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JANUARY 2010 JACKIE FRENCH NEWS - DESSERTS

Desserts, Cookies and Cakes

More than Six Ways with Fruit
Recipe for Cross Husbands
Six Delicious Baked Pots
Biscuits
Cakes

More Than Six ways with Fruit

Fruit Salad
Chop:

• 1 rockmelon
• 1 pineapple
• 1 large banana
• add chopped peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries, oranges to taste
• add the pulp of 6 passionfruit
• add half a cup sugar
• add 6 torn mint leaves if you have them.

Mix well.
Leave in the fridge for an hour or two for the flavours to mingle before you serve it.
Always cover fruit salad or the fridge will smell of rockmelon and the fruit salad taste of other things in the fridge

Peaches in Champagne
Ingredients:

• Slice peeled peaches into wine glasses.
• Fill the glasses with champagne. Serve at once.

Canned grapefruit and fresh lychees mixed together are also good with champagne.

Grown Up Iceblocks
Ingredients:

• 1 cup pineapple, chopped
• 1 cup rockmelon, chopped
• 1 banana, chopped
• half cup cream
• half cup sugar
• half cup water or Champagne or good white wine
• juice half a lemon
• 1 tsp mint, chopped, optional OR 1tsp ginger root, peeled and chopped, optional
• half cup grapes, optional
• half cup paw paw, chopped, optional
• half cup strawberries, chopped, optional
• half cup lychees, chopped, optional

You will also need: iceblock moulds or plastic or disposable cups, iceblock sticks or teaspoons.

Boil sugar and water or wine with the mint or ginger (or no ginger and mint as you prefer) for 5 minutes. Cool.

Add the fruit. You must have pineapple and banana and preferably rockmelon too, but other fruit can be added from the list.

Take long iceblock moulds, or plastic cups or even disposable cups. Pour about  one tbsp of cream into each, then carefully add the fruit mixture, so that the cream stays mostly at the bottom, and doesn't mix through it too much. Poke an iceblock stick or tsp into each one; freeze, and eat.

Raspberry and Blueberry Jelly
Ingredients:

• 1 packet frozen raspberries
• 1 packet frozen blueberries
• extra strawberries, peaches or other fruit
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 cup castor sugar
• juice of two lemons
• half cup water
• 2 sachets gelatine

Use a non-stick cake tin or line a cake tin with plastic wrap. Place sliced strawberries or peaches in the bottom; empty in the blueberries and raspberries.

Heat all other ingredients except the gelatine till nearly boiling; take off the heat; add gelatine. (Mix a little with some of the liquid first so you don't get lumps). Pour liquid into the cake tin. Leave till set ... it will take several hours.

Turn it out onto a plate. If it won't come out easily dip the base of the tin in hot water in the sink for about 30 seconds- make sure no liquid gets into the tin though! This will loosen the jelly enough for it to slide out.

Serve slices with cream, or ice cream. Serves 4 – 6.

Note: if that amount of gelatine doesn't form a well set jelly, the whole thing can be slightly warmed and more gelatine (mixed with a little of the warmed liquid first) can be added. For some reason sometimes more is needed- possibly this depends on the ripeness and juiciness of the berries.

The Five Minute Wonder- Fried Bananas
Ingredients:

• 4 bananas, thinly sliced
• 4 tsp butter or margarine
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
• 4 tbsp rum

Optional: 4 rings of fresh pineapple, cored and chopped
Melt the butter in a frying pan on a very low heat; add the fruit and fry on both sides for three minutes; add the golden syrup and the rum and  keep cooking till thick- another 2 minutes or so.
Serve with thick cream, ice cream or yoghurt.

Grapefruit and Lychees in Champagne
(A cheat's dessert)

Ingredients:

• 1 can grapefruit segments, drained
• 1 cup fresh lychees
• 1 cup green grapes(can be peeled and seeded if you feel energetic; I don't bother)
• 1 bottle champagne
• 1 tsp chopped mint OR two dashes bitters

Drain the fruit; place in glasses with the mint; cover with cling wrap and chill. Add champagne just before serving.

