Le Franco Phoney

This recipe makes enough for at least five small gingerbread houses, plus lots left over for festive shapes . Before you start baking, make sure you have:

- a very large bowl
- a decent rolling pin
- a piping bag/cylinder and nozzles
- baking paper
- sweets (jelly tots, Smarties, licquorice etc.)
- extra icing sugar, in case you run out
- cardboard for the templates (see below)

Gingerbread

500 grams butter
750 grams (2 cups) golden syrup/treacle
500 grams (2 cups) sugar
2 eggs
4 tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 teaspoons bi-carb soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ginger
1.25 kilograms (10 cups) plain flour

Icing

2 egg whites
800 grams (about 4.5 cups) pure icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Method

Place butter, treacle & sugar in a heavy-based pan and stir slowly over a low heat until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Cool for at least 10 minutes, then transfer the mix to a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together.

In another separate bowl, whisk the eggs and vinegar until just combined. Add this mix to the cooled butter mix and beat well with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Add all the sifted dry ingredients gradually to the butter mix. The gingerbread should now be thick enough to form a soft ball. On a well-floured surface, take a chunk of gingerbread and roll it into a ball. If a little soft, knead the gingerbread with extra flour until it’s thick enough to roll. Roll the gingerbread to a thickness of approximately 1/2 centimetre. Take your cardboard templates (see measurements below) and use a non-serrated knife to cut around the templates. If the surface isn’t well floured, the gingerbread may stick, causing stretched shapes.

Place the shapes onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and cook in a moderate oven (180 degrees Celsius) for approximately 12-15 minutes. Check during cooking because if the oven heat isn’t even, the shapes will burn.

Once baked, remove from oven and leave the gingerbread on the tray for five minutes. Take the pieces off the tray and place on a cooling rack. Allow to cool fully before icing.

Icing method

Beat the egg whites until combined. Add the sifted icing sugar until the mix is quite firm. Add the lemon juice (this will give the icing a slight shine).

House Template

Cut your own using the following measurements:
Roof: 10cm x 11.5cm
Sides: 9.5cm x 5cm
Front & back: 10cm x 4.5cm x 9.5cm (the diagonal)
Chimney pieces: 1.5cm x 5cm, 1.5cm x 3cm, then two more with a diagonal cut (see diagram)

…0r just download the PDF version here or JPG version shown here.

House Construction

Cover a large plate with foil. Spoon a small amount of icing onto the plate in the shape of the gingerbread house foundations (a rectangle). Using a piping bag, pipe some icing on the short ends of the two house sides (the small, rectangular pieces). Place the un-piped sides on the plate, parallel to each other but far enough apart for the house front and back edges to rest on the piped sides. You should now have a rectangle base for the roof to attach to. Give the structure a few minutes to “glue” together. You can add the door to the front of the house and start working on the chimney (fiddly) while you’re waiting.

Pipe down the edges of the front and back sections from the top tip to where they meet the sides. Take each roof panel and place on each side - simultaneously if possible - so that they meet at the top.

Decorate with sweets and icing. Allow a few hours for the icing to harden before wrapping in cellephane or covering.

This is THE tastiest cheesecake recipe ever. Simple, vegie-friendly, and quick to make!

Ingredients
1 can condensed milk
550 grams cream cheese (fromage tartine such as St Moret in France)
140 ml lemon juice
2 drops vanilla essence
biscuit base (150 gram butter biscuits, plus 50 grams butter, melted)

Method

1. Crush biscuits in bag with rolling pin and empty into bowl
2. Mix in melted butter, then place in base of pie dish and press down firmly with a flat spoon
3. Put all other ingredients into a blender and blitz until the mix is smooth and creamy (it took me about 4-5 minutes with a hand mixer)
4. Pour onto biscuit base and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight, if possible
5. Place your toping of choice or leave as is!

That’s it. Easy as.

1 large, round, unsliced loaf of white bread (a cobb loaf or similar)
1 200gram tub (or closest in size) of Philadelphia cream cheese (low-fat works just as well)
1 200ml tub (or closest in size) of sour cream
200 grams grated cheddar cheese
2 dessert spoons of powdered French onion soup mix (if catering for vegetarians, check the label for chicken stock)

You need to make the mix up well ahead of time; if possible, the night before, but at least an hour before it goes in the oven so the flavours mix up a bit. Remember, it takes an hour in the oven, so prepare in advance!

1. Place the cream cheese, sour cream, grated cheese and powdered soup mix in a bowl and mix with a large spoon until alll ingredients are mixed in.
2. Cover bowl with cling film/lid and place in fridge for at least an hour.
3. An hour before you want to serve the dip, cut a “lid” off the bread (like a halloween pumpkin), and dig out the bread, leaving roughly a 1cm thick bread crust inside.
4. Break up the bread into bite-sized pieces and place on a baking tray. Put to the side.
5. Scoop the cheese mix into the hollowed-out bread, then place the lid back on the bread.
6. Cook in a moderate oven (180 degrees) for 1 hour.
7. Five minutes before the dip is ready, place the tray of bite-sized bread pieces in the oven to crisp them up.
8. Once cooked, place cheesy loaf in large tea-towel-covered basket, and add bite-sized bread pieces around the loaf.
9. Take the lid off or nobody will know what to do.
10. Eat it - all of it, including the lid and the sides and the base.

What do you do when you want a home-made cake but don’t have the time, ingredients or possibly even an oven to cook it in? You make a fake, no bake cake. This recipe is so basic that even the most unadventurous cooks can vary the flavours with almost no effort. It’s a piece of… heh… cake really! In Australia, it’s called Chocolate Ripple Cake and you make it with Arnotts Chocolate Ripple biscuits. There’s no equivalent in some countries, but the Ginger Nut biscuit seems to do the trick. Any biscuit with that choc-chip style of consistency will do. Choose your preferred flavour.

Ingredients

2 packets ginger nut biscuits
1 large tub of whipping cream

Method

1. Whip the cream until it’s quite thick (so that soft peaks form when you remove the beaters).
2. Take one biscuit and use a knife to cover the flat side with cream. The cream should be at least the same depth as the biscuit.
3. Place another biscuit, repeat step 2 and then place on top of the cream-covered biscuit to sandwich the cream between the two
4. Repeat step 3 to form a stack of biscuits sandwiched with cream
5. When your stack gets long, place sideways on a long serving tray and continue.
6. When you’re happy with the length, cover the entire thing with cream.
7. Refrigerate for at least five hours, then serve, cutting at about 5cm intervals for each person.

The biscuits will absorb the cream to form a lovely moist, creamy, cake-like dessert. Delicious!

Top Tips

• Cut on an angle, rather than straight across - this provides an aesthetically pleasing pattern along the cut!
• You don’t have to have a straight line: you can create numbers, letters, anything you like (very handy for birthday cakes).
• If you don’t have a few hours to wait for the biscuits to absorb the cream, add your favourite alcohol to speed it all up.