Christmas Spice Biscuits

Christmas is one of those times where everyone seems to loves tradition and that includes a lot of the treat foods you associate with your own childhood festivities. I still remember the year my clever and creative sister made a gingerbread house which took pride of place on the china cabinet. Mum always made the Edmonds cookbook Belgium Biscuits which we stuck together with homemade jam and had a lot of fun icing. I have done it with my own children and still do- even thought they are all grown up. The smell of the cookies baking definitely brings back good memories for me and I hope they do for you.

This is my version of the classic Belgium Biscuit recipe.  It is a double size so you get enough done in one session to make some for your tins and some to give away.  I prefer a slightly crisp less cakey biscuit so have only one egg and 1 tsp baking powder in this recipe. This should make 4 trays of biscuits which you can either cook one at a time while you cut the next batch or double up in your oven.  Swap trays halfway through cooking if you do double up.  Traditionally the biscuits are either spliced together with jam and iced or iced individually. I suggest using a smaller size cutter for the double ones. 

Ingredients.

• 250g butter softened.

• 150g Brown Sugar

• 1 egg

• 4 cups plain flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 2 tsps cinnamon

• 2 tsps ginger

• 2 tsps mixed spice

• 2 tsps cocoa.

Method.

Turn oven on to 180CCream softened butter and sugar then add the egg and beat well.

Sift together the dry ingredients and add a 1/3 of the flour mix at a time to form a dough. If too soft add a little more flour. You don’t want it to be too sticky. .

Tip out onto a floured surface and bring together to form a firm dough.

Divide into 2. Form both into disc shape then wrap one in plastic wrap and pop in fridge until you are ready to roll.  Roll the other one to approx 3-4 cm thick.  Cut out shapes using your biscuit cutters.  Place on a cold tray and bake at 180C for 15 minutes or until cooked.  Gently transfer to a rack to cool.

While the first batch is cooking keep cutting the next one ready to go. 

When cool you can either decorate individually as a single cookie or put together with jam and ice the top one.  I use blackcurrant jam but any berry jam would work.

Icing

You can either ice with butter icing or royal icing or both! This year I iced the base with the butter icing then piped the royal icing on top. Others prefer royal icing which hardens into a more shell like texture.  Pipe around the shape first and then infill.  Have a cup of hot water handy to dip your spreading knife in to help spread the icing evenly.  Have fun decorating!

Butter Icing.

• 25g butter melted with a little vanilla essence.

• 1 cup sifted icing sugar

• A little boiling water to mix.

• Add drop of food colouring.

Royal Icing.

• 2 egg whites

• 2 cups sifted icing sugar

• Couple of drops of lemon juice.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks have formed. Add lemon juice then a ittle icing sugar at a time until smoothly combined. This will make your basic white icing. Divide into smaller bowls and add food colouring.

Allow icing to dry completely before packing away.  

Comfort Food

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so entwined that we cannot thing of one without the other.” M F K Fisher.  

“Soul food is our personal passport to the past.”   Sarah ban Breaknacht

Mmmm….comfort food!  It took me a while to find the right image for this post as I really wanted to put up an image of meat loaf with mashed potatoes and peas.  However, it turned out to be very hard to find one that looked glamorous enough to headline a blog and catch the eye (in a good way) so you’re getting this delicious image of a piece of lemon meringue pie that I had made a week or two ago instead.

Delicious home made lemon meringue pie

Comfort food can be a tricky area for those who are preoccupied with health or weight – particularly if you have developed disordered thinking around food. While food is not to be seen primarily as providing comfort when we feel bad – there is no reason not to enjoy comfort food from time to time.  The danger comes when we make it our go-to coping mechanism for dealing with uncomfortable feelings -even when we know the practice is futile. The trouble with using food to change our state from feeling sad, mad or bad, is that a lot of us spend a lot of time feeling sad, mad or bad, so we naturally end up living with the consequences of that behaviour including extra weight to carry. We add more pain to our state which then feeds back into that low mood state. It becomes an endless feedback loop.  Food in that context may be a comfort, but it’s a counterfeit comfort and a fleeting one at that.

The Tortoise Diet Method is about breaking that cycle by gently asking you to take the time to step back and take a look at why you are feeling the way you do.  Addressing and resolving the reasons behind your feelings and developing the behavioural skills to manage them is a key part of getting back to a life of wellbeing.

Once you do that, you can might even be able to get back to enjoying the pleasure of true comfort food!   The one that connects you to memories of childhood and the feeling of being surrounded by family, warm and safe. The sort of food you don’t really get at restaurants but more likely when you go home to visit mum or Grandma. It usually involves carbohydrate of some kind with a rich savoury sauce that doesn’t require much in the way of chewing even. Mince and mashed potatoes? Smoked Fish Pie? Meat Loaf? Lasagne? Can I get an amen? What’s your comfort food?

I learned a lesson many years ago my husband of the time brought home a big corporate client to visit at the end of the day. He was visiting from the US with his attorney and they had come out to our country house for a visit. I also had been out all day at work and when I saw how the visit was going, I could see that they would end up staying for dinner and I wasn’t really prepared for that. However I managed to rustle up something a bit flash and we all sat down to enjoy a meal together.  They had been travelling for some time and we were talking about food. About halfway through the meal, he put down his knife and fork and said “Do you know what I would really like to eat?” I waited for the answer.  “Meatloaf” he said.  Turns out he was tired of the endless hotel and restaurant dinners and wanted some good home cooked simple meatloaf. That was such a lesson to me but it did make sense.

