Bienenstich

July 17, 2022

   

Last weekend I put time into winter comfort cooking, baking an inessential bienenstich before moving on to a tray of pastitsio. There's a vegan bienenstich recipe on the blog already, but this time I revisited the full butter, milk and egg-laden version that I hand-copied into my recipe binder as a teenager. I couldn't remember the original source, but my mum showed me her identical handwritten copy by text message and confirmed that we're both using her mum's version.

I'm surprised that the recipe doesn't include yeast as the rising agent, both because it's common in bienenstich and because my grandmother used it well in other German-style cakes. Baking powder makes it all the quicker to mix up. It's a cake so simple that it doesn't even include vanilla, sandwiched with a thick custard cream, and topped with almonds set into toffee. It's that toasty topping that really makes the flavour memorable, and makes the cake messy to slice too! 

My method below is an expansion on the minimalist instruction in the version I inherited, which doesn't mention a cake tin or what happens to the filling after it's beaten. I can't blame the instructions for my one error - I didn't buy copha, thinking that I'd use a little coconut oil instead, and then forgot to put that in too. My filling did just fine without.

This is a cake that I'll remake only rarely (I estimate that it's more than 15 years since I last baked it!) but I'm glad to still have access to it, to my memory of it, and to be getting it onto the blog at long last.

Bienenstich 

(slightly adapted from my grandmother's recipe)

cake

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

60g butter, melted

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup milk

topping

60g butter

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon flour

1 tablespoon milk

1/4 cup flaked almonds (I will double this next time)

filling

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon custard powder

1 cup milk

1/4 cup copha (or coconut oil, or skip altogether)

160g butter

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a round springform cake tin with baking paper and lightly spray it with oil.

Beat the eggs well in a medium-large bowl. Thoroughly beat in the sugar, then the melted butter. Sift in the flour and baking powder, and fold until combined. Stir in the milk. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes.

When the cake's been in the oven for 10-15 minutes, set a small saucepan over medium heat to prepare the topping. Place the butter, sugar, flour and milk in the saucepan and stir to combine; add the almonds. Bring the mixture to the boil and cook for 10-15 minutes; I found that the mixture thickened and pulled away from the edges of the saucepan in a big blob. When the cake has finished its 30 minute bake, retrieve it from the oven and pour this topping evenly over it. Turn the oven up to 200°C and bake the cake until the topping is golden and crisp (I gave mine about 10 minutes). Allow the cake to cool.

For the filling, place the sugar and custard powder in a small-medium saucepan over medium heat. Gradually whisk in the milk and cook, stirring regularly, until the mixture has thickened to a custard. Turn off the heat, stir in the copha if using, and allow the custard to cool. Beat the butter in a small bowl and gradually add in the custard until everything is well mixed.

Carefully slice the cake horizontally into two layers and place the base layer on a serving plate. Spread over the custard cream filling and then gently place the almond-toffee cake layer on top. Slice and serve.

Peanut butter crinkles

August 22, 2021

   

Yesterday where's the beef? turned 15 years old. It holds a different place in my life than it did in 2006. I'm grateful for the few people who still read along, and for the many connections we've made along the way, but I think that continuing to update a non-monetised blogspot.com in 2021 has to be more about satisfying yourself than any imagined audience. It's serving that purpose.

On the 15th anniversary of this blog's first post, I forgot to buy a pretty slice of layer cake from Gloria and photograph it with a lit candle as I had intended. Instead, I went on a long bike ride in lovely weather with Michael, picked up some frozen La Panella pies to enjoy in the locked-down weeks to come, and baked these peanut butter crinkles with ingredients I already had at home. They're not very glamorous, and now the blog post is a day too late to properly mark the occasion.

That doesn't really bother me. The recipe is from my paternal grandmother, who was an excellent baker, and it's the one recipe that I have in her handwriting. It's very simple, and I find the combination of lemon rind and peanut butter in a dessert a little unexpected. I don't think the biscuits taste very lemony, but the rind definitely adds a little something, and brings them closer to the flavour that I remember. I've not tried veganising them, but I bet they'd be just dandy with margarine instead of butter.

 

   

A Singaporean 'fish' curry

 September 26, 2020

   

I took a walk through Fitzroy last month, and made a point of finishing at Vincent's Marketplace. This was a chance to stock up on mock meats and other vegan treats we can't access during our regular weekly shop. Since then we've been munching on novel chocolates, rationing out mock-salami on pizzas, and feasting on BBQ sauce stir-fries. I also picked up a Vegan Mould Fish (pictured below). It's not an appetising name, but I figured out that it refers to the whole-fish shape that the mock has been moulded into.

   

Before I get to the recipe, let me tell you that this is a great mock fish. It's made primarily of bean curd skin layers, with a sheet of nori on one side. It's as tender and flaky as mock fish gets - I've not had anything like it since White Lotus closed. For this recipe I decided to pre-fry it a little, to give it a crisp golden skin and prevent it from disintegrating during cooking.

