The Daring Bakers' Challenge: Traditional Scones

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

All I can say is WOW! Audax has made 16 batches and browsed through more then 200 recipes!! How crazy is that? Don't get me wrong, I armire him so much! He's provided us with so many useful pieces of advice and explained everything! Literally, I swear. He made scones sound so great I had to make them the moment I read the challenge for January which was on the first of January :) I've never baked any challange recipe this soon!!

Mince Pies

The magic number for today is 24. Asking why? No, don't worry, this IS a foodblog, no oracle or something :D The number reffers to the days left to Christmas. I think you all have to be bored by my constant talking about it but I simply love Christmas time. And I want to share my Christmas mood with you :) Here you have my first official Christmas cookie recipe (at least in this year and only when you don't count blondies as a Christmas cookie alternative) but these are not cookies in fact...

Fudgy Chocolate Cherry Cookies

February is here - the shortest month of the year and still it includes the most romantic holiday. The holiday of love. Yes, you're right it's Valentine's Day. This celebration comes from the USA and it's spread all over the world. As soon as the shops get rid off the Christmas stuff they start selling lots of red and pink shiny cute things like stuffed animals, chocolate bars with hearts on their wrappers, pralines, flowers, cards and so on. And that's it. The most common gift is chocolate and because we all love chocolate I just could have made nothing but something very chocolatey chocolate :D If don't know what to give to your loved ones, you can try these extra chocolate cookies with moist cherries which I made using absolutely delicious recipe by Marcellina who makes them at Christmas for her family (thank you so much for this recipe!). So let's get to work then :)