Madeira Loaf

I am actually home sick today - I pride myself on never getting sick, but I feel just terrible- a real flu and chest infection! I thought I would make this quick post while I am feeling slightly better (having slept for most of the morning).

My parents have been up staying since last Wednesday. We have been having a fabulous time! On Saturday we went to the new Takapuna Beach Cafe for lunch. The food is fabulous! I particularly like how the sweet treats are on a table in the middle of the cafe under large glass domes. Thdre were so many things I could have chosen - the nut caramel tarts looked especially delicious! In the end I left the choice to my Mum and she chose a thick slab of madeira loaf. It was delicious - lovely and moist.

When we got home on Saturday afternoon I got it into my head that I wanted to make Madeira loaf myself, so I looked through some books and ended up making the recipe from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. Unfortunately I cooked my loaf just a fraction too long. I wouldnt say that my loaf was dry at all, but I loved the almost undercooked moistness of the loaf we had tried in the afternoon.



Madeira Loaf is a quick and easy loaf to make. It is yummy while still slightly warm and can be converted into a yummy dessert by serving with thick yoghurt or cream. My usual madeira loaf recipe and other tips on how to serve loaves, can be found in the feature I wrote for the Foodlovers website here.

Mini Banana Loaves

I have always loved Julie Le Clerc’s books and recipes. In fact when the Epicurean was open and did cooking classes, I was a helper and helped at the classes that Julie taught there. She is now cooking editor of the NZ Womens Weekly. I don’t buy that magazine, but when Julie became editor they started putting out a bi-annual cooking magazine. The latest edition came out in the weekend. I do find the recipes that Julie puts in the womens weekly and the bi-annual magazine a bit simplistic, but I am a compulsive buyer and I do like Julie’s style and this latest release has some great ideas in it.



In the weekend I tried the recipe for banana chocolate chip mini loaves. I had frozen some bananas about a month ago that had started to look a bit worse for wear in the fruit bowl, so pulled these out to use. The recipe was a classic Julie Le Clerc recipe –very easy to put together. It is really just a banana cake recipe with chocolate chips added. Instead of 100g butter, I used 1/3 c rice bran oil. The loaves are lovely and moist. They freeze well and I was generous with the chocolate chips, so they are naughty but nice!



Banana Chocolate Chip Mini Loaves (adapted from Julie Le Clerc recipe)

3 ripe bananas, mashed
¾ c sugar
1/3 c rice bran oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 c chocolate bits

· Combine mashed banana, oil, egg , sugar, vanilla and milk
· Stir in dry ingredients, mixing only just to combine
· Spoon into mini loaf tins (I got 8 mini loaves and 2 small brioche tins)
Bake at 180c for 18-20 minutes

Some Sweet and Savoury

Monday was a public holiday and we had friends over for lunch. I always think a tart with some salad is a nice thing to have for lunch – it shows you have gone to a bit of effort but is easy to prepare as well.

I mostly make my own pastry when making a tart, but I did have some sheets of Ernest Adam shortcrust pastry in the freezer, so rather than re-invent the wheel, I used that as the base. The tart was based on a Ray mcVinnie recipe which you can find here - I made one large tart rather than individual ones. I always use free range eggs, but these ones were real free range from my friend, Jenny’s, farm – hence the rather fluro orange colour of the tart. They tasted terrific. The rest of the tart was sliced bacon, olives and feta cheese (I used Bulgarian cows milk feta that I get from Takapuna market rather than the goats cheese suggested in the recipe). The pinkish looking thing is a really yummy red onion confit that is also in the Ray McVinnie recipe. I did reduce the oil somewhat though, so mine was more of a relish than a confit. Served with a simple salad of rocket tossed with almonds and a vinaigrette of a tablespoon each of apple syrup, olive oil and cider vinegar, this was a lovely lunch.



Dessert was picked by my husband – he wanted some kind of syrup cake. This one was based on an Annabel Langbein recipe and is a lemon syrup cake. However, the syrup is actually a spicy one with the addition of vanilla beans, cloves and star anise. The recipe called for ground almonds, but I used ground macadamias which I had in the cupboard. They gave the cake quite a strong nut flavour and a more grainy texture than almonds would have. This is a great cake to make as it is very quick to put together and doesn’t take too long to bake. I imagine it would keep well in the tin as well. I cut the leftovers into slices, wrapped them individually in gladwrap and froze them.

