Yorkshire Pudding with Ice Cream and Caramel Fudge Sauce

Yorkshire Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream and Caramel Fudge Sauce

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For the last couple of weeks I have been having a strong craving for Yorkshire Pudding but not in the 

traditional way of serving it with roast beef and gravy and some greens. I wanted something sweet, hot and cold (though this is an impossibility), and with the crunch and softness of Yorkshire pudding.

This morning at around 7 am I just had to get up and make it. So the recipe I know is to make tthe pudding in reverse - by  whisking the eggs, salt, pepper and milk together and leave them for about 15 minutes. But before you do your whisking first switch your oven on to as high as it can go, ours is at 230 degrees Celsius. then you do your whisking. Whilst leaving your mixture, rub either beef droppings ("omagadhi gee ngobe" to the Owambo people) or vegetable fat in a baking pan and put on a rack in the oven.

For the measurement I used 6 eggs, 2 cups of milk, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 3 pinches of pepper (black or white).

After 15 minutes, add the flour (2 1/4 cups) to the mixture and whisk, then pour into the heated pan in the oven and bake (don't open the oven door even if it smokes) for 20 minutes and it is golden and risen.

Freshly baked Yorkshire Pudding

I serve immediately while it is hot with e few scoops of vanilla ice cream (I like country fresh by nestle) and a drizzle of caramel fudge sauce (I like the one by So!Go).

Caramel Fudge Sauce

Vanilla Ice Cream

Sweet dessert (breakfast in my case)

Try it and let me know what you think :)

Smoked Snoek Chowder

Snoek is a long thin commercial food fish found in the seas of the Souther hemisphere. This fish can grow to as large as 200 centimetres and have a mass of up to 6 kilograms. It is an oily fish, very bony and has very fine scales. You can buy it fresh, frozen, smoked or canned. It is quite common and is considered a delicacy in Namibia and South Africa (even more so than in Namibia). Snoek has a very distinct taste and flavour - and we love it.

So when my father brought home smoked snoek last Wednesday, my brain was a buzz with all the recipes I can try out and my fingers began to tingle with anticipation. I like soupy things, so I decided to make smoked snoek chowder.

Smoked Snoek Chowder

For the chowder I used potatoes, leeks (the white part only), celery, portobello mushrooms, salt, fresh parsley, fresh thyme, black pepper, white wine, water, vegetable stock powder, all purpose flour and the smoked snoek (de-boned and roughly shredded).

First, you make the base for the chowder, which is the same way you would make a typical potato and leek soup, then when that is cooked you add a third of your snoek and cook it for about five minutes on low heat. Once that is simmered down you add the rest of the snoek and take it of the heat and leave for 10 minutes. After that you can serve with either some form of bread or just eat it as it is.

I must say this was a hit, and with winter coming on there is bound to be a lot more of this chowder and other soups on the cards.

Of Birthdays and Graduations

The last weekend of April I was quite busy with baking. It began on the Wednesday when my baby brother asked me to bake the carrot cake, that I have, by now, perfected, for his birthday.

Baby Brother's Carrot cake - his friends went wild for this :)

The current recipe for the cake includes more flour as some of my reviewers felt it was too moist. I must say, right now people are happy with the current recipe.

Of course, one cake does not constitute "busy with baking". On the Thursday, my baby brother's birthday, I had to do a bit more baking for my step mother's, "mom 2" as I say when I need to differentiate between my two mothers, graduation tea on the Friday. Anyway, this blog is not about that. Uhm, to get back on track, I made five cakes, the carrot again, two chocolate cakes, a coconut cake, and a carrot coconut cake.
I don't think I shall talk much about the carrot cake as that is a very well sung song.

Chocolate Cake

Chocolate cake with Nutella topping

I have also, by now, gotten better at making chocolate cakes. This recipe is very easy and does not use hot water like I did before. The ingredients are not much - its just flour, baking soda and powder, cocoa powder, oil, sugar, a few scoops of fig jam (not marmalade or preserve) and eggs. So, jo (by the way this is not a typo), mix together, whisk, pour and bake. I baked four of these to make two iced cakes.

The icing on the cake couldn't be more simple, just sandwich the cakes together with fig jam and cover the top of the cake with Nutella. Simple!

Coconut Cake

Island Coconut Cake with Mango Coconut Syrup Icing

I was in such a island mood, which is something quite alien to me - I'm a winter and snow type of girl, and decided to bake a coconut cake. I've never attempted one before as I was always fearful of it being too dry. Mind you, this cake uses butter, quite a large amount of milk and tons of coconut. I also added some spices just so it did not come out bland.








