2. Cream together the butter, sugar and golden syrup.

3. Sift the flour, cornflour, cocoa powder into the creamed mixture, along with the water. If the mixture seems a little dry, add a touch more water until the mixture forms a dough. 

4. Knead the dough into a smooth ball. 

5. Roll the dough out to around 3-4mm and use a sausage dog shaped cookie cutter (you can get these here, here and here) or any other shape you like! 

6. Lay each cookie on a lined baking tray and pop into the oven for 10-12 minutes. 

7. Allow to cool on a cooling rack and decorate when you're ready. I love to add their little faces with these chocolate writers and pop on some sprinkles to make them little jumpers! 

 

Much like 95% of my Instagram feed, this weekend we headed out of London to our nearest pumpkin patch for some cliche Autumn activities! 🎃 There are three or four farms with pumpkin patches just outside of London that we found, but we decided to head to Garsons Pick Your Own this year. I've visited Crockford Bridge before and wasn't hugely impressed (a lot of the pumpkins had already been picked and just piled up by the entrance to the farm) but this may have changed in recent years. 

We chose Garsons as it was the easies to get to using public transport, just a short train from Waterloo then a short bus or Uber to the farm itself. Before you go to the farm you do need to book a 'farm pass' online, this is essentially just pre-booking and I assume it's a covid thing. They release the weekend tickets of the previous Friday and it's £4 per person - the cost of your ticket is taken off the total price of anything you pick though which was a nice little surprise at the till! 

When we arrived there was a short walk to the pumpkin patch and then we were allowed to go wild. A lot of the pumpkins were still on the vine so it felt that little bit more authentic, and there was a good selection of different kinds of pumpkins, perfect for creating our Autumn centrepiece at home. 

The farm also had fields where you could pick flowers, corn, and apples which we've now turned into a crumble ready for Sunday dinner. 

After we'd selected our pumpkins, we headed to the farm shop and purchased some Christmas decorations (never too early!) and some little foodie bits that we can't normally get in our local stores, before a quick pub lunch before heading home.