Category Archives: Cakes

Low(er) Fat Gingerbread

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Baking is perhaps my favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon, specially in autumn and winter. I love being able to take my time mixing, baking, filling, icing, decorating. And full baking tins somehow make starting the working week a little bit easier.

I made this gingerbread a few Sundays ago. It didn’t turn out quite as dark as I’d like (I’m still thinking about this black, sticky gingerbread from 101 Cookbooks), but the recipe is definitely a keeper. The demerara sugar gives it a kind of crunchier texture than plain old white or brown sugar, and the ginger sprinkled on top makes for a delicious crusty edge.

I lowered the fat in it by replacing butter with fruit purée and low-fat spread. It’s still high really in sugar, so you couldn’t call it exactly healthy… but it is better than a lot of gingerbread recipes out there. I baked it as a cake, but I’m also thinking about halving the recipe and making it into a loaf.

I recommend it for a grey weekend afternoon. By the way, if Mother’s Day slipped past you this year, it’s not too late! You can make this for an afternoon tea for your mum ;)

Low(er) Fat Gingerbread
Loosely based on a recipe in Food magazine

3½ cups flour
1 Tbsp ground ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp mixed spice
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1¼ cups demerara sugar
75g low fat table spread
½ cup treacle
½ cup golden syrup
100g fruit purée*
½ cup milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
¼-½ cup crystallised ginger, finely sliced

*either bought apple sauce or pie filling, or I suggest homemade apple purée. You could also try mashed banana.

Preheat the oven to 180°(C). Line the base and sides of a square or round tin – I made this one in a 20cm square tin, but this cake was probably too big for it. I’m planning on using my 23cm round springform next time.

Sift the flour, ground ginger, spices, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre.

Microwave the spread gently until it has JUST melted (it’s fine if there are still a couple of lumps of unmeltedness), and stir in the treacle and golden syrup. Stir in the fruit purée too. Beat in the milk and eggs. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir to make a smooth batter. Pour it into the prepared cake tin and sprinkle the crystallised ginger over the top.

Bake for about 70 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave it in the tin for 20 minutes before turning on to a rack to cool.

Vintage Cooking: Goldenglow Cake

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Titri was the family farm on my mother’s mother’s side. We used to go there a lot when I was little to visit my grandmother’s rather comical brothers, Ben and Max, who would tease me mercilessly. I still think of them as the Statler and Waldorf of our family.

We also used to go to Titri every spring to pick daffodils – nobody knows when or why they were planted, but an enormous field of daffies cropped up in front of the house every single year.

I don’t know when the old house at Titri was built, but this photo was taken sometime around 1900. You can see its amazing garden – a huge vege patch to the side of the house, and flowers, trees and shrubs in front. It also would have had an orchard. Just in the background at the left you can see the dairy shed where the family made their butter.

My great-grandparents, Charlie and Mary farmed here. Sadly, Charlie died suddenly in 1945, when their four children were still teenagers, and from then on, Mary ran the farm with the help of the boys. My grandmother moved to another farm in 1953 when she married my grandfather.

This is Mary (seated) in front of the old house – my grandmother is standing beside her, and the little baby is my mum!

A new farm house was built at Titri in the 1960s, but Ben and Max never really got around to pulling down the old one. This photo was taken around the late 80s or early 90s, and you can see the old house in tumble-down form.

I have a recipe from Titri for you today. You might have read my previous Vintage Cooking posts – I’ve been working on a project to make recipes from my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s recipe books.

This was actually one of the first recipes I tried from Mary’s book – how could you go past a name like Goldenglow Cake?

It’s quite lovely – it’s really a vanilla cake, but has just a tablespoon of cocoa, which gives it quite an interesting colour and flavour. The real discovery was in the icing, which is boiled. Actually, it’s like an unset/unbeaten caramel fudge that you pour over the top of the cake. I took some liberty and sprinkled with walnuts and pistachios, of which I’m sure Mary would have approved.

Goldenglow Cake

¼ lb butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1½ cups flour
1½ baking powder
1 Tbsp cocoa
3 Tbsp milk

Icing:
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
3 Tbsp milk
vanilla
pistachios and/or walnuts, to decorate (optional)

To make the cake:
Preheat the oven to 180°(C). Grease a 20 or 23cm round cake tin and/or line with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again. Sift the dry ingredients and add them to the  butter mixture in three lots, alternating with the  milk.

Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake. Now I unfortunately didn’t write down how long mine took, but I imagine it was about 45 minutes. Unfortunately Mary has a habit of only leaving lists of ingredients, so she can’t help us, either. I’d say go for 45 minutes but check it frequently. It will be cooked when the sides start to come away from the tin, and a skewer comes out clean.

Leave the cake in its tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool. I cut mine through the middle and spread with plum jam before icing – I think I was worried I’d slightly overcooked the cake and it would be dry without it – so that’s an option if you like jam. And who doesn’t?

To make the icing:
Put the sugars and milk in a small saucepan and place over medium heat. Bring slowly to the boil, boil for three minutes, then remove from the heat, add the vanilla and beat until creamy. Quickly pour over the cake (or it will set like fudge), and sprinkle with roughly chopped pistachios and walnuts.

Raspberry Cloud Cake

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Golly, I thought I was off to a good start writing my first post back on 1 January 2012, but then I haven’t been back until now! I’ve been trying some new dishes over the last week so I’ve got a few things to share with you over the next few days. I hope you’re enjoying a fabulous summer!

It was my birthday earlier this week. Hooray! I was very spoilt. We had my husband’s sister and her partner staying, so all had pancakes at our local cafe Peppermill, then my sister-in-law and I went into town for manicures and the boys cooked us a bbq dinner. Obviously our nails were too delicate to do dishes, so the boys covered that too.

As for dessert, I told my family that I wanted to make it myself. The thing is, I have loads of dessert and cake recipes marked to try, but throughout the year, there’s only two of us, and  we’re fairly conscious of eating healthily, so I don’t always have the opportunity to try them out. So on my birthday, I allow myself to make whatever I want, regardless of how terrible it is for you, or how few people there are to eat it (ironically, this recipe isn’t actually that bad for you, and there were four of us, so we got through it over a couple of days).

I chose this recipe from Annabel Langbein’s The Free Range Cook. It’s a lovely book and worth having for the scenic photography alone. I’ve made a bunch of recipes from the book; I love the way it lists a recipe that might turn into a marinade, salad dressing, dipping sauce, etc. for loads of different foods and dishes, so you get a lot of mileage out of the time you invest in the kitchen. I’ve had my eye on the gorgeous photo of the Strawberry Cloud Cake for ages. The time had come. I used my favourite raspberries in this version, but you can use fresh sliced strawberries, too, as per the original, or I was thinking blueberries might also make a nice variation, maybe with lemon or orange…

I used frozen raspberries. I know they’re in season at the moment – but they are so expensive fresh! And when you’re just going to freeze them anyway… fresh seemed like a silly idea. I used Orchard Gold berries which were terrific.

This cake looks impressive but is SO easy. My sister-in-law asked how I made it, and I told her the ingredients, and described the method as “Stir. Put. Chill. Beat. Put. Freeze.”

Make sure you do have a springform tin before you start; I wouldn’t like to try turning this out of a plain cake tin! And I’m no nutritionist, but please also note that as it contains uncooked egg, very young ‘uns and pregnant ladies might like to steer clear.

One more tip – if you use a dairy-free spread, this cake will be dairy-free, and I think the biscuit crumbs are the only gluten-containing ingredient, so if you use gluten free biscuits, you’ll have a gluten-free cake, too.

Raspberry Cloud Cake
Adapted from Annabel Langbein’s “Strawberry Cloud Cake” in The Free Range Cook
Serves 8-10

Base
150g wine biscuits, crushed into crumbs (or any plain sweet biscuits)
½ cup dessicated coconut
1½ tsp cinnamon
100g butter, melted

Filling
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
250g frozen raspberries (don’t thaw them, use them frozen)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

To serve
fresh or (thawed) frozen raspberries
white chocolate

Line the base of a 26cm springform cake tin with baking paper. I also gave the sides of the tin a light spritz with non-stick spray, just in case.

To make the base, mix the biscuit crumbs, coconut, cinnamon and melted butter together, and press firmly into the base of the prepared tin. It will be quite a thin base. Put that in the fridge while you make the filling.

Put the egg whites, sugar, frozen raspberries, lemon juice and vanilla in an electric mixer and beat for about 8 minutes. The mixture will be thick and fluffy, and you shouldn’t be able to feel any gritty sugar when you rub a little bit of the mixture between your fingers. Using a scraper, pile the mixture on top of the chilled base. I had serious doubts about whether all my mixture would fit, but keep flattening it down and you should be ok!

