jan_kohler_cooks

jan_kohler_cooks Cook- Taste- Explore. Recipes from my own kitchen and food experiences in wonderful places

07/04/2026

If your post‑Easter kitchen looks anything like mine, you’ve got a few hot cross buns hanging around, looking slightly too dry to be exciting. This is when I bring out the magic hot buttermilk syrup, which I usually serve with the iconic South African pumpkin fritter. The addition of this decadent sauce suddenly transforms those buns into a golden, sticky, sweet treat that tastes like you meant to save them for later. Leftovers? What leftovers.

As promised, I shared this on my blog but adding it here too in case you missed it!

Here’s what goes in:
½ cup butter
½ cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

How to do it:
In a saucepan on the stove, bring the buttermilk, butter, and sugar to the boil. Stir in the bicarb and the cinnamon and be prepared for frothing! The level of the sauce will rise up quite a bit.
Drizzle the syrup over the hot cross buns and serve immediately

If you’d like to do a bit of meal prep this weekend and get ahead for the week, here’s my weekly go-to bolognaise recipe...
16/01/2026

If you’d like to do a bit of meal prep this weekend and get ahead for the week, here’s my weekly go-to bolognaise recipe. I taught this in my student class yesterday (using a different cooking method in the Tokit), and I’m sharing the recipe as promised.

1kg of minced beef
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Olive oil for frying
1 quarter cup of Worcestershire sauce
1 quarter cup of tomato sauce
2 tablespoons of chutney
salt for seasoning
2 teaspoons of meat seasoning
2 teaspoons of mixed dried herbs (or fresh chopped herbs like parsley,
oregano or thyme)
3 tins of chopped or whole Italian tomatoes (400g tin)
3 cups of water (750ml)
How to do it:
In a heavy-based pot, fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil until the
onion is soft and appears slightly transparent. Add the mince to the
pot and brown with seasoning and sauces. Once this has taken on a
bit of colour you can add the tomatoes and water. Give it a good stir and leave it to simmer on low heat for about 3 hours, (or in a low oven in an oven-proof pot with lid). Stir the bolognaise and check the liquid levels frequently, toping it up with water if necessary. But remember what you really want here is a reduced, flavour intensive sauce.

🧑‍🍳 Note: if you’re making this in the Tokit, the chopping and mixing is done for you and cooking time greatly reduced. Good to know that you can still use your own recipes but use the convenient functions of the machine!

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