Tag Archives: Stephanie Alexander

Jul26

Stephanie Alexander’s Lemon Delicious

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I have the fondest memories of my Nan’s Lemon Delicious pudding. As kids we spent lots of holidays at my grandparents’ home at Tumut Plains in country NSW. It was my most favourite of all her desserts and once she knew how much I loved it, she would always make it when she knew I was coming. It was always paired with a main that she called ‘Old Faithful’ which was essentially a Tuna Mornay baked on a bed of brown rice and topped with rounds of sliced fresh tomato and grated cheese. In my mind they go together now. These days I love Lemon Delicious for the added benefit of being so cost efficient: the whole pudding costs around $3 to make and feeds 8. Enjoy finding the lemon sauce that pools in the bottom of the dish and serve with cream or icecream.

  • 2 lemons
  • 60 g butter
  • 1 1/2 cups castor sugar
  • 3 eggs, separated
  • 3 tablespoons self-raising flour
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  1. Preheat oven to 180°C and butter a 1 litre oven proof basin or serving dish.
  2. Zest 1 of the lemons and juice both. In a food processor, cream butter with zest and sugar, then add egg yolks.
  3. Add flour and milk alternately to make a smooth batter. Scrape mixture from sides of processor bowl and blend in lemon juice. Transfer to a clean basin.
  4. Whisk egg whites until creamy and firm and fold gently into batter. Pour batter into prepared basin.
  5. Stand basin in a baking dish and pour in hot water to come halfway up sides of basin. Bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool a little before serving.
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Jul17

Stephanie Alexander’s Homemade Pesto with Pasta and Chorizo

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I am a big fan of stir-through pasta sauces and regularly use store-bought ones for ease of use and lowering stress when it comes to meal times and hospitality. There are some really great tasting ones out there and I heartily encourage their use if it means making hospitality easier. Having said that, the recipe that follows for home-made basil pesto is just so easy and yummy that I had to share it with you. The bright green and powerfully flavoured pesto that results is worlds apart from its perfectly-fine supermarket counterparts. This Stephanie Alexander recipe is one that I’ve cherished for many years because of its taste, ease, affordability and versatility: make it ahead of time and store in fridge for a later use, such as a main pasta dish or on sandwiches or even as a dip with crackers and cheese. My favourite way to use it tossed through hot spirals of pasta with pan-fried chorizo cut into half-moon shapes with chunks of fresh capsicum. The quantities that follow make 250g of pesto and the photo above is a double quantity in a 500g jar. Depending on where you source your basil from, this little jar of basil bliss will set you back around $4.

  • 1 cup firmly packed basil leaves
  • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to seal
  • ¼ cups pine nuts
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • Sea salt
  • 60 grams parmesan, grated
  1. Put basil leaves, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and salt in a blender or food processor and blend/process until smooth. Stop the machine once or twice and scrape down the sides with a spatula. Remove cutting blade and change blade to a fine grate. Put parmesan through the processor into the bowl on top of the basil mixture. Remove blade and mix well (or grate cheese with a grater and add to basil mixture and mix well).
  2. Spoon pesto into a clean and dry 250 ml-capacity screw-top jar. Press down with the back of a spoon to ensure there are no air pockets and seal with a film of olive oil. Store in the refrigerator.