Step 1: Cream butter and sugar until smooth

It has been a week of baking, giving the oven and mixer a workout sometimes late into the night. It started with chocolate crackles (OK, not strictly baking), pizza muffins (yuck, never again), spider cupcakes, and a spooky castle birthday cake midweek, followed by Mexican wedding biscuits, peanut butter and choc chip biscuits and polenta for a weekend writing retreat. It’s times like these when it is handy to step next door and raid the O&Mc stores of Demeter flour and polenta and I am thankful that our Isa Browns are back to laying three eggs a day. Now if only we had a house cow…

Here’s my new favourite biscuit recipe. Big thumbs up from eight hungry writers at the Nundle Writing Retreat last weekend and the Trousdale family enjoying the leftovers.

Peanut and chocolate biscuits (Source: Matthew Evans, torn from Good Weekend, Nov 13, 2010)

You need 150g dark brown sugar, 100g butter, softened, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 300g crunchy peanut butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp bicarb soda, 225g plain flour, 200g dark chocalte chips.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Beat the sugar and butter until smooth, then beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the peanut butter, then fold in the salt, bicarb and flour. Mix until combined, then fold in the choc chips. Roll mixture into small balls and lay on trays lined with non-stick baking paper. Press down with a fork to about 1cm thick and bake for 10 minutes. Good luck letting them cool before small fingers want to reach for them and taste test. Better make a double batch.

Measuring out Demeter flour for pizza muffins in the Tala Cook's Measure