Peanut Butter & Nutella Sandwich Cookies

I can't believe that it's the third week off Bake Off tomorrow and I haven't joined in with any baking this time around. I used to bake at least once or twice a week around the themes, but I guess that's how I came to put on half a stone each series! Thank goodness for kids who will quite happily eat my baking, especially at the moment when it doesn't happen very often.

It's bread week this week so I don't know how I'm going to resist the smell of freshly baked bread if I decide to join in, as it's so hard to stop at just one slice. Ohhh, why does the food that tastes so good have to be so bad. 

It was hard to resist one of these cookies when I took them out of the oven, but a little disaster put paid to that when I knocked a glass of water over the baking sheet and ended up with around half of the biscuits getting wet and looking like they had been dunked in tea for too long. Thankfully I managed to salvage enough for the photos, which meant there was one each for the husband and kids, and none for me, hurrah! You may also notice that some of the cookies are a little on the scorched side - this, I blame the oven for! The fan broke on my main oven a little while ago, and since then the heat distribution within the oven seems to be a touch on the unpredictable side, to say the least. I really should get the repair man out..

The cookie recipe calls for only three ingredients, making them extremely easy to make, and an ideal recipe to bake with children. In fact the first time I made these cookies I made them with my youngest when he was just two, and then last year I used the recipe to make Halloween spider cookies. This time I filled them with a creamy Nutella filling, which also had just three ingredients.

Sticky Chocolate Orange Flapjacks

Today I'm sharing another nice simple recipe that can be made with the kids to occupy them for a short while in the holidays. 

One made, the kids will then keep pestering you for a slice of flapjack whilst waiting for them to cool - take this opportunity to get them to help with a few chores around the house!

Chocolate & Banana Pinwheel Pastries

School holidays are a time when the kids eat us out of house and home. They seem to be always hungry and as they all get up a different times here, the kitchen is being used constantly to prepare food. Despite having plenty of food in the fridge and cupboards they're always complaining that there's no food, yet what they really mean is that there's no 'instant food', apart from toast, cereal & fruit, which they live off mostly when they have to fend for themselves.

These pinwheels can almost be classed as 'instant food' as they take very little time to prepare. They're also pretty simple to make so the kids can make them by themselves, and as the recipe makes so many of them there may even be enough to last a couple of days!

Enjoy a couple of these for breakfast with your morning cuppa, have a couple more with your picnic lunch, and then finish off the day with a couple of warm ones with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Easy Peasy No knead Hot Cross Buns

Easter falls a few weeks later this year than it did last, which means that we have a bit longer to stock up on all the Easter chocolate and baked goodies in the shops. Hot cross buns are an Easter treat that I enjoy perhaps even more than chocolate, and as the kids love them too we get through packets of them over the Easter period. The first time I made my own hot cross buns was at school, during one of the many dreaded cookery lessons. I wasn't at all bad a cooking but that teacher put the fear of god in us if we didn't scrub those pans until they were like new, so I'm surprised that I didn't get put off for life. Whilst I do enjoy making bread, it's definitely only for those days when you have a bit of time on your hands, so I'm always searching for short cuts and ways to make the process easier. 

A few years ago I discovered Focaccia making, which involves barely any effort at all to produce an amazing tasting loaf. I then adapted the recipe a little and came up with a Cinnamon Apple Focaccia, which was equally as good as its garlic & rosemary predecessor. This got me wondering if I could perhaps use the same basic recipe to make hot cross buns. I replaced the olive oil in the focaccia recipe with melted butter, and with the addition of dried mixed fruit and mixed spice, this delicious hot cross bun loaf was born.