Cheesecake recipe for River.

River, who makes awesome comments that often make me laugh, asked for my apricot nectar cheesecake recipe. Jordan's been hoeing into the one I wrecked and couldn't take to our faculty party, and I had a piece yesterday when I came home for lunch and there was nothing quick to eat. Even the 'wrecked' one is still yum. There's only a quarter left. The recipe is an old one from the Australian Women's Weekly. Tried and true recipes are always the best.

APRICOT NECTAR CHEESECAKE.

Ingredients:

Base:

155g (5oz) plain sweet biscuits.

75g (2.5 oz) butter.

Filling:

470g (15 oz) can apricot nectar.

1/2 cup castor sugar.

1 tablespoon lemon juice.

1 tablespoon gelatine.

375g (12 oz) packaged cream cheese.

1 1/4 cups of cream.

Topping:

1 tablespoon of sugar.

3 teaspoons Arrowroot.

2 teaspoons rum. (Don't let your 11 year old help, as you'll get a lot more rum than you bargained for in the topping! Still tastes ok though...)

Instructions:

Combine finely crushed biscuit crumbs and melted butter, mix well. Press mixture firmly onto the base of a 20cm (8 in) springform tin, refrigerate 1 hour.

(I'm adding an extra step here for ensured success with this recipe. Shake the tin of apricot nectar before you open it. Trust me on this one. You want all of that lovely apricot taste in your cheesecake, not left in the tin.)

Measure 1 cup of apricot nectar from the can (reserve the rest for the topping.) Pour the nectar into a small saucepan, sprinkle gelatine over.

Place over low heat and stir until gelatine dissolves; allow to cool and thicken slightly.

Beat softened cream cheese and sugar until the mixture is smooth and creamy, add lemon juice.

Beat in apricot mixture, then fold in whipped cream.

Pour mixture into the crumb crust, refrigerate 2 hours or until firm.

Topping:

Place the sugar and arrowroot in a small saucepan, gradually stir in the reserved apricot nectar. Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring constantly; then remove from the heat and add the rum. (Yo ho ho.)

Continue stirring to allow the mixture to cool slightly. Spread the topping over the cheesecake and refrigerate until the topping sets.

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There you go. Great for dinner parties because you can make it a day or two before and there's one less thing you have to prepare on the day.

I'm planning a very self indulgent day today. The kids are at their Dad's, so I'll be baking, knitting (a bit) and quilting. I bought some really cute (yet manly) owl fabric for Brennan's quilt to make it darker like he said he wanted. Is he going to turn emo on me? So I'll be rotary cutting and sewing away, singing along to my ipod because MY music can now be played without any ill-informed adolescent judgements. I hope everyone else has a lovely Saturday too.

I leave you with Connor enjoying Christmas.

Purple beans and Breadcrumb patties.

Look at my harvest! Enough beans to feed five people, and there are plenty left on the plants. Brennan and I ate a couple while we were picking them. Bright green inside. I made some breadcrumb patties for dinner with mashed potato and steamed carrots and beans. Look at how the beans turned out...

Green! Isn't nature an amazing thing? Who would've thought that simple beans would evolve over thousands of years into something that can change colour with the simple application of microwaves. How did the beans know that microwaves were going to be invented? Imagine if humans slipped up and missed how to use microwave technology. There all the purple beans would be... hanging from the vines, really cross that no one would be able to appreciate the amazing colour change they were capable of. "All that trouble manipulating our dna for nothing", they'd fume. How lucky that some science guy tinkering with stuff in a laboratory discovered the key that now lets them mystify and delight my family instead. Ahh, the fun you can get from simple veggies!

The bread crumb patties are something I make very rarely, but the kids love them. Mum used to make them when she was flour/egg and breadcrumbing schnitzels in the olden days. Any of the coating left over she'd mix together and fry along with the actual dinner. Absolutely gorgeous. Last night I came home at about 5 so I thought I'd use the beans and have a meat and 3 veg meal. Just like Mum used to make! I was a bit tired so I wanted to do something easy.

Breadcrumb Patties.

All I use are packaged breadcrumbs, eggs, parsley (my parsley plant went to seed, so I threw it out. I used the leaves from the top of a celery instead), salt, pepper and a bit of milk. Mix until it gets to a nice consistency, drop into a frypan in pattie sized portions, and there you go! Great with tomato sauce. (Don't make them too thick, or they might not cook in the middle. Then they're not so nice, as you can imagine.)