Note: if using fresh fruit, mix with a syrup of half cup water boiled with half cup sugar and the juice of half a lemon for two hours or overnight before draining and adding the champagne

Chilled Oranges
Ingredients:

• 4 oranges, peeled and sliced and membrane removed
• 4 tbsp orange zest
• 4 tbsp Cointreau
• 4 tbsp castor sugar
• 1 tbsp water

            Place sugar, zest and castor sugar in a pan; bubble till it JUST turns golden. Take off the heat. Add to oranges and Cointreau. Chill with cling wrap over it. Serve cold. You can serve with cream or ice cream- and very good it is too- but it is also a wonderfully light but sweet dessert after a rich meal.

Fruit Crush
You need a blender to make this. It is extraordinarily fresh and good and fruity.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp tartaric acid
• 3 cups ripe fragrant strawberries (quarter them if they're large) OR
• 3 cups ripe fragrant pineapple, chopped (def not canned) OR
• 3 cups squishy ripe mulberries OR
• 3 cups very ripe raspberries (pick out all beetles)

Freeze the fruit FAST i.e. don't bung it in a crowded freezer, or all bunched up together. Place fruit in a plastic freezer bag and freeze in a single layer. Use with two days or the fruit will lose a lot of its fragrance. If possible, use as soon as it's frozen.

Boil other ingredients for five minutes. Refrigerate till very cold- semi frozen is even better.

Throw fruit in blender. Add 1 cup of syrup; turn on blender and process. Add more syrup only if the mixture is too thick for the blender to process.

Serve at once. It will be semi frozen, and slightly liquid; eat what you can with a spoon and slurp up the rest.

PS: a few mint leaves go well with the pineapple; a little orange zest added to the syrup when it's cooking is good with strawberries.

Strawberry and Passionfruit Crush
Ingredients:

• 3 cups strawberries, as ripe and sweet as possible
• ½ - 1 cup passionfruit pulp- about ten - twenty passionfruit, or use strained canned passionfruit
• 1 cup crushed meringues- this is one time commercial ones are fine
• 1 cup cream, whipped
• 3 tbsp castor sugar, optional- if the fruit is sweet you won't need it
• 1 tbsp cointreau... leave out if kids are going to eat this…and if they are around, they will.

Whip cream and sugar and cointreau. Cover and leave in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Hull and chop berries; add to passionfruit. Leave covered in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Just before serving, mix them both with the meringues. Serve in glasses or glass bowls- the pink, gold and cream colours are divine. So is the taste.

Ease of making: simple
Serves: 4-8
Time taken: about 5 minutes. You can prepare most in advance but assemble it just before serving.
Calories: not as many as you'd think, as the cream is whipped- far less than say a serve of sticky date pudding

Stewed Apricots or Cherries
Ingredients:

• 1 cup fruit, with or without seeds (Seeds need to be spat out, but they do give extra flavour)
• 1 tbsp castor sugar for every cup of fruit
• 1 tbsp water for every cup of fruit.
• Optional: 1 tbsp cointreau, or kirsch for every cup of fruit. A tbsp of port can be used with cherries, in which case add it with the water.

  
Place sugar in pan; add water then fruit. Simmer at a VERY LOW heat, stirring often, till the fruit just softens. Add cointreau or kirsch.

That's it. Don't add more water, unless it's scorching, or more sugar unless the fruit has no flavour, in which case make something else.

The Great Australian Crumble
The USA has pies, the English have tarts … but in Australia we gently crumble....which cries out for a poem starting: ‘Do not grumble at the crumble…’, but I don't have time right now to finish it....

• Equal amounts of brown sugar and SELF RAISING flour i.e. a cup of each
• butter
• Fruit

Easy options: a can of fruit especially pitted cherries, but with only about a third of the juice or:

stewed apple, or
stewed apple and almost any berry (Don't precook the berries- just add to the stewed apple)
stewed quinces
stewed or baked rhubarb
lightly cooked cherries (I put two layers in the baking dish, bake for ten minutes, then add the crumble topping)
apricots cooked like the cherries above
sliced peaches ditto

Mix flour and sugar. With your fingers rub in 1 tbsp butter, and then add more slices of butter till it's all crumbly ... like soft breadcrumbs. Don't worry if you add a bit too much or too little- a crumble is very forgiving.

Scatter the crumble crumbs onto the fruit. Pop into a moderate oven. Cook about ten minutes till the top is JUST starting to turn gold ... if you bake it too much your crumble will turn into a material suitable for the foundations of a 20 story building.

Eat hot or cold ... probably best is tepid i.e.  pop it out of the oven  as you serve your main course and it'll be waiting for you, crumbling gently, when you're ready for something sweet.
Note: The world is divided into those who eat their crumble with thick double cream, custard, single pouring cream, natural yoghurt, or plain for breakfast. I'm an ice cream girl … there is something fascinating about eating hot crumble and cold ice cream with just a little melted about the edges. And these days you can even eat no-fat soy ice cream, which is almost virtuous....

Plums in Port
Note: also good without the spices, if you only have port sugar and a can of plums.
This looks superb in clear glass bowls, or serve it in wine glasses - a very quick, simple dish that looks and tastes sophisticated enough to show off at a dinner party.

Ingredients:

• 1 can plums, drained, or 16 fresh plums, halved
• OR pears, quinces, a mix of granny smith apples and dried apricots … in fact even old doormats would probably taste pretty good in this stuff
• 1 cup port
• 1 cup water
• 6 whole cloves or 10 whole cardamom berries
• 1 stick cinnamon
• half cup sugar
• juice 1 lemon
• Optional: half a washed orange, sliced, peel left on.

Place all ingredients in a stainless steel saucepan. Simmer fruit gently till soft - anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour for fresh plums, or three minutes for canned plums- just long enough mellow the alcohol taste of the port. Fish out the spices and orange. Serve either hot or cold. Keeps for several days covered in the fridge.

Recipe for Cross Husbands

Ingredients:

• 1 fresh pear, peeled
• 2 cups cream
• ½ cup castor sugar, or half and half brown and castor sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla (or violet flavoured sugar)
• 4 eggs
• sprinkle nutmeg

Place sliced pear in an oven proof dish. Beat the other stuff with a fork and pour over. Scatter ground nutmeg on top. Bake at 22C for about 45 minutes or still the top is set. Serve hot, but also good cold.

Six Delicious Baked Pots

Lemon Pie without the Pie
Ingredients:

• 1 cup cream
• ½ cup lemon juice
• 4 eggs
• ½ cup vast or sugar

Pour into small oven pots or coffee mugs. Bake at 200C till set- about 10-30 minutes depending on the shape of the mug. (Thick ones take longer).  Eat hot or cold

Mandarin or tangelo pots
As above, but use mandarin juice or tangelo juice instead.

Baked Custard
Ingredients:

• 2 cups cream
• 4 eggs
• 8 tbsp castor sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla paste- comes in a small jar

Mix in a bowl.
Place in an oven proof dish, and bake at 200C for half an hour or till firm. This takes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes - ten minutes if you divide into four and bake in coffee mugs, longer if it's one big custard.

Fruit Custard
Place  1-2 tbsp of cooked fruit (or canned) in each pot or coffee cup, then add the baked custard mix. Bake as above.

Rum and Chocolate Custard
Grate 4 tbsp of dark chocolate. Add that and 1 tbsp rum to the mix instead of vanilla. Bake as above.

Bread and Butter pudding
Cut the crusts of a piece of white bread or fruit bread. Spread with butter on both sides - just a smear, not too much. If you love marmalade you can cover with smear of marmalade too, or your favourite jam, like cherry jam or strawberry.

Cut the bread into eight pieces, and place two in each pot. Pour over the basic custard mixture. Cook as above.

Optional: add 1 tbsp raisins or currants. These can be soaked in rum in a sealed container overnight or for a day before adding if you want a rum bread and butter custard.

Good with cream, vanilla ice cream, or natural yoghurt.

Caramel Tart
Ingredients:

• Caramel
• 2 400g m (or near enough) sweetened condensed milk
• 1/3 cup golden syrup
• 125 gm butter
• 2/4 cup cream

Prepare pastry for pie, tarts, or cover baking tray with shortcrust pastry or biscuit mix. Cook.

Place in saucepan. Stir on LOW heat all the time for about 10-15 minutes till it's thick and lightly golden. Pour onto biscuit crust, or into tarts or pie crust. Leave to set.

Topping: press in macadamias, pecans, walnuts, crushed peanut or macadamia brittle or crushed butterscotch lollies, or just before serving top with sliced bananas, either raw or lightly fried in butter, and then whipped cream.

Passionfruit tiramisu – family friendly
The problem with tiramisu is that
a.   it's so full of coffee that you can't sleep after eating it
b.   it's so delicious that you do eat it anyway, and
c.   it looks totally gloriously tempting but kids can't eat it either because of the alcohol and coffee.
So here is a family friendly tiramisu, extremely good, incredibly simple to make- in fact great for kids to make too.

