Marie Cookpad

  The recipe I am sharing with you today comes from an old Waitrose Cooking Pamphlet from 2009.  I was still working at the Manor when I picked this up at the shops.  I always had it in my mind to bake these and I can't believe it has taken me ten years to do so!   Crisp and buttery these delicious shortbread fingers get their lovely peppermint flavour from the use of crushed strong mint candies.    You put the  candies into a food processor, or spice grinder and grind them into a powder.  You won't be able to grind them totally into a powder, but if they are mostly powdered with a few tiny bits, that will work fine.   The short bread dough itself is made totally in the food processor. You simply tip the flour and cold butter cut into bits into the bowl of your food processor and blitz.   You want the mixture to resemble fine dry bread crumbs. Once you have that then its time to tip the ground peppermints and a small quantity of sugar in...

  I've told you about my friend Leona many times before.  She has figured large in my life and is one of those lifelong friends that we all love and cherish.  She is the same age as Todd, which makes her about 80, so a fair bit older than myself, but as in love, age is only a number.  We hit it off from the start and still do.    I have had many women in my life who have influenced me culinarily speaking and Leona was one of them.  She may not know it, but she taught me a lot through the years and shared a lot of really delicious recipes with me that were old family favourites in her family.  (She is from New Brunswick, and I am from Nova Scotia.)  Wee are both maritimers, which is probably a huge part of the reason we gravitated towards each other in the first place.    There is always a special kinship which is shared amongst Maritimers.  The Maritime provinces have traditionally been some of the poorest provinces in Canada, ...

  What a miserable horrible lousy rotten day it is out there today.  Windy, rainy, cold . . .  but at least its not snow!  In any case the lighting for my photos is horrible, but I hope you don't mind too much, and that it won't deter you from making one more holiday square for your cookie trays!    Its an old, old Maritime Recipe from back home.  You will find it printed on the pages of many a community or church cookbook. This is a pretty regular bake for most family celebrations over the holidays.   Its a pretty basic batter . . .  a  Blondie type of bar, but with white sugar instead of brown . . . but it bakes up dense and chewy . . . .    It is filled with lots of glace cherries.  I have used a mix that I was able to get which had golden, dark and light red and green cherries.  Jewel like!  You could use maraschino cherries if you can't get the glace ones.   Whichever cherries you use, rinse them well a...

  I wanted to make something special for the children of our Ministering brothers (father and son, church thing)  for Christmas.  They are always so good at visiting us.  When Todd   had his cancer and was going through treatments, the children came over to us one night and had made him cards and had some cookies they had baked for him along with some cards they had made.    They are a lovely family.  Their dad was coming over yesterday to pick up our tropical fish which we have re-homed with them and so I thought I would make them some goodies to enjoy over the holidays as well.   I had seen melted snowmen bark all over the internet and so decided to make some for them.  It was really simple to make. You just melt white chocolate and spread it out on a prepped pan . . .  I used Dr Oetker white chocolate for bakers, broken into squares. (Melted in the microwave according to the package directions.)   Add halved mini peanut...