I don't bake. I really hate it - I hate following recipes, I hate having to be fairly exact, and I'm not even a huge fan of sugar. I loathe tidying up after myself, especially flour.

So when my son's girlfriend, locked down with him in Melbourne, told me about how her and her friends were sending baked goods to each other through the post last lockdown, I laughed. Actually, I think my exact words were something like: 'Get f**ked, I love you guys, but not so much I'd bake goods for you, let alone send them'.

Then I started thinking. A lot. I thought about how much I DO love them, and how they've been in lockdown longer than me. Making some ginger biscuits and sending then through the post would be a nice thing to do, right? And it WAS raining outside. So... biscuits then.

The recipe I followed was this one mainly as it was the first one that came up when I searched 'chai ginger biscuits'. Go look at the recipe - with their henna style patterns on them, they are UBER cute.

Of course, I had to change things up a bit. I didn't have masala chai, but I did have a whole spice chai mix that I could put through a coffee grinder. I added twice the amount of fresh ginger. I used vegan butter, as that's all I had.

I also used some orange zest as I had a big box of them given to me via community exchange networks.

I folded calendula flowers through the dough when I rolled it out to cut with a glass. I then pressed the flowers into the biscuits for that little cheerful orange pop. Oh, and I used half the amount of sugar, because I never like things that sweet.

I made a dusting for them out of sugar and chai spice, and rough ground dried calendula flowers.

Then off I toddled to the post office and sent a box of biscuits express post - something I have never done before. I'm sure by the time I get around to reading the replies on this post (lockdown can get surprisingly busy) they would have arrived, fingers crossed!

Now, onto making marmalade....

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