Chocolate Chip & Cranberry Biscuits

 

The tins are always in need of sweet treats to fill them and these crumbly delicious biscuits are a favourite from Gran's book. You can make them twice the size for soft and delicious big treats (careful you don't eat the whole batch when you do this mind-you) or make small ones for little people's lunch boxes. 

INGREDIENTS

• 250g butter

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups self raising flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 150g chocolate drops
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries

METHOD:

Preheat the over to 190 degrees celcius. Grease a biscuit tray. 

Place the butter, sugar and vanilla essence in a food processor and mix together until creamy. Add eggs and beat in.

Add flour and cinnamon. Fold into the mixture with a spoon or spatula, then add the chocolate drops and cranberries and fold in. Place in spoonfuls on to the prepared trays, and bake for 12-15 minutes until golder brown.

TIPS:

Swap out the cranberries for walnuts, you can split the mixture in half and do two flavours in the same batch for some variety.

Enjoy xx

Homemade vegetable stock powder

Homemade stock powder is full of nutritous vegetables- and that's it. No added salt, MSG and goodness knows what else that comes in your store-bought stocks.  A great way to use up excess veges from the garden, you can change up the veges depending on the season and what you have on-hand but there are a few 'foundation' veges that need to be in there. Carrots add sweetness, celery adds savoury notes and the onions or leeks add the depth. Once you have those three in, then you can bulk it out with pretty much any other vege and herbs. In summer, zuchinni, tomatoes and capsicums all work well.
Thanks so much to my lovely friend Gemma for sharing this recipe (and a joy of dehydrating things) with me!

INGREDIENTS

• 400g carrots, unpeeled

• 400g leeks or onions
• 300g celery, use the leaves too
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups mixed fresh herbs (such as thyme, basil, corriander, sage, oregano or marjoram)
• 2 Tblsp nutritional yeast
• 3 Tblsp rock salt (vary this to your own taste)

METHOD:

Wash and finely shred or grate the vegetables. The smaller everything is, the faster it will dry. Place all the vegetables and herbs onto dehydrator or oven trays. Dry everything at 60-70degree celcius. If drying in the oven, open the oven door occasionally to let the steam out. 

Once everything has dried completely, place it in a blender along with the nutritional yeast and rock salt. Blitz until it is a fine powder.

Store the stock in an airtight jar. Dried thoroughly it lasts for more than a year, and 1 Tblsp of stock powder mixed with 1 cup of boiling water makes 1 cup of vege stock for using in your recipes.

Enjoy xx

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash