Flavourcape

Daniel’s 5th birthday party fell on a public holiday again. Five seems to be an age where kids love to show off their strength, lightning speed and superhuman powers. So naturally we had a superhero and pajama party (a few adults dressed up too, but swapped the spiderman mini-juices for wine).

We usually get a bit carried away and invite too many people, but it was a little more hectic than normal this year. I’m working fulltime as an acting magazine editor for six weeks, so it meant I only had weekends to run around and source cake decorations and ingredients. Then Craig’s flight was delayed for hours the day before while the house/cake/cupcakes/garden were meant to happen. No pressure. It’s why I wore a Wonder Woman T-shirt on the day and felt the part.

I deviated from the usual beer box cake recipe because I was given a new Kitchen Aid cake tin with smaller dimensions (23 x 33 x 5cm) and wanted to put it to the test. It made just the right size of cake to accommodate Clark Kent’s buffer alter ego. My cake rose too much in the centre, but I just piped butter icing in the cracks and kept spreading. Fortunately Superman needed a puffy chest.

The party was a blast, with granny baking cheesecake and gingerbreadmen, Hannah beautifully icing the cupcakes, and I sorted out the cake decoration late at night. In attendance: four spidermen, a superman-batman, dinosaur and a maiden or two. A few days later when I asked Daniel if he’d expected a superman cake (it’s a surprise until we bring it out), he said sort of, but he was hoping he’d have a cake with Superman’s kryptonite. Right …

HEILIE PIENAAR’S BUTTER CAKE
Versatile and flop-proof, butter cake is the foundation for many recipes. The cake batter is easily modified to include other ingredients and flavours.

Preparation time: 25 minutes
Baking time: 25 minutes
Skill level: easy
Makes: 1 two-layer cake

Ingredients: Double the recipe for the large tray bake variation below
125 g butter, softened
250 ml (1 cup) sugar
3 extra-large eggs
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence
560 ml (2¼ cups) cake flour
12 ml (2¼ tsp) baking powder
1 ml (pinch) salt
150 ml milk

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease 2 round 20 cm cake pans. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until light and creamy. Add essence.
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Add dry ingredients, alternately with milk, to egg mixture.
3. Spoon mixture into the prepared pans and bake for about 25 minutes. Leave in pans for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Variations
-Oil cake: Substitute butter with cooking oil.
-Large tray bake cake: Double the recipe. Bake mixture in an oven pan of about 24 x 34 cm for 35 – 40 minutes.
-Chocolate cake: Mix 60 ml (¼ cup) cocoa powder with 60 ml (¼ cup) warm water and add to the cake batter.

BUTTER ICING
(Multiply the recipe according to the quantity required)
100g soft butter, cubed
300g sieved icing sugar
2.5 Tablespoons milk
lemon juice to taste

1. Beat together butter and icing sugar until soft.
2. Beat in the milk and lemon juice. Add colouring.
   Tip: buy cake decorations and ingredients, including bottled red, yellow and blue gel food colouring, Spiderman cupcake icing faces, and catering packs of smarties (sort them into red, yellow and blue colours) at CAB Foods.

Superman S design
I photocopied the S emblem from a T-shirt, enlarged it to size, and cut out inside the letters to create an icing template. I was surprised I managed to pipe in the yellow and red design using a fine icing nozzle. The blue surrounding icing was easily spread with a knife. Extra smarties stuck on the board with piped white icing blobs. We don’t do plastic icing, so it’s never on the cake itself. But Superman needs a red cape …

Also see Daniel’s 4th birthday Peter Pan cake

Find the original beer box recipe here at Daniel’s 2nd birthday red bus cake

Once a year I take on unnecessary stress, indulge in a perfect parent complex and host a children’s birthday party. Onlookers are surprised that catering can be stressful when the average children’s party offers a few bowls of shop-bought sweet and savoury treats along the lines of Iced Zoo biscuits, marshmallows and Flings.

In our house it’s an annual opportunity to catch up with adult friends (yes, the majority have kids) so I enlist grannies and friends to make sure that the edible adult-orientated nibbles are homemade and plentiful, and extend the budget to cover a few bottles of bubbly. It means that people enjoy themselves and most stick around.

By far the biggest time-swallower is baking, icing and decorating (my favourite part) the birthday cake. It would be easier to order one, and take far less time to roll out fondant icing to cover crumbs and cake sections, but I hate the plastic taste. My cakes are iced with butter cream, smoothed over with hot water and a wide knife. For Daniel’s third birthday, a helicopter cake landed on the table. He loves airport trips to watch planes take off, and has a toy helicopter with lights that flash and blades that whirl.