Place a sheet of baking paper over the top of the filling, and put the cake in the freezer for at least 4 hours. Annabel says it will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to a month.

To serve, top with extra raspberries and white chocolate. Note: did I bother to properly drain and pat dry the thawed raspberries? No. Did the colour start spread out across the cake as soon as I placed them on top? Yes. Did I try and disguise it by hurrying white chocolate buttons onto the cake? Yes. Did it work? Wee-eell, I suggest drying the berries next time, but keeping the chocolate anyway. 
Cut the cake with a knife that’s been run under very hot water and dried. Prepare to gasp as you bite into the marshmallowy deliciousness.

Decorating your Christmas Cake

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Now that it’s December, our Christmas Tree is up, the fairy lights have been switched on and, possibly most importantly, the Christmas Cake has been decorated. And cut. And a little bit eaten.

I made our cake about a month ago and have been giving it a light dousing with sherry once a week since then. So to finish it off, I iced it in the traditional way – with a layer of almond icing, and then a layer of white icing on top of that.

I usually use bought almond and white icings (I think I used Pettinice brand last year which seemed ok), but this year I’m on holiday. So with all this time on my hands I thought I’d have a crack at making my own. Just to see if it was nicer/cheaper/easier.

I’ll go into more detail on the icings in the recipes below, but the short answer is: Almond Icing is DEFINITELY worth making at home. It’s cheaper than buying it, it’s really easy to mix up, and actually it’s easier to roll out and place on the cake than the bought stuff. Plus, it does taste nicer. Significantly more marzipan-y.

With white icing, the jury is still out. It’s definitely easier to roll out and place on the cake. It  is marginally cheaper. These factors may tip the scales for some. I can’t say it was easy – not in the skills department; the recipe is simple, but in the elbow grease department. The icing is so thick, the Kenwood refused to co-operate. So I pretty much did it by hand. Put it this way – I didn’t need to go on a run yesterday. As for taste, I can’t say I noted an enormous difference from the packet stuff. Friends I fed it to last night said they thought it was better. Maybe they were just being nice. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Try it yourself, and see what you think! Does anyone else make this stuff at home? What are your thoughts?

A few words on the decoration of cakes. Following the almond and white icing layers, I usually mix up Royal Icing and decorate the top of my cake with little kisses or stars. This year, I think mixing the white icing cleaned out my kitchen motivation reserves. I was content with just a big tartan ribbon and this funny little bird decoration that I’ve fallen in love with.

Others save up the scraps of white icing, and cut shapes out of them, and place the shapes on the cake (see this one by Hungry and Frozen).

The other decorating option is to use tacky but heart-tuggingly nostalgic plastic decorations. When I was little, my mum put the almond and white icing on the cake, and my brother and I were allowed to sit on the bench and “help” by providing advice on where the little plastic red house should go, where the jolly fat Santa should sit, and at which strategic intersections the royal icing kisses should be applied. We also had tiny plastic Bambi deer, which we pressed lightly into the white icing a couple of times, before settling on a position. This made ‘hoof-prints’ in the icing, as if the tiny Bambi had happened upon the Christmas Cake in the wild, and walked around a bit before deciding it was an excellent place to set up camp for the month. Man would not come to the thicket here.

I was (abnormally) thrilled to find that you can still buy the very same little red house for $3.99 at Spotlight, along with jolly fat Santas, wandering Bambis and gold “Merry Christmas” text plates.

I should add, too, please don’t let all this talk of home made icings, month-long sherry dousings and plastic Bambis put you off making or decorating a Christmas Cake! Although I made mine a while ago, it’s definitely not too late to make one now, and it will still taste amazing. My recipe’s available here. And in terms of decoration, you could just place extra dried fruits and nuts on the top of your cake, and brush with a lightly beaten egg before you bake it. It will look shiny and beautiful. If you’re keen on the almond and white icing combination, the bought stuff will definitely do the trick. The instructions for rolling it out and placing it on the cake below might help.

