Wherever she's lived around the world, Cherie Hausler's instinct has been to host "country gatherings", bringing people together to share good food and good times.
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That passion grew when she returned home to the Barossa Valley to settle in an unrenovated 150-year-old stone farmhouse on Koonunga Hill. It's a place where she can tend to her edible garden and turn her efforts into whole food recipes.
Her cookbook, A Plant-Based Farmhouse celebrates this, with more than 80 wholefood, dairy- and sometimes gluten-free recipes.
Quince hummingbird cake with tahini caramel
Ingredients
- 375g plain (all-purpose) white spelt flour, plus extra for dusting
- 390g rapadura sugar
- 10g (1 1/2 tsp) bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 7g (1 3/4 tsp) baking powder
- 5g (1 tsp) salt
- 6g (2 tsp) ground cinnamon
- 480g mashed banana (from about 3 bananas)
- 110ml extra virgin olive oil
- 180ml quince poaching liquid, at room temperature
- 8g (2 tsp) vanilla bean paste
- 60ml apple cider vinegar
- 150g poached quince, chopped into 1 to 2cm pieces
- 75g pecans, chopped
Tahini Caramel
- 75g maple syrup
- 35g tahini
- 35g extra virgin coconut oil
- 3g (3/4 tsp) vanilla bean paste
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Grease a 26cm bundt (ring) tin (or six baby bundt tins) with olive oil and lightly dust with flour.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon to blend well.
3. In small bowl, whisk the banana, quince poaching liquid, olive oil and vanilla paste together to blend well, then whisk into the flour mixture until completely mixed through, with no dry pockets of flour.Whisk in the vinegar until bubbles form. Mix in the quince pieces and pecans.
4. Transfer the cake batter to the cake tin/s. Bake the baby bundt cakes for 30 to 35 minutes, or the large bundt cake for 40 to 50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin/s for 10 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack.
6. Meanwhile, melt all the tahini caramel ingredients in a small saucepan over low heat until completely emulsified. (I make the same amount of tahini caramel, whether I'm baking one large bundt cake or six smaller cakes.) Remove from the heat. Depending on how hot the weather is, you may need to let the caramel sit for 5 to 10 minutes to get the right consistency for drizzling. You want the caramel to run - but not sprint! It should be similar to runny honey.
7. When the cake/s are completely cool, drizzle the tahini caramel over the top to run down the sides. Decorate with flowers or foliage of your choice and serve immediately. Any leftover cake will keep in an airtight container for 2 to 3 days.
Makes a 26 cm bundt cake, or 6 baby bundt cakes
Roasted vegetable pasties
Ingredients
- 980g mixed roasted vegetables, at room temperature, cut into 2cm cubes
- 3g (2 tsp) chopped lemon thyme
- 3g (2 tsp) chopped fresh sage
- almond or soy milk, for brushing
- tomato sauce, to serve
Spelt Pastry
- 240g plain (all-purpose) white spelt flour, plus extra for dusting
- 25g extra virgin coconut oil
- 5g (1 tsp) salt
- 75-90ml water, enough to pull dough together
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Combine the roasted vegetables in a large bowl with the fresh herbs. Stir together and season to taste with salt and black pepper.
2. To make the pastry, combine the flour, coconut oil and salt in a food processor and blitz for 30 seconds. Slowly add a little water at a time until the dough pulls together to form a ball. Place the ball of pastry on a floured board and cut into four even pieces. Have a small bowl of water ready to dip your fingers into.
3. Using a rolling pin, roll one pastry piece out into a circle about 20cm in diameter. Place one-quarter of the filling mixture in a small mound along the centre line, tapering off at each end. Use your fingers to wet the edges of the pastry. Pull the two sides over the filling and press together using your index finger and thumb, to concertina the join, working all the way around to each end. Finally, fold the very last piece of dough at each end over itself, to completely seal the pasty. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling to make four pasties. Brush a little milk across the top of the pasties.
4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the pastry just starts to colour and is cooked on the bottom. This is not the kind of pastry that puffs up, so don't wait for that as a sign it's ready. Remove from the oven and slide onto a wire rack, to ensure your pasties don't end up with soggy bottoms. Nothing worse. We always eat ours with Dad's homemade tomato sauce. Not sure they can be called pasties without sauce!
Makes 4 pasties
Stovetop chai
Ingredients
- 20g looseleaf Darjeeling tea
- 2cm thick slice of fresh ginger, halved
- 2cm x 8cm lengths of cinnamon bark
- 4 cardamom pods, slightly crushed
- 4 cloves
- 4 black peppercorns
- 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
- 400ml water
- 400ml soy or almond milk
- coconut nectar syrup or palm sugar (jaggery), to taste
Method
1. Fill a 1 litre teapot with just-boiled water, to heat the teapot while you prepare the chai.
2. Place all the ingredients, except the milk and sugar, in a medium-sized saucepan and bring to the boil over high heat. Allow the brew to boil for only 1 to 2 minutes - long enough to extract the flavour from the spices, but not so long that the tannins from the tea override all the other ingredients.
3. Add the milk and heat through, removing the pan from the stove as soon as you see the chai just begin to boil again.
4. If you'd like to add sweetener, stir it through the chai to dissolve it before straining the tea into your warm teapot for serving. That smell! The best.
Makes 2 to 4 servings
Rye, chocolate and beetroot cake with chocolate mousse creme
Ingredients
- 110g beetroot, peeled and grated
- 110g rapadura sugar
- 150ml soy or almond milk
- 55ml extra virgin olive oil
- 40g maple syrup
- 10g (2 tsp) vanilla bean paste
- 125g rye flour
- 50g raw unsweetened cacao powder
- 30g almond meal
- 2g (1/2 tsp) salt
- 2g (1/2 tsp) baking powder
- 4g (1 tsp) bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 5ml (1 tsp) apple cider vinegar
Chocolate Mouse Creme
- 2 avocados (300g)
- 155g maple syrup
- 75g raw unsweetened cacao powder
- 8g (2 tsp) vanilla bean paste
- 2g (1/2 tsp) salt
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Line the base of a 20cm springform cake tin with baking paper and grease the inside of the tin with olive oil.
2. Put the grated beetroot in a food processor with the sugar, milk, olive oil, maple syrup and vanilla paste. Blitz until smooth.
3. Add the remaining dry ingredients to the food processor and blitz again.
4. Pour the mixture into a bowl and use a spatula to quickly but evenly mix the vinegar through. Don't worry if you see white streaks - it's just the vinegar reacting with the bicarbonate of soda and baking powder, and it's a good thing!
Makes a 20cm round cake
- A Plant-Based Farmhouse, by Cherie Hausler. Murdoch Books. $49.99.
