Cherry & Walnut Cookies

I have to confess, I haven’t been doing much baking lately. I’d fallen into the bad habit of picking up 2 for $4 packets of biscuits from the supermarket for the kids just so I had something in the house for them. Most days they’d have crackers and cheese or a couple of bikkies and a glass of milk. Mother guilt had set in and I’d beat myself up for it. Now, I realise it got me through a bad patch and after all is said and done, $2 is a pretty good price for a packet of biscuits but I don’t believe you can get that same taste as you can from a homemade biscuit.

Looking for inspiration, I dug around through the basket filled with dried fruit and nuts and grabbed the small packet of glacé cherries and a small

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amount of walnuts left in a packet. Cherries and walnuts are perfect together. I used the usual biscuit recipe I love so much given to me by my friend Claire in Tasmania. Just mix dry, mix wet and mix together. Melt and mix. That’s my kind of recipe. Even Miss Fusspot ate these. If she knew there were cherries and nuts in them, she’d freak. I told her the little red things were lollies.

Cherry & Walnut Cookies

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup plain
flour
185g butter – melted
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup glacé cherries, chopped finely

1/4 cup walnuts, chopped finely

Preheat oven to 160 deg C. Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet
ingredients. Mix together. Bake for approx 15 mins or until golden.

Apple, Cherry & Walnut Crumble

This Apple, Cherry & Walnut Crumble (Crisp) wasn’t really planned as it’s not exactly crumble weather in Brisbane at the moment. Something we usually like to keep for our cooler winter nights but I had some Granny Smiths lurking plus a half jar of Morello cherries waiting to be used up. I added the walnuts to the crumble mix and there was dessert for tonight.

You can use any fruit you like; peaches, apples, pears, cherries, nectarines, plums, pineapple, mango, bananas, whatever you like. My crumble mix is usually a bit of this and a bit of that. No real quantities and I like to use a nut of some sort in the crumble for a bit of extra http://radicore.org/fud/index.php?t=usrinfo&id=4352& crunch. I choose a nut that will compliment the fruit.

Apple, Cherry & Walnut Crumble

5 Granny Smith apples, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 cup Morello cherries, drained
1 tbs caster sugar

Crumble Mix:
1/2 cup plain flour
2 tbs butter
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped finely

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Mix apple and cherries together, sprinkle sugar on top and put into a greased ovenproof dish.

Mix butter into the plain flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in other ingredients and place on top of the fruit. Bake for approx 20 mins or until golden. Serve with ice cream, cream or custard or all three!