Peanut cookies for mother's day

A post on mother's day in memory of my mum.

Peanut cookies were one of my favorite home made biscuits when I grew up, they were extremely moorish but I think the real reason was the trip to Paddy's Market to get the main ingredient of raw peanuts, such an exciting place to visit.

Paddy's Market in the '60's was not the sterile place it is today, then it was alive with the smells and squawking of live chickens, ducks, geese, tempting sweet puppies and kittens that I so wanted to have for my very own, sweet fluffy chicks, laying hens and song birds of all varieties. Fruit, vegetables, fresh eggs of all sorts, fish, meat. Fresh raw and roasted peanuts and something called rock candy that I adored that was hand made by a sweet maker and only available at Paddy's, it was a kind of nougat filled with nuts and dried fruit and really hard, hours of chewing pleasure for a kid. I was delighted and fascinated by the market and when I went to Thailand in the mid-seventies I recognised my childhood past in the the markets I saw there.

The nuts and veggies fetched, we'd go home and mum would make these peanut cookies, after a cuppa, a bex and lie down of course.

These biscuits are sweet and very crunchy, a perfect afternoon tea biscuit.

1/2 lb butter
1 and 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 scant dessertspoon of cocoa
3 cups self raising flour
2 small eggs
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 cups raw peanuts, skins left on

Beat sugar with the two eggs, then add peanuts, salt, vanilla essence, self raising flour, cocoa and mix all together.

Melt the butter and mix into above ingredients while still hot.

Make into small round balls and flatten onto a greased tray, they will spread quite a lot.

Cook in a moderate oven for 10 - 15 minutes. Watch them because they can catch and burn.

Cool on tray a bit before putting onto a cake rack to completely cool.

Mum's recipe doesn't say how many they make, I usually get around 25 from the mix.

Enjoy.

Basic ice cream

I learnt cooking from my mum, nanna and my Greek next door neighbours, but all my basic cooking skills come from mum, how to boil, poach and fry an egg, make toast, make béchamel sauce, cakes of all types, puddings, baked dinners, make a good gravy, the list goes on, all the cuisine in the repertoire of the Australian-English home cook.

I love using mum's recipes, she wasn't a chef or a famous cook, but she was a damed fine cook of Australian-English cooking, reading her recipes brings her into my kitchen, I can see her writing letters to my brother in Perth with the same writing style, her hand writing in her recipes is a reminder of her.

This is the ice cream I grew up on, as a child I wanted shop bought Streets ice cream and was embarrassed by this home made stuff, though I loved eating it, vanilla ice cream with milo sprinkled over it - yum!

Now I make my own ice cream from organic ingredients, and I have never made mum's, so I shall and then post about it.

There are no eggs in this recipe, instead, flour is used as the thickener, very 'make do and mend'.

Custard base
1 quart (old imperial measure) of milk
2 cups sugar
1/3 cup flour

Mix sugar and flour together thoroughly. Scald milk and add to dry mixture. Cook until thickened over a hot element, stirring occasionally. Chill in fridge. This makes 5 cups of custard base.

To make the ice cream
1 cup custard base
1 cup cream (real pouring cream, not thickened with gelatin)
1 and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Whip cream until just stiff, fold in the other ingredients well. Freeze, bring out of freezer and mix again, freeze, do this a few times, the more its done the smoother and less icy the ice cream will be. Use an ice cream churn if you have one.

Mum would add different flavouring: chocolate, fresh fruit, coffee, she would also layer it for 'something fancy' like a birthday and make little treats in an ice block tray.

Inspiration for this blog

This is my mother Edna, taken in the 1930's at a skating rink. She was born in 1916, the youngest of 12 children, her mum, my grandmother, died in the 1918 flu epidemic at the end of the Great War (WWI), this broke up the large family and my mum was brought up by a childless aunt (my grandmother's sister) and uncle, my 'nanna' and 'pop'.

Mum was trained as a dressmaker and I grew up with her tales of 'make do and mend' in the depression years, she was very good at it, making herself a new evening frock every week to wear to the Saturday night dances and saved for a cruise to New Zealand.

In the late 1930's she met my dad, they married in 1939 at the start of WWII, my brother and sister were born during the war, but I'm the belated baby boomer child.
My mum's dad was German and her mum was Australian (English parents), my dad's mum was French and his father, Scottish, so we kids are second generation Australian from German, French and Scottish immigrants of the early 20th century with a local thrown in for good measure.

I have a pile of hand written recipes from my mum, food that says comfort and love. Food that is a reminder of a different time and pace in Australia. I don't have the original's, my elder sister has them, and my photocopies are fading, so its time to move them to a new medium and share with other's on the inter web. I hope you enjoy them.

I was inspired to write down my mum's hand written recipe's by @frombecca on Twitter, she is a foodie and poster of great recipes in the tweet and blog sphere. Her Becca's Bakery blog posts her mum's hand written recipes.



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