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