Greek Syrup Cake (adapted from Annabel Langbein)

125g butter
1 c sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
¾ c self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ c semolina
1 c ground macadamia nuts
60ml lemon juice

· Cream butter and sugar, add zest and vanilla, then eggs, one at a time
· Stir in dry ingredients and lemon juice
· Pour into a lined 23cm round tin and bake at 180c for 30-35 minutes
· While still hot, pour over the following syrup (I used the syrup cold on the hot cake)

½ c water
1/3 c sugar
peel of 1 lemon
2 cardamom pods, crushed
½ tsp vanilla paste
1 star anise

· Stir all ingredients over a low heat to dissolve
Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes

Mocha Macaroons

Last week I made these macaroons for another staff members birthday. It was only the second time that I have made these French style macaroons. The first time I made them I was really disappointed with them – I am not sure what I did wrong, but they didn’t set up like they should have and were disappointingly flat. So, I actually wasn’t going to try making macaroons again. But, I see so many beautiful looking macaroons on Tartlette’s blog, so I decided to have another go.



I used a Donna Hay recipe for mocha macaroons. The actual macaroon part is a plain almond macaroon, but the filling is espresso powder and white chocolate. They are dusted with dutched cocoa. I didn’t want to make heaps of them, so I just made a third of the recipe. This worked quite successfully even though I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t get enough volume with just one egg white.

I was really pleased with these. The macaroons were crispy on the outside and chewy inside and I think they look like they should as well. I will definitely be trying other variations on the macaroon theme again.

Baby Biscuits

In April we had four good friends have babies – all baby boys. Last Sunday we went to visit little Max. He was only three weeks old – I haven’t held such a little baby in a long time! He is so adorable! Anyway, back to the food! I made these little biscuits to take to Max’s parents. They are the standard shortbread recipe I use when I am decorating shortbread – a much firmer shortbread than the one I make when making shortbread for shortbread’s sake rather than for decorating!





I had seen these little all in one biscuits in a book, but I didn’t have a cutter, so I traced around the photo in the book and then cut the biscuits out by hand. Not being known for my cutting skills and also being known for being just a bit quick, I was quite pleased with how I did. I was also really pleased with the decorating. I actually think that these are the best biscuits I have decorated and I feel quite inspired to do a lot more biscuit decorating.



I know that I have got lots of photos of exactly the same thing, but I am really proud of these!

More gifts

I have had a few wee gifts to make lately – some biscuits for a client who fixed our boardroom table and some for our WP manager’s birthday. For the client I chose pecan cinnamon cookies from a Donna Hay magazine. These are nice everyday kind of cookies. A bit like a chocolate chip cookie but with pecans instead.



They are the kind of cookies that start off in little balls and then spread to quite large cookies. They remained nice and crispy on the outside, but kind of chewy inside. I don’t think I put enough pecans in them and I also think that there could have been double the amount of cinnamon (I like quite strong flavours).



For Jacqui, I chose horse shoe shaped oat biscuits because she is right into horses. I must say though, if I hadn’t told her that they were horse shoe shaped she could have been forgiven to have thought that they were just weird shaped biscuits! My horse show making technique was not great!

The recipe for these biscuits came from the Australian Womens Weekly Book “Cookies”. They are quite a crispy biscuit with the added benefit of feeling kind of virtuous as they are made from oats. They are actually made from normal rolled oats and also rolled barley. I actually had rolled barley in the cupboard as I mix rolled barley, rolled rye and rolled spelt into my rolled oats that I eat for breakfast each morning. If you didn’t have it, you could just use more rolled oats.



Mixed Oats Horse Shoe Biscuits (from AWW Cookies)

125g butter
½ c castor sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp honey
½ c rolled oats
½ c rolled barley
2 c flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
½ tsp ground cloves
½ c rolled oats, extra

· Beat butter, sugar and egg until combined
· Stir in remaining ingredients
· Sprinkle bench with extra rolled oats, and roll tbsp of dough into lengths on oats and then twist into horseshoe shapes
Bake at 180c for 20 min. cool on wire racks

wee chocolate tarts

In the weekend we went to friend’s for dinner. I always like to take a little something with me as thank you. I have mentioned before that, seeing as I subscribe to 4 different cooking magazines, I make it a personal challenge to cook something from each of them once a week. By the time it got to the weekend I still hadn’t made a recipe from Cuisine, so it had to be something from there for my wee gift to take with us. I thought these little chocolate tarts looked like just the thing to take!

