Slices of life (+ recipes)

Fly cemeteries from 'A Second Helping: More from Ladies, a Plate' by Alexa Johnston (Penguin pbk, $45).

The aroma of baking filling a kitchen and the taste of freshly made buttery biscuits or a rich fruit cake are beloved and nostalgic memories of many of us who remember our grandmothers' warm family kitchens.

When Alexa Johnston's award-winning book of traditional New Zealand recipes, Ladies, A Plate, was published last year, she received a spate of appreciative letters from people. In response she has produced A Second Helping: More from Ladies, a plate, another book based on recipes from her collection of old community and charity cookbooks translated for today's cooks.

Many of her responses had been from teenagers and young people who were enjoying learning to bake, she said.

"Someone said she had made eccles cakes and made the rough puff pastry - the first time she had ever made pastry I think, and she was ecstatic. It turned out perfectly and was still getting text messages from her friends who had had one and couldn't believe how good they were.

"That's the nice part of baking. You don't have to every day and you don't have to eat it every day, but when you do do it, you want it to work and you want people to say 'we love that'. It's a bit of empowerment," she said.

But among the words of appreciation she also had a few shocks.

"People said they did something and it didn't work and I realised their level of knowledge was really low. I suppose, like anything you enjoy yourself, you can't quite realise that other people don't really enjoy it or aren't really interested in it.

"One woman had no idea how to make a sponge at all and she asked me if she could make a sponge in a gas oven, and I said 'Of course you can, a gas oven is good, moist heat'. Next time I saw her and asked how it went she said it turned out like a piece of rubber and she made another and it was the same and terrible.

"Then I found out she had made it using a wand blender, because she didn't understand the basic thing of aerating the eggs. She thought this is a beater and I'm going to beat it, and when they didn't get thick and fluffy she said 'Oh well, put the flour in and it will probably puff up in the oven'."

In response, Ms Johnston has expanded the informative introduction from her first book, "These things are worth knowing". It explains some of the techniques of baking, such as creaming butter and sugar or whisking eggs and sugar for a sponge, or cutting and folding dry ingredients to keep the mixture aerated, how to prepare pans so the baking does not stick, and the difference between fan and conventional ovens.

Besides cakes, biscuits, slices, savouries and a few preserves, A Second Helping includes recipes for sweets, such as Russian fudge and coconut ice, things people used to make for school fairs.

"Sweets recipes are in all the old books and they are definitely a special occasion thing. You don't make them very often. I've been intimidated by them because you never think they are going to work out and half the time they didn't.

"I didn't make sweets for years, and thinking about all that sugar, why would you, honestly? But when I got into it, I thought there's a lot of nostalgia around them, and also some of the recipes are quite good. And kids like to make sweets."

An art curator, she has another major exhibition to organise next year, but she is already thinking about the following book, What's for Pudding, which is to be published in 2011.

People have forgotten that puddings don't have to be rich, hugely calorie-laden desserts like those served in many restaurants. Nor do they have to be massive steamed puddings - although you could have one instead of dinner, she said with a laugh.

Puddings can be light, like milk puddings or the long-forgotten junket.

"There's a whole generation who have never heard of junket, and yet I've got Renco books from the 1930s with the most lovely recipes. There's one for a ginger junket where you bash up gingernut biscuits and put them in a bowl, make some junket using some syrup out of a ginger jar if you have it, then pour it on to the biscuits.

"The crushed biscuits rise up through the junket and float inside it and go nice and soft and gingery. Put a bit of whipped cream and some crystallised ginger on top and people say 'what is this?' It's fantastic, so light and slightly tart the way junket is, but it's not yoghurt. Not that I'm a junket queen, but it's an example of some of the lighter things that don't have to be heavy on cream and eggs but are satisfying and pleasant and a bit of a treat."