South African Apple Cake Recipe

I can't remember where I got this recipe, or what is particularly South African about it, but it's a really simple dessert with no exotic ingredients that feeds a hungry horde.   You bake it in a large lasagne dish.  You can bake it a bit earlier in the day and reheat it to warm when you're serving it.

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
30 g butter (melted)
1 cup self raising flour (gluten free works fine)
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
tin of pie apples (800g)
3/4 cup cream
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon caramel topping
vanilla icecream to serve

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Beat the eggs, sugar, milk, melted butter, flour, salt and cinnamon together and pour into a lasagne dish.  This should be a thick batter consistency - don't be alarmed!
3. Top the mixture with the pie apples - no need to be neat.
4. Bake for 30 minutes.
5. Bring the cream and brown sugar to the boil, and stir in the caramel topping.
6. Remove the cake from the oven, prick it all over with a skewer, and carefully pour the caramel sauce over it.
7. Return it to the oven for another 20 minutes or so.  Sometimes it needs more to cook properly in the middle.
8. Serve warm with vanilla icecream.

Happy birthday Harrison

Harrison turned 7 and had his first "proper" birthday party last weekend. Coming sandwiched between my first function as our P&C fundraising organiser (barefoot bowls) and Mothers Day, as well as lots of work stuff going on (applying for my own job - successfully as it turned out) it was a pretty full on week or two. I was decorating the cake at 1:30am on Saturday morning after the barefoot bowls function! The kids all had the URL of a Flickr set on their party bags and we uploaded photos taken in front of the tent when we got home from the party. The tent was 5 bamboo poles from bunnings and some calico and safety pins. Not sure I'd want to spend the night in it!

We're now rationing birthday presents. He gets to open one a day, which means he's probably got 3 weeks of birthday love! We made a "tent" cake with a campfire (gluten free versions of jaffas as red coals, hard candies melted and used as fire, scorched almond rocks, Flake logs), and trees (gluten free icecream cones with disgusting green royal icing - a surprising hit with the kids, they all wanted to try a tree!).

Here's Eva with her god-sister Amy and Ryan.

Happy birthday Marg

Marg Y's birthday was on Saturday (Bastille Day), so Harrison, Marg and I went to Whiteman Park, where we had a ride on a steam train and a birthday picnic, and then to Caversham Wildlife Park, where we hand fed kangaroos and patted a koala. It was a glorious weekend in Perth - clear and sunny and pleasant. Quite unlike the very chilly weather they're getting on the east coast at the moment.

I made a gluten free cake for her birthday... an interesting combination since it started out being a butter cake with a hint of lemon, but then we added squares of chocolate at the insistence of my assistant chef. He couldn't conceive of a birthday cake that didn't involve chocolate! We decorated it with gluten free hundreds and thousands, and gluten free marshmallow flowers. Now if only I had a daughter I could roll out the old "hippy flower" cake for about 15 years in a row, I reckon. With Harrison I think it's going to be variations on the train theme for a few years to come.


On Sunday Harrison went to his first "theme" birthday party. It was a superman theme, so he had an excuse to wear his superman costume. The boys had no trouble dressing as super heroes, but for girls, it seems fairy and princess costumes are all they can come up with. We coped very well with the food issue - he had his own iced mini-mudcakes instead of birthday cake, and we brought along a big bag of coloured pop corn to share, plus he had a few of his own snacks as well. There was another girl who also wasn't able to eat the party food, so he didn't feel too "special".

In a couple of weeks he has a pirate party to attend, which should be fun.

3 today

Harrision is 3 today. He had a little party yesterday (more of an afternoon tea really) with his "significant adults". Much easier to handle than a party with kids. He got thoroughly spoiled, of course. I bought gluten free lamingtons from Alternative Bites, and made a lamington train cake for his birthday. We had to replace some of the sweets that the recipe called for as couplings and cargo etc with gluten free alternatives, but it turned out pretty well. Today he has taken a GF cake in the shape of the number 3 to day care.

He's also taken all his Lego Thomas trains to daycare. Simon said that he started off well, giving trains to the other kids to play with, and being very excited to be able to share them, but then there was a bit of snatching when Harrison was distracted, and he ended up with no trains at all. Worst of all, some other kid took Toby (his birthday present), which has hardly been out of his hands since he unwrapped him. I'm sure it's all a lesson in negotiation, disappointment and compromise...

Birthday

It was Simon's birthday yesterday, and there were lots of celebrations. Harrison proudly got Simon's presents out of their hiding spot first thing in the morning and helped him unwrap them. Then we had a nice fruit platter for breakfast (better than Simon's usual Up'n'Go in the car on the way to work). We had a "special" dinner of pan fried snapper with a caramelised potato and tomato salsa side dish. I had made a gluten free mud cake for his birthday cake, but the ganache hadn't had enough time to cool and solidify, so it was more of a sauce. Leah took some photos of a chocolate covered Harrison looking decidedly drunk, and one where he looked like a vampire with dark chocolate sauce dripping off his mouth. I'll add one to this post when I get a chance. After H had come down from his sugar high and gone to bed, Simon and I went out for coffee while Leah stayed home with Harrison. All in all a nice day.

Visitors galore

Leah is staying with us for a couple of weeks while she finds a house. It's lovely having her to stay, and Harrison is having a ball with her. She's fabulous with kids and seems to have endless capacity for playing games and doing silly voices or actions. That's what comes of having a "theatre person" in the house. Marg and Neil leave on Sunday for their drive across Australia. They should arrive in Perth on Easter Monday and they'll stay with us until their house is ready for habitation. They already have the lease, but they'll need to furnish it before they can move in. And finally, Simon's mum arrives in mid May for about 3 weeks.

Amidst all this excitement we have Simon's birthday tomorrow and Harrison's on May 7th. Harrison and I have done our shopping for Simon's birthday, but he's struggling a bit with the concept of keeping a secret. He told Simon this morning - completely unprompted - that he has a surprise for him AND that it's a DVD. I'd better remember to make the birthday cake tonight.

New library

Back at work this week... The new library and IT building is open, and looking great. Very bright, lots of groovy and comfy seating, the bookshop and an Aroma cafe half in and half out of the library, a big e-lab and heaps of other computers. Still a bit of unpacking and settling in to be done, and my office doesn't yet have a phone, but it's all so much better than the old library. I'm staying in my office in the school in the long term, but I'll sit in the library office for the next couple of months so that students finding their way around the new library can find me easily. It's actually really quiet, so I'll probably get a lot of work done.

H settled in well at daycare. He's a "big" boy in the toddlers room now, and seems to be loving it. The girls can't believe how much his tummy has shrunk since last year. It's so funny watching him go through his little routines there - putting his hat back on the peg, and stopping to take his sandals off before bouncing on the mini tramp without being asked. UWA is great with hygiene and tidiness and getting the kids to take responsibility, but they're also incredibly warm and loving. They were genuinely glad to see Harrison again and take real pleasure in seeing him happy and healthy. There was a birthday at daycare yesterday and he couldn't share the cake, so I made and iced a gluten free one last night and sent wrapped slices to daycare today for them to keep in the freezer and take out when there's a birthday. Hopefully it will taste OK!

We also swapped the breadmaker the family gave me for Christmas for the Panasonic one that has a gluten free setting. Made bread for H on Sunday and it was amazing! I liked the GF bread that came out the breadmaker we'd borrowed from Mel, but the stuff I made on Sunday was a much better texture, even though it's the same mix. Who knows, I may even start making ordinary bread for Simon and me.