Misery, misery; if there’s one thing worse than going on a diet, it’s going on a competitive diet, where every day begins with a gleeful shriek from one’s husband as he hops from the bathroom scales and punches the air at another ounce lost. This all started last week when my husband decided to shed 7lb from his racing-snake physique ready for the beach and the annual donning of Speedos. I offered to join him, then waited graciously for him to protest, lest I waste away altogether. ‘Excellent plan!’ he cried instead, rather too enthusiastically. ‘It’ll be a race!!’. Honestly, MEN, I ask you….
One week in and I am falling behind, mysteriously. Who knew that tomatoes gain so many calories when placed on top of a pizza? Devious acts of sabotage are called for, so I am whipping up a frenzy of Siren-like temptation in the kitchen, hoping to stop his willpower in its tracks and give me a chance to catch up. Let’s begin with these perky tea-bag cookies, inspired by a recipe from beautiful French website Le Petrin. Deceptively petite, these look wantonly moreish, and the perfect accompaniment to an otherwise innocent cup of coffee…
I used a basic sugar cookie recipe (bottom), then rolled out the chilled dough onto a floured surface. I trimmed a business card into a tag shape then glued a cork to one side to allow me to place and lift it with ease. A pizza wheel proved perfect for cutting out the shapes without pulling on the cookie dough, and I used a drinking straw to punch a hole in each tag. I wanted to move the unbaked cookies as little as possible to help then retain their shape, so simply cut around them on baking parchment and slipped each one onto my baking sheet (2). When the cookies were cool, I melted a mixture of dark and milk chocolate chips to dip them into, then strung each cookie carefully onto a bamboo skewer to harden (4). What you can’t see here is Harry lying hopefully on the floor beneath, waiting for drips to fall…
As a final touch, I strung initialled tags onto the cookies using vibrant, sparkly thread, ensuring of course a disproportionate number addressed to my husband. Now, where did I put those damned celery sticks?
Nigella’s Butter Cut-Out Cookie Recipe, from ‘How to Be a Domestic Goddess’:
Ingredients
Cookies:
- 6 tablespoons soft unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and moving towards moussiness, then beat in the egg and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and eggs, and mix gently but surely. If you think the finished mixture is too sticky to be rolled out, add more flour, but do so sparingly as too much will make the dough tough. Form into a fat disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and let rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. When you’ve cut out the tag cookies and are ready to bake, they should take about 10mins, though check regularly.
I love your sugary plan! Women tend to shed weight slower at the beginning. There are some wicked exercises you can do that burn calories while you are with your child. !0 minute duration, 3x a day work really well!
what a sneaky devil you are!
i like it! the cookies look awesome!
Thank you very much! and yes, in such a race, no tactics are beneath me
So cute–both you and the tea bag cookies! Good luck on snaring the husband and winning the race. (insert diabolical laughter here.)
Very devious! I have a question for you about your photo layouts. Do you use a special program to get those lovely layouts where you have 3 or photos presented in one square? Or is it part of your theme?
Aha no I use the cheat / Luddite method which is to arrange a group of photos in PowerPoint (onto a single slide), then add any text I want to use.. Typically numbers or recipe instructions… Then save as a PDF doc instead of .ppt. Open the PDF, save again as a jpeg and crop in your photo editor (iphoto or picasa or whatever) to remove any white edges – hey presto you have a photo montage of sorts that acts like a single image. I’m sure there are less circuitous routes to doing this but it works a treat for me and doesn’t require any posh technology or know-how! Good luck… Email me if this doesn’t work and I’ll give you a bit more detail about the stages…
Great recipe, great post! Good luck to you!
I love it ….
That is such an excellent idea,thank you
Nigella strikes again! Love that woman. I shall definitely be trying this out on my boyfriend who is in desperate need of fattening up at the moment!
Now that’s one great cookie. What a cute gift for that tea drinker.
Now here do I buy those cute little tags. Our Micheals here in Canada doesn’t sell them?
Any suggestions.
Ah, good question; I used a die cutting machine to make mine (like Sizzix, or E-Clips), an expensive toy I’d lusted after for ages (I say expensive, but only if you count the cost-per-tag; really, I love it…). I’d spent a long time wishing I had a simple way of making monograms before deciding to just splash out and buy it. I use it for all kinds of stuff like the Handmade Books post and Harry’s memory game in this week’s post. Two alternatives; Paper Source has a simple-sounding tutorial (link pasted below) for how to make your own, though I’m imagining that unless you’re making simple initials like I or L it could be fiddly… choose your friends wisely (!). Alternatively I think Martha Stewart does an alphabet punch where you could punch out individual letters and mount them on simple stationery store tags. Finally, I know a lot of crafters sell bundles of die-cut letters and shapes on Ebay and Etsy, so if you were thinking you’d use them a lot it might be worth a browse. Hope that helps! http://blog.paper-source.com/how-to/how-to-monogram-gift-tags/