Forum Thermomix
Questions Doubts and Requests => Recipe Requests => Topic started by: Nikkit on March 12, 2014, 05:57:17 am
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Does anyone have a recipe for a light fruit cake?
As in light in colour?
I have plenty of good recipes, but mine are all dark cakes and I want to try a light coloured one.
Thank you lovely ladies ;D ;D
Nikki. :)
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I have one for you Nik, with pic. It is tried and true and was quite the rage... um 50 years ago.
This is from my mum's favourite cookbook (can you tell?) and the page this cake is on is dog eared. Let me know if you would like me to transcribe it for you.
From memory it's awfully good but I haven't had it for decades ;D
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I have one that is like the old fashioned Ritz fruit cake if you are interested. It's not thermomix but you could still use it.
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Love your Mums old cookery book Gayle 8) It looks so well used and loved. ;D
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Djinni - thank you thank you thank you! :-*
Exactly what I was looking for. It printed out fine too - so no need to transcribe it thanks. I'll make it tomorrow when I'm home and see how it goes...will let you know.
I had high tea at The Raffles in Singapore last week and they had the yummiest light fruit cake on the stand, didn't think to ask them for the recipe, but hubby loved it and wants me to make one.
Cookie - would love your recipe too. (The more the merrier!!) Not worried that it isn't a TM recipe, I'll either make it as is or convert it.
Thank you ladies, I knew someone in here would have exactly what I was looking for. What an awesome bunch in here :D :-*
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On its way Nikkit. I will send to your home email. It will be easier for me. It is still in ounces and pounds, is that ok for you? I'll put the metric with it.
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Thanks cookie, I got it. ;D
Todays job is make 2 fruit cakes me thinks.
Thanks ladies :D
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Love your Mums old cookery book Gayle 8) It looks so well used and loved. ;D
LOL CC you are diplomatic. We lived on a farm with rich red soil that seemed to find its way onto just about everything and stained most things ;D Mum made beautiful cakes in an old wood stove. Her sponge cakes were fantastic.
Dad brought the cookbooks all the way from Rockhampton to Sydney for me and I keep them although they are a bit worse for wear. I love to look at the old recipes and ads although they do make me sad sometimes as both Mum and Dad are both gone now :(
Can't wait to see your cakes Nikkit :)
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Best I stop playing on the computer and get to work then!
I have some old books too, one is my great Nana's and it is coverless and very well used. When my Grandma passed away last year I somehow ended up with a box full of her recipe books. None of them old, but one is her hand written one of recipes that she cooked often. Rather thrilled that I ended up with that one!
Although in all honesty my Grandma was a dreadful cook unless you wanted something sweet. I can still smell boiled mutton coming from her kitchen and her "fatty water soup" was ... there are no words. It was ... fatty water with a few bits of barley in the bottom. I am shuddering thinking about it now!
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One problem...
I have no custard powder. I have not bought custard powder in 4 years! Does anyone know what I can use instead of custard powder? I only need 1 dessertspoon, so am hoping that I can substitute something else in.
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I'd use cornflour in place of the custard powder
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Yes, so would I.
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Thanks Jen and Judy.
Djinni's cake is in the oven as we speak/write. Smells yum!
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Yes Nikkit, I hope you used cornflour. It colours the cake yellow and I don't know what else. ???
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Checking how things are going here… Hope it turned out
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I just realised I have that Esk Valley book. It was Mum's. the recipe sounds lovely.
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It did djinni, haven't got time to take a pic right now, but it turned out lovely!
As usual I didn't have all the ingredients so swapped the orange rind for a drop or 2 of orange water. Gave it a nice flavour!
Cookie - didn't have time for yours, but hopefully will this week.
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No worries. You have the recipe when you feel so inclined. :D :D
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I can remember Ritz fruit cake being a special treat as it was 'bought' when everything else we had was home made. Funny that, now we want everything home made to get rid of the nasties. Oh for my mums recipe book.
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Thanks Cookie.
I seem to run out of time over the weekend, work, friends for dinner Sat night, and a quiet horse ride got in the way! Maybe this week.
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I have all my mum's recipe books including her hand written recipes and even some of my grandmothers. I love looking through them. :)
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I also have some handwritten recipes of my Nana's. Like you Mab, I love reading through them as well.
Does make me smile though, my Nana wasn't the best cook (unless it was sago pudding - she made that awesomely!!) She would put dinner on after breakky on the old wood stove and it would sit there and simmer away all day, summer, winter, spring, autumn. Didn't matter the time of year that wood stove was always going. Something was always simmering away on it!
And my Grandma was a dreadful cook too. She would stew a good rump steak and fry anything that should have been stewed! And she boiled mutton. I can still smell it now. Ergh!! :P (and I think I already said that here somewhere, but it is a smell that will live with me forever!!)
