March 2005 . . .
Intro- wombats and other creatures
Lessons I learnt from Grandma
Too many beans
Scouring Paste
Schedule so far this year
Awards
New books
In the March garden
A Few Recipes
. Chocolate peanut butter cake
. Wombat Muffins
. Tiramisu (Adults only)
. Chocolate liqueur (Adults only, kids don't even think about this one)
. Sugarless jam (for my Dad who is diabetic)
. Scones (to eat with the jam!)
A tale of ginger beer bazookas and a recipe
Wombats and other creatures
Still no wombats about till late at night, but lots of snarls shrieks and back scratching at 2 am under the bedroom. They're not mating type shrieks and snarls, just 'that is my bit of grass IF you don't mind thank you very much' type snarls. Mothball does not like sharing her territory. Trouble is, none of the other wombats take any notice unless she bites them.
This February has been the Month of the Brown Snake- the biggest and most aggressive I've ever seen. It is at least 2 metres long but thicker than my arm- and yes, I'm sure it's a brown snake.
I first saw it about a month ago as it wriggled across grass from the vegetable garden. Most snakes slide along the edge of the garden, where it's hard to see them. But this one didn't seem to care who saw it. I suppose when you're that big no kookaburra in its right might is going to swoop on you.
It glided up to my study, then slithered in and out and up the hop vine on the pergola outside, then glided from hanging basket to hanging basket outside my study windows, so I was only half a metre from it and could count every scale (which is how I'm pretty sure it WAS a brown snake and not a copper head, or rare type of python).
Some of those baskets are more than a metre apart, but that was no problem for the snake. Finally it saw me moving- and struck at the glass. (Hope it got a headache- and a toothache).
I must have moved again because it kept on striking at me, winding round and round the baskets and along the windowsill, still trying to find a way in through the wall or the glass, striking every now and then just in case the glass had vanished.
It worked its way systematically along my study, then for the next forty minutes tried to get in all along the rest of the house too.
I was worried by then- Bryan was about to arrive home and this beast was by the front door. I heard the car pull up down on the flat and yelled at him as he came up the stairs- just in time. .
The snake leapt at him- it was on the ground by then- more than a metre high and 2 metres in length. I have never known a snake to leap like that- or known they could.
Luckily Bryan had heard me yell and was looking the right way so knew where to jump and run. The snake struck at him, missed, - thank goodness Bryan wore jeans and boots- gave him a last strike- missed again - then mooched away.
We've seen it many times since then, either asleep on the paving- it doesn't bother to hide- and once asleep on the front gate post. It gave yet another enormous leap at Bryan that time, but Bryan had seen before it woke up and got out of the way.
I've never seen a brown snake half as big, or one that climbs so high, though I know they do, as brown snakes eat bird's eggs and baby birds.
Which is lucky for us, as the small birds go insane- especially the scrub wrens- every garden needs watchful scrub wrens- when they see a brown snake in the garden, yelling and diving right around it, which lets us know when there is one about, unless it's very well hidden.
The scrub wrens don't yell when they see a red bellied black snake.
I had no idea snakes could leap so far, though, nor be so aggressive. I did know one other aggressive brown snake, but that was 30 years ago- a vicious one, that kept hunting me in the veg garden. Browns are more aggressive than red bellied blacks, but I've never known any others THAT aggressive i.e. hunting us and striking. I suppose when you're that big you can be a bastard.
So now when we go outside we wear boots and jeans - which is a nuisance in the heat- and listen carefully before we open the door in case the small birds are yelling, and are very very careful watering the hanging baskets. Roll on winter and cold weather and snake hibernation time.
Lessons I learnt from my Grandma
There are some lessons I learnt from my grandmother that probably don't need to be kept for posterity...like putting a tin can lid in when you cook fresh asparagus so it'll taste just like the genuine gourmet canned stuff; or making mayonnaise out of condensed milk vinegar sugar and yellow mustard powder or the interesting fact that a gift box of chocolates contains no calories whatsoever. Actually maybe I'll keep that one.
But there are lots of little grandma-isms that keep coming back to me where I need them, especially housework ones. My grandmother's attitude to housework was that it was always better if someone else did it, but she was still very good at know WHAT to do.
It was grandma who told me about dried eggshells and thermoses. If you've accidentally left your thermos full of white tea and it's gone off, you can sweeten it by filling it with dried eggshells and hot water and leaving it for a few days to absorb the pong.
