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As mentioned on Day 16 of The Challenge This brings back memories of visiting my German grandparents near Frankfurt. Essentially we had 4 meals a day there, the three standard ones and a fourth, Kaffeetrinken, at about 4, where there would be fresh baked cakes (yes, plural), every day. Needless to say that visits involved a bit of weight gain, but also cooking with my Oma in her kitchen, and picking fresh fruit and berries in the garden with Opa. This recipe comes with fond memories, both of times with them and since starting to make it for myself. Plus, did I mention, it's plum season?! I hope you enjoy! Ingredients: Cake: 1 1/2 c flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp cinnamon 273 c butter, soft 3/4 c sugar 3 large eggs 3/4 c ground nuts (I like using almonds) 8 plums or apricots, halved and pitted Crumble topping: 1/4 c oats 1/8 c chilled butter in pieces 1/8 c light brown sugar 1/2 c nuts, chopped ( Walnuts or hazelnuts) 1) Sift dry cake ingredients. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and mix well. Add a little of the flour mixture, stir, and add in the rest and the ground nuts. 2) Spoon (yes, not pour, as it will be quite thick) the batter into a prepared pan. Arrange plums cut side up over the cake and press gently. 3) Mix crumble with fingers and scatter over the top of the cake. Sprinkle nuts over the top. 4) bake at 177°C for 45-50 minutes until golden and knife comes out clean. Cool in the pan 10 minutes then serve. It serves up well on its own, with cinnamon sugar, cream or heavy cream, custard, jam, or a combination of these (although that is a bit decadent!) I hope you enjoy this as much as I do and that you can create your own memories with it :)

So I have this habit of taking traditional things and doing my own take, usually the same but just with more veg, and all from scratch , no tins or boxes allowed except tomatoes or tuna. This was similar. A creamy pasta sauce, but replacing some of the cream or milk with pumpkin purée, and a dash of vinegar. Super tasty, lighter than the regular version, but smooth and velvety, bursting with flavour. We spiced it differently to normal, of course, and added veg. It would have been beautiful with bacon and parmesan too, or other veg like asparagus, courgette, aubergine etc., but was still excellent without. Ingredients: 250 g pasta 2 TBSP butter 2 TBSP flour 3/4 c milk, warm 1/2 c pumpkin purée 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar 1/4 c white cooking wine 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp cloves 1 tsp cayenne 3 red onions diced half a head of garlic, minced 2 peppers, 1 red 1 yellow, diced Black pepper to taste 1 TBSP olive oil 1) Cook pasta according to instructions. 2)Make a roux with the butter, flour and milk: melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour and stir it in until it forms a uniform mass. Add the milk a little at a time, stirring after each addition to avoid lumps. Add the pumpkin purée, spices, wine and balsamic adjusting quantities to taste and consistency. Stir, pepper, set aside. 3) Heat oil in a pan. Sauté veg in the olive oil. 4) Toss pasta and veg together, pour sauce over it, and serve. Optional cheese to grate over the top. Filling and tasty, velvety but with a bit of a tang to bring all the flavours out. It is an incredibly chameleon-like meal, able to shift to fit the mood, your fridge, tastes or dietary requirements. I hope you enjoy! Note: When in doubt as to how to make flat flavours pop more, add acid not salt. Vinegar, lime or lemon juice or wine depending on what it is.

Challenge update: The two days following the pumpkin cream pasta, days 14 and 15, we were away, so they were out of Challenge days. Today for lunch we had Mulligatawny Soup with fresh Rosemary Focaccia. I love this warm-flavoured and yet fairly simple soup. We've had it with a variety of breads in the past, from roti or naan, to regular bread, tatty scones and today focaccia. The focaccia certainly worked well and did justice to the soup, not something I would spurn doing again! Then a veggie stir-fry for dinner :) Simple and satisfying, with a good crunch and taste. For dessert, we had my German Oma's Plum Kuchen with cream, which I have not made in years! Here are the recipes to the soup and the kuchen. Focaccia recipe on request.

As mentioned in Day 8 of The Challenge Savoury crêpes can have any range of fillings. Dead simple to make (if you have the right pan, which I now do! :) ), they can suit almost any taste: vegetarian or carnivorous, with cheese or spinach or mushrooms , spicy or not. With eggs or not. Very versatile and easy. We did a bunch of these with traditional fillings and then trialled something new with our last few crêpes. Ingredients: 1 1/4 c flour 2 eggs (I had used all my eggs on the soufflé the night before so instead I used 4 egg yolks - these came out beautifully!) 1 c milk 1/4 c oil Cheese, ham, spinach, mushrooms, fried eggs, cockles, tomatoes, Swiss chard.... the choice is yours! And, for our new filling per crêpe: 2 tbsp pumpkin purée 2 dates per crêpe 1 tsp lime juice 3 slices of mozzarella Black pepper 1) Mix flour, egg and milk together. 2)Oil a crêpe pan, heat slowly and pour in 2 ladles full of batter. Wait for batter to turn opaque and for bubbles to burst, then flip. 3)Add whatever filling you want and fold the crêpe in half, allowing cheese to melt. * For our new filling, spread pumpkin purée on the facing side of the crêpe. Place halved dates and mozzarella slices in them, and add lime juice and black pepper. 4) Flip again allowing the other half to cook, and serve. These worked beautifully. I wasn't sure about our new filling until I tried it, and did warn my husband that I was trialling something new and that he didn't have to join me if he didn't want to. It worked though! The traditional ones were tasty, but the new ones had an added spark. They were somewhere between savoury and sweet, or savoury with a twist of sweet. They could use a little tweaking, maybe adding some spice or some heat, but I would certainly try this again.

