What to make when you can’t give a present

My younger son’s teacher laid down the law in his class this Christmas, and said that she wanted NO Christmas presents from the families.  In fact, she’s getting the kids to do a “reverse advent calendar” this month instead.  Each day, a different child brings something to give to a charity that helps people in need, and at the end of the month, they will present it to the organisation. As we live in France, along with presents of toothbrushes, canned food, toilet paper and soap, absolute necessities such as Fois Gras, chocolate and tapenade have been donated. I’m waiting for someone to bring a basket of raw oysters and a bottle of champagne! Since we couldn’t give this fabulous teacher a present, my sons and I decided to make some Christmassy cookies for the teacher and the whole class to share. When the kids decorated the cookies, I set a limit to the number of balls they could put on each “tree” as otherwise, you would not have been able to see the actual cookies, but just a dithering array of sugar.

Cookies that are lots of fun to make with kids

The recipe for the cookies in very simple and lots of fun to make with the kids.  I have a video of my youngest son making them when he was too short to even reach the kitchen counter and had to stand on a stool.  I promise I won’t bore you with that video – those are the kind of things that only parents and grandparents should have to watch. He’s almost my height now (I’m going to be the one having to stand on a stool soon), but he still loves making them.

I haven’t included instructions for the icing or decorations as in the end, this cookie dough can be cut out into any shape and decorated or not, depending on what you have on hand (that goes with cookies….don’t decorate them with garlic slivers or olives….).  If you want to make the icing, mix powdered sugar with a small amount of hot water until you get a thick paste, add some drops of food colouring, then spread them onto the cookies.

I was going to throw in a photo of our real tree to get the holiday spirit going, but the kids really went to town on hanging tinsel this year and it looks a little like a Christmas elf has thrown up all over it, so instead I will leave you with this soothing, non stomach-churning photo of some snow as that’s what I’m wishing for for Christmas this year!

By Lisa Watson

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Ginger and cinnamon cookies

A recipe that's fun to make with kids: Ginger and Cinnamon Christmas tree cookies 

Course cookies, sweet

Cuisine American, New Zealand

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

fridge time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 18 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 275 g All-purpose flour 2 cups and 2 Tbsp, 10 oz
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 100 g Brown Sugar 4 oz
• 75 g Butter at room temperature 3 oz
• 1 Eggs
• 50 ml Golden Syrup 2 Tbsp
• 2 tsp Mixed Spice or 1 tsp ginger and 1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

• Mix the dry ingredients together.
• Rub in the butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
• Mix together the egg and golden syrup, then add to the dough.
• Knead the dough until it forms a ball.
• Wrap the dough in cling-film and leave in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes.
• Heat the oven to 180°C /350°F.
• Roll the dough out onto a floured bench and cut out cookie shapes.
• Bake for 8 - 10 minutes.
• Leave to cool on a rack then ice as desired.
• The cookies will keep in an airtight container for at least two weeks.

Why it’s time to make your own cookies

My kids have been eating way too many commercial cookies out of a packet recently, so I decided it was time to get baking. I often make ginger/cinnamon cookies with this recipe that I am going to share with you, but decided it was time for a change.  I used the same dough, but added some cocoa powder instead, and Lo and Behold! Out came chocolate caramel cookies!  And they were great! Usually when I make cutout cookies, the kids spend ages decorating them with all sorts of garish coloured sugar pearls and stars.  This time I managed to make these chocolate caramel cookies while they were out, so we adults can now eat them too without feeling sick from the sugar rush.  If you want to make them a little prettier, you could always drizzle chocolate glaze over the top of them.  Or find some random kid to smush silver balls and coloured sugar confetti all over them.

Tips to make the cookies more quickly

If you don’t want to do the whole thing with cookie cutters, you can roll the dough into a cylinder, wrap it in plastic wrap, refrigerate it, then slice it onto the cookie tray to bake.  If you want to be super lazy, don’t even cook the dough. Just eat it raw.  But, that may be going a little far.  If you’re that unmotivated, it might be better just to get some store-bought chocolate caramel cookies in the shape of stars. You can’t find them in the supermarket?  Well, that’s a good reason to make these cookies then!  My cookie-cutters are a little wonky after years of indelicate use from young children.  The star looks like it’s imploding and the gingerbread man cutter seems to have one skinny leg and one fat, but I like them that way as it reminds me of all the times my boys  and I spent around the kitchen table together when they were smaller. They’re not so enthusiastic about making them anymore, but they do still like to eat them though.

