I love cooking

As I was looking for recipes to share with little Anna, my granddaughter, I came across one that brought a flood of old memories. You know those old recipes like the caramel-peppermint-crisp tart? Oh, how the festive tables groaned under the extra-large dishes of puddings and tarts that our aunties and grannies made! And biscuits always featured in the ingredients as any cook worth their name in society at the time, could take a packet of biscuits and make a table groan with the sweet products of her imagination …

Indeed, those recipes have become part of our culinary heritage. When today, we enjoy these

dishes created by our moms and theirs, we know that they did not merely leave us their recipes – they left us their hearts.

Still, every time I make one of those traditional recipes I cringe a little with embarrassment as I put the odd-coloured, huge, voluptuously-stuffed dish on the table. But when serving time comes, there seems to be something in the dish that satisfies on a level so profoundly moving that even the most snobbish of contemporary diners and winers are driven to take second, even third helpings. Then fortunately, when afterwards I look at the dish bearing only scraps of evidence that it once contained a fridge tart, my ego subsides as I become humbled by thoughts of days when life was special and occasions and people mattered and we cooked to show people that they were relevant to us in a way that was significant and respectful and sincere and never to showcase anything else but love and grace.

So here it is: another oldie. From the popular television cooking series we produced in 2008 and for a second season in 2009 with Tannie (Trix Pienaar), Boeta (Brendan Murray) and my dearest darling Lizz Meiring as herself, Take a Biscuit, here is our adaptation on the original as it was on the Bakers packs for decades.

And BTW, this was the recipe most downloaded on our website at the time and proof that cooks want simplicity but taste. This recipe ticks the boxes. Five ingredients. A few easy steps. Bliss!

Cara-Mint Tart

Click here for the recipe.

Chef’s hint: Buy double the ingredients – the requests for making this beauty again and again will not stop! On the other hand, halve the ingredients to make a smaller tart if you are just one who will enjoy this bliss … lol! Cooking is (like all art forms) flexible, so that you may present as well as interpret it your way!