Ingredients:

• 1 pkt sponge finger biscuits
• 1 carton mascarpone cheese
• 1 cup canned passionfruit juice, minus the seeds
• a punnet raspberries or frozen raspberries or sliced strawberries
• half cup grated chocolate, preferably dark bitter stuff

Optional: 3 tbsp cointreau to mix with the mascarpone if you really want an adults only version

Take a glass dish. Layer in half the biscuits. Pour over the juice, spread half the mascarpone, scatter on the fruit. Now layer the rest of the biscuits, spread the rest of the cheese, and scatter on the chocolate. Leave for about 2 hours for the juices to soak into the biscuits. Serve in slices.

    This is okay the next day if you keep it covered in the fridge, but best made a few hours before serving.

PS. And yes, of course you can make your own sponge fingers, and use fresh picked fruit. But if you use fresh passionfruit you may need to add a little sugar, and in which case don't bother removing the seeds – just use half as much juice again. King Island cream can be used instead of mascarpone.

Biscuits and Cakes

• 125 gm butter
• 1½ cups brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup SELF RAISING flour
• 2 cups dark choc chips
• 1 cups of your favourite nuts (roasted salted peanuts, sliced almonds, or macadamias)

Optional: add 1 tbsp grated orange rind and use sliced almonds for orange and almond biscuits, or  1 tbsp very good cocoa for double chocolate biscuits, or add chunks of violet crumble bar or chopped after dinner mints instead of choc chips.

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg, then flour, then everything else.
Preheat oven to 200C. Place on non stick trays or grease them first. Place tsps of mix on the trays- they'll spread. Bake about 10 minutes. They should be pale brown and still softish – they'll crisp as they cool. Store in a sealed container.

Serves: about 30 biscuits
Ease of making: moderate... easy enough for kids to make as long as you watch to make sure they don't burn their fingers on the trays.
Jackie's Christmas Biscuits (invented the Friday before Christmas 2009)
These are delicious – an Aussie biscuit crunch with the colour and tradition of old fashioned Christmas goodies. For gluten free I'd add a little more butter, as they may otherwise be a bit dry, or rather reduce the gluten free flour by about 2 heaped tbsp. Add more of the chopped apricots instead of the oats.

Ingredients:

• 125 gm butter
• 1½ cups brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup Self raising flour
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• half cup dark or white choc chips
• half cup of your favourite nuts (sliced almonds are good, or macadamias)
• 3 cups finely chopped glace fruit, or just glace cherries if your prefer, or glace ginger

Optional:

• 3 tbsp candied peel, or
• 2 tsps ground ginger or mixed spice

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg, then flour, then everything else.
Preheat oven to 200C. Place on non stick trays or grease them first. Place tsps of mix on the trays- they'll spread. Bake about 10 minutes. They should be pale brown and still softish –  they'll crisp as they cool. Store in a sealed container.

Serves: about 30 biscuits
Ease of making: moderate... easy enough for kids to make as long as you watch to make sure they don't burn their fingers on the trays.

Almond Delicious Biscuit
Note (i): This recipe is gluten free; also crisp and divinely delicious. The nuts are far better for you than wheat.  This recipe is also low in cholesterol- no butter or egg yolk. You'll find this biscuit satisfies your hunger in more ways than one: a snack to keep you going as well as happy.

Note (ii): you can double or triple the recipe and divide it so you make several flavours.

• 1 tsp honey
• 250 gm ground almonds
• 3.4 cup castor sugar
• 1 cup icing sugar (not icing mixture, which contains flour)
• 2 egg whites OR 1 egg white and

Flavouring:

• 1 tsp orange zest and/or 1/2 tsp cointreau
• 1 tsp lemon zest and 1/2 tsp lemon juice or a dash of bitters
• 2 drops almond essence
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee
• 1/2 tsp rum

Extras to put on top:

• ½ cup sliced almonds, or
• 1 cup chopped macadamias, or
• halved walnuts, or
• 100 g chocolate, melted

Beat one egg white till firm and fluffy. Gently mix in honey and your choice of flavouring, then gently mix in almonds and castor sugar. Cover and leave in the fridge overnight.

Next day, preheat the oven to 160C.

