Caroline solely ran a guesthouse for an Englishman for 4 years. She even entertained guests and cooked for them, while having to run the budget as well. This is her totally original recipe, with which had guests from all over the world coming back for more.
Her secret ingredients for 12 big muffins
2 cups orange juice
3 ½ cups Cake flour
1 T Baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 Eggs
½ cup fruit cake mix
All you need to do is:
First turn on the oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Take out a muffin pan and grease it well with butter inside, or spray with baking spray. Whisk the orange juice, eggs and sugar together in a medium bowl. Next sift the baking powder and flour into another smaller bowl. Using a metal spoon, fold in the dry ingredients you have sifted into the liquid mixture. Check so that everything is mixed evenly, and then fold in the fruit cake mix. Spoon the mixture so that it fills about ¾ of each hole in the pan. Pop it in the oven, start checking at 25 minutes, if the point of the knife comes out wet when you insert it in the middle of one muffin, let it go for another 5 minutes. That’s it! Have it just like that, or with some honey and butter, jam and cheese…
500g icing sugar
1 tin (385g) condensed milk
390g desiccated coconut
5ml peppermint essence and 3 drops green food colouring
or
5ml vanilla essence and 3 drops pink food colouring
Place the icing sugar, the condensed milk (taste it first, just for the fun of it!) and coconut in a bowl and mix well. At first it may seem a bit dry, but work those arms and mix and mix so that when you take a bit of the mixture between your fingers and squeeze it, it holds. Divide the mixture and place one half into a tin of about grease paper-lined 20×20x5cm and press it down evenly in a layer of white. Mix the chosen essence and food colouring with the remaining ingredients, I out in some medical gloves (whack, I know, but I felt I’ll leave the green/pink stained hands for another operation, because food colouring is quite hard to wash of) and used my hands, working it through with my fingers. Press the coloured mixture onto the white layer, place it in the fridge for 1 hour until it is firm. Now turn it out of the tin (the grease paper makes this loads easier) and cut it in squares, I got about 25 out of this batch, but it really depends on how big you want to go. It would make even the sweetest tooth go on a sugar high after just one square.
Grandmothers are legends – and from them we inherit legend recipes. This lemon tart is much like my ouma Awe (pronounced A-wwwie, with the kind of friction in your throat an Afrikaans ‘w’ would make) – a twist on the traditional, utterly unforgettable, and clever – on top of all that! In memory of my ouma Awe from Brandfort, a town in the Free State.
For one piece of Ouma’s inheritance:
One packet of Tennis – of Marie biscuits
150g butter
1 tin Condensed milk
2 eggs
4 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 T castor sugar
How to go about using the inheritance:
Firstly, turn in your oven on 200 degrees Celsius. Put your biscuits in a sealable bag (for example a large ziplock bag), let all the air go out and seal it. Using a roller pin or empty wine bottle, roll over the biscuits and crush them into very fine crumbs. Next melt the butter in the microwave for about 1 minute on high or in a small pan. Shake the biscuit crumbs into a medium-sized bowl and add the melted butter, then stir to combine well. Take out your tart tin, or any dish similar, and pour roughly 3/4 of the mixture into the tin. Now -hands on – press! Spread it out so that it builds up out to the sides, but keep a good base as well. All-in-all try to get some all over, as even as possible. Place it in the fridge to set a bit.
Pour the condensed milk into a bowl. Next take out a smaller spotless bowl of stainless steel, and separate your 2 eggs, the whites in the stainless steel bowl and the yolks in with the condensed milk. How to separate? Crack the egg carefully in the middle against the side of a bowl, while holding it in your hand. Keep the stainless steel bowl under you and using both hands, carefully open the egg and let the white slide down into the bowl. Next slide the yolk, keeping it whole, in your one hand and let the white run through your slightly open fingers. Place the yolks in with the condensed milk. Don’t let the yellow spoil the whites’ complexion – it will make it incapable of becoming stiff! Using an electric whisk (using your hand and a whisk is extremely labour-intensive, tried and tested!) whisk the egg whites until turn white-white and can hold soft peaks – when you lift up the whisk, it stays. Add the castor sugar and whisk another round. Next swop your bowl for the condensed milk and yolks and whisk well until it is well combined. Keep going and add the lemon juice a bit at a time. Take out a metal spoon (to keep the air) and fold in the egg whites with the other mixture in circular, voluptuous movements until no white streak remains. Spoon this out into the tart base. For the final touch, sprinkle the remaining quarter of the biscuit crumbs on the top. Bake it in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes. It is ready when the top has coloured to caramel slightly and you can smell it. You will not believe how good this is!
This cake is the 1, 2, 3 of choclate cakes – soft and moist, but I’m missing the intense chocolatey taste here. I guess that is because of the use of cocoa, it still does not allude to that chocolate high. Nevertheless, it still gets the thumbs up-sign! When looking for the ideal but easy birthday cake, last-minute or 35 minute chocolate cake, or if you are new to this nirvana, go for this one! Mmmmm….
For the cake:
400ml cake flour
220ml castor sugar
1 t baking powder
1/2 t bicarbonate of soda
120ml best-quality cocoa you can find
175g unsalted butter, soft
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla extract
150ml sour cream
Take everything out of the fridge, just to let it come to room temperature. Put your oven on 180 degrees Celsius, and grease (with butter or marge or cooking spray) your cake pan – any one you like as long as it is big enough for the mixture. Line it with baking parchment at the bottem. (For a round cake tin, use a square piece, fold it in a triangle in half, then the triangle in half again, and once more. Put the tip in the middle of the pan, and measure it along the edge – the size of the pan. Tear/cut it with a round angle and open the paper, it should be more-or-less round and ready to fit!)
