Honey jumbles

Here's a secret formula I learnt in my kitchen this week: sugar + spice + all things nice = honey jumbles.
Now, you could always save yourself the trouble and pick up a pack of honey jumbles at the supermarket, but it won't beat having that warm and gingery aroma wafting through your home, or that happy feeling you get when you open the oven and pull out a tray of golden, fresh honey jumbles.
You might be surprised to see that this recipe actually doesn't include any honey at all – the golden syrup provides the sweetness and colour. If  this contradiction bothers you, you could probably swap out the golden syrup and replace with honey and brown sugar (but I haven't tried that yet)... Or, indeed, you could simply start calling them "golden syrup jumbles". But I digress.
No matter what you call 'em, the only thing to do with these jumbles is slather them with icing, brew a pot of tea, and plonk yourself down on the sofa with a good book.

Ingredients

Sugar + spice (the jumbles)
100 g unsalted butter, chopped
250 ml golden sytrup
400 g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
Pinch cloves
3 Tbs milk

All things n(icing)
1 egg white
240 g sifted icing sugar
2–3 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp plain flour
Food colouring of your choice

Method

1. In a medium saucepan, heat butter and golden syrup until just boiling (when bubbles begin to break on the surface). Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.
2. In the meantime, sift the dry ingredients. Once the syrup mixture is cooled, stir in the dry ingredients and milk. Mix well, then cover the saucepan with cling wrap and leave to rest for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with baking paper. 
4. Turn out about a quarter of the mixture onto a very lightly floured board or bench. Roll into a long snake shape approximately 2.5 cm in diameter, then cut with a knife into 5–6 cm lengths and place onto baking trays. Repeat this step three times until all the mixture has been used.
5. Bake 10 minutes and cool on trays. When the jumbles are completely cold, spread icing over them with a knife.

Makes 16

All things n(icing)

1. Beat egg white in a cup with a fork until it's as frothy as you can get it.
2. Place half the quantity of icing sugar in a bowl and make a well in the centre . Tip the egg white into the well and mix thoroughly, starting from the inside and slowly working outwards to the edge of the bowl.
3. Add the remaining icing sugar, flour and 2 tsp of the lemon juice and mix thoroughly again.
4. Add up to 1 tsp extra lemon juice to get the mixture to the right consistency.
5. With a knife, spread the icing over half the quantity of honey jumbles.
6. Add a few drop of the food colouring of your choice to the icing sugar mixture and mix well again before spreading it over the remaining half of the honey jumbles.
7. Leave to set at room temperature.

Tips

• Don't flour the board/bench too much, or your honey jumbles will have flour stuck all over them – even after cooking. A very light sprinkle will do the trick.
• Don't worry about the cracks that appear in the top of the jumbles as they cook. That's just what happens. After you've iced the jumbles, no one will be able to tell the cracks are there.
• Be careful not to over-cook the jumbles! Ten minutes should be enough. Eleven minutes will probably cause burnt edges.
• What's the right consistency of icing? I had to try a few times to get the icing on my jumbles smooth and shiny, and I think it helps to have a frothy egg white, to mix the ingredients together very well, and add enough lemon juice so that the mixture is thin enough to slowly run off a knife. If it's staying in a clump on your knife, it's not thin enough, and you should add more lemon juice. But be careful not to go too thin, because then the icing will trickle off the jumbles. Also remember that the food colouring will thin out the mixture even further.

Champagne with lychees

Lychees amaze me – they have such a striking appearance, an other-worldly flavour (almost like a grape, but sweeter and somehow foreign), and in your mouth they even feel exotic. So I love an opportunity to use lychees whole in a recipe. They go very well in fruit salads, but one use you may not have considered for lychees is simply to drop them into a glassful of bubbly. I use tinned lychees because you don’t have to concern yourself with peeling and pitting them or searching for fresh ones at your supermarket, but also because the delicious lychee syrup included in the can helps create a delightful cocktail.

It’s a simple treat for a girl’s night or a brunch. The syrup takes away some of the sharpness of the drink, and you get that bonus at the end: alcohol-drenched fruit at the bottom of your glass – yum.

Ingredients

1 x 750 ml bottle of sparkling wine, chilled

1 x 560 g can of pitted lychees in syrup (undrained)

Method

1. Take 6 glasses. Place 2 lychees and 2 Tbs of syrup in each glass.
2. Divide sparking wine evenly between the 6 glasses. Stir gently to spread the syrup through each drink. Serve.

Makes 6 glassfuls.

Chocolate brownies (fudgy)

Is there anyone who doesn’t like brownies? Surely they must be as rare as those poor suckers who can’t stand chocolate. The brownie, which started life only a little over a century ago in America (okay, I’ve just lost everyone who thought I was talking about Enid Blyton’s mischievous hobgoblin creatures), is now pretty much universally adored.

I can remember the very first time I tasted a brownie. It was at a friend’s birthday party in early high school, we were playing pool in her den and listening to Coldplay’s “Yellow” (it was also the first time I’d heard Coldplay) and I picked up a strange, under-cooked-looking chocolate slice and took a tentative bite. There was no going back.

I understand that everyone has their own strong opinion of what makes the perfect brownie (fudgy or cakey, choc-chips or not, nuts or not, packet mix or homemade), so I’m not going to be stupid enough to promise that my recipe will rock your socks. But I can assure you that it’s rich, dense, fudgy, and I love it to bits – or, as Chris Martin sang, “you know I love you soo-ooo”.