Beat the second eggwhite, and add half of it to the biscuit mixture – again, very gently.

Take teaspoons of the mix. Roll into small ball then roll each ball in egg white then icing sugar.

Place balls on a greased tray or a tray covered in baking paper. Leave a good space between them. Press balls flat with a glass. Top with nuts if you want them.

Bake for about 20 minutes. They should be just pale golden brown. Be careful not to overcook them so they are too dark. They'll turn crisp as they cool.

If you want choc covered biscuits brush over melted chocolate when the biscuits are cool.
Store in a sealed container for up to three weeks.
Ease of making: medium
Time taken: 10 minutes to mix, 12 hours to rest or overnight, 20 minutes to bake
Serves: about 25 small biscuits.

Chocolate Ginger Slices
These are so irresistible I haven't made them for five years - but will again this Christmas. They make stunning presents, and last for weeks, but wrap them up with lots of ribbon or the scent may tempt you to scoff the lot.
I ate something like them about 35 years ago, and experimented till I came up with these- much better than the original. I was living in a shed with no oven at the time, and needed a goodie that didn't need baking.

Ingredients:

• 1 pkt biscuits, about 250 gm – any plain biscuit will do, but they give different results. Milk arrowroots or Nice are good.
• 125 gm butter
• 1 heaped tbsp powdered ginger
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 heaped tbsp cocoa
• 1 egg
• 1 or 2 cups sultanas
• 1 or 2 cups walnuts or macadamias or sliced almonds
• Optional: 1 cup crystallised cherries

Icing

• 2 cups icing sugar
• water
• 1 tbsp cocoa
• 1 tbsp powdered ginger

Break biscuits into crumbs - fingers work best, in a large bowl.
Put butter, sugar, cocoa, ginger and sultanas and cherries into a saucepan. Melt butter on low heat, stirring all the time. This will take about 3 minutes. When all is mixed add the egg, stirring well for about a minute. It should all be like a gluggy caramel.
Scrape mix into the biscuits and mix well with a large spoon, and then press mix into a greased tray and leave to get quite cold.

Now make the icing: mix icing  ingredients with a little water – adding very little at a time.
Spread icing over the slice. Now AT ONCE scatter on and press in the nuts. The whole of the top should be studded with nuts, pressed down firmly into the icing. Leave to set.

Cut into SMALL squares. Store in a sealed container for up to a month.
Serves: 1- 30 (depends how large you make each
Ease of making: very simple.

Sweet Potato Rock Cakes
The sweet potato makes these moist and naturally sweet – as well as good for you, as it includes sweet potato, olive oil, blueberries, dried fruit and nuts. The only villain is the sugar, which you can reduce or even leave out if you're used o a low sugar diet it's used for sweetening in this recipe, not texture, and the fruit and sweet potato will add natural sweetness. It's also healthier made with whole wheat instead of white flour.

Ingredients:

• 125 ml olive oil
• 1 cup castor sugar plus 2 tbsp extra
• 1 cup Self raising flour
• 1 cup gm mashed sweet potato, peeled then boiled, microwaved or baked
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries OR currants
• 1 cup macadamia nuts or other nuts (optional but good for you)
• 1 cup sultanas or 1 cup chopped dates

Possibly needed: 1 egg, or a little water, low fat milk, yoghurt or cream or sour cream

Put the oven on to 200C.  Mix everything except the extra sugar and the 'possibly needed' liquid.

The mixture should be moist enough to drop down from the spoon in big glops. If it's too dry to glop, add the egg or a drizzle of liquid till it glops properly. (Some blueberries, sweet potato mash and some flour are moister than others. If yours are very dry then some extra liquid may be needed. But you probably won't need it.)
 
Grease a baking tray or line with baking paper.  Take a tablespoon and put heaped spoonfuls (about 1 glop) of the mixture a little way apart on the tray.

Sprinkle each 'cake' with a little of the extra sugar.
Bake for 10- 15 minutes or till firm to touch or a skewer comes out dry. Take out of the oven, cool then place in a sealed container.

They are best eaten the same day, but still great for the next three or flour days. If you've used blueberries the rock cakes may start to grow whiskers of fungus or go bad after this time. If you have used currants they'll last longer.
Serves:  12- 20
Ease: very easy

Cakes

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
Ingredients:

• 100 gm dark chocolate
• 125 gm butter
• 125 gm chunky peanut butter
• 1 and a half cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• three quarters of a cup SELF RAISING flour
• ½ half cup plain flour
• ½  a cup milk, or light sour cream, or buttermilk

Turn the oven on to 200 C.  Line a cake tin with baking paper.