All you have to do is chuck all the ingredients in a food processor and mix! I find it to be a quite thick batter so watch it as it spins for about 30 seconds. You can also do it the other way – here goes – mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, raising agents except the cocao) and then cream in the butter by beating it with a whisk for a bit less than a minute. Whisk in the cocoa, sour cream, vanilla and eggs.
Put this in your cake pan, make shure your oven is hot enough and pop it in for 35 minutes, start checking at 25 though, especially if you are making two smaller layers (you can also swop them around half way into the cooking time if one is under the other one in the oven (to ensure even cooking). Test if the cake is ready by inserting a sharp knife in the middle of the cake – if it comes out clean, not wet with chocolate, it is ready! Take it out…
Leave it alone for 10 minutes, just so that it can cool down before you turn it out, otherwise it will break (tried and tested)! Then turn it out on a wire rack for further cooling (5 minutes). This feels like forever – but now you can ice the cake! Use a can of caramel, mixed around a bit to loosen it up and then spread over nice ‘n thick. Or you can make some
ganache (the chocolate icing of the kings which uses no icing sugar): equal quantities of dark chocolate and cream, in this case use 150g dark chocolate and 150ml cream. Put a deep pan on the heat with a some water in it. Now you need a bowl which does not touch the water, will fit the pan like a lid, so that no steam escapes. Place the chocolate (broken up into small pieces) and the cream in that bowl. Turn the heat down. When the chocolate has melted, about 3-5 minutes, take it off the heat and whisk furiously in the bowl, or you can transfer it not to spill this liquid black gold. It should be glossy and smooth. All you have to do is pour the ganache on the cake in the middle, use every bit of it and let it run over the sides. Transfer to a clean serving plate.
*This cake a made for dessert once, and served it with ice cream. That was cool, but my icing just did not work this time, I added to much cream. It happens!
Manie, ek is verbaas – van eiendomsontwikkelaar (my ma en hy werk so nou en dan saam aan ‘n projek) tot DJ, pa en nou die nuwe eienaar van die drankwinkel met die meeste ganache, jammer panache … Roeland Liquors in Roeland straat – jou kaaskoek is bobaas. Hier is dit – net soos jy vir my vertel het op 12 Desember 2006.
“Sit die oond aan op 180 grade Celsius. Maak die kors soos dit moet wees : meng ‘n ¾ pakkie Marie- of Tennisbeskuitjies, fyngemaak*, met 100g gesmelte botter en druk dit plat in ‘n tertbord (wat goed gesmeer is met botter), sit dit solank in die yskas. Volgende neem jy 2 bakkies roomkaas, wat jy gekoop het, en meng dit met ½ koppie room, ¼ koppie suiker, dan een eetlepel bruismeel en 1 teelepel vanielje geursel. Vir die volgende het jy twee keuses: vir ‘n ligter kaaskoek – skei 2 eiers, gooi die wit in ‘n klein mengbak en die geel by die roomkaas-mengsel. Klop die witte totdat dit hul punte hou maar nog sag is, vou dan dit met ‘n metaallepel in die roomkaas-mengsel in. Die tweede opsie is om die eiers te breek en net so in te gooi by die roomkaas, as jy dit ‘n bietjie meer dense wil he. Gooi die vulsel in die tertdop en bak vir … so 30 minute. Voilà!”
*Jy kan dit met die hand doen, sit dit in ‘n groot vriessakkie en maak dit toe, kap en slaan en haal jou frustrasie uit (of gebruik ‘n deegroller). Jy kan anders ‘n voedselverwerker gebruik, dit werk ook baie goed.
J Ek het die tweede opsie ingekluis na ‘n aanbeveling van Uno (hy hou van ‘n dense kaaskoek), so bietjie kooketic license – Jade.
Manie’s Cheesecake
I included the Afrikaans version so that you can understand where it comes from… Hang on! English here I come!
Manie, I am amazed – from a property developer (he and my mother sometimes work in a partnership on a project) to DJ, father and now the new owner of the liquor with the most ganache, sorry panache … Roeland Liquors in Roeland street, your cheesecake is the master. And here it is – just like you told me on 12 December 2006.
“Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Make the crust like it should be: mix a ¾ packet of Marie- of Tennis biscuits, made into fine crumbs*, with 100g melted butter and press it flat in a well greased (with butter, smear all around) tart pan, then put it in the fridge for the meanwhile. Next mix 2 tubs of cream cheese, the bought ones, and mix it with ½ cup single cream, ¼ cup sugar, then one tablespoon of self-raising flour and one teaspoon vanilla essence. Nou you have two choices : you can seperate two eggs, place the egg white in one small bowl and the yolk with the cream cheese-mixture. Whisk the egg whites by hand or electric mixer untill they can hold a point, but are soft. Fold the whites using a metal spoon into the cream cheese-mixture. The second option is to break two eggs and through it right in. This will create a denser texture, whereas the first option is for a airy and light cheesecake. Pour the fulling into the case, then put it in the oven for say … 30 minutes. Voilà!”
*You can do this by hand by putting the biscuits ito a freezer bag, letting out the air and closing it, then mashing and smashing and taking out everything on it, or you could use a rolling pin. Another option is to put it in a food mixer – which works well too.
J I included the second option after a suggestion by Uno (who loves dense cheesecake), just a bit of cooketic license – Jade.
