Yoghurt Fruit Smash

This dessert is super-easy and quite healthy so you can enjoy it without feeling any guilt whatsoever! 

Ingredients:
Fruit of your choosing - we used our own homegrown blackboy peaches and pears plus a banana
Natural yoghurt
Cinnamon
Bailey's Irish cream
Chocolate - about a quarter of a cup when slowly melted in the microwave for a few seconds until it is a thick sauce, otherwise simply chop and use

Method:
Layer fruit in the bottom of the jar, sprinkle with cinnamon and then spoon in natural yoghurt.  

Dribble a tablespoon (or 2 or 3) of Bailey's Irish Cream over the yoghurt.   

Add more fruit and then yoghurt.   

Spread the melted chocolate sauce over the top. 

Add another layer of fruit, then more natural yoghurt.  

Top with a spoonful of fruit and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Push down a little bit with a spoon on the mix if you wish to make it look a bit more "smashed".

Optional : add whipped cream or chopped nuts on top. 

Scrumpy Scroodles

These little bite sized beauties are so easy to make but very hard to stop eating!

Ingredients & Method

Mix well in a bowl:
250 grams (or 1 cup) of sour cream
1/2 cup of chopped bacon (or salami)
1 cup of grated cheese (preferably tasty)
2 tablespoons of dried onion soup mix (or use one medium sized, finely diced onion)
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
Optional : a handful of finely diced fresh herbs such as chives or parsley

Spoon into greased mini muffin tins and bake at 180C (350F) for around 20 minutes.
Makes about 18.

Pikelets

When I was growing up it was quite common for my mother or the lady of the house to "whip up" (as they said) a batch of fresh scones or pikelets for morning or afternoon tea or for unexpected visitors.  They were quick, filling, very cheap to make and when they're fresh and just cooled - delicious - especially with lashings of butter and homemade jam.  Of course if you were especially impatient or starving as us kids would cry,  you could even butter them hot and have butter and jam dripping all over you!

My sister and I loved convincing our mother to let us use the last of the pikelet mixture to make our own "gingerbread man" - or perhaps she would do it for us.  Either way the "gingerbread man" could range from a reasonably elegant and well defined chap to Mr Blobby!  I also used to enjoy watching the bubbles form in the pikelet mixture as they cooked - you're very easily entertained when you're ten years old!

If we wanted to get really fancy we would whip fresh cream and have jam and whipped cream on the pikelets or scones, at which point - if served with tea - the scones would be designated a Devonshire tea. 

My recipe has changed a bit from my mothers over the years but I still think it's good fun to make fresh pikelets - and I notice they still vanish just as fast as they did forty or so years ago!

To Make Pikelets

Beat 2 fresh eggs, ½ cup of sugar and 1 tbsp of melted butter in a large glass bowl until thick.

Add 2 cups of sifted flour, 2 tbsp of custard powder (or more flour if you have no custard powder), 2 good teaspoons of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix till combined (don’t overstir).

Add ¼ of a cup of sofa-type dry ginger ale (or other soda type drink), 1 and a ¼ cups of milk and 1 tsp of vanilla essence. Mix till combined (again, try not to overstir).

Set a large frying pan on a low to medium heat - a stainless steel or non-stick pan seems to work better than cast iron - and lightly grease it with butter. Drop about 1 tablespoon of mixture into the pan for each pikelet and cook a few minutes on each side until brown. I use my old electric frying pan and usually do 4 at a time.

Eat them as soon as they are cooled, the fresher the better - with butter and honey or golden syrup or raspberry, strawberry or some other kind of jam.

If you want to fancy them up for visitors or just for more of a treat let them cool right down and then spread them with some jam and freshly whipped cream on top, or you could do what I did above - spread them with strawberry jam, add some whipped cream, some sliced strawberries and a sprinkling of icing sugar.

Below : Pikelets in the pan and then cooling off.