Melt butter and chocolate; take off heat when JUST melted and beat in sugar, then peanut butter, then the eggs one by one. Now add the flours and milk and mix gently - don't overbeat. pour into the cake tin and bake for 45mins-1 hour, or till the top springs back when you gently press it and the top is mid brown, not pale or black!

Take from oven. Leave in the pan for 20 minutes to cool a little and firm up, then tip out and peel back the baking paper. When cool ice with plain chocolate icing, or caramel chocolate icing:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbsp melted chocolate
• 1 tbsp caramel topping
• Milk - enough milk to moisten and to mix...add a tsp at a time so you don't make it too moist.

Murderess's Apple Cake
This cake was baked by a French mass murderer in the 1850's and 60's in the apple growing area of Normandy. It was so stunningly delicious that no one could resist it, arsenic and all. She even took it around to the grieving families of the deceased, who ate it in their turn all unsuspecting.

Ingredients:

• Absolutely no arsenic whatsoever (This is important)
• 1 tbsp sultanas or seedless raisins
• 1 tbsp calvados or rum or apple juice at a pinch
• 100 g butter
• 100 g castor sugar
• 2 eggs plus one yolk
• 225 g Self raising flour
• 2 tbsp mixed peel or marmalade
• 2 tbsp chopped almonds (or other nuts)
• Pinch cinnamon and nutmeg
• 3 apples, peeled cored and sliced at the last moment or they'll turn brown
• 2 tbsp brown sugar

Soak the sultanas in the rum overnight or for an hour or two. Butter and flour a cake tin, or line with baking paper.
Cream butter and castor sugar; add eggs one by one then the extra yolk, then fold in the sultanas, marmalade, nuts and flour. Pour into a cake pan- a wide lamington pan is perfect, as the cake should be about the height of your little finger. Now press the slices of apple into the cake, sharp end downwards. Sprinkle with the brown sugar and spices. Bake at 180 C for about an hour and a quarter. It's ready when a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool.

White Christmas Cake
This cake is superb: rich, buttery and moist. But make sure you don't use all self raising flour, or it'll be too dry.

You can eat it plain; pour on hot lemon syrup and make it a lemon syrup cake; or serve it in slices with stewed apricots or stewed cherries.

If you're serving it  at an 'everyone sit at he table and admire the food' type meal, try slicing the cake on a platter, pouring on the apricots of cherries, then drizzling the whole lot with thick King Island cream, or mascarpone cheese mixed with pouring cream, or creamy natural yoghurt.

Ingredients:

• 200gm butter
• 2/3 cup castor sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cups plain flour
• 3/4 cup SELF RAISING flour

Optional:

• 1 cup red and green crystallised cherries, and /or
• half cup ground almonds or
• 1 cup chopped macadamias

Beat butter and sugar till soft. Add eggs one by one- don't add another till the first is well beaten in. Gently mix in the flours and other ingredients.

Line a large cake tin (or two smaller tins) with two layers of baking paper. Pour in the batter. Bake at 150 C for 1 hour.

Lemon or Lime syrup

• 1 cup lime/lemon juice
• 1 cup castor sugar
• half cup water

Bring to the boil when you take the cake out of the oven. Leave the cake in its tin. Simmer 5 minutes while you poke holes in the cake.  Pour the hot syrup on the still warm cake. Leave it in the tin to soak up syrup for at least half an hour.

'Maybe' Cake
A healthy nut and vegetable based cake.  (Also moist and quite delicious).

Note: Even the fussiest kids won't realise there are veg in this cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Self raising flour
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
• ½  tsp ground coves (optional)
• 1 cup brown sugar Or 1 - 1/12 cup finely diced dates
• 1 ½  cups grated raw carrot, OR sweet potato, OR pumpkin OR beetroot OR pineapple, fresh or canned
• ½ cup sultanas OR currants
• ½ cup sliced glace ginger (optional)
• ½ cup chopped walnuts, or pecans, or macadamia nuts, or almonds
• 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, OR peanut oil; OR macadamia oil; OR sunflower oil
• 2 eggs (optional- but the cake will be a bit crumbly without them)

Mix well. Line a cake tin or a loaf pan with baking paper. Spoon in the mix. Bake at 160 C for 1 hour. Check at 40 minutes if you are using a wide shallow dish, as it will cook faster.  It's done when the top springs back if you touch it quickly with your finger or poke in a skewer- if it comes out dry, it's done.