Just a note about this recipe.  If  the dough doesn’t stick together very well, add a little milk or water, a teaspoon at a time until it clumps together.  If you have no golden syrup, or don’t want the caramel side of the cookies, add the equivalent volume in milk.

For another kind of delectable cookie, you could try chocolate afghan cookies instead.

Travel Photo of the Week

This is a beach on the island of Sardinia, Italy.  I think the photo says it all! Pack your bags and go (after baking some chocolate caramel cookies).

By Lisa Watson

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Chocolate caramel cookies

Chocolate Caramel Cookies: better than store-bought! Use this recipe to make cookies with your kids!

Course cookies, Dessert, sweet

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

Resting time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 48 minutes minutes

Servings 35 - 40 cookies

Ingredients

• 275 g All-purpose flour 2 cups and 2 Tbsp, 10 oz
• 30 g Cocoa powder 4 Tbsp
• 100 g White sugar 1/2 cup, 3.5 oz
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 75 g Butter 3 oz
• 75 g Golden Syrup 3 Tbsp
• 1 Eggs

Instructions

• Sift all the dry ingredients into a medium-sized bowl.
• Add the room temperature butter and rub it into the dry ingredients with your fingers until the mixture ressembles breadcrumbs.
• Mix the egg and golden syrup together then add it to the dough.  Mix in with your hands until the ball forms.  If the dough is too dry and won't stick together, add a tiny bit of water and keep kneading the dough.  Continue adding a teaspoon of water at a time until it sticks together.
• Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.  You can keep it like this for at least two days.
• Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Take the dough out of the fridge and let it softn on the bench for 10 -15 minutes.
• Roll it out on a floured bench until it is about 1 cm thick.  Use cookie cutters or a glass to cut out the cookies and place them on a cookie tray lined with baking paper.
• Bake for 8 - 10 minutes.

A short introduction

I’m back!  I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long, but the Summer got a little bit crazy!  I had lots of fun in Italy in the Dolomiti mountains, which I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks, but for now, I wanted to start off the “beginning of the year” (I work on the school year since that’s where my kids are) with something very special: a guest post written by a fellow ex-pat Kiwi and internet friend, Emma.  Emma writes a fabulous blog called Adventures of a London Kiwi in which she shares her travel and day-to-day life experiences while living in London. Don’t just read this post by her: go check out her blog!

Emma very kindly agreed to write a piece on her mother’s delicious date scones for my blog.  I had forgotten all about these delicious baked goods until I saw her post on them.  I loved date scones when I was a kid.  In New Zealand they often appear on the table and you can also find them in cafes all over the place.  I have to make them myself soon…..though I’m hoping that Emma will come and visit me one of these days, and make them for me!

So, without further ado (drumroll please…..!!), I pass you to Emma!

Emma’s Date Scones

Growing up on a small farm in a tiny town, buried deep in the centre of New Zealand, we never had much in a material sense as kids. Entertainment usually consisted of running amok in the nearby paddocks, usually with our easy-going cat held hostage, endless re-runs of our favourite movies (this was by choice – anything new was treated with indifference) and clothes for my younger siblings were usually well loved hand-me-downs.

What we were lucky enough to have is a sense of adventure, love, endless attention and a mother who could cook like an angel. She wasn’t perfect in many ways – though who is? – but anything that came out of our oven & fridge was mysteriously packed with enticing flavour in a way that I’ve never quite been able to capture. Was it the years of experience, hundreds of small sheets of scribbled paper recipes or just a gift for seasoning?

One of my earliest memories is sitting in our country kitchen (not an idealised Martha Stewart one, but one where gumboots and overalls hung near back of the door) staring at our oven, willing her latest batch of date scones to rise really quickly so we could tumble them out, burn our fingers and smother them in butter.

Living in London 25 years on, almost 20,000 miles from that kitchen, I still get that feeling each time I slide a batch of date scones into the oven, or spot them in our favourite Kiwi Cafes in the bustling centre of the city. I have managed to glean her recipe for these delicious scones – one of the few she has peeled away from that handwritten cooking book. I’m sure she just keeps the rest to make sure we travel home as often as possible…

I have a suspicion that Lisa – so kind to let me guest post here! – has a collection of recipes just like my mum’s, but you’re lucky enough that instead of making you visit her kitchen table – has published them right here on her blog. Come to think of it though, a trip to Lisa’s sounds utterly delicious!

