Caramel Anzac Slice

Intro

This is, without doubt, the very best of my recipes for slices. It has all my favourite flavours: coconut, caramel and rolled oats. These are reminiscent of Anzac biscuits - a great Kiwi classic (yes - I will give recipes for these too).

Recipe

Base

Cream together

• 200g butter
• 150g sugar

Add

• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Press mixture into a greased swiss roll tin. Cook 10 minutes at 175 degrees celcius.

Filling

Melt together

• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 25g butter
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup

Pour over the partially cooked base then add the topping..

Topping

• 70g butter rubbed into
• 1 cup rolled oats (organic oats are worth it - truly)
• half cup coconut
• quarter cup flour
• quarter cup brown sugar

Sprinkle over the topping and bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees celcius.

Shortbread

Intro

When I have been poor, especially at Christmas time when the bambini expect things like Christmas presents and a Christmas meal, I have given gifts of food. One year I made Cashew Fudge packed into Christmas tins, another year Chocolate Truffles packed into small timber boxes which the kids dad made me out of pine offcuts which I washed green with watered down paint. Another year I made shortbread which I wrapped in cellophane and tied with red and gold ribbons. Tomato Relish, Tomato Sauce and Lemon Honey and also good gifts which people liked receiving.

Recipe

Cream together until white and fluffy

• 1 pound (454g) of butter
• 250g icing sugar

Sift together then fold in to the butter mixture in 2 or 3 batches:

• 400g flour
• 100g rice flour
• 110g cornflour

Form into 2 logs, wrap in glad wrap, greaseproof or tinfoil and refrigerate until firm.

Slice into 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick slices, put onto a greased baking sheet and mark tops with a fork making 3 rows of evenly spaced prong marks. Sometimes I use a wooden scottish shortbread mould with thistle marks.

Bake slowly at about 140-150 degrees celcius for at least 30 minutes, maybe 45 - maybe longer. They do not want to be coloured at all and are best when quite dry.

Tomato Sauce

Intro

Another one of Nancy Ransom's recipes - and its so yummy. I havn't made this for ages but I used to do a big cookup every year when I could buy tomatoes by the boxful from the market gardens for about $4. Des used to grow magnificent beefsteak tomatoes in his glasshouse - big as your palm - and I guess thats how come Nan accumulated these recipes utilizing the surplus.

A kitchen whizz is fine for chopping everything up and also for whizzing afterwards before bottling.

Recipe

Simmer together in preserving pan for 2.5 hours:

• 6 pounds tomatoes, chopped roughly (3kgs)
• 2 pounds onions, sliced (1 kg)
• 2 pounds apples, chopped roughly (1 kg)
• 3lb sugar (1.5 kg)
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 15g ground ginger
• 15g garlic

Tie these together in a square of muslin and throw in as well:

• 15g whole allspice
• 15g whole cloves
• 15g whole peppercorns

After the 2.5 hours is up, add vinegar and simmer for another half hour

• 1.125 litres malt vinegar

Remove muslin and bottle (in really hot sterilized bottles).

Oven Fried Chicken

Intro

I do cook real food, although from looking at the blog so far it would appear we live on cocktails, antipasto and enormous amounts of chocolate :) 

So for the first of many recipes of 'real' food (since tequila and chocolate apparently aren't) here is a chicken ovenbake. I make these a lot because they cook on their own while the chef is socialising with guests :) This is my oldest chicken bake - one I found as a Child Bride suddenly required to produce an evening meal every night! I reckon you could use this as a marinade, use chicken wings or niblets, and throw these on the bbq instead of in the oven. I'd double the marinade quantities. The best way to marinade I know is to put the ingredients into a plastic bag, squish to combine then throw the meat in. Suck all the air out - with a reverse balloon pump thingee of course and certainly not with your mouth ;) - and then just turn the bag over and wriggle the meat apart a bit every now and then. 

Recipe

• 500g chicken drumsticks
• 2 tablespoons of oil
• 3 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
• a few drops of tobasco sauce
• 2 teaspoons of curry powder
• half teaspoon oregano
• quarter teaspoon paprika
• 1 chicken stock cube

Place chicken in an over proof dish in a single layer. Combine all ingredients together, brush over the chicken. Bake in a moderate oven for 20 minutes, turn chicken over, baste with any remaining marinade, Bake for another 15 minutes.

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Intro

1 part Anita, 1 part my Mum and 1 part Rosalie :) 

This recipe has lovely layering around it and the intro may well end up longer than the recipe! Back in the day, when I was a kid, my Mum and Dad used to have these lovely dinner parties. Graham Greig (work colleague of Mum's) and Anita (his wife) were regular guests. Anita made this gorgeous Chocolate Mousse cake once and, fortunately for us gave the recipe to Mum. Apparently, its an old Hudson and Hall recipe and I did track it down many years later but this modified 'made up' version is heaps easier to make. 

