Dates and Dried apricots

These recipes are in my mother's handwriting and are housed in an old blue plastic folder. They are transcribed here as part of the A-Z Challenge 2019. Each day in April a new letter of the alphabet and accompanying recipes are posted.

Loaves or cakes?

It appears that anything that was to be sliced and served buttered was known as a loaf rather than a cake. Banana loaf is now served as toast and buttered in some locales.
This date loaf was served buttered. The choice of nuts to be added is left to the reader, I think Mum probably used walnuts in most cases. Here she has written the quantities then doubled the ingredients to the left of the original list. It was more economical in terms of effort and energy consumption to double the mixtures for our large family. In later years, once she had a deep freezer, extra cakes and biscuits were frozen until needed.

Date & Nut Loaf

[Quantities given for 1 mixture]
2 cups S.R  Flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup Dates
½ cup of nuts (chopped)
1 cup Boiling water
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon carb. soda

Cream butter and sugar, add egg, the dates( previously soaked in boiling water with carb. soda until cool) Lastly add flour and nuts

Bake 20 - 30 mins in loaf or nut loaf tins - mod[erate] oven.

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Dried Apricots

For many years Mum dried our own apricots from the fruit trees. This was a tedious process in the heat of South Australian summers. While the industry was still viable in South Australia, local dried apricots could be purchased for a reasonable price. We always had delicious home made jams usually apricot, plum or fig.

Origin of this recipe
My father had only one family of first cousins, the McInerneys of Riverton. Some of my parents' best friends were from this family and Carmel is the youngest member of that generation. So this is Carmel McInerney's recipe written out by my mother. This is a very sweet jam, I suggest reducing the sugar!

Dried Apricot Jam

1 lb Dd. Apricots
8 cups sugar
3 pints water (or less)
½ cup lemon juice
1 sml tin crushed pineapple

Soak fruit in water overnight
Next day cook fruit & water until fruit is soft about 25 mins.

Add sugar, pineapple & lemon juice & boil approx 35 mins.

Bottle while hot and seal when cold.

Jam making in summer was a very hot sticky process with no air conditioning to relieve the heat in the kitchen. Luckily jams such as this one could be made at any time of the year as it did not depend on fresh fruit for the  major ingredient.