Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

“Hello, my name is Alexander David, what’s your name?”

The three year old on a tricycle who introduced himself to me all those years ago turned 21 last week. He is a kind, generous human being with compassion and maturity far beyond his years.  His mum was my lighthouse – she helped me to see clearly and kept me off the rocks – and to this day I miss her desperately.  I’m sure she’s watching from above, blissfully proud of her boys and the truly fine young men they’ve become.

I rang this week to ask about his party (he lives down the road), and his reply was a classic example of Alex’s ever willingness to help:

“Hi Al, are you home?”
“No, do you need me to be?”

What happens when a party is organised by a 21 year old?  Well, there’s lots of alcohol and….sausage rolls.  When I recounted this to June, she, amidst much laughter, told me that she was planning to make finger food and a custard filled sponge cake for the soiree.  My contribution of pizza and chocolate slab cake isn’t nearly as classy, but hopefully it will help absorb some of the alcohol.

Party Pizza

This is a dead easy way to make lots of party food fast.  I made a double batch of my yeasted bread dough, then rolled it out flat and topped it as I would a pizza.  Because it wasn’t rolled too thinly, the base rose on baking, making each serve fairly substantial, even though the pieces were cut quite small.

• 1kg bakers/bread flour
• 20g instant yeast
• 20g fine sea salt
• 640g water
• 100g olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 250C.  Place the bread flour in large mixing bowl and whisk in the yeast.  Stir in the salt.  Make a well in the middle, and pour in the water and olive oil.

2. Now, with a spatula, start mixing the dough.  It will be very sticky, but just keep mixing.  Then scrape the spatula off with your fingers, get your hand right into the dough, and scrunch it up through your fingers until it all comes together and there are no more dry bits of flour.  Scrape off your hand and leave the dough while you get the bench ready.

3. Oil your bench, either by rubbing in a little olive oil, or spraying with a little oil spray.  Don’t bother with flouring it.  Tip the dough out on the bench, scraping the sticky bits out with your spatula.  It will look like a shaggy mess.  Knead the dough (flour your hands or the dough a little if necessary) – it will be sticky at first, but after a very short while, it will become smooth and pliant.  You basically want to stretch out the dough, fold it in on itself, give it a quarter turn, and repeat.  Keep doing that until the dough is smooth, then gather it into a ball.

4. Spray the scraped out mixing bowl with oil and put the dough back in.  Cover the bowl with Gladwrap and leave it somewhere for an hour or so.

5. Once the dough has doubled in size, scrape it gently onto your re-oiled bench fold it a couple of times to knock the air out of it, then flatten it out slightly.

6. Tear off a large sheet of Bake large enough to line the tray you want to bake the pizza on.  My oven is 90cm wide and this amount of dough was enough to fill one large tray – if your oven is smaller, you might need two trays.  Place the dough onto the centre of the Bake, flour the top, and roll it out until it’s wide enough to line your tray(s).  Slide it onto the tray before topping it.

7. From here on, you can do anything you like – I started with tomato sauce on the base and topped it with mozzarella, dry ricotta, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, onions and pancetta.  By the time you’ve finished playing with toppings, the base will have risen just a little and be ready to pop into the oven.  Turn the oven down to 220C as you put the pizza in, then let it bake for 15 – 20 minutes, or until it looks well cooked and the toppings are crispy.

Chocolate sheet cake recipe to follow…