I have surprised myself with how much there is to say about decorating a Christmas Cake. I feel that a summary is needed. So:

  • Home made Christmas Cakes are delicious. You can bake one following this recipe, and either:
  • Place pretty dried fruits and nuts on top of the cake, and brush with warmed up golden syrup, or a beaten egg, before you bake it; or
  • Bake the cake plain, and ice it with a layer of almond icing, followed by a layer of white icing, either home made or bought; and then:
  • Leave it as is; or
  • Tie a big ribbon around it; or
  • Cut out shapes from white icing and stick them on; or
  • Go crazy with piped royal icing and/or nostalgic plastic decorations.
So there you have it! If you have any energy left, the recipes and my tips for home made almond and white icings are below, along with instructions on placing them on the cake. Have fun!
Home Made Almond Icing

This recipe is slightly adapted from Alison Holst’s Christmas cookbook. This mixture made enough to go over the top and down the sides of my huge Christmas Cake, so you may like to reduce quantities if you have a smaller cake, or if you just want the icing on the top. 

200g ground almonds
2 cups icing sugar
1 cup caster sugar
2 egg yolks
½ tsp almond essence
4 Tbsp lemon juice

Place the almonds, icing sugar and caster sugar in a large bowl (I used my Kenwood cake mixer), and mix to combine. In a little bowl, mix together the egg yolks, almond essence, and 2 Tbsp of the lemon juice. Mix this mixture into the almonds, and add the remaining lemon juice, a little at a time, until you have a paste that will be easy to roll out, but not too sticky.

A wee note – I’ve made a note to myself to try replacing some of the caster sugar with more icing sugar next year, to make a smoother paste.

Home Made White Icing
This recipe is also adapted from Alison Holst’s Christmas cookbook. It makes a large quantity – you can freeze leftover white icing. 

1 Tbsp gelatine
3 Tbsp cold water
3 Tbsp liquid glucose (also called glucose syrup, most supermarkets stock it with the baking supplies)
2 tsp glycerine (also called glycerol; easiest place to find it is at a pharmacy)
1 kg icing sugar. Yes, you read right. 1 kilogram.

Mix the gelatine and cold water in a small microwave-proof bowl, and stand for 3-4 minutes. Warm it in the microwave – I put it in for 20 seconds, gave it a swish around, and in for another 20 seconds. You just need to dissolve the gelatine. Mix in the liquid glucose and glycerine. Tip: run your measuring spoon under hot water first, these two ingredients are like golden syrup.

Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl (again, I used my Kenwood mixing bowl). Pour the gelatine mixture into the middle of the icing sugar, and mix. I started off using the dough hook of my Kenwood, but this only worked for so long before it gave up. After that I just kneaded it with my hands. I also added a few splashes of very hot water when I thought the icing was just too dry and crumbly to work.

Putting It All Together

Christmas Cake
Apricot Jam (my cake used about a third of a 500g jar)
Almond Icing, home made or bought
White Icing, home made or bought
Patience

First, warm your apricot jam in the microwave, and pass it through a sieve. Brush the cake with the jam so the almond icing has something to stick onto.

Sprinkle your bench or a board with icing sugar, and roll out your almond icing until you have the right size to cover your cake. You can fill in any little holes or dents in your cake with scraps of the almond icing first, so you have a smooth surface to place your icing onto. Then, lightly drape your almond icing over the cake. This can be tricky.

I have a very useful little plastic or silicone placemat sized thing I bought for about $3 at Moore Wilson’s.  It’s very thin and flexible. I’m not sure what it’s purpose is supposed to be (maybe a hot plate?) but I use it as a rolling board. That way, I’m able to pick up my board with the icing still on it, and invert it over my Christmas Cake, then gently peel the board off the icing, leaving a crease-free smooth surface without risking breakage. Just make sure you dust the board with plenty of icing sugar before you start rolling.

Whip round the cake with a sharp knife to cut off any overhang, and then smooth the icing, and repair any cracks as much as you can by lightly pressing with your fingertips.

Now, brush the cake again, very lightly this time, with more sieved jam, so the white icing can stick onto the almond icing.

Sprinkle your bench or board with more icing sugar, and now roll out your white icing, again so you have an area big enough to cover your cake. I did my board inversion trick again, but if you don’t have a flexi placemat type thing, just lift your icing onto the cake as best you can with the aid of spatulas, fish slices and family members. Hopefully you can avoid any major cracks or splits as you place it on. Again, cut off any overhang and smooth the icing down.

All done! Now you can finish your cake off with any other decorations you like, and munch away!

Christmas Cake

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I love Christmas!!!

