RECIPE: beetroot and carrot cake with coconut cream chantilly

Carrot cake has never really been my bag, usually it barely comes close to that beautiful natural sweet nutty flavour of carrots and often it's overloaded with sugar. I find myself wondering if there are in fact carrots in there at all! Anyway... I had a ton of beetroot and carrot salad leftovers that could NOT go waste and naturally, carrot cake is the answer. This has certainly changed my opinion!

Beetroot and carrot cake with coconut cream chantilly
adapted from A-Z of Vegetarian Cooking in South Africa

Ingredients:
500ml/2 cup Flour (1 cup wholewheat and 1 cup white flour)
10ml baking powder
bit of cinnamon
bit less nutmeg
pinch of ground allspice
2 eggs, seperated
75ml oil
125ml honey/ 150ml treacle sugar
75ml milk/ water
10ml vanilla essance
rind of 2 grated oranges
500ml grated carrot (or half carrot, half beetroot).

*Nutty Carrotcake: Add 50ml  chopped nuts and 50ml of seedless rasins to the basic batter.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. In a large mixing bowl, combinel the dry ingredients. In a seperate mixing bowl combine all the wet ingredients (except for the egg whites) then add the grated carrot and beetroot. Stir into the dry ingredients and mix well. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold carefully into the batter. Place batter into a well greased baking tin. Bake for 45min - 1hour or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Chantilly ingredients:
half tin of Coconut cream
500ml icing sugar
desicated coconut/ coconut flakes

Whisk the coconut cream and sifted icing sugar until smooth. Place it in the refrigerator or deep-freeze until firm. Then pour over the cake and sprinkle with coconut.

When I made this, I got a little over-excited about eating it... I ended up pouring the chantilly over the cake while it was still warm which immidiately melted it - still tasted AWESOME though!

RECIPE: Garlicy, lemony prawns

When it comes to prawns, I am always on the hunt for that all you can eat sign at the restaurant and could quite literally eat more than a kilo! However, I'm not such a fan of the fried factor - I try to avoid it at all costs! So, here's prawns, the way I LOVE it...

My FAMOUS prawns
Serves 2 or as many as you want on a platter

Marinade 800g of  whole deveined prawns in a ton of garlic, a glug of olive oil, loads of freshly squeezed lemon juice and a shake of Ina Parmans Rosemary and Olive Salt. I like to leave the heads on for flavour and shells on for crunch.

Lay the prawns out on a baking pan, pour the marinade over them and grill in the oven at 180C for 15min (or until pink). Or tip the prawns and marinade into a cast iron pot and cook on full for 5min (or until pink) - if there are too many to fit in the pot, cook half first. You will always hear people talking about floury over-cooked prawns... don't let this happen to you! The moment they start going pink, you've got about 1-2min left. If you are unsure of the cooking time, do one first and taste to discover the way YOU LIKE IT!

Serve with the sticky marinade - grab some baguette to mop up the juice!