Snickerdoodles and Chilli, anyone?

Good evening gorgeous people!!

I hope you have all had lovely weeks so far. I have! It's been busy, productive, and (especially today) bloody freezing! My mother sent me a beautiful jumper in the post today and it has become a Winter, not an Autumn jumper- it's that nippy! It is only the fourth of November, and I shouldn't be surprised at the weather, I suppose - it brings pleasant thoughts of mulled wine, Christmas stockings, fairy lights and cosy evenings curled up in front of the fire. I set my Christmas countdown by the fairy lights strung up around the university buildings and to my delight they were put up yesterday. You should see how excited I get when the Christmas tree with its rainbow bulbs goes up! Lovely thought in my Linguistics lecture the other day... Apparently Norwegians call "lightbulbs" light-pears, because of their shape.

How whimsical!

Now, before I carry on: recipes!

I shall be giving you recipes for chilli, guacamole, (plus recommended additions) and the charmingly named snickerdoodles.

Excellent stuff.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

Chocolate cardamom chilli.

Now, this is a rough estimate as always and you can use either stewing beef if you're feeling extravagant, or as I am here: lean mince.

500g mince/stewing beef
1 can red kidney beans
1 can chopped tomatoes
50g darkest chocolate or 1 tbsp cocoa
3 cardamoms, bruised
2 red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped (I only used one, because my friend Martin grows his from seed and the vapours from the tiny 2cm one I used were so strong that we had to leave the kitchen due to stinging eyes)
2 cloves of garlic - chopped or minced
1 onion
shakings of powdered cumin, coriander and cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste

Chop your onion (I always wear goggles for this and it entertains my boyfriend hugely if ever he sees me wearing them), and mince your garlic. Heat oil in a heavy-based pan and soften your onions before adding the meat. Brown the meat and then add your garlic, the chocolate, chillies, cardamoms and spices. Let the meat absorb all these lovely flavours before you drain and add your kidney beans and chopped tomatoes. For greater depth of flavour you can add passata. I added Worcester sauce myself. (wooster, you lovely Americans) Shake in your salt and pepper... like a polaroid picture!! And then let the whole lot simmer for a good 20 minutes. I am always a fan of speed and whilst slow cooked chillis are exquisite, sometimes I just want an almost-instant bowl of the stuff.

I make guacamole with two ripe avocadoes, a huge helping of fresh coriander, the juice and pulp of two limes and a deseeded green chilli. I then add sea salt and cracked black pepper and mash the whole lot in a pestle and mortar - not only does it taste fantastic but it's so green I'm almost tempted to count it as a veg portion!

It's not often I boil rice with this as I prefer to eat it with good old sour cream and tortillas, Mexicana cheese and the guacamole mentioned above, but a huge mound of fluffy rice would make a nice addition if you were serving it to your friends for dinner. If I'm slow cooking I tend to use stewing beef and I leave it in a warm oven for a good two hours in a beautiful crock pot. (It looks very pretty when I dump it on the table in front of my friends)

Onto the snickerdoodles!!

I made these earlier today in a fit of work avoidance (I can only take so much French political philosophy before I want to cry) and they weren't actually as good as ones I've made in days gone by. I didn't have the nutmeg as requested by the recipe but to be honest it was a half teaspoon to 250g of plain flour and I didn't see the point.

One of my favourite spices, however, is cinnamon and I think the incorporation of more cinnamon and less vanilla extract would improve these babies no end. You're actually meant to roll the snickerdoodle-dough balls in cinnamon sugar, but I can't see why you shouldn't put cinnamon in the mixture as well.

You need:
One preheated HOT oven.
250g plain flour
125g unsalted butter at room temperature (do make sure it is room temperature, I took mine from the fridge and gave myself terrible armache trying to cream the sugar into it)
100g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (any more than this and it gets all icky and overpowering)
Cinnamon, lots
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Combine your baking powder and flour in a bowl, add a good sprinkling of cinnamon (0r any other winter spice you deem appropriate) then in a separate bowl cream the sugar and butter together until pale. I always get nostalgic at this point because butter and sugar creamed together remind me of a very naughty sugar sandwich my grandmother once made for me. Now she makes fantastic apple sponge I will one day discover the secret of instead. Once you have creamed said nostalgic sugar/butter mix, add the extract and beat in the egg. Add the dry ingredients and stir until you have a dough which is ever so similar to that found in Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream (ironic, no?).

Anyway, roll your mixture into little balls just shy of a ping pong ball size, and dip them in cinnamon and sugar before placing them on a baking tray. I tend to flatten them out with a fork so they are slightly more biscuit-like in appearance but whichever way you shape them they will still taste just as good. Bake these in your oven for as long as it takes - once they are golden brown and the sugar is glistening, whisk them out and let them cool down before you devour them.

I would tell you how much this recipe makes, but I ate three straight off the tin and burned my tongue so any estimate would be just that. Call it thirty, just as a rough guide. You'll see what I mean though - they're utterly addictive with strong coffee or a pot of tea. They seem to last a good long while as well, as long as your friends/family/flatmates don't discover them. Pop them in a padlocked airtight container just to be safe.

A quick note... I would love to tell you how much my recipes make and for how many people but in truth I eat at least twice the amount a normal person would, one of my flat mates eats half a normal portion, and my boyfriend is almost worse than me. The chilli above would do two large servings, so double the recipe if you are feeding four, for example.

I hope you all had lovely, lovely Hallowe'ens and celebrated in style. I'm holding a dinner party tomorrow evening and also dropping in on one with a foody gift, so expect more of my writings coming your way.

Sleep sweetly!
Eloise xxx