For the first six months that I lived in the UK, I really tried to get into the cooking magazines here. I made myself overlook the paucity of vegetarian recipes. I averted my eyes from the clunky photography. I told myself that I could become enthused about jam sponges. Then, I saw that the lastest issue of UK Gourmet (or whatever it was called) had, splashed across its cover, the phrase "Twenty ways with cabbage". And that was when I realised that it was just not going to happen. I would never find UK food magazines anything but depressing. I phoned my mum and asked her to get me a subscription to Australian Gourmet Traveller for my birthday. Now life is so much better. Here is a recipe from the June 2002 issue, the third of these bundles of Australian cooking joy to drop through my letterbox in Brighton.

Combine butter, sugar, golden syrup and treacle in a saucepan and stir over low-mdium heat until sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and cool.

While the mixture is cooling, peel and finely grate the ginger. Press it through a small sieve over a small bowl to extract all the juice (I press it through a fine tea infuser with the back of a spoon). Discard pulp. Sift together the ground ginger and flour. Stir the ginger juice into the cooled mixture, then mix in the flour, a quarter at a time, to form a stiff dough.

Form heaped-teaspooon quantities of dough into balls, then place 5 cm apart on paper-lined baking trays. Bake at 190 for 12-15 minutes or until just golden. Stand biscuits on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 30.