The cake can be iced, but doesn't need it. It's also good served hot with cream or ice cream.   It lasts about a week in a sealed container. It’ll still taste fresh then, but may start to grow whiskers. Throw out if it begins to look mouldy or tastes sour. 

The ‘Wow Factor’ Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups brown sugar
• 4 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup cocoa OR good dark chocolate
• 3/4 cup cream or natural yoghurt
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups Self raising flour

Heat oven to 180 C. Line a cake tin with baking paper.
Place all ingredients except the egg and flour in a saucepan. Heat very slowly, stirring, till the mixture boils. Take off the heat and let it cool.

Now stir in the egg, then gently mix in the Self raising flour. Pour into the tin and bake 30 minutes. If you are using a very large tin the cake will be flatter and take less time to cook.

Adults only extra:
Now sprinkle 2 tbsp of Kahlua over the top of the cake.

Topping: raspberries and cream, or cooked dark cherries and cream with more grated chocolate, or chocolate icing.

Chocolate icing:  2 cups icing sugar, 3 tbsp cocoa or melted chocolate, milk or more kalua. Mix till stiff but spreadable.

PS. If the cake is for kids don't add the Kahlua, but try jelly snakes curling around on top of the icing. 

Serves: 8 good slices, but will stretch to 10-12, especially with cream and fruit or jelly snakes
Ease of making: easier than most cakes- suitable for a novice.
Time taken: ten minutes mixing, but ¾ -1 hour from getting the ingredients to eating the cake.

Christmas Cake
The secret of a great cake is long soaking of the fruit, so it’s soft and tastes of the alcohol, and long slow cooking, NO OVERCOOKING, and lots of rum and or whisky. This is a delicious example – very rich and moist.

Most people who don’t like fruit cake have only eaten packaged ones, or overcooked dry ones, or ones that have been made artificially dark with ‘browning’ essence, or ones without enough rum.

A good Christmas cake should still be moist and delicious in mid-winter.  It is a most excellent thing to have in the larder; you only need small pieces and you always have something extremely good to serve to guests. 

Even better, Christmas cakes leave a very nice crumby detritus every time you cut them; this of course is the prerogative of the cook.  (It is a well-known fact that only intact slices of Christmas cake contain calories; crumbs and left-overs are calorie free.)

PS.  If you adore ginger, crystallised ginger can replace all or part of the pineapple.

Ingredients (1):

• 1 cup rum, or half rum and half whisky
• 3 cups sultanas
• 1 cup currants
• 2 cups chopped crystallised cherries
• 2 cups chopped glacé pineapple or glace ginger or more sultanas if you can’t get the glace fruit
• half a cup pineapple or apricot or cherry jam
• 3 tbsp grated fresh orange rind or lemon rind or both mixed
• 1 cup brown sugar
• juice of 1 lemon

Place the above ingredients in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Place in the fridge. Leave for at least 3 days... 3 weeks is even better!

Ingredients (2):

• 250 g butter
• 5 eggs
• ½ ground almonds
• 2 cups plain flour

Melt butter, add eggs one by one, then ground almonds and plain flour and the fruit mixture. Mix gently but well. Don't keep beating though once it's all amalgamated.

Line a deep tin with 2 layers of baking paper.  Pour in mix. It should quite touch the top of the tin. Place in the oven, and put a layer of baking paper on top. The paper will sag, which I why the cake shouldn’t be too near the top, so the paper doesn’t touch it.

I place whole almonds in a pattern on top – not needed but looks good.

Bake at about 150 C for 2- 4 hours.  The amount of time will vary according to the size of your tin, the thermostat in your oven and even the type of flour and the weather – I’m serious!

Note: You’ll know it’s done when the top is light brown, not dark brown, and when you press it, it springs back. But don’t overcook. Two hours may be all it needs.

