No Fuss Ginger Biscuits



My oldest son Johannes loves these, so he is happy to help.

 
 

 

Lately I have been visiting old recipes, looking for something simple from before chia seed, Rapadura sugar and gluten free. Not that I mind those ingredients at all, I use them too, but I just wanted old-fashioned and simple.  A crunchy sweet biscuits to put in lunchboxes as a treat. I found these ginger biscuits in an old cook book of mine. I have made them several times now; my kids love them and my colleagues love them.

 

 

 

I like them really thin and crispy; and for this I use the bread cutter that I have (I talked about it in this post Retro Kitchen)… but you can of course slice them with a knife. The recipe says to roll them into little balls and bake. I tested this, see picture to the left below, the left biscuit is sliced, the right biscuit is rolled. So depending on how you like your biscuit – choose your method.

 

Also you can replace powdered ginger with fresh grated ginger, one table spoon, to make them healthier.

 

Ginger Biscuits

Makes about 60

 

Ingredients:

250g wheat flour

125g butter

225g brown sugar

2 tbsp. powered ginger or 1 tbsp. fresh ginger finely grated

1 tsp. powered cloves

Pinch of salt

½ baking soda

1 egg

 

Directions:

1.       Chop the softened butter and flour together until it resembles breadcrumbs (I do this with a knife). Stir into the mixture the brown sugar, ginger, cloves, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl beat the egg and add this to your dough mixture. Now knead until you have an even dough.

 

2.       Decide how you want your biscuits. You can immediately roll them into little balls, place them on a baking tray and bake them in your oven. This gives you a thick biscuit. Or you can roll your dough into rolls/logs, wrap them in cling wrap and refrigerate them for 1-2 hours or so, or even freeze the dough for baking later. The ones I make are about 5 cm in diameter. If you want them nice and round you have to turn or roll the rolls of dough a few times while they are cooling, otherwise they go flat on one side. Once the dough rolls are hardened you can slice them to your liking.

 

3.       Bake in the middle of the oven at 200 degrees C/400 degrees F for 12 min or until edges are browned.

 

 

 

 

Tree Orchid

I just have to show you this. It is a tree orchid (don’t know the real name?) growing  in a Frangipani tree in our garden. Once a year it grows these long stems with masses of little white orchid flowers – it just happens… no help from anyone… and it is so miraculous to see. It only lasts for 2 weeks or so, and then the flowers are withered away again. This tree is also host to several other plants growing between its branches, and some pretty big spiders too, but none of them beat the orchid in loveliness.

 

 

 

We had up lights put underneath the two Frangipani trees. It looks like a resort when they are on at night.

 

xo Sarah

Sunday at the Beach

Today we drove 2 hours north to Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast. The sun was shining and the beach was amazing – water crystal clear and the sand soft and squeaking under foot! I still have to pinch my arm sometimes when I get to experience the beauty of nature here in Australia. Europe has some pretty stunning places and occasionally you can find a quiet spot to enjoy all by yourself. This is of course totally exaggerated,  but  Australia is just so breathtaking on a massive scale, and there is hardly anyone around! Just take a look at this beach. It is Sunday and school holidays, but still it is not crowded at all. Everyone is spread out I guess – it runs for miles.

 

Kids surfing on the sand

 

 

This Surf Life Saver is heading to work with his gear and his cooler bag. I wonder if he is thinking: "I really don't want to go to work today... or life's a beach"! They do a great job of keeping us all safe in the water!

 

 

Great things to do at the beach: play in the sand and eat ice cream! My boys Johannes and Elias (the two blondes) and their friend Jai.

 

When you are done with the beach, you can conveniently go and have a shower here - do you see the shower in the background... or does your eyes stick to the sign in the foreground like mine did... and then you decide to wait with the shower till you get back home....?

 

xo Sarah

 

 

Retro Kitchen

This is my bread cutting machine. It is an original from the 1970’s, and it is still great for cutting and slicing. I love it - I love that something old like this still functions, because it is so simple and sturdy!

It works with a handle that you turn manually, no need for plug-in power here. Attach it to the table, turn the handle and away you go. You can adjust the width to whatever suits you. I use it for the heavier breads that I bake, I slice vegetables, but best of all I can use it to make wafer-thin crispy cookies. It is done by rolling the dough into thick sausages, put it in the freezer, take it out 1 hour before, then slice it while it is partly thawed and bake. Easy!

Ginger Biscuits

 When I was growing up, we always used this "bread machine" as we called it. Back then in the 70ties, there were only two kinds of bread, ryebread and white bread and not much variations over these two types. The bread was not sliced and therefore most households in Denmark, where I grew up, had one of these. One day I was slicing some salami and my little brother Simon came over and stood beside me. As soon as I had cut a slice of salami he snatched it and ate it. I now did what most big sisters would do (?!); I took the salami and hit him hard over the head… and he went all wobbly and almost fainted. Knocked out by salami! Sorry Simon!

xo Sarah

Refreshing Rain

After months of dry skies, we rejoice to the sound of heavy rain drops. Well, maybe not all around Brisbane, because in some places they got 400mm in one night and flooding. When it rains here it really rains!

