I thought I’d take a quick moment to share with you artwork by my favourite gocco print artist (so far) Julie West. I love the lines in her illustration and the colour combination’s she uses.
She also does some great letter press work and vinyl toy design – two things I’d love to play with one day. You can see more of her work at the Julie West shop or the Julie West Flickr stream.
Pink ice cream people by Julie West
Pooping deer by Julie West
With all credit going to my good friend Andi who give me this recipe a while back, I will say this sticky date pudding is one of the easiest and yummiest sweets I have made yet. It’s an excellent winter warmer, eat it on the couch wrapped up in a doonah cocoon next to your puppy or serve it on fancy plates as an impressive dinner party dessert.
Sticky date pudding served with ice cream
Pudding ingredients
1 cup dates
1 cup boiling water
3 tblsp butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups SR flour
Sauce ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup thickened cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tblsp butter
Pour boiling water over dates, let stand for 20 minutes.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time beating gently then fold in flour. Mix in dates and water.
Pour into baking dish. Bake at 180 degrees for 40 minutes or until brown and pudding comes away from the edge of the dish.
Combine sauce ingredients, boil, simmer for 10 minutes until slightly thick. Pour sauce over pudding pieces when serving.
Today I worked on getting some more gocco prints done. I’m fairly happy with the results and glad I now have some more Moleskin notebooks with prints on them which might go in my one day to exist Etsy store… something I really should get onto.
Although I’m happy with the results there was no real creative achievement as I used an old design. I really should have tried something new like using 2 different coloured inks. Creative fail but on the positive side I think I improved my ability to clean the sticky gocco ink off of the master without ruining my house, furniture and clothes, and I have something to move forward from.
Print run preparation - Preparing with pre cut paper and moleskin note books. Some varieties of paper work better than others… I am still testing grounds and working out the best stock for printing on.
Inking the master - As you can see the master is stained green from the last ice-cream squirrel print run - this happens. it's pretty much impossible to clean a master to it's original state… luckily it doesn't effect the next round print quality at all.
Complete gocco prints
Lemon meringue pie is one of my all time famous desserts. Over time I’ve adjusted recipes and incorporated others, so I think I could safely say this is now my own original recipe.
Make as one big pie or use ramekins or a muffin tin to make small pies, note that baking time of meringue will probably be slightly less if making multiple smaller pies.
Mini lemon meringue pie with ice cream
Pastry
70g SR flour
130g plain flour
30g caster sugar
120g butter
1 egg
Lemon filling
3/4 cup of lemon juice (real lemons will always be better than lemon squeeze but that is an option too)
3 egg yolks
60g butter
4 tblsp corn flour
1 cup water
3/4 cup caster sugar
Meringue
4 egg whites
3/4 cup of caster sugar
1. Make pastry
Mix flours, sugar, butter with food processor or beaters until mixture looks like almost like breadcrumbs. Mix in egg until dough can me made into a ball. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Roll our pastry (flour bench top and rolling pin). Put into pie dish(s), bake in oven at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes until golden brown. Use pie weights or rice if you like (I don’t usually bother).
2. Make filling, fill & chill pies
Mix sugar, lemon juice, water and corn flour until combined in a pot, stir continuously and simmer until boiling on stove top.
Remove from heat and mix in butter and egg yolks very quickly.
Cool until cold or room temperature.
Spoon mixture in to fill pie base(s).
3. Make & bake meringue
Pre-heat over to 200 degrees celsius.
Beat egg whites until they are soft, white and create their own peaks when you remove hand beaters. Continue beating gradually adding all the sugar until you have glossy white meringue texture.
Spoon mixture on top of chilled pies, bake in 200 degree celcius oven for 15 – 20 minutes. Meringue should be a light brown colour once ready.
Mini lemon meringue pies on their way into the oven
Mini lemon meringue pie
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