This is one of my favourite puddings. It’s a traditional South African recipe that’s easy to make and doesn’t take too long – about 10 minutes to mix together and then 60-70 minutes in the oven. I usually make it right before dinner and then it’s almost ready by the time we’ve finished eating and cleaning up. I like it plain, but it’s also great with ice cream or cream.

While the pudding is baking, you boil the ingredients for the sauce in a saucepan. Then, when the pudding comes out of the oven, you poke holes in the pudding and pour the warm sauce over it.

South African Brown Pudding (Bruinpoeding)

Batter

2 cups white sugar

4 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons apricot jam

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

3 tablespoons vinegar

2 cups milk

salt

Sauce

1 cup white sugar

1 cup water

2 cups milk

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine

2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream the eggs and the sugar together.
3. Mix in everything except for the milk.
4. Add the milk last.
5. Pour into a baking dish.
6. Bake for 60-70 minutes.
7. For the sauce, mix all ingredients together into a saucepan.
8. Bring to a boil.
9. When you take the pudding out of the oven, poke lots of holes into it with a toothpick.
10. Pour the warm sauce over the pudding. (Don’t pour it all at once – Give it a chance to soak in.
11. Serve warm plain or with ice cream or cream.

This bread is absolutely delicious. It’s like having pumpkin pie and cheesecake for breakfast…okay okay, and lunch. I didn’t make any changes to the recipe. Just a note – a 15 oz can of pumpkin is equal to 1 and 3/4 cups.

Next time, I’ll try using all whole wheat flour. I might also leave out the walnuts and make a little more cream cheese filling.

Birthdays are excellent excuses to make cake! For my birthday this year, I made a good ol’ chocolate cake with German Chocolate Cake Frosting in the middle and on top and regular chocolate frosting on the sides.

I found the recipe for the cake and frosting online – it’s from an old advertisement for Fry’s Cocoa (which is what I used). It’s called One Bowl Chocolate Cake.

The cake is good, but the real show-stopper is the German Chocolate Cake Frosting. It really doesn’t matter what the cake tastes like, because this frosting would make any cake taste amazing. The only change I made to the recipe is that I used walnuts instead of pecans.

Cake batter

Cakes right out of the oven

Frosting

The best frosting ever

The cake underwent rapid inhalation promptly after being served...

I prefer these scones to the other recipe I’ve posted. They’re less buttery, which I like. The last time I made the other scones, I found them way too buttery.

The recipe is from S.J.A. de Villiers’ Cook and Enjoy It.

White Scones

2 cups cake flour (I just used all-purpose)

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

2 to 4 tablespoons ice-cold butter

3/4 to 4/5 cup milk

extra milk to brush on top

1. Preheat oven to 475F to 500F. Grease a baking sheet and dust with flour.

2. Sift together the dry ingredients.

3. Rub in the coarsely grated butter using your fingertips, or a pastry cutter or food processor, until the mixture is crumbly.

4. Add the liquid, cutting it into the flour with a spatula until just blended. Avoid unnecessary handling or kneading as it will affect the texture of the scones.

5. Place the dough on a floured board and flatten gently with your hands or roll out gently until 2cm thick.

6. Cut out 5cm rounds with a biscuit cutter or cut into squares or triangles with a knife and place on the prepared baking sheet.

7. Brush each round with milk and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown on top. (Mine took about 15 minutes in the oven.)

The recipe yields 12 scones. (I made 6 bigger scones instead.)

I had some applesauce lying around that I wanted to use, so I was happy to find this recipe. It also gave me a chance to use whole-wheat flour.

I used a pretty old, spotty loaf pan – big mistake. When I took it out, there were tiny bits of metal flakes stuck to the sides of the bread. I cut off the sides (pictured below), which is too bad because I love crusts. Needless to say, I threw the pan in the trash.

Here’s the part of the recipe I used:

FOR 1-POUND RECIPE 
1/3 cup milk 
2 tablespoons water 
1 large egg 
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut up 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
2 1/4 cups bread flour 
2 tablespoons sugar 
1 1/2 teaspoons Bread Machine Yeast

Add dough ingredients to the bread machine pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer. Select the dough/manual cycle. When cycle is complete, remove dough from machine to a lightly floured surface. If necessary, knead in enough flour to make dough easy to handle. If dough is too elastic, cover and let rest for 10 minutes before shaping.

Roll dough into a 12 x 8-inch rectangle. Spread with jam. Beginning at long end, roll up tightly as for jelly roll. Pinch seam to seal. With sharp knife, cut into 9 equal slices (I cut 8 slices). Place, cut sides up, in a greased 8 x 8 x 2-inch baking pan.

