Up! John or (The Grand Old Duke of Walk)

Sing to the tune of the Grand Old Duke of York

Our leader is our friend
His group is roughly ten
He walks us up to the top of the hill
and he walks us down again

Chorus
When we are up we are up
When we are down we are down
He's clever when he plans the walks..
'Cause there's much more up than down

We reach the highest point
Quite often every day
We catch our breath, admire the view
And continue on our way

Chorus

At night we party on
We celebrate the day
We keep uncorking bottles
'Til the "ups" all go away

Chorus

So if you're feeling down
And life is low indeed
Just walk with us and you will have
More 'ups' than you could need

Chorus

Belgian Torte Recipe (and Cardamom Ice Cream)

Classic emergency entertaining recipe! Especially handy for those that live out of town - most of these ingredients will be in your pantry or fridge! If not - substitute! I can also imagine this done with tinned raspberries or cherries and associated jams and served with sour cream slightly sweetened with sugar mmmm mmmm!

For those in a real rush to cut down cooking time you could do individual tortes in a muffin tin! ( don't forget to line with paper the jam sticks badly)

For the Torte

Oven 150 C
Grease 8 inch loose bottomed cake tin and line sides with baking paper

Ingredients
75g finely chopped dried apricots
3 tbls brandy
225g butter
75g sugar (caster or light brown)
2 tbls Vegetable oil
1/4 tsp Vanilla ess
1 Large egg beaten
450g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
225g apricot jam

Sauce
425g tin apricot halves
2 tbls Brandy
1 tsp arrowroot

Garnish
Icing sugar

Soak dried apricots in brandy for at least an hour

To make the dough
Cream butter sugar till creamy add oil and vanilla essence then the beaten egg - sieve flour with baking powder and add to mixture - knead till smooth. ( should be like bread dough in consistency)
Divide dough in half and grate half into cake tin, mix jam and soaked apricots together and cover grated dough. Grate remaining dough over apricot filling.
Bake in oven for appx 1 1/2 hours till golden.
Removed from oven, loosen torte from sides with knife and leave in tin till cold and demould then - being careful not to break fragile sides - wrap in foil.
To make sauce - drain apricot halves retaining half juice and puree in blender - in a saucepan add puree and blend brandy with arrowroot then add to pan and bring to boil slowly, stirring all the time until it has thickened slightly. Leave to cool.
To serve
Place on serving plate and dredge the top fairly heavily with sieved icing sugar, serve with apricot sauce and whipped cream.

Apricots go with Cardamom!
so for the truly indulgent ...

Cardamom Ice Cream

Either make homemade icecream using your fave recipe or to cheat just buy good quality vanilla ice cream and mix through powdered cardamom! Mine was homemade with a standard vanilla ice cream recipe to which I added the cardamom pods and I also whisked the spare egg whites and added them to give it a bit of lightness.

4 egg yolks 2 cups of milk to make the creme anglaise/custard - add flavourings to milk boil and let them steep for a good 20 minutes then make the creme anglaise/custard ( strain flavouring goodies out before cooking custard on a double boiler ) then add mixture when cool to
a tub of double cream
4 egg whites whisked to soft peaks
freeze
serve slightly softened.

Enjoy!

I made this starting at lunch time without an ice cream maker and it was ready in time for dinner!