It is a strange notion indeed for an avid baker such as myself to not really like cake or sweet things. I bake often, but seldom eat any of the sweet things that come out of my kitchen. I love the process, the science, the pure magic of mixing eggs and sugar and whatever and getting a result so different from say, mixing it somewhat differently. Alchemy I guess is my driving force. Few people in my family or circle of friends complain though.
But I do like ice-cream. I savor the act of licking a spoon of creamy coolness, even in winter. I can often picture myself sitting at my Grandma's linoleum table with a bowl of sorbet and some chocolate powder (you know the stuff you flavor milk with) and stirring the concoction until it reached the perfect texture and then eating it slowly. It was an act executed with almost religious ceremonious pomp by myself and my sister. It is one of my favorite memories.
I also remember, an entirely different kitchen a few years later (tiles and no linoleum) and a soggy mess on the floor early one morning; my friend and I craved a bowlful of ice-cream for a midnight feast and accidentally forgot to close the freezer properly.
My preferences are predictably boring though. I like vanilla and chocolate. Sometimes choc-mint. No double-chocolate bar, peanut butter, caramel coated treats for me. I prefer a bowl. No wrappers and no wooden sticks.
I'll make an exception for a cone from Baglio's on the square in Sandton, eaten in the shadow of Madiba's huge statue, amongst pigeons and tourists.
My two kids adore ice-cream as well. They go through bowls and bowls year-round. And most of their friends seem to like it as well. There is a glass jar of cones on the counter that I cannot seem to keep full. And the same goes for the ice-cream. We make lollies with fruit juice or milk and sorbets with a simple sugar syrup.
But I always wanted to have home-made vanilla or chocolate ice-cream. The real deal. And thought that I had that box ticked when I bought an ice-cream churner at the end of last year. I made a few batches, but was never happy with the texture. Too grainy. The sorbets were wonderful, bursting with flavor and smooth to the tongue. The vanilla version needed some tweeking.
And so yesterday, in a moment of craving ice-cream and the nearest shop far away, I read a few recipes and then stumbled onto the recipe book of none other than 'Ben and Jerry's' and what a revelation. The book tells stories of small beginnings, long hours and big dreams and of course a love of ice-cream far bigger than my own. But I found a recipe for vanilla ice-cream that requires no cooking of the custard and the result is amazing. Yes, the eggs are raw, but beaten to a ribbon of light fluffy mousseness and leaves no trace of egg once frozen. And the best part, no waiting for the custard to cool down before churning. This is so good, that I am now considering buying cream in bulk.
I think I may have mentioned here before, that Autumn is by far my favourite season here in the Lowveld. The days are beautiful, the sky crystal clear and the most beautiful of blues. And of course the intense heat makes way for a lush coolness.
Our family schedule also calms down a bit after a hectic show season through summer and we get to spend lazier days in the garden and greenhouses. Lunch today was a bit of a cheat and consisted of waffles and ice-cream. Everybody deserves a bit of sweetness every now and then and the kids simply loved it.
They are giggling in the garden, under the huge trees as I am typing this. Happy laughs.
I am planning a baby shower for a friend of a friend here in my garden. The idea is to have a rustic, picnic-style meal under the trees, all in neutral, natural colours.
I felt like a bit of pottering yesterday and made some arrangements with this event in mind.
And then decided it was time to share something with all of you again.
Enjoy...
Life is back to a pace that allows for blogging and the occasional bit of pottering. The last few months left very little time for either and in fact very little time for anything it seemed.
Our new kitchen got finished and so did the office and classroom and for a while we just enjoyed it all. Our little family has now found a new rhythm in our bigger space and the little school for two is doing well too.
This past month was time for the big Winter holiday in South Africa and our house had been bustling with people throughout. My sister and her kids came from Canada for a month and we had the best time. The little ones spent countless hours exploring the garden, collecting rocks and climbing trees. They must have circled the property a million times on their bikes and worked up a huge appetite looking for the kittens and building sand castles. We took turns cooking for all the hungry little tummies (and some days we had many, as more friends came to play) and both shared the kitchen. We toasted marshmallows on the fire and went foraging for Pecan nuts or peas in the garden. They ate oranges and dried mangoes and drank liters of my Mum's home-made lemonade. My heart aches now, just thinking about the happy times.
