Fruit and nut cake

Get
50g dried apricots
110g blanched chopped almonds
200g sultanas
250g butter
150g honey
7 eggs
400g flour
4 tbsp rum
Butter paper and wheatgerm for the form


Do 

Butter a bread form and sprinkle with wheatgerm.
Pre-heat oven to 190°c.
Chop apricots. Mix with sultanas and mix both with a little flour.
Beat egg whites stiff, add some honey and beat again till stiff.
Beat butter and honey until smooth. Add egg yolks on at a time while beating for a few minutes. Add alternately a little flour and egg whites until a smooth mixture forms.
Then add the rest of the floor and egg whites and carefully lift under the mixture.
Add the fruit and nuts and lift under.
Add the rum and lift under.
Pour into the bread form.
Form the top into an M shape.

Bake on the second bottom shelf for 40 minutes.
Cover with parchment paper and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes.
Leave it in the hot oven for a further 10-20 minutes in necessary.
Test if it is baked with a wooden skewer or small narrow knife. Even if the skewer comes out clean, leave it in the turned-off oven for 10 more minutes to ensure it does not have a soggy centre.
Remove from the form and cool . Wrap in paper.

This cake lasts well even in hot weather out of the fridge. Good for camping trips.
Optional: leave out the fruit and nuts for a dry cake ('sand cake').

Cherry cheese cake

GET
200g wholemeal spelt flour
1 tbsp agave syrup
1 egg yolk
125g organic butter

1kg organic quark (curd cheese)
5 tbsp organic agave syrup
75g wholemeal spelt flour
3 organic free-range eggs, separated
1 egg white
 ½ untreated lemon
200g dark red cherries, pitted

DO
Grate lemon peel and press out the juice.
Put spelt flour into a large stainless steel bowl.
Mix in agave syrup and egg yolk.
Add butter in flakes and knead to a pastry. Add more flour if it is sticky.

Cool

Preheat oven to 175°c.
Roll out pastry into a 28cm buttered round baking form with sides about 3 cm high. Pierce the bottom with a fork in several places. Cover with baking paper and place light weights on it (e.g. tea spoons)
Bake pastry shell for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from oven.

Beat quark, 3 egg yolks, 3 tbsp agave syrup, flour.
Add lemon and mix.

Beat 4 egg whites and add 2 tbsp agave syrup. Continue beating until stiff.
Fold in the egg white mixture.

Add a little filling to pastry shell to cover the bottom. Arrange cherries evenly on it. Add the remaining filling to pastry shell covering the cherries.
Bake at 175°c for 30 minutes. Then turn oven down to 140° and bake for a further 35 minutes.
Turn off oven and leave the cake in it for another 20 minutes.
Remove from form.

Best eaten when cool especially on the second day and thereafter.

Blueberry Banana Cake Pacific Style

The mid-north coast of NSW is converting from banana production to blueberries, so this recipe takes advantage of the presence of both fruit in one place. You can use as many blueberries as you wish.

Get
150g organic almonds
1 bowl blueberries
8 fat ripe cavendish bananas (more if small)
some lemon juice
8 tbsp agave nectar
4 eggs separated
200g unsalted butter
1 tsp cinnamon
about 150g flour
5 level tsp baking powder (no aluminium or phosphate, quantity depends on the type of baking powder, do not use too much)

Do
Roughly mash 8 bananas with some lemon juice.
Grate the almonds finely.
Preheat the oven to 190°.
Beat the soft butter in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until it is smooth. Beat in alternately the egg yolks and 5 tbsp agave nectar. Beat well into a soft mixture.
Add the cinnamon.
Beat the bananas into the mixture one at a time.
Beat the almond meal into the mixture gradually.
Add the flour a tablespoon at a time while beating. Alternately add the baking powder so it mixes in evenly. Only use enough flour so that the mixture is thick but still falls slowly - “heavily” - from the spoon. Beat well.

