Gran’s Milk tart

We had a “Pik & Proe” at our church recently. Basically everyone makes their favourite recipe, it could be bread, pasta, veggies, salad, dessert, whatever you feel like basically. You then bring this dish to the church and everyone can try your dish.

I love it, you get so many ideas and new recipes. I decided to make my Gran’s Milk tart. Okay, okay I might have changed a few things to make it leaner, but it still tastes great!

Gran’s Milk tart

Ingredients:

1 pack short crust pastry (yes, I cheat)

1 litre low fat milk

150g Sugar

½ Vanilla pod

½t Cinnamon

70g Cake flour

50g Corn starch

2t Custard powder

½t Salt

3 Large Eggs (separated)

6T Water

60g Butter

1t Vanilla essence

Method:

1. Roll out the pastry and place it in a prepared 25cm pan. Bake blind at 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. Remove the beans and bake for another 5 – 10 minutes, until golden brown.
2.  In a pot add the milk, 50g sugar, cinnamon and vanilla (scrape out the vanilla seeds). Heat it until warm and keep it on a low heat.
3. Mix the egg yolk, water and 100g of sugar until it is light yellow.
4. Sift all the remaining dry ingredients into the egg mixture and mix well.
5. Take a cup of the warm milk and add it slowly to the egg mixture, mix well. This will warm the mixture before you add it to the pot. Slowly add the egg mixture to the warm milk on the stove. Stir continuously.
6. Keep the mixture on a low heat and stir continuously until it thickens. This will take some time, be patient. Add the butter and vanilla essence. Remove the mixture from the heat and remove the vanilla pod.
7. Use an electric mixer to beat the egg whites until it makes soft peaks.
8. Gently fold the egg whites into the warm milk mixture, make sure it is well combined.
9. Pour the mixture into the pan with the baked pastry. Dust with a bit of Cinnamon and bake for 20 minutes in a 180 degrees Celsius oven.
10. Let the milk tart cool completely before removing it from the pan.

There you have it, my Gran’s milk tart recipe. Be warned the first time you make this you will feel overwhelmed and uncertain. By the third time, you will feel like a professional! Don’t give up, it’s worth the effort!

Have a fantastic day!

Peanut butter – guilt free cookies

I found this recipe in a magazine, and thought: “yeah right! This will never work.” I was very sceptical, but tried it.

It worked! I couldn’t believe it. It is hearty, filling and best of all guilt free! Well mostly guilt free… See one cookie, counts as 1 portion of fat. The best part is, it is so rich you can’t really manage to eat more than one cookie at a time.

Peanut butter is a good source of healthy fats and could lower your risk for diabetes type two. It is also a good source of protein. It will make you feel fuller for longer. As everything in life, enjoy in moderation. My gran used to say whenever there is a "too" in front of a a phrase it's not healthy (too much chocolate, too much running, too much make-up), keep it simple.

Peanut butter – guilt free cookies

1 cup of natural peanut butter

1 cup of Castor sugar or sugar replacement

1 egg

Mix it all together, it will form a dough. Roll little balls and press them flat on a prepared baking tray. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 10 minutes. Leave to cool on the baking tray before removing it.

You get about 20 – 30 regular sized cookies out of the mix. I made small cookies and served it as dessert with some nice filter coffee. YUM! 

(1 cookie = 1 fat serving)

Red Velvet Cake

Saturday we hosted a beautiful pink baby shower for my friend at a Bistro in Stellenbosch. Their little girl is due in November, we can’t wait to meet her. Thank you to everyone at Ella’s for making the day special!

Of course I had to spoil mommy with her favourites, Red velvet cake. I made Red Velvet cupcakes with a butter cream cheese topping.