The best way to make date scones starts the night before. If you’re in a hurry this isn’t an essential step, but to make The Best date scones, it’s a good idea. *Roughly chop the dates, put in a small container, add enough boiling water to cover, pop somewhere safe and dream of date scones in the morning. If you do this step, the next day switch out half a cup of the milk in the recipe for half a cup of the date water.

You’ll also need to make sure you have a 250ml cup measure/mug – that’s how we roll in the Antipodes. None of this ‘weighing’ malarkey, well, not much anyway.

By Emma

And a short P.S. from Lisa: don’t forget to go to Emma’s blog Adventures of a London Kiwi to read more from her!

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Date Scones

Emma shows us how to make date scones: a New Zealand favourite recipe

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 3 cups All-purpose flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 Tbsp White Sugar
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 75 g Butter 2.7oz, 1/3 cup
• 1 1/2 cups Dates
• 1 cup plus a little for glazing Milk

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 220°C (400ºF) & dust an oven tray with extra flour.
• Sift flour & baking powder into a bowl, then add the sugar & salt.
• Cut butter into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.
• Add milk (and/or date water) and dates, mixing lightly until the mixture comes together kneading a few times.
• Press the scone dough lightly out, and score into 12 even-sized pieces at least 2cm apart (that's about an inch for you imperialists).
• Brush with the extra milk, and cook for around 10 minutes or until golden.
• Scoff once vaguely cooler.

What to do with all those zucchini

Zucchini, zucchini everywhere and not a recipe in sight……or is there? My kids and I grew zucchini plants from seed this year.  They’ve taken a while as the weather’s been all over the place, acting like a teenage girl who doesn’t know what to wear on a date: “Shall I go stormy and dark?  Shall I be light and sunny?  Or shall I give them a bit of both so that they don’t know what to expect?”.  Anyway, now, just a couple of days before we go on holiday, there are zucchini coming out our ears.  I’d been throwing them in pasta sauces, and putting them in places that they really have no place being (please don’t get smutty on me….I didn’t mean THAT!!), when I suddenly remembered that fritters are the way to the light.  They are so versatile that you can stick pretty much any vegetable in them and it comes out tasting great!

Fritters are very forgiving

So I set to work trying to remember the recipe my mother used to make when I was a kid and she made corn fritters.  It worked!  I also found some spring onions in the fridge that needed using up before we leave, so I minced them up and threw them in with the grated zucchini too. Fantastic!  Fritters can be seen as the seagulls of the fridge world.  They swallow up everything that you have left and are not sure what to do with.

Try not to go on holiday when the vegetables are ready

The worst of the whole vegetable garden thing this year is that I think our house-sitters are going to be the ones reaping the benefits while we’re away in Italy.  There are all types of tomatoes on the brink of ripening and even MORE zucchini bursting out like balloons that are all planning to be ready on the day after we leave.  I’m beginning to think that the vegetables do it on purpose as some sort of protest (we are in France, after all), as they didn’t get cared for enough in their younger months.

Travel photo of the week

Here’s something to get the travel bug working inside your head. This week I’m taking you to one of my favourite places in the world: Yosemite National Park in California. When we lived in California, we used to go there at least four times a year.  I miss it dreadfully still!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 12 -15 fritters

Ingredients

• 150 g 1 cup All-purpose flour
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Salt
• 2 Eggs
• to taste Pepper
• 120 ml 1/2 cup Milk
• 2 medium size about 200g/7oz Zucchini
• 2 Spring Onions

Instructions

• Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
• Add the eggs and milk and mix in.
• Grate the zucchini. Blot it with a paper towel to get rid of excess moisture. Finely mince the spring onion.
• Add the vegetables to the batter and stir in.
• Heat a frying pan with a thin layer of oil in it.
• Pour tablespoons of the mixture into the pan once the oil is hot.
• Wait until one side browns and flip them over. Each fritter should take 3 - 5 minutes to cook.
• When the fritters are cooked, drain them on a plate with a paper towel on it.
• The fritters acan be eaten hot or cold.