Grandma was good on pongs. A cup of white vinegar and a glop of lavender oil remove the pong from musty sheets, and good wash with bicarb of soda and vinegar takes the pong away from mattresses where kids have had an accident too.
This stuff is also good for spots where the cat has been, or that peculiarly pungent vomit made with regurgitated strawberry milkshakes.
Grandma also told me how to clean burnt saucepans by mixing a teaspoon of bicarb with a cup of water, bring both to the boil, then leaving overnight. Scrub a bit then repeat.
One of her other lessons was how to whiten the grouting between bathroom tiles by cleaning with shoe whitener, then rubbing it off. Actually I've never bothered with his one, sorry Grandma...we seem to be able to survive with dingy grouting.
But whenever I wash windows I remember grandma saying Don't wash them on hot or windy days, or they streak...and a splodge of Metho in the water makes them sparkle.
And if you want to clean fly screens, stick on a pair of rubber gloves and rub all over them; then wipe the other side with a damp cloth. All the fluff and gunge will come off easily.
And yes, of course Grandma did tell me about always watering clean underwear in case of accidents. This one probably needs a bit of updating for the new millennia.... these days if you suspect you may be involved in an accident, make sure your underwear isn't too interesting. You want them to keep their minds on the job.
A Surplus of Beans
I've been picking beans lately. In fact I've been picking a lot of beans...yellow butter beans and round green beans and purple king beans and snake beans and three sorts of perennial runner beans.
The trouble is every spring I'm longing for a dish of fresh beans sautéed in olive oil with garlic and onion and a touch of lemon juice. So I plant every variety that catches my fancy.
And come mid summer we do have rather a lot of beans.
There are however several things you can do with a surplus of beans. You can thread them with a needle and thread and hang them up to dry to make what the Americans call leather britches. Actually they have the taste and texture of leather britches too.
You can cover them with water and boil for half an hour, then use the liquid as a rinse to stop fabric fading, except of course these days faded fabric is fashionable.
You can boil them for an hour then strain of the liquid. It'll then set like jelly, and if you're a vegetarian you can use it instead of animal based gelatines.
You can just let the bally things grow as big as they want to get. Then when they dry on the vine pick them off and shell them like peas, and keep the dried beans for use during winter. Home grown fresh dried beans are far better than any dried beans you'll buy, and ANY green bean will give you good dried beans.
And if you're really feeling masochistic you can plant some of them again next year
Scouring Paste
This is a short announcement for anyone worried about their grotty bath, fat encrusted kitchen tiles, slimy bath room floor etc. First of all go and have a good lie down, preferably with a lavender oil massage, because there are worse problems in the world than neglected household fittings.
If however if you're still agonising over your household grottiness, try mixing 1tb detergent, 3 tb baking powder, 1 tsp eucalyptus oil and 1 tb castor sugar. Rub a very little onto the grotty spot, sprinkle on some white vinegar, go and have a cup of tea, then come back and wipe it off.
This cleans just about anything. On the other hand if you try it on the cat she'll object, your budgie will turn up its toes and the mixture may stain or scratch some surfaces, so test it first. Any side effects are your fault, not mine. But it's cheap, it works and it smells good, and very little lasts a heck of a long time.
Latest books
. 'Rocket Your Child into Reading' Šabout how to teach kids to read and overcoming reading difficulties
. 'Phredde and the Vampire Footie Team'
. 'Pete the Sheep' (with Bruce Whatley... and the rest of the team who brought you 'Diary of a Wombat')!!!!!
Plus... 'To the Moon and Back' with Bryan Sullivan (otherwise known as He Who Mutters at the Wombat), 'Tom Appleby, Convict Boy' and 'My Dad the Dragon and My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome' also came out last year
Coming in early April:
'They Came in Viking Ships'Š. a novel featuring Freydis Ericsdaughter, the Viking explorer forgotten by history- I have a feeling the male historians didn't know what to make of her- Hekja the Scottish runner and Snarf, a dog. (Snarf is the only one not mentioned in the Sagas, but he should have been.)
'The Secret World of Wombats'Š. about guess whomŠall the dirt on wombats, and the stories of a few of them
And thenŠ.
'My Uncle Wal the Werewolf'
'How to Grow your own Spaceship'
'Phredde and the Runaway Ghost Train'
Schedule this year so far:
March 10th, 11th and 12th Melville Festival, Perth.