And I’m lucky this year to be getting a good break before Christmas, so I’ve got all sorts of decorating, cooking and baking projects in mind. I may well become unbearable.

But first things first. I’ve made my Christmas Cake nice and early so it can mature for a good few weeks before we make a start on it. And it’s a GIANT cake, so even if we start eating it on December 1 (the day the Christmas tree goes up), we’ll probably still be eating it well into January.

This is my family’s traditional Christmas Cake recipe.  It’s quite a typical New Zealand Christmas cake I think, with the trifecta of vanilla, almond, and lemon essences rather than alcohol (although that’s added later). I love it. Like many ‘family’ Christmas things, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas without it.

I have been trying little tweaks to the recipe over the last 3-4 years, and I think I just about nailed it last year, so I’m expecting the 2011 vintage will be the best yet. It’s a simple cake to make, but I’ve included quite detailed mixing instructions – Christmas Cakes aren’t cheap to make, so you want it to be as delicious as possible.

Time for a Little Something’s Christmas Cake
This mixture makes a very large cake – my tin is 10×10″, and about 3½” deep. You can halve the recipe to fill an 8×8″ tin (or 2/3 it if you want a deeper cake)**.

1 lb butter
1 lb sugar
½ cup golden syrup
10 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp almond essence
1 tsp lemon essence
1½ lb flour, sifted
2 kg mixed fruit*

*Firstly, a note on the mixed fruit. The quality of the cake really rides on the fruit you use. This year, I bought as much high quality bulk bin dried fruit as I could afford, and finely chopped it, then topped that up to 2kg with packaged mixed fruit (again, the best you can afford). The fruit from the bulk bin included dried pears, apples, figs, peaches, strawberries, apricots, kiwifruit, papaya, cranberries, raisins and currants. Alison’s Pantry bulk bins do a good mix called “orchard fruits”, and another called “berry zest”.

**Another instructional note – I mix my Christmas Cake in my Kenwood mixer. And it’s such a huge mixture that I can’t mix it all in one go – so I make the cake in two halves.

OK, down to business. Preheat the oven to 160º(C), and grease and line a 10×10″ cake tin. Soften the butter (just to room temperature), and chop the mixed dried fruit.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the golden syrup, and then the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. If the mixture seems like it’s starting to curdle, beat in 1 Tbsp of the sifted flour – that should fix it. If not, it’s probably not that big a deal.

Mix in the essences and the sifted flour, and then add the fruit, and keep stirring until it’s evenly mixed through. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin, and smooth the top with wet fingers (this should stop any rogue raisins sticking it out the top and burning). My family tradition is to leave the mixture sitting in the tin overnight, but I don’t know how much of a difference that makes. I’m still too superstitious to skip this step, in case the ghosts of great grandmothers past come back to haunt me for disrespecting the recipe.

I always ice our Christmas Cake, but if you prefer to decorate the top with glazed nuts and more dried fruit, this is the time to add it. I like almonds and cherries, but use whatever you like really! Place them on the cake, and brush with beaten egg to glaze the cake, and leave it 15 minutes before baking. (I’m going to make baby Christmas cakes in another couple of weeks and decorate them this way, so I can do better instructions then).

Bake the cake for 4-5 hours (mine took exactly 4 this year). If you find the top is darkening too quickly (I always do), place a baking tray, or a layer of aluminium foil over the top of the tin. Place the tin on a cooling rack, and leave the cake to cool in the tin. While it’s still warm, pour over about ¼ cup sherry over the cake. I’m sprinkling an extra tablespoon or so of sherry over the cake about once a week now too.

In another 2-3 weeks, I’ll be icing our cake with homemade almond icing, white icing, and then decorating with royal icing, so I’ll put posts up on those steps too. But until then… it’s never to early to get excited about Christmas!

Lemon Curd Layer Cake

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I made this Lemon Layer Cake a few weeks ago. I had a day of cooking and photographing food to give my blog a bit of a new look. I wanted to keep a lemon-y theme, so this was the obvious choice!

Lemon Curd Layer Cake

Cake:
8oz unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1½ cups self-raising flour
1¼ cups plain flour
¾ cup milk
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest

To Layer:
Lemon Curd/Honey (home-made or store-bought)
Lemon Buttercream (see below)

Preheat the oven to 180°. Grease and line three round cake tins (I lined the base and lightly floured the sides).

Cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually, and beat until fluffy (about 3 minutes in an electric mixer). Add the eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, combine the (sifted) flours, and add to the cake mixture in four parts, alternating with the milk, lemon juice and zest, and beating well after each addition.

Divide the batter among the cake tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in their tins for 10 minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack.

When completely cooled, spread the first cake with lemon curd, then lemon buttercream, place the second cake on top and repeat. Ice the top cake (and you could do the sides too) with lemon buttercream, and finish with a swirl of lemon curd to decorate. Coconut would be yummy too.

Lemon Buttercream

8oz unsalted butter, softened
about 6 cups icing sugar
½ cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the icing sugar, and then the lemon juice and zest. Beat until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar until the icing is thick enough to spread nicely.

Marble Cake

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I’ve been wanting to try baking a marble cake for a while now – they look so gorgeous when cut into slices! And then an excuse came along; I owed another team at work a favour. I went for the simple Neapolitan trifecta on this occasion, but I also have plans forming for chocolate orange and chocolate peppermint creations.

I’m not actually a very seasoned cake baker, I mainly do biscuits, slices and sweets, but am making up for lost time. The high peak on this cake indicates it was a little overmixed – easy to do when you’re dividing mixture and adding flavour and colour to the smaller portions. Still, lesson learned and filed away for next time.

I spotted this version with its feathered buttercream in Alexa Johnston’s book Ladies A Plate. Her icing looks amazing. Mine doesn’t come close. Note to self: chocolate sets more quickly than you think it will and you need to be lightning quick whipping the skewer through it to feather it effectively.

Still, imperfectly high peak and amateur icing and all, I like this cake. All was well with the world when I sliced it and found a colourful marbled interior.

Marble Cake
from Alexa Johnston’s Ladies, A Plate

for the cake:
4 oz butter
7 oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ cup milk
2 Tbsp cocoa
2 Tbsp boiling water
few drops red food colouring

for the feather icing:
4 oz butter
2 cups icing sugar
1 Tbsp milk
2 Tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp vanilla essence
2 oz dark chocolate

Soften the butter and bring the eggs to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 180° and line a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs with a fork and add them a little at a time. Sift the flour and baking powder, and add them to the mixture in three lots, alternately with the milk. Divide the mixture into three portions.

Sift the cocoa powder and pour the boiling water over it, stirring until you have a lump-free paste. Add this to one third of the mixture. Colour the second third pink with the food colouring, and leave the last third plain.

Dot large spoonfuls of the mixture randomly about the tin – try to get an even distribution of colours . Draw a table knife firmly through the mixture to create the marbled streaks.

Bake – Alexa Johnston recommends 60 minutes, but mine was done after 45. Rotate the tin part way through cooking. When cooked, the top will be golden, the sides will just start to shrink away from the sides of the tin/paper, and a skewer will come out clean.

Leave it in the tin for a few minutes before gently turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, cream the softened butter and icing sugar with the milk, lemon juice and vanilla. Beat to a soft, spreading consistency – beat long enough for the colour to pale. Take about 3 Tbsp of the icing out and colour it pink.

Use the rest of the (uncoloured) icing to spread over the cake. A couple of tips here – firstly, Alexa Johnston had smoother her icing out perfectly. I had decided to leave mine a bit more rustic, but in hindsight, I wished I smoothed it down, it would have helped the feathering. Secondly, this is quite a lot of buttercream icing. I used all of it on the cake, but I think the feathering would also have come out better if the base buttercream wasn’t quite so thickly applied. You can learn from my spudgy decorating.

Melt the chocolate, and put the melted chocolate and pink icing into (separate) piping/forcing bags. I used a small star tip for the pink and a plain nozzle for the chocolate. Pipe alternating circles around the top of the cake and quickly draw a skewer through them to pull the lines into waves. The idea is to create a spiderweb effect (my picture is not a stellar illustration of this).

Time for a cup of tea with this little something!

Tarta de Santiago

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The final post in my series on a Spanish tapas & paella dinner party. I think I mentioned that one of my guests was dairy and soy free. Actually, it was really easy to plan the dinner menu with that in mind, but a little more difficult when it came to desserts. I find most European-y desserts are creamy or chocolatey, and when you take those options out, there’s not a lot left! But I started thinking a cake would be the way to go. I came across dozens of recipes for a Tarta de Santiago, or St James’ Cake. Then it was just a matter of finding one that didn’t use butter. This one was the way forward.