Challenge update: We've had a sick baby this week, so chalenge updates and recipes are a little delayed, but we also had extra help from a sister (who it has to be said did the lion's share and a spectacular job), so there has been some pretty cool food too. Day 11 we had fried chicken with home made coleslaw. Day 12, just to round off the home cooked gourmet fast food was burgers with grilled watermelon and halloumi, peach and chili sauce on sweet bread and stuffed butternuts on the side. Day 13, to lighten things a bit, and to use the rest of the pumpkin from the souffle, was pasta with veg and a pumpkin cream sauce. Here is the Pumpkin cream pasta recipe. As I have a bit of a delay, if there is any recipe you want to appear more quickly, don't hesitate to comment or send me a message! ;)

Challenge update: On day 9, we had a beautiful roast veg salad, with corn, courgette, beetroot, feta, mushroom and onions, with roast artichoke and home-made aioli. We also pre-prepared cabbage dumplings ( inspiration from our Persia cookbook by Naomi Duguid) for today, Day 10. A little labour intensive but worthwhile. It was pre-prepared however as she recommended serving cold. We found however that the dumplings were much tastier hot than cold. Also, as good as the dumplings were, the filling is worth making on its own. The cabbage wrapping did add something, but not necessarily enough for it to be worth the work.

As mentioned in Day 6 of The Challenge This started as part of a soufflé craze the we and some friends went through in South Africa. I can't remember how it started, but for the year that we lived there we made all sorts of soufflés, sweet and savoury, most of which were without recipes, just trials of our own devising. This particular one appeared after Thanksgiving. We had cooked down a whole giant pumpkin to make pie and had extra pumpkin pie filling, so we used it to make soufflé. I really enjoyed revisiting it, on request of a sister. Soufflés unfortunately have a reputation for being delicate and difficult, but I've found that essentially a medium-thick roux with the right number of egg yolks and stiff egg whites mixed in usually comes out perfectly (unfortunately this one deflated before I managed to take a picture, but it had risen beautifully and was light and fluffy). Ingredients: 3/4 c pumpkin purée 1/2 c brown sugar 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp of ground ginger 1/4 tsp of ground cloves 1 tbsp melted butter 1 tbsp milk (or condensed milk, but this will make it sweeter. Do feel free to adjust this and the sugar to suit your tastes.) 2 tbsp of orange zest 2 egg yolks 6 egg whites Butter and cinnamon sugar to coat soufflé dish 1) Preheat oven to 200°C. Mix pumpkin purée, brown sugar, spices, butter, milk, egg yolks and orange zest. Beat whites to stiff peaks. 2) Add 1/3 of egg whites to pumpkin mixture and gently mix it in, then fold in remaining whites. 3) Butter a medium-sized soufflé dish and sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar OR prepare 6 individual ramequin dishes. This allows the soufflé to rise without sticking to the sides of the dish. 4) Bake for 25-30 minutes for a medium-sized dish OR 8-10 minutes for individual ones WITHOUT opening the oven door until the end. It should be firm but soft and airy. Serve plain, with cream, ice cream or meringues. I love this soufflé! The original pumpkin pie recipe that we used is my husband's grandmother's, but the soufflé is entirely ours. Just as good this time as previously, and definitely worth having a light dinner and this afterwards. Do eat it fresh out of the oven as it collapses quickly and just isn't the same. A similar concept does work for cake mixes too, like black velvet or carrot cake, or other soufflé bases like baked apple. Let me know if there's another one you would like me to post on here :)

Challenge update: I originally had other plans for today's dinner but received a new cast iron crêpe pan from my father today, so I had no choice but to try it out for dinner... Traditional fillings and a trial couple at the end too, with dates, pumpkin and mozzarella. Recipe here!

Challenge update: Picnic on a hike for lunch and then sandwiches for dinner made way for... Pumpkin pie soufflé this evening. Because we are responsible adults making completely responsible and healthy choices at all times. It was a request from a sister, to include this recipe on the site, and, tough as it was to fall on that sword, we did so for the sake of the blog and the challenge, and it was totally worth it :) Here is the recipe.

As mentioned in Day 6 of the Challenge Courtesy of my husband who had complained about not having time to cook recently and said that he wanted to make ramen noodle soup at some point. So while I painted the crib, he made dinner. Light and refreshing, filling and very tasty. Easily tweaked to be vegetarian, too. Ingredients: 2 noodle nests 1 knob of ginger, grated Half a head of garlic, grated 2 carrots, grated Handful of batwing mushrooms, 1 cup of spinach 1 cup of cabbage, chopped 3 cups of chicken broth 1 1/2 tbsp cooking sake 2 tbsp soy sauce 4 cups of water 2 tbsp peanut oil 2 eggs A handful of chives 1) Fry garlic and ginger in oil until golden brown and fragrant. Add water and broth. 2) Simmer for a few minutes before adding carrot, cabbage and batwings. Add sake and soy sauce. Cook 10 minutes. 3) Add spinach and noodles and cook until done. 4) Meanwhile boil eggs for 1 minute then remove from the heat and leave for 10 minutes. Peel, slice in half and place them on top of the noodles with chives. This came out super tasty. Not too heavy after a hot day but still filling and nourishing. It would have benefitted from a handful of fresh coriander instead of chives had our plant not gone to seed... I was very grateful to hubby for cooking it and hope you enjoy it as much as we did.