Thursday 10 March, 2005
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Herbs and Gardening talk
AH Bracks Library, Cnr Canning Hway and Stock Rd
Contact: AH Bracks Library or Dymocks Garden City Tel: 9364 0115
Cost $3 includes afternoon tea, bookings essential
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm Wombat Reading
AH Bracks Library, Cnr Canning Hway and Stock Rd
Contact: AH Bracks Library or Dymocks Garden City Tel: 9364 0115
Free Event
6:30 pm - 7:45 pm Rocket Your Child into Reading
AH Bracks Library, Cnr Canning Hway and Stock Rd
Contact: AH Bracks Library or Dymocks Garden City Tel: 9364 0115
Cost $3 includes light supper, bookings essential
Friday 11 March, 2005
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Rocket Your Child into Reading
Willagee Community Centre, Archibald Street, Willagee
Contact: Willagee Community Centre Tel: 9364 0848
Cost $2, bookings essential
7:00 pm - 11:00 pm George Negus and Jackie French – Literary Dinner
Bluewater Grill, Heathcote Cultural Centre, Duncraig Road, Applecross
Contact: Bluewater Grill Tel: 9315 7700
Cost $70, includes 3 course meal, wine and beer, bookings essential
Saturday 12 March, 2005
9:30 am - 11:00 am Young Booklovers' Breakfast – Wombats and other stories
Bluewater Grill, Heathcote Cultural Centre, Duncraig Road, Applecross
Contact: Bluewater Grill Tel: 9315 7700
Cost children $2, adults $5, includes light breakfast, bookings essential
March 17th, Librarians' Conference, Harrietville Victoria.
March 18th, 19th, Two Fires Festival, Braidwood, including a talk with Val Plumwood on the Friday about Living with Wildlife.
March 27th (Easter Sunday), Two Open Garden Workshops here. Bookings essential – there are only forty places in each workshop. Each workshop will go for three hours and will include morning or afternoon tea. There will be a general talk for about an hour with questions, then a tour around the garden explaining how we can grow 266 types of fruit here, including tropicals like avocadoes, bananas, sapotes, coffee, cinnamon and how we use groves to protect our trees from frost, heat, drought, possums, birds and winds like the breath of hell. Kids over eight welcomeŠ but be aware that there are water hazards and machinery so it isn't suitable for kids under eight. Contact the Open Garden Scheme for details at act@opengarden.org.au or call 0269 432666
April 10th 13 th, ASLA Conference, Canberra, including a 'Meet the Wombats and Have Lunch' tour down here. (Wombats not guaranteed, but you'll certainly see lots of wombat holes! Plus hear the true history behind the books.)
April 23rd and 24th, Conflux Sci-Fi Conference, Canberra.
May 9-11, Talks and workshops at Bowen, Qld. Contact Susan Conolly at Queen's Beach State School, 07 4785 1255.
June 6-12 Storylines Literary Festival in New Zealand
June 22nd and 23rd, Gardening School at Toowoomba, Qld.
July 18, 19, 20 talks in Brisbane, contact Helen Bain at Booked Out helen@ngi.com.au for bookings
August 15th, 16th and 17th, Sydney Book Week talks. Contact Lateral Learning on bookings@laterallearning.com
August 22nd, 23rd and 24th, Melbourne Book Week talks. Contact Booked Out on lauris@bookedout.com.au
Sept 30th - October 1st, Bega, NSW Rural Women's gathering.
October 21 Open Garden Seminar at Taree. Contact Lynne Walker at the Open Garden Scheme at nthnsw@opengarden.org.au
25 October Talk for Canberra Organic Growers
27 November Garden Workshops. Contact Open garden as above.
If you'd like to book other talks or workshops contact Lateral Learning (Lateral Learning, bookings@laterallearning.com) – often I can fit in other events when I'm in the area. But please don't contact them just to get a message to me!
As Lateral Learning is a booking agency they only take bookings for paid talks and charge a fee for all bookings. If your event is non-profit it's best to write to me directly at PO Box 63, Braidwood, 2622 to see if I can fit it in, or email Harper Collins.
March in the Garden
March is the harvest month- the time to gather in what you've grown and keep it safe for winter. It's a gentle month. The sun isn't as fierce and there's a touch of lushness in the growth- the Autumn flush before the winter.
In autumn the soil cools down and things start growing. Autumn flushes are as marked as spring flushes. Fruit swells as much in a week as it did in the previous month and new soft shoots appear all over the place.
