A retro flan for Christmas lunch

Growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s, a flan wasn't the fluted tart thing that we know now, it had a sort of sponge case, and my Mum regularly made one for Sunday lunch.
I've recently pulled out the Tala brand flan tin she gave me when she was downsizing her kitchen gear some years ago, and decided to have a try at making one from her recipe.

 This is the tin - upside down,
and below is the tin with the sponge
mixture in it, before going into the oven
for cooking.





The recipe follows:  (I changed Mum's 1950s instruction to "grease the tin well with animal fat" and instead suggest you use a good coating of baking spray!)
4 oz (100g) butter
4 oz (100g) sugar
4 oz (100g) self-raising flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons warm water
Cream butter and sugar, gradually add eggs previously beaten together, add the warm water, then gently fold in the flour.  Bake 25 minutes at 170 degrees.


Allow to sit for 2 minutes when removed from the oven, then turn out.

Out of the oven, and turned out, this is the cooked flan shell.  In the background is the "Tala" flan tin showing what it looks like on the side that you put the the mixture in.

The Filling:

¾ cup milk                              2 egg yolks                              2 tlblspns sugar

2 tblspns flour                          2 teaspn grated lemon rind     juice of a lemon

¼ teasp salt

Heat milk until almost boiling.  Beat yolks and sugar in bowl over boiling water.  Stir in flour.  Pour hot milk over eggs, stirring all the time. Cook until flour is cooked, add rind and salt, and as much lemon juice as is necessary for taste and texture.  Pour into flan case.

I then put the drained contents of a 400g tin of pitted cherries on top, and then made a meringue with the egg whites as follows:


Meringue – Beat the 2 egg whites till thick.  Add 90g sugar in the last stages, gradually, continue whisking until stiff.  Pile meringue on top of flan, making sure it comes right to the edges.  Dust with sugar.  Bake 170º ten minutes, keeping a close watch on the colouring.

 
Happy Christmas to one and all!

Netting the Plum Tree - pai te mahi, Kuia!*

*Awesome work, Nana!

I have just netted my Satsuma Plum Tree.
I can say that pretty quickly, but it was two hours of ladder shifting and climbing, stretching my arms and the netting only to find my arms weren't long enough and the netting was snagged on twigs.  Down again, and unhooking the netting (which I sewed into a sort of tent shape last year) and trying again from a different part of the tree.  I had laid the netting on the ground and thought I could just sort of pull it up... er no, not that simple.

And the tree has grown since last year, so I ended up using the vineyard trick of clipping netting together with the tags from the necks of bags of bread - I added a length of grapevine netting to make it long enough to pull together at the bottom.

Then I threaded through some oldish elastic - it still had stretch, but I wouldn't use it to keep my knickers up! - and finally my clothes peg trick to keep the birds out and to give me an easy access to the plums when they are ripe, and I shake the tree and they fall into the net.

The tree was a gift in 2009, it's a beautiful tree with delicious Satsuma plums, and if I don't go to this trouble, the birds strip it of plums.

I'm pretty sure I won't be wanting to tackle physical work for a couple of hours, but I am very proud of myself.
Pai te mahi Kuia indeed!

Icing the Christmas cake!

Twelve days out from Christmas, and time to ice the Christmas cake.
I've been feeding it brandy for the last couple of months, and it's getting iced with a lovely Brandy Butter icing.

Recipe (from the Edmonds Cook Book):
175g (6 oz) butter
500g (1lb) icing sugar
3 tablespoons brandy (or sherry or wine)
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Cream butter and sifted icing sugar, add brandy and vanilla.  Beat well.  Will keep.

Voila!

It's the only Christmas cake icing I ever use,  it's yummy, it's quick and easy, it's very forgiving and it's very popular!