Bringing back a traditional NZ cookie

These biscuits from New Zealand, called Elsie’s Fingers, are a very old (as far as history goes for New Zealand!) cookie that was an integral part of the childhood of anyone born before the 80’s. I remember often snacking on Elsie’s Fingers for afternoon tea when I was a kid.  For some reason, they were taken out of the NZ cookbook “bibles” at some point, and never put back again.  The powers-that-be don’t know what they’re missing out on!  They’ve destroyed a part of NZ’s heritage, and at the same time removed a rather tasty snack from the mouths of the youth of today! I say we rise up! Rise up and protest against the injustice brought against thousands of young Kiwis not knowing what Elsie’s Fingers are!  Or, you can just make this recipe and have a cup of tea while nibbling on them, and sit in an armchair, while watching someone on TV protest about something else if you prefer.

All about Elsie’s Fingers

Who is Elsie, and did her fingers really look like pale, puffed-up sausages?  We shall never know. But whoever she was, I say thanks to her for inventing this childhood favourite of mine. I guess if you really wanted to go crazy, you could add the zest of a lemon into the mixture, but you’d really be going out on a limb there.  The biscuits are kind of like shortbread in texture.  Perfect for dunking in tea.  Elsie’s Fingers are also great fun to make with kids, as the recipe is very simple to make, and in the end, you can form them into whatever shape you like.

If you look at the recipe you will see that the flour varies by 1/2 a cup.  This depends on the size of the egg you’re using.  Add all the flour, except the last 50g (1/2 cup) first and mix it in, the if the dough is still too sticky, keep adding flour until it doesn’t stick to your hands.

For other delicious New Zealand treats, you can check out these crunchy ANZAC biscuits or tickle your taste-buds with some Ginger Slice

Travel photo of the week

Before you run off to make Elsie’s Fingers, like I just know you will, I want to leave you with another photo from our trip to New Zealand in February. That way you can dream of this beach (Rawara Beach in Northland) while chomping on the cookies.  Can you believe it that the sand is so fine that it squeaks when you walk on it!

By Lisa Watson

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Elsie's Fingers

These cookies from New Zealand are called Elsie's fingers.  Why?  Come and find out and learn how to make them on Italian Kiwi.

Course Snack

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes minutes

Total Time 22 minutes minutes

Servings 16 large or 30 small

Ingredients

• 125 g Butter 4.2oz, 1/2 cup
• 90 g White sugar 3 oz, 1/2 cup
• 1 Egg
• 250 - 300 g All-purpose flour 14.1 oz, 2 - 2 1/2 cups
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• Extra sugar for rolling cookies in

Instructions

• Cream butter (at room temperature) and sugar together until white and fluffy.
• Beat in the egg.
• Mix together the flour and baking powder, then stir it into the creamed mixture.
• Line a cookie tray with baking paper and heat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF) .
• Roll walnut size pieces of dough into sausage shapes, then roll them in sugar and place them on the baking tray.
• Bake for 12 - 15 minutes until they are light brown in colour.

Notes

If you look at the recipe you will see that the flour varies by 1/2 a cup.  This depends on the size of the egg you're using.  Add all the flour, except the last 50g (1/2 cup) first and mix it in, the if the dough is still too sticky, keep adding flour until it doesn't stick to your hands.

A classic square from the annuals of my childhood cookbook

I’m back from New Zealand and, after a week of sleepless nights, finally over the jet-lag! While I was there,  my mother made ginger slice, which whisked me back to my childhood faster than that Back to the Future dude went all over the time spectrum in his Dolorian!  When I got back to France, I scrabbled through my old recipe books and found the recipe for ginger slice that I had carefully written out in my cookbook when I was 9 or 10 years old.  This recipe for ginger slice came from my cooking teacher at school.  I don’t know if they still do this, but back in my day when I was a young whipper-snapper (wow, do I sound old right now!), they used to send the girls to do cooking and sewing once a week, and the boys would go off to do carpentry.  I really envied those boys!  They got to play with a whole lot of dangerous tools and make birdhouses, while all we did was the stuff I did at home on the farm already (seethe, seethe).  Anyway, one good thing to come out of it was this ginger slice recipe I’m going to share with you today.

So, what did I do in New Zealand?

Ginger slice is generally called ginger crunch in New Zealand and you can find it in pretty much all the cafes you walk into.  I’ve called the recipe below ginger slice as it’s not very crunchy, but more “cakey”.  If you want it to be more like a flakey biscuit base, leave out the eggs and add a little less flour.