The weather is cooling now. With a few exceptions like spinach, broad beans and cabbages the main vegetable planting time is over.
Autumn's new growth is attractive to sap sucking pests. Luckily these are less of a problem that they are on spring new growth- there are more predators around after a summer's breeding to cope with them. If you are worried by aphids and other sap suckers try a reflective alfoil mulch to deter them, or use a glue spray- mix 1 cup flour with 1 cup boiling water, then mix in cold water till it's just spray able. Strain out the lumps before using! Use at once before it sets into clag an d wash the sprayer well.
Mostly I just squash aphids or leave them alone- they'll disappear soon enough in cold weather anyway.
The other reason for leaving the aphids alone is that they will help regulate that soft sappy growth, which is liable to be blackened by frost- and dead material can host fungus and other disease that might start die back along the branch or twig. Don't always assume that pest damage is bad in the long run.
Bedding Your Garden Down for Winter
Don't mulch
Mulching stops roots freezing- it insulates them. It will also increase frost damage to the leaves above. So choose- frozen roots or frozen leaves. Instead of mulch, plant ground covers around your frost sensitive plants- like marjoram or dyers camomile or very early bulbs that will provide living insulation.
Plant thickly
A better alternative to mulch is just to plant very thickly, so that the leaf cover both insulates the roots and other plants around. I keep masses of foliage turnips and radish and parsnips in our garden over winter- far more than we need- just to help protect the other plants around.
Crowded broccoli plants and crowded silver beet plants in our garden continue to produce long after the 'spaced' ones have stopped.
Don't clean up the garden
Leave those corn stalks, radish going to seed and patches of weeds alone. The weeds probably won't seed or run about till spring anyway - and they'll protect the soil and help insulate your plants.
Gardeners who recommend you spend your peaceful winter months 'tidying up the garden' just have a fetish for straight rows and nice chocolaty bare earth. This may help their spirits but won't help the garden. Gardens are wasted on people with a passion for sweat and blisters. Gentle pottering and a bit of contemplation are more effective than maniacs with mattocks.
Planting
Autumn is the time to prepare for the hungry gap. The hungry gap is spring to early summer. It's the time when you have eaten most of the surplus from last autumn- the apples, pumpkins, old carrots and parsnips in the garden- but the new seasons crops are still months away from maturing.
A few hundred years ago the hungry gap was the starvation time, the scurvy and plague time, when the weather was warming up but people's diet was still poor.
If it isn't in your garden now you won't be eating it in spring. The carrots, celery, silver beet etc you planted last spring will have to last you to the next one, the pumpkins and melons ripening on the vine will be stored through winter, the cauliflower and other brassicas should be steadily maturing.
If you don't have enough crops in now you will either be hungry or shopping at the supermarket. If you want fresh food in spring it should be growing now.
It's a bit late now for most things. Anything you plant now must either be quick maturing, or the sort of plant that will go quickly to seed as soon as the weather heats up - like peas, cauliflowers, broccoli- the sprouts and pods you eat are the immature seed heads.
If the soil still feels warm when you stick a couple of fingers in it, try spinach- real English spinach, not the smaller new Zealand spinach or big leafed silver beet. The leaves are smaller softer and more delicate than silver beet and run to seed in hot weather, though new varieties are a bit more bolt resistant. The taste is delicate and delicious and they are worth the effort,
Pick the leaves as young as you want. Steam them, stuff them or sauté them in butter. There is an old gluttonous French recipe that I have never tried. You pick a kilo of spinach. Sauté in butter till the butter has disappeared. Next day- adds more butter and sauté again. Do this for a week. At the end of the week eat the resulting buttery puree- very rich, very delicate, and just enough for one.
Without going to these extremes though well-buttered spinach puree on toast is a winter delicacy.
Onions can also be sown now, and right through the colder months. Cold weather means bigger bulbs. Summer onions are all green tops and no bottoms.
Start putting in the brown skinned long keeping onions now till the end of winter. Pukehoe is a fine textured good tasting excellent keeper- but there are so many onion varieties it is fun to experiment. Like spinach you've never eaten onions till you've had fresh ones. Many gardeners don't bother growing them because they are slow, hate weed competition and are so cheap. But when you can only buy white red or brown onions in the shops a true onion taste is a luxury.
Other Autumn crops include:
.kale, or borecole, very easy to grow with dark green curly leaves
.Chinese mustard, with thick succulent stems- very fast growing and easy to germinate. It will keep producing when your silver beet has slowed down- and shouldn't go to seed till late in spring.
