Reflections on a book launch

A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to my book launch on Saturday. It was lovely to see so many people. I am a little slow-witted at times, so it was only part way through that I remembered I’d delegated the role of ‘official photographer’ to my husband but hadn’t told him. This picture is my sister’s.

Quite intellectual looking, I think… apart from the array of beer barrels as a backdrop.

You may also note the biscuits just to my right hand side. They were supposed to be avocados – well, they did look a bit avocado-ish, though I was worried they looked more like fried eggs (albeit green ones).

My friend Rachael asked for the recipe and, as I am pursuing an avocado-themed recipe series for the next few Mondays (see last week’s post for Chocolate Mousse), I thought I’d share it as they look like avocados, though there is no avocado in the ingredient list.

Making Mondays Marvellous: (Avocado) Chocolate Biscuits

Place 225g softened butter and 140g caster sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Beat in 1 egg yolk and 2 tsp vanilla extract (I used less, as I was icing the biscuits). Sift together 250g plain flour, 25g cocoa powder and a pinch of salt (I used salted butter so didn’t add extra salt). Mix into the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Then add 100g of finely chopped plain chocolate. Stir well. It should be a stiff dough, which you can roll out on a floured surface and cut into shapes. Put on a baking tray, spaced apart, and back at 190C for 10-15 minutes.

Helpful points to note:

1. You’ll need a lot of flour for rolling. If you don’t need shapes, it would be much easier to create balls of dough and flatten them.
2. The chocolate chunks can make cutting shapes awkward! Not all my pears were perfect…
3. The avocado effect was simply using the same pear shape to cut out green sugar-paste icing, and cutting a hole in the middle (I used the letter ‘O’, though experimented with the number ‘0’ as well!)
4. Do check your cutters. Some plastics don’t survive even the top level of the dishwasher. (There will be no more regular pear-shaped biscuits in our house now…)

And that was that!

General verdict: ????
(Of the 90 I made, only 5 came back, and 4 of them I’d hidden away!)

Thanks once again for your support. It was a wonderful afternoon and a delight to share the publication of my book with so many lovely people.

Don’t forget to buy the book – no recipes included!  Beware the Falling Avocados is available as a paperback in the UK HERE and as a kindle version HERE. In the US the paperback is HERE and the kindle version is HERE.