It’s nice to be nice biscuits (and other nice things)

So… I have so much to blog about right now
that I’m managing not to blog about anything!

(Yup, that’s Zoë logic for you!)

So to get me back in the swing of things,
how about some baking?

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When we were in Japan, I got lots
of nice baking and ‘cooking’ stuff.

One of those things was a wordy biscuit kit.
(I’m sure that the exact translation!)

Since we got home, I’ve been waiting
for an excuse to actually use it…

(Does anyone else ever do that?
Buy themselves something nice
and then not allow themselves to use it?)

So on Sunday I thought wouldn’t it be nice
to bake some biscuits… for us. For no reason at all.

The biscuit on the front of the pack reminded me
of Nice biscuits.. which reminded me of
my recently re-found ‘It’s Nice To Be Nice’
print by Hazel Nicholls…

And so I made ‘It’s Nice To Be Nice’ biscuits!

(See all those letters… they had to be individually
taken apart. My thumbs were really raw afterwards!)

By the time I finished, I kept reading
this as “It’s nice to be mice”!

(Also it’s much harder to put letters backwards
into a holder to stamp on dough than I realised…
there were a few outtakes where the words
are round the wrong way!)

If you fancy making NICE biscuits,
the recipe we went with was:

100gm flour
40gm butter
1/4 tsp baking powder
50gm powder sugar
40gm desiccated coconut
8 teaspoons of water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 almond extract
sugar to sprinkle on top

Mix everything together to make a dough.
Roll out dough onto baking paper.
Put in the fridge for a few hours to firm up.
Then use a cutter to make biscuit shapes.
Bake until golden brown. Then add sugar on top.
Wait patiently to cool a bit before eating!

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So I said we also bought ‘cooking’ stuff?
That means sushi kits and some other random things…

Remember the perfect little pocket sandwiches
we ate in Japan? (They were number ’10 in my
10 things I love about Tokyo’!)
Well, we got a kit to make those too.

My other half has been making peanut butter and jam ones so far.
I may need to conduct some more ‘research’ into other
combinations soon… chocolate and banana maybe?

Oh and perhaps the craziest kitchen item we bought?

A bunny mould for boiled eggs!

I can never quite decide if these are cute
or just completely freaky… they’re
good fun to make though!

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Until next time… which hopefully won’t be
as long this time! (If you follow me on twitter
or instagram, you probably already know
there’s a future Barcelona post brewing!)