After such a long time, the freshness of first rain on the garden is such a pleasure to observe and to smell. The plants, they must really be loving it too! It is not easy to keep a garden here, unless you choose an all native garden. I like native gardens (a bit prickly maybe), but I also like to grow some vegetables. I love picking my own stuff out of the garden for cooking, even if it is only herbs… and picking flowers.

It seems like the year is split into two seasons only: a dry season and a wet season and it is basically never cold here. During the dry season, you can only keep your garden alive by remembering to water, during the wet season everything explodes and grows a 100 miles an hour! Coming from Denmark, where it is unusual, if there is a hold up of rain for a day or so, it is a strange experience to actually miss the rain and when it rains, even though it is warm, I still feel like snuggling up inside with a cup of tea – how strange - it must be remnants from dark and cold rainy days back home.

 

It is great to have our pool and water tank filled once again. The water tank supplies water to the garden, our washing machine and the toilets - I love it!

xo Sarah

Through Nora's Lens

Studying blog-advise on the net, I have learnt that good images are everything. With the camera I have available at the moment, this is only wishful thinking. But take a look at these wonderful images! I had invited my friend Nora over for lunch. She brought her new top notch Canon camera along and we were going to catch up while doing a few shots of my stuff and having a healthy lunch at the same time. Multitasking mums, or so we like to think...

Nora is a very talented photographer; I was blown away when I looked through the images she had taken. They are so beautiful! I was baking some bread for us, so Nora took some shots of that and of embroidery and more… I won’t put them all in this post. I hope you like them too.

xo Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Garden in Lindved

 I decided to send some “flowers” home for my dad’s birthday. Flowers, that he can enjoy looking at, when the garden is all frozen during winter - in a frame on the wall.

 

 

 I used natural unbleached linen, my favourite background material for embroidering. The colours are pastels with a bit of pang mixed in.

 

 

 

 

The dandelion-type flower turned out really well. I mixed one string of metallic bronze coloured thread with a dusty pink for the "petals"... and I just love the texture of the French Knots in the centre. I will definitely use this design again.

 

 

My dad is a garden wizard. He can make anything grow. I send him seeds from Australia and he  manages to grow them into flowers and trees in the much cooler climate of Denmark.  My mum helps him make it happen and they both enjoy the short summers in their blooming fruit and veg producing garden. There are no rules in this garden all plants are welcome and are mixed in between each other, that is what is so great about it, layers and layers of colours and textures. Have a look at the pictures below. I took these when I was home in August last year. It was a beautiful, mysterious early misty morning. The colours of the Dahlias were glowing in the mist. It was a very special experience. 

 

I love this misty view from the back of my parents garden. What a lucky capture with the camera of my IPhone.

 

The colours!

 

This Dahlia flower is as big as a dinner plate

Real Flour Real Bread

 



Thank you to Satori Organic Café for supplying me with the best quality organic flours including stoneground organic 100% rye flour – now I can bake at my hearts delight (and for a happy family/friends!). Pure rye flour is really hard to come by in Australia, it is not a staple at the supermarkets around here and it is sooo expensive in health food stores. I bake (almost) all our bread, so price does make a difference. But more than that I really appreciate knowing what I feed my family e.g. real bread and not the typical plastic-wrapped square loaf of yeast-pumped and absolutely no-fibre cottonwool-type-bread from the supermarket. When I know every single ingredient that is in the bread I am happy – it makes my day… and when putting those few simple ingredients together and pulling a beautiful and super healthy goodie out of the oven – simple happiness of creation, thank you very much! That’s my kind of bread.

xo Sarah

PS. I'll post some recipes soon....

 

 

 

Tranquil Forest

The pond at the Tree House Hideaway.

 

The creek at the Tree House Hideaway

 

We spend a weekend with friends at the Tree House Hideaway at Yandina on the Sunshine Coast. It is the most tranquil place you can imagine; the house is situated in the middle of Mapleton Forest Reserve on 10 acres with a creek running through the property, waterfall and all. No sound of cars, just birds!

 I had baked a sour-dough bread to take up there and Jules and I took this "afternoon tea" photo on the veranda overlooking the gardens. Mark and Jules, who own the property, have done such an amazing job of restoring the house and surroundings. It is such a serene setting... oh and the bread was nice too.

 

On Sunday morning, before everyone got up we went for a walk in the forest.

 

 

 

 The light of the early morning sun through the trees was beautiful.

 

Left side is green and lush, right side has been burned off.

The council had recently been doing some burning off to keep the danger of bush fires down before summer. It was interesting to walk through the burnt parts, where all the undergrowth was blackened and ashes.
 

 

 

 

 Here a log had burned out completely and only left a shadow of ashes.

 

 

Towering gum trees.