Cinnamon Cookies

I am lucky enough to be able to look after Grandma's recipe collection while I digitise them and as soon as I got them home I couldn't help myself, I had to make something. I let my husband have first choice from those that I had already typed up and he surprised me with by choosing the following recipe. I thought he would have gone for something chocolate, but no, he chose; Cinnamon Cookies.

These turned out wonderfully. Soft and a little chewy with a very subtle flavour. They were a different technique for making biscuits than I am used to as you roll balls of the mixture in a coating before baking, which, as we discovered, can give you very different flavours and textures depending on what you roll them in. A nice variation on this recipe is to use coconut and cocoa as the coating. 

Ingredients:

125g (1/2 cup) butter or margarine

185g (3/4 cup) castor sugar

125g (2/3 cup) brown sugar

4 egg yolks

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

185g (1 ½ cups) self-raising flour

125g (1 cup) ground nuts (almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Method:

Beat butter and sugars together until smoothly combined. Add egg yolks, milk and vanilla and beat well. Sift flour into mixture, then stir in until evenly mixed. Chill mixture, covered, until firm. Meanwhile, mix ground nuts with cinnamon.

Roll chilled dough into 2.5cm balls in clean cold hands. Roll balls in cinnamon-nut mixture until evenly coated. Place 5cm apart on lightly greased baking trays. Bake towards the top of a hot oven at 200°C for 10 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire cooling tray.

Makes approx. 60

The beginning...

My Grandma has been in a nursing home for a few years now, but I can still vividly remember her and Grandad's place, with its sprawling back yard full of vegie patches and mango trees. Of walking into the kitchen and having huge cooked lunches with mountains of potatoes; both baked and mashed at once!! Her potatoes were my absolute favourite, and I don't think I'll ever taste any as good again. Of afternoon teas with cakes and biscuits and scones... oh the scones!

I think its clear to say that a lot of my memories from their place and my childhood times spent there revolved around food. Of family meals. So to be able to read and record and cook some of those recipes, is something I am very excited to do.

This blog is where I am going to collate these recipes and I am hoping to cook as many of them as possible as well.

I am going to leave this first post though with 2 photos. The first is of the cookbooks and recipes from my Grandma and the second is of Grandma and Grandad and myself a few days before my wedding.