. collards- a leafy cabbage like green traditionally cooked with bacon grease but better just steamed with butter. These can be planted from spring through to late Autumn.
.edible Chinese chrysanthemum -you harvest the leaves after 35 days, and eat them steamed or in soup or stews.
.Corn salad or lambs lettuce is a traditional European salad green, also used for cooking. It should be grown in autumn rather than spring-it's less bitter in cool weather and won't run to seed till spring. It is slightly too strong for many tastes. Cover the plant with a large pot or box for a week before picking to lessen the strong flavour.
.swedes can be grown in temperate to tropical areas now. Don't confuse home grown swedes with the rank disasters available commercially. Swedes should be picked small and young- unless you want to feed them to the cow- and they lose their strong taste if grown in cold weather. Sow thickly and eat as small as possible or they'll taste like stock food.
.carrots and leeks and beetroot and silver beet can be sown in armer spots- as long as the soil still feels comfortable on your wrist they'll germinate. But they won't grow much till spring- and then they'll jump to seed, leaving you with spindly veg that tend to toughen.
.broad beans will crop in spring- try planting them against wire so they don't fall over and picking is easier. The extra light will also encourage more flowers.)
. peas- try dwarf sugar snap, a very quick maturing pea- eat the whole pod like a bean; snow peas- eat the flat pods;
.turnips-these need cold weather for sweetening- plant mini varieties now so they mature before bolting)
.watercress ( keep snipping so it doesn't go to seed).
Warm and subtropical areas might still try quick yielders like- .tampala (Chinese spinach or leaf amaranth). You'll get edible leaves in about six weeks of warm weather.),
. Chinese cabbage (about eight weeks to maturity- they're good even if they bolt without hearting in spring)
. cauliflowers ( early and late varieties will tend to crop about the same time in spring if sown now)
.kohlrabies if you don't expect a frost for the next ten weeks ( big cabbage flavoured roots, incredibly easy to grow; try them cooked or grated raw), .red mignonette lettuce ( if it bolts in spring don't worry- you've just got free seed for summer planting )
.cos lettuce ( pick off the leaves and eat them as they grow)
. Broccolli (it may not grow much now but it'll be ready sooner in spring).
Other Jobs for March
. divide agapanthus and other large clumped plants. One big clump can give you twenty new plants!
. move shrubs and small trees while the weather is cool, but still warm enough for them to put out new roots
. take rose cuttings: - snappable wood about as long as you hand. Fill a box with clean sand and plant so just the top third is poking out. Keep moist and in semi shade; pant out your new roses next winter
. keep pots of succulents dryish- if they die over winter it may be too much moisture, rather than cold that kills them
. leave pumpkins in a sunny spot I.e. the shed roof or on paving) for a few days to 'cure' so their skins will harden before storing them (on their sides- moisture collects in the tops and bottoms and the pumpkin may rot)
. pick off African violet, rex begonia, gloxinia, pepperomia leaves. Poke the leaves veins downwards into clean sand till the leaves are half covered New roots will form at the ends of the veins- and by next spring you'll have new plants to pot out.
Harvest: Melons and okra will be ripening. As well as most summer vegetables – especially tomatoes, corn, eggplant, zuchinni by the bucket load- early cabbages and other winter vegetables may be starting to mature. This is a good time for peas, and for digging sweet potato roots
Fruit: olives, a few late oranges, lemons, kumquats, figs, late peaches, late nectarines, apples, passionfruit, pepino, babaco, paw paw or mountain paw paw in warm areas, sapote, macadamias, hazelnuts, almonds, tamarillo, strawberries, autumn raspberries, brambleberries, early quinces, early persimmons, pears, melons, pecans, bunya nuts, late grapes, banana passionfruit, Cape gooseberries
What to Plant in March
New veg to try: coloured chard- just like silver beet but with brilliant yellow pink or reed stems, long white radish- very mid tasting and fast growing ornamental kale- frilly and coloured but can be finely chopped to make a stunning coleslaw, sweet, tiny red mignonette lettuce, crisp fast growing Japanese turnips
Hot climates.
Plant to eat: garlic, macadamias, avocados, bananas, custard apples, lychees, sapodilla, star fruit, paw paws, mangoes, passionfruit, citrus, strawberry plants, capsicum, carrots, chilli, cauliflowers, eggplant, okra, potatoes, silver beet, sweet corn, zucchini.
