chaos

Chaos and hot weather - not a nice combination! We are moving in a week and a half, not too far, just a few streets down in fact, but the packing and organisation is still the same as a big move. Our lounge room looks like a cardboard monster threw up in it and my sewing room...let's not go there.

I am heading to Melbourne at the end of the month for a baby shower and I really wanted to have my present finished to take with me. So I can't pack my sewing machine, or the fabrics I need, which is fine - but now I have no room to baste the thing because the floor is covered in boxes! We get the keys to the new place late one afternoon, so I wonder if I can convince my husband that before we move in, that I need to use the wide open floor to baste my quilt??

I am a bit nervous about this quilt. I let my friend choose the fabrics as our tastes are so very different. As I was sewing the blocks together I started to get very worried, individually, some of them are not so pretty at all. However I am hoping (and crossing everything), that when they are all together that it will look ok.

Last night in the heat I decided it would be a good idea to do some baking. The apartment is still about 10 degrees warmer than it is outside, but I do have some beautiful salted chocolate cookies to show for it.

Craft room girls - these are for tonight!

World Peace Cookies

1¼ cups plain flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

½ tsp baking soda

155g unsalted butter, at room temperature (it really does need to be soft for this recipe as there are no other wet ingredients)

2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar

¼ cup sugar
½ tsp fleur de sel or ¼ tsp fine sea salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

140g dark chocolate, chopped

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder together. Beat the butter until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for another 2 minutes. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour just disappears into the dough- don’t be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly. Add the chocolate pieces and mix just to incorporate. Turn half the dough out onto a piece of cling wrap on the bench. Shape the dough into a log of 4cm in diameter. Wrap the cling wrap around the log and refrigerate or freeze for at least 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 160˚C. Using a sharp knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1 cm thick. (The rounds are likely to crack and break as you’re cutting them- don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds onto baking paper lined trays, leaving about 3cm between them. Bake for 12 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool.

recipe from Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan