Feeling calmer with less things around you. But more biscotti.
After a year’s absence from blogging, I feel I am now emerging from the complete madness of having three children with very immediate and urgent needs and starting to put everything back together. I read this sentence in an interior design magazine once, “I feel calmer with less things around me.” Entirely true. So a big theme last year has been shedding what is not needed. If you ask my husband, purchases have not gone down but I think they have changed to achieve the goal of having things nice and orderly. I try to do at least one thing every day that will last more than that day and achieves a bit more order. And I do think it works. Yesterday it was going through my youngest (15 months) daughter’s drawers and sorting out the things she has outgrown, taking everything out (she was happy to help with that part) and thinking about what worked or didn’t work about how I store her clothes. The end result is that every time I open the chest of drawers, rather than thinking “oh no, I really need to clean up in here” I now pat myself on the back and think “well done, this is so much better”. As silly as this sounds, it really does help in finding a way out of the chaos of having three children and freeing up time to spend with them doing thing I enjoy. It also meant decluttering. There are so many things we keep that we really don’t need.
On the recipe front, after spending more than I like to think about on favourite biscuits, I have now worked out my own recipe for cantuccini, those really hard Italian almond biscuits that are great dunked in coffee. Here goes:
350 g plain flour
300 g sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
350 g whole almonds
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence or 1 packet of vanilla sugar (depending on where you live and what’s available)
Preheat oven to 180 celsius. Crush half the almonds, then mix all dry ingredients. Whisk eggs and vanilla and add to dry mixture. It will be the stickiest dough you’ve ever seen but just push on through it and add more flour if needed. Shape into logs about 7 cm wide and 3 cm high. They rise quite a bit so place them far enough apart. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden and they feel reasonably firm to touch. Take them out of the oven and allow them to cool (best done on a rack), then slice them diagonally about 2 cm wide. Place on a tray cut side down and bake for another 15 minutes. Allow to cool and store in an airtight container. Absolutely delicious dunked in coffee.
In keeping with today’s theme, I am sure you will feel calmer with cantuccini – it doesn’t take long until there are less of them around and they make you feel better by simply tasting great.
