Honey Tea Cakes

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
1 cup honey
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon each baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each ground ginger
maybe some nutmeg?

Instructions:
* cream the butter, then beat in the honey a bit at a time.
* beat in the egg and the vanilla.
* (sift and) mix the remaining stuff in.
* cook in an oven that doesn't hate you.

Probably would work better as a whole cake in some sort of loaf tin than in a muffin tray like I made them in.

Lemon, Lime and Mint Sorbet

Ingredients:
* 2 cups water
* 1 1/2 cups sugar
* 3 cups lemon and lime juice
* some chopped mint

Making:
Dissolve the sugar in the water, heating in a saucepan. Add the mint, if you want. Mix it all together, freeze, stirring now and then.

Notes:
I'm not sure about the water:sugar:juice ratio. Perhaps it'll be different next time. I also put in a bit of spearmint tea, just because it was there.

Leek and Potato Soup

Ingredients
* potatoes
* a leek
* some onion (I used two, but I sure do dig that onion)
* olive or canola oil
* chicken or vegetable stock

Instructions:
* chop up the onions and sautee them in the oil until they turn clear.
* chop the potatoes and the leek into smallish bits, and add to the onions.
* add a bunch of water and the stock.
* boil until all the bits go soft and start to disintegrate.

I mashed it up with a potato masher thing once the vegetables had gotten soft enough. If you find leek and potato boring, maybe some spices?

Nervous Gumbo

Ingredients:
(3 tablespoons) vegetable (I used canola) oil
3 tablespoons of flour
l large chopped onion
chopped capsicum
chopped carrot
chopped sweet potato
5 or 6 cloves chopped garlic
some string beans or something
half a thing of tomato paste
1 tin of tomatoes
2 - 3 cups water
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper or whatever seasoning you want

Instructions:
* cut up the vegetables into bits that you'd like to find in your gumbo (bearing in mind that it's meant to cook for, like, an hour and a half).
* Heat the oil in a big ol' pot, then stir in the flour. Stir it like you've never stirred before, until it gets all brown and you wonder if perhaps you've let it go too far.
* Chuck in the onions, capsicum, sweet potato, and garlic. Keep stirring and cooking until the onions go clear.
* Add the tomato paste, and stir.
* Throw in the beans and keep stirring over heat until it "goes crumbly or dry". Or until you get sick of stirring it.
* Tinned tomato goes in, and cook slowly on low heat for ever and ever and ever. Add the water, a little at a time, and stir ocassionally. This thing'll stick to the bottom like some sort of manta ray.
* Hey, remember to put in the sugar and the bay leaf, too. Also I put in some peri peri seasoning to make it a bit bitey.

Goes great with steamed or boiled rice. Also, maybe you should use the proper vegetables? Who knows?

Rum and Raisin Muffins

Ingredients:
1 cup raisins
1 cup (dark) rum (or less if you are feeling stingy. You only use about two tablespoons of this in the muffins)
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar
125g butter
200g sour cream (one little container's worth)
1 egg
some vanilla
some nutmeg

Instructions
* soak raisins in the rum (apparently you're meant to do this overnight, but who does that? I soaked them for maybe twenty minutes, tops.)
* whisk/mix sour cream, egg, vanilla and 2 tbs rum until smooth.
* if you can be bothered, cut the butter into the dry ingredients. If you can't be bothered, maybe beat the butter into the wet ingredients.
* ut the dry and wet ingredients together and carefully mix until almost combined.
* add the raisins, and mix a little bit more.
* divide into 12 muffiny things on a muffin tray, and cook the heck out of them in a moderately high oven for as long as you can wait.

Probably would go good with some butter.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
250(ish) g butter
1-2 cups of sugar, depending on how decadent you feel (half brown and half plain is nice)
1 or 2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups self raising flour
one of those bags of chocolate chips (maybe you could mix it up a bit, and do half dark and half white chocolate?)

Instructions:
* cream the butter and sugar in a big bowl.
* add the egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.
* mix in the first cup of flour with the electric beaters.
* carefully mix in the rest of the flour, a bit at a time (otherwise your arm muscles hurt or you get flour everywhere).
* mix in the chocolate chips.
* put teaspoon/desert spoon sized amounts on an ungreased baking tray. If you want to get fancy, you can roll the dough into little balls first, but you don't need to squish them down.
* cook in a moderate oven for as long as you want. They're quite nice a little undercooked, but they are also nice when they've been cooked until not quite brown.

Corn, Potato, and Roast Garlic Soup

Ingredients:
* onion
* butter
* corn kernels
* potato
* chicken stock
* basil
* paprika
* salt
* garlic
* olive oil

Instructions:
* cut onion into tasty morsels and saute in some butter until see through.
* cut some potatoes up into little bits and add to the onions.
* add some water and chicken stock
* chuck in the corn kernels
* bring up the boil and stir for a bit.
* add some (dried) basil and maybe paprika? Anything else you want maybe? Hey, maybe some chili would be good?
* roast the garlic cloves (with the skin on) with a little olive oil until they're gooey on the inside and fill your kitchen up with the smell. Hopefully, the soup will have started to thicken by now, as the potato gets mushy.
* mushy up the gooey garlic when you feel the time is right, and stir it round in the soup.
* serve with some cheese probably.

Worst Biscuits Ever (Inverness Biscuits)

Adapted from The CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints (36th edition), page 241.

Ingredients:
125g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 egg
some amount of rolled oats
(some amount of flour)

Instructions:
* Cream butter and sugar
* Add and mix in egg and vanilla
* Add a bunch of rolled oats and the baking powder to make a "dry mixture"
* Wonder what the heck is dry about the mixture. Panic. Add some more rolled oats.
* Realise that rolled oats are not very nice anyway.
* Grease a baking tray and put (a teaspoon of) mixture with plenty of room in between them
* Bake in an oven. For some amount of time.
* watch as the butter melts and starts to burn and the rolled oats sit there doing nothing
* Panic. Maybe add some more rolled oats.
* Add some flour.
* Re-grease the tray and put more teaspoon quantities on them. Fiddle with the temperature settings, and fret about the biscuits until they are a bit chewy and a bit burned.
* Whinge at your housemates until they eat some and pretend to enjoy them.

Biscuits keep until somebody eats them. Cuz it's not like they're gonna taste any worse in a week's time.

Nutty Wheat Rusks

Ingredients:
5 cups nutty wheat
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 t salt
3 T baking powder
200 ml margarine
2 cups buttermilk
3 eggs

Instructions:
* Melt margarine
* Beat eggs and add buttermilk. Mix dry ingredients. ADd buttermilk and eggs and melted margarine.
* Grease bread pans. Sprinkle flour on hands and roll into oblong balls (like sausage rolls), place next to each other in pan.
* Bake at 180C for 20 to 30 minutes and then separate pieces and dry out overnight at 100C. Close oven but leave slightly ajar.

Stuff I changed:
* I only made a half quantity of this.
* No idea what "nutty wheat" is so I just used wholemeal flour.
* They didn't have buttermilk at the shops, so I used "lite" cream instead.
* Instead of leaving it overnight, I left it for three and a half hours at around 110C.
* I used half white sugar and half brown sugar.

It actually worked out quite nicely. The buttermilk might improve the flavour a bit, but they're mostly okay.