Ingredients

250 g dark chocolate (buttons, or roughly chopped)

130 g unsalted butter, chopped

300 g caster sugar

100 g plain flour

50 g cocoa powder

3 eggs

Icing sugar, to decorate (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 27 x 18 cm slice pan and line with baking paper.
2. Combine caster sugar, plain flour and cocoa powder in a large bowl.
3. Melt the dark chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring bowl never touches the water. Stir occasionally until mixture is melted and smooth.
4. Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture and mix thoroughly. Add eggs and mix again.
5. Spread mixture into the prepared pan and even out the surface a little with a spatula or knife. Bake 30 minutes or until just firm. Be careful: over-cooking will make the edges too hard and crunchy.
6. Cool in pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. When cold, slice into squares with a sharp knife.
7. If desired, sprinkle with sifted icing sugar before serving.

Makes 12 squares.

 

Tips

• When melting chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, be careful not to burn yourself on steam escaping from between the bowl and the saucepan - especially when you're stirring the chocolate. You can actually buy double-boilers to use for this exact kind of thing, but I haven't bothered yet.
• Including some white choc-chips after Step 4 will add some interest and texture to the brownies.
• I always remove the outer edge of the brownies to give each square a neat, symmetrical look. But that’s just me.

Minestrone with damper

Here’s a deliciously hearty combination to keep you warm this winter! It’s simple, and doesn’t take long to prepare – the most time-consuming part is chopping the veggies. And the damper can be fully prepared while the soup is simmering on the stove.

The great thing about minestrone is that you can make it up as you go along. If you don’t have the exact ingredients I’ve listed below, simply substitute them with whatever you have in your fridge or pantry. Capsicum, zucchini and kidney beans are some examples that also work well in minestrone.

It’s nicest eaten the same day because if left overnight, the pasta will eventually soak up most of the moisture, and it won’t be soupy anymore (it'll still taste great, though).

 
Minestrone

Ingredients

2 Tbs oil
2 brown onions, diced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
6 rashers of bacon, chopped
Half a bunch of celery, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 cup green beans, chopped
2 x 400 g tins of chopped or crushed tomatoes
2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 x 400 g tin cannellini beans, drained
4 cups vegetable or beef stock
3 cups boiling water
2–3 cups spiral pasta

Method

1. Heat oil in a saucepan, then stir in onion, garlic and bacon and brown for a couple of minutes.
2. Add the remainder of the ingredients, bring to boil,  then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
   
   

   Serves 8–10

Parmesan damper

Ingredients

4 cups self-raising flour
2 cups parmesan cheese, finely grated
1–2 bunches of chives, roughly snipped
1 cup oil
1 cup milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and line baking tray with baking paper.
2. Mix flour, cheese and chives in a large bowl, then add oil and milk, stirring to form a loose dough.
3. Turn out half the mixture onto a lightly-floured board, kneading lightly to coat with flour. Roll into a short, fat, sausage-shaped loaf and place on prepared tray. Repeat step with the remainder of the mixture to form a second loaf, and place on the tray also
4. Bake 20–25 minutes, then cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or cold, with butter.
   
   Serves 8–10

Banana bread

Got bananas going bad in your fruit bowl? Hate to see them go to waste? While I detest the sickly-sweet flavour of overripe bananas, that sweetness is the perfect ingredient to incorporate into some delicious baked goodies. My personal favourite would have to be banana bread. Sure, it's so unhealthy that it completely defies the point of eating fruit, but at least I'm not wasting bananas... Right?
It has taken me a few attempts to get my banana bread turning out the way it looks in cafes. I've found that a great result requires dark brown sugar, heaps of bananas (the riper the better, and if you have time, leave the mashed bananas sitting for a few hours to brown slightly), and a few hours for the loaf to settle after baking. The result? Deep brown, moist banana bread that slices like a dream.

Ingredients
270 g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
280 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
500 g mashed bananas, browned
140 g unsalted butter, melted

mashed bananas

after a few hours, browned

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 23 x 13 cm loaf tin and dust with flour.
2. Combine sugar and eggs with an electric mixer, add bananas and beat until well combined.
3. Add dry ingredients and beat thoroughly again, before slowly pouring in the melted butter and beating until well combined.
4. Pour mixture into the loaf tin and smooth the surface with your spatula or a knife
5. Bake for around 70 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the loaf comes out clean. Cool in tin for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. This loaf is best left to rest for eight hours before slicing.

Tips

• The riper the bananas, the sweeter the bread.
• 500 g equals about five medium-sized bananas. If you want a lighter bread, simply use less bananas. The recipe will still work, but won't be as dark, dense or sweet.
• I find it easiest to "mash" the bananas on a plate using the back of a fork. Once they're mashed, I leave them on the plate to brown for a few hours. This isn't necessary, but I think it makes the bread a little darker in colour.
• To prepare the loaf tin, just grease it as normal then sprinkle with flour. Turn the tray gradually in one hand, tapping it sharply with the other hand to spread the flour around the surface of the tray. The flour will stick to the greasy surfaces as it moves around the tray. This step ensures that the loaf is very easy to remove from the tin after baking.
• Why leave the loaf to settle for eight hours after baking? It's not at all necessary, but I have found that the bread will be more dense, and the slices will be neater and look more professional. But don't worry if you can't wait, it will taste just as good fresh from the oven!