Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives 2020 – I’m not just a writer, #Recipe -Peanut Cookies by Richard Dee.

Welcome to the new series of Posts from Your Archives in 2020 and if you would like to participate with two of your posts from 2019, you will find all the details in this post: New series of Posts from Your Archives 2020

This is the first post from the 2019 archives of Richard Dee and he showcases his other skill… as a baker with a recipe for Peanut cookies..

 I’m not just a writer, Peanut Cookies

We writers tend to get obsessive over our craft, if we’re not careful we could talk about it all day, every day. And not everyone wants to hear all the little details of plot, characters and marketing successes and failures. Nor do they want to be bombarded with a constant and incessant ‘buy my book’, refrain.

I try and keep away from becoming too narrow in what I post or share about myself. I want people to see that I’m not just a writer. I like to spend my time doing other things, one of which is cooking. Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), I’m a sucker for an ingredient that I’ve never seen or used before, and will often buy something and then see what I can do with it afterwards.

I spotted this, I can’t remember where now, and my thought process went into overdrive, it’s pretty readily available, somehow I had never noticed it before. Now I see it everywhere, in various brands and sizes.

I’ve tried cooking with peanut butter before, it’s great mixed with Sweet Chilli sauce to make a coating for chicken or pork, however, I’d never had much success using it in anything that was sensitive to the amount of liquid in it. Like biscuits. For one thing, peanut butter is too wet and you have to modify the other ingredients and proportions to allow for that (if you can). So when I saw the powder, a whole new range of possibilities opened up.

My first idea was a peanut cookie. Now I know you can just add chopped peanuts to an ordinary cookie but I wanted to see what difference substituting some of this powder for the plain flour would make.

Ingredients,

• 175 g softened butter,
• 200 g Plain flour
• 50 g of the peanut butter powder,
• 90 g Caster sugar,
• 100 g roughly chopped salted peanuts

Method,

Cream the butter and sugar. Add everything else and work into a dough. Form the dough into a sausage and coat it with Demerara sugar. Wrap it in cling film and rest it for 30 minutes in the fridge Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Take the chilled dough and slice it into 2 cm discs, flatten them onto a baking sheet which has been dusted with more Demerara sugar. Keep them looking slightly rustic at about 1 cm thick.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, keep an eye on them, as soon as the edges start to brown, they are done. Take them out and let them cool for a few minutes before transferring to a rack.

The addition of the powder made for a very short pastry and boosted the flavour. The biscuits melted in the mouth and were very hard to resist. In the end, I didn’t bother.

©Richard Dee 2019

About Richard Dee

Richard Dee is a native of Brixham in Devon, England He left Devon when he was in his teens and settled in Kent. Leaving school at 16 he briefly worked in a supermarket, then went to sea and travelled the world in the Merchant Navy, qualifying as a Master Mariner in 1986.

Coming ashore to be with his growing family, he used his sea-going knowledge in several jobs, including Marine Insurance Surveyor and Dockmaster at Tilbury, before becoming a Port Control Officer in Sheerness and then at the Thames Barrier in Woolwich.

In 1994 he was head-hunted and offered a job as a Thames Estuary Pilot. In 1999 he transferred to the Thames River Pilots, where he regularly took vessels of all sizes through the Thames Barrier and upriver as far as HMS Belfast and through Tower Bridge. In all, he piloted over 3,500 vessels in a 22-year career with the Port of London Authority.

Richard is married with three adult children and two grandchildren.

His first science-fiction novel Freefall was published in 2013, followed by Ribbonworld in 2015. September 2016 saw the publication of his Steampunk adventure The Rocks of Aserol and of Flash Fiction, a collection of Short Stories. Myra, the prequel to Freefall was published in 2017, along with Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café, a murder mystery set in space and the start of a series featuring Andorra Pett, an amateur detective. He contributed a story to the 1066 Turned Upside Down collection and is currently working on prequels, sequels, and new projects.

A small selection of  books by Richard Dee

One of the recent reviews for Andorra and Her Sister

Nov 12, 2019 Steven rated it it was amazing

Andorra Pett – space station café owner, scooper pilot and sometimes super sleuth – returns for another adventure. Andorra finds herself on Earth to sort out her ex, Trevor’s affairs following his grisly murder at the hands of a mobster on Mars.

Intending this to only be a brief stay to finalise affairs before returning to the space station orbiting Saturn and the comfort of partner Derek. Unfortunately, as ever, trouble manages to find her in the form of her estranged sister Tia. When she is arrested for smuggling through importers and money laundering she calls the only person she can for help – younger sister Andorra.

Suspecting from the start that something is amiss, not least Tia lacking the sense to pull off such a crime, Andorra cannot help but be drawn in to solve the mystery and see that justice is served. Smugglers, corrupt police and a chance run in with Clive – an old face from her first ever mystery – make for high jinks aplenty. He is found running what he claims to be an official Oort Cloud Café tribute bar complete with sleazy Andorra lookalike waitresses and slanderous tales of fictitious romances assuming Andorra will never hear of it way back in space.

Once again Richard Dee has delivered a wonderfully funny murder mystery with a cast of characters new and old to entertain readers. The mystery becomes farcical as it twists and turns to a conclusion. Andorra sees herself in her share of trouble and tight spots all in the pursuit of clearing Tia’s name. This third instalment of the Andorra Pett series is a wonderful addition and only makes me long for book four in 2020 that much more.

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon US

And: Amazon UK

Read more reviews and follow Richard: Goodreads

Connect to Richard

Website: Richard Dee’s Scifi
Facebook: Richard Dee Author
Twitter: @RichardDockett1

My thanks to Richard for sharing this recipe with us and they do look very irresistible…your feedback is always welcome.. thanks Sally.