Butterflies and Tarts

You'd be forgiven if you thought that this blog had changed from a food blog to a travel log, but I can't help but share all the beautiful places I have experienced in the last few weeks.

There are so many tourist spots that as a local we so often miss out on, or keep promising ourselves to try and never get the time to go. You actually need to have a visitor from out of town to motivate you to make the effort.


Yesterday we went to Butterfly World. We have been promising ourselves to go there for months now, and I can't believe it'd taken this long to get there. When you walk through the entrance door, the first thing to mind is -"Wow, look at all the butterflies!". It sounds really stupid, I mean what do you expect when you go to Butterfly World?



I certainly didn't expect to walk into a very hot tropical forest full of live butterflies! I was like a kid in a candy shop - pointing my camera at everything. You walk through a forest with 1000's of butterflies, each a different colour, each more beautiful than the last. It's like Paris Fashion Week!

And just when you think it can't get more exotic, you walk into another room crammed filled with the ugliest creatures on the earth - it's almost like a sick joke. On the one side you have these beautiful butterflies in the most extraordinary colours and then you have the reptiles and spiders - talk about Cinderella and the ugly sisters! Shame, they not that bad, I guess their mothers love them too.

So as it was my mother-in-law's last night with us, and knowing her love for dessert I decided to try something new. In the last month I have seen 3 recipes for Buttermilk Tart, in 3 different magazines. A very traditional pudding made by grannies all over South Africa. As I am not a granny, I decided to change it slightly and pimp this old classic right into the 21st century.

Coconut Milk and Orange Blossom Tart
Serves 4-6

15ml Butter
80g Sugar
2 Eggs
10ml Orange Blossom Water
100g Flour
salt
5ml Baking Powder
400ml (1 can) Coconut Milk
250ml Buttermilk
Dessicated Coconut for sprinkling

Oven Temp at 180C
Cream the butter and the sugar.
Add the eggs and the orange blossom water and mix well.
Add the dry ingredients and blend.
Add the coconut milk and the buttermilk and mix well again.
Grease a baking dish (I used a Pyrex dish about 16cm square) and sprinkle coconut around the base and the edges.
Pour in the mixture and sprinkle a little coconut on the top.
Bake for about 30 minutes until cooked through.
It will rise, so make sure your dish is deep enough.
If the coconut is browning too fast place a piece of foil on the top to stop it from burning.
Serve warm (not hot) with vanilla ice cream.