Salmon cakes

Tried these last night (half batch, still made 8 patties). Tasty, but I think I would prefer something more frittery next time.

Banana pudding

Trialled this recipe, but left out the sugar. Was passable, but doesn't pass the test of being acceptable to fussy people if the bananas aren't at the perfect stage of ripeness.

I think I'll have to stick to cake/muffins for using up past-it bananas...

Blancmange

Edmonds blancmange recipe - about as exciting as jellified milk should be. Was a nice alternative to ice cream, served with fruit. I may try it sweetened with honey at some point, I think that would be tasty.

An acceptable (part of a) dessert, but I think a nice eggy custard would be yummier.

Crumpety bread

I tried this recipe, and it turned out with a very crumpet-like texture. It was also fabulous toasted with garlic butter...

More hokey pokey

Tried with brown sugar, preferred the white sugar version.

May try tweaking the golden syrup/milk ratio, but next up will be cake.

Hokey pokey 4

The same again, down to 125g of flour (original recipe quantity). I think at some point I'm going to turn this into a cake recipe.

This is my favourite so far - soft and nicely flavoured.

Cake!

What better birthday cake than a maple spice cake?



I used this recipe, but omitted the pecans.

The cake was delicious, although the frosting was incredibly sweet. (Apparently it went really well with coffee). I think I'd prefer something like a buttercream. Either way, I'll definitely be trying it again sometime.

Hokey Pokey 3

As last time, but only 150g of flour. Dough was a bit soft for comfortably rolling into balls, so I just dropped spoonfuls on the tray.

Tasted similar, slightly stronger hokey pokey flavour...

Hokey Pokey Biscuits Mk II

75g butter
50g sugar

50g Golden syrup
50g Milk

1tsp baking soda

175g flour

Cream butter and sugar
Warm milk and golden syrup, add baking soda and stir
Add syrup mixture to butter and sugar
Add flour
Roll into balls, flatten with a fork

Bake 10 minutes

The original recipe tasted quite buttery. This variation is more cakey, and with more hokey pokey flavour. Nice but still not the texture I'm looking for. Next time, less flour (maybe 150g)

Hokey Pokey Biscuits

Years ago we had a family recipe for hokey pokey biscuits. They were gooey and delicious, and totally unlike any other hokey pokey biscuit I've ever tried. I think I vaguely recall hearing that the recipe originated from a copying error, which could explain the difference.

Every now and then I try to recreate something like I remember. So when I noticed that the recipe in the older Edmonds we have had 30% less flour than the 1976 version, and was otherwise identical I had to give it a try.

The result was a light buttery biscuit, with a hint of hokey pokey. Tasty, but not what I was hoping for. I will try again with double the golden syrup and see what that gives me. Or maybe use brown sugar instead of white... Plenty of options to try, anyway.

A Bit of Crumpet

The recipe for today is the crumpet recipe from the Edmonds Cookbook (1976). I've never made crumpets, so I was guessing slightly about the consistency - the recipe calls for a 'fairly thick batter'.

I made a half batch, and I left it to rise for longer than the stipulated hour because it's not particularly warm today. I found the frying temperature was quite finicky - too hot or cold and they turned into yeasty pikelets. I think a slightly runnier batter would have been better too.

I definitely want to try them again, they tasted pretty good, even if most of them weren't amazingly crumpet-like.

No photos, we scoffed them all for lunch.

Oat-banana muffins

A couple of weeks ago I tried this recipe. I don't have a big blender so I just used fine ground oatmeal.

I failed at taking photos, unfortunately. They looked kind of like oaty muffins.

They were a little stodgy, but I was half expecting that. I'm not sure if using a blender would help with that. The flavour was nice, if mild. I think they would be fabulous with added blueberries, and may have to try that in blueberry season.

Spicy Venison Stew

After deciding to stew some of the venison in our freezer I thought I'd look for a recipe. My bookshelf yielded only one recipe for venison, and that was for barbecuing. So, Google to the rescue, I found this recipe.

I've made it mostly as written, but dropped the meat to 850g, left out the chicken stock, and only added a small amount of chilli (my excuse there is baby-friendliness). I also used Merlot (Wolf Blass Yellow Label), because that's what we had that seemed passable.

Oh, and I threw a few leftovers in too, because that's what stew is for, right?

Served with mashed potato, and the rest of the Merlot.

The stew turned out very tasty, and served 4 adults easily with about 3 servings left. There was about the proportion of meat that I normally like in my stew. I think if I use this recipe again I will make approximately half a batch, and leave out the chilli entirely - the small amount I put in was enough to push the spiciness to a level where the baby wasn't too keen on it.

(For anyone interested and local, the venison came from here. I got a boneless shoulder roast and cut it into smaller pieces to freeze)