Evening everyone. I know you have all been dying for updates on my vegetable growing. Well. I’ll tell you about them but no close ups. Going to save that exciting nugget for my next post, mainly because I’m now selotaped to the couch and have no intention of leaving it till I go to bed.

I’d like to start by ruing the day I searched for vegetable growing hacks. I could have used that hour for other things but on the other hand I’m sad I didn’t watch them earlier. Amazing. On foot of these I have planted strawberry seeds harvested from the fruits themselves and planted them in the little plastic punnets you buy them in, I’ve planted a pineapple (super excited about that one) and I’m bringing my leeks back to life (you can have one close up).

I was fleeced by the fecking seed sellers for my tomatoes though. 3.60 for the pack. Pretty standard until I realised there were ten seeds in the pack. Ten. Ten poxy seeds. Regardless I planted six. Only four have germinated. Not cool lads.

That’s probably enough about my horticultural exploits. For now.

My world does feel small. This post is underlining it. Urgh.

Anyway, I thought I’d teach my boys how to be useful little humans. They’ve been doing a few chores; pairing socks, setting the table, cleaning their room all the usual but I thought I’d really let them bake something. Really bake something. So like the post title says, I lowered my standards. Lowered them right down. I accepted that whatever we made it wasn’t going to be perfect. But in fairness to the lads they did way better than I expected. I weighed the ingredients and spaced the biscuits more OCDly but other than that they did everything.

They made chocolate crinkle cookies. Good and soft and not too sweet. I’m not going to lie though. They aren’t going to cure this pandemic, they’re not even crazy chocolatey but they look great, taste perfectly good and you can genuinely let the kids make them. You don’t even need any fancy equipment just a couple of bowls and a big spoon (a whisk too if you have one).

This recipe makes about 40 little biscuits.

Cocoa powder                   60g

Caster sugar                      200g

Vegetable oil                      60g

Eggs                                     2

Plain flour                          180g

Baking powder                  1 teaspoon

Icing sugar, enough to roll the cookies in

Preheat your oven to 170C and line a baking tray with baking parchment.

Get two mixing bowls, a whisk and a spoon and all your ingredients ready to go.

Into your first bowl measure in the cocoa powder and sugar. Stir a bit.

Pour in the oil. Stir or whisk it together.

Crack in an egg and beat.

Crack in another egg and beat.

In your second bowl weigh out the flour and baking powder, stir.

Now tip the flour into the first bowl and mix it together to form a very soft dough.

Boom. Cookies pretty much made. And yes Daithí they are gooey.

You can pop it in the fridge for a short while to make it easier to work with. Needless to say we did not do that.

For the rolling stage it’s easier to start a little production line. Someone portioning the dough. Someone rolling the dough. Someone dusting the balls. The following video is perfect. It makes me happy.

So. Put a couple of handfuls of icing sugar in your now empty flour bowl.

Pinch off large marble sized lumps of the dough and place on a plate. Do this till there is nothing left. That’s a sad sounding sentence.

Anyway, next person has to pick up each dough lump and roll them to form a ball. Through your balls in the icing sugar bowl.

Shake them around to coat them all over and place them on the baking tray.

They don’t spread a crazy amount so you can get quite a few on a tray.

Into the oven with them for 9mins. You’ll be impressed that they actually have worked and look lovely. They’ll firm up a little as they cool and they keep for ages. In fact these wee wonder biscuits almost get nicer the longer you leave them. Within reason.

Keep well.