Afternoon Tea

I am now in the habit of baking on Sunday's. Usually I do muffins or a cake, all made from scratch, so The Boy and I have something to take to work along with our fruit. On Sunday afternoon I was having my lovely friend Miss K over for a catch up. It was my first time entertaining in The Penthouse that didn't involve family, so I decided to make something a little different.
A few weeks ago I found the AWW cookbook The Country Table and as soon as I opened it up I knew I had to have it. So I flipped through it on Saturday and decided on honey jumbles. Interestingly this recipe didn't involve any honey at all but instead used golden syrup. The team behind the cookbook suggested the prep and cook time was around 25 minutes. How about two hours instead! I don't often make biscuits I'll admit, usually if I do I buy a log and use a knife to make biscuits. The only exception to this is making my gingerbread cookies, but these "honey" jumbles were much more involved than the humble gingerbread (although the end result was slightly similar in taste).

As usual I successfully managed to make a mess in the kitchen, even though I was washing up as I went I couldn't help getting flour all over the bench and floor. An hour before my friend was due it was time to make the icing (I had actually planned to make biscuits and cake but ran out of time). The AWW listed how to make the icing. It was 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of flour. We only had 1/2 cup of icing sugar in the cupboard so The Boy was forced to go out and buy some more. When he returned I only had about 20 minutes, so without thinking I made up the icing sugar as per the recipe. I iced four of them and tasted the icing and spat it out. The flour gave it an almost soapy taste and was awful! I had no idea why they suggested flour because it was just wrong. With fifteen minutes to go we had to start again. I just went for icing sugar, water and vanilla essence, and of course, pink food colouring and this time it turned out brilliantly.
The icing was a little runny, but it did give the jumbles a home made feel (that and my lack of ability to make them look the same) they were a huge success and tasted amazing. I will definitely be making them again and the recipe was fantastic. Better than the ones in the shop, much more flavour and still very soft in the middle.

We did have some left over to take to work the next day. Of course The Boy was told at work that next time I need to use blue icing if he is to ever bring in home made food again.