Lamingtons (or Lemingtons?)

I've seen these pretty fancies spelled both ways.

South Africa's Best Bakes, no.3!  You won't believe me if I told you that I made these within half an hour.  To be honest though, I took a generous short cut or two!  Cake Mamas like me obviously love our baking, but when there's washing to be done, ironing to be packed away, floors to be mopped and toddlers to be scolded at for continually drawing on the walls (!) we welcome short cuts when needed!  It's like having a little kitchen elf help you along the way!

In my case,  I paid my kitchen elf R45 to bake me half a sheet of plain cake.  His name is Marco and he's incredibly cheap, but his bakes are always excellent quality.  Yes, I can bring myself to order from others...I'll occasionally even indulge in baking from a box.

My needs over the weekend were completely justified though.  On Saturday we went to visit a poor lady whose husband had recently passed away.  Now in Cape Town, there's a beautiful tradition that's kept after a death, known as the '7 nights'.  Every night for 7 nights after someone has passed on, visitors and sympathisers come to the house of the bereaved to pray for the deceased soul.  It's customary to bring something along, and people usually bring large quantities so that the family (in this case, the widow) is not burdened with having to make or buy in food for her guests.  I needed something that would go a long way, that would keep if kept in the fridge for a few days, and that would be really quick to make.  My husband's sister in law Rezia (and my saviour that day) immediately phoned Marco (my knight in shining armour and kitchen elf) and in an hour I went to pick up my half sheet of plain sponge.

By the way, half a sheet is still huge.  It made about 50 lamingtons.

But what is a lamington?  It's simply a sponge, cut into a square, dipped in lamington dip mix ( shortcut no. 2, using instant mix as shown above) and rolled in coconut.  I'm told that if you can't get your hands on lamington instant mix, you can even dip the sponge in a crazily coloured fizzy drink (in South Africa, Creme Soda is Green and we also have crazy red Raspberry flavoured soft drinks).  If that doesn't float your boat, use warmed up smooth jam mixed with some boiling water, add a little colouring if you wish.  You just need some sweet liquid to for the sponge to be dipped into.  And the great thing is that since you've dipped the sponge, it won't dry up, even if you keep it in the fridge.

Oh, and did I mention that you can dress these coconut gems up with a little cream and fresh fruit?

Enjoy!!

Impossible Tart

Greetings, readers!

Please accept my apologies for not posting anything for a few days.  I so try and keep the blog updated regularly, but the chilly weather here in Cape Town has made way for cold and flu in the Cake Mama household.  Yes, it really does get cold in Africa, as you might have noted if any of you watched Monday’s match at Greenpoint Stadium.  I drove home from my in-laws that night amidst a hailstorm, and was reminded of the mother of all storms we once experienced when we lived in Northen British Columbia, Canada.  The only difference was that in Canada, it was so unbelievably cold outside that all viruses and bacteria carrying illness died (well, that’s my professional scientific opinion) so you couldn’t get sick.  Here, the wind is bone-shiveringly chilly but when you combine that with the strong African sun…well, it’s sick weather. 

I haven’t, however, forgotten my promise to supply you all with yummy South African bakes!  Here’s my next one, named ‘Impossible Tart’.  It should really be called ‘Very Possible and Extremely Easy Pudding’ because it’s laughably easy, and it’s not exactly what I’d call a Tart.  The term ‘tart’ is used very freely in South African cuisine – it basically refers to any kind of pudding that is set when either baked or refrigerated (you’ll meet the refrigerated version when I post up the recipe for ‘Peppermint Tart’, which is so mmmmmm).    Of course, only the English use the term ‘tart’ to describe a particular kind of woman.  I assure you, that I do not make reference to that kind of tart in any of my blog posts.

Finally, please excuse the lack of photos at the moment.  It seems that my little Cake Child has played with my camera’s battery charger and has somewhat misplaced it, bless her cotton socks.  Since I refuse to post up any pictures of recipes that are not my own, I’ll just have to hunt for the battery charger so I can get some more delicious pictures up!

Impossible Tart

Ingredients:

4 eggs

50 ml melted butter

1 cup sugar

¾ cup plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

2 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Pinch salt

1 generous tbsp apricot jam

1 cup desiccated coconut

Method:

-          Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

-          Mix all ingredients together and beat until well combined (by hand or with an electric mixer)

-          Pour into a dish which has already been greased with butter.