We're into the last stages of interviews now. The difficult ones. These are mainly the kids who wouldn't work for an ipod with $1000 strapped to it. Of course by this stage of the game they can't rely on natural ability to get good marks like they may (or sadly, may not) have been able to do in the past, so these interviews are a wake up call for some. Most end up getting a bit of a shock and walk out a bit shaken. Others walk into the room with their head so firmly buried in the sand that you can practically see the bucket full of the stuff they have on their shoulders.

There are only three kids who we simply can't promote to year 11. They are totally different, except for the fact that they've failed just about every subject. One is lazy and hasn't done a stroke of work since year 7, one just doesn't have the wattage but she's a lovely girl who tries reasonably hard, and one covers those two bases but is also covering a world of other problems. I'm dreading her interview. She is a head burier. In fact I think she's buried everything but the tip of her nose. She hung up on me yesterday when I told her it was pointless to have an interview with just her, and I rescheduled it to tomorrow so her Dad could be there "to talk about her future". She'll have to either repeat year 10 or maybe go to TAFE. Trouble is, I don't think she's mature enough to handle TAFE. But she's not mature enough or bright enough to handle the work at year 11 either. It's an awful situation. I really feel for her parents. When I called her Dad at work to organise the new interview time, the weariness that came into his voice when I said who I was and why I was calling was sad.

The other girl is a totally different story. She and her parents opened up the interview by saying that they all feel that she should repeat the year. She's new to the school anyway and she's one of the youngest in her year level, so they don't see a social problem with it. She's happy, so are they and I can't tell you how relieved I was! Problem solved before I even had to bring it up. I love clear sighted parents.

Heigh ho! With a bit of luck these interviews should be over by the end of the week. Then I just have to write student managers reports on the front of 130 kids reports (bleuch!) and then the rest of the year will be a smooth ride down to Christmas. I'll be preparing for next year's classes, moving back into staffroom 1 (I've hopefully got a desk right near some of my friends) and looking forward to the holidays. Only 4 weeks to go till Christmas!!!

Jack's Cookie Stall.

Phew! Success!

We went to school yesterday with 10 huge ziplock bags full of cookies. He'd made 240 of them, and was planning to sell them for $1 each or three for $2. These things were as big as your hand, with M&Ms mixed through and chocolate buds on the top. Health food... in a very sugary way! So there was wow factor.



Before school I sold two bags just to the teachers in staffroom three. Lots of young staff, particularly the Phys Ed people who do far too much activity and consequently need a pick-me-up before school. I took bags to my year 12 classes and sold another bag and a half, so by the time the lunchtime stall started, Jack had made his money back. I could breathe a sigh of relief, (thank God my idea wasn't a dud!) and now the rest was up to him.

By the end of lunchtime there were only 20 left. I was so proud of them. But the best news is by the end of the day there was only ONE left! (Thanks to a group of very peckish year 12's.) Success! Success! Success! And now my spendthrift son has enough spending money for Phuket. (This is a great relief to both of us...)

Here's Jack and a satisfied customer, while the swirling mayhem of the market stalls goes on in the background. It's a shame that you can't hear the kids spruiking. Then again, maybe it isn't. Some of them got very excited as lunchtime wore on.

I'll include the recipe. I don't know who Lizzie is, but the woman's a genius. These cookies are very addictive. The amount of repeat customers Jack had yesterday are testament to that.

Lizzie's Big Batch Cookies.
750g margarine
1.5-2kg self raising flour. (When baking for home, I make half of this wholemeal flour.)
6 eggs
1.5kg brown sugar. (I suspect this is the ingredient that makes the biscuits so yummy.)
3 tsp vanilla essence.
(This mix is so large that you can separate sections out and add different things to each for variety. Chocolate chips, cornflakes, Milo, dried fruit, nuts, coconut, etc. Whatever is on hand.)

• Preheat oven 225 degrees. (200 degrees if fan-forced.)
• Melt margarine in the microwave. Let cool slightly.
• Mix in all the basic ingredients, beginning with the flour. (1.5 kg). Add more flour if needed.
• Add the extra ingredients, (chocolate, cornflakes, whatever.)
• Make balls 20c sized. (This is too small for my boys. I like to fill them up. I make golf-ball sized balls. They spread a bit in the oven.)
• Bake for 15 minutes or so until browned.

We made three batches of these to get 240 humungous biscuits. The finished biscuits, and the dough, freeze beautifully. I make a batch every three weeks or so, and the kids have two in their lunchboxes for recess. They, and their friends, love them.