“Enough about cake!”  you shriek.  “What did you do when you were in New Zealand?” you ask in a more moderated tone, after taking a few deep breaths. Well,

we did a lot of this:

and hung out with friends like these:

We also spent some time with a few of these:

who live on my parent’s farm that looks like this:

and we spent a lot of time swimming, body-boarding and building massive sandcastles in places like this:

That about sums it up. Had enough yet? 🙂  So, go make the ginger crunch, and make a cup of strong black tea with a spot of milk in it to go with it. Close your eyes while you are munching and slurping, and pretend you’re sitting in a cafe in New Zealand.  Next thing you know someone will be saying to you, “Hey cuz!  Where youse guys from?” or “Sweet as, bro! (to say they like something, like what you’re saying, or agree with a plan you suggested)”, and then you’ll know you’ve teleported to the North of New Zealand successfully!

By Lisa Watson

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Ginger Crunch from New Zealand

Ginger Slice from New Zealand is a delicious sweet square found in all good NZ cafes. Get the recipe here

Course Dessert

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 35 minutes minutes

Ingredients

For the Base:

• 125 g Butter 4.4oz, 1 cup
• 125 g White Sugar 4.4oz, 1 cup
• 1 Tbsp Golden Syrup
• 2 small Eggs
• 1 tsp Dried Ginger
• 250 g Flour 7oz
• 1 tsp Baking powder

For the Glaze:

• 4 Tbsp Butter
• 8 Tbsp Icing Sugar Powdered Sugar
• 4 Tbsp Golden Syrup
• 2 tsp Dried Ginger

Instructions

For the Base:

• Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
• Add the eggs, and beat in one by one.
• Add the golden syrup and beat in, then add the dried ingredients. Mix until the dough becomes homogenous.
• Pressed out into a greased rectangle tart dish.
• Bake at 190°C (375°F) for 15 -18 minutes until it is browned lightly on top and firm to the touch.

For the Glaze:

• In the last few minutes of the base cooking, put all the ingredients in a pot and heat on the stove-top, stirring constantly, until the butter has melted.
• Pour the glaze over the base once it comes out of the oven (while it is still hot).
• Leave to cool, then cut into squares or rectangles.

A recipe from way back when

This recipe for peanut square is an childhood favourite of mine from New Zealand.  My mother used to make it regularly. She modified it from a recipe published in the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers Cookbook.  It’s not as posh as it sounds. It was an important way for women in the isolated country areas of New Zealand to join together and have some support, which I think meant that they made lots of jam and scones, and wrote this cookbook, well at least back in the 1950’s and ’60’s.  I love the cookbook as it dates back to the early part of last Century, therefore has all sorts of arcane sections, like the one for “Savory Gelatine Dishes”. Unfortunately, the copy I have comes from the 80’s, so has been updated to “include the use of electrical appliances“, as it says it the introduction.  I’d love to read the recipes for cooking things on open fires! Next time I head down to the farm in New Zealand, I’ll have to dig around to see if my mother still has one of the older editions.

Musings about coconut in New Zealand

Peanut square has dried coconut in it, just like many other sweet recipes from this time in New Zealand, such as mothballs and chocolate crackles.  This has always surprised me that dried coconut shows up everywhere, as it isn’t warm enough for coconut palms to grow in New Zealand.  My guess is that it was used so much because it keeps forever once dried, so was an easy product to have on hand.  Plus, the Polynesian Islands aren’t that far away and they DO have coconuts.  I imagine the boats from England may have stopped there on the way down to the ends of the Earth to gather more food for the passengers, and brought dried coconut with them.  On a tangent: can you imagine if you lived a Century or so ago, jumping on a ship in England to travel for months and months all the way down to a place that you’d never seen?  It must’ve been like it would be to move to the moon these days!

It’s all about the ratio of ingredients

You can use peanuts with the skin on or without for making peanut square.  I don’t think it makes that much difference.  I used peanuts without skin as that’s what I had in the cupboard.  In the recipe, it says to chop the peanuts roughly.  I didn’t actually do that either, as you can see by the photo above, but it worked fine! Remember that this recipe was originally with everything as a ratio, so if you use any kind of teacup to measure the ingredients, it will work fine.  For the those of you who are determined to bake with measurements, I have quantified everything. 🙂

Not so much a travel photo of the week

I’ll leave you with a photo that’s a little different.  It’s not exactly a travel photo of a beautiful landscape, but is a very typical photo of a New Zealand shearing shed in action.  This is taken in my parent’s shearing shed.  I know every knot in the wood there as I spent many hours sweeping and picking up wool there.  I’m very happy to hand my broom to the guys in the photo.  The work is hard, and in this shed, there’s no electricity, only a generator to run the machinery, so you can’t here anything but the buzzing of the cutters and the thumping of the generator all day.  I really admire the shearers and shed-hands (the people who sweep and sort the wool)!