I was not quite sure what to do to make this cake attractive - first of all it is quite a large cake so I was overwhelmed. In the end I used cream cheese icing to sandwich the base and the top together and then used mangoes (in true island mode) for the top before drizzling over a mango and coconut syrup. For the syrup I used mango juice, desiccated coconut, icing sugar and a bit of lime and simmered this in a pan until it reached the consistency of maple syrup.

Monster of a Cake

On cutting the cake it felt just a little hard and all my fears of a dry cake seamed to be coming true. But when one ate the cake it was moist and soft so I was quite baffled.

Coconut Carrot Cake

Coconut Carrot Cake

The last cake I baked was made similar to the coconut cake, but with two thirds of coconut to a third of grated carrots and no milk only butter.










Anyway, this cake is so different from the coconut cake as the cakes are flat (probably because the moisture is less) and hence produce a small tea cake. To ice I used smooth cream cheese icing with desiccated coconut.

Messy plate :(

Please let me know of any cakes you would like me to try out next and just general food recipes are also welcome.

Almond Cake

It has certainly taken a while to post the "iced" almond naartjie cake pictures! And no, I did not just ice my cake today. Fruit cakes do not keep well for long periods of time unless one has added (and keeps adding) some form of liquor to the cake.

Anyway, I decided to go with a kumquat marmalade as the icing bit.

Kumquat covered Almond Naartjie 

Kumquat marmalade used to "ice" the cake

The reviews on this method of "icing" weren't great. Overall, everyone liked the actual cake - my cousin and I put our taste buds to good use to ensure the ingredients were well balanced before baking. On tasting the batter, we opted for it to be a bit too sweet and upon baking the cake sweetness was just right. Even my father, who is not the sweet-toothed sort of man enjoyed it. My father's reaction to the cake was the marmalade was "not the icing on the cake and overpowers all other flavours".

Now I, and anyone else who wants to try this recipe, know that serve the cake as it is. No icings, unless of course you go with the hazelnut icing used for the cupcakes.

Flour-less Almond Naartjie Cake should be served without an icing
for better appreciation of its natural flavour of almonds and naartjies

Of Butterflies ....

I found this butterfly in the kitchen and found it to be quite fascinating. I fell madly and deeply in love with it. we spent the day doing our beautiful dance - we did the tango (she was playing hard to capture with the camera), and the quickstep (flying away from the camera) and then we danced slow (success).

By the end of the day I found my new found love drowning in water in the sink. I couldn't even save her since the water was very warm. By the time I got to her she was dead. Very heart broken.

I'll forever cherish the way we danced!

Naartjie Almond Cake and Cupcakes

My plan this weekend was to make three cakes but on account of me not finding all the ingredients for the cakes I could only make one.

I've been meaning to make naartjie almond cake for awhile, but the fear of it not turning out well or it not being received well always left me hesitant.

I awoke at three am to boil the naartjies, in question, for two hours and left them to cool before puree-ing them. Note this is a flourless cake, which is what made me apprehensive. I wasn't sure if it would come out of the tin well, and it being a fruit cake meant it would burn easily. So I opted for cupcakes, which I could watch and time to ensure no burning, and a cake (just to see how it came out) for this recipe.


Its so simple and only uses about five ingredients - sugar, naartjies, powdered almonds, eggs and baking powder. The trick with this recipe is trying to balance the bitterness of the naartjies and the sweetness of the sugar. I found it helped to add a bit of vanilla to pureed fruit.

This time I also tried my hand at decorating. I used a marshmallow fondant icing, which I had made on Thursday afternoon, to fashion my decorations. It was quite a mission to try and colour the icing. It occurs to me now that I should have added the colour to the melted marshmallows before turning them into fondant. Anyway, I fashioned flowers - or what I think flowers look like.

For the actual icing bit I used a hazelnut chocolate German equivalent of Nutella. Delicious.

I'm still not sure how I want to ice the cake version of the recipe - perhaps I'll serve it as is or maybe add sticky orange preserve.

Let me know what you think and please feel free to make suggestions for recipes I should try out next.

Breakfast Again.....

I awoke this morning to the heat of the sun's rays on my face which made me wonder when exactly I had left the curtains not drawn. Then our puppy, seeing me awake from my window, decided it was the best time for it to bark and nag for a bit of breakfast. This puppy can be quite annoying if it wasn't too funny.

Having finished giving the puppy and its 9 year old father their breakfast, I too was quite famished. I must say I prepared a much larger breakfast than I could finish - but finish it I did and had to carry out my work on a very full stomach.

Anyway for breakfast it was a chive omelette, with a salad consisting of olive oil stir fried

bean sprouts, basil and two types of lettuce all laced with a honey mustard dressing. I decided to go overboard and add last nights meat balls - made the same way as the Namibian meatballs, but with three types of mince (lean beef, normal beef, and pork).








I then topped it off with a banana, yoghurt, coconut cookies and rooibos tea.