Tag Archives: recipes

Capturing winter sun in a jar

Posted on by
14

Winter sun can be so uplifting to the spirits when its cold outside. A face tilted towards the sun through a glass window. Body warming against a sheltered brick wall. There are pockets of warmth in my apartment that are just perfect for capturing that winter sun.

Little Monkeys pillow, when he goes down for a day time nap. His pillow has been soaking up the morning warmth already for him to lay his head on. Makes me want to snuggle right down with him.

Coat stand, standing holding all of our jackets. When ever I go to put one on during the day, a little bit of winter wonder has been stored in there. Warming my back and a soft ahhh slipping from my mouth.

The dining table, just about time I usually eat some lunch, that soft winter sun is waiting for me. Sunny fingers out stretched, waiting to draw me in.

This mandarin marmalade drew me. Its sunny colour, and tang of sweet citrus, just begging for a little sourdough to accompany it.

Mandarin Marmalade

1.3 kilos skinned and segmented manderines

800mls water

Cooked up until soft (approx 1/2 an hour). Then wizzed up in a hand held mixer.

1 kilo sugar

1 large strip of lemon peel

Cooked up, and reduced until thickens. (Saucer test- put in freezer, then ladle a little jam on, if thickens and wrinkles then its ready.)

Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.

* If you are not so keen on marmalade but like jam, this could be a good one. It doesn’t have the citrus tartness that normal marmalades do, due to their skins not being cooked up in the batch. The Monkeys loved this, and you know most kids don’t go for marmalade. It sits happily in between.

Sourdough Oat Cakes

Posted on by
13

Are they a pancake or are they a pikelet? Or a they simply an oat cake? I started making pancakes with oats in them quite awhile ago.

1/ It was something to do with left over porridge. (as an alternative to my grandmothers staple ‘mock brains‘).

2/ I added a lower glycemic index to the old pancake.

3/ I thought it was a bit tastier and more substantial than a traditional pancake recipe.

Not that I don’t love the traditional kind, but I am always hungry not long after, and with the added oats it keeps The Monkeys going longer as well. One day while talking to a Scottish friend, these little pancakes came up. She said that she had always made them and back home she called them oat cakes. There you go… oat cakes sounds much more appealing than porridge pancakes.

Now seeing as though I was well and truly aboard the sourdough train, I thought lets see what happens if I add some starter. I had originally wanted to make sourdough crumpets, but didn’t have any rings to cook in them so this was somewhere between. I was mixing it all up and Mr Chocolate went past asking what I was making… just playing. Seeing what will happen if I add this and this and then do this…

Verdict?

Deeelicious! Well thats what Monkey Boy said anyway. I’m sure the Little Monkey meant it too with his cheeks stuffed full like a squirrel. My oat cakes will now always be sourdough oatcakes. Gobbled up with in minutes.

Sourdough oatcakes

1 cup sourdough starter

1 cup plain flour

1 cup milk

50 gms butter

2/3 cup whole oats

1/2 tps bicarb soda

Put butter and oats in microwave together, (butter on top) and heat till melted. Add starter, flour, milk, buttery oats to mixer (I used a dough hook) and mix until well combined. Fold in bicarb soda and let sit for 3 hours in warm spot. Spoon into frying pan and cook as you would pancakes.

Crostata di Marmellata

Posted on by
12

What did you make for dessert Mama?

Crostata di Marmellata

huh…?

Jam Tart little fella, jam tart.

It just sounds better when you say it in Italian. I was flicking through an old Gourmet Traveller and came across this delicious looking recipe. I needed something for the following day. Friends were coming for brunch and crostata di marmellata looked like it could be on the menu.

Adding some apple to the rhubarb jam, and slightly changing the recipe around- this was really tasty. The rhubarb jam I had a lot left over and the pastry not quite enough to do the lattice. So will have to make another to use up the left over jam… damn it. I think this one could become a firm family favourite.

Rhubarb was something that was always in my Nana’s garden. I don’t remember her cooking a whole lot with it, but it was always there. A Nana likes to have options you see. In the fruit shops or supermarket it always looks so tired looking and picked about a year ago. Then I came across some at the fox studios farmers markets– and hurray it was crispy, looked like it had been picked that morning and was just begging to be made in to something.

