Romany Creams

Posted on June 18, 2013 by rumtumtiggs

I’ve had this recipe since 2011 (I think) and I’ve lost it numerous times. You know when you do a spring clean and suddenly nothing is where you remember putting it? That happens here quite a lot with us living in utter chaos 85% of the time and doing a major clean and declutter every 6 weeks or so.

I think that is the general way of life for many families of two kids under the age of 10 and ours have a lot of stuff. The schools tend to send home a lot of paper too and that, combined with junk mail takes up a lot of room. We try to recycle as much as possible but we have a real need for a recycle project or depot in our area.

Would you believe that I bake more than the one or two things I post here every week? I often bake with my daughter but when I think about posting it I end up deciding it isn’t challenging enough to qualify as a blog post. Then there are the times when I bake something and it browns a bit too much, like this week’s lemon meringue. So there goes the idea of posting a picture which means it won’t make it onto the blog either. I do try and put this recipes up on my Facebook page though and if you would like to be kept up to date, please like the rumtumtiggsSA page.

Romany Creams is a popular South African biscuit that many enjoy with their tea on a Sunday afternoon. It lends itself to be a very hard cookie which makes it perfect for dipping.

Romany Creams (makes 36 sandwich cookies) recipe from here.

375g butter, at room temperature

325g sugar

125ml boiling water

40g cocoa

425g self raising flour

160g desicated coconut

250g cornflakes, lightly crushed

400g milk/mint/dark chocolate, melted for sandwiching the cookies together

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line a cookie sheet with baking paper or a Silpat (silicon baking mat). Cream butter and sugar together scraping down the bowl twice until light and fluffy. Dissolve cocoa powder in boiling water. Allow to cool slightly then add to the butter mixture. Add flour, coconut and cornflakes and milk until well combined. Roll cookies into teaspoon sized balls and place on the cookie sheet. Allow about 2cm space in between each cookie for spreading. Use a fork to press the balls down gently. Bake for 15 minutes until dry to the touch. Leave on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining batches. Once they have cooled, melt the chocolate in the microwave for 1 minute at 100% power stirring every 15 seconds. Allow to cool slightly and place 5ml of chocolate on one cookie and sandwich with a matching half. Allow to set on a flat surface (if you can ) before serving.

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Peach Frangipane Tart

Posted on June 15, 2013 by rumtumtiggs

Homemade puff pastry is a baking nemesis for many bakers. The rolling and buttering is just too time consuming and painstaking to consider making when you can buy all butter pastry in your local supermarket and have the convenience and decadence in the blink of an eye.

I’ve had Nina Timm’s puff pastry on file for a long time and my only reluctance was the fact that it looked too easy. How is it possible that this could work? Well, I’m pleased to report that it did. I made it earlier this week and had it waiting in the fridge for inspiration to strike and for me to decide what I would use it for. It would have to be something I hadn’t made before (obviously)and something that wasn’t made in kitchens too often.

A number of fellow bloggers have been making frangipani tarts recently and I had been thinking of making one for a while. So, with the pastry at hand and the ground almonds in my cupboard all I needed was some canned peaches (fresh peaches are a little hard to find in winter) and do an internet search for a frangipani recipe and I was ready to go. Please remember to make the puff pastry the night before.

Peach Frangipane Tart

Rough Puff Pastry (from here)

500g butter, cubed

250ml boiling water

550g cake flour

5ml cream of tartar

Pinch of salt

Place butter in a bowl and pour boiling water of it. Allow to melt stirring occasionally to help it along. Sift dry ingredients together. Pour butter into dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Pour into a plastic bag or onto some cling wrap. Allow to rest in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Frangipane (from here)

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

125ml ground almond meal
60ml granulated sugar
1 egg
45ml butter, softened
5ml vanilla extract
15ml tablespoon all-purpose flour

410g canned or fresh peaches (2-3 ripe peaches/stone fruit)

Preparation:

Using a food processor, combine all the ingredients until a smooth, creamy paste is formed.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.

To assemble: Roll out pastry to fit a pie dish and prick with a fork. Spread frangipani mixture onto the pastry base so that it is evenly covered. Top with sliced canned or fresh peaches (or any other stone fruit). Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown and set.

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Hidden talents

Posted on June 14, 2013 by rumtumtiggs

My Mom: Juanita Johnson (nee Burger)

I was lying in bed last night trying to fall asleep when I started thinking. Now this seems to be my body’s latest trick and, for the past few days, the minute I put my head on the pillow my brain wakes up and goes, “hey, here are some thoughts I forgot to send you while the sun was up.” So, naturally I tried to argue with it and convince it that it was sleep time. No way Jose! So I tried to direct it to thoughts that needed to be thought about (rather than worry about things I can’t change) and I started to think about what I would blog about next.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk over the past few days and haven’t really had much inspiration. Everything I see on Pinterest I feel like I have seen before and the books I am reading are not really getting me to the edge of my seat. That is when I started thinking about hidden talents. Now, I never really knew I was a writer until I started blogging. I didn’t realize that I had a way with words that made people want to read it and I think I got that talent from my mother.

Juanita Johnson (nee Burger) turned 70 this year and I remember a picture in the passage of the home where I grew up with a newspaper clipping that I used to read, from as soon as I could read. This clipping was an article the local newspaper had done about our house, after my mom written a few “letters to the editor” about how the badly maintained drains in our street would cause rainwater to get splashed onto the front of our house when the busses raced down our main road after heavy rains.

