Month: September 2007

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

This is based on a Donna Hay recipe which I think she did with limes. I’ve done both and like them equally. I tend to make the lemon one more often as limes never seem cheap here. Ever.

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

  • 220g butter – melted and cooled
  • 1 1/2 cups caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup natural yoghurt
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 tbsp finely grated lemon rind
  • 2 1/2 cups plain flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  1. Preheat oven to 160C
  2. Whisk butter and sugar together
  3. Add eggs, one at a time
  4. Fold through yoghurt, rind and juice
  5. Sift in flour and baking powder
  6. Spoon into a greased and lined 10x20cm loaf tin
  7. Bake for 1hr15mins
  8. When cooled, ice with the following glaze

Glaze

  • 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
  • 1 1/2 tblsp lemon juice
  • 1 tblsp water
  1. Stir together until cooled
  2. Spoon over cake

Boiled Fruit Cake

Comfort. Sometimes it comes from getting to watch a longstanding favourite movie, or an unexpected phone call in which you confide, cry, laugh and so much more. But for me, for longer than I can remember, comfort is associated with cooking and with eating. But cooking. The process of making something that at the end is enjoyed by myself and sometimes more importantly by others is for me the ultimate in comfort time.

It has always been there. When I met all sides and layers of my birth families, I discovered my paternal grandmother is always in the kitchen cooking for everyone. The fact I suddenly had this connection, this continuum with another generation of my family was life changing. Comforting in fact.

Combine that with a new girl starting at our school in 1988 and me meeting her mum, who was a die-hard home cook and introduced me to the world of Gourmet Traveller and I guess a well worn track in my life was begun.

Below is a family recipe for a boiled fruit cake. For me this cake, topped with a simple lemon icing, washed down with a cup of strong tea is the ultimate in comfort and memory food. Every birthday, Christmas and major family gathering was marked by it. I of course have played with it but the principles and flavour of it remain the same.

It’s one of those fruit cakes where all those weirdos people who do the “I don’t like fruit cake” eat about four slices. And while I’m not about to say that every child offered a slice of this has eaten it, I’m straining to remember one who hasn’t.

It’s the first in a series of posts on comforting cakes and bakes as I try once and for all to coral all my food writing and recipes into one location. The index at the bottom of allconsuming will remain but many if not all of those recipes will eventually be reproduced over here as well. I love nothing if not an ordered site.

Boiled Fruit Cake

  • 600g mixed dried fruit* (I normally use sultanas, currents, raisins in varying ratios of the total amount, always working to sultanas being the most, with a handful of glace cherries)
  • 6oz butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tin crushed pineapple in natural juice, drained with juice reserved
  • 1 cup hot water (or use the pineapple juice and make up to 1 cup with water)
  • 1 tsp bicarb
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup plain flour, level
  • 1 cup SR flour, heaped
  1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a 24cm square cake tin**
  2. Place the fruit, sugar, pineapple, butter and water in a saucepan, bring to the boil and cook for 2-3 minutes
  3. Add the bicarb, then cool
  4. Fold through the eggs, then the flours
  5. Bake for 1 – 1.5hrs
  6. Turn out and once completely cooled ice with lemon icing.

* Our family recipe was to use one normal sized box of Sunbeam mixed fruit (425g or something like that) with an extra handful of sultanas thrown in.
** Tradition calls for a greased and floured tin then lined with the butter wrapper.

Lemon Icing

  • 2 cups icing sugar
  • 1 tbs butter, softened
  • lemon juice or water to loosen
  1. Mix the icing sugar and butter by hand, adding juice in small amounts until you get a thick but workable icing
  2. Ice cake
  3. Eat!

For Suse

Variations on a theme

The Chipmunks Mice

Some things are best left in the 60s

Note to self: if the guy is singing you a love song in a higher register than you, it’s time to run.

Beyond that, quite frankly I am too scared to click through to the screen shots that came up when I put “Pig Babe Movie Scene” into YouTube search.

Lentil loaf

Which I really want to call Yentl Loaf as some sort of homage to the mighty Babs because clearly I am hilarious.

Lentil Loaf

  • 1/2 cup green lentils
  • 1/3 cup red lentils
  • 1 1/2 cups stock
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 zucchini, grated
  • 1 carrots, grated
  • 1/2 red capsicum, diced
  • 2 cobs corn, kernels cut off
  • 125 g firm tofu, cubed
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh 5-grain breadcrumbs
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 lemon, finely grated zest and juice
  • 2 tbs fresh herbs
  1. Combine the lentils with the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes or until all the fluid has been absorbed.
  2. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin w/ baking paper (I made two smaller loaves)
  3. In a deep frypan, heat the oil and saute the onion and garlic until soft
  4. Add the carrot and zucchini (I grated them in the food processor as grating by hand is for pussies), corn and capsicum and cook for a minute or 2
  5. Fold through the tofu, breadcrumbs (keep a handful aside to scatter over the top), eggs, lemon rind and juice and herbs
  6. The mixture should be wet but not runny
  7. Spoon into the baking dish and cook for 40-50 minutes until firm to touch
  8. Let cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then cut into thick slices

 

I reckon you could make them a little wetter, roll them as patties and make lentil burgers.

The variations on this are infinite. I loved it. Oscar loved it. Felix and Jasper hated it. I served it with salad, avocado and a dollop of sour cream (and chilli sauce for me, sweet chilli for Felix). It would rock with a salsa type creation with fresh chilli to give it some kick, but it was the day before fruit and veg shop day, so no fresh tomatoes to work with.

Spice-rubbed roast chicken and tabouli

So this might not look the best, but the flavour was sensational. Because we’re I’m currently in the midst of Project Boombalardy, I took most of the skin off as the WW recipe that inspired this said to do, but if you’re just a sane rational person with no emotional issues regarding food, just rub it over the chicken. Maybe rub some up under the skin as well just for even more flavour. That said, taking the skin off the chicken I mean, I was amazed at how much fat still came off the bird (I didn’t bother taking the underside skin off.

Spice-rubbed roast chicken

  • 1 chicken, cut down the backbone and pressed flat
  • 1 tbs sumac
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1 lemon – finely grated zest and the juice
  • 1/4 cup plain yoghurt
  1. Combine all the spices with the lemon zest, juice and the youghurt
  2. Rub into the chicken
  3. Marinade for as long as you’ve got (I did it for a couple of hours, I reckon overnight would be sensational)
  4. Preheat oven to 200C
  5. Place the chicken breast down in a baking dish and roast for 20 minutes
  6. Turn and roast for a further 25 minutes

Great with tabouli
Low-fat high-flavour tabouli

  • 1/2 cup cracked wheat
  • 4 sun-dried tomatoes, finely sliced
  • 2 tomatoes, finely chopped
  • 2 cups flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup mint, finely chopped
  • 1 lemon
  1. Soak the cracked wheat and sun-dried tomatoes in 1 cup of boiling water for 10 minutes then drain well
  2. Combine with grated zest of the lemon and juice of half the lemon