Recently at my weekly yoga class we held an informal 80th birthday party for a lady who attend regularly and is a great advert for the benefits of yoga, amazingly enough she had just returned from a month long tour of New Zealand too, so I for one will be carrying out practicing yoga as long as I can.
As part of the birthday celebration my contribution was a lemon meringue birthday, which I was pretty proud of (the base recipe being a Fiona Cairns recipe from The Birthday Cake Book), as our yoga class is a quaint country church hall I couldn't adore the cake with candles through fear of setting off the fire alarm, so I resorted to raiding the garden for suitable edible greenery and flowers. I plumped for the fragrant yellow day lily and freshly picked lemon balm leaves.
As the birthday cake was topped with blousey meringues I had a couple of egg yolks left over so I came up with this recipe which is takes it inspiration from several sources, a Gino D'Acampo recipe for sultana cookies from Italian Baking and a lemon drizzle biscuit from Biscuit by Miranda Gore Brown.
What you need
- 85g butter - softened (needs to be very soft)
- 115g caster sugar
- 2 egg yolks - left over from the meringue making
- Couple of drops of Fiori di Silica essence (from Bakery Bits)
- 175g plain flour - I used gluten free
- 50g fine cornmeal
- 85g dried cranberries - drained after being soaked in warm water for 20 minutes or so
- Pre heat the oven to 180c
- Mix all the ingredients except the cranberries in a mixer , until you have a course dough
- Add the cranberries to the mix and just incorporate until the mix comes together
- Take walnut sized lumps of dough and roll into balls, place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment and flatten slightly
- The mixture makes approximately 18 - 20 cookies
- Bake for 15 -20 minutes until golden
- Cool on tray for a few minutes before carefully removing o a wire rack to cool fully
- Store in an airtight tin
We are linking up to Treat Petite this month - the theme being Lets Get Fruity ! created and co hosted by Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer, as the resultant cookie is very fresh and fruity.
And also to Bake of the Week over at Casa Costello , which is a challenge for all things baking....
