Orangello muffins

They were meant to be orange muffins but we only had one orange, so in came the tangello.  These are filling and not overly sweet and a little tangier than a plain orange muffin. We doubled the recipe and made 32, otherwise they disappear too quickly and there are none for lunches.
Recipe adapted from http://annies-eats.net/2010/04/16/orange-muffins/

ingredients to make 16:
1 cup milk
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
½ cup sour cream
2 large eggs
225g butter, melted
3½ cups plain flour
1 cup sugar
1½ tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
Zest of 1 orange or tangello (or if doubling use zest and juice of both fruits)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 180C.  Line muffin pans with 16 paper liners.  In a medium mixing bowl, combine the milk, orange juice, zest, sour cream, eggs and melted butter.  Whisk together to blend.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Stir to blend.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated.  

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared muffin cups - about one ice cream scoop in each.  Bake about 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  

A wintry day baking Mexican wedding cakes

Came across a recipe for Mexican Wedding Cakes today and I couldn't resist their title, they're also called Russian Tea Cakes.  Conjured great images in my mind.......

It was the perfect day for baking, drizzly, cold ,wet.  The recipe pretty well puts everything in a food processor and whizzes, you then make logs which can be frozen or cut and cooked.  They are very like shortbread, only better, as I don't like short bread all that much.  I used ground almonds in mine as I had them in the cupboard but you could use a variety of nuts - think I'll try roasted pecans next time. The biscuits are rolled in icing sugar while still warm, the recipe suggests a second dip when cool but this was completely unnecessary.  My dough didn't come together at first so I added some extra butter and that fixed the problem.  The two year old 'helped' (she drags up a chair as soon as she sees me near the kitchen) by adding ingredients and chopping and placing biscuits - unfortunately she was frightened of the food processor.  She also helped eat all the uneven end bits from the logs and scrape out the bowl.

I cut open a vanilla bean pod and scraped the seeds out for some extra flavour. You can see their little black specks above

 The recipe is very generous, I froze 2 logs and even gave some away to the guys fencing our yard.

 wet washing drying on the curtain rails - the foggy window created a perfect finger painting canvas for the two year old

 As she seemed in the painting mood I got her out some water colour paints which kept her occupied for hours.  I like these much better as they're not so messy.

Mum brings me home some delicious vanilla beans from Indonesia whenever she visits. They feel fresh soft and juicy.  I put the left over pod in my castor sugar container.