Neenish Tarts

Liz's Nana always made these for her when she was growing up. On her flight over to Sydney this weekend she stumbled across a recipe for the delicious tarts while reading a magazine.

When Liz realised I had never had one of her favourite tarts she insisted we make them.

Judging from the picture, I thought they were going to be fiddly and annoying, but Liz is good at that type of baking so I thought it was a good opportunity to do it with her.

Surprisingly, they weren't difficult at all and were delicious.

We decided not to add the jam, as Liz thinks they detract from the tart as a whole. Also, if we were to make them again, we would double the filling, as there was not quite enough.

(Liz's Nana used to make a large tart with only brown icing, which is another nice idea)

275g packet frozen sweet tart cases
FILLING
1/4 cup raspberry jam
1/4 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup condensed milk
50g butter, room temperature
1 tbs lemon juice
ICING
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 tsps cocoa, sifted
4 tbs warm water
few drops pink food colouring

Preheat oven to 200C.

Place tarts on tray and bake following instructions (8-10 min) until golden. Allow to cool.

FILLING - Spoon an even amount of jam into each tart shell

Combine icing sugar, condensed milk, butter and lemon juice and beat till smooth. Divide evenly between tart shells and chill for 15 minutes.

ICING - Divide the icing sugar into 2 bowls. Add the cocoa to 1 bowl and combine. Gradually add the water until smooth. Repeat in the 2nd bowl with the colouring.

Spread the choc icing over 1 half of each tart. Chill till set. Cover the other side of the tarts with the pink icing. Chill till set.

Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

I have made this cake many times in the past, but not for a long time.

Its from Nigellas Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame and like most Nigella Lawson recipe is pretty hard to mess up.

This cakes is wonderful and moist and everyone goes nuts over it.

The only thing I would say is, everytime I have made this cake I have used molasses and this time I couldn't find it so I used treacle and it wasn't as moist as it has been in the past.

FOR THE CAKE

175g unsalted butter

125g dark muscovado sugar

2 tablespoons caster sugar

200g golden syrup

200g black treacle or molasses
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbs warm water
2 eggs

250ml milk

275g plain flour

40g cocoa

175g chocolate chips

FOR THE ICING
150g icing sugar
30g unsalted butter
1 tbs cocoa
60ml ginger ale

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Tear off a big piece of baking parchment to line the bottom and sides of a roasting pan of approximately 30 x 20 x 5 cm deep.

In a decent-sized saucepan, melt the butter along with the sugars, golden syrup, treacle or molasses, cloves, cinnamon and ground ginger.

In a cup dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the water.

Take the saucepan off the heat and beat in the eggs, milk and bicarb in its water.

Stir in the flour and cocoa and beat with a wooden spoon to mix.

Fold in the chocolate chips and pour into the lined tin.

Bake for about 45 minutes until risen and firm.

It will be slightly damp underneath the set top and that's the way you want it.Remove to a wire rack and let cool in the tin.

Once cool, sieve the icing sugar.

In a saucepan heat the butter, cocoa and ginger ale.

When the butter's melted, whisk in the icing sugar.

Pour the icing just to cover the top.

S

First Post

When Liz joined me in Sydney for the weekend we decided to create our own blog, focussing on food, in the hope that we will be invited to join Daring Baker, so here we are.

After a lovely dinner at La Sala on Friday night we reconvened and came up with our name and decided to cook something together as all of our posts from now on will now be seperate as Liz lives in Adelaide, and I live in Sydney.

Fingers crossed this works!