Red Velvet Cake

Ingredients:

115g of Butter or Margarine

1 cup of Castor Sugar

2 Eggs

30ml of red food colouring (or a few knife tips of the concentrated red colouring powder)

2 Tablespoons of Cocoa

350ml of Buttermilk

1 Teaspoon Vanilla essence

2 ½ Cups of Cake flour

½ Teaspoon of Salt

7ml of Baking Soda

12ml Brown vinegar

• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, add the eggs one by one while mixing.
• Next mix in the rest of the liquids (buttermilk, food colouring, vanilla essence and vinegar) together with the Cocoa.
• Sift together the flour, salt, Baking Soda and add the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.
• Gently fold together the mixture and place in cupcake holders.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 22 min - 25 min. (If you bake a cake instead of the cupcakes it should take about 30 min)

Icing:

500g Butter

250g Icing sugar

250ml Cream Cheese

100ml Lemon Juice (add more if needed)

Cream together the butter, cream cheese and Lemon juice. Add the icing sugar until it reaches a nice piping consistency. This icing will harden slightly. (If you want shine add 1 tablespoon of syrup)

This recipe is not too sweet, but the icing is very rich you can definitely not eat more than 1. Let me know what you think!

Celebrating 2 years

Since I’ve last posted we’ve visited the Indian capital of South Africa. Durban. We had a total blast, trying everything from shwarama’s, to bunny chows and of course the infamous curry.

A bunny chow - it's a quater loaf of bread with curry.

The curry was absolutely divine! It wasn’t hot at all, but it was so flavourful. I have to try and make this at home!

Infamous curry

My husband and I also celebrated our wedding anniversary. I can’t believe it has been 2 years! So to celebrate our day I made one of my husband’s favourites. Scones, and tea. It was delicious, not many things can top freshly baked scones.

Scones

Sift together: 2 Cups plain flour, 1 tablespoon of Baking powder, 2.5ml of Salt.
Add 4 Tablespoons of butter to the dry ingredients and rub it together until all the flour is covered in butter and looks like bread crumbs.
Mix together 1 egg, 250ml of milk and 15ml of sugar. Add this mixture to the flour and butter mix.
Now here is the trick. Don’t mess with the mixture to much, fold the mixture just until it is mixed.

You can now either roll the mixture out 2cm thick and cut out nice shapes, or you can be lazy like me. I scoop out little balls and gently press it down until it is 2cm thick. I like doing this, it makes the scones look more rustic when it is cooked. You can brush the scones with a bit of egg to help it bake to a golden brown colour.

Now place the scones onto a prepared pan and bake in a 220 degrees Celsius oven for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy fresh with some jams, cream, cheese or fresh fruit. You can really do whatever you like, just make sure you enjoy a cup of tea with it.

Have a great day every one!

Breakfast Health Rusks

So I’ve never tried making rusks before, and I must say it didn’t go too bad. Except that it maybe burned a little, and my right bicep is twice the size than my left one. I will definitely make this recipe again.

I found the base of this recipe on the beautiful Nigella’s website (thank you!!) I made a few changes to suit our taste and lifestyle, and viola, a tasty breakfast rusk.

Almond, Cranberry, Health Rusks.

Health Rusk

Ingredients

1 Kg Self raising Flour
15 ml Baking Powder
5 ml Salt
4 Cups All Bran Flakes
2 Cups Oats
1 Cup Sunflower Seeds
1 Dried Cranberries
1 Almonds (shavings)
1 Cup Coconut
3 Wheat-Bix blocks crumbled up  
500g Butter
1 1/2 Cups Brown Sugar
4 Large Eggs
500 ml Buttermilk
125ml Milk

Method

1. Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius 
2. Mix all dry ingredients in your biggest mixing bowl. 
3. Melt Butter in pot and add sugar, stir until sugar is dissolved. Cool down for a few minutes. 
4. Add Butter mix to dry ingredients. 
5. Beat Eggs, Buttermilk and Milk together and add to mixture - Mix all until well combined 
6. Divide dough into baking trays. Press dough down and mark rusks with a sharp knife. 
7. Bake for 1 hour. - Let cool in Baking trays. 
8. Set oven to 100 degrees Celsius
9. Cut rusks on marked lines and lift rusks out onto bigger trays or foil-lined oven rack. There has to be some spaces between rusks.
10. Dry rusks out for 4 hours. (mine only needed 3 hours)

These rusks looks good and tastes great (after I scraped of the burned bits). If you don’t have time to eat in the mornings, this would make a great snack to keep you going.

Happy Baking!!