BLOG: White Enamel Pie Dish

Pumpkin fruitcake

Carrot cake with chai spices and honey mascapone cream

The call went out on Messenger for help with catering for more than 20 schools visiting our town for a Zone Cross Country at the Golf Course and Bowling Club. This started a baking frenzy among Nundle Public School parents, anticipating about 700 runners and their families in our town of 300 people. Within minutes replies came through offering cupcakes, muesli and fruit biscuits, savoury cheese and vegemite scrolls, blueberry muffins, and soup. Even friends without children at the school donated baking, including pies and sausage rolls from Jenkins Street Guesthouse. I used the opportunity to flick through my collection of recipes and baked a recipe I had saved from a June, 2014 Home Beautiful, for Spiced chai carrot cake with honey mascarpone cream. It was a selection of recipes from Eleanor Ozich's My Petite Kitchen Cookbook (Murdoch Books). At the top of the recipe is a quote from Eleanor Ozich, "I particularly love making this cake in the colder months."

Our autumn garden in Country Style

Duncan and I had the opportunity to reflect on our autumn garden at Nundle in April @countrystylemag's 'In the garden' by Georgina Reid of @theplanthunter. Echoing the story, I've picked our medlars and crabapples for making jelly/paste to serve with pork or poultry. The medlars are softening, bletting, before making the medlar jelly. Our autumn garden looks sub-ideal right now (many of the photographs in this post are from our archive). Our district is in drought, with some landholders reporting the worst water situation in 18 years. Others have seen springs dry up for the first time in living memory. Trucks loaded with hay come into Nundle past the shop daily, and trucks loaded with cattle leave weekly. However, as I compile this blog post it is raining. Soft, slow, drizzling rain that will help grow feed, and lower temperatures and demand for stock water. Here's an extended version of our answers to Georgina's questions about our autumn garden.

Promoting regional events

Our town of Nundle, in New England North West NSW, is coming into its peak event season, autumn. We have three major events within three months, Nundle Country Picnic on Sunday, March 11, Nundle Go For Gold Chinese Easter Festival on Saturday March 31 and Sunday April 1, and the Great Nundle Dog Race on Sunday, May 6. Local businesswoman Megan Carberry is holding a Nundle Scrapbooking Retreat on Friday, March 9 to Sunday, March 11 and asked me for advice on promoting her event. I thought this might be an opportunity to share ideas with a wider audience.

Fig and almond friand slice

It was the last day of the school holidays for our boys today, but I went to school representing our Parents & Citizens Association at a Staff Development Day on Play is the Way, a games-based behaviour education program developed by Western Australian Wilson McCaskill. Our P&C catered for the 47 teachers, support staff and parents attending the workshop from north west schools at Premer, Attunga, Woolomin, Dungowan, Moonbi, Tintinhull, Inverell, and Nundle. I made a Fig and almond friand slice to contribute to the morning tea. The recipe, from Australian House and Garden, called for dried figs, but it would work equally well with fresh figs. The wild fig tree in our neighbours paddock is covered in figs, however they are still green and hard. I am hoping they will ripen. The Fig and almond friand slice was delicious, with a definite nod to friand nutty flavour and airy texture. I was happy watching it disappear off the baking tray when we mingled for morning tea.

Cinnamon apple almond cake

With a cool easterly blowing off the Great Dividing Range behind our house, a baking window appears between January heat waves, and temperatures at Nundle in the high 30s (40C+ in other areas of south eastern Australia). I have almost finished an online Kids Gut Health Masterclass and I am keen to put some of my learning to work, making a healthy school holiday snack for our boys. Focussing on wholefoods, Anthia Koullouros's book I am food is an excellent companion to the Kids' Gut Health Masterclass. I flick through it looking for inspiration and my eyes fall on the Cinnamon apple almond cake

Prune and oat slice

This Prune and Oat Slice is an absolute winner in lunch boxes. Whenever I try something new I am inevitably disappointed with boomerangs. You know, the lunch box contents that come home uneaten. Not this slice, 100% success rate. Our boys have two weeks left of school and if like me, the inspiration for lunch boxes wanes at this time of year, give this recipe a go. As a bonus its ingredients are mainly pantry staples, butter, caster sugar, plain flour, baking powder, oats, and golden syrup. And if you don't have prunes in the cupboard, substitute another dried fruit or softened fresh fruit. If you'd like to experiment with the texture you could substitute wholemeal plain flour, or even buckwheat or brown rice flour for the plain flour, and rapadura sugar for the caster sugar. Next time I might try adding cinnamon and ginger to the base and crumble too. Duncan enjoyed it heated with a dollop of ice cream for dessert.

Banana and cashew nut bread (just don't mention banana)

Rather than toss bananas "on the turn" into the chook bucket, they are destined for Banana and cashew nut bread. Just don't tell our eldest son...who doesn't eat bananas. Even though he ate them as a baby and a toddler, he developed a dislike for the smell and texture of bananas, and at different times in his life hasn't even been able to stay in the same room as someone eating a banana. Now when bananas are squished beyond recognition and baked with butter, brown sugar, eggs and flour, they become extremely palatable for him. We just call it butter cake, with a knowing look between the parents.

Making curds and whey

If you like the flavour and texture of homemade yoghurt and labne, you might like to have a go at making curds and whey. I am reading Anthia Koullouros's book 'I am Food' and this week followed her instructions for separating curds and whey. It's a simple process, starting with one litre of high quality, full fat milk, unhomogenised if possible. We are lucky our local grocer sells Peel Valley Milk's Gold Top Milk, from a dairy just 20 minutes drive away. It is unhomogenised and when you open the screw top lid there is a lovely layer of cream to spoon out. 

Shortbread for homemade Christmas gifts

A collection of antique Scottish hand carved shortbread moulds sitting on our kitchen dresser motivated me to experiment with making shortbread for homemade Christmas gifts. I'd given the moulds to my father-in-law Terry for Christmas many years ago, and after his passing they were handed onto me. Shortbread is a favourite of our youngest son and I knew he would enjoy a few pieces of shortbread in his school lunch box. I love that you can Google the name of a chef you trust, in this case Anneka Manning, and the dish you want to make, shortbread, and a recipe appears. For the first batch I made Anneka's recipe and for the second batch I added almond meal, after reading Gerda Foster's recipe in A Year of Slow Food, to see what difference it made (I like the addition of the almond flavour).