Mix in the blueberries keeping some aside for decoration.
Whip the egg whites until stiff, then add the remaining agave nectar and continue beating until stiff.
Lift the egg whites under the mixture.
Butter a baking form and dust it with a little flour.
Add the mixture to the form and spread it evenly.
Decorate with the remaining blueberries and press them lightly into the mixture.

Vaccinium myrtillus

Bake on the 2nd shelf from the bottom for 25 minutes. Cover it with paper. Turn the oven down and bake for a further 25 minutes at 120°c. It should be golden. Test with a thin knife that it is cooked. The knife should come out clean. If it is not clean, return covered to the oven for another 10 minutes and test again. Turn off the oven.
Cool in form in the open oven.
Remove from form when cool.
Store in a linen cloth.

Cheese cake

GET
300g wholemeal spelt flour
1 tbsp agave syrup
1 egg yolk
125g organic butter

1kg organic quark
5 tbsp organic agave syrup
75g wholemeal spelt flour
3 organic free-range eggs, separated
1 egg white
1 untreated lemon
1 organic vanilla pod
100g washed organic sultanas

DO
Soak sultanas in lemon juice with grated lemon peel (zest).
Put spelt flour into a large stainless steel bowl.
Mix in agave syrup and egg yolk.
Add butter in flakes and knead to a pastry.
Cool

Preheat oven to 180°c.
Roll out pastry into a 28cm buttered round baking form with sides about 3 cm high. Pierce the bottom with a fork in several places.
Bake pastry shell for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from oven.

Beat quark, 3 egg yolks, 3 tbsp agave syrup, flour.
Add sultanas and lemon and mix.
Scratch out the inside of the vanilla pod and mix it in.
Beat 4 egg whites and add 2 tbsp agave syrup. Continue beating until stiff.
Lift the egg white mixture under.

Add filling to pastry shell.
Bake at 180°c for 30 minutes. Then turn oven down to 160° and bake for a further 15 minutes.
Turn off oven and let the cake cool in it.
Remove from form.

Best eaten when cool especially on the second day. And thereafter

This cake can also be baked with just a pastry base, no side.
This cheese cake is a further development of a previous cheese cake recipe.

Honey or syrup?
This recipe uses agave syrup rather than honey. According to some sources, heating honey over 40°c is unhealthy. Generally, where honey is used in these recipes it can be substituted with agave syrup or maple syrup depending on the disired flavour.

The cake is immersed in a wildflower meadow. Visible are Bellis perennis. The air is abuzz with honey bees and various bumblebees feeding on the sea of wild flowers. Lawn fanatics erase with the help of fossil fuel the food source of these pollinators regularly and eagerly work on their extinction.

Banana cake

Another version of the sugar banana cake posted previously.
This time there are large chunks of sugar bananas in the cake. The orchid in the picture is the Lesser Swamp-orchid (Phaius australis) which would have inhabited the Coffs Harbour swampy paperbark forest near sea level. All is now airport, highway and malls with view of the denuded hills growing bananas.

Sugar Banana Cake

We were fortunate to be able to harvest these bananas from a tree in the garden whilst in the Dorrigo/ Bellingen region. The recipe will work with any bananas of course. You can use more bananas mashed up and vary the amount of macadamia nuts. There is a fine balance between underbaking and leaving a soft uncooked centre and overbaking leaving the cake too brown.

Get
300g organic macadamias
10 fat ripe sugar bananas (more if small)
some lemon juice
6 tbsp honey
4 eggs separated
140g unsalted butter
half a vanilla pod
some grated lemon rind
about 150g flour
4 tsp baking powder (no aluminium or phosphate, quantity depends on the type of baking powder, do not use too much)

