Cake not pie

I have had a jar and a half of fruit mince maturing at the back of my kitchen cupboard for a very, very long time. For a few years I made mince pise each Christmas - and they were tasty.  But they were very fiddly, and I lost enthusiasm around about 2012.  In particular, handling short, buttery pastry in the heat of an Australian summer is not much fun.

So there the mince lurked, in the darkness.

In response to the persistent pleas of my space-loving housemate to actually use some of the many things in the cupboard, I decided to sort out that mince. And discovered it is actually not that easy to find a non-pie recipe for fruit-mince.

Eventually I found this blog entry for a Fruit Mince Crumble Cake. Even though the blogger didn't have a great result with her cake, it looked pretty appealing to me. The cake was excellent and very well received by my family on a cold autumn evening.

Fruit Mince Crumble Cake

(from Better Homes and Gardens - December 2008)

Crumble

1 cup spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
125g unsalted butter, cold

Cake

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
160g unsalted butter, cold
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
400g jar fruit mince
100g sweetened dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 24cm round springform cake tin and line base with baking paper.
2. To make crumble, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a bowl. Using your fingers, rub butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Combine flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Rub butter into this mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl and mix with the milk. Add to the flour mixture and and stir until combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and smooth out to make an even layer.
4. Spread fruit mince over the cake batter - the layer does not b=have to be even, but make sure that most of the batter is covered by the mince. Sprinkle cranberries over the mince and top all of this with the crumble mix.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of cake. Stand tin on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before removing from the tin and cooling completely on the rack.

This cake is best served warm, and it is excellent with custard.
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Chipotle Maple Barbeque Sauce

I started planning tonight's dinner with a Mexican cookbook open in front of me - in the end the final result came from a midpoint between Mexico and Canada.  And it was amazingly tasty.

I had the remains of a can of chipotle chillies in the freezer and a dining partner who was very keen on eating them.  None of the recipes in my Mexican cookbook inspired me today so I jumped into Google and came across this recipe for Chipotle-Maple Barbecue Chicken.

Didn't have any chicken pieces but I had a nice fillet of pork just waiting to be enjoyed.  I took my inspiration very much from the recipe and tweaked it a little to suit my audience.

I had the time to brine the pork - and having never done this before I seized the moment.  I put about 1/8 cup of salt and 1/8 cup caster sugar in 500L of cold water and stirred it all until the solids dissolved.  Plonked the pork in the jug of brine and left it on the bench for about an hour.  Patted it dry and then into a hot frying pan, smeared with a bit of the sauce.  I put a little more of the sauce on the pork as it was cooking - enough to caramelise a little.  Went the pork was ready, I let it rest a little then sliced it and poured over a couple of generous spoonfuls of the sauce.

It was definitely worth it - the meat was tender and juicy.  My companion claimed he could taste the sugar from the brine in the pork - I didn't get that at all, just tasty moist meat.

As for the sauce, this is what I did: I put about 1/3 cup tinned chipotle chillies in a blender with four smashed garlic cloves, 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, about 1/2 cup maple flavoured syrup, 4 tbsp. white wine vinegar and a tup of tomato paste.  Whizzed it all up and then put it in a saucepan with about 50g butter and a tin of crushed tomatoes.

I let it simmer for a while to reduce a little and added a bit of smoked paprika to increase the smokiness.  The kitchen smelt wonderful.

I now have a couple of jars of wonderful smoky-sweet tangy sauce and a well fed and happy husband who is insisting on having chipotles in the house, all the time, under every circumstance.