“One should never, but never, pass by an opportunity to celebrate.”
~ j d malouf
I received this email the other day, from the daughters of one of my clients, and I present it just as it was written:
dear Nicole
my sister and me my name is Molly and her name is Sam need your help please
our Mum is gradating from her decree soon and we want to make her a speshel supprise so can you help us with a good resipee? it is just mum and us and so she won’t have a party and mum says it is not importunt but it is importunt becos she worked real hard for a long time and she promussed to cook us sossages and chips for the vicktry dinner but then there will be no speshel cake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
she can’t eat much cows milk and she is glootenfree and also we are not to allowed to bake anything or use the stove because mum says we might burn the house down but we have saved some money almost $15 and there is a Woolies when we walk home from school and we could go there to get things for the supprise love from Molly I am ten and Sam she is nearly nine girls rule xx 😊
Dear Molly and Sam,
it is wonderful that you want to make your Mum a special dessert treat to celebrate all her hard work and graduating from her degree. You must be very proud of her. I had a look at Woolworths, and you can get all the ingredients for my recipe with the money you have. I hope you make her a lovely home-made card too, because I know she will treasure it.
Just follow the instructions and you will be able to make something really yummy for you all to share, and you won’t need to use the oven or stove at all!
A parfait (pronounced par-fay) is a sweet celebration served in a glass, that usually has layers of yummy things. This one has layers of fresh strawberries, Lamington fingers (sponge cake dipped in a chocolate glaze and rolled in coconut for our non-Australian readers), and coconut yoghurt (yoghurt made from coconut milk) – all things that your mum can eat and enjoy. I also used some jelly. It’s easy to make these and fun to eat. I was lucky because I already had some homemade coconut jelly in the fridge. That’s the cubes of white and clear stuff you can see in the picture below. But I think this recipe would be very good with raspberry or strawberry flavoured jelly too. Remember to wash your hands first, use good team work and help each other clean up afterwards.
Lots of love from Nicole ❤ xx
PS – I’ve added several variations to the recipe for our more mature readers, see below
Ingredients for 4 serves:
- 1 packet of Lamingtons or Lamington Fingers (choose gluten-free for your Mum, Molly and Sam)
- 500g of coconut yogurt
- 1 punnet of fresh strawberries
- Some ready-made jelly (Molly, Woolworths has jelly already made in little cups – you will need one cup or maybe two)
- 1 orange
Method:
- Find some glasses or pretty teacups (Molly and Sam choose 3) or use parfait glasses if you have them
- Wash the strawberries and cut off the green top. Cut each strawberry in half and the cut the halves into smaller pieces. Keep two strawberries aside and cut them in half to use for decoration
- Cut the lamingtons into small pieces
- Squeeze half an orange and pour the juice over the strawberries and stir with a spoon to coat the berries in the juice – you can eat the other half of the orange
- Put some lamington pieces in the bottom of each glass or cup. Then add a spoonful of strawberries to cover the cake
- add a little bit of jelly and then cover that with a layer of coconut yoghurt
- keep layering the cake, strawberries, jelly and yoghurt until you get to the top of the glass
- Finish with a bit more yoghurt and then put a strawberry on the top. Add a few little pieces of lamington if you have some left over
- Keep these in the fridge until you are ready to eat them
Variations:
- use any kind of cake you have available
- change out the strawberries for any other kind of moist fruit
- swap the orange juice for a few tablespoons of your favourite liqueur (I used Frangelico on my strawberries)
- instead of coconut yoghurt you could also use whipped cream, thick custard or any other kind of yoghurt, or even rice pudding or chocolate mousse
- use your favourite flavour of jelly, or if you’re not a jelly fan leave it out
- use sprinkles, fruit, chopped nuts, chocolate syrup or grated chocolate on top to garnish your parfait
