Apple Pie

Here is a yummy subtle Apple Pie! Not too sweet, not too hard.

Ingredients:
Pastry:
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
225g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes approx 1cm (good from the freezer!)
1/2 teaspoon salt
About 1/3 cup ice-cold water

Apple Filling:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons plain flour
1/4 cup of cold water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
8 granny smith apples (peeled, cored, sliced into 5mm slices)

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C.

For the pasty:
Combine flour and baking powder thoroughly in a bowl, add the butter cubes and allow processor to pummel until its a flakey, sandy crumble.

Dissolve 1/2 teaspoon salt into 1/3 cup of ice water then slowly poor into the flour butter mix in the processor. Allow it to beat until it ONLY JUST pulls together into dough. Don't over mix. This should just take a minute max.

Dump onto glad wrap and tighten into ball. Leave in fridge.

Apple filling:
Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour until paste. Add water, both sugars and bring to boil. Lower temperature to a gentle simmer and leave while you sort the pastry and apples.

Remove pastry from fridge and cut into thirds. Roll 2/3s out by dropping onto lunch wrap, over laying another sheet of lunch wrap. Squash with rolling pin a couple of times until its a bit flat before rolling out into a thin sheet, about 3mm. Lay into a greased 9 inch pie dish.

Place sliced apples into pastry-lined pie dish, so its piled up. Use remainder of dough to lattice the top of the pie (criss-cross with strips of pastry).

Pour the hot sugar butter slowly over the lattice work so that it butters the pastry and sinks between the gaps into the apple.

Bake for 55 minutes at 170 at the bottom of a fan bake oven, Be careful not to scorch the top (put tin foil over it if its looking a little tanned).

Serve with vanilla bean whipped cream (Split and deseed a vanilla pod into a bowl, add 2 heaped tablespoons of icing sugar, add 300ml heavy cream, whip.)

Triumphant Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

1 Big vanilla bean
3 cups of cream
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs

With a knife, slice the vanilla bean in half, length-ways. Scrape the seeds into a large heavy saucepan and add cream, milk and sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring occasionally, then remove from heat.

In a large bowl lightly beat the eggs. Add hot cream mixture to eggs in a slow stream, whisking. Return to pot. Cook custard over moderate heat until a film appears on the back of a spoon.

Pour custard through a sieve into a bowl and chill.

When cool, place in ice cream churn - you'll probably need to do two batches as this recipe is rather large.

We made this for dinner at Z and R's last night, and threw in some hokey pokey after the churn had finished. In another batch we threw in 4 fresh passionfruit. Both were what dad describes as triumphant. So super gooood!

Ski Lodge Crunchy Sponge Topping

125gm butter - grate into:
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup sugar

Mix together

In another bowl:
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
Beat together and add to crumble.

Place over the top of any fruit (warm) and bake on 150 for about 45 minutes or until cooked.

This is mums only sponge topping recipe, so those of you who frequented the lodge will remember it as being one of the recipes that nearly brought about standing ovations. Its the SPONGE one - not the apple crumble topping. Mum has just mentioned that she has never seen a similar recipe and swears its the only one in existence that goes crispy on the top and lovely and spongy underneath. She has just this second made it with stewed apples from the tree with frozen berries in it but it can be used on top of any fruit. Its important (she adds) that THIS recipe be used on warm fruit for it to work properly, however, the crumble should be used on cold fruit.

Shop Pecan Pie

3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup glucose syrup
1 cup brown sugar
30g butter, melted
125g pecan nuts

Add to pie case.

Shop Wholemeal Carrot Cake

1 1/2 Cups wholemeal flour
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
3 cups raw sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda

Blend well together with fingers

Whisk these together:

4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups oil

Add:

4 cups grated carrot
1 cup crushed pinapple
1 cup coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts

Bake on 150 40 minutes

Sticky Date Pudding

1 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1 tsp baking soda
150ml boiling water
125 gm butter
2 eggs
1 heaped cup sr flour
3/4 cup sugar

Sprinkle soda onto dates, pour over boiling water. Stir and leave 10-15 minutes. Beat together butter and sugar, add eggs, flour and date mixture. Cook in a greased dish 30-35 minutes. Allow to stand while preparing sauce.

Sauce:
3 cups loosely packed brown sugar
75gm butter
300ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essence

Put all ingredients into saucepan, stir over medium heat until sugar dissolved. Bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

If you are serving the dish whole onto the table, pour all of the sauce over the pudding and return to oven for 5-10 minutes until the sauce is mostly absorbed. If serving individual bowls just spoon a few tbsp over each and warm in the oven. Yummy if served with milk - its so sweet and heavy that cream or ice cream can sometimes be a bit much!!