This cake was gorgeous. I served it with fresh strawberries and a little yoghurt (not for the dairy free-er!) and it worked beautifully. I’m glad I didn’t settle for a cream-based dessert. A light cake and fresh fruit was a nice finish to the dinner – it was elegant and sweet without tipping any of us over the edge into the land of the uncomfortably full. I have more experience in that land than I care to mention. Plus, I’m not 100% on my special dietary requirement knowledge, but I think this cake is gluten free as well as dairy and soy free, right?

The cake also provided Mr J. with a constructive afternoon activity (that makes him sound more like my child than my husband, doesn’t it? Hmm). He scoured the internet for pictures of St James’ sword or cross, to trace onto graph paper and to cut out painfully neatly. Thanks, Mr J.!

Tarta de Santiago (St James’ Cake)
adapted from Cook It Simply

6 large eggs, separated
pinch salt
200g caster sugar
large pinch ground cinnamon
250g ground almonds
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180°, Prepare a 24-cm deep-ish springform cake tin. To do this, I roughly cut some baking paper a little bigger than the loose base of the tin, and put this over the base before clipping the tin back together (i.e. the paper sat between the base and the side-y piece of the tin. The photo a bit further down might help). I then lightly sprayed the sides and paper-covered base of the tin with cooking spray.

Whisk the egg whites and salt in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Then whisk in half the caster sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until you have a glossy meringue texture.

In another large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the rest of the caster sugar and the cinnamon. Beat until thick and increased in volume. Fold in just a little of the egg white mixture to start with, and then fold in the remainder gently. Then fold the ground almonds in. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes. Check it after about 30-35 minutes – if it is browning too quickly, put a baking tray over the top of the tin so the cake can still cook but not get a tan. My cake had risen too high to do this so I tied on a bonnet made of baking paper:

Once the cake is golden and firm (but still springy), remove it from the oven and let it cool in its tin for 10 minutes.  I started getting worried at this point because the cake looked slightly dark and shrunken in the centre, like my paper bonnet had caused it to steam itself:

But I needn’t have worried! When I turned it out onto a wire rack to cool completely after 10 minutes, it looked perfect. Eerily perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake that looks like this:

When it’s cool, dust it with icing sugar – if you like the traditional look, use a stencil of St James’ sword.

This is also my recipe for this month’s Sweet New Zealand, started off by Alessandra Zecchini and being hosted this time by Pease Pudding. Looking forward to seeing the other entries!

Vintage Cooking: Apple Shortcake

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I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I love using family recipes. It’s easy to feel a real connection with your family, even members you never got to meet, when you read their handwriting, follow their instructions, and enjoy food that they once prepared for their family and friends.

This recipe is from my grandmother’s recipe book. Grandma Joan was my mother’s mother and grew up on a farm in Waihola, near Dunedin. She had three brothers, and their father had died when the children were teenagers, so the boys took over the management of the farm, and Grandma would have helped her mother at home. This is Grandma Joan – I think this photo was probably taken in Dunedin in the mid-1940s.

Grandma married my grandfather in the 1950s, and she moved to his family farm at Taieri Beach (also near Dunedin), where they raised their family and farmed for many years. This picture is of my grandparents on their honeymoon:

My mum spotted this handwritten recipe in Grandma’s book and suggested I try it. I don’t remember Grandma making it when I was a little girl; it isn’t a family favourite or anything – but I imagine Grandma would have made it for the farm staff many times. She must have been pretty familiar with it, at any rate – the recipe in her book is just a scribbled list of ingredients and the words, “usual method”!

This isn’t a decadent meal of a slice – like most of our every day farm baking recipes, it makes a delicious but fairly plain sweet to enjoy after lunch or on a tea break. It pays to have a few recipes like this in your book; they’re simple to make, well liked by most people, and while I wouldn’t describe the shortcake as exactly “healthy”, you don’t feel like you need to put an hour in at the gym to compensate for eating a slice!

Grandma Joan’s Apple Shortcake

¼ lb (115g) butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1½ cups, plus 1 Tbsp (230g) flour
1½ tsp baking powder
two small apples, thinly sliced (unpeeled is fine)
2 tsp sugar, extra
icing sugar, to dust

Preheat the oven to 200°(c). Grease and/or line either a 26x17cm slice/brownie pan, or a round cake tin, depending on your preference.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat again. Add the sifted flour and baking powder, and mix to a soft dough. Add a little milk if the mixture seems very dry (I didn’t need any). Halve the dough (I find it easiest to weigh it; each half should weigh around 250g). Roll the first half out and press it into your greased tin.

