Mango, coconut, passionfruit – all words that evoke a flood of sensory memories: eating my first mango and juice is running down my chin; picking abundant passionfruit from the vine growing wild in the vacant block next door ....
A PLUM JOB
SUMMER CELEBRATION
SUMPTUOUS SHORTCUT
SUMMER FRUIT IN KIR JELLY
Here in the southern hemisphere, summer fruit is everywhere and we’re loving it. And just to ease ourselves out of our celebratory holiday mode and back into the working year, we’ve combined a refreshing summer tipple with the abundance of berry fruit to make a simple, delicious and pretty healthy dessert to kick off our blogging year ....
A GRAND FINALE
RHUBARB, RHUBARB, RHUBARB
Funny how one thing leads to another. I recently needed only a couple of stalks of rhubarb, to pickle, to top some delicious sticky rice cakes for a pre-dinner nibble. As our rhubarb pickle loses its vibrant colour after a week or two, I only pickle what I need. What to do with the rest? A bit of poaching with some star anise, orange juice and zest produced a cup full of delicious pulpy sweet rhubarb.
What to do with that ...
SWEET NONYA
Nonya cuisine is probably the world’s first true fusion food. It really is a fusion of cultures using Malay, Indonesian, Thai and Chinese flavours and spices and is also well known for a wide variety of delicious and sometimes unusual (to me) traditional cakes and sweets. I went crazy for their delicate Pineapple Tarts ...
YUZU MEETS PUDDING
WORTH THE WORK
Husband’s birthday. Cake needed. But what to make? Something new. He’s had all our recipes of course. Birthday getting closer ..... Chatting with a friend just back from Europe who, on a train to Brussels, consumed several pieces of what she described as the most delicious cake she’d ever had - a Medovik, a Czechoslovakian Honey Cake. Bingo! ....
SUGAR AND SPICE AND ALL THINGS RICE
DELICIOUS LEMON
We’ve posted a few citrus-based recipes recently but given that lemons, oranges and grapefruits are in season right now we know you’ll allow us to post one more. After all, it is winter in the southern hemisphere and vitamin C is supposed to be good to ward off colds and the flu.
So here is a classic lemon delicious pudding with a touch of lime ....
PERFECT PASTRY
JENNY'S FROZEN LEMON MERINGUE CAKE
My beautiful grandmother, Dot, had a lovely tradition of always noting the name of the person who passed a recipe on to her. I still have her old hand written recipe book with its solid wooden cover. It is full of recipes with lovely names like Chocolate Cake Rene and Aunty Nellie Lambert’s Rock Cakes, Muriel’s Caramel Marlow and Elsie T’s Coffee Crystal Biscuits as well as many of Dot’s own recipes ....
SEMI FREDDO
Semi freddo (the Italian for half cold) is considered a half frozen dessert and is made from egg yolks, cream, sugar and any flavouring you fancy. It is a good alternative to home made ice cream, if you don’t have an ice cream machine, as you don’t have to churn the semi freddo mixture. You can freeze it in individual moulds or in one piece as we’ve done here to serve as a birthday cake ....
NIPPLES OF VENUS
Ever since seeing the movie ‘Amadeus’ many years ago, I have lusted after the large and rather provocative looking chocolates which were offerred to Mozart’s wife by the composer, Salieri. My memory is that he tells her in a rather seductive way that these delicious looking morsels are called Nipples of Venus and that she promptly wraps her plump lips around one of these generously proportioned items, wide eyed and giggly ....
