See the pretty snowflakes . . .

Falling Snow

See the pretty snowflakes,
Falling from the sky;
On the wall and housetops,
Soft and thick they lie.
On the window ledges,
On the branches bare;
Now how fast they gather,
Filling all the air.
Look into the garden,
Where the grass was green;
Covered by the snowflakes,
Not a blade is seen.
Now the bare black bushes,
All look soft and white,
Every twig is laden,
What a pretty sight!
~author unknown


Welcome to Tuesdays With Dorie. Yes, that delish baking group that gets together once a week, every Tuesday of the week, to bake in unison the same scrumptiddlyicious recipe from that wonderful baking book, Baking, from my home to yours, written by the equally as scrumptious Dorie Greenspan! (Whew! that was a mouthful, no pun intended!!) This week's recipe was World Peace Cookies on pages page 138-139, as chosen by Jessica of Cookbookhabit.

I have to tell you from the outset that I did not make these cookies. Not because they didn't look decidedly delicious, but because they were chocolate through and through and my Todd hates chocolate biscuits. (they call cookies biscuits over here) He deplores chocolate biscuits . . . and alas I didn't want to be tempted in that way. I love, Love, LOVE chocolate anything, especially biscuits and cake and I knew I would just snuffle down the whole lot all by myself and I couldn't take that chance . . .

But bazillions of others did and if you want to see their results, you only need to visit the Dorie Blog Roll to see what they got up to! Also the recipe for the World Peace Cookies can be found on Jessica's Page.

I did bake cookies, however . . . just not Dories. I made these wonderful little jam surprises, but I'll get to them a bit later on.



Yesterday was something quite unusual over here in the UK. It was a Snow Day!! Something quite unique and unheard of for the most part, especially down here in Kent! Snow is quite serious business over here. We just don't have the equipment to deal with a lot of it. We got quite a lot of it yesterday, and over most of the UK as well! Traffic ground almost to a halt. The M25 became a huge parking lot. Planes skidded off the runway at Heathrow. Flights were cancelled. Airports where shut down. Children did not have to go to school. Grownups did not have to go to work. (well all except for us that don't have far to go that is!!) Parks filled up with a plethora of people enjoying this rarity, sledging and snowboarding and building snowmen. I watched on the telly as a huge group of them built a huge snowball . . . the largest snowball I have ever seen and then proceeded to roll it down a hill in unison. You have never seen anything like it, a huge group of people running after this huge snowball, all laughing and cheering it on! It was wonderful and made me long to join in!



I can well imagine that all over the country snow angels were made.



I can well imagine that all over the country snowmen popped up like foreign visitors from an alien land.



People walked beneath the falling white fluffy flakes.



Children played and sledged and gamboled through the white falling flakes.



Jess tired herself out catching snowballs that disappeared as soon as she caught them.



Todd tired himself out, clearing the car off umpteem bazillion times.



It was wonderful. This will most likely be known as "The Great Snow of 2009."

Here's the delicious cookies I made instead of the chocolate ones. Tender little cookies baked in tiny muffin tins and filled with a combination of jam and nuts, these live up to their name in a big way . . .



*Delights*
Makes about 3 dozen

One delicious burst of taste . . . buttery goodness filled with sweet and sticky raspberry jam and crunchy toasted pecans. So much pleasure in one . . . tiny . . . mouthful.

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
Filling:
1 cup raspberry jam
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans
Icing Sugar (Optional)



Pre-het the oven to 180*C/350*F. Lightly grease some mini muffin tins and set aside.

Cream together the butter and the sugar, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Whisk the flour and the baking powder together. Stir this into the creamed mixture. Shape into about 36 round balls. Place each ball into one of the muffin cups and press around the edges to make a shell.

Stir the jam and nuts together and fill the centres of each shell with this mixture. Don't overfill, or they will bubble up and create a bit of a mess on your pans and be very difficult to remove.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until the edges begin to brown.

Remove from the oven. Let sit for a few minutes before removing from the pans to finish cooling on a wire rack. If desired dust with icing sugar.