by Sally Andrew
• For the best texture, it is important to let the cake layers cool completely before icing. I know this is hard to do, because you will be impatient to gobble up this amazing cake.
CANDY’S CHEESECAKE
(Serves 10–12)
Crust
200g Brazil nuts, crushed
75g digestive biscuits, crushed
100g desiccated coconut
finely grated zest of 2 oranges (approx. 4 t)
1 T caster sugar
150g butter, melted
Cake
750g plain cream cheese, softened
finely grated zest of 2 oranges (approx. 4 t)
finely grated zest of 1 large lemon (approx. 2 t)
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
¼ cup lemon juice
¾ cup (180g) sour cream
Sour-cream topping
1 cup (240g) sour cream
2 T caster sugar
2 t lemon juice
finely grated orange zest for garnishing
Use a pestle and mortar or a food processor to crush the Brazil nuts (I like them a little crunchy). Use a rolling pin to crush the digestive biscuits, and add these to the nuts, along with the coconut, orange zest and caster sugar. Add the melted butter and mix well.
Grease a 24-cm springform cake tin. Press the crust mixture lightly onto the base and sides of the tin. You want a thin crust on the base (5–7 mm) and it doesn’t matter if the crust doesn’t go all the way up the sides of the tin or is uneven in height. Put in the fridge for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C
To make the cake, blend the cream cheese, orange zest, lemon zest and caster sugar in a large bowl, then add the eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Add the lemon juice and sour cream.
Pour the mixture into the cooled crust. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and cool for 15 minutes.
Make the sour-cream topping by mixing the sour cream, caster sugar and lemon juice in a bowl. Spread over the cheesecake and bake for a further 20 minutes or until set.
Leave the cheesecake to cool in the oven, with the oven door ajar. Then refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Garnish with a little finely grated orange zest.
Tip
• This recipe has flavours of Karoo and New York, and is the best cheesecake I have ever eaten. For an extra-fancy cake, garnish with brandied muscadels (muscadel raisins simmered in a little brandy, water, honey and sugar).
SWEET-POTATO CAKE (Serves 10–12)
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1 T baking powder
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
pinch of salt
2 cups white sugar
1½ cups sunflower oil
¼ cup boiling water
4 eggs, separated
1½ cups (200g) peeled and coarsely grated sweet potato
1 cup (100g) chopped walnuts
1 t vanilla essence
Icing
2 cups (250g) icing sugar, sifted
4 T (50g) butter, at room temperature
250g plain cream cheese
ground cinnamon for dusting
½ cup (50g) chopped walnuts
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease two 23-cm cake tins, dust them with a little plain flour and shake out the excess flour.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
In a separate large bowl, beat the sugar and sunflower oil together. Add the boiling water and beat well. Add the egg yolks and the flour mixture and stir. Mix in the sweet potato, walnuts and vanilla essence.
In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them gently into the mixture.
Spoon the batter into the cake tins and level them off. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for about 40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean. Let them cool a little in the tins before turning them out carefully onto wire racks to cool completely. It is crumblier than sponge cake, so be gentle.
To make the icing, mix the icing sugar and butter well; the mixture will be like fine crumbs. Add half the cream cheese, one tablespoon at a time, stirring gently to avoid lumps.
Spread the rest of the cream cheese on top of each cake layer. Spread the icing on top of the cream cheese and sandwich the layers together. Dust a little cinnamon over the cake and top with the walnuts. Cool the cake in the fridge before serving. Store any leftovers in the fridge.
Tips
• This cake is a little crumbly but very delicious, and you will have people guessing what it is made from.
• It is even nicer the day after baking.
HENK’S FAVOURITE
(Serves 8–10)
4 eggs, separated
2 cups white sugar
2 cups milk
½ cup (70g) plain flour
⅔ cup orange juice
4 t grated orange zest
2 T lemon juice
⅔ cup Van der Hum liqueur
Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease an ovenproof dish, about 25 × 25 cm.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the milk, sift in the flour and beat well to get rid of any lumps. Add the orange juice, orange zest and lemon juice. Finally, add the liqueur and mix well.