Rhubarb and Apple Jam

400gms chopped rhubarb

400gms chopped apple

800gms raw sugar

2 long strips of lemon peel

1 split vanilla pod

200mls water

Cook up, in the usual jam fashion. Simmering gently until jam has thickened and wrinkles (put small dish in freezer for 10 minutes, spoon small amount of jam on to it, if thickens and wrinkles, jam is ready.)

Pastry

180 gms flour
60 gms icing sugar
50 gms almond meal
1 lemon grated rind
1/2 tps vanilla extract
100 gms butter
1 egg
water (can’t remember how much I put in, enough to get dough like consistency)

Soften butter and mix in with dry ingredients until resembles breadcrumbs. Add vanilla, egg, water and grated rind. Knead well, until all incorporated. Chill until pastry is managable to roll out, and not be too soft. Roll out to desired shaped dish, add the jam and cook at 170C until golden.

5 drinks to dunk in while watching the World Cup

Posted on by
11

Here are 5 hot drinks to dip biscuits in to while watching the World Cup in South Africa.

Why are they hot? Because here in Australia it’s winter, and especially cool here in Sydney this week. Also with the time difference the games are being shown at rather unattractive times. 2.00am and 4.30am are fine when you have been out all night and you just want to ‘keep on truckin’, but not so friendly when you have two pint sized people that like to wake up for a cuddle, drink of water, toilet stop, snuggle in your bed, snuggle in their bed etc etc. Sleep is precious and continuous hours together even more precious.

HOWEVER, it’s the World Cup and there just might be a few games that would be worthy of going to bed a little earlier and then getting up to watch in the cold and dark. Now if I am going to do that, then I sure as eggs want something to warm my belly while I watch Mr Chocolate get all excited, silently pump the air and muffle groans in couch cushions. (Actually that’s reason enough to get up, if only for the entertainment in my lounge room.)

5 hot drinks to dip biscuits in while watching the World Cup


Chai Tea

black tea (either loose leaf or bag)

cinnamon

nutmeg

cardamom

knob of ginger

milk

honey

water

Cook all ingredients up in a pot. Adding amounts to suit taste. Let simmer for awhile to let all ingredients infuse together.

Spiced Hot Chocolate

50gms dark chocolate

2 cups milk

1 large strip orange rind

cinnamon

1 small fresh chilli, split and deseeded

Vanilla Milk

1 cup milk

1 dessert spoon muscavado sugar

1/2 tps vanilla

Ayurvedic Milk

1 cup milk

1/2 tps tumeric

1/4 tps nutmeg

Green Ginger Wine

* Now this one is quite often dismissed as an old persons drink of choice. Its cheap and its good! It warms you on a cold night, it keeps colds at bay when you have a niggly sore throat that could get worse, and it’s perfect as a little night cap and to get dunked with biscuits.

sourdoughs

Posted on by
20

Sourdough tastes good. It tastes reaallly good. Give me a fruity sourdough, with a little butter and I’m a happy woman.

I had toyed with the idea of making a sourdough starter for awhile, but it just seemed too hard. Too time consuming and too confusing as to what I was supposed to be doing. I read and I read, so many different ways to ‘start’ the starter, that my head hurt. All the pages were rolling into one, the words a blur, and nothing was sinking in. I closed my eyes at night thinking of starters and woke again, only to find my first thought of the day was sourdough starter…. Now what do I need to do again? Slash before prove or after? Steam? Oven at the hottest setting or turn it down a tad? Feeds beforehand? Ratio of starter to flour?…..?……?

Enough! Just do it girl. Get cracking.

Yes, there are a number of different ways to do it. Does that mean its complicated or versatile? Lets hope with versatile. I went with the “Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook” method, and for the next 3 weeks diligently fed dear “Suzie” (she had to have a name if she was going to be a permanent fixture in my kitchen) and hoped for the best.

* Now it must be said before I go any further. I’m a hack cook and a hack baker. I look for short cuts, I change recipes, and sometimes it could be said I completely bastardize recipes. Lets put it this way…. I’m not a sifter. Now this can be a downfall at times as the impatient me wants to take over and the delicate french chef in me gets thrown to the back of the kitchen. However, most of the time it works. The food is edible, and The Monkeys go to bed with a full and happy tummy. So for me, hack works… that being said, I wasn’t so sure hack was going to work in doing a sourdough starter.


