I’ve been lucky. I’ll be lucky again.
~ Bette Davis
First up, before I announce the winner of my recent giveaway, it was so much fun holding it. I’m not usually someone to gush over gifts, though I do appreciate them when they are thoughtful/significant – but oh, when it comes to GIVING presents… I always love it!
I really enjoyed reading the comments you left on my giveaway post – thank you everyone for entering! I hope to hold something similar again soon, and please do enter again next time.
Tonight, I wrote all your names on little slips, and got my flatmate Matt to pick my lucky winner… drumroll… Beens! Congratulations!
Beens has just started her blog recently, and it seems so fitting to me now that she should have won the book so she can have a Kiwi-compiled cookbook on her bookshelf for her upcoming move to New Zealand ;-)
Also made some cookies (with Matt’s help in banging the almonds and chocolate into little pieces)… here is the recipe!
- Winter Warmer Cookies
Recipe adapted and modified from Smitten Kitchen
- Ingredients:
115g butter, at room temperature (or microwaved in 3 bursts of 5 seconds, then chopped into small cubes)
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground clove
1 cup quick-cooking oats
2 cups chopped almonds
1/2 cup cranberries (approximately – use your eyes to gauge quantity)
200g dark chocolate, chopped
- Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with foil and lightly grease it.
- Beat the butter in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla, and beat until well mixed, about three minutes. Stir in eggs, one at a time.
- Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove in a separate bowl. Add half of the flour mixture to the butter, mixing on low speed. Once the flour has been incorporated, add the second half.
- Stir in the oats, almonds, cranberries and chocolate chips. Drop the dough, by the tablespoon, onto the foil-lined tray and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and cool the cookies on a rack. I used the same piece of foil to bake all my batches.
- Yields plenty of cookies (more than 35… somewhere along the way, I lost count). Store at room temperature in a cookie jar or other airtight container.
treehousekitchen 
Zomg cookies! Those look absolutely amazing. Also, thanks for posting that draw – I was trying to think of a good pressie for my mum’s birthday, and I’d already given her like half the school cook books in Auckland, didn’t even think of Wellington until now. Cheers! :D
Once again, thank you!
I have an enormous pile of cookbooks that I have to leave behind, but I consider it a good omen that I haven’t even touched down and I already have a cookbook waiting for me!
Yum yum yum, I lurve craisins in baking! What’s the texture of the cookies like? Cakey? If you say cakey then that’s it. I have to have them. Now :)
Char – luckily there are South Island school cookbooks to target next ;-)
Beens – my pleasure!
Nessie – sort of crunchy then cakey, yes ideal indeed!