Night baking

I woke in the small hours and couldn't get back to sleep so made a cup of tea and read for a bit. This usually sends me back to the Land of Nod in due course. This morning it didn't so I thought "More tea, and maybe a biscuit" then, realising there were no biscuits worthy of the name for my current requirements–digestives just don't cut it sometimes!–I decided to get up and make some.

Gansey jumper on over the PJs, beanie on head, socks, slippers, and off I went downstairs at 0330. For years I've followed a very good ginger biscuit recipe, by a Mrs Ruth Boyer, which is to be found on page 138 (you can tell that page of my copy has been opened a gazillion times) of Yorkshire TV's Farmhouse Kitchen recipe book published in 1978. This time I decided to modify it by swapping the ginger for ground goriander seed and cinnamon and by adding dried cranberries and white chocolate chips. My favourite supermarket-baked cookies are white choc chip and cranberry ones but shop cookies are never as good as home made ones, even when baked on site, it's just that I've never managed to replicate the chewiness. Tonight was the night to succeed!

So, with the oven heating up, by 0400 the beanie was pulled off and measuring/mixing was under way. Although the recipe says the biscuits take 20 minutes to bake, in our fan oven they only took 10.  The recipe says it makes 40 biscuits. I made 38. I have scoffed two and drunk another cup of tea. If it were not still dark I'd be outside hedge hacking. By the way, the Boggy Brae midges are still biting! Fortunately there are not many and they seem to be an effete generation so their bites are not causing much itching.

Another by the way, particularly for relations should they be reading this, that red spot beyond the table is a felt leaf patch on a heavy quilt made out of old trousers of mine, with old brushed cotton shirt fabric for backing and a cotton bedspread for wadding. The chair belonged to my maternal grandma. Yesterday I was at the funeral of the grandma of one of Toadlet's school friends so grandma thoughts are rising.