sugar and spice and all things nice

Happy New Year everyone! Santa has been very good to me and brought me not only a subscription to the Donna Hay magazine, but also a Kitchenaid stand mixer! With a note from Santa saying I can now bake him lots of bread and cookies.

I haven’t had any time to use it yet though, S and I are still spending every spare moment doing DIY – I know, the story is getting really old now, but what can I say. S and I are both perfectionists, we want everything to be done properly. With my parents’ help, we did actually get our sitting room finished, decorated and furnished in time for Christmas. There is now a sofa, armchair, cabinet, tv, and even some pictures and ornaments above the fireplace. And we even managed to put up a Christmas tree. We don’t have curtains yet (the windows are still covered with newspapers, very classy) and there are some details to sort out, but the room is finished enough to enjoy spending time in there.

Now we only have the dining room to finish and we really want to get that done before our little one arrives. Yes, seems like I’m part of the baby boom in blogland. Must be something in the flour. Or the eggs. Less than two months to go now and only one more week until my maternity leave, so hopefully I’ll get some use out of that Kitchenaid before our little one makes her appearance and my days (and nights) get filled with bottles and diapers.

We’re trying to hold off on the pink (and plastic Dora/Bob/Disney/…) invasion for as long as possible, but a bit of sugar and spice never hurts. I baked these sugar and spice cookies for our antenatal class (pre-Kitchenaid), where they were demolished in the blink of an eye. I fully intended to make these cookies again for Christmas, in nice snowflake shapes with some icing swirls, but that of course never happened. They taste just as good though without any fancy shapes and go perfect with a nice cup of tea on a cold winter’s day.

sugar and spice cookies
makes 24

100g butter
1/3 cup muscovado sugar
1 tbsp mixed spice
1 cup plain white flour
1 egg, beaten
Demerara sugar

Cream butter and sugar together. Add flour and spices. Roll in a log and put in fridge for about half an hour. Cut off 24 ‘slices’ and pat those slightly out with your fingers. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with Demerara sugar. Bake for about 12 minutes at 150˚C. Enjoy.