I decided to do a rye starter. The rye apparently gets going easier and then you can switch over to normal flour, it just gives it a head start,(it’s then just a white starter.) So with rye flour and water in a bowl sitting on top of my fridge, the feeding began.

According to the method I was following, the starter wouldn’t be strong enough until after 3 weeks. But in the mean time I did play around with the portions I was supposed to be discarding.

Batch made with 'ferment'- oops

First up, a batch made at day 5. A Light Rye and Apple. Yeast used as a raising agent. Starter used more as ‘ferment’ taste. I have since read that you shouldn’t be using it at all at this stage as the bacteria levels are not right….. oops. I did wonder about this, as at this stage it smelt weird. Not like vomit, as I had read it could smell, just different… vomit didn’t sound so good.

Sunflower and Linseed with a small amount of dried yeast for backup. Fermenting overnight in fridge

Seeing if it would work in the bread maker. Yep it did. No yeast added and rose beautifully. It did go dry quite quickly though, when used in sandwiches, but fine for toast. I did try and start the bread maker in the morning and then left it sitting for a further few hours to prove before continuing on to cook. It rose beautifully again but then I worked out there wasn’t a just cook button and it had reset itself. So won’t be doing that one again…. dense, (the bread not me…or maybe a little of both.)

no commercial yeast, 10 hour prove

Light Rye with no yeast, two bulk proving times, and cooked 10 hours after starting.

Sunflower and Linseed, one feed 8 hours before mixing ingredients, 2 x 1 hour proving times with a knock back in between, then a slow ferment overnight in the fridge for 10 hours.

I still have to try the Bourke Street Bakery method of feeding the starter 3  times in 24 hours before adding other ingredients, then a long ferment over night. Some people do the extra feeds to build it up and some don’t. It seems there are so many methods in working with natural yeasts, and it’s just a matter of finding what works for me. That being said, if by chance anyone that knows what they are doing reads this and sees something that screams out- No you shouldn’t be doing that! Please let me know. Or just a sourdough tip, and the best methods that work for you.

Overall- I am really happy with the outcomes. I should have done a bread making course so all of this makes a bit more sense, and am hoping to down the track. But until then, I have a starter bubbling away happily, I’m producing edible bread, (actually it’s more than edible it’s really tasty!) I don’t have to rely on commercially made yeasts. I’m saving a bucket of money by not buying shop bread. (For the same price of 2 shop bought sourdoughs, I am getting 12 kilos of flour which in turn makes…. lots more loaves.) Then just playing around with different flavours, etc. like sunflowers, rye, bran, pepitas, apple.

I’m finding it so satisfying to make these breads, it really does feed my soul. I’m truly amazed that they rise and taste good, I just wish I knew more of the how, where, why part of bread making with natural yeasts.

In the mean time though, hack is working.

How to make Pici and share some love

Posted on by
8

Pici is a hand rolled pasta from the Tuscany region. Like the orecchiette, it’s a labour of love…. but jeez, it’s worth it. Side track the kids and go and bond with your partner in the kitchen. Pour a glass of wine, roll some pasta  together and share the love. If you are by yourself, crank up some music and let your mind wonder to every lovely thing thats ever happened, and enjoy that wonderful you time.

This is how we spent a Sunday, well a couple of hours of it. Chatting and rolling, chatting and rolling.

The Monkeys had other things to do such as reorganise the book shelf, dismantle the pram  and build duplo towers as tall as themselves. It was so lovely just to talk and make pasta. The rhythm of the pasta rolling hooks you in, your hands doing the same methodical thing over and over until the benches are all covered in drying pasta. Your hands in a rhythm, lets your mind wonder. I love nothing better than a passionate discussion about something. Time to really dissect the topic and explore it. Rolling the pasta and standing in the kitchen let us do just that. Unlike the  chocolate making from another weekend before, this one had happy smiles all over it.

….and you could taste that love and happiness in the pici.

