Community flavour to savour

When her daughter started at Taverners Hill Infants School in Sydney’s inner west, Nicki Davies quickly noticed that good food featured heavily in the school culture.

“We had an international day, where everyone brought in wonderful, home-cooked dishes,” Ms Davies said.

“Then at the annual fundraising auction dinner, people bid phenomenal amounts of money for things like cooking lessons with a local nonna (Italian grandmother), a dinner party catered by one of the mums, and family meals cooked by our principal.”

Having seen other schools produce cookbooks, Ms Davies believed it would be an excellent fundraiser that the whole school could participate in.

Taverners Hill Infants principal Jacki Gardner and the P&C vice president, fundraising, Belinda Lewis, agreed and in December the Taverners Hill Cookbook went on sale through the school and local businesses.

So far the book has generated profits of about $12,000 from the original 1,000-book print run, with sales boosted by strong local support.

Following a commercial radio interview about the book, Taverners Hill Infants School principal Jacki Gardner was inundated with inquiries.

“By the time I returned to school, the answering machine was completely full with requests for the cookbook,” she said.

The colour, 248-page publication features more than 150 recipes from the school community, popular local chefs and celebrity contributors including Neil Perry and Margaret Fulton.

The then Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, even offered a family favourite for the book, but due to a surplus of contributions his mother’s chocolate cake recipe missed the final edit. The recipe featured in a school newsletter after the federal election.

Ms Davies secured the voluntary services of a professional food photographer, stylist, and graphic design agency to work on the cookbook.

Sponsors included local retailers such as grocers, florists and restaurants, and some large corporations.

“We all really wanted to tell our story of community through favourite recipes, anecdotes and student illustrations,” she said.

“We have so many strong culinary influences in our area and such a sense of community. We think we’ve captured that with our cookbook.”

• 185 gm butter at room temperature
• 155 gm brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 190 gm self-raising flour
• 30 gm cocoa powder
• 125 ml milk

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla, add eggs one at a time.
In another bowl sift the flour and cocoa together, then fold it and the milk alternating into the creamed butter and sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes in moderate oven (150-180 degrees).

ICING

• 1½ tblsp cocoa
• 1 tblsp warm milk
• 125 gm icing sugar
• 75 gm butter room temperature (cubed)
• ½ tsp vanilla