In a separate clean bowl, beat the egg whites until they are stiff and fold them carefully into the mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the greased dish and bake for about 45 minutes. The pudding will have a brown crust on top and be soft underneath when done.
PIKKIE’S PUMPKIN PIE
(Serves 8–10)
3 cups cooked pumpkin (or butternut squash) mashed
2 t olive oil
2 eggs
1 cup cream
1 cup brown sugar
1 t salt
1 cup milk
¼ cup melted butter
1 cup (140g) plain flour
2 t baking powder
ground cinnamon, for dusting
Cook the pumpkin and allow it to dry and cool in a sieve before mashing. The best way is to roast it on a baking tray, tossed with 2 teaspoons of olive oil.
Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease an ovenproof dish, about 23 × 23 cm.
Whisk the eggs, cream, sugar, salt and milk together, then whisk in the butter. Add the flour and baking powder and beat well. Finally, mix in the mashed pumpkin.
Spoon the mixture into the greased dish and bake for 50–60 minutes. The pie should be nicely browned on top. If you shake it, it will be a bit jiggly, like firm jelly. It will get firmer as it cools down. Dust with cinnamon before serving.
Tips
• If you use butternut squash instead of pumpkin, you can reduce the sugar to ¾ cup. It’s important that the pumpkin is as dry as possible, which is why it’s best to roast it. But you could also cook it in a very little water or oil and then drain it in a sieve for a while.
• This pumpkin pie can be served hot or cold as a pudding, with cream or custard. It will also go nicely as a side serving with any of your meat dishes.
AUNT SANDRA’S MALVA PUDDING
(Serves 8–10)
½ cup white sugar
1 T butter, at room temperature
1 egg
1 cup (140g) plain flour
1 t bicarbonate of soda
½ t salt
½ cup milk
1 T vinegar
1 T apricot jam
Sauce
1 cup milk
⅔ cup white sugar
6 T butter
⅔ t vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease an ovenproof dish, about 23 × 23 cm.
Cream the sugar and butter in a large bowl, then beat in the egg.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt, and alternate adding this and the milk to the creamed mixture. Then add the vinegar and apricot jam and mix well.
Pour the mixture into
the greased dish and bake for 40–45 minutes. It will have a golden crust when done.
To make the sauce, bring the milk, sugar and butter to the boil in a saucepan, stirring all the time. Boil for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract.
Pour the hot sauce over the pudding as it comes out of the oven. Let it stand to absorb the syrup.
Serve hot with pouring cream or homemade custard.
LASSIE IN LOVE’S SHORTBREAD
(Makes about 4 dozen biscuits)
2½ cups (350g) plain flour
1 cup (110g) cornflour
1 t baking powder
250g butter, at room temperature
½ cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk
Preheat the oven to 150°C and lightly grease a baking tray, about 20 × 30 cm.
Mix the flour, cornflour and baking powder in a bowl.
In a separate large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the egg yolk and then gradually mix in the flour mixture to form a soft dough.
Knead firmly with your hands. When the dough forms one smooth lump, turn it out onto a floured wooden board. Flatten with a rolling pin to about 2 cm thick and then roll and shape the dough to fit the baking tray. Score the dough with a knife, making outlines of narrow biscuits (approx. 2 × 6 cm), and prick all over with a fork.
Bake for 25–30 minutes. Turn off the oven and remove the tray.
While hot, cut the shortbread along the scored lines and return the tray to the warm oven, leaving the door slightly open, for an hour or overnight to dry out. Store in an airtight container.
Tip
• You can use a cookie cutter to make shortbread biscuits in different shapes.