Our friends from Cape-Town and Namibia also visited, which called for more cake and big camp fires and potjies full of deliciousness. And more tears when it was time to say goodbye.
The holiday was simpy magical, but more so because the days had been beautiful and warm. Almost impossibly so. The sky seemed an iridescent blue with none of the fires, wind and horrible, bone chilling cold.
All this beautiful weather had us all gardening up a storm over the last few weeks. We have expanded beds and created paths, moved mountains of compost and huge logs and ever so slowly got rid of the last of the cement.
Unfortunately my telephone cable were the target of a copper cable thief in July, which meant a whole month without any internet here on the farm. Our telephone company then installed a thief-proof cable, but alas, the new technology and the old farm lines did not want to communicate so well, which meant more interruptions in service and alas, many blog ideas left unpublished. It had been a year of excuses for my lack of posts - no internet, no camera, no computer, no time. But here is to a more creative, crime-free future.
The lack of internet meant we did have a lot of warm evenings in front of the fire-place, reading books or watching sports. And the fire-wood came from a friend who traded me a load for some of these cookies.
And the cake was an impromptu cake for a birthday party dinner that we were invited to. I had all the ingredients and then experimented with the combinations. There are very few rules when making an ice-cream cake. It is sort of a marvelous concoction really. Try it, you won't regret it.
My life has changed a lot in the last few months, all for the better I think.
The last few years were hectic. I was involved with a few projects and between work, school, running markets and a million different things, we all were hardly home. I think, looking back, that most days I were running on adrenaline and running on almost empty at the same time. I loved the Christmas Market and being involved with it. I will miss it.
But, I knew that this year I need to shift focus. I needed to focus on a few things that were left by the wayside. Family, friends and my house and garden. A huge collection of orchids as well.
We are in the midst of a big revamp of our house as well. We have been in the house now, for eleven years. And we planned the house as newly weds with no kids and very few possessions. How things have changed. And with that change came a whole new set of requirements for our house. So, we started with a pool. And then we needed more cement and bricks to join the house and the pool. A few more loads of bricks and the big kitchen expansion was born. We were doing it all ourselves with the help of guys from the farm. There were days that got the better of us and there were days when it all seemed totally crazy. Luckily, the end result is better than I ever hoped.
But, alas, we needed more bricks, as the garage is slowly, being transformed into a new office and a classroom. By the end of the month it should all be finished.
I have realized, that I own a whole lot of pans and baking sheets. And a huge amount of strange and beautiful packaging items as well. All this moving the house around, meant a lot of sorting out of cupboards and the discovery of many items long forgotten.
All this means, that by the end of the month, I'll have more space to bake and more time to photograph and hopefully, it will all translate to more activity on my little blog.
I have been baking a lot. And a huge amount of chocolate cakes for all sorts of occasions.
I'll be bringing you a few of the recipes in the next few weeks.
For now, my newest discovery and absolute favorite cake, a nutty, hazelnut torte that I found here.
Try it, it is delicious.
I have some very fond memories of myself and my sisters perched in an apricot tree with the cousins or the neighbors, devouring the juiciest, ripest apricots on a warm sunny day.
I love living in the Lowveld and the abundance of mango and litchi in summer, but I do miss a fresh peach or apricot. Nothing beats a sun-kissed summer fruit straight from a tree.
Luckily, I found a huge pile of very fresh, just ripe apricots in our local fruit market the other day and I could not resist. I started putting a few in a bag and then got carried away. Well, really carried away and ended up buying eight kilograms of the blushing fruits.
I had a plan though, that all started as another fond memory of a few family members, often my paternal grandmother and my mother and whomever got roped in, making jam. We would all gather around a huge jam pot, chatting, peeling, discarding pips or stirring, tasting.
My next stop after town was at my mom's house with a request for her to join me in my jam making quest. Firstly, because I have never done such a vast quantity before and secondly, because making jam requires chirpy company. It just does. And yes, we did fill a 50kg pot with apricots and sugar and ended up with lots and lots of jars of golden goodness.
