Vanilla Plum Cake

I am so lucky that I get beautiful fresh ingredients given to me direct from the vegie patch or orchard at Fish Creek!  Mum and Dad's plum tree is absoultely choccers this year and I got a big bag full of beautiful blood plums last week.

I knew that I would stew some of them, I love stewed fruit with my cereal in the morning and the kids love them with ice-cream for dessert.  I went straight to Annabel's book to get a recipe to blog and found this Vanilla Plum Cake, very easy and very delicious!

The cake only needed the plums for the top so I guess I really only used about 10 plums and stewed the rest.  Annabel suggests you can use any fruit, apricots or peaches would be nice too.  The inclusion of the buttermilk makes the cake so moist and with the vanilla and the zest of a lemon - so yummy!
The cooked cake would also make a really nice dessert with a dollop of cream or scoop of vanilla ice-cream.  I cooked the cake in a large baking dish, cut half to eat now and froze the rest to use in lunchboxes ready for the first week back to school!

 

Roasted Beet & Rocket Salad

Think I may have found my favourite Annabel salad!  This was SO easy to make and really delicious.  No many ingredients but the combination of the caramelised beetroot, the creamy feta and crunchy almonds is awesome.

This is especially yummy as the beetroot is from Mum and Dad's veggie garden at Fish Creek!  The beetroot was slowly roasted after being mixed through with olive oil, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and salt & pepper.

 I used really lovely feta that I bought from a local deli that was marinated with some preserved lemon.  The feta was so smooth and creamy and with the hint if lemon, went so well with the lemon and olive oil that made up the dressing.  I took this salad to a Christmas BBQ and could have sat down and eaten the whole bowl on my own!  Will definitely make this one again!

Prawn and Mint Finger Rolls

My next few posts will all be recipes from Annabel's book that I made over the Christmas holidays.  As it is Summer and we go out a lot to friends and family, it's nice to take something to share, and people are now expecting an Annabel creation so I'm loving it!  

These delicious prawn and mint finger rolls were easy to make and went down a treat at my family pre-Christmas dinner.  Annabel's tip to use a damp t-towel was great as the rice paper was much more manageable and the rolls stays beautifully fresh.

The ingredients were all lovely, fresh and crisp.  Iceberg lettuce, carrot, mint leaves, coriander, vermicelli and prawn meat  made up the finger rolls - very simple.
The dipping sauce completed this quick starter which was a combination of sweet chilli sauce, lime juice and zest, fish sauce and the white of a spring onion.  So easy and so delicious!