Now, to the recipe proper. This is a fish curry recipe that's included in the same LNY zine as the crispy skin 'duck' we recently enjoyed. I've just realised that Steph posted this fish recipe on her blog at that time, too, but it was my recent flick through the zine that reminded me of it. I remember eating this curry at that LNY picnic and trying to mop up as much curry sauce as I could with the spring onion pancakes Michael brought along. It's a beautifully flexible recipe and I'm including it below, with Steph and Liz's permission, as it appears in the zine (if you need a plain text version, you can find that on Steph's blog).

   

In this incarnation, we used:

• spring onion for the 'onion thing', because we had leftovers from another recipe
• Vincent's Nyonya curry powder, which we keep a good supply of,
• chilli flakes, because we were freshly out of chilli oil, and
• a generous handful of French beans, to round this up to a meal with rice.

There's every chance we'll adjust future batches for whatever's convenient on the day. The recipe would be feasible for cooking on a weeknight if you had thawed mock fish on hand and it was a pleasant, almost meditative activity for a Sunday evening with a podcast. Our lightly simmered curry was colourful and fragrant, rich with coconut milk and flaky bean curd, warmly spiced with only a low chilli heat. We enjoyed one round of smug lunchtime leftovers.

   

Pastitsio / παστίτσιο

August 22, 2020

It's been a long, homely winter and we've been cooking a lot of comfort food, including a couple of tempeh lasagne trays to deliver to friends. It got me thinking about other pasta bakes, and after some internet browsing I got particularly into the idea of trying pastitsio. From there I had a resource much better than the internet - my friend Natalie enthusiastically shared her family's recipe for this Greek dish, including the adaptations her vegetarian mum has been making for decades.

Pastitsio starts with a layer of tubular pasta, seasoned with feta. The pasta is topped with a tomato and beef mince sauce, then covered with bechamel sauce and cheese. The easiest way to make this dish vegetarian is simply to use mock beef mince - Natalie's mum has been known to do this, and I was also happy to make a rare purchase of one of those mince packs that made a big splash in the supermarket meat fridges a year or two ago. With eggs, butter, two kinds of cheese and almost a litre of milk involved, veganising pastitsio is a tougher ask but there are recipes out there and it's only getting easier, the way mock dairy options are proliferating.

While I'm very pleased with my first attempt, I've got some tweaks to make. I straight-up forgot to buy an onion this time around, and also overlooked the bit where you grease your baking tray. The rigatoni I bought were probably a bit too big; I'm interested to find out if there are better options at Mediterranean Wholesalers. Finally, the baking tray I used wasn't quite high-walled enough to achieve the distinct three layers and I've a different one I can try. 

We're currently living in hope of warmer days and loosening lockdown conditions, so I might not get back to it this winter. It'll be good news if I don't, but a comfort for days if we remain housebound.

Pastitsio / παστίτσιο
(based on a recipe from My Greek Dish,
with lots of helpful advice from my friend Natalie)

pasta layer
400g tubular pasta, e.g. penne (my rigatoni was a bit too big)
110g feta
2 egg whites

'meat' sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
800g mock beef mince (I used 2 x 400g boxes of Naturli')
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
400g can chopped tomatoes
1 teaspoon sugar
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 whole clove
salt and pepper, to taste

bechamel
110g butter
110g flour
900ml milk
100g Kefalotyri or parmesan, grated
pinch of nutmeg
salt, to taste
2 egg yolks

Start by preparing the 'meat' sauce. Pour the olive oil into a very large frypan over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring, until softened. Add the garlic, tomato paste and mock mince. Use a wooden spoon to break up the mince, then continue to cook and stir for about 5 minutes. Pour over the red wine vinegar and chopped tomatoes, stirring everything together. Stir through the sugar, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, clove, salt and pepper. Bring everything to the boil, then pop the lid on and simmer the sauce for 20-30 minutes, until most of the liquid is evaporated. Remove the bay leaf, cinnamon stick and clove (if you can find them all!). Set the meat sauce aside.

Next, prepare the bechamel. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. When the butter is completely melted, whisk in the flour. Add the milk to this flour paste, no more than a cup at a time, whisking almost constantly to maintain a smooth sauce. Bring it just up to the boil so that the sauce thickens, stirring all the way, and then turn off the heat. Stir in half of the grated cheese, then the nutmeg and some salt. Whisk in the eggs, going quickly to ensure they don't cook and separate from the sauce. Set the bechamel sauce and the remaining grated cheese aside.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling water, for 2-3 minutes less than directed on the packet. Drain the pasta and crumble in the feta cheese, then whisk through the egg white to evenly coat the pasta.

Preheat an oven to 180°C.

Lightly grease a large high-walled baking tray with oil. Spread all of the pasta mixture across the base of the baking tray. Spoon over all of the meat sauce across the top of the pasta, aiming for even coverage. Pour the bechamel over the mock-meat layer as evenly as you can. Sprinkle over the remaining grated cheese. Bake for around 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Allow the pastitsio to rest for 20 minutes before slicing and serving.

Mum's orange cake

July 18, 2020

A month ago I made an orange cake. It was a really great cake, but it also had me feeling a bit wistful for the orange cake that my mum would occasionally make as a treat. Although it certainly felt special to us, Mum's cake wasn't anything over-the-top, simply baked in a rectangular tin and sprinkled with icing sugar. I remember it having a distinctive lightweight but rich texture.