VAN DER HUM LIQUEUR
(Makes about 1 litre)
5 whole cloves
½ fresh nutmeg
2 sticks cinnamon
2 T finely sliced naartjie peel
750ml (1 bottle) good brandy
¼ cup rum
Syrup
1 cup white sugar
½ cup hot water
Bruise (but don’t powder) the cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon with a pestle and mortar. Tie these into a piece of clean cheesecloth.
Scrape out and discard the white of the naartjie peel, and slice the peel finely before measuring. Put the spices (in the cloth) and naartjie peel into a big clean jar, and pour in the brandy. Put on the lid and shake the jar gently every day. (If you forget some days, it doesn’t matter.) If you hold it against the light when you shake it, you will see the flavours coming out through the cloth in little ripples.
After a month, the flavours should have come through nicely. It can get bitter if you leave it longer. Strain the brandy through cheesecloth.
Boil the sugar and water together until it makes a thick syrup. Let it get cold and then stir it into the brandy. Add the rum and let it rest for a week or two before drinking.
Tips
• If you can’t get naartjies, use tangerine or mandarin peel. If you can’t get these, use the peel from a tasty orange (e.g. a Valencia orange).
• Your spices must be fresh.
• This is very easy to make and worth waiting for; it is very, very delicious.
BREAD AND RUSKS
MOSBOLLETJIE BREAD AND RUSKS
(Makes 3 loaves)
250g seeded raisins with stalks on
3 cups boiled water, cooled to room temperature
1 T white sugar
(or 3 cups ‘must’ wine)
2.5kg plain flour, sifted
1 T salt
1½ cups white sugar
1 T aniseed
1 t grated fresh nutmeg
250g butter
1 cup boiling-hot milk
2 more cups boiled water, cooled
3 T melted butter for brushing
sugar water made from 3 T white sugar dissolved in
3 T warm water
‘Mos’ is ‘must’ and ‘bolletjies’ are ‘little buns’. If you live in a wine-making area, you may be able to get some ‘must’ wine. If not, you can make your own. Bruise the raisins using the back of a spoon, then put them in a glass jar with the 3 cups water and 1 T sugar. Leave to stand in a warm place for at least 24 hours, until the raisins float and the grape juice ferments and becomes ‘must’. Strain out the raisins (through cheesecloth in a sieve).
Add just enough of the flour (about half a cup) to the must wine to make a slack dough: soft like pouring batter. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise until it is frothy and full of gas bubbles. (This can take about 2 hours.) Keep a little of this slack dough as a yeast starter for any kind of sourdough bread (see Tips below).
Combine the rest of the flour with the salt, sugar, aniseed and nutmeg in a large bowl, and make a hole in the centre. Melt the 250g butter in the hot milk and stir this and the frothy batter into the flour mixture. Add at least 2 more cups of water to get it to a manageable dough.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead very well with your hands. Fold and knead. Fold and knead. Then fold and knead some more. For about 45 minutes. Invite others to help. Think peaceful thoughts or listen to a programme you like on the radio.
Allow the dough to rise in a warm place until it has doubled in volume. Now you can leave it for longer. Overnight is good. If it is a cold night, you can wrap it up and take it to bed with you for a while, and then put it in your hotbox.
The next morning, knead the dough gently and form into 24 buns. Pack the buns tightly into three greased loaf tins (8 buns per tin). Brush with the melted butter and again allow to rise until doubled in size. This can take between 1 and 3 hours.
Bake at 200°C for 45–55 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. When you tap the top of a loaf, it should sound hollow. Brush the loaves with the sugar-water solution and bake for another 5 minutes.
Eat some as fresh mosbolletjie bread with farm butter and then prepare the rest for rusks. Tear the loaves into buns and then slice these into tall, thin rusks. Spread out on oven trays and leave overnight in the warming drawer, or bake in a low oven (80–100°C) for 4–6 hours until hard and dry. If the rusks go brown, the oven is too hot.
