Celebrate with Food and Wine by Victoria Heywood book review and Frozen Anzac Caramel Cream recipe

Great recipes for a year of feasting and festivities. Well with an opening line like that this is sure to be a book that I will enjoy.

Broken into types of celebrations and festivities rather than the normal formula this is a book created to get you whipping up a feast of great food and enjoying it with family and friends. With chapter headings that include Australia Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mothers’ and Fathers’ Days, Halloween, Birthdays, Anniversaries and Christmas and each of those chapters including more than 10 dishes you can be assured you will have enough recipe ammunition to take the stress out of planning and put the fun back into entertaining.

Heywood writes in the introduction, “One notable Christmas dinner I remember involved a very large goose, a disorganised hostess who was still in her pyjamas when we arrived at the designated time and a five-hour wait for food. Five long, hungry hours—now that’s not a celebration in my book. And while some excellent wine filled a few gaps, by the time the hostess’ goose was cooked and finally served, we would have cheered the arrival of anything resembling food. So take heart, this book isn’t a collection of tricky dishes that will have you stuck sweating in the kitchen for hours while the celebration gets going without you. Instead, most of the dishes here will hopefully elicit congratulatory oohs and aahs, while also being designed to be prepared ahead of time or tossed together at the last minute.”


An added bonus is the wine recommendations by Ralph Kyte-Powell for each recipe. I don't generally drink alcohol, so having someone else who knows what they're talking about do all the hard work makes delivering the total package of a memorable meal just that little bit more achievable.

I'm not gonna lie (cause this wouldn't be a very good review then would it), when I first received the book it wasn't quite what I expected. I like glossy pages with large full colour photos on every page.

But after that initial thought wore off I remembered that more than a couple of my favorite, most often used cookbooks are nearly completely devoid of photo's.And to be clear, Celebrate with food and wine does have quite a few photo's, just not every second page. I guess what I'm trying to say is this is a book designed for real cooking not just looking.

When it get's down to it a successful cookbook is one with simple recipes made from easy to source ingredients that you can actually use, which is what Celebrate with Food and Wine appears to provide. A number of the recipes are suitable to get the kids involved and in many instances there are alternatives given which I always think is super helpful.

Any-hoo there are a number of recipes in the book I am looking forward to trying out including the Crumbed Mozzarrella with Cranberry Relish or Raspberry and White Chocolate Breakfast Jaffles (under the Valentines chapter), but seeings as it's coming up to Australia Day soon I thought I would share this recipe from the book with y'all.

Image from the book Celebrate with Food and Wine

Note: This is an Australian release book and the recipe is provided in metric measurements, I have provided the below recipe as it was provided to me. As I know a lot of you do not use metric here are some rough conversions (provided by me so any mistakes are mine not the authors) 250g = 8  3/4oz, 2 Litres is just over 4 pints, all purpose flour is required and a passable substitute for golden syrup would be dark corn syrup.

Frozen Anzac Caramel Cream - makes enough for 16 serves from Celebrate with Food and Wine by Victoria Heywood reprinted with permission from Slattery Media

With its layers of crunchy Anzac biscuit crums, gooey caramel and rich vanilla ice-cream, this dessert is both decadent and dead easy to make.

You can make it even more simple by crumbling ready-made Anzacs—simply pop about 16 biscuits into a plastic bag and smash with a rolling pin until you reach the desired consistency.

This dessert does take a while to set properly, so aim to make and freeze at least one day ahead of time.

Ingredients 

250 grams butter, melted

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

1 3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup dessicated coconut 

500ml quality caramel topping

2 litres quality vanilla ice-cream, softened 

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

Combine the butter, sugar, golden syrup, flour, oats and coconut in a bowl. Divide between the trays and press into a thin layer.

Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes, then crumble while the biscuit mix is still warm. Set aside to cool completely.

Line a 20cm x 30cm high-sided dish or 2 loaf tins with non-stick baking paper. (You could even scoop the ice-cream out into a bowl and use the empty container.)

Spread half of the crumble mixture evenly over the base of the dish (or the 2 tins) and drizzle half of the caramel topping over the top. Spread the ice cream over the caramel.

Sprinkle the remaining crumble mixture over the ice-cream. Drizzle the remaining caramel topping over the crumble. Cover and freeze overnight. Cut into squares to serve.

Wine tip (by Ralph Kyte-Powell as provided in the book Celebrate with Food and Wine)

Heavenly with a luscious liqueur Muscat from Rutherglen.

I received a copy of Celebrate with Food and Wine for the purposes of this review.

........and on the topic of book review, the book blog tour for my book Sweets on a Stick is still underway, here are the

1/9/12 – Moogie and Pap blog,Review
1/10/12  Still Blonde after all these YEARS Review/Giveaway

1/11/12  Random Cravings Blog Review with recipe/Q&A

1/11/12  Katy and Kid Review/Giveaway

1/12/12 Giveaway Blogs, Review/Giveaway

1/13/12 Consumer Queen, Giveaway

1/14/12 Confessions of an Over-worked Mom Review/Giveaway

1/15/12  Mommy Pants blog Review/Giveaway

1/17/12  Mom Vs. the Boys Blog Review/Giveaway

1/19/12  Mommy’s Free Time blog Review

If you miss on those giveaways out you could always pick up a copy yourself here at Fishpond or Amazon