Cookies for courage - a recipe

Our house is quite old, at least by Namibian standards. It was build in 1902 out of clay and cow dung.
The walls breathe, it is cool in summer and warm in winter.

After my big crafty project clean-out I decided to give our home a proper make-over. Fill in all the
cracks, paint all the walls and ceilings, polish the floors, wash the curtains, sort out every cupboard...

Friday was day one of the tlc for the home project.

I only had one client Friday morning, and thought that we could quickly fix the cracks and paint the healing
room over the weekend, and then I could work in it again on Monday.

Unfortunately, the first thing we discovered was that the termites had eaten their way through the ceiling.
The paint was literally the only thing keeping it up.

This is the down-side of living in a natural, healthy home. Termites love it. We tried many things to keep
them in check, from termite whispering (me) to poisoning (my man).
Obviously nothing worked.

I dread what else we might discover...


Because of all this, I felt in dire need of some comfort food.

These cookies are lovely as you can basically use whatever you have on hand.
I used frozen berries, desiccated coconut, some baking chocolate, almonds and some oats.
But you could also use dried fruit, or fresh apples, or cacao powder.
The original recipe comes from a German recipe book from the 50's. I have also seen something similar here.


For the once I made, you will need:

280 g (2 1/3 cups) flour
a pinch of salt
250 g (8.8 ounces) butter
250 g (1 1/4 cups) sugar
1 tsp syrup
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

50 g (1/4 cup) oats
80 g 81 cup) designated coconut
100 g (3.5 oz) chocolate
100 - 200 g (3/4 to 1 1/2 cups) berries (fresh, frozen or dried)
80 g (3/4 cup) chopped almonds

Preheat your oven to 185 degrees Celsius (365 degrees Fahrenheit) and put some baking paper onto your baking tray.

Mix the flour and salt.
Melt the butter, then whisk in the sugar, the vanilla essence and the eggs. Whisk until foamy.
Fold the flour into the butter mix until just combined. Now carefully add the other ingredients.

With a spoon, put little blobs of dough onto your baking tray.

Put in the oven until lightly brown. The book said 12 minutes, but mine took nearly 25 minutes.
They are so dark because I used dark sugar instead of white one.

And now enjoy!

And after having nicely procrastinated, I now must go back to the building site.

Hugs to you all, and have a wonderful weekend!


Lots of love,

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