Plants for beauty: hibiscus bushes, calendula, poppy, primula, snapdragon, sunflower, salvias; fill bare spots with ferns.
Temperate:
Plants to eat: garlic, macadamias, avocado trees, citrus, strawberries, beetroot, broccoli, broad beans, cabbage, carrots (mini or 'French round' carrots mature fastest), cauliflower, garlic, leeks, parsnips, spinach, celery, fast maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: bulbs, including liliums, agapanthus, iris; multi stemmed jonquils, heat hardy tulip varieties, flowers like alyssum, dianthus, pansies, primulas, salvias, poppies, sweet peas, stock. Grevilleas for nectar for the birds (Superb and Robyn Gordon and her relatives bloom throughout the year)
Cold climates:
Plants to eat: garlic, strawberry runners, broad beans, spinach, onions, seedlings of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, fast maturing Asian veg like tasto, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: bulbs like daffodils, jonquils, tulips, anemones, hyacinths, freesias, ranunculi, seedlings of Iceland poppy, primulas, pansies, polyanthus, sweet peas.
A Few recipes
Sugar Free jam
500 gm apples, or half apples and half berries
2-4 tb chopped cooked ginger, optional
Juice of two large lemons
Half tsp tartaric acid
2 tb Jamsetta (from supermarket)
1 tb liquid sweetener optional: may not need it!
Cook all except Jamsetta and sweetener till it goes glop glop and it very thick. Add Jamsetta and sweetener to taste cook another two minutes then pour into sterilised jars. Keep in a cool place or the fridge- this jam doesn't keep very well as it has no added sugar.
Scones
Mix
2 and a half cups SR flour
Quarter tsp salt
2 tb butter
One and a quarter cups half milk half water, or Shape milk, or buttermilk
Roll out to the thickness of a largish snail; cut out rounds with an inverted glass. Heat oven as hot as possible; cook on a greased tray or baking paper, each scone touching the other, for 15 minutes or till brown on top. Take out and AT ONCE wrap in clean tea towel to soften a bit. Serve hot and fresh.
Note: can be brushed with beaten egg or milk before cooking for a glossy top. I cook mine in a lamington pan- the ones on the side keep their shape better in that. This amount will nicely fill a lamington pan.
Wombat Muffins
(Carrots for the wombats; rounded choc tops that look like wombats)
Ingredients
3 large raw carrots, peeled and grated OR 2 large beetroot, NOT canned, cooked, peeled and grated
1 and three quarters of a cup SR flour
Third cup cocoa powder
1-cup brown sugar
2 eggs
Third of a cup olive oil
Third of cup buttermilk
Put oven on to 225C while you mix the muffins. Muffins must be put into a hot oven or they won't rise well.
Mix well, by hand- mechanical mixers over beat them.
Place in greased muffin pan or paper cups. Cook for about 25 minutes, or till well risen and kitchen smells of chocolate. Check after 20 minutes to make sure they aren't singeing on top.
Rum and chocolate Tiramisu
1 choc cake
2 cups coffee
Half-cup sugar
4-tb rum
600 ml cream
One and a half cups mascerpone or King island cream
2 cups sliced strawberries, or raspberries, or cherries, cooked or raw
Grated chocolate
Boil coffee and sugar for five minutes.
Mix cream mascarpone and rum.
Cut cake into five slices.
Drizzle the coffee mix onto the cake slices. Spread cream mix and fruit between the layers of cake. The final layer should be cream mix. Scatter on grated chocolate. Keep in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 48 hours, but best eaten after about 4 hours. Very very yummy.
Ps you can double the amount of rum, or use Marsala instead of rum or a chocolate liqueur.
Chocolate Liqueur
400 gm can sweetened condensed milk
300 ml cream
1 cup whisky
20 squares dark chocolate OR 4 tb bottled choc sauce
Optional:
half cup strong coffee made by adding half cup boiling water to 2 tb ground coffee
6 drops Tabasco sauce
1 pinch ground ginger
1 pinch ground cinnamon
ground nutmeg to sprinkle
and
3 raw eggs if you need sustaining (don't worry- they just make it richer and fluffier!)
(any or all of these optionals can be added)
Method
If using the chocolate - which is the best but fussier- break it up roughly, place in a pan or microwave with the cream, and melt on low heat. Do not let it boil or even simmer! Stir till well mixed.