Do
Peel 4 bananas, cut them up and sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.
Beat the butter in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until it is soft. Beat in alternately the egg yolks and 5 tbsp honey. Beat well into a soft mixture.
Mash the remaining 6 bananas. Beat them into the mixture one at a time.
Cut the vanilla pod along one side and scrape the inside into the mixture. Grate a little lemon rind into it.
Grate the macadamias finely. Beat them into the mixture gradually.
Add the flour a tablespoon at a time while beating. Alternately add the baking powder so it mixes in evenly. Only use enough flour so that the mixture is thick but still falls slowly - “heavily” - from the spoon (maybe only 3-4 tbsps). Beat well.Whip the egg whites until stiff, then add the remaining honey and continue beating until stiff.
Lift the egg whites under the mixture.
Preheat the oven to 190°. Butter a baking ring (spring form) and dust it with a little flour.
Add 2/3 of the mixture to the form and spread it evenly to cover the whole bottom. Place the banana pieces on top and press in a little. Cover with the remaining mixture.
Bake on the 2nd shelf from the bottom for 35 minutes. If it starts to get too brown cover it with paper after 25 minutes. It should be golden. Test with a thin knife that it is cooked. The knife should come out clean. If it is not clean, return covered to the oven for another 10 minutes and test again.
Remove from form and cool.
Store in a linen cloth.

Another
Sugar banana almond cake

Pear apple pie

Get organic
450g wholemeal spelt flour
1 heaped tbsp honey
2 eggs
125g butter

1 kg ripe yellow pears
500g apples
1 tbsp water
150g almonds

50g icing sugar
pear schnapps

Do
Put flour in a large bowl.
Add honey in the middle and eggs.
Mix together with some flour into a paste.
Cut in butter. Mix.
Knead together into a pastry. Add more flour if sticky, more butter if not smooth. Cool.

Peel pears and apples and core them. Slice into a large pot. Slice the apples very thinly, pears more chunky.
Add water and cook at a medium temperature on the stove with the lid on until soft. Use apples which break down into a mash quickly. The pears should keep their shape. Turn of heat.
Finely grate 100g almonds with a hand grater.
Blanch 50g whole almonds.
Add to the apples. Mix carefully.

Butter a 28 cm round spring form.
Cut pastry into 3 pieces for the pie (2 equal, one smaller).
Roll out one piece for the bottom, make 3 cm sides with the small piece. Save the other piece for the top.
Cover the bottom of the pie shell with greaseproof paper and put a few weights on it (e.g. nuts or metal spoons).
Bake on second shelf for 10 minutes at 190°.
Remove from oven, remove paper and weights.
Fill the pie with the pear-apple mixture.
Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the pie with it.
Press down the edges using a patterned object (e.g. knife tip, lemon zester) to seal the pie.
Bake a further 20 minutes.
Loosen the pie from the bottom and sides of the form with a knife after 30 minutes and remove from form . Cool.
Sieve icing sugar. Mix in pear schnapps until a sticky mass forms. Paint this on the pie with a spoon and smooth over. Use lemon juice as an alternative to alcohol.

This is more a pear pie than an apple pie so it is important to use apples that break down into a mash quickly when cooking them, e.g. rubinola. Pears give off quite a lot of juice when cooking so the ground almonds are necessary to soak it up. The whole almonds give a pleasant surprise.
>> Apple pie

Nut ring with currants. (Sand cake)

Get
200g blanched almonds
100g currants
100g macadamia nuts
250g butter
4 heaped tbsp honey
8 eggs
350g wholemeal organic spelt flour
1 tbsp pear schnapps
butter paper

Do
Preheat the oven to 190°C.
Grind 150g almonds with a hand mill. Wash and dry currants and roll them in a little flour to keep them separate. Chop the remaining almonds and the macadamias.
Separate the eggs. Beat the whites stiff. Add 1 tbsp honey and beat again until very stiff. Set aside.
Beat the butter smooth. Add the remaining honey and beat together. Add egg yolks one at a time and beat well each time. Beat until smooth.
Add a little flour to the egg yolk mixture and mix it in. Add alternately flour and almond meal beating each time. When the mixture becomes too thick, add some of the beaten egg white alternately with the flour and almond meal.
Lightly mix under the egg white foam and the remaining flour and almond meal. Lift under the chopped nuts and the currants. Lightly mix under the schnapps.
Butter a 28cm baking ring form and powder the surface with a little flour.
Add the mixture evenly and press down lightly. Flatten the surface.
Bake in the oven on the second shelf from the bottom for 40 minutes. Then cover the cake with a piece of greaseproof paper and turn off the oven. Leave the cake in the closed hot oven for a further 20 minutes.
Remove from the form and cool.

