Strawberry Dessert Cake

Firstly I want to wish my Mum a happy birthday! I hope she is having a wonderful day! 

We went around to my Mum and Dad's place last night for a family dinner for Mum's birthday and we made this beautiful dessert cake. I wasn't sure what I was going to make for mum's cake (she had only told me that she didn't want chocolate, so that didn't narrow it down very much), but then I had some strawberries for breakfast a few days ago and they were so sweet that I decided I wanted to use them in mum's cake. I went trawling through Grandma's recipes and stumbled across this one. 

There's a couple things that I've noticed about cooking all these old recipes. Firstly, sometimes its really hard to work out what they will look like when they are done. We are all so used to recipe books having photos of all the finished products these days! And also, on a number of occasions I have read a recipe and thought, "that can't be right" or "can't see how that is going to work" but every time the recipe comes together and surprises me! This recipe did both of these things. As we were making it last night (yes, I had to get Mum to help me make it as I have a cold and didn't want to contaminate the rest of the family, so thanks Mum for making your own cake!), Mum and I really couldn't picture how it was going to turn out. Mum kept asking "is it supposed to be like this" and I kept answering "I think so. We just have to follow the recipe and see what happens". Anyway, I'm pretty sure we got it right! It looked great and tasted even better and I'm really excited to share this recipe! 

And once again, happy birthday Mum! 

2 cups Self Raising Flour

½ teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons margarine

1 egg, well beaten

Two-thirds cup milk

Sprinkle ½ cup sugar over 4 cups sliced fresh strawberries, cover and let stand at room temperature. Sift flour, salt and sugar into basin. Work in the margarine finely. Combine the egg and milk, and stir into the flour mixture. Blend well. Spread this dough in a well greased 7 x 12 x 1 ½ inch cake pan. Spoon the berries and juice over the top of the dough. 

Now blend together ¼ cup sugar, ¼ cup butter and 3 tablespoons of self-raising flour. Drop this mixture evenly over strawberries. Bake 35 to 40 minutes in a moderately-hot oven (400 deg F). Serve warm with cream or ice-cream. Makes 8 to 10 servings.2 cups Self Raising Flour

Note: we cooked it at 180 degrees C

          The mixture that goes on top will be a similar consistency to a crumb. 

          We baked it in a round dish as we didn't have a rectangle one the right size.

Butterscotch Pie

I finally cooked a recipe tonight that my husband has been asking for since he first saw Grandma's recipes. This butterscotch pie looked easy enough but once again there was no recipe for the pie crust. I tried a different shortcrust recipe to my last attempt and it worked quite well. Also looked a lot prettier than my last attempt thanks to my new tart tins (thanks Mum and Dad!).

Filling

1 egg

½ cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons plain flour

1 cup milk

3 tablespoon cold water

2 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch salt

Prepared tart shell

Put egg yolk, sugar, milk & flour which has been mixed to paste with the cold water, and all the other ingredients into a saucepan & stir over heat until thickened. Pour into tart crust. Beat egg white & 3 tablespoons sugar, spread over top and brown in oven.

Pastry 

125g unsalted butter, chilled

1½ cups plain flour

¼ cup icing sugar

1-2 tablespoons iced water 

Process flour, butter and sugar in a food processor until mixture resembles breadrumbs. Add water and pulse until dough begins to come together into a ball, do not overmix.

Scoop mixture into a plastic freezer bag and gently press into a smooth disc. Refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.

Roll out pastry between 2 sheets of baking paper to a 3mm thickness. Line a loose based 24cm flan tin with pastry, trimming the excess. Prick base with a fork and push a large sheet of foil into the pastry shell, pressing it up and over the sides.

Bake pastry at 190°C for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake for a further 10 minutes until crisp and golden. Cool, then use as required.

(recipe from Masterchef website: http://www.masterchef.com.au/recipes/sweet-shortcrust-pastry.htm)

Pecan Pie

Pecan Pie is a dish that is often associated with special occasions, especially in the USA and is quite commonly served at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it hasn't got the same reputation here in Australia. Consequently it had been quite a few years since I had eaten pecan pie. I remember having it in a little country cafe when we went to visit my Grandparents once and thought that it was really tasty. I'd never contemplated making it before, but when I saw the recipe in Grandma's book I thought I might give it a go. Mother's day seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Grandma's recipe was just for the filling and so I did a quick google search for a shortcrust pastry recipe, however, the one I used wasn't perfect as it needed to be blind baked and then after it was then baked for an hour with the filling it became very crunchy. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't quite right. So I'm still on the hunt for the right pastry recipe and would love suggestions if anyone has them. As such, I'm only going to post the filling recipe today.

½ cup brown sugar

1 level tablespoon butter

1 cup corn syrup (substitute golden syrup)

3 eggs well beaten

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

1 unbaked pie shell

Mix well, adding pecans last. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 325°F (160°C) for approximately 1 hour or until set.

Serve with cream and chopped pecans