By Lisa Watson

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Peanut, Coconut, and Chocolate Slice

Course Dessert

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 40 minutes minutes

Servings 10 people

Ingredients

For the Slice:

• 125 g Flour 1 cup
• 200 g Brown sugar 1 cup
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 170 g Butter 6oz
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla essence
• 1 Tbsp Golden syrup
• 90 -100 g Peanuts 3/4 cup
• 100 g Dried coconut 1 cup
• 30 g Cornflakes 1 cup

For the Icing

• 260 g Icing sugar 2 cups + 2 Tbsp
• 80 ml Boiling water 1/3 cup
• 2 Tbsp Cocoa powder
• 1 Tbsp melted Butter

Instructions

For the Slice:

• Roughly chop the peanuts. Slightly crush the cornflakes.
• Mix the dry ingredients together.
• Melt the butter and mix in the golden syrup and vanilla essence.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix.
• Press into a rectangular or square tart tin that has been greased with butter.
• Bake at 180ºC (350ºF) for 25 - 30 minutes until golden brown.
• Leave to cool in the tin before icing the slice with chocolate icing.

For the Icing:

• Add the cocoa powder and butter to the boiled water and stir until dissolved. If they butter doesn't melt completely, put the mixture in the microwave for a few seconds or on the stove-top.
• Add the icing sugar and whisk until you have a smooth, runny mixture.
• Pour onto the biscuit base and leave to set.
• When set, you can cut the slice into squares or bars. It keeps well for 2 -3 weeks in a closed container.

Banana cake is my favourite! What’s yours?

I figured that I’ve been giving Italian recipes a pretty good run on my blog, so now it’s time to add a few from New Zealand to balance the “Kiwi” bit of “Italian Kiwi”. The first recipe I want to share with you is one which is still my very favourite cake to eat, even after all these years. Banana cake was my “go-to” birthday cake when I was a kid.  It was always my first choice, even over any kind of chocolate cake.   I’ve tasted (and gorged on!) way too many other cakes over the years, some of which were mind-shatteringly delicious, but when I want cake, banana cake always comes to mind first.

How Maui fished up the North Island of New Zealand

The photo above is taken from the window of the bedroom I slept in when I was a kid, and did a lot of illicit banana cake eating in. The range of hills you see there are called the Tangihuias.  The part of New Zealand I grew up in  is very hilly.  Maori legend tells us that Maui, this super-awesome guy who did all sorts of wonderful things like catching the sun and creating fire, fished up a giant fish with a magic fishhook smeared with his blood. This fish became North Island of New Zealand. His hungry brothers, who were hopeless at catching fish, didn’t listen to Maui when he told them the priest needed to bless it  before it was cut up. While Maui was away getting the priest (who really should have been with him on the fishing trip I think!), the brothers started to sneakily eat the giant fish anyway.  This made the gods angry, so they made the fish writhe and thrash about, creating the hills that make up the North Island.  If it hadn’t been for Maui’s brothers, the whole island would’ve been flat. I have to say thanks to them as it made where I grew up much more beautiful! 🙂

How ripe should the bananas be?

Just for the record, the colours in the photo above of the farm are real.  My husband took them during a lovely sunset last time we were down there. OK, now back to the actual subject of today’s post: the banana cake! Yes, I know….the photo below of yucky brown bananas isn’t that appealing, but I put it in to show you the perfect “ripeness” for making the cake.  The softer and browner they are, the better!  I often put bananas past their prime for eating into the freezer.  When you want to make the cake, you can just thaw them, then squeeze the insides into the cake batter.  I won’t write here about the consistency of the thawed bananas, but just let’s say that they’re perfect when they drip everywhere.  (Important hint: thaw them on a plate)

Finishing touches to the banana cake

You can eat banana cake as it is, with sifted icing sugar (powdered sugar) on top, or covered in chocolate or vanilla icing.  There have always been very deep lines drawn in the sand in my family about whether banana cake is better with chocolate or vanilla icing….I’m on the side of vanilla!

This recipe is slightly adapted from the bible of cooking in New Zealand: The Edmonds Cookery Book.  When I was a teenager, this cookbook is given to pretty much everyone when they moved away from home so that they didn’t have to eat baked beans on toast every day.