There’s nothing nicer after a hard day’s work, especially if its cold outside, than to sit down to a plate of slow cooked goodness, rooted in good childhood memories, and lick that plate clean.  So don’t ever think that in order to be slim that you have to forgo all your favourite foods and replace them with lettuce. Enjoy those experiences and make sure you share them with your family. How much better to pass on good food memories to our kids rather than memories of associating food with fear and restriction. Balancing good nutritious food with the enjoyment of treat foods at times of celebration, family favourites and yes – comfort foods when required. Creating a healthy culture around food is one of the biggest gifts you can give to your children (along with a plate of savoury mince, mashed potatoes and peas)

Bonus Recipe!

Pauline Mackay’s Meatloaf

You will need a lightly greased loaf tin plus a nice ovenproof casserole dish to bake this in. Its a two step cooking process and involves a surprise ingredient in the sauce – but a very popular family favourite.

• 500g Beef Mince

• 500g sausage meat

• 1 cup fresh bread crumbs

• 1 onion chopped

• 1 dsp curry powder

• 2 eggs

• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

• ½ cup milk

• ½ cup water

• 1 tsp salt.

Get in with your hands and mix all the ingredients together.  Press into prepared loaf tin and bake in a moderate oven for 30 mins

Sauce

• ¾ cup water

• ½ cup tomato sauce

• ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce

• 2 Tbsp malt vinegar

• ½ cup soft brown sugar

• 1 Tsp instant coffee

• 2 tbsp lemon juice.

Combine all ingredients into a saucepan and bring to the boil stirring on the stove top. Simmer while the loaf is cooking.  Pauline often adds a bit more water to make sure there is plenty of sauce!

After 30 mins, remove the loaf from the oven and carefully tip into another casserole style oven proof dish – one you can serve it in if you wish. It should hold its loaf shape by now.   Then pour over the sauce and pop back into the oven to cook another 20-30 minutes.  Baste every 10 mins or so.

Serve with plenty of creamy mashed potatoes and maybe peas to complete the comfort food factor. And as a bonus, if there is any left over the next day it makes a great sandwich filling.

Note: I got this off my MIL and have since heard its written up in the CWI recipe book as well.

The passing of a special Professional Countrywoman

It’s been a while since I have posted on my blog – I have been MIA for a while this year and for good reason.  My lovely mother, an amazing archetypal Professional Countrywoman, passed away peacefully in April and I had the honour of helping with her last few months of care, along with my sisters and brothers.   She went a bit earlier than she should have, but peacefully all the same having had a long and fulfilling life. 

She was a little atypical of her generation having taken on a Pharmacy apprenticeship as a young woman, a career which she continued with later on in life while raising seven kids and helping with the farm.   She married the handsomest man to arrive at the Bible Camp which is where young women were meeting boys in her day, moved to the farm near Helensville on the South Kaipara, and went on to create a beautiful home and fill it with babies.  We even had Grandma live with us.

She loved antiques and beautiful fabrics and wallpapers and knew how to make all the soft furnishings. I remember her making loose covers for a whole lounge suite, wallpapering the very high stud walls of our old farm villa, even stripping back old kauri furniture for our dining table.  She could tan hides – not just ours (which she didn’t but probably wanted to sometimes!) – and break down a carcass.  One day the plunket nurse turned up one day to see one of the babies she regularly produced, to find mum presiding over a table full of freshly butchered cattle beast she was prepping for the freezer.

There are pictures of us three girls all wearing dresses she made for us, lined and beautifully made and matching the one she was wearing. We were all taught to sew as well and make our own clothes as teenagers.  She spent hot summer days preserving the fruit off the trees, or boxes of fruit from the local orchards. Always plenty of puddings with cream available for the winter. She could bake better than anyone and there was a lot of tin rattling going on after school as we raided the stash for afghans or yoyoes or chocolate slice.  Dinner was always at the table and there was always at least 10 around that table – often more.  Her hospitality was legendary.

We were encouraged to read widely of all the books filling up the book shelves, classics, mythology, good literature and anything from the local  library.  We were all expected to go to University – especially the girls.  Her one indulgence was beautiful country magazines.  Australian Home Beautiful, UK Country Living, NZ House and Garden, and more recently Australian Country Style and NZ Life and Leisure. She even had a regular order with Oamaru Paper Plus who would post her monthly order up to my sister’s house in Woodhill where Mum was mainly residing while receiving treatment through the Auckland Health system.

We absorbed it all without even realising it. I didn’t know I was interested in gardening but literally became one overnight – the day my brand new young Flight Lieutenant husband and I moved into an Airforce Married Quarter at Hobsonville, Auckland.  I haven’t stopped gardening and creating my own beautiful spaces for my own family since then, even though I now have a different husband and live on a different Island.  Most of my favourite furniture pieces have been generously donated from her collection and I am not parting with them.

Mum was a beautiful redhead in her day and that hair never went grey. It just faded like a rose that had just gone past its full bloom – fooling those who didn’t know her into believing she was younger than she was.  She had a young spirit and never lost her curiosity for life or her love for babies. She got to see her great-granddaughter, Elderflower, who entertained her on a final visit in April this year, and kept on the watch to see where the next one might possibly be coming from.

Then she was gone.  Surrounded by the family members who were there at that moment after a day or two of story-telling, laughter and music.  Life took its course and took her with it. She knew where she was going and it showed on her face right to the end.  It was as good as it could have been.

But it is sad. Really sad.

It still is. We all think she is still up the road and just a phone call away to tell her the latest thing that Elderflower said or the beautiful Pierre de Ronsard that has flowered into the frost. But that spirit of hospitality, generosity, curiosity, and the love of beautiful quality art, furniture, fabric and spaces lives on in her children, her grand children and I’m sure into the future.

She was my role model for a countrywoman: raising a family, gardening, cooking, working, travelling and most of all, being the matriarch and showing the way for those of us who follow.  Thanks.

Rest in peace Mum.

Post first published 11 June 2023