Green salad with Native Raspberries and Violets

This is a salad of mixed garden greens with the edible flowers of the European field pansy and the Australian Showy Violet (Viola betonicifolia) Or use V. banksii formerly Viola hederacea.

The tropical native raspberry is used in the dressing and for decoration. One could use any edible petal or berry of course.
When making a flower salad, be mindful that the flowers and all other ingredients are from a trustworthy source as pesticides/ weed killers are ubiquitous in Australia. Always make sure you know the plant/ flower you are eating.

GET
A bowl of mixed salad greens from the garden
A handful of snow peas
25 Tropical raspberries
5 Flowers of edible violets

3 Tsp. Macadamia oil
2 Tsp. Balsamic vinegar or mirin
2 Tsp. Vegetable stock 
20 Native Raspberries
 

DO
Place 20 raspberries in stock and mash. Sieve and keep liquid.
Wash all vegetables, fruit and flowers and dry. Rip large green leaves into bits. Cut large peas in halves.
Mix oil, vinegar and sieved berry juice in to a dressing.
Place greens into a bowl and mix half the dressing under. Sprinkle with the remaining berries and toss the flowers and the rest of the dressing over it. Serve immediately.


Images:
1. Rubus probus, Viola tricolor, garden greens
2. Snap peas, Viola betonicifolia flowers and leaf, flower of Rubus rosifolius
3. Mixed berries: Rubus probus, strawberries and blueberries

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.

Cherries that survived the snow and Paeonia

Paeonia (Paeoniaceae) in all varieties. Perfumed lilac and Lily of the Valley fill the air

Cherry blossom that stood in snow, now gives forth some cherries despite the climate disruption

Lemon almond cookies

Get
250g wholemeal flour (spelt flour)
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
1.5 heaped teaspoon ground Sri Lanka cinnamon, known as 'Ceylon cinnamon'
250g butter
400g organic almonds
rind of 1 lemon
all organic

Do
Beat butter in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. Add honey and beat it creamy.
Add egg and mix. It will not mix in so add a little flour and beat, then a little more flour and beat again. The mixture will become smooth.

Add cinnamon and grated lemon rind. Grate almonds and add to the mixture.
Add flour gradually while mixing.
When it becomes too firm to mix, add more flour and
knead to a pastry. Keep adding flour and kneading until it is not sticky
Cool in fridge.
Roll out thin.
Using cookie cutting tools cut out shapes.

Bake at 190°c for 6-8 minutes until light but not brown on a baking tray in batches on the second shelf from the bottom. Remove from oven and cool on the tray to avoid breakages.
Store in a tin lined with greaseproof paper in a cool place.

Use cookie cutting tools without narrow features as this pastry is quite crumbly.