-          Bake for about 40 minutes (time varies according to your oven) until the top of the pudding is golden brown.  It should not be completely firm like cake, but it should not wobble when moved!

-          There’s only one way to serve this pudding, and that’s with some warm custard.  Enjoy while watching your favourite programme, or getting stuck into a great book.

Welcome to South Africa, world! Milk Tart recipe

Wooooo hooo!!!  The Fifa World Cup has come to South Africa!  The atmosphere's electric!  People are going crazy!  The traffic going into town is completey choc-a-bloc!  There's so much noise!  Yippee!

Alright, alright.  I'll settle down.  In fact, for those of you reading this that know me personally, you're probably confused already (that's if you didn't pick up the note of sarcasm).  I'm not remotely interested in football.  I was the weird girl in school because I didn't support a team like everyone else, and I once got chastised badly for pretending to support Turkey in a previous world cup match against England, in a very English high school.  Sorry, I'm just not very patriotic when it comes to sport (if ever).  I have dual nationality (British and South African) and I have nothing against either country, nothing at all.  I think that every country has it's beauty and charm.  I just fail to get excited about a bunch of highly overpaid men kicking a ball around trying to get it into a net.  I have no problem if you want to play the game to keep fit etc, but I can't really understand why people obsess over watching it.  All the time.

Take South Africa, for example. A country that straddles the 1st and 3rd world border,quite significantly.  On the weekends, my husband and I (along with his brothers and sister in law who totally run the project) go to a township in Cape Town called Delft. Here, only a mere 15 minutes drive from the safe and comfortable leafy suburb in which I live, is a vast area where people live in poor excuses for houses.  We're talking corrugated iron roofs, thin board-like walls, and in the area called Blikkiesdorp (small tin town) people live in so-called residences that resemble what you and I call a porto-cabin.  A mobile toilet, except, it's supposed to be a house.  They share a toilet with 5 other 'houses'.  The area's infested with crime.  Children can't go to school because it's become risky to walk. Most people have no other means of transport, meaning that unemployment is also rife.  How is this World Cup benefiting those people, and countless others?

Anyway, I'm digressing.  The football tournament is here now, and even if I'm not interested in the sport, I can still be a good host and welcome our foreign visitors into this beautiful land.  Welcome, visitors!  Enjoy your stay in South Africa.  Enjoy soaking up our gloriously diverse culture and eating our unrivalled sumptuous cuisine.  And here's my little offering - for the next few weeks, during the World Cup, I propose to 'pepper' my blog with what I'll call South Africa's Best Bakes (although some may not be bakes at all, as we're rather good at fridge desserts and deep fried things as well).  I'm kicking off now (haha-the irony) with Milk Tart (Melktert).  I think the first time I can remember having this was when my sister-in-law Ziemie made it for us when she was just a newlywed.  I thought it was fabulous then, and I have a soft spot for it because my Dad loves custard tarts, and this is pretty much the same thing.

This recipe has been slightly adapted from the original recipe in the Capetonian housewife's bible, Boeka Treats.


Ingredients:

Base:
125g butter
125ml (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1 small egg (or 1/2 large egg)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
250ml (1 cup) self raising flour
250ml (1 cup) plain flour

Filling:
400g (1 tin) condensed milk
1tsp vanilla essence
Pinch salt
9 eggs (yes, 9)
3 1/2 cups boiling water
3-4 pieces stick cinnamon
3-4 pieces crushed cardamom
30 ml (2 tbsp) butter

Method:

Biscuit base:
- Cream the butter and sugar.
- Add the egg and vanilla and mix.
- Sift in the flour to form a firm dough.

Filling:
- Line a pyrex dish (25x35cm) with the biscuit base dough, breaking off peices of dough and pressing it onto the the base and sides of the dish.  Refrigerate.
- Pour condensed milk into a bowl, add the boiling water, butter, cinnamon and cardamom. Add vanilla and salt.
- Allow to cool.
- Beat the eggs and add to the cooled off mixture. Mix well.
- Take out the lined dish from the fridge.  Strain the egg-milk mixture into the lined dish.  Sprinkle the top with a little ground cinnamon.
- Bake at 180 degrees until it's set (about 45 mins).

Enjoy!