These last few months had been hectic and the reason again was the Christmas market that I organized with the help of a few wonderful friends and family members.
You can see some pictures here on the ever amazing Lauren's blog.
I love the creative process of putting it all together, meeting all the amazing crafters and purveyors and seeing all the happy faces of customers. But it does take its toll on family life and normal day to day living.
So now, life is back to normal and the phone is not constantly glued to my ear as it had been for who knows how long. I can think and breath and be a mom and wife and accountant again. And of course the time spent in the kitchen increases too. We get to sneak away on weekends to the mountains too and have spend a lovely, misty afternoon in one of our favourite spots looking for flowers this past weekend.
Enough with the excuses and babbling and back to the real reason for my reappearance around the blogosphere - apricots and financiers. I don't get cravings for anything sweet very often, but maybe because of the energy draining activities of the last while or maybe because of the beautiful rays of sunshine that broke through the clouds of the last few days, today I craved something sweet. And something with apricots, just because I happen to have had a punnet of the sweetest apricots right there on the counter. And these fit the bill exactly. They are not sweet, but not sour either and the contrast of crumbly almonds and feather light egg white batter with the sour-sweet fruitiness of the apricots are just divine.
None left, not one.
You know the first time you make something, that the recipe will become a staple, one you'll make over and over again. This roulade is one of those. It is so simple, and yet so delicious. The sort of thing you whip up in no time at all, but then it surprises you by being so yummy.
And everytime I make this, everybody wants the recipe. The surprising thing is that I then realize how few of my staple recipes are actually on this blog. Probably the reason being, that they are so second nature, so easy to fall back on to, that you forget to take pictures, forget to write them down.
Well, no more. I have promised this recipe to all and sundry and here it is.
The husband of a very good friend phoned me a few weeks ago and asked if I could help him to organize a surprise party for his wife. Of course, how could I resist? And he emailed me a photo of a table in an orchard with little bunting flags whisping in the wind. Not everyday you receive a brief from a husband....
And so the planning started. The logistics were a bit daunting, as it meant EVERYTHING had to be transported there and if something was left behind, we'll have had to manage without. I packed the car to the limit and stacked boxes of cakes and sweets on top op plates and straws.
But wow, what a morning! It rained the night before, but when I peeked outside early on saturday, the cloads were gone and in their place were the bluest sky and the lightest mist just touching the mountains. The sort of morning you wish you could touch and keep in a special place for later. The orchard was the perfect setting for us friends to mingle. The props felt as if they were meant to be there and we lingered as long as the fierce Lowveld sun allowed us to.
Happy birthday Marique!! I loved being part of a special day for such a wonderful person.
This past year past in a blink of an eye. It was one of great excitement and looking back, I could never have anticipated everything that happened to me and the family. But that is the joy of life is it not? We can never control everything that happens to us and yet we always end up a little stronger, a little wiser and a little surprised at the journey that is life.
We are still on holiday for a few more precious days. Nothing beats a December holiday - sunshine and warm days around the pool, eating fresh fruit and ice-cream! Pure bliss! And of course orchid hunting trips to beautiful places.
Friends invited us to dinner and afterwards we waited for the Masoyi fireworks spectacular to ring in the New Year last night. The villagers of this remote area close to Hazyview has a tradition of purchasing some fireworks every month of the year. Our friends have a veranda overlooking the village and we had ourselves the best seats in the house to enjoy it. It really is something special.
And today we followed a little tradition of our own and went for our New Year's day picnic looking for orchids. Nothing beats a little picnic under the trees near a little stream, surrounded by beautiful flowers and butterflies.
And of course we took lots of litchis.
Our trees are just dripping litchis at the moment. We collect them by the bags full and eat them in a shady spot in the garden. We canned some too for the winter months when we crave a little taste of summer. Canning is a family activity where we all come together to peel, cut and chat. It reminds me of growing up and helping my mom and grandmothers with the jam or preserves. And now my children help too.
I made a little salad with litchis too. Very simple, with butter beans, litchis and a dressing of mint, chilly, fish sauce, lime and sugar. Delicious.
Best wishes for 2012! Here's to the journey that is life and all the surprises installed for us around the corner.
