Weekend Cooking: Sticking to the recipe

Do you have weeks when sticking to the recipe is just harder than it should be, even if it is something that you make regulary? We had that this week, not once but twice.

I was lucky enough to meet up with half my team this week, and so I thought I would make a little treat for them. Good plan. I even played it safe and made things that I have made before.

The first thing I made was Rocky Road Clusters which I managed to get right, but to be honest it would be a big problem if I did mess it up because there are only three ingredients!

The second thing that I made was Soft Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies - another recipe I have made multiple times in past and they have been big hits, even being labelled as the favourite thing I had ever taken into work at my last job.

Now admittedly,  I did start making them after a very busy day in a very busy week in a very busy couple of months at work, and we had had people come for dinner, so I was probably a bit too tired to actually bake but bake I did.

And it wasn't until later that night as I was going to bed, I realised that I had forgotten to put the sugar in to the cookies. I remembered to grind the cloves, but no brown sugar at all! Now my husband assured me that it still tasted good but I did feel as though I needed to give the recipients a warning, just in case.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the next day we had a friend coming for dinner.  She is gluten intolerant so we wanted to find something that was easy to do after work that she could eat. In the end we decided that we would make one of favourite recipes - Baked Zucchini, Tomato and Parmesan Risotto.  This recipe is one that we have even used as a basis to make other baked risotto's using the principles of the recipe, such as doing bacon and mushroom baked risotto.

Given how often we make it, you would think that we wouldn't bugger it up, but somehow we used vegetable stock instead  of chicken stock but that wasn't too big a deal. It still tasted delicious, and my friend asked for the recipe. What might have been a problem was something that we only realised when we were laying in bed and my husband said to me....um...I forgot the tomatoes! I mean, they are even in the title of the recipe!

I am meeting up with the other half of my team this week so I will have another go at making both of these recipes, but maybe we will just keep it a bit simple!

Are you making edible gifts this year? What are some of your favourite things to make?

Weekly dinners:

Saturday: 
Sunday: Cheese on toast
Monday: 
Tuesday: Chicken kebabs wth baked potato and coleslaw

Wednesday: Very cheesey mac and cheese
Thursday: Zucchini and parmesan risotto
Friday: Pizza (takeaway)

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.