By Lisa Watson

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Banana cake

Banana cake from New Zealand is a delicious recipe for using up over-ripe bananas.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 35 minutes minutes

Total Time 45 minutes minutes

Servings 1 cake

Ingredients

• 125 g Butter at room temperature 1stick; 1/2 cup; 4oz
• 160 g Granulated white sugar 2/3 cup; 5.6 oz
• 2 Eggs
• 2 Bananas large or 3 small
• 3 Tbsp Milk
• 1 tsp Sodium bicarbonate
• 250 g All-purpose flour 2 cups; 8 oz
• 1 tsp Baking powder

Instructions

• Cream the butter and sugar in a standing mixture (or by hand) until white and fluffy.
• Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well.
• Mash the bananas, then add them.  Mix in.
• Heat the milk to nearly boiling.  Add the sodium bicarbonate to it.  It should become a foam when you stir it.
• Add this foam to the cake batter and mix.
• Add the flour and baking powder and mix gently until it becomes incorporated.
• Scoop the batter into a 25cm (10  inch) diameter greased cake tin.
• Bake at 180ºC ( 350ºF) for 35 - 40 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. Start testing at about 30 minutes, as it gets dry if cooked too long.
• You can decorate it with icing sugar, or chocolate or white icing, or just leave it plain.  It's good every way!

The best apricot cake I’ve ever made

One more week of the school holidays to go.  At this time of the year I always have mixed feelings: sad, as it’s so nice just to hang out with the kids and not have to rush anywhere, but also happy, because I’ll have more time to work on my blog and the kids will be too busy being back at school to fight with each other.  While they’re busy with a couple of those I-devices, I thought I’d get this recipe up for Torta di Albicocca (apricot cake) before the apricots are out of season.  Nothing worse than reading about a delicious recipe that you can’t make because the ingredients aren’t available!

I love cooked apricots.  Their taste condenses a lot when they are cooked, and with this apricot cake, it’s no exception.  The cake is simple and showcases the apricots to the full advantage of your taste-buds! You could of course use any other juicy stone-fruit in their place, but do try it with the apricots. No real reason, except for the fact that it’s really, really, really good!  Whenever I make this cake it disappears before I can steal a piece to take a photo of it for the blog (actually, I mean: to keep for myself so that I can eat it for breakfast the next day).

A cake that takes no time to make, and why Chardonnay grape seeds are good for hamsters

This cake can be whipped up in a hurry, which is a big bonus, plus it looks and tastes wonderful. It has no butter in it, so it could almost be considered healthy……..well, OK, it’s a cake after all, so don’t get your hopes up too much.  If you want healthy, just eat the apricots and forget about the rest. I used grape-seed oil, but any oil with no taste will work fine.  If you’re wondering: no, I’d never heard of grape-seed oil either.  Some friends left a bottle of it behind after staying at our place.  It has a lovely greenish colour, and seems very “light”. On Wikipedia it says that it’s relatively good for you (as opposed to other oils), and that hamsters that ate Chardonnay grape seeds managed to avoid becoming obese on a high-fat diet.  Hmmmm….I wonder if that works if you drink Chardonnay too?  I think I could be onto something!

Notes on making apricot cake

For this cake, I use the cake tin you can see in the photo above.  It’s 25cm (10 inches).  You could use a slightly smaller one or a bigger one, depending on what’s in your kitchen cupboard, or how thick (or thin) you want the cake to be. You’ll need to vary the cooking time accordingly.  For a larger tin, the cooking time will be less as the cake is thinner.  Just stick a knife or a skewer in it every so often to test it after the first 20 minutes. If it comes out clean, take the cake out of the oven.

Travel Photo Of The Week

Thinking of Summer: here’s the Travel Photo of the Week: The beautiful beaches of the island of Sardenia. This was taken about ten years ago and at that time, there was nobody around, even though it was the middle of Summer.  I’m not sure if it’s still like that now.  It’s amazing to be able to find empty places like this in Europe!

Just thinking of this apricot cake is making my mouth water, and I have some apricots sitting on the bench….I know what I’m going to do today!

By Lisa Watson

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Apricot cake

Easy to Make Apricot Cake. Find the recipe on Italian Kiwi!

