Rhubarb Rose Cake with a swish of ginger syrup

So you've bought yourself a 250ml bottle of Rose Water for a recipe you liked - but it only required 1 or 2 teaspoons. Now you have 240mls left over - just sitting in the pantry cupboard. What to do? Well, try this...

This is what you need:
2½ cups diced rhubarb
1-2 teaspoons rosewater
1 teaspoon cornflour
¼ cup caster sugar
150g butter - softened
¾ cup sugar
3 eggs
1¼ cups self-raising flour
½ cup ground almonds
¼ cup milk

This is how you do it:
Slap your oven onto 175 Celcius - fan bake
Line a 22cm square cake tin with greaseproof paper
Combine diced rhubarb, rosewater, cornflour and caster sugar. Mix it up real good
Spread this mix evenly over the base of your cake tin
Haul out your electric beater from that drawer that has everything in it (I always seem to find one beater attachment quite easily but spend a good deal of time rifling through all the other bits and pieces of utensils before finding the other one) then cream the butter and sugar together for a good 3-4 minutes on medium speed
Add eggs (at room temperature) one at a time, beating well
Into this mixture, fold the sifted flour, almonds and milk until you have a smooth batter. No need to overdo it...
Spoon this batter over the top of the rhubarb - making sure it has a smooth even top
Then bake it for 45 minutes or so - or until your cake is golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean
Leave the cake in the tin and let it cool on your bench for around 20 minutes - while you make the ginger syrup.
Put a serving tray over the top of the tin and invert/flip it. Now remove the baking paper
And - you're ready to serve as is, or cooled down a bit more. The good news about this cake is that it keeps well in the fridge for 2-3 days and is quite ok when heated up in the microwave.

For the Ginger syrup:
1 cup water
¼ cup honey
6 pieces crystallised ginger - sliced

Combine water, honey and ginger in a medium saucepan and simmer for 5-10 minutes. You want it slightly reduced but definitely syrupy. Best way to serve is warm (or at room temperature) spooned over the cake.
No need to say that the cake and syrup deserves to be accompanied with whipped cream or a good vanilla ice cream.
There you go... Enjoy

Special thanks to Jo Wilcox and NZ House and Garden magazine for the recipe


Rhubarb Rose Cake

Lemongrass and chilli prawns

it's the barbecue season, and if you're tired of making garlic buttered prawns -  then here's a quick tasty recipe to liven up your tastebuds.

Always remember - fresh prawns give more flavour if you cook them with the shell on
Don't have fresh prawns? No problem - use frozen, but make sure they're cooked through properly by increasing the cooking time
Enjoy with a dry white wine

2 lemongrass stalks
2 kaffir lime leaves
2-3 tsp chilli paste (or sambal oelek)
1 tsp minced ginger
1 peeled shallot
2 Tbsp coriander - finely chopped
grated rind and juice of 2 limes
1 Tbsp fish sauce
500g whole raw prawns (if you have shelled raw prawns, then use 350g)

cut the lemongrass so you're only left with the white bit (remove the tough core)
(the green stems can be used to make tea or a stock)

take out the central vein from the kaffir lime leaves - leaving only the leaf bit

in a pestle and mortar - or a mini food processor - put the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, chilli paste, ginger, shallot, coriander, lime rind and juice and fish sauce. process until you've got a nice paste.

put the prawns into a sealable plastic bag and toss them in the mixture you've just made.
refrigerate for 20 minutes

barbecue or pan fry the prawns for 3 to 5 minutes on each side (total 7-10 minutes)
turn only once until the prawns turn a pinky salmon colour and are cooked through

if you want - drizzle with a LITTLE sesame oil before serving

serve with coriander and mint leaves on a bed of cooked vermicelli or thin Asian noodles

BUTTERMILK RUSKS - recipe and pictures

Sometimes there's nothing nicer  than to dunk a rusk into a good cuppa tea or strong coffee...

Store bought rusks are fine (if you can find them) but why not give this recipe a go. It's active relaxation and you can enjoy the results better than a bought one. 

Just like Ouma used to make

BUTTERMILK RUSKS

(bear with me - final outcome photo still to be processed...)

This is what you need:

1 kg self raising flour

5 ml baking powder (1tsp)

10 ml salt (2 tsp)

2 large eggs

200 ml white sugar

500 ml buttermilk

190 g butter, melted (measure the butter first, then chop into chunks and put in a microwavable jug/bowl. 

For this recipe we gave it three 30 second bursts on high power - stirring after each zap - since we used frozen butter)

This is what to do:

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 

Beat the eggs, sugar and buttermilk together. 

Cut this mixture into the dry ingredients with a knife. 

Knead the dough lightly - gradually adding the melted butter while kneading. 
This will take only a few minutes until it becomes a good soggy dough.

Pack balls of dough tightly into greased loaf pans. The balls should reach about 2/3rds the height of the pans. 

(we rolled balls of dough - then slightly squashed them to form a tube shape to get more in the loaf pan)

So you're probably thinking, "how big does the dough ball have to be?"...
Well, my first attempt - I rolled dough the size of meatballs. These came out humongous and barely fitted into the teacup! (self raising flour has the unique knack of expanding the dough when it cooks. Funny that - hehe) This batch was slightly smaller than a meatball size - and I still had to slice the baked rusks with a sharp bread knife to get them to that dunk-able size . Next batch - I'll try making a whole lot of small balls (the size of a plum) and put them in a large roasting dish so they can be pulled apart after baking and hopefully not need to be sliced. 
But that's the fun in trying something new (and tasty) 

Bake at 180C for 30 minutes (conventional oven). 

Check whether the rusks are done by tapping the top surface; it should sound hollow. 

Turn out onto a wire rack and break into individual rusks. 

If they look too big to fit into your tea cup or coffee mug - feel free to slice them to the required thickness

Lower the oven temperature to 100C and dry the rusks for about 4 hours, turning them every 30 minutes. 
Since we have a fan oven, the temperature was lowered to 75C with fan on for the same amount of time...

Cool on a wire rack and store in airtight containers. 

Will keep for at least 3 months, but believe me, they won't last that long!

So thanks to my mate Ray who sent this recipe, there are now always home-made rusks in the cake tin



BUTTERMILK RUSKS - recipe and pictures