Travel theme: Round

Jo Bryant, ,

Round is this week’s Travel Theme. What could be rounder than balls of delish ice-cream???

Day 107 - 17.4.2013Maybe a round soft poached egg with hollandaise sauce on top of asparagus and a round of freshly baked bread ??

IMG_4262Not to be forgotten is the homemade pizza…all round oozing with melting goodies.

pizzaNow we are heading in to colder months here I am a big fan of a hot round bowl of soup…especially Bok Choy Soup with prawns and mushrooms.

Bok Choy soupI do love the feel of a ripe round peach in my hand, raising it to my nose to suck in the sweetness before taking that first bite.P1040145To finish I shall leave you with my favourite sweet treat…the delightfully round Neenish Tart. Add a ball of whipped cream and I’m yours for life.

Neenish Tart

Some thoughts around round:

    • “Do you mean to say,” asked Caspian, “that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you’ve never told me! It’s really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?”
      Edmund shook his head. “And it isn’t like that,” he added. “There’s nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you’re there.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    • “Money, you have lots of friends hanging round the door.
      When it’s gone and the spending ends
      They don’t come no more.” ― Billy Holiday
    • “Life’s just a merry-go-round. Come on up. You might get a brass ring.” ― Mae West

 

 

that's all folks

 

 

 

 

Published by Jo Bryant

I was born in the land of Banjo Paterson, gum trees, and weather extremes. I am a freelance photographer. I love to make images that make people happy. To capture forever a precious moment. I am also a freelance writer/editor. I live in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, but still like to claim my Australian heritage. I graduated with a Bachelor of Communications in 2008. I am writing my first novel. I love to write poetry, short stories, and also write for the web. And there is nothing that is on a par with a sunny summer's day spent at Waihi Beach.

37 Comments

  6. Yummy makes my tummy rumble, you’ve managed to pick all my favourite foods Jo. I think I will invite myself to your house for lunch

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          2. Well I sure hope to see you, though I am actually hoping to be in Napier by then…if all goes according to plan. But you could come for a visit…it is a wonderful place.

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          3. You choose some of the nicest places to live Jo. I really like Napier, spent 1 day passing through this year and definitely is on the to-do list for a longer visit.

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          5. Thanks so much Jo it will be a pleasure to meet one of my blogging buddies. I had another blogging couple from America call in to see me last year and I had great pleasure showing them a very small part of the GC

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    1. This could take a while Gilly. For the one I make and love:
      This is for about 30.

      Pastry cases…
      125g soft butter
      1/2 cup white sugar
      1 egg
      2 cups plain flour
      1 teaspoon baking powder
      Pinch of salt

      Ensure your butter is very soft for a start. Either zap it quickly in the microwave for a few seconds at a time or cut it into cubes & sit it in a bowl of tepid water for a few mins. Cream butter & sugar until pale in colour & fluffy in consistency. You could probably save a lot of time by doing this with a hand held electric beater. If you can’t be bothered getting the electric beater out, just do it by hand using a wooden spoon. Add the egg & beat well. Sift the flour, baking powder & salt & then add to the creamed mixture. Stir well until everything is combined & it starts coming together. Lightly flour your bench & turn the dough out. Knead it for a couple of minutes & then form it into a disc. Wrap in clingfilm & then leave to rest in the fridge for 15 mins. Heat your oven to 180C static or 160C fan bake. Grab the patty pans & spray them lightly with cooking spray – or grease well with butter. Remove the pastry from the fridge. Lightly flour your kitchen bench again & then roll the pastry out to a few mm thick – 2 to 4 mm. Cut out rounds using a 7cm ish biscuit cutter (or a size that will best fit your patty pans, remembering to allow for the pastry to be pressed down a bit into the pan) & place each one into the patty pans. Press each round of pastry gently into the patty pan. Grab a fork & prick the bottom of each pastry case twice. Bake for 12 minutes or until the cases are cooked & look nice & golden. Remove from the oven & leave the cases in the patty pans to cool completely before filling them.

      Filling:

      1/2 cup icing sugar
      100g soft butter
      1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
      2 tablespoons lemon juice

      Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Add butter, condensed milk & lemon juice. Beat until smooth. Fill pastry cases not quite to the top of the cases (allowing room for a thin layer of hard set icing on top). Leave the tarts to set in the fridge before icing the tops.

