Tasmanian Jelly Cakes

Those of you who don't know us wouldn't know that we go to Tasmania every year for Christmas.
We also go camping and above is the photo of a possum who had a little baby with her, and they both came down to entertain us one year.

If you do things year after year, rituals develop , and what has happened is that each year my mother will make the same things for Christmas. A meringue or two and a raspberry cheesecake . And kiss biscuits and jellycakes to eat on Christmas Day and to take camping with us.
The kiss biscuits are very hard to replace with a gluten free recipe, not successfully done yet. But the jelly cakes have been replaced by "Santa rolling in the snow"

Santa Rolling in the Snow

Sponge ( this recipe will make about 18 cupcakes or two sponges)
3/4 cup of real conrflour
1 tsp baking powder ( wards)
3 egg separated
1 pinch of salt
half a cup of sugar.
jelly
whipped cream

Make up some raspberry or strawberry jelly and put it into the fridge.
Go out into the garden and have about three pots of tea, a glass of wine and three conversations with various pets before returning to make the sponge. The jelly should not be quite set, so that you can dip the sponge cakes into the jelly and roll them into coconut.

Sift the flour and the salt and put them aside
Beat the egg whites till stiff
beat in the egg yolks
Beat in the sugar until the mixture goes meringue like and you can see figure eights. ( this must be some dream or hallucination from the original writer of this recipe, as I never see such things. I give up before this happens, but my sponge still turns out beaut and the sun still rises the next day)
Fold in the dry ingredients.
Place into patty pans
bake in an oven 180 celsius for 20 minutes or less ( 13 minutes in my oven)

When they are cool, remove each cake delicately from the patty pan.
NOW my mother always enlisted help to do the dipping, with one person doing the jelly and the other rolling them in coconut, but this is not always possible so I do it myself.

Have ready the cakes, then the bowl of jelly, then a bowl of coconut, the bag of coconut nearby to add more and then a cooling tray to sit them on. Dip one cake at a time into the jelly and then toss it into the coconut where you will roll it with your other hand, then sit it out on the cooling tray.
Sometimes I leave a cake in the jelly for it to absorb the goodness whilst I roll its friend in coconut.

Place in the fridge to set. When set, slice a gash in the middle and fill it with a dollop of cream.

The jelly cakes do need to be guarded late on Christmas day when your brother packs to go down to the west coast. If you don't watch him with a steely eye he will flog the lot of them.




Meringue
My mother makes the meringues and then uses the egg yolks to make an egg yolk cake , which she then makes into jelly cakes.
Now what do we do with the eggyolks? I have been looking high and low for a gluten free eggyolk cake. My mother only ever makes the hard meringue, not the marshmallow one which you use vinegar to make. We would call that pavlova, and it has nothing to do with us, because we don't like it. One day when we were Christmas camping a discussion arose amongst the aunts and my mother about how you make meringue. Nobody could agree and some were quite disgusted that the others had not heard a word they'd said. The up shot of it all is, that they all make a meringue for Christmas and they've never had any problem with the particular way they make it. So there must be at least twenty different ways that all work.


Meringue
( sort of according to A. C. Irvine, the late Mistress of Domestic Science, for the Education Department of Tasmania.
My Nan gave me the "Central" Cookery Book by A.C. Irvine for my tenth birthday}

3 eggwhites
6 oz.s caster sugar
pinch salt
essence of vanilla

prepare some baking paper on the tray
sift caster sugar
beat whites to a very stiff froth, then add half of the sugar and beat till very stiff
Fold in the remainder of the sugar with essence.
pour it onto the tray and try to spread it about so its flat on top.
Bake in a slow oven for two hours.
DO NOT BROWN ( yes, I am yelling at you)

Slices

you can all blame Helen for this, she made it especially and sent it to me.




Caramel walnut slice
from Helen

Base:
half cup s.r. flour
(gluten free works the same as normal flour)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup coconut
60gm butter

topping:
2 eggs
half tsp vanilla
1 cup coconut
90 gm walnut pieces
one and a half cups brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder ( wards)

sift flour into bowl, add sugar and coconut, mix well. Melt butter and add to dry ingredients, mix well. Press mixture into greased tray ( or use the magic baking paper) / bake in moferate oven for 15 mins.

topping: Lightly beat eggs and vanilla with a fork. add coconut, chopped walnuts, brown sugar, baking powder and mix well. Spread mixture over partly cooked base, return to moderate oven and bake a further 25 minutes or until topping is cooked. Cool in tin before cutting.




spotty slice
to make with leftover biscuits that aren't getting eaten.
or open a packet of those arnotts rice cookies

90 grams melted butter
100 gms or 1 cup biscuit crumbs
185 gms of chocholate bits or chopped up chocolate
1 cup coconut
400 gm sweetened condensed milk

line a deep tray with baking paper
melt the butter and then add everything else to it.
bake for 30 mine at 180 and then cut when cool.