Pici

450 grams fine ground semolina flour

225 mls water (approx)

In a bowl, slowly add the water to the flour, to form a stiff dough. It should be quite smooth and not really sticky to touch. To get to that smoothness, knead, knead, knead. It can be quite a stiff dough initially. Pull off a small palm sized piece, rolling it into a snake approximately 2cm  thick. Then using a knife, cut small 3cm portions off. Rolling one portion in your hand and then finished off on the board. (so it’s now a long thin snake) Pressing down with a skewer stick, length ways, following the body of the snake. The skewer sitting in the middle, lift up and then gently rolling the pasta over, to form a hollow noodle. Lay the pasta on a sprinkling of semolina to avoid sticking, and let dry for awhile before cooking.

Serve it with a simple sauce. Let the pasta be the main part of the dish, and the sauce the accompaniment. A little olive oil, a little garlic, some cherry tomatoes, a good bit of some great parmesan….

Buon appetito.

Banana Honey Bread

Posted on by
7

Honey is such a versatile ingredient for cooking. My pantry is never with out it, and no small jars of it for us. I have a 3 litre container of bush honey which my dad got for me from his local area and a pot of creamed honey I had bought at a local old lady charity shop down south. Both are delicious. Even though nobody in this household actually eats it straight, it is used in lots of different cooking. From smoothies, tea, coffee, chai, muffins, apple crumble, cakes, biscuits and for this recent recipe Banana Honey Bread.

Honey can be traced back to Egyptian times, used for the making of Mead, used medicinally, you can preserve  it for a really long time and as I like to use it- as a natural exfoliant when doing a facial. (Try it, the honey works really well.)

Today its for making bread though. Add some bananas that need to get used up, add a few more bready ingredients and you are away. A cheap, tasty snack or something different for breakfast.

 

Banana Honey Bread

* adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef

3 1/2 cups strong bread flour

100mls water

whizzed up banana- about 4 medium sized ones

1 tps cinnamon

1 tbs raw sugar

1 tbs salt

2 1/2 tps dried yeast

2 tbs honey

1/2 cup linseed meal

* extra honey and flaked almonds for the top.

Mix all ingredients with a dough hook in mixmaster, until combined well and pulls away from the edges. The dough looks quite wet and glossy. Cover with cling wrap and leave in a warm spot until doubled in size. Knock it back, quick knead, and leave to prove until doubled in size again. Shape the dough into small balls and place next to each other on a lined tray. Leave for half an hour. Drizzle more honey on top and scatter flaked almonds.

Cook at 210 C for about 20 minutes.

Easy thing to have for breakfast, a snack, or whack in the freezer and get out as needed. The Little Monkey loves these, and if he is having a fussy day eating, these always get gobbled down.

Recalibrated

Posted on by
4

There are some things in life that just make me sit back, take a big outward breath and smile. There are some things that always make me feel like this and some things that take me by complete surprise. With that big deep breath taken, all momentary worries are gone. All stresses have been shelved and happiness raises its sunny head. It can be so brief, but with that moment taken, everything gets recalibrated.

The monkeys are going mental and the very average morning looks like its dragging into a very average long day. Then with the tiny few words of Monkey Boy saying something completely out of the blue. It stops me. That breath is deeper, actually filling my lungs, I smile, and everything gets re-aligned. Completely changing the rest of the days attitude.

Black cockatoos do it too. From a young child these beautiful birds seem to have had a spell over me. They are flying over head at dusk, looking for a place to rest for the night. Their slow and deep cry speaks to me. Stops me in my tracks, pulling my eyes towards them, watching their slow flight over head. That mournful cry, tugs at me. Making me smile… re-calibrated again.

The simple process of making bread at the moment is what I feel I need to do. The process of making, baking and then eating such a simple thing, really gives me a lot of pleasure. The simple tastes of freshly made bread, butter and my own jam. Can make a hungry stomach, a happy one with just one bite. With just a few mouthfuls, energy re-stored, mind re-aligned and city hippy farm girl re-calibrated once again.

Turkish Bread

Turkish Bread

* adapted from sbs Food Safari recipe

1 tbs dried yeast

pinch of caster sugar

375 ml warm water
480 g strong bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
60 ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 egg
50 ml milk
sesame seeds

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 125 ml of the warm water and set aside in a warm place for about 10 minutes until frothy. Use your fingers to work 90g of the flour into the yeast to make a sloppy paste. Sprinkle lightly with a little more flour, then cover with a tea towel and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes to form a ‘sponge’.

Put the remaining flour and the salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the sponge, oil and remaining water. Use your fingers to work it to a soft, sloppy dough. Should be quite sticky.

