Like any butter cake, this is a highly recommended cake for people who like normal, sweet butter cakes with that rich and oh-so-sweet buttery icing. So we added coffee, but you could just as easily add lemon, lavender or even chocolate.
Combining basil, parsley and a handful of nuts into a dip is nothing revolutionary, but the result complements the crisps and crackers so very well.
A strawberry-topped focaccia makes the prefect breakfast bread, or a great morning tea with coffee (or tea). It’s like having ready-made bread with jam. It is a deliciously not-too-sweet but sweetish focaccia-style bread.
These deep fried balls of zucchini goodness have been a favourite restaurant menu item for longer than we’ve been married. Their kabac mucveris are bigger, fluffier and deeper-fried than ours, but you can’t expect miracles from a small home kitchen that doesn’t do deep frying at all. We do shallow frying and baking with an unhealthy amount of oil, and they’re all good.
This Asian-style coleslaw, courtesy of the Paddington Foodie, has become a favourite for summer lunches and for packed lunches for work. Its healthy, filling and it has a perfect combination of tart and sweet with an underlying crunch that makes it a joy to eat.
This cake is such a last-minute throw-it-together affair. It’s quick, easy, doesn’t need any icing, and it tastes great.
This one is for those who love muffins. It’s a simple mixture of almond, apple, egg and a few other ingredients to give a really delicious and moist muffin. As a bonus, it’s perfectly suited to those can’t tolerate gluten or any starch at all.
Avocado is a bit of a luxury here, and guacamole is an absolute delicacy. Because of its specialness, our guacamole is really just mashed avocado with seasonings added: lemon juice, salt and pepper, and sometimes onion. That’s about it. If we have a few people, then it becomes a full-blown appetiser with some celery and tomato to…
This summer pasta salad of smoked salmon, avocado, fennel, lime and preserved lemon managed the high accolade of ‘my favourite pasta salad ever’. It’s easy to make and filling. You can also leave out the pasta for an easy, grain-free option.
We have a few standard car-camping meals, and the tuna, tomato and basil pasta is one of them. It tastes great, it can be cooked in a trangia (or over a campfire, but not in summer, alas), and it needs very little preparation. It’s also very healthy and full of calories, which is important when there’s another day of walking to come.
My grandmother had a vast orchard, filled with dark plums. I’m sure there was more than one variety of tree, but it’s the dark blood plums I remember. And her dark plum jam, and her jam drops. This probably isn’t exactly the recipe my grandma used (the jam is rose petal jam for a start), but these jam drops match my memory of them perfectly: the shape, the size, the colour.
This delicious rose petal jam needs no cooking: it’s raw jam. It’s just a matter of grinding sugar and rose petals into a paste. It is unusual, and you need to be selective with the rose petals: pick the freshest and most fragrant ones you can find. but it’s well worth the effort.
Salt free, sugar-free, gluten-free biscuits for a morning tea? It’s easier than you think with these almond unsweet biscuits. With just two ingredients, they’re so easy to make they’ve instantly become part of our emergency morning-tea repertoire.
Laksa is easy to make, and it never fails, provided you have the right ingredients, including a good laksa paste. We now make our own paste that suits the tastes of a household heavily influenced by a variety of Asian restaurants around town.
Create a lighter olive tapenade by popping a stick of celery into the mix. Serve the results on cucumber rounds for an easy appetiser with a difference that suits just about anyone.
It’s time for coleslaw. And not just any old coleslaw. This one comes with two options for dressing: one option is a recipe we’ve been using for years, uses a deliciously creamy, yet vegan mayonnaise, and everyone prefers it; the second one is now a new favourite and uses some much-loved ‘Asian’ flavours. Our new favourite is pictured here.
This has to be one of the tastiest and easiest ways of doing chicken I’ve come across yet. Plonk it all in a large pot, go away for an hour, et voilá it’s done. Add a salad and some rice, and there’s a very easy, delicious meal.
Broccoli soup with almonds and leek makes a delicious entree or even a light dinner: just have more if you’re still hungry!
We discovered quinoa a couple of years ago as another option for lots of things, but it was this pudding with its combination of apple, orange and quinoa, that grabbed our enthusiasm. It’s designed as a breakfast porridge, but it also makes good dessert for the über health conscious.
This cake is so easy to make: just toss everything into the bowl, mix and bake. No fuss, no problems, and a perfect cake every time.
It’s the dead easy version of our almost-easy-mix spicy-topped apple cake from a few weeks ago.
Mermaid's tresses 