This is my Mum’s alltime favorite dessert. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table tucking into a lovely bowl of it when I was a kid and I know Mum had been making it for a long time before I came onto the scene. I haven’t found her original recipe, but this is the same as the one she made.
When my children were at school I used to bake a batch of biscuits at least once a week and these were a great favourite. I must have written this recipe out for Mum grabbing the first bit of paper I could find and used a texta to write with, not a great piece of penmanship. It comes out of one of my biscuit cookbooks that was published in the 60s, but I made them a lot later than that. You’ll need 125g of butter.
This is a very hearty beef casserole great for these winter nights. I like the fact that everything is thrown in one dish and you can put it in the oven and forget it for a couple of hours. The recipe converts to 250g of blade steak, but you could put more in if you want to bulk it up a bit.
This is the twin of Brandy Alexander Pie both very much desserts of the 70s. They have basically the same ingredients, but this one has creme de menthe instead of brandy. Mum cut both recipes out, probably because I’d told her about making them for dinner parties for our friends. I haven’t heard of anyone making them for a long, long time now though………………..
This is very much a dessert from the 70s. Brandy Alexander Pie together with its twin Grasshopper Pie were all the fashion back then. They are basically the same recipe but this one has brandy and creme de cacao and the other has creme de menthe and creme de cacao. I liked this one, but I think you can see why they both went out of favor.
Ham is one of the things that has changed enormously on our table and in our cooking over the years. In Australia it wasn’t served very often. At Christmas the big treat was chicken, not turkey or ham which were very American and not available as they are today. The only way we saw large pieces of ham at our house was from a tin – the best brand being Mayfair. This old recipe at first glance sounds a bit strange, but the combination of ham, mustard, ginger and pineapple could taste quite good, I think I’d top it with a bit of cheese though. Might be worth retrying with a better quality piece of ham?
This is a recipe I used to make for dinner parties in the 1980s. Mum must have asked for the recipe and my daughter wrote it out for her and added the lovely drawing. Needless to say she did not go onto becoming an artist….
This recipe is in my brother’s lovely flowing handwriting, which means that my sister-in-law gave to Mum back in the 60s. Mum used to make it for casserole style entertaining and it tasted quite good, although personally I was never that fond of the tinned pineapple, you can use fresh pineapple instead if you have the same problem. You need around 750g of sausages.
These were definitely an afternoon tea delight. Coming home from school to find some of them left on a plate after Mum’s friends had gone home was a marvellous treat. With a bit of luck there were a few sandwiches and other goodies left as well. Argh, the good old days when there was time to have fancy afternoon teas………………….
As you can see this recipe comes from a publication called WOMAN and is dated November 12, 1951. Must admit I’ve never heard of the magazine, but fruit crumbles have been around for a long, long time so it’s not surprising this recipe dates back that far. The difference with this recipe is that it uses bananas mixed in with the apples and I think that would taste great, especially with a little ice cream or cream on top.
Beb's Recipe Drawer 