Make the most of fresh produce with these blueberry custard cupcakes. Really easy to make, great to freeze for lunchboxes, or put them on a pretty plate and share with a friend.
Ingredients:
- 1 quantity cupcake mixure
- thick custard
- Fresh blueberries
Make up the mixture for the cupcakes and half fill your patty cases. Using a piping bag, pipe some of the custard into the middle of the cupcake mixture, then top with more cupcake mixture. Top with fresh blueberries and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake moderate oven until golden.
Chocolate Brownies
These chocolate brownies are seriously good and incredibly easy to make – if Mr 17 can make them (over and over again) then so can you!
Ingredients:
- 250g choc chips (white, milk or dark or a combination)
- 1 C self raising flour
- 250g butter
- 3/4 C castor sugar
- 1/2 C cocoa
- 4 eggs
Method
Melt the butter. Combine all the other ingredients, add melted butter. Pour batter into a lined cake tin/slice tin. Bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes.
To see if the brownies are cooked – you want them still a little gooey on the inside, but firm on the outside. As they cool, they will continue to cook. If you want a drier brownie, cook for a little longer.
Wrapped Stuffed Dates
When you can buy dates at an absolute bargain price, and you buy 5kg of them – you need to be able to make more than just sticky date pudding! This super quick and easy way to treat yourself with dates is sure to be a hit.
Ingredients
- short crust pastry
- Fresh dates
- Nut butter or similar
- milk
- sugar
Roll out the short crust pastry until it is really thin. Cut into strips. Slice the date to remove the seed and fill with a teaspoon of nut butter. Roll the date up in the pastry. Brush with milk and roll in sugar. Place on tray.
Bake Hot oven until crisp and golden.
Serve warm or cold with fresh cream.
Whole Orange Syrup Cake
This Whole Orange Syrup Cake is one of those recipes that bring back memories. Decadent, moist and oozing with flavour, this one is sure to be a hit at afternoon tea – don’t forget the dollop of full cream to top it off!
Ingredients:
- 1 orange
- 125g butter
- 1/2 cup castor sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1.5 cups self raising flour
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 cup milk
For the syrup you’ll need:
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 60g butter
- zest of one orange (zest the orange before juicing it!)
Directions:
Zest the orange and put aside for the syrup. Juice the orange, and put the juice aside, also for the syrup.
Process or blend the remaining skin and pulp until it’s fine – I use a food processor and always chop the skin before trying to process it.
In the processor, add the butter and sugar and process until creamy, add the eggs one at a time.
Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add the flour and milk and mix until it forms a smooth batter.
Pour into a lined pan. Bake 180deg C for about 40 minutes until a skewer comes out cleanly.
While the cake is cooking, in a saucepan combine the sugar, orange juice, butter and zest. Stir constantly until the sugar dissolves and butter has melted. Bring to boil and then remove from heat.
Once the cake has been removed from the oven, pour the hot syrup over the cake (while still in the pan) – you may need to use a skewer or fork to pierce the top of the cake to allow the syrup to penetrate. Allow to cool before turning out and cutting.
Lemon Slice
The secret to a really good lemon slice is that “zing” you get on your tongue after you eat it – balanced with just the right amount of sweetness so that you get a very slight shudder, but not a full on cringe. This is one of my favourite recipes – a short base, a creamy zing on the palate followed by the need for more.
Ingredients
Base:
- 1.5 C plain flour
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
- zest of 2-3 lemons (depending on how zingy you want it)
- 180g cold butter, chopped
- 2t iced water
Place all ingredients into a food processor (or mix by hand) and mix until a smooth ball forms. The ball should be able to hold form when pressed and not crack – if it does still crack when pressed, add a little more water.
Press into lined baking tray and bake 180deg for about 20 minutes – until it becomes golden.
Filling:
- 6 eggs
- 2C castor sugar
- 1C lemon juice
- 1/2c plain flour
Beat all ingredients together well, pour over cooked base and bake a further 35-40 minutes until firm.
Cool in tray for 10 minutes, then gently remove from tray and rest on a wire rack to completely cool (this stops the base from sweating and softening).
Once cool, cut into cubes.
Hide in the back of the refrigerator so that nobody else can find it in an air tight container.
Not suitable to freeze (it won’t last that long anyway!).
Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 125g melted butter
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup plain or
flavoured yoghurt - 1 packet white choc chips (200g)
- 200g frozen raspberries
- 4 cups
self raising flour (sifted) - 3/4 cup castor sugar (reduce to 1/2 cup if using
flavoured yoghurt )
Method
Melt butter. Heat oven to 180C.
In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients, adding the melted butter last. Whisk in the sugar. Add the choc chips and crushed raspberries.
Very gently, stir in the sifted
Spoon into cup cake patty liners.
Bake moderate oven 20-25 minutes until golden on top and firm to the touch.
Cool on a wire rack. Wrap and freeze for lunchboxes.
Choc Chip Biscuits
It’s a choc chip biscuit kinda day – cool, overcast, time for some comfort food and a cup of tea, good book and a day on the lounge…..or, I could take these to work next week
Ingredients
- 125g
butter, softened - 1/2 cup castor sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1t vanilla essence
- 1. 1/2 cups
self raising flour - 1 cup choc bits (I use white, dark and milk combined)
Method
Preheat oven 180ºc. In a bowl, beat together the butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg – beat further so that the mix is smooth. Add vanilla essence – beat. Add flour and combine. Add choc chips.
Place small rolled balls of mixture on
This recipe is very similar to the peanut butter biscuits – with this one I did not add any extra flour as I did for the other recipe. As a result, the mixture was stickier and quite wet.
When I cooked them up – they spread further than the peanut butter mixture.
Once out of the oven, they were a much chewier texture – if you like crisp biscuits, I suggest adding more flour to make a drier mixture. You can see comparatively in the images above how they much they spread.
Homemade Custard Tart
Remember when you were a kid and grandma would bake a homemade custard tart? Try our easy recipe today!
Ingredients
- 8 egg yolks
- 1C castor sugar
- 1T vanilla essence
- 1/4C custard powder
- 600ml thickened cream
- 1 quantity shortcrust pastry (unsweetened
- nutmeg
Method
Beat the egg yolks until thick and creamy. Add the vanilla essence. Slowly add the sugar, beating while adding. Add thickened cream and beat until a good thick volume is reached. Add custard powder, beat well.
Pour into prepared baking tin. Sprinkle ground nutmeg over the top of the tart. Bake 180 degrees until the custard is just firm. Turn off oven and allow to cool with oven door ajar.
Serve warm or cold with a dollop of fresh cream or ice cream.
Pear, Walnut and Mascarpone tart
This pear, walnut and mascarpone tart is one of my originals.
One day I was wondering what to do with those left over pears and who was going to eat them – I started day dreaming and into my head popped this pear, walnut and mascarpone tart, and I could taste it even though I’d never baked it.
So, jump on board and give it a try – you can thank me later!
Ingredients:
- shortcrust pastry
- 2 almost ripe pears
- 1 C chopped walnuts
- cinnamon
- 6 eggs
- 1/2C castor sugar
- 1 t vanilla essence
- 500g mascarpone cream (or 1.5C fresh cream)
- honey to drizzle
Method:
Make up the shortcrust pastry and cook as per my recipe here.
Slice the pears into about 2-3mm thickness. Spread the pears and chopped walnuts into the shortcrust pastry, sprinkle with cinnamon.
Whisk together the eggs, castor sugar, vanilla essence and cream until combined (you don’t want thick egg in the mix).
Pour over the pears and walnuts. Drizzle with honey.
Bake moderate oven until just set.
Serve with a dollop of cream.
Peanut Butter Biscuits
Peanut butter biscuits are yummy in a lunchbox, or with a cuppa – these easy biscuits will have them begging for more every week.
Ingredients
- 125g butter, softened
- 1/2 cup castor sugar
- 1/2 cup brown
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 1 1/2 cup self raising flour
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
Preheat the oven to 180ºc.
Cream together the butter and sugars until smooth and creamy. Add the egg and beat well. Add vanilla essence and peanut butter – again, mix well. Slowly add flour to mixture until a soft dry dough forms.
Form small balls of mixture and place on lined trays. I actually add a bit of extra flour if I think the mixture is too wet.
Bake in oven until golden in colour (about 10-12 minutes).
Cool on tray. Once cool, store in airtight container.
