Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies – Lime Flowers

In terms of sheer quantity, there's nothing I bake more than cookies. Or as we call them in Oz…biscuits or biccies. While I love baking all types of desserts, with just the 2 of us in our household, it’s very hard to finish off a whole cake or tart in 1 or 2 days when it’s nice and fresh. Ok, so it might not be THAT hard…but we’d need to call in the Fat Controllers pretty fast! And so, this is where biscuits fit in perfectly. They have a longer shelf life & are so versatile:

• sometimes the dough can be frozen so you can whip up instant biccies;
• they make handy thank-you gifts when friends & family have us round for dinner/celebration;
• they have a low-guilt factor when you just need a sweet little treat to lift your spirits in the afternoon (assuming you limit yourself to 1 or 2);
• fabulous with a cup of tea;

….well, the list could go on!

So this last Christmas saw the purchase of the Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies magazine. This is my new best friend – it’s serious biccie heaven. I saw it at the newsagency one week but didn’t buy it; when I went back 2 weeks later it was no longer on display…a mini-panic ensued within until the newsagent brought a copy for me from out the back. Phew! The newsagent said to me ‘There must be something in there you really wanted to make’ – such was the look of relief on my face!

It’s a great mag – I love the pictorial index for each biccie & there are over 100 recipes, split up into categories like “Soft & Chewy”, “Crisp & Crunchy”, “Light & Delicate” (my current fav), “Cakey & Tender”, "Rich and Dense" etc etc. I’ve barely made a dent in the recipes having only made 4 different ones…it is seriously overwhelming trying to decide which ones to bake!

Over the weekend, I made the “Crisp & Crunchy” Lime Flowers to take to some friends who had invited us over for dinner. This was the second batch I had made, as I had frozen half the dough a couple of weeks ago as they made a lot of biccies. They are quite moreish – buttery, sweet, crisp & crunchy like Martha says with a lovely lime tang. Mmmm. So the dilemma now is…do I bake these again or do I go for one of the other 100+ recipes?? N