In a mixer with a dough hook, on a low speed for 10–15 minutes until very smooth and springy. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, then cover with a damp tea towel and leave to rest at room temperature for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to its highest setting. Divide the dough in two, then form into rounds and leave, covered, to rest for 30 minutes. Mix the eggs and milk to make an egg wash. Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface. Use the heels of your hands to press and flatten each piece of dough out to a 20 cm oval.

Brush the surface liberally with the egg wash. Dip your fingertips into the egg wash and mark rows of deep indentations across and down the length of the dough, leaving a narrow border.  Sprinkle with nigella or sesame seeds and bake for 8–10 minutes until crisp and golden brown.

Party shoes and churros

Posted on by
3

churros- a little late night snack

Churros. Pretty much a spanish doughnut, is what it could be compared to. There are so many variations of these in many Spanish-speaking countries. Served for breakfast, street food, or a late night snack. It seems the world loves them.

Usually I would have never made something like this. I’m not a big doughnut fun, and the healthy factor always stopped me from trying to make these before. Its dough fried in oil, rolled in sugar, not for the faint-of-healthy-hearted!

However I had been perusing a Gourmet Traveller magazine and damn it, the photography got to me. It was a Spanish special and no sooner than you could say “Yo no soy marinero soy capitan, soy capitan“, I had a spanish meal plan at the ready.

Much to an amused husband, I declared that I should give these Churros a crack. Although he was a little dubious, was also enthusiastic, as Churros dipped in Hot Chocolate is a happy food memory for him traipsing about Spain in younger days. With a backpack on his back, party shoes on his feet and a churros in hand, Spain was his oyster.

Churros

275gms ‘OO’ strong flour

1 tbs olive oil

1 tps salt

600mls water

Bring water, salt and oil to the boil in a large saucepan. Stir in flour, beating with a wooden spoon until smooth. Transfer to a piping bag with a fluted nozzle. Heat oil in saucepan, pipe dough into 7cm lengths into oil, cutting with scissors. Cook until golden, drain on absorbant paper. Toss in sugar and cinnamon.

Hot Chocolate

200ml cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cinnamon quill

150 gm dark chocolate

2 large strips of orange rind

*adapted recipe from Gourmet Traveller Magazine.

Eat these hot and straight away. They do not keep, as they will be oily little flaccid sticks if you keep them for the next day.

Honey Ricotta Bread

Posted on by
9

“Mama, this tastes better than cupcakes!”

Recently while watching Italian Food Safari a few weeks ago, they cooked up a wonderful looking Ricotta Bread but they hadn’t laid out any recipes on the website- much to my disappointment. Not finding any other recipes elsewhere that seemed just right, I decided to venture out in to the unknown by myself.

It was a little nerve-wracking, there was a dash of timidness, and a sprinkling of hope. I have only been playing around with breads a relatively short time, and I wasn’t exactly sure it was time to be branching off and making stuff up just yet… hasn’t stopped me before though. So feet first (so to speak of course) I dove into that dough. I figured at worst, it will be stodgy little brick and I will still have to eat it. At best, it will be delicious bready loaf and everyone gets to eat it.

Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial had given me the heads up on a place that sold bulk bakers flour. So with 12.5 kilos of strong bakers flour sitting on my kitchen bench, it was time to get crackin’.

Honey Ricotta Bread

1 cup polenta

2 1/2 cups strong bakers flour

2 tps dried yeast

2 tps salt

250g ricotta

4 tbs honey

400ml water

With a dough hook, mixed everything up in the mixmaster. Once thoroughly mixed through, I left it for 10 minutes. A gentle knead on a floured surface then put in slightly oiled bowl, covered with cling wrap for 1/2 an hour, (or until doubled in size.). Another gentle knead, flattening the dough to an inch thick, folding over into 1/3, then folding again from the other side. Back into the bowl and then repeating the process in another half an hours time. Form into the shape that you want to cook in and let the dough rise for another 20-30 minutes or until risen by about a 1/3. Cook at 240 C until golden and sound hollow when knocked.

(Time varies depending on the shape you have cooked it in, ie. Bread rolls vs loaf)

Outcome? It was delicious! Thats when Monkey Boy said “Mama, this tastes better than cupcakes!” Now, if that isn’t a tick of approval I don’t what is.

