Date Scones

Sift together:

• 3 cups flour
• 5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Grate in 

• 100g butter (keep dusting it in the flour)

Chop in

• 1.5 cups of roughly chopped dates

Mix in

• 1.5 cups milk

Tip onto a floured baking tray, pat into a rough circle, at least an inch thick, then cut into 8 pieces. Spread out slightly, dust with caster sugar.

15 mins at 220 degrees celcius

Kumara Cake

 

Sift together

• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 cup flour
• 1.5 cups muscavado sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teasp salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Beat together

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup cooking oil 

Then fold in:

• 3 cups grated orange kumera

and the dry mix above.

Pour into a 20cm cake tin and bake for 1-1.5 hours at 180 degrees until a skewer comes out clean.

Ice when cool with chocolate icing - yummy with a block of chilli chocolate broken ontop as decoration.

 

Savoury Dumplings

Intro
Lovely Pippa gave me a file box of homekill stewing steak today - so excited - and yes you really can taste the difference. So this weekend its a big slowcooked casserole I'll be making with loads of garlic and carrots and red wine and onion. Then I'll drop in these fluffy white dumplings - yum. Beef and Carrot stew would be good too.

Mum used to make these when we were kids but I've no idea how (or when) she had time to make the stew given she worked fulltime and we didn't have crockpots ...

Recipe

• 2 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 beaten eggs
• 12 tablespoons milk

Sift dry ingredients together, rub in butter (or use a food processor) drop large tablespoons-ful into stew, place lid on top and cook 20 minutes at a high simmer.

Mum's Sultana Cake

Intro

The first pages in my recipe notebook are all written in my 11 year old handwriting and are all my Mum's. She is an amazing cook and gets enormous pleasure nowadays from preparing beautiful evening meals to share with her new husband, my step father Graham, and also glorious dinner parties for friends and family.

This is all a far cry from the family cooking that Mum used to do at the time I was copying out her recipes. I left home when I was 19, and as the eldest of 4 kids, Mum still had many years of family cooking ahead of her and making good, nutritious meals on limited income. I remember Mum going through her recipe book choosing recipes we were able to bake on the basis of how economic they were: how much butter, how many eggs. We were beginner cooks and I guess to there was a better than even chance that it would be a disaster! She identified, quite rightly, that the more ingredients a recipe has the higher the cost.

I have kept Mum's recipes back until now because they are really special and I didn't want to share them until it felt right.

This light sultana cake is a staple that mum regularly made. I remember it being yellow and lightly studded with moist sultanas and whenever we went on picnics - which we did often - we always took a square tin containing a sultana cake. Our favourite place for picnics was Mount Victoria in Wellington, we spent hours in the pine forest having raucous pinecone fights, but Red Rocks was memorable too with towering rock cliffs to scramble up.

Recipe

• 1 pound sultanas (450g)
• 1/2 pound butter(225g)
• water
• 3 eggs
• 1.25 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon essence
• 12 ounces flour (3 cups)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Place sultanas in a saucepan, cover with water then boil for 5 minutes. Strain then add the roughly chopped butter. Set aside to cool.

Beat together eggs and sugar until thick and pale then stir into the cooled sultanas and butter. Add essence, flour and baking powder.

Bake in a greased, floured and paper lined square tin for about an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean, at 350 degrees. Watch the top so it doesn't burn the sultanas (might want to put a square of paper on top after 40 mins).

*Can add spice if desired.

Peppermint Crunch

Intro

Every summer my primary school, Titahi Bay North School, walked over 'The Farm' to Shelley Bay for a picnic ... and we needed food and drink. I remember one particular trip Mum had flavoured our drink bottles with peppermint essence! It was so yummy and surprising and special I have never forgotten it and I always associate this recipe with that memory.

Later, on the day of 6th form accreditation, we ended up here celebrating our good fortune to have UE accredited. I remember Mum coming to collect a load of us teenagers packed into the Holden station wagon like sardines and she took us back home to continue celebrating - safely.  

Shelley Bay is now known as its more appropriate Maori name, Whitereia Park, and is still a very cool picnic location.

Recipe

• 5 ounces flour (140g)
• 3 ounces sugar (85g)
• 3 crushed weetbix
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon cocoa
• 4 ounces melted butter (125g)

Mix everything together, press into a greased slice tin (swiss roll tin) for 15 minutes at 375 degrees fahrenheit (180 degees celcius).

