and it continues...

so i figured the last week has been a slow but steady build to what tonight had in store... bake off to end all bake offs. i even gave myself an edge by having a quick nap after work. i had been sourcing recipes from various places for a while, i had post-it-ed magazines and cookbooks, copied recipes from websites. ingredients had been bought and were waiting in the pantry and fridge, i was all set.

i even read the recipes before i began. i know, what is with that? i knew that i had to leave one mixture to firm in the fridge for an hour, another half hour. i had a few eggs (not balls) in the air this night.

i took a recipe from the sbs magazine feast, the december edition because it had all these international tidbits on the cover. i decided to try the russian spiced biscuits or pryaniki. those are the ball shaped biscuits with meringue and drizzled chocolate on top.

next to the pryaniki are peanut butter kisses. that recipe came from a long-stalked website called bakerella which usually designs amazing cake pops (which i also have a book for and will bake some up one day). anyway, you bake the peanut butter biscuit and as soon as you take them out of the oven you press a hershey kiss chocolate into the centre and the bottom melts. i had one about 30 minutes after i had done this and nearly fell over it was so delightful.

my big disappointment for the adventure were the lemon and almond cookies. these came from the december donna hay magazine (again because of the christmas cookie cover). i was so looking forward to those and i have no idea what went wrong. i will be seeking advice from a friend at work tomorrow, as she used to be a chef.  check the pics out below....

they should look like this...

and it looked promising before they went in the oven...

but when they came out they were like this... eeeeeek!!!

so there's no way they're going near anyone, but they taste delicious. honestly, i need to work out what went wrong because i could live off these biscuits they are so divine. ha!  

but onwards and upwards. that was the last of the oven usage. it was time for coconut ice from the frankie magazine book sweet treats.

the coles magazine christmas edition provided the recipe for christmas chocolate bark.

i had a little bit of chocolate left over so for the gluten-free i dipped some strawberries.

and that was my evening. exhausted now. must sleep again. just realised there was no time for dinner.