Like Water for Chocolate

Posted on by
9
The movie poster for Like water for chocolate

Like Water for Chocolate movie poster

Like Water for Chocolate- by Laura Esquivel, has always been a book that I have savoured. A book that involves romance, tragedy and food. Three key ingredients that can hardly go wrong in a best selling novel. A sumptuous feast of a book that follows the main character Tita, and her life long love Pedro.

Writing about  mindfulness recently, I was reminded of it, so I re-read it again.  This book talks of emotions being felt when cooking and the taste of that emotion in the end result. Causing anyone that eats the food to be effected by it. When the main character is in love, the love comes out in her cooking. When she feels sad and bitter while making her sister’s wedding cake, the eating result is everyone is left with a tearful longing, ending with a collective vomiting.

The scene of the final wedding feast where everyone has paired off after eating chillies in walnut sauce, makes for wonderful imagery.

I wanted to cook like Tita. Or at least a little Mexican influenced. So with Mole on my mind I did an easy version. Not because I wanted it to be easy, but because time availability dictates what I can cook. (The monkeys are busy business.) I wanted to play around with the flavours of different spices, the chicken, and the chocolate. To be cooked as mindfully as I could, and to put as much love and attention in as I could muster.

Having never tasted a dish like this before, I was unsure of what to expect. But I liked every ingredient that went in, so it had a good head start.

Tasting it, after I had made the sauce, my taste buds weren’t sure what was going on. It had an almost earthy taste, I’m guessing from the 85% Cocoa I had put in. A curious taste that had my mouth, zinging from one side to another  to find another different subtle taste to briefly savour. It had certainly been cooked mindfully, the monkeys were sidetracked and I could put all my love and attention into my little mexican novel cooking inspiration. But had I put too much?

Making the mole the the day before. The next day, I cooked it in a baking dish with chicken legs and added some tomato passata. I felt it needed the added zingy-ness that you get from good tomatoes. Cooked for about an hour at 200 C.

The end result?…

Not bad. I didn’t think “Woohoo Mama!”, and launch myself at my husband, but I didn’t start sobbing and vomiting either. It was certainly flavoursome, packed a chilli punch, and it was a stray out of the usual food street I walk. Served with some rice, flaked almonds and sesame seeds on top.

And when it really comes down to it… it was really all about the book anyway.

Chilli Chocolate Chicken

A good dollop of olive oil

1 diced onion

4 cloves of diced garlic

1 1/2 tps cinnamon

1 tps smoked paprika

1 tps nutmeg

2 tps cumin

2 tps coriander

1 tps dried chilli

salt to taste

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup masala

1/4 cup muscavado sugar

250mls vegetable stock

50 grams 85% cocoa chocolate

Everything cooked in that order, with the broken chocolate added in at the end when the sauce has been turned off the heat.

Baby whale song

Posted on by
6

Listening to a 1 year old sing, is a bit like listening to a whale sing its ocean song. Its enchanting, emotive, and brings a soft smile to your lips.

A 20 month old might not sound like a baby to some, but he is my baby. While he is still learning words and and a lot of what comes out his mouth is still gabble, to listen to him singing is enchanting. I turn my head at a tilt just so I can hear it better, just as I would as if I was listening to the magnificent creatures of the deep.

The soft lilting singing, the intonations, the placid look on his face while he goes about his monkey business singing as he does. This makes me want to squeeze him harder. This makes me want to stroke his downey soft baby curls on his head. This makes me want to plant kisses on the back of his sweet soft neck. I don’t though. I stop myself and hold back those hands, hugs and kisses. Hoping to let nothing side track him and detract from his baby whale song.

Apple Plum cake

125 grams butter

2/3 cup raw sugar

2 tps vanilla

3 eggs

1/2 cup natural yoghurt

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

100 grams ground hazelnut

1 tps cinnamon

1 apple and 4 plums pre-cooked

Add butter, sugar, and vanilla. Mixing in the 3 eggs and natural yoghurt. Add all dry ingredients. To a springform pan (20cm) add half the mixture, then a add a layer of the cooked fruit mixture. On the outside of the pan add the remainder of the cake mixture, leaving a hole in the middle for the fruit. Add any remainding fruit mixture to the middle and cook for 45 mins at 180 C or until golden.