Ice with peppermint essence flavoured icing. Its nice with chocolate or green coloured icing, or for a treat 2 layers of icing: 1 white peppermint flavoured and a chocolate icing on top.

ANZAC Biscuits

Intro

I have just come back from attending the local ANZAC Day service at the RSA Bowling Club at Waitarere.It was pelting down with rain but, as usual, the club was crammed packed. Old soldiers and their families, locals, and servicemen of every 'flavour': army, airforce, navy, police, fireservice plus the local scout troop. All beautifully dressed in full uniforms. We attend year after year because it is a part of being a Kiwi. I love joining with my community, the backpipes, Binyin's lines, the Dedication, the laying of the wreaths and listening to the haunting strains of the last post.

As long as I can remember I have been attending ANZAC ceremonies. First with my parents, then as a Brownie, Girl Guide and Ranger. I remember marching behind the solidiers in the freezing early morning darkness for the Dawn Service at Titahi Bay, then as a young bride we supported the Father in Law. Now I go to support my children who are Scouts. Today Connor laid the wreath for the Scouts, but Millie has done it in the past, and I am very proud that they conduct themselves with such decorum.

ANZAC Day is a very special public holiday in New Zealand. and Australia too, to honour our soldiers who fought and died at Gallipoli in 1915, but also other soldiers and theatres of war. Gallipoli was a disaster. The campaign took nine months, we lost a third of our soldiers, Kiwis made up a quarter of those who died at Gallipoli and it had no influence on the outcome of WWI.

What we celebrate on ANZAC DAY is the Kiwi spirit that was defined on that beach: bravery, tenacity, practicality, ingenuity, loyalty to King and comrades. We emerged as a Nation, even as we fought unquestioningly on the other side of the world in the name of the British Empire.

Anzac Biscuits

One of the food items that women in both Australia and NZ sent to soldiers during the First World War was a hard, long-keeping biscuit that could survive the journey by sea, and still remain edible. These were known as Soldiers' Biscuits, but after Gallipoli they became known as Anzac Biscuits.

The traditional Anzac Biscuit is hard and flat but newer versions are soft and chewy. There are many recipes for Anzac Biscuits. Common to most is the inclusion of rolled oats, coconut, butter and golden syrup - but never eggs which were in short supply during the First World War.

I remember making these with my Grandmother when I was just a little girl, John Imber's Mum made them for us to take tramping when we were teenagers and I make them now for the kids lunchboxes. They are delicious, indestructible and get better over the week.

Recipe

• 125g flour (4 ozs)
• 150g sugar (6 ozs)
• 1 cup coconut
• 1 cup rolled oats
  
  
• 100g butter (3.5 ozs)
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (soda bicarb)
• 2 tablespoons water

Mix together the first 4 ingredients. Melt butter and syrup together in a largish saucepan. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water in a cup - then pour it into the melted butter and syrup. It will fizz up - stir it in - then stir it into the dry ingredients.

Place spoonfuls on greased baking trays and cook for 15 - 20 minutes at 180 degrees celcius (350F).

Photograph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/australian-war-memorial/3461453199/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Chocolate Mint Cheesecake

Intro
I first typed this recipe up back in December but have been wracking my brains for a story to go with it. Bottom line: there is no story. It is just a really lovely no-bake recipe that I have made several times in recent months alone.

Its also very nice with a thick blueberry 'sauce' on top instead of the mints. Simmer a couple of handfuls of blueberries with a splash of water and about 2 tablespoons of sugar. Once its thickish (use cornflour if need be) allow it to cool and then spread it over the filling.

Recipe
Base

• 90g plain sweet biscuits
• 1 tablespoon cocoa
• 45g butter

Filling

• 250g cream cheese
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teasp vanilla essence
• 1 teaspoon gelatine
• 2 teaspoons cold water
• 1 cup cream
• 6 chocolate after dinner mints
• 1 tablespoon water

Method
Crush the biscuits finely in a food processor or with a rolling pin and plastic bag. Add melted butter and cocoa to the crumbs then press into 18cm flan dish with a removable base. Place in the fridge to firm up.

Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth with a electric cake mixer. Put the cold water in a teacup, sprinkle gelatine over the top and then place the cup in hot water until the gelatine dissolves. Add this to the cream cheese mixture and beat well. Whip the cream and fold it through the cream cheese mixture. Spoon it into the crust. Dissolve the mints in the extra water in the top of a double saucepan. Cool it a bit then spoon this over the cream cheese mixture and lightly swirl through. Refrigerate until set.