Mum's Pineapple Cheesecake

2 cups sweet biscuit crumbs (1 packet of Nice biscuits)
100gm butter (melted)

2 tsp hot water
1 tbsp gelatin

400gm cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

1/4 cup of lemon juice
1 425gm can crushed sweetened pineapple (drained)
1 1/4 cups cream (whipped)

Dissolve gelatin in hot water

Beat cheese until smooth, add sugar, gelatin, vanilla essence, lemon juice and 1/4 of pineapple syrup. Blend well

Fold in cream and pineapple

Decorate with strawberries

Mum's Chocolate Mousse

100gm block Toblerone chocolate, chopped
2 eggs separated
1/2 thickened cream

Melt chocolate in a large bowl over hot water.
Mix in egg yolks one at a time, beat until smooth and thick.
Fold in whipped cream and then softly beaten egg whites.
Refrigerate for several hours.

Mum's Favourite Pinapple Rice Cream

1/2 Cup short grain rice
3 cups of milk
1/4 cup of sugar

Bring rice and milk to the boil. Turn down heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes until milk is absorbed.

Remove from the heat and add quarter of a cup of sugar.
Leave to cool. When cold fold in 1 (450gm) can of crushed pinapple and 1 cup whipped cream.

Mums Carrot Cake

Blend well with fingers:
3 cups wholemeal flour (or use ½ white flour)
3 cups raw sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda

Whisk together:
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups oil

Add:
4 cups grated carrot
1 cup crushed pineapple
1 cup coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts

Bake 150 degrees for 40 minutes

Icing is a mix of cream cheese, butter, lemon juice and icing sugar

Nan's Sultana Cake

Cover 450gm sultanas with water, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Strain off the water and cut in 225gm butter, add 1 ½ cups sugar.

Mix well and add 3 beaten eggs, 2½ cups sr flour.

Add some lemon juice.

Cook on 150Degrees for around 1/2 an hour.

Meringues

1 egg white
3/4 cup castor sugar
2 tsp cornflour
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp vinegar
2 tbsp boiling water

Grease a cold oven tray. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, add sugar and beat until thick. Add other ingredients. Around 5-10 minutes beating.
Cook in a slow oven for one hour 1200 . Cool with oven door ajar.

Mamma's Banana Cake

125gm butter
175gm sugar
2 eggs
2 mashed bananas
1 tsp bicarb soda
2 tbsp boiling milk
225hm sr flour

Ice with cream cheese icing with lemon juice.
Double this for my tin.

Bread and Butter Pudding

½ loaf French bread, sliced 1.5cm thick
100gm melted butter
6 large juicy dried peaches, thinly sliced
2 400g cans peach slices, drained
5 eggs
½ cup castor sugar
500ml milk
¼ cup sliced almonds
3 tbsp raw sugar
4 tbsp brandy
cream to serve

Paint bread with melted butter. Place ½ the slices butter-side down into bottom of oven dish. Sprinkle dried peaches over top and ¾ canned peaches. Arrange remaining buttered bread slices on top. Fill in the gaps with remaining peach slices.

Beat eggs and castor sugar together and stir in the milk. Pour evenly over the bread mixture. Push it all down and allow to stand for 10 mins. Sprinkle with almonds and raw sugar and bake 1-1 ½ hours.

Mamma's Apple Crumble

1/2 cup Caster Sugar
100g Butter, cold & finely diced
1 tbsp Cinnamon, ground
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Flour

Preheat the oven to 190°C.

Put the butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon into a food processor and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, or rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips.

Spread the butter mixture evenly on top of the apples.

Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until well browned and crisp.

Remove from the oven and serve with whipped cream.

Rice Pudding

3 tbsp melted butter
4 tbsps pudding rice
2 tbsp caster sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
500 ml milk/cream
fresh nutmeg

Grease a dish with ½ the melted butter, add rice, sugar, milk and vanilla.
Top with the remaining butter and grate over some nutmeg
Bake 2.5 hours – stir after 30 minutes and 60 minutes.

Vanilla Bean Custard Ice Cream

7 Egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
Dash salt
1 Vanilla bean
1 cup of whole milk
2 1/2 cups cream

Whisk egg yolks with sugar and salt in one bowl.

Split vanilla bean in half and extract seeds, then place both shell and seeds into a heavy bummed pot with milk and cream. Bring to simmer.

Gradually whisk hot cream into egg mixture - then return all to pot and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon - but don't let it boil!

Strain through sieve into bowl. Leave to cool then churn in ice cream maker. Makes a quart.

Strawberry Ice Cream

500g Strawberries
100g Caster sugar
300ml Cream
Juice of a lemon

Mash the strawberries or puree them in a processor. Mix in sugar, cream and lemon and pour into ice cream maker. So easy but tasty as!