Mum emailed me a photo of her recipe, which is actually from The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. Both oranges and eggs are turning up regularly in our Local Drop deliveries, so I was ready to bake it for myself within days. The only notable variation on your standard cake baking here is that the eggs are separated and the whites are whipped to form stiff peaks before being folded into the batter - that must be where that light texture came from!

My cake was almost as good as I remember Mum making it, although it was a bit crustier than hers. While I have a fairly regular-looking loaf pan, I recall Mum using a longer, narrower tin with a smaller cross-section. I'd guess that this allows her to bake it for less time, and this makes for a more lightly coloured and barely-crusted cake.

While all this butter and eggs clearly isn't vegan-friendly, I wonder if this cake style would lend itself well to some aquafaba adaptation. Maybe that's the direction my orange cake-baking needs to take next.

Mum's orange cake
(actually from The Margaret Fulton Cookbook,
with a small flour conversion from me)

2 eggs, separated
113g butter, at room temperature
grated rind and juice of 1 orange
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
icing sugar, for serving

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Prepare a loaf or ring cake tin with oil, butter, flour and/or baking paper.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

In a separate medium bowl, cream together the butter, orange rind and sugar. Beat in the egg yolks. Sift in the flour, baking powder and sugar, then the orange juice, until well combined. Fold in the egg whites.

Pour the cake batter into the cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. Allow it to cool slightly, and sift over some icing sugar to serve.

Vegan jaffle party!

June 19, 2016

This idea popped up while I was hosting that Family Favourites picnic potluck in the summer. I was probably telling someone about how my family called jaffles Hot Ones (thanks to toddler-me) and got to thinking about how fun a jaffle potluck could be. A few irons in a row, a pile of bread, and everyone brings a filling. Hot Ones all round!

I waited until the cold weather rolled in, when toasty carbs bring the most comfort. My dozen-plus guests definitely brought the goods - extra jaffle irons, numerous vegan cheeses, home baked beans, mock meats, canned spaghetti, the last of a garden's basil... even sweet stuff like caramel bananas and chocolate chips.

For dessert, I had another family favourite to share - this one's something my mum would occasionally make for dinner guests. It starts not with bread, but with puff pastry. Yep, you just thaw out a sheet of puff pastry and cut it into two rectangles. Fill the rectangles will sliced banana, chocolate chips and marshmallows (these ones are vegan). Fold the pastry over into a square but don't fuss about pinching the sides - a good jaffle iron does all the shaping for you! These pastry pockets take longer to cook than your average bread-based toastie but they do eventually puff up golden and flaky, with sweet molten filling.

I candied some oranges Cinnamon Snail-style, then teamed them with chocolate spread and cinnamon for punderful jaffa jaffles. Others paired the chocolate spread with Turkish delight to great effect. It was a sweet way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

Choc-notella pudding

January 3, 2016

I couldn't stop thinking about Family Favourites. I would have loved to make a frozen chocolate crunch or shared around some mango coconut splice blocks, but they just wouldn't work at a picnic. Then I thought of nutella pudding. I didn't need to make more food at all, really, but I couldn't resist a go at veganising nutella pudding.

This one goes in the style of British self-saucing puddings, with the nutella in the sauce and a typical cake batter plonked on top of it. I tracked down a jar of biona dark chocolate spread, which was a little less sweet than nutella and completely lacking in hazelnuts, but it did the vegan silky chocolate job perfectly. Dairy cream became coconut cream, buttermilk begat vinegar-spiked soy milk, butter was replaced with margarine, and I switched the eggs for apple puree (I'll go for a mashed banana instead, one day).

For all those changes, it was the same pudding in every way that mattered. It's probably intended for mid-winter eating, still steaming with a scoop of cream or icecream on top. But it's day-after no-extras state holds just as much nostalgia for me, and that's pretty much how ate it at the picnic.

Choc-notella pudding
(adapted from this family recipe)

1/2 cup vegan chocolate spread
1/2 cup coconut cream
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
90g margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup apple puree
3/4 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup cocoa

Lightly grease a baking dish and preheat the oven to 180°C. 

In a large bowl, whisk together the chocolate spread and coconut cream. Spread the mixture over the base of the dish.

Mix together the soy milk and apple cider vinegar and set the aside. The milk will curdle into a buttermilk substitute.

Use the same mixing bowl to beat together the margarine and sugars. Beat in the apple puree. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa, then mix them until just combined. Mix in the curdled soy milk.

Pour the cake mix into the baking dish and gently smooth over the top. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Doffie biscuits

January 3, 2016

Cindy's Family Favourites picnic theme had me scratching my head - our family meals were from a straightforward meat 'n' veg range, and nothing amidst the chops and sausages of my memories jumped out at me for the occasion. Instead, I thought back to school lunchboxes and found myself strangely nostalgic for this relatively simple apricot slice. Mum dug up the recipe for me over Christmas - they're called Doffie Biscuits and they're basically sugar, flour and dried fruit. 

Veganising them only required me substitutes for 2 eggs and a couple of tablespoons of butter - Nuttelex did the trick for the butter, while a combination of Orgran No Egg and apple sauce provided enough moisture and binding power to replace the eggs. The results aren't going to change your life but they're good - heavy on the apricot and nice and chewy. And if you're me they're going to transport you straight back to your awkward teenage years.