Helicopter cakes viewed from the top often look a bit dumpy, so a side view made more visual sense. I used the same rectangular beer box cake recipe see Daniel’s beer box bus cake, drew a paper stencil off a photo print-out of a favourite toy rescue helicopter, and cut the design off the cooled cake.

I learnt some lessons:

1. When the unreliable old oven you inherited with the house dies a week before the party and the labour and spares don’t justify the repairs, you borrow from the mortgage and negotiate a deal on a new electric oven with gas hob. Defy was an easy choice because it’s a brand I’ve used previously, and offers value for money and reliability. I can also position the cake tin directly on the black metal tray and use the thermofan setting at 10 degrees lower for the same baking time, saving energy.

2. After numerous shopping trips for cake decorations, at least two helicopter cake essentials will be unavailable at every local baking outlet you try. After trying four baking outlets, how fantastic to discover a new Cape Town CBD branch of The Baking Tin called Sprinkles. Sprinkles was the only Cape Town store to sell an edible icing face for a pilot/train driver/bus driver (gap in the market here?). And yippee, they stocked the flat liquorice strips necessary for helicopter blades. (To make blades I sellotaped two black straws together, inserted skewer sticks inside to angle into the cake, and cemented a liquorice strip on top of each straw with three small blobs of icing. Square liquorice allsorts were cemented to form pillar supports under the blades.)

3. Piped icing and gel colours will only get you so far. The key to a good children’s cake is lots of coloured balls and good sweet decorations. They’re the bits that are picked off as soon as the candles are blown out. I enjoy the challenge of sourcing the right visual shape for say, the jelly hook on a liquorice wheel ‘cable’, or the round liquorice allsorts ‘wheel’. Informed afterwards that the headlight or wheels or pink doorway didn’t pass muster, I realised it was the flavour of certain sweets that weren’t to my little person’s taste. Okay then.

The look of surprise and glib happiness – You did this all for me? – on a three-year-old face always makes the hours spent so worthwhile.

My friend Fabio of Roma is visiting and made us his crostata the other night – that’s a jam tart to you and me. It was so delicious we persuaded him to make another one a few days later. It’s the ideal light dessert after lunch, and even works with an espresso for breakfast the next day (if you have any left over!)

The recipe is a little short on details because Fabio makes it from memory - he doesn’t bother with sifting flour or combining ingredients in a specific order - and the baking time is by feel and the look of the pastry in the oven. But it’s simple, not overly sweet and quick to make. The only fiddly bit is getting the pastry to crisscross neatly.

FABIO’S BLACKBERRY CROSTATA

400g cake flour
250g chilled butter, out of fridge for 10 min
250g sugar
2 eggs
Most of 1 jar of quality blackberry jam (we used Hillcrest)

1. Mix the butter and sugar in a food processor or cake mixer. Add the eggs mixed with a fork. Then gradually add sifted flour, to make a soft dough.
2. Line a 25-cm to 27cm-diameter tart tin with kitchen paper, or use a silicone tart base.
3. Use about two-thirds of the dough and press gently on to the base of the tart with your fingers so that it’s flat. It should be about 1cm thick. Reserve the rest for the dough strips on top.
4. Spoon the jam over evenly, leaving about 1.5cm from the edges free of jam, as you would if spreading tomato sauce on a pizza. Fabio: “It’s a personal thing, but I spread enough jam over until I just can’t see the dough underneath.”
5. Take the remaining dough, roll worsies ie lattice strips (Fabio’s South African slang is pretty good) with your fingers. Lay them over the jam filling, flattening them slightly as you lay them and press on to the tart edges (that way the strips won’t stick if they come into contact with the jam). Crisscross with strips running the other way to produce a lattice effect.
6. Bake at 180 degrees celcius for about 45 minutes (up to 60 minutes) or until golden with crisped edges. The time depends on the size of the tin. Serve at room temperature. Blackcurrant or any darker fruit jam works best.

Baking takes on new meaning when you have a young baby, and friends are arriving within a few hours for Sunday tea and cupcakes. Little guys want attention and cuddles so they generally cry and moan loudly when they are tired/hungry. This makes simple tasks such as baking quite a challenge. Solution: lie them back in a baby chair to observe the kitchen action and wonder about all the creative stuff.

