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.
"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."
FLY CEMETERIES
The chief prerequisite for a successful "fly cemetery" is a dense and dark filling with individual raisin flies appropriately squashed together. The enclosing layers come in several forms: some recipe books suggest plain pastry shortcrust on the bottom and flaky on the top; others a sweet short pastry or a more cakey mixture.
I really like Lois Daish's version. She adapted it slightly from a recipe she found in Mackenzie Muster: A Century of Favourites (from the South Island's Mackenzie Country), published in 1985 to raise funds for a community centre in Fairlie, South Canterbury.
The original recipe came from Jean Campbell. Jean's filling uses mixed dried fruit, apple and spice and tastes very good indeed. In an earlier South Island book, sold in 1967 to benefit the Karitane Public Hall building committee, I found another excellent filling contributed by Mrs Caddie.
She suggests currants mixed with blackcurrant jam and a little brown sugar - very simple and effective. Try them both. You can call them fruit squares if you wish, but for me they'll always be fly cemeteries.
For the base and top
200g flour
55g caster sugar
125g butter
1 egg yolk
2 tsp cold water
For Jean Campbell's filling (Lois Daish's version)
275g mixed dried fruit*
1 smallish tart apple, peeled, cored and chopped
1 tsp cocoa
½ tsp ground cloves
* sultanas, raisins, currants, figs
For Mrs Caddie's filling
2 tbsp blackcurrant jam
2 tbsp brown sugar
340g currants
Getting ready
Preheat the oven to 375degF/190degC. Make the first filling by pulsing all the ingredients in a food processor, or chop the dried fruit a little, grate the apple and mix everything together to a rough paste.
If you are making Mrs Caddie's filling, just combine everything in a bowl, using enough of the jam to stick it all together.
Mixing and baking
1. Put the flour and sugar into a food processor, drop in the cold butter in small lumps and pulse until the mixture is like breadcrumbs, then tip out on to the bench. Or you could rub the butter in with your fingertips. Mix the egg yolk and cold water with a fork and sprinkle over the floury mixture. Fork through, then use your hands to press the dough together and knead lightly until it is smooth.
2. Divide the mixture in two and, on separate pieces of baking paper, roll out each to a rough circle or square, about 23cm across. Put one layer on a baking tray. Spread the filling evenly over the base, leaving a margin at the edges, then invert the top layer of pastry on to the fruit, remove the paper and press the edges together well. Prick the top layer with a fork.
3. Bake for about 25 minutes, rotating the tray after 15 minutes. Cool on a rack and slice to serve. Keeps well in an airtight tin. Makes about 16 squares or wedges.
CHINESE CHEW
With or without butter, with or without ginger, with brown or white sugar, Chinese Chew seems to have been continually hybridising since it appeared in New Zealand and Australian recipe books in the early 1940s.
I imagined it was called Chinese because of the inclusion of preserved ginger, but several of the earlier versions have none. Dates and walnuts are the constants and it's the dates that make it chewy.
The following recipe is a further hybrid, my version of the one in Aunt Daisy's Radio Cookery Book, ninth edition, circa 1939, with a small amount of melted butter for tenderness and lots of ginger for bite.
Ingredients
2 eggs
200g brown sugar
30g butterpinch salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
125g flour
½ tsp baking powder
120g dates
100g walnuts
100g preserved ginger
30ml milk
icing sugar, for dusting
Getting ready
Preheat the oven to 200degC and line a shallow 30cm x 21cm tin with baking paper, or grease it lightly.
Bring the eggs to room temperature. Sift the flour and baking powder. Chop the walnuts, ginger and dates. Melt the butter.
Mixing and baking
1. Whisk the eggs and sugar together, using an electric or a hand beater, until they are well combined and slightly fluffy (about 2 minutes). Change to a large metal spoon and fold in the melted butter, salt and vanilla essence, followed by the sifted flour and baking powder, and lastly the fruit, nuts, ginger and the milk.
2. Spread in the prepared tin and bake for 15-20 minutes. Rotate the tin after 10 minutes. When the cake is lightly browned and springy to the touch, remove it from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.
3. Cut into bars while it is still just warm, pressing the edges back into position if they roughen when cutting. Sprinkle with icing sugar to serve. Store airtight. Makes about 24 bars.