Take it out of the oven. Now AT ONCE while still very hot, drizzle over another half cup of rum.   A lot of the alcohol will evaporate at once, but some will remain, so leave this step out if you think kids will have large chunks – but they may not, as they may well not like the taste – it’s a bit strong for most kids. Don’t worry about the alcohol added before cooking, as the cooking will destroy the alcohol. But the taste will be there, so if serving to anyone with an alcohol problem use orange juice- not from navel oranges as they turn bitter – instead of rum and whisky. And add 1 tsp mixed spice to the mix. 

Cool in tin before turning out. Wrap in alfoil and keep till Christmas. I make more of the rose mixture and dribble a little on the cake every week.

Note (i): if you make many small cakes instead they make excellent Christmas presents.  In this case cooking time will be less.  You'll have to sniff, poke and see i.e. as soon as the cake has been filling the house with good spicy fragrance for about half an hour, dip a skewer or even a knife in and see if it comes out clean, or if the top springs back when you press it lightly with your finger.

Note (ii): these can be made with gluten free flour, but will be dryer. Use only half the flour, and substitute almond meal for the other half.
Note (iii): I sometimes add candied cumquats to this cake, but only because we have a lot of cumquats.

Sue Tranter’s Rhubarb or Apple Gluten Free Cake
(Can be made with ordinary flour, it’s stunningly moist, delicious and full of flavour.)

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 125gm butter or margarine
• 200 gm castor sugar
• 250 gm gluten free SELF RAISING or ordinary flour
• 2 large grated apples and a dust of cinnamon
• or
• 2 cups stewed rhubarb, with half a cup chopped glace ginger added as it stews. I stew ours in orange juice.

Cream butter and sugar. Beat eggs in well one by one. Fold in other ingredients. Bake about 1-11/2 hours at about 150 C. It's ready when the top is light brown.

Serves about 12
Ease: medium
Time taken: 20 minutes to mix, 1/ ½  hours to bake

Ultra-moist Double Apple, Apple Cake
(With thanks to Grandma, who made the perfect one)

This is the moistest, most apple-y cake I know. It keeps for two weeks in a sealed container the fridge; about a week out of the fridge. The cake stays fresh longer, but the apple grows green whiskers. Throw out of it does.

Ingredients:

• 180 gm butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 3/4 cup SELF RAISING flour
• 1 cup grated apple mixed with the juice of a lemon
• 2 apples, peeled and sliced
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg, mixed spice or cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in eggs one by one. Beat well and don't add the next till the previous one is mixed in perfectly. Fold in the grated apple and flours.

Place in a greased and floured cake tin OR line it with baking paper. Now take the apple slices; slide them in narrow side down into the cake. The tops should be just level with the top of the cake mix. You’ll be surprised how many slices you can fit in.

Dust the top of the cake with the spices.

Bake at 150C for an hour, or till a skewer comes out clean, or the top is brown and the cake springs back when you press the centre.

Leave the cake to cool for about ten minutes in the tin before you turn it out.

Serves: 12
Ease of making: medium
Time take: 5 minutes to mix, 1 hour to cook.

Lemon Syrup Pound cake (Possibly the best cake in the universe)
Keeps: in a sealed container for at least a fortnight, possibly longer
Variations: add 1 tbsp poppy seeds, or caraway seeds,  OR grated orange,  OR lemon,  OR mandarin rind, OR 1 cup finely chopped pistachios,  OR 1 cup grated dark chocolate

Ingredients:

• 250gm butter (must be butter)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 4 room eggs
• 1/2 cup SELF RAISING flour
• 1 cup plain flour

Cream butter and sugar well- must be smooth and pale. Beat in eggs one at a time: lots of beating, or it will curdle. It won't be as light if it curdles, though still superb.  Gently add flour. Place in a greased and floured tin or line with baking paper. Bake at 180C for 1 hour. As soon as you take it out pour on the hot syrup. Leave in pan to cool and absorb the syrup.

Note: This cake is still good without the syrup, and can be iced for a birthday cake, especially the chocolate version.

Ease of making: medium
Time taken: 1 hour to cook, half an hour to make
Serves: about 40 slices

Syrup

• half cup lemon or lime juice
• half cup castor sugar

Bring to the boil slowly, stirring so sugar dissolves. As soon as it boils pour over the hot cake SLOWLY, so each bit of cake gets a good wetting.  You may like to poke a fork into some of the crusty bits so that the syrup really penetrates into the cake.

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For more information from Jackie, please go to her website: www.jackiefrench.com

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