Take off the heat. Add the other stuff. Beat well with a blender or eggbeater or fork and lots of arm power till it's frothy.
Drink at once, in suitably small glasses, with a sprinkle of nutmeg on the top. If you scoff the lot don't blame me.
Store in a bottle in the fridge for up to a week, or 24 hours if the eggs have been added. It may well last a lot longer than that but I as far as I know no one has had that much willpower....
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
100 gm dark chocolate
125 gm butter
125 gm chunky peanut butter
1 and a half cups brown sugar
2 eggs
three quarters of a cup SR flour
half cup plain flour
half a cup milk, or light sour cream, or buttermilk
Turn the oven on to 200 C. Line a cake tin with baking paper.
Melt butter and chocolate; take off heat when JUST melted and beat in sugar, then peanut butter, then the eggs one by one. Now add the flours and milk and mix gently- don't overbeat. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 45m- 1 hour, or till the top springs back when you gently press it and the top is mid brown, not pale or black!
Take from oven. Leave in the pan for 20 minutes to cool a little and firm up, then tip out and peel back the baking paper. When cool ice with plain chocolate icing, or caramel choc icing:
1 cup icing sugar
1 tb melted chocolate
1 tb caramel topping
enough milk to moisten enough to mix...add a tsp at a time so you don't make it too moist.
Ginger Beer Bazookas and a Recipe from the Past
When I was twelve our family made its first ginger beer. It was a complicated procedure. We nurtured a 'plant' for weeks, adding sugar and ginger every morning, before we fed the dog; or double if we'd forgotten or were late for the bus the morning before, and a bit more for luck, said my mother gaily, with a happy disregard of recipes. We scavenged lemons off the tree next door, and bottles from someone else- in those days of deposits on the bottles you had to be quick, or some toad down the road would grab the lot.
Then we brewed. My memories of brewing are indistinct, mixed up with the smell of porridge stuck to the bottom of the saucepan and marmite all over the bench and shouts of 'Has any one fed the cockatoo?' and 'Where's my other sock?' Somewhere in the toast crumbs and flying sunflower seeds (the cockatoo got stroppy if it wasn't fed by 8) my Mother added a teaspoon of plant to each bottle, then sugar, and water, and lemon juice. Actually she could never remember how much sugar and how much lemon juice - the recipe had been eaten by the cockatoo. The cockatoo sat on the back porch and made rude comments as you travelled to the dunny, and imitated the telephone perfectly, just as you were comfortably seated- so she generally added what was left in the packet, if the grocer was coming that afternoon and she wanted to empty the caddy.
You also had to put six raisins in each bottle. We didn't have any raisins that first time. We left the raisins out. I meant to pick some up on the way home from school, but forgot, and it was too hot to go down to the shop and anyway the Flintstones were on television- the first time around. My mother suggested dates instead, but was outvoted. We broke into the Christmas muscatels.
The brew worked. That is to say it bubbled. It bubbled perfectly. We put the bottles in the laundry to mature. Laundries are the classic place to brew ginger beer. Ours housed the dog as well, as well as a budgie cage ( the budgie was deceased- I think it was discouraged by the cockatoo), the foundations of my perpetual motion machine (still unperfected) two tricycles, a pogo stick, an old blanket the dog slept on, a mop, two paint cans left over from the time my mother thought the steps would look better green, the washing machine, and the mangle. The mangle rivalled the cockatoo in malice. It ate sheets, and sports uniforms on the last day of holidays, when everywhere was sold out of replacements, and it was no use my mother arguing I should have taken it out of the bag at the beginning of the holidays, not the end; the mangle wouldn't have eaten it at the beginning of the holidays. The mangle was no fool. It would have waited till the first week of term instead.
My mother claimed that mangles developed your hand eye coordination; mangling mothers produced cricketer sons, in some freak of acquired genetic inheritance; but she had no hesitation in discarding it a few years later for an automatic model, thus blighting our hopes of free seats at Lords.
It was hot that first summer we made ginger beer. The bitumen collapsed on the road outside, and stuck to our thongs; it was the first summer I remember I actually chose to wear shoes; even the bindi eyes burnt through your callouses.
Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the extra sugar. Maybe muscatels have more than their fair share of yeast and we should have tried the dates instead. Maybe it's simply my mother's fate that every recipe she follows- or almost follows- goes wrong. Maybe it was just poetic justice that the dog, who'd kept us awake for three nights the week before when the corgi over the road was on heat (corgis sexual flavours float further) should have his own rest interrupted.
