Lamingtons and Oyster - Made at The Blue Bird

Although we are still operating with limited kitchen equipment (a mini oven and a two burner portable hotplate), we are proudly making a number of our own food lines in-house at The Blue Bird.  Every morning I make a batch of our own recipe sausage rolls which come out of the oven around 11.00am and are sold out most days by 1.00pm.  Word of mouth has been spreading the news about fresh made sausage rolls (not to mention the smell of cooking pastry drifting down the street) and we have a few weekly regulars coming back for seconds.  You can imagine my surprise when a visitor to town came in asking for one of our famous sausage rolls.  Famous?!  He had had them recommended by someone further down the street I guess.  I can't imagine how else they might be "famous".  World famous in Lockart?  Like L&P which is world famous in New Zealand.  The secret to the sausage rolls?  I guess it is using fresh ingredients like herbs from our own garden.

I also make some sort of sweet treat in the little oven.  Where would I be without it?  An impulse buy has become an indispensable tool already.  Today's sweet was coffee cream cake which came from my old school recipe book. An egg-less cake that never fails. It was originally chocolate but it makes a good coffee cake that is not too sweet.  I made up a silky coffee flavoured cream topping to give it that bit more of a coffee hit.  Other days I have fashioned my own version of the perennial favourite lamingtons.  The look rustic because I don't have the secret technique for coating them in coconut without making a mess but that is how you can tell they were made by hand and not a machine I guess.  Muffins are made here with lots of fruit in the Twoberry Muffins (blueberry and cherry) or Black Forest.  I tried to get fancy with writing a 'B' for Blue Bird in the top of the muffins but by the time they baked it just looked like a gooey squiggle.  Never mind.  At the weekend I often make scones for Devonshire Tea, spicy fruit or plain served with apricot or cherry jam and fresh cream.  Last week I made some old-fashioned cinnamon oysters, clipped from the back of a baking powder packet by my mother in the 1970s.  She tucked it in a recipe book but never got round to trying it out so I had to take up the mantle.

A new friend from The Rock is a keen CWA slice maker of some local repute  She has shared some of her best 'slice' recipes for future cafe use.  She assures me that the jelly slice will walk out the door in winter.  So I made lemon ginger slice (just like nan used to make someone told me when they tried it), and one that was simply called 'slice' made with sultanas and coconut.  I added my own twist of pink strawberry marshmallow topping and called it Marshmallow Chew because it sounded better than just plain 'slice'.  My friend tried my Custard Sponge Kisses sandwiched together with strawberry jam and cream and said it was like an old-fashioned powder puff, just like her mum made. Don't give away my secret recipes, she told me.  I laughed and said that one day, when we are famous, I might publish The Blue Bird Cafe, Lockhart's recipe book as a souvenir piece.

You never know which sweet treat will be under the glass dome at The Blue Bird as I try out new recipes.