Doffie biscuits

(based on a recipe from a cookbook compiled for the School of the Air some time back in the 1980s)

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

1.5 cups caster sugar

600g dried apricots, sliced up (the original recipe calls for 1.5kg of dried fruit, but whoever compiled the cookbook suggested that 500g was enough)

4 heaped tablespoons shredded coconut

2 tablespoons melted Nuttelex

2 teaspoons Orgran No-Egg, mixed with 4 tablespoons water

1/2 cup of apple puree

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Mix the flour, sugar, apricots and coconut in a big bowl.

Stir in the Nuttelex, egg replacer and apple puree.

Spread the mix evenly in a large flat tray and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the slice is cooked through. It will seem a bit soft when it's hot, but will firm up as it cools so you can slice it up.

Original recipe

Superchook

January 3, 2016

We capped off our new year weekend with a vegan picnic and a Family Favourites theme. I wanted to learn what foods make my friends feel nostalgic, their back stories, and the funny nicknames they might have. Most of all, I wanted to introduce them to Superchook.

Superchook fits all these criteria. It's something my mum made semi-regularly as I grew up, taking a little extra effort than most dinners, the kind of thing I'd ask for on my birthday. It was a chicken fillet stuffed with chopped bacon, cheese and green herby specks, then crumbed and fried. From the stuffing to the substance to the egg-dipped outer, it's light-years from vegan eating.

Funnily enough, my picnic adaptation was easier to prepare than the original. I bought a packet each of Fry's and Gardein crumbed schnitzels, unsure of which would work better (Fry's were easier to work with, but I liked the Gardein texture better). I gently, gently sliced a pocket longways through each schnitzel and spooned in a mixture of grated Vegusto Melty cheese, diced and fried Cheatin' Rashers, finely chopped parsley and ground pepper. Rather than frying and fretting over them holding together, I popped my Superchooks in the oven for 20 minutes and they were good as gold.

With it being a picnic and all, none were eaten in their native habitat - hot with cheese oozing at the dinner table, served with steamed veges on the side - but they vanished rapidly nonetheless. Even vegan, this chook's still super.

Mango & coconut splice blocks

December 18-19, 2015

On the weekend before Christmas, our friends put on a yum cha feast. I was originally planning to bring along some mango coconut splice jellies but with the temperature approaching 40 degrees I decided to put them on ice.

For a vegan and gluten-free crowd, I adapted a recipe that my grandmother and Mum both made in years gone by. The original blends canned mangoes and sugar syrup, then layers them with dairy cream. I couldn't help noticing that canned mangoes are stored in sugar syrup, and so just used that in the fruity layer. I replaced the dairy cream with coconut cream, natch.

I couldn't find a perfectly level spot in the freezer to store my splice blocks, so the ratio of mango to coconut varied from one end of the container to the other. I didn't mind in the least! They're dense and full of ice crystals, but sweet and soothing in the summer heat. You'd struggle to put a dainty spoon through them, and I've been content to eat them with sticky fingers on many afternoons.

Mango & coconut splice blocks

(adapted from a family recipe, transcribed below)

3 x 425g can mangoes including the syrup they're stored in 

juice of half a lemon

pinch of salt

1 x 400mL can coconut cream

Line a large baking tray or rectangular lidded container with foil.

Place the mangoes and their syrup and the lemon juice in a food processor or blender. Blend them until very smooth. Place 1 cup of the mango puree in a bowl; stir the salt and coconut cream into this puree. Pour the coconut mixture into the foil-lined tray and freeze it until firm, around 4 hours.

Pour the remaining mango puree over the frozen coconut layer and freeze again until firm, at least 4 more hours. Cut the slice into blocks and serve on a saucer or wrapped in paper.

Frozen mango bars
(a recipe inherited from my grandmother and Mum)

1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/4 cups water
3 x 425g cans sliced mangoes, drained
300mL thickened cream

Combine sugar and water, stir over low heat until dissolved. Boil for 5 minutes or until slightly thickened. Cool.

Blend mangoes, syrup and juice until smooth. Combine 1 cup mango mixture with cream. Line lamington pan with foil, pour in cream mixture. Freeze until firm. Pour remaining mixture over frozen cream. Freeze several hours until firm. Cut into squares.

Next-gen frozen chocolate crunch

December 2-6, 2014

Clamps and I have birthdays in early December, and this year we held a joint celebration - first at the Cornish Arms to honour his love of beer and deep-frying, then back to Casa sin carne for my kind of icecream. There was vodka-spiked cherry sorbet, my best batch of Vietnamese coffee icecream yet, and a little leftover rhubarb & strawberry sorbet. The centrepiece was a next-generation frozen chocolate crunch.

This icecream cake is an old family favourite that I've written about before, but it needs stripping of dairy and gluten to suit my circle of friends. I used Leda gingernut cookies in the crumble, Orgran egg replacer in the chocolate layer, and So Good vanilla icecream for the centre - all convenience foods in the spirit of the original recipe.

This cake was different to its forebear, with a noticeably darker, denser chocolate strip and a subtle ginger accent. It was wonderful in its own right. It might even earn the storied status among my mates that the original recipe holds with my family.