Mum used to make this Mousse Cake for high days and holidays using sponge cake and a packet mousse mix and lumps of cake rather than layers. So not the Hudson and Halls recipe as such, or method actually, which involved many fine layers of homemade cake and mousse and hours of faffing about. The original recipe is hideously expensive to make and we were not a wealthy household but we took the concept! 

Then one Christmas in the mid 80s I put my finger into a bowl of chocolate mousse that Rosalie Blake's son Jeremy had made from a recipe he got from their neighbour Sarah Hodge in Manakau. Stunning. Just 1 word for it. So, the recipe entered its final incarnation and I use Rosalie / Sarah's mousse recipe, Mum's method and Anita's concept. This is only made on very special occasions - birthdays really. But wait - there is a final twist to the tale ... years later, my widowed Mum and Anita's widowed husband Graham got married. and one of the first times I went for a special meal (Christmas or something) I took a Chocolate Mousse Cake ... and that's when I found out that the dessert was actually based on Anita's recipe. 

Recipe

Melt gently together in a double boiler (or a microwave if you are impatient) until a nicely combined smooth mixture - don't over melt or over stir.

• 300g good chocolate*
• 125g unsalted butter (salted works just fine)
• 25g cocoa powder (yes use a scale)
• 50g castor sugar

Separate

• 5 eggs - throw 1 yolk away (or feed it to the cat)

Add 4 lightly beaten yolks to the chocolate mixture and stir until just combined - then stop immediately (or mixture may curdle) Beat together until stiff (but not quite pavlova stiff):

• 5 egg whites
• a pinch of salt

Gently fold into the chocolate trying not to smash too much air out.

Whip cream until soft peaks form (don't over whip because it makes it harder to work with)

• 300 ml cream (whipping cream / double cream - don't know what else its called)

Gently fold this into the chocolate mixture as well, taking care not to smash the air out. 

Take some cake** and break it into golf ball sized pieces. Get a spring form tin and put a thin layer of mousse on the bottom of the tin. Put bits of cake in and pour mousse in the gaps, then plonk more cake and more mousse in until the tin is full. If you use a large tin the cake will be shallower, if you use a smaller tin the cake will be very deep. Its best to use a larger tin because this is a very big dessert cake that feeds about 10 (or 4 teenage boys). 

Cover it with tin foil and refrigerate until firm. At least 6 hours - preferably overnight. When ready to decorate, lift tin foil off, slide a hot knife around the edge of the tin, loosen the spring form tin, take tin off, place a serving plate on top and tip cake and plate upside down. Remove the base of the tin by sliding a hot knife underneath it. Smooth the top if desired with a hot knife. Decorate with whatever you like. I often use piped whipped cream and halved, hulled strawberries or tinned mandarin segments. My kids love broken flaked chocolate or Belgian seashell chocolates or Ferrero Rochers (yes - the bambini are horribly spoilt but they love me so its all good). 

* Good chocolate means not compound chocolate and not that crappy Cadbury palm oil one but real chocolate. Whittakers is great. Milk is perfect or sometimes I use 50/50 milk and dark Ghana. Don't only use a dark one or it will be unpleasantly bitter. If the mousse tastes grainy or doesn't form a delightful creamy smooth texture it is usually crappy, cheap, nasty chocolate (and I've been caught out a few times). 

** I usually buy a plain trifle sponge or pair of round sponges from the supermarket but I sometimes make a chocolate sponge. It makes a firmer cake which is a bit more filling.

Gin Gimlet

Intro

I propose Gin Gimlet as the Summer drink of choice this year. Last year we only had 2 summery days so didn't need one but the previous year we did Margaritas - which, despite containing the devil's liquor (tequila), made for a memorable summer.

Recipe

• 1 part gin
• 1 part Roses lime cordial (up to 3 parts really but I prefer 1:1)
• ice

Mix it up and drink.

Cheese Puffs

Intro

Another one of Nancy Ransom's recipes, this one was brought home by Des from Te Kowhai which was THE wedding reception lounge in Horowhenua - back in the day. He was a chippie by trade but was surprisingly good at baking. Apparently he was the cook when he was stationed in the Pacific as a young man during WWII - which explains why a man of his generation, working in a macho industry, living in traditional, conservative, small town NZ in the 60s actually knew one end of a wooden spoon from the other! 

Recipe
Sift together:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 and a half teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• pinch of cayenne

Combine together then add to the dry ingredients above :

• 1 beaten egg
• 3/4 cup milk

Then fold in:

• 1 and a half cups grated tasty cheese

This should be a wet, lumpy, sloppy-scone consistency. Put tablespoons of mixture into greased patty tins and cook for about 5 minutes in a very hot 400 degrees fahrenheit oven. Serve immediately.