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Nikkit the smell of boiled mutton is something you never ever forget. During seeding or ploughing times if Mum was short of meat for Dads lunch sandwiches we always had an evening meal of boiled mutton. Usually the shoulder. Oh yuk. Talk about tasteless grey stuff. I can still see it sitting on my plate with the boiled pumpkin, cabbage, carrot and potato, even though it would have been at least 55 years ago.
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I don't think my Mum ever boiled mutton (she did corned beef) but if she had, I certainly wouldn't have eaten it ;D I was a very fussy eater as a child.
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There is no comparison between corned beef and boiled mutton Judy. Chalk and cheese!
Corned beef is lovely, boiled mutton shouldn't even be fed to dogs!!
I am so glad my Mum didn't resort to boiled mutton during seeding or harvest time Cookie. Mum would stay up all night and cook and then spend all day on a tractor or on the header, looking after stock and all the other jobs that have to be done around the farm. Food was very important to Mum and no-one ever got anything that was below standard!
I often ask her now - how did she cope in those busy times? She was expected to do as much as Dad on the farm, plus keep the house, cook, and look after us kids. She shakes her head and does wonder herself! Needless to say I do remember being picked up off the school bus in the tractor or header numerous times and sitting on the floor doing my homework while Mum drove.
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Your Mum is a legend Nikkit, the farmer's wives I knew weren't expected to do that much :o
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She sure is a legend. My Mum never worked on the tractor or header. She sometimes helped with the sheep and of course was flat out from sun up to sun down at shearing time. Look out if the shearer's breakfast wasn't on the table at 7.30am, a full cooked breakfast of course. Then scones at smoko, lunch of cold meat and salad, afternoon tea of fruit cake and other cake, then dinner of a hot meal and sweets. Thank goodness they didn't have supper.
How big was your farm Nikkit? Ours was 3760 acres. Wheat and sheep.
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I have to admit that my Mum is an amazing woman. She doesn't think so, she just thinks it was what she had to do. She worked darned hard for 40 years on the farm next to Dad.
On top of all the farm work Mum had an amazing garden and an orchard with over 50 fruit trees. She would 'bottle' fruit (in the old Vacola pan) jam, pickles, you name it. The pantry was full of Vacola bottles! She also had over 100 roosters going at all times to kill so we had chicken in the freezer. She was also a wildlife carer and so we had roos/possums/birds/animals in the house that she would be rehabilitating. Was a bit of a zoo!
Even now that Mum is "retired" she doesn't stop. If we want to visit her or have her look after the kids we have to book her at least a month in advance! I know she would drop everything to do anything for us, but I believe that this is her time now and she deserves to do what she wants to do.
I love my Mum!
Cookie the farm was 5000 acres, my Grandfather cleared the first 2000 odd by hand back in the 30's. We were wheat, sheep and cattle.
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She sounds an amazing woman Nikkit and you are right, she does deserve to do whatever she wants to do and it's nice to hear she is keeping herself busy. I'm sure she loves having the grand children though.
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She does love having the kids Judy, will do anything for them.
After my Dad died we decided that life is not a dress rehearsal and you are a long time dead, not much point sitting around!
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I can remember boiled mutton and caper sauce and to this day it gives me the shivers; to top it all off it was usually a weekly meal as there were not a lot of shops and my mum did not drive so couldn't just pop out to the shops like we do.
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Never a truer statement Nikkit. It is lovely that your Mum is still busy. Your Grandfather would have worked very hard clearing land in those days. Is the farm still in the family? Sadly ours isn't. One brother wasn't interested and the other said he was but didn't really treat it as a business and left. Mum sold it then. Very sad but we didn't know enough to take it on. I'm glad now though the way farming is going.
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Just catching up on all this. Lucky I grew up in beef cattle country by the sounds of it :D
My mum was also a very busy lady especially during harvest times when she had to feed the family as well as all the itinerant workers who were always hungry as the work was physically demanding. She also kept the temporary workers' quarters ship-shape. Country women were/are amazing.
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Phwoar! Boiled mutton with caper sauce. Flash party dish there troupie. !
It still makes me shudder though! Erk!
Yes Cookie, Granddad did work very hard, and ran a very successful farm that his sons took over when he moved to Perth with Grandma. The farm grew to 7000 acres for a little while when my brother and SIL were farming, (Mum and Dad and semi-retired to Perth) but then they sold part of it, leased the farm out and moved north. The farm is now 1/2 sold and 1/2 leased out, but I think the last 1/2 sells this year.
It makes me a bit sad in some ways that so much history in the family is being passed on, but really - it is only dirt, I have taken what I want off the farm and have lots of good memories. Farming is not how it used to be anymore, expenses are very high, margins are tight and you need some serious land to make a $$. My brother says now "to make a million dollars in farming you need to start with 5 million"!
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So true Nikkit. Sad as it is I am glad that no one in our family is in farming now.