Next-gen frozen chocolate crunch
(adapted from a family recipe)

85g vegan, gluten-free biscuits
85g slivered almonds
1L soy vanilla icecream
170g dark chocolate
2 teaspoons powdered egg replacer
100g margarine
2/3 cup icing sugar
4 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons coffee liqueur

Place the biscuits between two pieces of baking paper and crush them coarsely with a rolling pin. Spread the almonds out over a small baking tray and toast them under a grill, keeping a careful eye on them and tossing them regularly to prevent burning. When the almonds are lightly golden, retrieve them and stir through the biscuit crumbs. Set the mixture aside.

Remove the icecream from the freezer and set it at room temperature to soften.

Gently melt the chocolate in a saucepan, set over a second saucepan of boiling water. Set it aside to cool a little. In a mug, stir together the powdered egg replacer and water until smooth.

In a medium bowl, beat the margarine until fluffy. Beat in the icing sugar.  Pour the egg replacer into the bowl of margarine and follow with the vanilla and coffee liqueur, beating everything together thoroughly. Finally, beat in the melted chocolate until smooth.

Line a springform cake tin with foil or baking paper. Sprinkle half of the biscuit-almond mixture across the base. Gently pour in half of the chocolate mixture and spread it evenly over the crumble. Spoon the softened icecream over the chocolate layer and even up the top. Spread over the remaining chocolate and finally the last of the crumble. Cover the cake tin with foil and freeze the cake for at least four hours, preferably overnight. Slice into small wedges to serve.

Aunty Ral's gingernuts

December 29-31, 2012

This morning we are guests on Bhakthi's RRR segment Cook The Book, and we'll be discussing Gillian Mears' recently published novel Foal's Bread. (Here it is, archived online.) The book traces the life of Noah Nancarrow, a talented and hard-working horse show-jumper living in northern New South Wales before the Second World War. The story is romantic and tragic, told in a style that's lyrical but also calls on the Aussie vernacular.

Foal's bread isn't anything you'd want to eat. It's a piece of tissue sometimes found in the mouth of a newborn foal and that can be dried out and kept as a lucky charm. Yet among the descriptions of animal husbandry and the Australian landscape you'd expect, this book is also littered with references to the food of the time. The colour and texture and sensation of food is often interwoven with the characters' experiences. Noah's sister-in-law Ralda bakes ceaselessly - to comfort, to celebrate, and to enter into competition at the Show.

To accompany our radio interview I've baked gingernuts. Aunty Ral's gingernuts are a Nancarrow family tradition on Show day and they're said to be crunchy and crackled on top, best dipped in a cup of tea. I took my recipe from my mum's yellowed Barossa Cookery Book, which was published in the time that this novel is set. I've typed it verbatim below - recipe writers then clearly expected much prior knowledge from cooks!

GINGER NUTS

One lb. 2 ozs. flour, 1/2 lb. butter, 1/2 lb. sugar, 3/4 lb. treacle, 1 oz. ground ginger. Mix all the ingredients into a stiff dough, roll out, cut into small biscuits, and bake in a moderate oven. 

- Miss J.M. Bartsch, Angaston

May 24-25, 2011: Lady Violet's pumpkin scones

Us Queenslanders get a little homesick at this chilly time of year. A few of my workmates are fellow banana benders, one of whom agitated for a Queensland-themed afternoon tea on the eve of State of Origin. I don't care a fig for footy but have a long history of supporting snackage, so I signed up and started wondering what Queensland food even was.  Tropical fruit, XXXX beer and Bundy and Coke were all I could think of. Twitter helped me out, with meredith_te and HerbalGill reminding me that pumpkin scones have a close link with Queenland's (corrupt) political history, which has already been covered well by Veggie Mama.  (Meanwhile Johanna GGG asserts that pumpkin scones have a history of their own pre-dating Queensland's Lady Flo.)

Pumpkin scones were certainly part of my time growing up in Queensland. I associate them less with Lady Flo and more with my grandmother, who lived on a farm in the Lockyer Valley and often baked dozens of pumpkin scones just in time for morning 'smoko'. (I've written previously about my gramdma and her recipe for 'cow pats'.) These scones are sweeter and doughier than their British counterpart, and I was always just as happy to eat them with a smear of butter as I was lathering on the jam and cream. Grandma often added plump sultanas to the mixture - a variation that I enjoyed and my brother detested. I erred on the side of caution and left them out this time. They are, of course, just gorgeous straight from the oven and I discovered that they actually go stale quite rapidly. I suppose they always disappeared so rapidly at the farm that we never noticed! Even so, half a minute in the microwave can rescue a day-old scone and I hear they freeze well too.

I'm going to name this recipe after my grandmother here; it's always been hers to me.


Lady Violet's pumpkin scones
(based on the recipe found here, sent by Google-savvy mum!)

1 1/2 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 1/2 cups mashed pumpkin, chilled
3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

Pre-heat an oven to 220°C. Line a baking tray with paper

Place the butter, sugar and salt in a large bowl and beat them together thoroughly with a fork.  Mix in the egg, then the pumpkin. Sift over the flour and baking powder and fold it through to make a dough - it will be quite sticky.

Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and sprinkle more flour on top. Form the dough into a large rectangle 3-5cm tall and use a glass to cut round scones from it, placing them on the baking tray. 

Bake the scones for about 20 minutes, until golden on top and cooked through.

March 18, 2010: Morocco-inspired carrot salad

When our friends Mike and Jo returned from a summer trip to the Middle East, they kindly brought us back a box of magnificent dates. (They're nature's caramel, people!) Then our latest vege box yielded half a dozen or more cute little carrots and I thought of a recipe that my dad's wife Anne has served on a couple of my visits. It features lightly steamed carrots, which are dressed in a Morocco-inspired mix of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, some herbs and spices and, of course, chopped dates. I emailed Anne for the recipe over lunch and she responded when she arrived home from work, just in time for me to adapt it for dinner that night. I phoned them for a catch-up chat at 9, and she was delighted to hear that we'd already managed to prepare and devour it.

Since I was working from the pantry I didn't have everything required for the original recipe. I replaced the lemon juice with pomegranate molasses and reduced the oil, and used dried parsley for a bit of green in lieu of the coriander. While it probably wasn't quite so fresh, it tasted great! I'm starting to wonder if there's anything, sweet or savoury, that doesn't taste terrific with pomegranate molasses.

We ate this salad with some mixed green leaves and faux chicken kievs. They're based on this recipe by melbedggood. Ours were pleasant enough, though some of the alterations I made didn't really work - I'm looking forward to blogging it properly in the future when I get it right.

Morroco-inspired carrot salad
(based on a recipe at entertaining made easy)

~300g carrots
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
pinch of garlic powder
generous pinch of cumin
generous pinch of chilli flakes
salt and pepper, to taste
4 dates, finely chopped

Peel the carrots and slice them into thick rounds. Cook them in boiling water until just tender.

While the carrots are cooking, whisk together the remaining ingredients in a medium-sized bowl.

When the carrots are ready, drain them and add them to the bowl, tossing them to coat them in the dressing. Serve!

January 30-31, 2010: Potato-crusted silverbeet pie

When my enthusiasm for silverbeet was waning, you guys got me sorted. I was so pleased with the meal ideas you left on that post that I was actually counting down the days until the next silverbeet delivery! During those chard-less days I received another recipe suggestion via email, from Michael's mum Robyn. Well, folks, she's my mother-in-law, so I figured I'd better give it a shot. Ha! Actually, it looked like a good one - a quiche-style dish with a pastry made mostly of mashed potatoes.

Now, a mashed potato 'pastry' is usually the kind of thing that would have me suspicious. Shortcrust pastry is almost sacred to me. But Michael and I had this dish we used to make pre-blog, with a grated potato crust and broccoli-quiche-kinda filling, so I knew this had promise. I just didn't read the recipe closely enough before we started. Michael set to boiling and mashing the potatoes a little late in the evening and it was only then that I noticed the 30 minutes required to rest the pastry, the 40-50 minutes to bake the pie and the subsequent 20 minutes that the finished pie allegedly needed to rest. (I knew it'd take a while to bake but, really, did it need all that lazing around?) So Michael made the potato dough, popped it in the fridge and we got dinner delivered.

This was a good decision. Our delivered dinner was marvellous, and the pie prep got even more involved than the recipe predicted. The potato pastry was mushy and challenging to mould, even when I tripled the flour quantity, and the pie just would. not. set. It spent at least an hour and a half in the oven all up, and got its post-oven nap twice over - still the crusty walls buckled when I loosened the springform pan, with cracks oozing mashed potato and threatening to unleash an eggy avalanche. Dinner was messy but tasty, and lunch was better - a night in the fridge firmed everything up nicely and it even withstood a solid microwave heat-up at work.

Naturally, that picture you see up top is the well-behaved post-fridge version of this pie. I've since had a chance to consult Robyn on our approach and not come up with any glaring mistakes. She thinks we could potentially up the flour quantity even further, while I'm plotting a pastry pre-bake to firm those potatoes right up. In the recipe below I'll record what we did (with a couple of asides) and, if we do something better next time, you'll be the first to know. It's the least I can do for you crazy silverbeet lovers.

Potato-crusted silverbeet pie
(based on a recipe from Michael's mum, Robyn)

4 large potatoes
20g butter
3/4 cup plain flour
3 eggs
300mL cream
1/2 cup grated tasty cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan
6-8 cups chopped silverbeet, stems included
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste

Peel and chop the potatoes, then cook them in boiling water until tender (about 15 minutes). Drain the potatoes and mash them thoroughly (you don't want lumps!). Add the butter and flour and stir everything together until it's firm enough to form a ball (you may want to add more flour). Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes (we left ours for a full day).

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll the dough out between two pieces of greaseproof paper, large enough to fit a springform tin (if you don't have one, I'm sure you can use a pie or casserole dish or cake tin). Remove the top sheet of paper, then ease the bottom sheet and the pastry into the tin and gently shape it to form a crust. Although I did not do this, I would suggest pre-baking this crust until lightly golden - maybe 10, 15 minutes?

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and cream, then stir in the cheeses, silverbeet and nutmeg. Season it as you like and pour the mixture into the potato crust. Bake the pie until it's set - this will probably take an hour and possibly longer. Allow the pie to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before slicing and serving.

