What a year this has been so far. I know it’s only 8 days into the new year, but to me it feels like it is already June.

The first day of the year, I landed up injuring the bottom of my foot from my own stupidity. I was too lazy to undo the laces on my running shoes, so I just went barefoot on the treadmill. At the end of the hour session, my feet were fine. The next morning, I couldn’t walk on them, they were painful every time I put weight on my feet, I could feel the bones protruding into the bottom of my feet. Nothing makes me seem professional than walking around the office in mismatched socks and croc sandals.

If that wasn’t enough, we seemed to have had the hottest week of the year, this past week and the office aircon packed up. I am allergic to the heat, I love love winter. So every day I go to work looking like a normal person and when I come home, I look like I have just completed the comrades. I am sweaty and my face looks red and fat like a full moon. How long till winter again???

I have been feeding my parents anything that I can either pop in the oven or cook in the microwave. It is just too hot to cook curry, actually it is just too hot to be in front of the stove pronto.

Last night we had load shedding at home for 2 hours, when that was down and the lights were back on, I could finally go to dream land. Yes yes, I am still afraid of sleeping in the dark. As I was nodding off, the selfish phone rang,  the generator at work didn’t kick in. For 2 hours we, trying to get the generator on, trying to override, to reboot and trying my best not to throw myself on the floor and have a mini tantrum, because who in their right mind, would be awake at 3am ,I could have been dreaming of Dr McDreamy???

Anyway, Eskom decided that at 4am they would end load shedding and the power was restored. This gave me just enough time to get a few minutes of sleep, shower, get dressed and be back at the office by 7.

With sleep deprivation comes no motivation to cook, so for supper I made my world famous toasted cheese sarmies. My dad was not impressed, apparently I have had sooo many toasted cheese sarmies, that it is enough to last him a life time. So to appease him, I thought today would be the perfect time to attempt making an eggless version of Hungarian tart. If I accidently burnt it, I couldn’t always blame the fact that I was tired.

Growing up, I always heard of Hungarian tart pastry being made with eggs, I have never come across and eggless version, so I was greatly surprised when I used Google to search for an eggless one and I came up with a few.

I didn’t really have high hopes for this recipe but I was surprised by the outcome. It came out perfect, just the way an egg version would. Of course you would have to overlook the burnt jam edges. I asked my mother to keep an eye on the tart, so I could have a catnap and well she forgot. When she did eventually remember it was about 10 minutes too late, but both parents agreed that they preferred it to be a little on the dark side and not pale in colour. I don’t buy either of their reasoning. If I had to burn it, both of them would have been complaining that they could taste burnt jam and my dad would not have let me forget…. Strange things are happening… what are these two up to?

Ingredients:

• 125g x butter.
• 50ml x buttermilk.
• 2 x tbsp. vegetable oil.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.
• 4 x tsp baking powder.
• 2 x tbsp. castor sugar.
• 2 x cups cake flour, sifted.
• Jam, for spreading.
• ¼ x cup desiccated coconut.
• Icing sugar for dusting the top of the tart.

Method:

• In a mixer, cream together the butter and castor sugar till light and fluffy.
• Add in the vegetable oil, buttermilk and vanilla essence, mix till well combined.
• Add in the dry ingredients and mix till it starts coming together and forms a soft dough.
• Shape into a ball and divide into 2 pieces, a ¾ and ¼ discs.
• Using your fingers, place the ¾ dough disc into your cake tin and evenly flatten along the bottom of the tin.
• Generously spread a layer of jam over.
• Sprinkle the desiccated coconut over the jam layer.
• Grate the remainder ¼ dough disc over the top of the coconut layer. Make sure that the grated dough covers the entire surface and that there is no visible coconut or jam layers.
• Pop into a preheated oven and bake at 80 degrees for 45 – 50 minutes or until the top of the tart is golden brown.
• Leave in the cake tin to cool completely before turning out onto a cooling rack.
• Once the tart is cooled completely, dust the top with icing sugar.