Our Button Cookies

I live in a small town. I have no problems with it, it's a choice we made as a family about ten years ago. However, my children, now all grown up with their own lives, DO NOT like the quiet life at all, and my daughter Juliet lives in a larger town about an hour away to the north, and my son lives in the capital, Wellington, an hour to the south. Just close enough for us all to get together every now and then.

This weekend I made my first visit to meet some of Juliet's friends and fellow bloggers and also to help at Fabric-a-brac, raising money for Mary Potter  Hospice.

Juliet is an avid organiser of grand things. She was asked to bring some baking along. She said she would come to my house and we could bake the day before the event, and later that same day, get to Wellington to help measure and price the fabric.

We made button biscuits. She had seen them somewhere on the web, but with no recipe, so we used a basic  cookie from the great Kiwi cook book, Edmonds. Practically every cook in New Zealand would have started with an Edmonds cook book.

The trouble is.... we went to get the butter for the cookies, as I didn't have any at home , and driving home, I realised with horror I didn't have a huge amount of flour, probably not enough to make the amount we wanted to make. How on earth could we go shopping to get cookie ingredients and forget to get flour?

Sorry, Edmonds... we had to make alternative plans!

Out came every flour imaginable in my pantry. Normal flour, rice flour, corn flour, and hidden in the back of my pantry I found some buckwheat flour. Now we seemed to have about the right amount of flour to make up the mixture.

The pink cookies (strawberry flavour) came out the best, followed by the almond flavour. Lemon was sort of okay, and then we had to mix up another batch of cookie mix. We had only put one egg in the first mix, but saw that in the recipe we should have put 2. So in went a second egg. Oops, maybe a bit more flour as now the mix was too wet. No more flour.... I know! Custard powder! In it went. Flavours were now chocolate mint, and raspery coconut ice. We were on a creative roll! By now, we are running out of time, as we live an hour away from Wellington, and we were expected there at 6 pm.

We were panicking a wee bit!We quickly iced a 'thread' on the button holes, but the cookies were too hot to pack, so we jumped in the car, and whooshed off to Wellington. The car smelt fantastic. We got to the main Hall at Massey eventually, after going twice around the very big block as they had changed the roads due to roadworks outside the University Entrance.

Measuring up the fabric for sale

Later that evening we met up with my son, and we rushed into town to get something to eat, and spent the night at his house. He lives right next to Lyall Bay. During all this time, the cookies were still on the tray in the car. We packed them up the next morning in bags.

Well, if any of you ladies who went to the Fabric-a-brac and bought our cookies, I apologise. The night in the car, and the haphazard contents of the cookies made them a wee bit soft, and a bit dry. Promise that if we make them next year, we will a) make them out of the correct ingredients, and b) not leave them in a car all night! Just be reconciled that Fabric-a-brac thanks you for the donation, and it will be going to a worthy cause!

Am I going to give you the recipe! No!

But this was our inspiration.

Have fun if you decide to make some!