Tractors and jam drops

Our Tom turned three last week. And as I think I may have mentioned before, he is a little bit obsessed with tractors. So to celebrate, yesterday we invited our neighbours and Orange-based cousins over for some tractor cake. Then Tim parked the actual tractor in the front garden and the kids climbed all over it all afternoon.

The cake was inspired by one seen in the latest Donna Hay Kids magazine and Tommy has been obsessing over it for about three months now. From his reluctance (putting it mildly) for me to actually cut the cake and pass it around… I think he was happy with the end result. For afternoon tea we also had chicken sandwiches, popcorn and jam drops. The latter are a really nice little biscuit so I thought I’d share the recipe here below.

Jam and almond drops

These biscuits certainly don’t look uniform or perfect but they are delicious and easy to make. Of course pleas swap raspberry jam with whatever you prefer (marmalade works well too).

Makes about 30

250g butter, softened
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups plain flour
90g custard powder
2/3 cup almond meal

raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 180c and line a couple of biscuit trays with baking paper. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, add the vanilla and mix to combine. Fold through the flour, custard powder and almond meal and mix gently until combined. Roll into small balls (about a teaspoon-full) and place on the baking tray, a few centimetres apart. Press down the centre of each with your thumb to make a nice little indent you’ll later fill with jam. Bake for 10 minutes or until the biscuits are just golden. Let cool on a wire rack and then spoon a little jam in the centre of each one.