Sometimes while looking through the Edmonds, I come across recipes that when I read through them seem doomed to fail for one reason or another. It often makes me put them aside until I have the mental strength to deal with them lol.
T
he 
recipe for
Brandy 
snaps is one of those. Every time I read through the recipe it was the method that annoyed me. The recipe on page 39 says to cream the butter and the sugar. Brandy snaps should be thin, deep golden, crispy and almost lace like in appearance, but I suspected that creaming the butter and sugar and then adding the other ingredients was going to produce a biscuit rather than a brandy snap. Sadly I was right; due to the butter and sugar being creamed the mixture was too thick and resulted in soft, pale biscuits – and they weren’t a very nice biscuit at that.
I 
know the
issue was the method, so I decided to use the exact same recipe but instead of creaming the butter and sugar, I melted the butter, sugar and syrup together before adding the dry ingredients. This meant the mixture was darker and definitely runnier.
The resulting brandy snaps were exactly the way they should be. Lovely and crispy, lacy and dark gold. They were perfect.
The 
other thing I 
should point out is the Edmonds recipe says it will make 30. That’s using tablespoon measures of the mix. I am not sure how on earth that is meant to happen but I only managed to get 12 out of the mixture so you should be aware of that before trying the recipe. Do try it though but definitely use the different method for a perfect result.
A 
recipe that I have used many many times from the Edmonds is the Afghan recipe on page 37. A couple of weekends ago I found the Waitati farmers market which is a short drive north of Dunedin city and one of the stalls was filled with bags of the most wonderful looking walnuts. After grabbing a bag, I knew I had to finally test the Afghan recipe officially so here goes.
The recipe is super easy to put together super quick to bake and is a firm favourite of most people I know. The recipe makes perfect chocolatey biscuits with a perfect amount of crunch from the cornflakes. It really is an iconic kiwi biscuit and is a must have in anyone’s recipe armoury.