Well, this has been a very interesting couple of weeks…I don’t know about everyone else, but I have been cooking, cleaning, crying, laughing, dancing and brainstorming more during quarantine than this whole year so far.
I must say this last week I have really been missing our tour partners, doing our walking food tours, walking around the city and just being outside in general.
Lockdown has been exciting yet terrifying in the same breath. We get to be at home but we also need to keep working so we can survive financially, obviously, that’s hard as walking food tours are out of the questions at this stage. I have been watching various webinars and talks as the days go by… slowly, and I hear plenty of things like “No pain, no gain” or “When you fall off the horse you need to get right back on” and my personal favorite, “In this time it is survival of the fittest.”Although I agree to a certain extent we have no idea how bad this pain is going to be, how high the horse is or how fit should our businesses be to get through this.
With all this in mind, I decided to try out a few new projects with my newly found “free time”. I have been meeting up virtually with old and new friends. We have decided to fill in our chats with some cooking, baking, sharing stories and chatting about the circumstances we all find ourselves in. I have learned so much more about my audience, fellow business owners, but most of all I have connected with the world and realized that we are all going through this together. This week we started on a very positive and VERY sweet note.
I chatted with a dear friend of mine, Hendrik Pretorius. Henk is an incredible South African pastry chef who finds himself in Lisbon, Portugal. We have known each other from childhood, and there is no fonder memory than stuffing our faces with freshly baked cookies from his mother’s bakery. He joined us on an Instagram live chat where we got into storytelling, went down memory lane and best of all he shared his grandmother’s Malva Pudding recipe with us! We got to see how to make the Malva pudding step by step, and yes I ate it all.
If you are wondering what I am talking about, well then you will have bake it yourself. I will be sharing the recipe below for your delight.
This pudding goes all the way back to the 1600s when Dutch settlers made their way into the Cape harbor now known as Cape Town. Yes, it has been delicious and loved by South Africans for that long, even more reason for you to bake it. Henk baked it in the most traditional way which took me all the way back to my granny’s kitchen. In Afrikaans we would say “Baie lekker” meaning very delicious, it’s a must-try during your next visit to South Africa or my home Cape Town.
I am sending out this recipe to one and all, big and small as a message of inspiration and hope. We, humans, are incredible, we can lend a helping hand, borrow a listing ear or just be there for someone. Let’s be kind to each other, it might just make someone’s day or even your own.
Stay positive and feel free to reach out to us at this time.
Thank you to Henk for making this blog so much more fulfilling and sweet.
Feel free to look him up through the below channels.
Regards, Elsje Erasmus
Malva Pudding Ingredients and Recipe:
1 egg.
1 cup sugar (350ml).
11⁄2 tsps. Vinegar.
1 tsps apricot jam.
1 Tsp baking soda.
1⁄4 tsp salt.
1 cup (350ml) milk.
1 cup of cake (350ml) flour.
Method:
Preheat oven to 180C and prepare a 2 inch cake pan and butter it. Mix the egg and sugar until it is a thick consistency.
Add the apricot jam and mix.
Add the vinegar and mix.
Add the rest of the ingredients except the milk.
Add the milk last and mix thoroughly
Add the mixture to the cake pan and bake for 25 -35 minutes or until it is golden brown. Sauce Ingredients:
1⁄2 cup sugar.
1⁄2 cup boiling water. 1⁄2 cup milk.
1⁄4 cup butter.
1 tsp vanilla essence.
Method:
Add all the ingredients into a saucepan and bring to boil until everything is dissolved and remove from fire.
Pour the sauce over the malva pudding and return the malva pudding to the oven which is switched off for 5 minutes.
Enjoy