Layer the slices of apple over the dough, and sprinkle with 1 tsp of the extra sugar. Roll out the remaining dough and lay this on top of the apple slices. Prick with a fork and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tsp of sugar.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the dough is lightly golden and smells cooked. Leave to cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar and cutting into squares, bars,  or, if you used a round cake tin, wedges.

Wellington on A Plate: Ruth Pretty’s Food, Frocks & Frivolity

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Wellington On A Plate has just finished for 2011.  I think it’s been a really good festival! I didn’t get to as many events as I would have liked, but I did end up eating at a whole heap of new places. The deals restaurants run during the festival are well worth checking out.

One event I did make it to was Ruth Pretty’s “Food, Frocks & Frivolity”, held at her home in Te Horo. Such a great afternoon!  It was a weddings-y themed afternoon where the women were free to roam around the house sipping cocktails and bubbles, enjoying the continuous supply of canapés, watching cooking demonstrations from Ruth and her staff, and stopping to look at displays from local businesses – jewellery, shoes, dresses, flowers, photography, even hair & make up artists who were ready to give anyone a touch-up! Ruth had a tea stop with beautiful china cups, and a coffee machine and barista set up outside if you felt like a break from bubbles (I didn’t). It’s probably for the best that my own wedding has been and gone. I would have been an uncontrollable bride at an afternoon like that!

We started off with a browse in Ruth Pretty’s kitchen shop (loving the latest addition to my wooden spoon collection, and can’t wait to try the Blooker cocoa I bought) and coffees in the garden room before the afternoon started.

Then we were taken over to the house and introduced to all the staff, and made a start on the cocktails (‘Rosebud’, made with Absolut Vanilla Vodka with passionfruit, cranberry and pineapple) And then the canapés started. I only managed to get pictures of three. They were all beautiful – but the chorizo stuffed dates were A. Mazing.

‘Beehive’ Honey Cones filled with Whipped Goats’ Cheese and Dukkah

Chorizo-Stuffed Medjool Dates with Piquillo Pepper and Tomato Sauce

Tuna Tartare with Miso Braised Eggplant

(Also on the canapé menu: Zany Zeus Feta, Sundried Tomato & Mint Tarts in Parmesan Pastry Cases; OceanNZ Abalone with Ginger Sesame Dressing; Scampi Tails in Chopsticks with Lime Wasabi Dressing and Karengo Fronds; Farm Raised Venison Meatballs with Orange Ginger Glaze).

I headed straight for the kitchen, which we were free to wander in and out of. Around the room there were little macaron-filling stations where we could fill and pretty up a little box of macarons to take home. There’s something women love about macarons, pretty boxes and ribbons. It was mayhem. But see how cute they look!

 
 

The highlight of the afternoon was Ruth and her assistant Veronika making beautiful celebration cakes. There were three.

Firstly – a three tiered round chocolate cake, filled and iced with ganache. So impressively iced! Veronika had the cake on a type of lazy susan, and spun the cake around, spreading the icing, while Ruth just tipped the saucepan of ganache over the top. Result:

The second cake was a cube cake – as tall as it was wide! This was made up of three square cakes, each having 6 layers of sponge, meringue and chocolate ganache. Whoa. This was the cake to end all cakes.

This was iced with a white chocolate buttercream icing. I think one of the nicer touches of the afternoon was that the bowls of icing and ganache were left on the table beside a large pile of spoons… so we could all sample!

 

Thirdly, the croquembouche. The tower of choux pastries. Here they are, waiting to be filled with crème pâtissière and stuck together with toffee:

Here you can see Veronika dipping them in caramel toffee – working quickly to get in there before it sets – and building the croquembouche. This was great to watch!

Then adding spun sugar all around the croquembouche…

Finishing touches…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there you have it, one croquembouche:

Then it was time to dismantle the minutes-old croquembouche. This seemed a little sad. But we had to focus on the positives. Like eating the three finished cakes.

Delicious! My favourite was the croquembouche.

Lovely way to spend an afternoon. Recommended if Ruth does a similar event next year!