If anyone told me that I would not have the urge to bake or cook, I would laugh at them and tell them they are so wrong.

But alas here we are, coming up to my uncle 2 month anniversary and if I have baked 3 times in those two months, then it has been a lot.

My uncle has not been the first in my family to die, I have seen both my mother’s parents pass on, my dad’s dad and my mum’s aunties. They were old, so it was inevitable that they would pass on.

My uncle was another story all together. He spent Monday with us at work, eating and taking photos to see how he would look older, younger and so forth. I last saw him Tuesday evening and he sent me a roti watsapp video and Friday came and the phone call came to say he was sick and then the worst possible phone call anyone can receive, I received on Sunday morning. Don’t ask me how I managed to get dressed, drive to the hospital and run up two flights of stairs to the ward, but I did.

After that everything has been a blur, my mind can’t hold a thought, I can barely sit still and focus on recipes and the worst part is standing in front of the stove cooking because my uncle always used to sit and watch me doing my thing.

Trust me, I have not known grieve until now. Right now the only place I find comfort is in bed binge watching junk television that doesn’t require me to use my brain.

I know I seem to be a bit tad dramatic, after all he was just my uncle, not a parent, not a sibling, not a child but we were close and everyone you meet always says the same stupid line, time heals all wounds, I don’t think so, I think we just manage to deal with the pain but right now I am not ready to face it all, I am happy living under the covers for now.

Everyone seems to have moved on with life, going places, doing their things, geez I can barely walk past my uncle’s toiletry bag and not weep. One look at that bag and we are back in the hospital ward all over again.

My mum says she feels like he has been gone so long and everyone seems to have forgotten that there was a Ragie at all. I just can’t seem to get my head around the fact that his story has come to an end and his presence in all our stories won’t feature. Generations who now get married won’t have him pulling weird funny faces in the photo, children born after his time, won’t started screaming blue murder, when they first lay eyes on his ugly mug. Boy could he make babies cry when he first looked at them. It just seems so strange that a man who was in the centre of our family will now no longer feature in our family history going forward.

This past Friday, I was paging through my gran’s recipes book when I came across a recipe that she had clipped from the Your Family magazine dated August 1990, so ironic, because August now also holds some significance for me.

This recipe was originally an egg recipe, but I converted it to eggless. It was also an excuse to use my cookie gun, whose box was covered in layers of dust, just shows you when last I made cookies.

The verdict, my mother loved them, my dad loved them, he was just happy to be eating a homemade sweet treat, he has been eating store bought hot cross buns and crunchie biscuits like it is going out of fashion.

My mother says Ragie would have liked them, but I don’t think so, he would have complained that they were too hard and most likely he would have sued me if he broke yet another tooth…lol.

I loved the ginger icing that sandwiched the two cookies together, my brother hated the baked cookies he preferred the raw dough. My parents want to know what planet he came from, he seems to be the only one in the family that loves raw cookie dough and not the actual finished biscuit.

Ingredients for the biscuit:

• 250g x butter, room temperature.
• 2 x vegan eggs ( 1 x tbsp. egg replacer powder mixed with 4 x tbsp. boiling water) or 2 x medium eggs for the meat version.
• 2 x cups castor sugar.
• 1 x cup golden syrup.
• 700g x cake flour, sifted.
• 2 x tsp bicarbonate of soda.
• 2 x tsp ginger powder.
• 2 x tsp cinnamon powder.
• 2 x tsp mixed spice powder.

Method:

• In your stand mixer, mix together the eggs, castor sugar, butter and syrup until well combined.
• Add in the remaining ingredients and mix till a nice soft dough is formed.
• Place in your biscuit gun and press out onto a greased baking tray.
• Pop into a preheated oven and bake at 180 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown.
• Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking tray and then carefully place on a cooling rack to cool completely.
• As they cool they will harden up.

Ingredients for the ginger icing:

• 200g x icing sugar.
• 60g x butter.
• 1 x tsp ginger powder.
• 2 ½ x tbsp. golden syrup.

Method:

• Place everything into a saucepan.
• Over a low heat, whisk till the butter has melted and everything is incorporated.
• Remove from the stove and allow to cool to room temperature.

To assemble, sandwich two cookies together with some of the icing and cover with a generous dusting of icing sugar.