped match in front of us and our newly acquired books littering our laps and sofa.

It was past half eight when we finished eating and I was so tempted to give in and just get some emergency store bought bread out of the freezer (we have three loaves in there from pre-baking resolutions which are agreed to be emergency loaves). But something in me just wouldn't give in. I knew we'd be going to bed late-ish and figured that bread would take a maximum of three hours with resting, proving and baking. So, with N ploughing through one of his new books and yelling match highlights at me down the flat I quickly threw ingredients into a bowl. Using the wonderful pecan and cranberry recipe (mentioned earlier somewhere in my bread making posts), as a guide I made a wholemeal nut and seed loaf using half pecans, half walnuts and a large handful of pumpkin seeds.

Since I know the proportions of flour, water, salt and yeast by heart now all I had to do was work out how much of the nuts and seeds to use (70g nuts, 30g seeds). I then left it to rest and prove as the recipe recommended and baked it for 40mins. By 11.45pm we had a lovely crusty new loaf ready for the morning and the smell of fresh bread to waft through the flat as we lay reading in bed.

It was great, and proves that a little dedication to the cause is always worth it. Books and bread, numbers two and three on my favourite things list.

Another successful lazy Sunday.