Cooking recipe books

Cantuccini are almond and aniseed biscuits from the Tuscany region in Italy. The recipe is from I talian-style cooking: the recipes of the Italian traditional cooking .   The biscuits are delicious and will keep for ages! Serves:  about 100 biscuits. Ingredients: 300g plain flour 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda 200g sugar 100g sweet almonds, whole (blanched  or with skin) zest of 1 orange 6 star anise, powdered pinch of salt 2 eggs 50ml milk 1 egg yolk Method: Sift the flour into a bowl and add the bicarbonate of soda.  Make a well in the center and add the sugar, pinch of salt, orange zest, aniseed powder and almonds. Break 2 eggs into it and mix well, adding a little milk if the mixture is too dry. I added 50ml milk. Divide the dough in 3 parts and form 3 strings as thick as 2 fingers together and place them in a non-stick baking tray. I had to break the strings to fit on the trays. Brush the strings with egg yolk. Bake in a 190°C oven for 15 min, then r...

I kid you not, this is a fantastic recipe. It tastes exactly as it should! The dough is a bit wet so not too easy to work with but worth it in the end.  I was sceptic about the small quantity of sugar but the extra sugar on top of the biscuits makes it perfect. I really love Darina Allen's recipes. Serves: 16 biscuits. Ingredients: 225g butter 110g caster sugar 110g plain white flour ⅛ tsp bicarbonate of soda 300g porridge oats (I have jumbo oats at home so that is what I used) 1 egg granulated sugar Method: Cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Sieve the flour and bicarbonate of soda together and gradually add into the oats. Turn onto a board sprinkled with oatmeal and roll out to a thickness of 1cm. I did not have oatmeal so improvised with plain white flour. It is quite a wet dough so work it as little as possible and flour the rolling pin heavily. Cut into rounds with a 7cm round cookie cutter. Glaze with egg wash and sprinkle with granulated suga...

As expected, the ginger nuts didn't last more than a week. Darina Allen's recipe was so good I decided to try another one of her recipe's in her ' Forgotten skills of cooking ': shortbread biscuits. They were very easy to do and are very tasty. Darina mentioned that depending on the butter used, the biscuits will taste British (salted butter) or French (unsalted butter).  I used my usual unsalted butter and as I tasted the first biscuit, I knew what she meant. Unsalted butter makes the biscuits taste like butter biscuits and less like shortbread biscuits. Must re-do this recipe with salted butter! Serves: 21 biscuits using a 5 cm pastry cutter. Ingredients: 175g plain white flour 50g sugar (Darina mentions caster but I used what I had at home: granulated) 110g butter milk as needed Method: Put the sugar and the sieved flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Gather the mixture together and knead lightly. The mixture was very dr...