The name of this dessert says it all. It’s so easy, quick, and an all time fave of mine and my family’s going right back to when I was little.

Sorry, but I forgot to take the photo before everyone got stuck into it. This one serving was all that was left. You have to eat it right out of the oven.

INGREDIENTS

1 Tblespoon  butter

1 Cup  castor sugar

2 Tblespoons  Self Raising flour

Juice of 1 lemon

1 Cup milk

2 eggs (separate the yolks from the whites)

METHOD

First beat up the egg whites until stiff.

Cream the butter butter and sugar (I melt the butter in the microwave to save time), add flour, lemon juice, milk and egg yolks. Beat well.

Fold the egg whites into the batter and pour into a 12″ oven proof buttered glass pudding dish set in a pan of water.

Cook at 180 C for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

ENJOY!!

Like stories, food is for sharing

Here is the sky at 6am from my back garden. It only lasted for about 5 minutes. So thankful I was up early. The sound effects were incredible too, amplified on the still Spring air – magpies warbling, doves cooing, a butcher bird carolling, a wattle bird cackling, minor birds squawking.

The bed in my office is always a mess

One of the questions I was asked at a recent school visit was Can you write two books at the same time?

Yes I can, but they have to be of different genres. For example I can work on a picture book and a junior novel, or a picture book and a YA novel but NEVER a junior novel and a YA novel at the one time.

This is because I inhabit the setting of my story, I walk around inside it, familiarising myself with its smells and noises and peculiar atmosphere. Then I get inside the heads of all my characters, especially my protagonist. It would be totally confusing therefore to have two main characters in two different settings inhabiting my mind at the same time telling me what to do. Not to mention trying to follow the plotline of each novel.

How is it with other writers? Are you able to work on two books at once?

I remember when my kids were small, seeing boys driving in their cars sporting the tell tale P plates on the front and back windows, and my immediate thought was that they were hoons. If I passed a group of these boys in the street, I would feel uneasy, not knowing what was going on inside their heads. I wasn’t a writer then.

But my own son, Ren turned 17 and my whole attitude changed. He began to walk with the same swagger, wear his hair long and scruffy, his jeans halfway down his bum and he began driving a beat up old car with a big stencil across the back window.

Since becoming an author, I have learnt to keep my mind wide open to people, places, events. Now I sit in my curbside café and watch and listen and record. I wish I could see the world through the eyes of a child but this is impossible. But I do observe and wonder and ask why.

Jumping to conclusions, being critical, judgemental, impatient are all enemies to a writer.