Darling

Sunday evening. The weekend is coming to a close. These last few hours are always a mixture of too many things... the sad feelings of knowing that an early morning awaits, of rushing around to finish off your mounds of work and finally admitting defeat for the day and all the great plans that you had made. It is about making sure that you haven't forgotten anything important, but feeling like you have... of whispered conversations on the couch, attempting to hold onto this precious inbetween moment, wrapped in blankets and the warm glow of love, sipping hot chocolate and listening to the rain thunder in the winter darkness.  It is a time of wanting to go to bed early and drift off gently into blissful unconsciousness, yet wanting to stay up late as though tomorrow will never come...

A family tradition is to make pancakes on a Sunday evening after church. Right now I can hear my darling mixing the batter in the kitchen next door, accompanied by the sweet smell of cinnamon, while I finish off my studying. And somehow I feel like I may just make it through this next week...

Chocolate chunk cookies

Winter is raging. It is icy. Rain clouds have replaced the clear blue skies and wonderful warmth of the past few days. Across the country snow has fallen. And so, here is something that you can do to keep warm - bake American-style chewy chocolate chunk cookies. In my family we make these at least once a week - they really are THAT good! Within thirty minutes you will have gone from wanting, to making, to baking, to eating.

What you need:

• 2 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups of firmly packed brown sugar (that yummy sticky sugar, or you can just use white sugar and add a good squirt of golden syrup)
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla or caramel essence
• 1 1/4 cups of self-raising flour (or normal flour with a tsp of baking powder)
• 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips (or at least 2 100g slabs of dark chocolate roughly chopped into lovely large chunks of goodness) - personally, add as much chocolate as you like, for a true chocoholic believes that you can never have too much chocolate!
• 1 to 1 3/4 cups of either oats, walnuts, raisins or coconut (or a combination) - we usually add either oats (to make us feel "healthy") or crushed pecans 

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180/200 C (or around 400 F).
2. Using an electric mixer (or your arm and a whisk - which will really warm you up!) beat the eggs and sugar together - for about 1 minute or until the mixture changes to a lighter colour.
3. Stir in the oil, essences, sifted dry ingredients and remaining ingredients (basically throw everything else into the bowl).
4. Cover and cool in the refrigerator for 30 minutes (I don't think we have ever done this step before - we just cannot wait!) But for those of you that have a little bit more baking patience, this is so that the mixture hardens to prevent the cookies from spreading while they bake (for us the oats usually hold the cookies together nicely).
5. Place spoonfuls of the cookie dough mixture onto a grease baking tray or two. If you have a really sweet tooth you can roll your cookie balls in icing sugar and then place them on the tray to bake.
6. Bake for about 10 minutes or until slightly brown. Allow to cool for 5 minutes (like that is going to happen!)
7. Enjoy while still warm - with a tall glass of cold milk or crumbled over a bowl of ice-cream :)

When I lay in bed, under my blankets, licking the melted chocolate off my fingers, all warm and cozy, I remember all those who are less fortunate than me... I have been so blessed and have so, so very much, while many in SA suffer in this freezing cold. Give thanks, be humble, share! Leave your safe, comfortable life and help those who go without, let your prayers become action, take a plate of cookies to your neighbour, go through your cupboards and fill boxes for the shelter down the road, donate blankets at your local supermarket, get involved in a church outreach or community project, smile at a stranger, make a small but loving difference :)