I don't think the dog ever recovered from the explosions. Not just one, but a series, as though the first set off the others. Most of us were out of bed by the fourth, and at the laundry door by the sixth, though my youngest brother who was still in nappies didn't make it till the tenth had blown its neck right through the window and into next door's gerberas. There didn't seem to be much we could do about it. My mother shut the laundry door to contain the damage, and we went back to bed.
The dog was still whimpering in the morning, huddled against the cockies cage, as though it still possessed a bird that might protect it. He wasn't hurt, though he stank of ginger for weeks, and preferred to sleep under the back stairs from then on. Even the sound of the mangle made him shiver. The cockie looked a bit shattered too; it hadn't realised there was any noise in the world louder than him.
There was glass on the mangle, and in my perpetual motion machine and all around the pogo stick, and ginger beer still bubbling in the carry trays of the tricycles, and the dog's blanket seemed to have brewed up a special froth of its own and was popping happily in the corner. There were also three ginger beer bottles, still intact.
Three ginger beer bottles presented a problem. If left to themselves without the pressure released they might explode. On the other hand, they might explode anyway. We looked in the pink pages for ginger beer bomb disposal units, but there weren't any. We had two alternatives; someone could risk life and limb and take the caps off, or we could put the laundry in quarantine indefinitely.
Then last wasn't really an option. My other was pining for some hand eye coordination with the mangle. I wanted to work on my perpetual motion machine and the owners of the tricycles were whingeing on the back stairs. Also the bottles might explode at any unsuspecting intruder, like Mrs Lemon next door when she borrowed the soap, or the butcher who left his tray there when we were out, and the dog had to sleep somewhere, the cockies cage was all very well but what if it rained, and anyway his fur was full of chewed sunflower seeds the cockie had spat out during the night.
My mother has never shirked a crisis. With cries of 'Stand back you lot! I mean stand back!" she attacked the bottles and released the pressure. The bottles promptly volcanoed over her sixties' perm, neat waves down her head, and the dog began to whimper again and raced for the garage under the house, not to return till the cockie yelled, 'Here dog, dinner!' in mid afternoon, a subtle practical joke he indulged in several times a day.
Actually the remnants weren't too bad. We made another lot, and that was even better, with the whole family organised in a roster to let the pressure off, before school and after school and another when we put the dog out. A mob of school friends got tiddly on it; at least we hoped we did.
I made my first solo batch of ginger beer about fifteen years later. I was living in a one room shed at the time, so it would be my bed that got wet, not the dogs. But it didn't. We'd bought some Fowlers ginger beer bottles, which might have helped, with hinged lids that popped off under pressure; lovely things but I don't think they make them any more.
Not that it matters as much now. Plastic tends to crack rather than explode, and you can always leave screw tops on loosely. Explosions from the laundry or cellar or under the house are no longer a necessary part of ginger beer making.
In fifteen years I've refined the ginger beer recip a bit. This one only takes 48 hours to brew and about 5 minutes work, as opposed to the three weeks of morning cultivations with the ginger beer plant.
Recipe:
Warning: this does contain very slight amounts of alcohol- all brewed soft drinks do. It is not suitable for small children.
For every litre bottle of ginger beer you want to make, slice a lemon, bung it in a saucepan with half a cup of sugar (raw sugar gives it more body; white sugar a clear drink; honey turns it into an explosive ginger mead), half a teaspoon of powdered or a thumb nail sized bit of fresh ginger, and two thirds of a litre of water. Boil for five minutes- stir a few times so the sugar doesn't form a rock like toffee on the bottom.
Leave till almost cool WITH THE LID ON, add a pinch of dried yeast, and leave overnight, again with the lid on. Bottle in clean PLASTIC bottles, filling them only two thirds full. Leave for another 24 hours, cool, and drink. Keep in the fridge, but for no more than week. Throw out if it gets mildew or otherwise looks odd.
I usually make about six bottles at at a time. The mixture in the saucepan is syrupy with so much sugar and the lemons are almost candied, but it still brews up well. It's a more beer like ginger beer than you'll buy in the shops, slightly bitter, very bubbly, and not very sweet. If you want to make a blander drink add lemon juice instead of sliced lemons, and use white sugar- a cup rather than three quarters of a cup.
And let the pressure out often. Plastic bottles may not turn into bazookas in the laundry, but they can spit a froth of ginger beer a room's length with ease.
Jackie French