Course cake, Dessert, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 40 minutes minutes

Servings 1 cake

Ingredients

• 300 g Flour 2 1/2 cups cake flour best; all-purpose works too
• 180 g White sugar 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp
• 4 tsp Baking powder
• 1 pinch Salt
• Zest from 1 lemon
• 3 Eggs
• 60 ml Milk 1/4 cup
• 150 ml Oil 2/3 cup - use a tasteless oil. I used grape-seed oil.
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract or 1 packet vanilla sugar
• 10 - 15 Apricots depending on their size

Instructions

• Heat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
• Beat the eggs, salt, vanilla essence and sugar with a standing mixer or an eggbeater at high speed until they become fluffy and whitish in colour.
• While still beating, add the milk and oil in a thin stream.
• Add the flour, zest and baking powder.  Mix in gently until combined.
• Put in a greased 25cm ( 10 inch ) cake tin.
• Cut the apricots in half and place them over the top of the cake batter.
• Bake for approximately 30 - 40 minutes until a tester comes out clean.
• Let sit for 5 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool.

What “biscotti” are called in Italy

Yes, I know I just put up another almond biscuit recipe recently, but honestly, I bought a lot of almonds when I made the marzapani, so they have to be used up. This is a recipe for classic Tuscan biscuits called cantuccini or cantucce. Cantuccini are the grandmother of the biscotti you find in every cafe spread through the U.S.A. (no mention of trade names, but it begins and ends with  an “S” and was founded in Seattle).  The taste has mutated, but the form has stayed true to the original. The only addition to the basic biscuit dough in the original cantuccini are almonds: there’s no chocolate, marshmallows or cranberries to be seen anywhere!

The variety of biscuits in Italy is endless!

The name biscotti simply means “biscuits” in Italian (oh, and for the record the word “biscotti” is plural….you can have ONE biscotto or many, many biscotti!).  Biscotti in Italy can have any shape or form; be soft or chewy; square or round.  Of course, every region has its own special type of biscuit; the variation is endless!  Local products are incorporated into many of the biscuits, for example pistachios in the South and hazelnuts in the North, making them very unique to their area. I have even eaten biscuits in Sardinia with olives in them and dusted with icing sugar.  I have to admit, it was a little strange, but maybe that one is an acquired taste……

How are Cantuccini eaten in Italy?

Cantuccini are not generally dipped in coffee, but in a sweet, fabulous dessert wine called Vin Santo (Saint Wine).  I guess it’s called that because it’s so very heavenly to drink!  In Tuscany you find the “Cantuccini e Vin Santo”  in nearly every restaurant on the dessert menu.  That’s what I get every time I’m there!

The trick for making Cantuccini so crunchy

The trick that makes cantuccini so crunchy is double baking the biscuits.  The first baking of the cantuccini is done in a kind of loaf form like you see in the photo below.  Once the loaf is golden-brown, you take it out of the oven, wait for it to cool so you don’t burn your hands, then carefully slice it, and bake the slices in the oven again.

When we go to Tuscany we usually come back with a few bottles of Vin Santo, and until now, packets of commercially-made cantuccini.  Now that I’ve discovered how easy they are to make, I won’t be buying them anymore!  The only slightly tricky bit is cutting them.  You have to have a very sharp serrated knife and a firm hand.  Now, I just have to figure out how to make Vin Santo and I’m set with dessert for life!

 By Lisa Watson

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Cantuccini: the original "biscotti" from Tuscany

Find out how to make Cantuccini, the original "biscotti" from Tuscany, Italy

Course cookies, Dessert

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 45 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 130 g Whole unpeeled almonds 1 cup
• 300 g Flour 2 1/2 cups
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 1 pinch Salt
• 150 g Sugar 3/4 cup
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Tbsp Honey
• Lemon zest from 1 lemon
• 1 Tbsp Butter at room temperature

Instructions

• Put the almonds on a cookie tray in a single layer and bake in the oven at 180ºC (350ºF) for 5 minutes.
• Leave to cool on the bench.
• Beat the eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer (or whisk) until foamy. 
• Add the honey and softened butter and mix.
• Add the flour, baking powder, lemon zest, and salt. Mix in gently.
• Stir in the almonds by hand.
• Form the mixture into two long thin "loaves"  no more than 6cm (2 1/2 inches) high and place them on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper.
• Bake at 200ºC (400ºF) for 20 minutes until golden-brown.
• Leave to cool for a few minutes until you can touch it.
• With a SHARP serrated knife, cut slices approximately 1cm (1/2 inch) thick and lay them on a cookie sheet.
• Bake at 200ºC (400ºF) for 7-10 minutes until slightly browned.

Notes

The cantuccini can be stored in an air-tight container for several weeks.