Lemon and coconut slice

1 cup of gluten free flour
1 cup coconut
three quarters cup castor sugar
2 eggs lightly beaten
110 gms of melted butter

preheat oven to 180 c
put baking paper in the tray
mix all ingredients in a bowl and squash flat into the slice tin.
bake for 25 mins till browned
cool for ten minutes

ice it with lemon icing.
You also need icing sugar ( not icing mixture) and a lemon and a dob of butter.
put the dob of butter in the microwave to melt. then add some icing sugar, then squeeze half a lemon on top, then add more icing sugar to make an icing consistency. ( if its not enough add more lemon juice or 1 tsp hot water and more icing sugar.
spread onto the top of the slice.

sprinkle more coconut on top if you like ( but sometimes this puts the children off eating it)

serve with a cup of tea


Chocolate slice. - Absolutely wicked wisemen slice

125 gms butter or half a cup ( who would try and squash butter into a cup to measure it?)
100 gms or half a cup of sugar
1 tbspoon cocoa
1 tblsp golden syrup
200 gm or 1 cup of plain gluten free flour
40 g or half a cup of coconut
one teaspoon of wards baking powder ( did you know that other brands put flour in theirs to fatten it up?)

chocolate icing

Preheat your oven to 180 c.
place butter, sugar, cocoa and golden syrup in a saucepan or in a bowl in the microwave.
Melt it all, stirring as you go but do not boil it like I did. ( don't worry even if you do this it will still work)
After a successful melting remove the treasure from the source of heat and add the flour, the coconut and the baking powder. Press it into the slice tin ( here's your challenge for the day - I usually do it with my fingers, but it is hot and may burn the pinkies)
Bake for ten minutes.
When cool, ice with chocolate icing.

A real winner if you are trying to make something fort the kid's lunches at 7.30 in the morning.

When you can't find your slippers make tuna mornay

This morning I couldn't find my slippers. I had in my right hand, a pair of blue striped cotton explorers ready to put on when I found my slippers. If I put them on before I found my slippers they would get dirty from the floor. (my floor often has parts of the garden on it from the dog and the gardener going backwards and forwards). You see I might want to wear them to bed also, so I must not get them dirty. Now where are my slippers. Has the dog taken them? Surely not both slippers at once. Usually the telling part about the dog taking a slipper is that the other one is left standing ominously alone. I stomped around the house, from one end to the other with the socks still in hand. Did I leave them in the bathroom when I had my shower? Did a child steal them? "Yusef have you seen my slippers? I was so distraught that in my head I could hear the flapping noise that slippers make as I walked towards his room. I stopped and looked at his empty floor gazed downwards but inwards a little towards myself and then I saw my slippers! On my feet.

Some days when you can't find your slippers. or there is no meat or fresh vegies, or you feel a bit like a guinea pig in a little dog's mouth, the only thing to make is Tuna Mornay.

You only need: a can of tuna, milk, butter, cheese, onion, cornflour and rice. ( you should be able to find all of these on a bad day)

put the rice on. ( rice cooker is best and easiest - buy one today!)
(if you have any vegies put them in the microwave)
Fry the onion in a little saucepan ( here you can add vegies like chopped capsicum, mushrooms,)
When browned remove the saucepan from the heat.
Add one tablespoon of real cornflour and stir in, then add one can of tuna ( how big is up to you or your cupboard) and stir quickly. Then add a cup or more of milk and then a cup of grated cheese.
(here's where you add frozen peas and corn if you have them or throw in a can of corn)
Return to stove top on medium heat and stir till the first bubble boils them quickly remove.

serve some rice in a bowl and pour the mornay over the top.
(kids and teenagers love this meal!)

Now where did I put that dog?

Agnes Thaggard's Never fail Quick Orange cake

This is Aggie's cake recipe which she made with gluten free flour and it worked to our surprise!
What's more, it was nice.

155 gms butter
two thirds cup of castor sugar
Cream these together
( aggie says she always accidently melts the butter in the microwave and it still works)

Then add:
the rind of one orange
and the juice of one orange
one sifted cup of gluten free S.R. flour ( white wings)( or otherwise if you must)
and three eggs
( When the pottery ladies questioned her about adding the eggs last, Aggie replied that usually she had heats the butter so much that she has to add it last cause " you don't want scrambled eggs in your cake")

"180 c for 40 -45 minutes in a heart shaped tin 'cause that's all I've got."




This is a Dolly Varden
I talk to her every Christmas
There are some things you can rely on to stay the same.

thick slip in an icing bag

One day in pottery we made these fish for the wall of the thousand fishes.
I brought some thick slip and there were two or more colours. I coloured some blue with some stain I had lying around.
I bought a cheap icing set for two bucks from the $2 shop.
We put the slip into the icing set and squeezed it out.
Its lots of fun

Coconut Macaroons

as in all of those that were eaten, all sixty of them in the first half hour of a mad Hatter's Tea-party. A wonton display of piggishness.

One recipe makes thirty. If you double it it will make sixty and if you triple it you may get to eat some yourself.
be careful if you triple it, I found even my biggest bowl was too small.

2 eggs separated
(one of my eggs got muddled and it still worked)
pinch salt ( I always forget it)
3/4 cup of castor sugar
3 cups of coconut.
( which is equal to a big 250 gm bag - as I recall)

preheat the oven to 180 c or 360 F
beat the egg whites until they are stiff or until you are bored with the situation.
add one egg yolk at a time and keep beating.
( I always tip them all in at once and as I whistle I look around to make sure no-one is watching)
throw in the sugar whilst continuing to beat
(this does get a bit tedious and I have thought about one of those large mixers that you don't have to hold but the bench already has too many whitegoods on it)
fold in the coconut.
place in spoonfuls onto expensive baking paper
( or they will be extremely difficult to remove)
10 - 15 -20 minutes or till they begin to brown.

creamy white glaze ( Pat Beasley)

in case it ever gets lost.

creamy white
potash feldspar 2362
whiting 1275
kaolin 1893.5
silica 993.5
talc 937.5
tin 300