With Alice back in London, I was looking for something to try and found a recipe for Romany Creams in the Baptist Collection Biscuit Book compiled by the ladies of the Port Shepstone Baptist Church. For those who don’t know them, Romany Creams are one of the classic South African special occasion biscuits – a chocolate and coconut sandwich held together by chocolate icing, something that ex-pat South Africans import all over the world.
My first attempt didn’t turn out very well. The recipe calls for 125 ml of boiling water, added with the coconut, and then the addition of extra flour until the mixture leaves the bowl and ingredients don’t stick to your hand but, when I had added almost half as much flour again as was in the original recipe it still seemed too soft.
Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided to go ahead to the baking and see what happened. The result tasted pretty good but looked a bit anaemic and collapsed on the baking tray so, with advice from Alice, I decided to make some adjustments. For the second batch, then, I added 50 grams of dark chocolate to darken the mix and changed the method slightly to add the water last on the basis that I could stop when the texture was right.
This time round, I also decided to check the quantity conversions so measured the ingredients and then weighed them and found, by chance, at least part of the problem last week. Two cups of flour turned out to weigh more than the 240 grams in the recipe – closer to 400 grams, in fact – and, with that adjustment, the texture of the mixture was just about right and I ended up adding the full 125 ml of water.
The result was the recipe below, which turned out well in both texture and flavour. I will try this again in a couple of weeks time and I shall try substituting the cocoa with a hundred grams of dark chocolate to strengthen the flavour and colour and I’ll keep you updated on the result.
Romany Creams (Gloria Tarboton)
INGREDIENTS
250g Butter
50g Dark Chocolate
250g Castor Sugar
400g Flour
60 ml Cocoa
5 ml Baking Powder
3 ml salt
200g Desiccated coconut
3 ml baking powder
125 ml boiling water
Chocolate for filling.
METHOD
Cream the butter and sugar and add the melted chocolate. Add the sifted dry ingredients and then the coconut. Then add as much of the water as necessary so that the mixture rolls into a ball without sticking to the hands or the sides of the bowl. Put teaspoons-full (or use a biscuit maker) onto a greased baking tray and bake at 180˚C (350˚F), Gas mark 4 for 15 minutes. When cool sandwich together with melted chocolate.
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Monday, 19 September 2011
Mum's recipes - Part 1
Over the years, my mother has sent me a variety of recipes collected by the family. The recipes have arrived in a variety of units of measure and, sometimes, with somewhat inscrutable cooking directions. This blog is a record of my attempts, with the help of Alice, my daughter, to test and standardise the recipe book as a family property. The intention is to standardise the units of measure – something that will require a bit of trial and error – and to expand the methods on the basis of real cooking experience.
Alice was home for the weekend a couple of weeks ago and we cooked the first two recipes on Sunday 4th September 2011 and, perhaps because Alice was there to fine tune the method, they came out with very little in the way of problems. In particular, the problem we had was finding the right temperature for the lemon cake with two complexities. The first was what, exactly, the term ‘in a medium oven’ means. A quick phone call to mum gave the answer 180˚ C – Gas mark 4, but this didn’t allow for the fact that we were using the fan oven so we started cooking at 170˚. Fortunately Alice assessed progress ten minutes into the baking and turned the temperature down to 160˚ with an excellent outcome.
Mum had cautioned us not to overcook and let it dry out, which Alice assessed perfectly – beautifully moist.
Lemon Cake (Isobel Sanderson)
170g butter
200g sugar
2 eggs
Lemon rind
300 ml flour
5ml Baking Powder
3 ml salt
55 ml milk
For the lemon drizzle
80 grams sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
METHOD
Cream butter and sugar then add eggs and lemon zest followed by dry ingredients alternately with milk.
Bake in a 23 cm cake tin in a moderate oven (180C (160C fan) / gas mark 4 / 350F) for 25 – 30 minutes.
While the cake is baking, dissolve the sugar over gentle heat in the lemon juice. Pour this over the cake as soon as it comes from the oven.
Spicy Fruit Loaf (Jack Meikle)
240 ml cake fruit
250 ml brown sugar
250 ml water
80 g butter
2 ml nutmeg
5 ml cinnamon
5 ml ground ginger
2 ml salt
475 ml plain flour
5 ml bicarbonate of soda
3 ml baking powder
METHOD
Boil together fruit, sugar, water, butter, spices and salt for 3 minutes. Allow to cool slightly and fold in sifted flour, bicarbonate and baking powder. Add a little water if necessary to dropping consistency. Bake in a loaf tin at 160C / Gas mark 3 / 325F for ca. 60 minutes
Alice was home for the weekend a couple of weeks ago and we cooked the first two recipes on Sunday 4th September 2011 and, perhaps because Alice was there to fine tune the method, they came out with very little in the way of problems. In particular, the problem we had was finding the right temperature for the lemon cake with two complexities. The first was what, exactly, the term ‘in a medium oven’ means. A quick phone call to mum gave the answer 180˚ C – Gas mark 4, but this didn’t allow for the fact that we were using the fan oven so we started cooking at 170˚. Fortunately Alice assessed progress ten minutes into the baking and turned the temperature down to 160˚ with an excellent outcome.
Mum had cautioned us not to overcook and let it dry out, which Alice assessed perfectly – beautifully moist.
Lemon Cake (Isobel Sanderson)
170g butter
200g sugar
2 eggs
Lemon rind
300 ml flour
5ml Baking Powder
3 ml salt
55 ml milk
For the lemon drizzle
80 grams sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
METHOD
Cream butter and sugar then add eggs and lemon zest followed by dry ingredients alternately with milk.
Bake in a 23 cm cake tin in a moderate oven (180C (160C fan) / gas mark 4 / 350F) for 25 – 30 minutes.
While the cake is baking, dissolve the sugar over gentle heat in the lemon juice. Pour this over the cake as soon as it comes from the oven.
Spicy Fruit Loaf (Jack Meikle)
240 ml cake fruit
250 ml brown sugar
250 ml water
80 g butter
2 ml nutmeg
5 ml cinnamon
5 ml ground ginger
2 ml salt
475 ml plain flour
5 ml bicarbonate of soda
3 ml baking powder
METHOD
Boil together fruit, sugar, water, butter, spices and salt for 3 minutes. Allow to cool slightly and fold in sifted flour, bicarbonate and baking powder. Add a little water if necessary to dropping consistency. Bake in a loaf tin at 160C / Gas mark 3 / 325F for ca. 60 minutes
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