Morning Tea Recipes

Hope you’ve all had a lovely week. We’ve had a pretty quiet one and this afternoon we’re off to our friends’ wedding which will be fun.

As promised, here is the recipe for the Powder Puffs I made at my Pink Ribbon Morning Tea Fundraiser last weekend. A few people also asked for the Jelly Cheesecake recipe so I’ve included that too. I’ve added a few tips under each one to explain some things I do when making these. Let me know how you go if you give either of these recipes a try and if you have any questions, or if anything in these recipes isn't clear, please ask.

Powder Puffs
(Makes what you see above plus a few extra)

I chose to make this recipe for my morning tea as it is one which can be made the day before an event. In fact these are much better served the next day when they’ve had time to soften. For a morning tea, I would usually make these the afternoon or night before.

2 eggs
½ cup sugar
½ cup cornflour + 2 extra rounded soup spoons
2 tbsp plain flour
½ tsp cream tartar
¼ tsp carb soda

Preheat oven to 200°C. Beat egg whites and sugar well together (nice glossy peaks). Add beaten egg yolks, then dry ingredients which have been sifted 2 or 3 times. Cover baking tray with baking paper, spray lightly with oil and drop teaspoons of mixture two inches apart. Bake 5-10 minutes (I found 6 mins was good) in fairly warm oven. Put together with whipped cream two or three hours before needed and dust both sides with icing sugar.

Tips:

When dropping the batter onto the tray, I use a teaspoon of mixture (not too overloaded) and hold the spoon upright to let the batter drop off to make nice round circles.

When these come out of the oven, they will appear pretty hard and perhaps a bit crisp. This is normal. When they are cool, pair them up as best you can in similar sizes and fill them with cream (I whip 300ml of thickened cream together with some vanilla essence and 2 tablespoons of icing sugar).

When placing these on your platter, lightly dust it with icing sugar first to stop the powder puffs sticking.

Put in the fridge – after several hours, they will soften up. Take out of the fridge for a little while before serving.

Jelly Cheesecake

As with the powder puffs, this recipe is a great ‘prepare ahead’ one which can be done the day or two before an event.

Jelly:
1 pkt raspberry jelly (you could use an alternative flavour)
1 cup boiling water
1 cup cold water

Biscuit Base:
6 oz butter (melted)
Marie biscuits (I used a packet less 6 biscuits)

Filling:
1 tin condensed milk
½ cup boiling water
1 tbsp gelatine
125 g cream cheese
juice of 2 lemons

Crush biscuits. Add melted butter. Press into lamington tin (25x30cm) - I line the tin and I use the bottom of a glass to press in the mixture nice and firmly. Beat cheese. Add condensed milk, then juice. Dissolve gelatine in boiling water. Add to mixture. Beat well for 10 minutes. Spread over base. Allow to slightly firm before continuing with jelly. Make jelly with boiling water and then add cold water. Leave to sit for a bit (but don’t let it set) before pouring over the filling. Refrigerate several hours or overnight. Cut into squares when firm.


Tips:

There is nothing too difficult about this recipe except, it’s important to let the cheesecake layer slightly set before you pour over the jelly. When pouring over the jelly, I use a jug and pour it over the back of a large metal spoon very slowly. This stops the jelly from making a hole in your cheesecake layer.

For my morning tea, I piped some of the cream I’d whipped for the powder puffs above on top.

To serve, I cut the cheesecake into nice even squares (I trimmed off the edges to make my squares neater).