My mom, by that stage, had written a great many letters with queries few people had thought about, like when the national police bulletin (during the apartheid era) used to describe people has “coffee coloured”. I think my mom was the only one to ask, “Is that coffee with milk… or without?” She certainly had, and still has, a very quick mind and a way of writing that made people sit up and take notice (the police bulletin never described people as coffee coloured again). Her talent was never acknowledged and I wish to do so now. Thank you for passing on your ability to write Mommy .

So, on this Father’s Day weekend, I would like you to tell me what your secret talent is and where you think you got it from. Maybe you can drive really well, or you know how to tell a joke. Maybe it is something you are secretly proud of and never really thought of sharing it with anyone. Maybe you can touch your nose with the tip of your tongue or you are an amazing dancer who never took your talent to the stage. Let me know!

I hope you will forgive the non-food related nature of this post and indulge me by sharing your stories .

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Microwave Rocky Road Chocolate Fudge

Posted on June 9, 2013 by rumtumtiggs

rocky road, microwave fudge, chocolate fudge, fudge, microwave sweet making, making fudge, 5 ingredient microwave fudge, tami magnin, rumtumtiggs

Microwave Rocky Road Chocolate Fudge

This recipe is not for the faint of heart…or for those on a diet…or for those (weirdos) who don’t like chocolate . This Microwave Rocky Road Chocolate Fudge will make it a lot harder to fit into your bikini this summer but it is oh so worth it.

I’ve nicknamed this recipe, “evil in a bowl” but it can also go by the name “PMS gone in 60 seconds”. You can whip it up in under 5 minutes and be eating it in less than 3 hours. How’s that for a neat trick?

I got the recipe from here but customized it to what I had in the pantry . The texture of this fudge is smooth and creamy and it never really seems to go matte and unsticky. It does hold its shape after a new hours in the fridge yet but the delectable texture of creamy toffee tends to hang around.

Microwave Rocky Road Chocolate Fudge

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 2 minutes

Yield: 20

Ingredients

270g chocolate, I used a mix of dark and milk chocolate
397g sweetened condensed milk
5ml vanilla extract
50g mini marshmallows or marshmallows cut into smaller pieces
50g pecan/walnuts broken into smaller chunks

Instructions

Melt condensed milk and chocolate together for 2 minutes on 100% power stirring at 1 minute intervals until the chocolate has melted. Stir in the extract, marshmallow and nuts and pour into a square baking tin lined with baking paper. Allow to set in the fridge for 4 hours before turning out onto a board and slicing into squares with a sharp knife.

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Banoffee Whoopie Pies

Posted on June 8, 2013 by rumtumtiggs

This is the 100^th post since I started posting on this self hosted site in September 2012. I thought that this occasion should be marked with something a little special that will take what I have learned so far and be combined into something that requires a little more effort.

I used the Hummingbird Bakery, Cake Days recipe book for the whoopie cakes, a recipe for “the best frosting in the world” from various sources on the internet and made reference to my favourite recipe for salted caramel from a fellow blogger who blogs at Eat with Emma. I would recommend that you make the frosting and salted caramel the day before so that you don’t find yourself pressed for time and with a mountain of dishes. If you want to skip the making of the salted caramel make sure you have a tin of dulce de leche or caramel condensed milk at hand as it will work well as a substitute.

When I first saw the recipe for “the best frosting in the world” I was like, there is no way that is going to work…it doesn’t even use icing sugar! Then, I tried it and it is amazing. Please don’t be scared off the weird non-icing type ingredients list. It even uses normal granulated sugar. Give it a try. You won’t be sorry . Oh, since I tried to skip the step of using cookie sheets and cooking them off in 2 batches I used mini muffin trays so they look a bit like mini banoffee whoopie mini muffin sandwich pies.

Banoffee Whoopie Pies

1 large egg

150g castor sugar

125g plain yogurt

25ml milk

5ml vanilla extract or seeds of 1 vanilla pod

75g butter, melted

275g cake flour

3ml bicarbonate of soda

1.25ml baking powder

5ml ground cinammon

1 small banana mashed with 5ml lemon juice

Beat egg and sugar until pale yellow and fluffy. Mix yogurt, milk and extract together and add to the egg mixture. Add melted butter and mix on a low speed until well combined. Sift together dry ingredients and add to the egg butter mixture. Mix well until there are no longer traces of flour. Add mashed banana and fold in gently until well distributed. Place mixture in the fridge to rest for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and prepare 2 cookie sheets with baking paper. Place tablespoonfuls of the mixture about 3cm part on the baking sheet (they will spread). Bake for 12 minutes until lightly golden brown and springy to the touch. Allow to cool slightly before transferring to a wire cooling rack. While you are waiting you can make the filling.

Filling:

45ml cake flour

250ml milk

250ml sugar

5ml vanilla extract

250ml butter

Tin of caramel condensed milk (if you don’t have this you can cook a can of condensed milk in a pot filled with water to cover the tin for 2 hours) or salted caramel.

Place flour and milk in a pot on the stove and cook while stirring continuously until very thick. Cool completely (you can speed this up by placing the pot in a sink of cold water or ice blocks while stirring. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla essence together until fluffy. Add the cold milk flour milk mixture and beat very well until it starts to look like whipped cream.

To assemble:

Sandwich 2 cookies together with 5ml of caramel and 10ml of frosting. Press down gently and set aside until you have repeated the process with all the other whoopie pies. Serve with a cup of tea. Makes about 18 sandwiches.

Rumtumtiggs…

challenging myself to try something new

Peach Frangipane Tart

Microwave Rocky Road Chocolate Fudge

Banoffee Whoopie Pies