Melt in your mouth jam sandwich biscuits...

There is something so insanely comforting about a jam sandwich biscuit. It's such an old school biscuit that believe me, something that has been around that long, has to tickle your taste buds. So, let's not try for a second to imagine that biscuits in a packet are going to taste anything like the ones you can make from scratch. The only real fiddley bit in making your own is the actually assembly of the biscuits. However, once I had a method to the madness it moved along quite easily.
So, first you start with your shortbread - 1 cup butter creamed with 1/2 cup icing sugar, then add a teaspoon of good vanilla extract, finally 2 cups plain flour. Mix until it comes together, shape into a disc and refrigerate for an hour. Once chilled, roll out and use your cutters to get as many biscuits as you can. Use smaller cutters to cut out centre pieces. Bake for 10 minutes. Once cooled, spread jam on the full biscuits. Sprinkle the cut out biscuit with icing sugar and sandwich on top. Devour shamelessly! Taking comfort in each bite...one is never enough!

A little bit of spice...vegetable curry puffs

Oh I adore ready made puff pastry...it opens up a plethora of baking opportunities. This evening I felt like something hot and spicy to pick me up so what better way than to pop some curry vegetable and potato filling onto a square of puff pastry. Fold it over, press down edges, cut a few breathing slits and into the oven. They're ready in about twenty minutes and are really best eaten on the day. A lovely satisfying savoury snack.

Easter morning breakfast of champions!

So what do you feed a hungry family on Easter morning? A breakfast of champions, of course. And what might a breakfast of champions be? Baked French toast with homemade blueberry syrup.
Baked french toast...so incredibly easy and so fabulously delicious. The real difficulty is not locking yourself in the nearest cupboard and devouring the whole tray of it yourself! The trick is to prepare it the night before and leave it in the fridge for the bread to soak up all the flavour. Pop it in the oven when you wake up and it will be ready in an hour. When it comes out try ad wait patiently for it to cool slightly before slicing a big square, spooning over your blueberry syrup and digging in. You really couldn't ask for a more satisfying morning treat.

Baked French toast

Half a sliced loaf of bread (I used regular sliced pan but the 'big slices' variety)
5 eggs
1.5 cups of milk
.75 cup of cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract
Freshly grated nutmeg

Cut up the bread slices into squares and squeeze them into a well greased baking tray. Don't worry too much about the placement just squeeze in as much as you can.
In a bowl, whisk eggs, milk, cream, vanilla and nutmeg.
Pour over bread and cover.
Leave overnight in the fridge.

Streusel topping
.5 cup flour
.5 cup dark brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
.5 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter

Put flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resemble coarse breadcrumbs.

Next morning, heat oven to 190c and sprinkle the streusel topping over bread. Pop in the oven for an hour.
Take out and devour shamelessly...you deserve it (especially if you gave up sweet things for Lent!)

Blueberry syrup

1 cup fresh blueberries
.75 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 tsp cornflour dissolved in some hot water

Put blueberries, sugar as water in a pot. Bring to the boil and simmer until blueberries are soft. Add dissolved cornflour to blueberry mix and stir until syrup has thickened. Pour generously!