Tip
An alternative to schnapps is rum, e.g. Bundaberg rum.
Image 2: Part of Vallotton, Felix, via Zeno

Cheese cake

GET
300g wholemeal spelt flour
1 tbsp organic honey
1 egg yolk
125g organic butter

1kg organic quark
3tbsp organic honey
25g wholemeal spelt flour
3 free-range eggs, separated
1 egg white
1 untreated lemon
100g washed organic currants or sultanas

DO
Add spelt flour to a large bowl.
Mix in honey and egg yolk.
Add butter in flakes and knead to a pastry.
Cool

Soak currants in lemon juice with grated lemon peel (zest).
Beat 4 egg whites and add honey. Continue beating until stiff.
Beat quark, 3 egg yolks, flour.
Add currants and lemon and mix.
Lift the egg white mixture under.

Roll out pastry into a 28cm buttered round spring form with sides about 4 cm high.
Add filling.
Bake at 180°c for 45 minutes.
Turn off oven and let the cake cool in it.
Remove from form.

Best eaten on the second day. And thereafter

Cheese cake is best made with quark. In Germany this is no problem. In Australia there is at least one brand of organic quark. I use one from the Adelaide Hills which is excellent, both the Swiss and German styles. The German style is very low fat. High-fat cheese should be avoided for health reasons. Some other types of curd cheese like cottage cheese are difficult to render smooth. Smoothness is an important quality for a cheese cake.
The egg yolk in the pastry functions to bind the pastry to the cheese mixture.

There is now a new version of cheese cake.

Apple Pie

This apple pie is different every time you make it. It depends on the type of apples and the quantity. If you take a lot of apples - about 2.5 kg - it becomes a very generous moist pie. If you take more almonds and fewer apples it becomes dryer. According to season, you can use red or green apples and each variety gives a different quality to your apple pie. I prefer red delicious, granny smiths, boskoop (from Holland) and cox orange.

GET

 450g wholemeal organic spelt flour 
1 heaped tbsp honey
2 eggs
125g butter
1.5 - 2 kg organic apples (green, red, large or small)
0.25 cup water
100g organic sultanas
1 lemon
75g ground organic almonds
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g organic icing sugar
lemon juice

DO

Put flour in a large bowl. Add honey in the middle and eggs. Mix together with some flour into a paste. Cut in butter. Mix. Knead together into a pastry. Add more flour if sticky, more butter if not smooth. Cool.

Wash sultanas, soak in lemon juice and grated rind for 15 minutes. Peel apples and core them. Slice into a large pot. Add water and cook at a low temperature on the stove with the lid on until soft but not to mash. Turn off heat. Add sultanas, then almonds to the apples. Add cinnamon. Mix.

Butter a 28 cm round spring form. Cut pastry into 3 pieces for the pie (2 equal, one smaller). Roll out one piece for the bottom, make 3 cm sides with the small piece. Save the other piece for the top. Cover the bottom of the pie shell with greaseproof paper and put a few weights on it (e.g. nuts or metal spoons).

Bake on second shelf for 10 minutes at 190°. Remove from oven, remove paper and weights. Fill the pie with the apple mixture. Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the pie with it. Press down the edges using a patterned object (e.g. knife tip, lemon zester) to seal the pie. Bake a further 20 minutes.

Loosen the pie from the bottom and sides of the form with a knife after 10 minutes and remove from form . Cool on a grid.

Sieve icing sugar. Mix in lemon juice until a sticky mass forms. Paint this on the pie with a spoon and smooth over.

In Germany they would serve it with cream, in America and Australia with ice-cream, but this pie needs neither. >> Pear Apple Pie