With Easter so close and Hot Cross Buns everywhere it seems like a great time to share a couple of Hot Cross Bun recipes. My son in law loves Hot Cross Buns so I made this dessert for him to try last weekend. The Hot Cross Bun & chocolate base was great, but we all agreed that the topping needed a bit more custard and less cream. It’s well worth trying though.
The combination of fish, spinach, mustard and mashed potato make this recipe look really good. I don’t think Mum ever made it, but I’m sure she meant to one day…..
As my husband says, like mother like daughter, I scribbled this recipe down on a piece of paper one night after eating them at a friend’s house. Sadly he passed away recently, so in honor of a great fellow and a good cook here’s his recipe for Oven Dried Tomatoes.
Just for variety I thought this more biscuit style recipe might be worth trying. Mum cut it out from the Australian Women’s weekly back in March 2001. I haven’t calculated the cost to make them, but I think it would be a bit more than $1.50 these days.
This recipe comes from the back of the Pampas Ready Rolled Puff Pastry pack. Originally Mum had to hand make any pastry she used, so the advent of prepared pastry was almost as good as sliced bread. The first type of prepared pastry came in a block and still needed rolling out which was a bit of a chore, then someone had the great idea of ready rolled sheets and using pastry became a lot easier.
A favourite family dessert was always Bread & Butter Pudding served with cream, this recipe is an updated version of that using croissants and blueberries. Mum cut this out of the Herald Sun, but I’m not really sure if she ever actually made it, I suspect she stuck to her well loved version.
When I was growing up the one thing that that Dad always had growing in the garden was rhubarb. Its giant green leaves and red stalks filled one corner of his veggie patch and never seemed to die off. Luckily Dad liked eating it so Mum stewed it up with some sugar and served it with custard for dessert – quite often. I don’t know about my brothers, but it was never one of my favourites and I’ve been greatly surprised to see that it has come back into fashion – who would have thought? I think this recipe at least would be sweet enough to counteract some of the tartness I didn’t like.
I think Mum taught me well, because like her when I’m entertaining I always like to have everything prepared in advance and leave only a few things to be done when the guests arrive. What I like about this recipe is that you can prepare the chicken up to stage 4 and then cook and serve the rolls when your guests arrive. It would work well with either a salad or vegetables and that makes it very versatile.
We always had bananas in the fruit bowl and I suspect Mum made banana fritters when there were a few too many ripe ones left. I think her original recipe was simply the bananas chopped into a sweet batter mix, but these ones have a few other added ingredients which would add to the flavour.
Mum cut this recipe out of the Woman’s Day. It makes a quite versatile cake that you could serve as a dessert with ice cream and cream, but works just as well as a yummy afternoon tea or supper treat.
Beb's Recipe Drawer 