Tips
• This recipe takes a few days, but it is worth it. It’s not as difficult as it sounds; much of the time is waiting, with some time kneading, and it all makes you feel very peaceful. The kneading is hard work, so get someone to help you if your arms need a rest.
• It is best to use raisins that are organic or unsprayed, so that the yeast from the grapes is still alive.
• Mosbolletjie dough rises best in a summer thunderstorm.
• If it’s cold, and there is nowhere warm in your kitchen, you can wrap your dough in a thick towel and put hot water bottles above and below it. Then wrap it in another blanket or put it in your hotbox. The bottle must not be too close to the dough, because the dough must be warm, not hot, to rise nicely.
• You can use the raw slack dough as a starter to make any kind of sourdough bread. Add a little milk and flour to the raw dough, let it rise and bubble overnight, and then store it in the fridge. Keep feeding it like this with flour and milk every few weeks and it can last you forever. It might also pick up some of the wild yeast in the air in your kitchen (or in your garden, if you leave it outside to harvest yeast). This will give your dough a special local flavour. Sourdough bread is heavier and more filling than bread made with instant yeast.
USING A HOTBOX
A hotbox is a wonderful way to slow cook your food. And it saves lots of electricity too.
You might be able to buy a hotbox (usually made with Styrofoam balls). It is a big cushion with a soft hole in the middle for your pot, and a cushion lid. I got a nice one covered with shweshwe cloth from a church fête a while back. But they are also easy to make. You can put your hot pot on a wooden chopping board, wrap it up in a towel and then a blanket, and it will work as well as a hotbox.
You will need to bring
the pot to the simmer on the stove first. Then wrap it up or put it in the hotbox. This will keep the food cooking for about 4 hours, and keep it hot for 10 hours. For some dishes (especially curries) I like to cook my meat slowly for 24 hours. I leave it in the hotbox overnight, and during the day I put it back on the stove for 5–10 minutes every 5 hours or so.
The food will only cook in the hotbox if it is covered with fluid and the pot is almost full (a half-full pot will stay warm but won’t cook). It works best if you have a thick cast-iron pot. The hotbox is perfect for making soups, stews, curries, rice and other grains. It will get your meat very tender, falling off the bone. No moisture is lost in the process, so if the end result is too wet, you can heat the food in your oven afterwards to cook off the extra liquid. If you are cooking grains, make sure you don’t add too much water or they will overcook.
Acknowledgments
I am immensely grateful to all the people and publishers who have given me support, encouragement and ideas. They include:
My agent, Isobel Dixon, and her fantastic team at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. Isobel gave great editorial feedback and did the English translation of the first verse of Langenhoven’s lullaby. Louisa Joyner (Canongate Books, UK) is a brilliant editor, Vicki Rutherford a fantastic managing editor, and Ailsa Bathgate a wonderful copy-editor. Umuzi (imprint of Penguin Random House, SA) gave very useful feedback and checked the Afrikaans words, and Bronwen Maynier polished the recipe section. Big thanks also to Mandy Brett (Text Publishing, Australia), Bridget Read (Ecco, imprint of HarperCollins, USA) and Iris Tupholme (HarperCollins, Canada) for their input.
My parents, Bosky and Paul Andrew, were the first to read the early chapters of this book, and their delight propelled me forward. My man, Bowen Boshier, gives me love and support every day, and advised me about things such as weapons, nature and animal names. Peter van Straten played with some plot ideas with me. Along with Bowen Boshier and Andrea Nixon, Peter is part of my personal paparazzi that provides the photos and videos that give life to my website. Brian Rogers (Buddy Care SA) gave me useful information and stories about PTSD. Fulla Planets kindly gave me all the Greek words I requested. Ronél Gouws created an idiom (about the buck in the shadows) for my use. Petra Vojnova gave me a computer when mine died. Wayne Boshier provided IT support and helped me find Arabic words and names. Leif Peterson taught me a little about the informal economic sector in South Africa.