      Icing tops

      2 cups icing sugar
      1/4 teaspoon soft butter
      About 2.5 tablespoons water
      1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence

      Sift icing sugar into a bowl & add the butter & a little water at a time to reach a spreadable consistency (you can always add more sifted icing sugar to thicken & more water to thin if need be). Mix in the vanilla essence. Scoop out half of the white icing & place in a separate bowl. Leave to one side until you are ready to add the cocoa & ice the other side of the tarts. To make the chocolate icing, add 1 tablespoon of sifted cocoa powder & mix in, adding a little more water to gain a spreadable consistency. You don’t want the icing to be too runny because you’ll have no end of problems with it running off the sides of the tarts. So aim for a thick, spreadable consistency that just slowly falls off the end of a knife. First, ice half of the tarts with the white icing & then leave to set for a few minutes before icing the other half with the chocolate icing.

      Now where did they come from ??? Rumour has it Australia, but no one knows for sure. According to this Ozwords site, it goes as follows:

      First, for those who are not of the cake-shop conglutination (aficionados of glucogunk), what is a neenish tart? It is, it seems, a cake with a filling of mock cream, and iced in two colours — white and brown, or white and pink, or (occasionally) pink and brown.

      In May 1995, Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Heraldincluded some discussion of the origin of the term:
      Wendy Kerr and Jenny Hawke, of the Forbes public library, found this in Patisserie,an encyclopedia of cakes, by Aaron Maree: ‘Thought to have been invented by cooks in outback Australia.’ And that may be right. Leo Schofield, writing in the SMHin 1988, said his mother made them from a Country Women’s Association cookbook sold in Orange in World War II. When he asked for information, some readers suggested they had a Viennese or German origin. But a Mrs Evans said they were first made in her home town, Grong Grong. She and her sister, Venus, nominated Ruby Neenish, a friend of their mother’s, as the originator. Mrs Evans said that in 1913, running short of cocoa and baking for an unexpected shower tea for her daughter, Ruby made do by icing her tarts with half-chocolate, half-white icing. From then on they were known as neenish tarts. That, said Leo, would account for the tarts’ popularity in country districts and country cookbooks.
      We have been unable to track down the eponymous Ruby Neenish, and some of the ‘authenticating devices’ in this account feel a little shaky ? just how ‘unexpected’ can a shower tea be?

      The earliest reference to neenish we have been able to find occurs in a 1929 recipe for neenish cakes. This is in Miss Drake’s Home Cookeryby Lucy Drake, published at Glenferrie in Victoria. The cases are made from: 8 ozs. almond meal; 6 ozs. icing sugar; 1 large tablespoon flour; essence almonds; 2 whites of eggs. The filling is made of: 1 gill cream; 1/2 gill milk; 1/4 oz. gelatine; 1 tablespoon sugar; essence vanilla. No mock cream here. The icing is half white and half pink.

      The fifth edition of the Country Women’s Association Cookery Book and Household Hints,published in Perth in 1941, has the following recipe, provided by E. Birch of Baandee: Cream 2 ozs. butter and add 1 tablespoon sugar, rub in 5 ozs. self-raising flour and a pinch of salt and mix to a stiff paste with an egg. Knead well. Roll on a well-floured board till very thin, line patty tins with paste and fill with a good thick custard. Glaze the tops with thin icing. Use chocolate and white alternately’. This time, the icing is half chocolate and half white. And, of course, no mock cream. More interesting is the fact that the cakes are called nienich tarts. This certainly has a Germanic ring to it, and the spelling continues to be used in the CWA Cookery Bookas late as 1964.

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      1. Well I’ve copied this all to a word doc and may have a go at it when the daughter is around, I think it would be fun with a glass or two of cider! Meanwhile, I think it would make a brilliant blog post for the rest of your non Kiwi and Aussie readers 🙂 Thanks honey Gx

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        1. You might have a point Gilly. Let me know how it goes making them. Sometimes I cheat. I just colour half the filling with cocoa and skip the top layer of icing. A friend who makes amazing Neenish Tarts taught me that trick. Makes them just a little bit less sweet. I might make a batch and walk through the steps on a post. Thanks for giving me the idea dear lady !!!

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