At this point, I covered them with cling wrap and put them in the fridge overnight. When I took them out, I turned the oven on at the lowest setting, turned it OFF, and then put the buns in the oven to rise for 30 minutes. Then, I took them out, preheated the oven to 350F, and put them back in for 30 minutes once the oven was ready. As you can see, I did everything according to the recipe except for putting them in the fridge.

Cover dough and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until almost doubled in size, 20 to 30 minutes. Bake rolls at 350 degrees F (180 C) for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool slightly; remove from pan.

The recipe says to cut into 9 pieces, but I wanted bigger rolls, so I cut 8 pieces.

Ready to rise for 30 minutes or, if you're prepping them the night before, into the fridge overnight. IMPORTANT: cover in cling wrap if they're going into the fridge.

After resting in the fridge overnight, they rose a little.

This is after the final rise. They were in a warm oven (that I preheated to the lowest setting and then turned OFF) for 30 minutes.

Another shot of the rolls after the final rise, ready to bake.

After baking at 350F for 30 minutes.

The recipe is dead simple and the bread machine does practically all the work. All you have to do is divide the dough, roll it into ropes and then shape the ropes into pretzels. Then, you boil the unbaked pretzels in a water/baking-soda mixture for 10 seconds each, transfer them to a pan and put them in the oven. The shaping part might seem difficult, but it’s surprisingly fun and easy.

There’s a good diagram of the shaping method at the bottom of this page.

Or, you can check out these videos.

I baked them for 8 minutes. The bottoms were a little brown, but they didn't have a burnt taste.

The recipe says to sprinkle water and then coarse salt on them when they come out of the oven, but I skipped that step; I was making them for breakfast and I didn’t want to eat something too salty.

After tasting them, I think that they definitely need some kind of seasoning, like cinnamon-sugar (see below).

I couldn't fit all of them on the same pan, so I did a second round and sprinkled them with a cinnamon/white sugar mix.

These also browned a lot on the bottom.

Half and half - one plain, one cinnamon-sugar.

A great breakfast!

So, I looked around the internet and found a sandwich-style Challah recipe that can be made in the bread machine (always a plus!)

The texture is very light and airy and the bread is slightly sweet.

I was a little unsure of what setting I should use on my bread machine…I was trying to decide between Basic and Sweet. I ended up following the recipe, which says to use the Basic setting (it took 2 hours 40 minutes in total) and it turned out great.

Ooo, bubbles... And a bread-cave!

• Added 1/3 cup wheat germ
• Added 1 cup chopped walnut pieces
• Decreased brown sugar to 2 tablespoons

I baked it for 20 minutes, taking it out every 5 minutes to stir.

This is before it went into the oven. It's best to use as large a pan as you can find so that you can spread a thin layer of granola - that way it'll bake evenly.

A close-up, before baking

Right out of the oven - nice and golden!

After adding a cup of raisins

All done!

ANZAC biscuits were originally called Soldiers’ Biscuits, but were later renamed in honour of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

As the story goes, people made these biscuits during WWI to ship to their relatives fighting abroad. Because they don’t contain eggs or milk, they didn’t spoil before they reached the soldiers (which took about 2 months!). Also, eggs and milk were probably scarce during those times due to rationing.

Here’s a more in-depth explanation.

There’s a great story behind them and, more importantly, they’re delicious! Rolled oats, coconut, golden syrup, butter, sugar…is there a better combination?

The dry ingredients

After adding the wet ingredients

The recipe yields 22 cookies (more than what is shown here).

I got this recipe from an Australian lady:

ANZAC Biscuits (Cookies)

1 cup flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup white sugar (I decrease this to about 2/3 cup)

1 cup coconut

1/2 cup melted butter

1 tablespoon golden syrup (I use Lyle’s Golden Syrup. You can also use dark corn syrup)

2 tablespoons boiling water

1 flat teaspoon baking soda

——————————

Combine dry ingredients.

Combine melted butter and syrup. In another bowl, combine boiling water and baking soda. Then combine the wet ingredients together, before adding to the dry mixture and combining.

Shape into (approx.) large teaspoon-sized balls and flatten slightly on a greased cookie tray. (You might find it hard to keep the ingredients together. Try pressing the mixture really hard in your hand. If it’s still too crumbly, add a little more melted butter.)

Bake at 375F for 8-10 minutes. Watch them as they burn easily. Cookies are ready when they are golden brown.

Yields 22 cookies.