December 25, 2009: Frozen chocolate crunch

When I set my heart on icecream for dessert on Christmas day, I didn't go searching for something new and exciting from one of my favourite cookbooks or blogs as I usually do. Instead I wanted to restore a family summer tradition that faded a decade ago. My dad's and my birthdays fall only a day apart, and for many years we took it in turns to request Frozen Chocolate Crunch as our birthday cake. It doesn't look any more special than just layers of vanilla and chocolate icecream with a few biscuit crumbs, but there's just something about it. It could be the use of real chocolate, the whipped egg whites, or the coffee liqueur in the chocolate layer, or it could just be the numerous parties and holidays that I associate this dessert with.

My tastes have shifted and expanded since I last ate frozen chocolate crunch, but to my surprise and delight I enjoyed it just as much this year as I ever have. The one I made differed a little from the original recipe that I'll give below. For starters, I halved the recipe because Mum noted that she usually reduced it by a third and my memories were of a very large cake. The topping is typically a mix of toasted biscuit crumbs and slivered almonds (except for the time that Mum used Dad's favourite sweet, Smarties, for his 40th birthday) but I omitted the almonds for my nut-averse brother. I found that I didn't have enough chocolate mixture to make top and bottom layers, but this was plenty rich with the single chocolate base layer. What's more, there was plenty to share around twice on Christmas day with Mum, Carol and Liam, and still keep aside three generous slices for Dad, Liam and I a couple of days later.

Frozen chocolate crunch
(as copied by my mum, from recipe card to email)

125g coconut biscuits
125g slivered almonds
155g marg
1 cup icing sugar
3 eggs, separated
1 teasp vanilla
2 tblsp coffee liqueur
250g dark cooking choc
2 litres vanilla icecream

Crush biscuits coarsely, combine with slivered almonds. Spread on oven tray, heat in slow oven until crisp and golden. Cream butter and sugar, add egg yolks, vanilla and coffee liqueur, beat until fluffy. Melt choc in double saucepan. Cool, then add to butter mixture. Fold in firmly beaten egg whites.

Press half biscuit mixture in base of foil-lined cake tin. Pour half choc mixture on top, press down so nuts are held in mixture. Spoon ice-cream over choc, top with remaining choc, then biscuit mixture, pressing nuts into choc. Freeze overnight.

December 21-22, 2009: Macadamia-date balls and vanilla-vegan bubble slice

This year my Christmas baking wasn't baking at all - I went the melt-mix-chill route. It has much to recommend it: it's quick and simple and it doesn't get you too hot and flustered amidst the warm weather and general Christmas chaos.

My first priority was a gift for my step-grandfather, Max. He's been having some health problems in the last few months so I wanted to give him something tasty and treat-like that wouldn't be overly bloating or calorific. The date macadamia balls that Jo posted on It Ain't Meat, Babe seemed to fit the bill - my one-day foray into raw food proved the power of dates' sweet caramel flavour, and the creamy richness of ground macadamias. The bit of cocoa in this recipe only enhanced the treat factor. If I made these again just for myself, I'd sacrifice the sweetness and up the cocoa even further.

The second treat loitering fuzzily in the background is our old family favourite, bubble slice. It's appeared here in various guises before, and I'll dub this version the 'vanilla-vegan' one. Actually it doesn't contain vanilla at all, but rather is the plainest, bare-bones version of the slice without any added nuts, dried fruit or chocolate. The original recipe uses honey and butter, but I made the vegan- and pantry-friendly choice of substituting golden syrup and Nuttelex. In spite of these alterations the aroma of the peanut-butter caramel mixture bubbling on the stove took me straight back to my mum's kitchen. It remains a crowd-pleaser, going down equally well with my country-living, meat-eating brother and the inner-city vegan friends who dropped by for tofurkey sandwiches.

Macadamia-date balls
(based on this recipe from It Ain't Meat, Babe)

1 1/2 cups macadamias
1 cup fresh dates
2 (or more) teaspoons cocoa
~ 1 cup shredded coconut

Blend the macadamias to a powder in a food processor. Add the dates and cocoa and continue to blend until the mixture forms a smooth dough.

Form tablespoons of the dough into balls and roll them in coconut. Store them in the fridge until you want to scoff them.

Vegan-vanilla bubble slice

5 cups rice bubbles
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
125g Nuttelex/margarine
4 tablespoons golden syrup
4 tablespoons peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

In a large bowl, stir together the rice bubbles and coconut.

In a small-medium saucepan, melt the Nuttelex, golden syrup, peanut butter and sugar. Bring them to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Pour the caramel mixture over the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. Press the mixture into a small baking tray, using the back of a spoon to smooth over the surface. Refrigerate until set, then cut into squares.

November 3, 2009: Apple and walnut pancakes

During the first week or so of Michael's convalescence, I went into comfort food overdrive. A stray egg in the fridge turned into pancakes for breakfast on a weekday and then when there weren't any stray eggs I realised that I could still make pancakes from the pantry, thanks to Vegan Brunch.