If the crying starts again (quite likely) place in a baby carrier on your chest. Your little guy will fall asleep in a cosy position, while you’re able to continue the flour sifting and beating. Cake mixers produce surprisingly soothing lullabies. There are drawbacks however: quick work is required, and you’ll be stuck on your feet carrying a fair weight for the next couple of hours. But the rewards are sweet.

CHOCOLATE CHIP CUPCAKES WITH CHOCOLATE ICING & GINGER AND CARROT CUPCAKES WITH SWEET ‘N SOUR ICING

Makes 12 to 14 of each of the cupcakes

BASIC CUPCAKE MIXTURE
125g butter at room temperature
150g castor sugar
200g cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup milk
½ teaspoon salt

CHOCOLATE CHIP ADDITIONS
1 x 100g slab dark chocolate, broken into rough pieces

GINGER AND CARROT ADDITIONS
60g grated carrot
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

CHOCOLATE ICING
125g butter at room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
¼cup Nomu cocoa powder

SWEET ‘N SOUR ICING
400g icing sugar, sifted
125g butter at room temperature
200 - 250g fat-free or low-fat smooth cottage cheese

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and place 12 to 14 cupcake paper cups in a muffin pan.
2. Beat the butter and castor sugar. Add the remaining ingredients, alternating the flour with the egg and milk. Beat for a few minutes until it produces a smooth batter.
3. Divide the batter into two bowls. Add chocolate pieces to one half. Stir in ginger, carrot and cinnamon to the remaining batter.
4. Spoon into cupcake cups (don’t heap batter as cupcakes will overflow during baking).
5. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool.
6. For the chocolate cupcakes, combine the butter, icing sugar and cocoa in a cake mixer to create a stiff mixture. Spread over chocolate chip cupcakes.
7. For the carrot and ginger cupcakes, combine the butter and icing sugar together in a cake mixer. Add the smooth cottage cheese to create a runny consistency. Dollop over cupcakes. Sprinkle with pan-toasted almond flakes.

Some of you may be on the mailing list of the Main Ingredient newsletter from John and Lynne Ford’s gourmet-goodies-one-stop-shop in Sea Point. I loved hearing about their kitten Hamish the Greedy Guts Gourmet, who had allegedly “sampled (and, mostly, enjoyed) mange tout, wasabi, sushi ginger, broccoli, pork crackling, Laksa coconut soup, a corner of the Cape Times, smoked salmon trimmings, roast potato and some tomato”. They reported that he wasn’t - yet - keen on wasabi.

Recently pet-sitting two Terriers (one tall, one short) and a somewhat grumpy cat, I was delighted to make the acquaintance of the neighbour’s puppies. A Weimaraner called Chilli, and my favourite – a Beagle called Ramsay! I never asked what inspired the latter puppy’s name, but its owner lived in London so I’m assuming that a certain foul-mouthed Michelin-starred chef had something to do with it.

Ramsay is at that wonderful puppy stage of all paws. I noted on her frequent inquisitive visits into the kitchen that like some chefs I know, there is always tummy space for a little something extra. Chefs I know don’t have ears that drape into the food bowl though…

Our impromptu pet-sitting braai recipe for peppered fillet has been dedicated to the ever-expectant appetite of Ramsay the Beagle.

RECIPE RAMSAY PEPPERED FILLET
serves 5 or 6

1.2kg beef fillet, trimmed
olive oil
black peppercorns, coarsely crushed in a pestle and mortar
freshly ground salt
7 fresh rosemary sprigs

1.Rub the fillet with olive oil on all sides. Sprinkle with crushed peppercorns and salt. Using toothpicks, fasten rosemary sprigs into any folds, securing them in place with toothpicks.
2.Cook the fillet on a braai grid over hot coals (wood and charcoal mixed) for 20 minutes. Cover with foil in a warm place off direct heat while the meat rests. Serve slices of rare meat.

MUSHROOM SAUCE
½ packet of 20g dried chanterelle mushrooms
Approximately 250ml boiling water
? cup butter for frying
1 pack portabellini mushrooms, sliced
a splash of white wine
250ml cream

1.Hydrate the dried mushrooms in a cup of boiling water. Strain and reserve the water.
2.In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the sliced fresh mushrooms for about 10 minutes. Add the drained mushrooms and strained water. Cook at high heat to reduce the liquid. Add a splash of wine while doing so.
3.Add the cream and keep reducing the liquid while stirring. The sauce should thicken slightly after about five minutes.
4.Serve warm with the peppered fillet.