Custard two-ways

Today was grandparents day at my daughter's school. It's her final one actually as she is in Year 6. My Dad dutifully attends this event every year. He takes the morning off work, rocks up in his suit, eats his hot-cross bun and heads back to the office. My parents live an hour away and it's a rather convoluted trip to the office.

Anyway I had bought some mini pastry cases with a view to making some custard tarts one day and what is one of my Dad's favourite cake-shop treats from his childhood? Yes, the custard tart so last night I made a batch of custard up for custard tarts.

Of course because mine were mini tarts and we had leftover custard so I decided to make bread and butter pudding with the remains. Not just any bread and butter pudding mind you - choc chip hot cross bun bread and butter pudding!

So we had the pudding after dinner and today the lunchbox had custard tarts for my daughter and her grandfather!

Custard
3 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste or the beans from 1/2 a vanilla pod
2 3/4 cups milk.

1. Whisk all together in a large bowl.

Custard Tarts
12 pre-made mini tart shells (I used Sara Lee)
1/2 quantity of custard
nutmeg to sprinkle on top.

1. Fill pastry cases with custard.
2. Sprinkle with nutmeg
3.Bake till set, about 20 minutes.

Choc Chip Hot Cross Bun Bread and Butter Pudding
4 choc chip hot cross buns
1/2 serve of custard
1/2 cup walnuts

1. Slice hot cross buns and arrange in a casserole dish
2. Pour over custard
3. Scatter over walnuts.
4. Bake in moderate oven 30-35 minutes
5. Serve with ice-cream or whipped cream.

Enjoy!

Scrolls two ways - savoury and sweet

Sometimes a get on a bit of a baking binge. I really like being able to take one recipe and get more than one thing out of it. Like taking a basic batter and make more than one cake or a universal muffin recipe and getting more than one type of muffin. It gives more options and I don't know why it just appeals to the multi-tasker in me.

One the weekend I decided to make pizza scrolls for the lunch-boxes this week. I cheated and made a quantity of bread dough in the bread machine using a bread mix that had been lurking there forever. (A bit of a tip but if you do that use fresh yeast...yeast expires and expired yeast means no rise and that's not what you want)

Then we halved the bread dough and made pizza scrolls with one half and choc-chip scrolls with the other. There is so much sugar in a choc-chip scroll that nobody needs a sweet dough with them in my opionion.

So this week the first few days my daughter and husband had savoury scrolls as their main lunch item and on Thursday and Friday they will have a sweet scroll. Easy.

A scroll is made by taking a sqaure of dough, covering it with filling, rolling jelly-roll style and slicing. In the US they call them cinnamon rolls...in Australia we used to put he jam-filled ones in acirle and call them Chelsea Buns.

Here's my version

Pizza Scrolls
1/2 quantity of bread dough
1/4 cup tomato paste
100g chopped tinned pineapple
125 chopped ham
1 cup grated mozarella

1. Roll dough into a rectangle
2. Spread with tomato paste, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover tomato paste with other topping.
3. Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

Choc Chip Scrolls
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup choc chips
1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

1. Roll into  rectangle.
2. Spread with butter, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover with other toppings.
3.  Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

A healthy lunch box treat.

Now that the price of bananas is returning to normal after the price hike that came from the Queensland floods it is nice to be able to enjoy the humble banana again.

Banana bread is a popular treat in lunchboxes and at cafes but the reality is much of it is high in fat and not as good for us as we would like to believe.

This banana carrot cake is low-fat and uses wholemeal flour and as such is a great option. You can omit the nuts if your school or work place is a nut-free environment as so many are. Alternatively I have used chopped nuts or walnuts rather than pecans if that's all I have had on hand.

Banana carrot cake

90g butter

1 cup raw sugar

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 cup grated carrot

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 ½ cups wholemeal flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder sifted

1 teaspoon bi-carb sifted

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ cup chopped pecans (I leave these out due to nut-free school policy)

1. Cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time. Mix in carrot and banana
2. Fold in sifted ingredients and pecans. Spoon mix into greased and base lines 20cm round cake pan.(I use a lamington pan because the slices are a better shape for lunch-boxes etc).
3. Bake in a moderately slow oven 180C fo 50-55 minutes of until cooked when tested. Stand 5 minutes before turning out.

I cut before I freeze. Enjoy!