My first rendition was cobbled together from memories of my mum's Sunday pikelets. They were always based on self-raising flour, eggs, milk, and a little sugar. Sometimes she subbed half the white flour with wholemeal, and occasionally she added grated apple. If you've not tried grated apple before, I highly recommend it - I love the extra moisture and tangy flavour it adds. Used in tandem with the wholemeal flour you end up with a healthier tasting pancake, but not a stodgy one. Since I was in a pantry-clearing mood, I threw a handful of walnuts into the mix too.

I lacked the intuition to whip up vegan pancakes on the fly, but of course Isa had me sorted. In Vegan Brunch, she recounts her first efforts to create them at the age of 17. The accompanying recipe for 'perfect pancakes' is clearly tried and true, having been published in Vegan with a Vengeance prior to this cookbook. While I was all anxious for an egg substitute, Isa doesn't seem to replace it directly - the liquids involved are oil, water, soy milk and a smidge of maple syrup. These pancakes were flatter and less cakey than my more traditional ones, but no less delicious.

As far as toppings go, I'm always keen on fruit and sometimes a little syrup - we had both on hand. On the second occasion I scavenged what pie filling remained, remodelling it into a rather fetching cashew cream dollop and orange compote.


Apple and walnut pancakes - traditional
(inspired by my mum's Sunday pikelets)

Sift together 1/2 cup plain flour, 1/2 cup wholemeal flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder. Stir through a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of salt. Add a small peeled and grated apple, and 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts. Lightly beat one egg in 1 cup of milk, then beat this liquid into the dry ingredients. Fry third-cups of the batter in a hot frypan, greased with a little butter. Only flip the pancakes once, when bubbles have risen to the batter's surface and it has started to dry out. If you want to keep a lot of pancakes warm for serving, set the oven to its lowest temperature, line a tray with baking paper, and store the fried pancakes in the oven.


Apple and walnut pancakes - vegan
(adapted from Perfect Pancakes in Vegan Brunch)

Sift together 1/2 cup plain flour, 3/4 cup wholemeal flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, a pinch of salt and a shake of ground cinnamon. Add a small peeled and grated apple, and 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts. Gradually whisk in 2 tablespoons of canola oil, 1/3 cup water, 1 cup soy milk and 2 tablespoons of maple syrup. Fry third-cups of the batter in a hot frypan, greased with a little vegetable oil. Only flip the pancakes once, when bubbles have risen to the batter's surface and it has started to dry out. If you want to keep a lot of pancakes warm for serving, set the oven to its lowest temperature, line a tray with baking paper, and store the fried pancakes in the oven.

November 10-11, 2008: Grape Cake

In the week following our annual lab culinary competition, I circulated the collected photos from the event and volunteered to collate a cookbook of everyone's entries. Since then the recipes have been flooding trickling in, and one of the first was one of the most surprising! Lab member Bonnie has been residing overseas for many months but emailed this grape cake recipe as a belated competition entry from afar. It'd be nice, I thought, to make, photograph and share around this cake before finishing the cookbook. And that's what I did when we had a guest speaker on Tuesday afternoon.

The idea of a plain cake with whole grapes suspended within it wasn't exactly rocking my world, yet this was perfect afternoon tea fare. The grapes were so soft that one person asked me if I'd peeled them, and the hints of lemon and cinnamon were just heavenly. Though the recipe suggests garnishing this cake with icing sugar or cream, I'd almost prefer not to - for me, its charm lies in its simplicity.

Grape Cake a la Bonnie's Mum

200g butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 lemons, juice and rind
2 1/2 cups self raising flour
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups seedless grapes, sliced in half

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Generously grease a springform cake tin.

Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs, vanilla, lemon rind and juice in turn.

Sift together the flour, salt and cinnamon. Gradually beat it into the cake mixture. Fold through the grapes.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake it for about 15 minutes, before lowering the oven temperature to 180 degrees C. Continue baking until the edges of the cake start to come away from the tin (this took a further 30 minutes for me, I think).

November 1, 2008: Three-shades-of-brown bubble slice

Leading up to our very long weekend away, the crew agreed that each couple would prepare a dinner, dessert and some lunch. Michael's already shown off the lip-smacking cashew curry he brought along for dinner, and this is an off-the-menu extra snack that I made. It's a variation on my old family favourite, bubble slice. I went for a different effect this time, hoping that walnuts and dates would complement the ground wattleseed that I wanted to include. I also replaced much of the butter and sweetener with some leftover coconut cream. It was a mixed success - the walnuts and dates worked together nicely, but I couldn't taste the wattleseed at all and there was too much of the rich binding ingredients for the amount of rice bubbles and nuts involved. Even so, there weren't any leftovers to contend with on our arrival home!

Three-shades-of-brown bubble slice

1 cup walnuts, chopped
3/4 cup dates, chopped
3 cups rice bubbles
~120mL coconut cream
4 tablespoons golden syrup
4 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
60g butter
1 tablespoon ground wattleseed

Grease a medium-large tray. In a large bowl, stir together the walnuts, dates and rice bubbles.

Melt the coconut cream, golden syrup, peanut butter and butter in a saucepan over medium heat, bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes. Stir through the wattleseed.

Pour the sweet butter mixture over the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Press the mixture into the tray and refrigerate for at least an hour. Slice into squares and serve.