The tarts are very rich. The pastry is made with dutched cocoa which give a very strong chocolate flavour. The pastry was delicious eaten raw (I am one of those naughty people who prefers raw dough to cooked!!!). It was really forgiving and was easy to press into the tart tins. The other nice thing is that you chilled the tart pastry and then baked it, not having to worry about baking it blind. I used shallow tart tins my mother had bought for me a while back - they are quite hard to find these days, but you could use mini muffin tins.



The filling was a ganache using 72% chocolate, cream and a couple of teaspoons of espresso. The recipe also said to spread a thin layer of chocolate over the ganache – due to time constraints I skipped this step and merely dusted them with more dutched cocoa.

I really liked these tarts. They are just enough for two small mouthfuls, which due to the richness of the chocolate is probably all you need.

Feijoa & Coconut Cakes and The Narrow Table

We have a monthly meeting at work and every now and again I bring in something to nibble on while we have it. I was given a bag of feijoas and thought I would make these little feijoa and coconut cakes for the meeting. The cakes are lovely and moist as they are drenched in lemon syrup after baking. If you didn’t like feijoas, you could top them with sliced plum or blueberries or even just leave them plain. The recipe is below.

I also wanted to tell you about the dinner we had out for my husband’s birthday on Tuesday. We went to The Narrow Table in Mairangi Bay. This is a new restaurant and is French bistro style. It has had some really great reviews in Cuisine and the Sunday Star Times. See the Cuisine review here. Incidentally the prices were much higher than mentioned in the Cuisine review. It has also had a very average review in Metro. On Tuesday night it was very average! In fact it was almost below average.

Firstly, the wait staff were very indifferent. We ordered a glass of wine to begin with (quite expensive for suburban dining, starting at $12 a glass). The menu was broken into entrees, mains and dessert. I didn’t want an entrée but would have quite liked some bread and nice oil or even butter to nibble on while we pondered the menu. There was nothing on offer – even when I asked. My husband had pacific oysters done in tempura batter. He said they were nice but not startling.

Then for our mains we were told that the fish of the day was hapuka. There was no fish of the day listed on the menu, so I assumed this was a special. However, when my husband ordered the tuna from the menu, he was told that it wasn’t tuna today, but hapuka. Why don’t they just list fish of the day on the menu rather than specifying a fish they don’t have? Then I heard the waitress tell the next table that the fish of the day was salmon – why weren’t we told that? It took 15 minutes to establish that we could have either. I chose salmon and my husband chose hapuka.

The mains were served with baby spinach leaves in a yummy vinaigrette and baby potatoes. I am not sure what variety the potatoes were, but they tasted very bland – I suspect that they were Nadine, a variety referred to as the “dumb Blonde” of the potato world. The meal was tasty enough, just not the 4 stars I had expected from the Cuisine review. We didn’t have pudding, opting to go home for birthday cupcakes instead. I don’t think we will be going back.

Feijoa and Coconut Cupcakes (makes 15)

150g butter
¾ c sugar
3 eggs
1 1/3 c flour
¾ c coconut
1 ½ tsp baking powder
6 feijoas, peeled and sliced

· Cream butter and sugar; beat in eggs, one at a time
· Stir in flour, coconut and baking powder
· Spoon into cupcake cases and top with a few slices of feijoa
· Bake at 170c for 25 minutes
When cold, spoon over hot syrup made by stirring ¾ c each of sugar and water and juice of 3 lemons over low heat until sugar is dissolved, then simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Birthday Cupcakes

It was my husband’s birthday yesterday. I seem to be making a lot more cakes lately due to TWD etc, so instead of one great big cake I decided to make some cupcakes so at least we can freeze the ones we don’t eat. My husband loves sweet things but also enjoys the illusion of healthy sweet things!! That is he chooses cakes and slices with fruit in them on the basis that they are the healthy option as opposed to something chocolate! So on the pretence of making him healthy cupcakes, I made him apple and walnut spice cakes, adapting a Julie Le Clerc recipe for apple caramel cake.



Actually, the ingredients in these cakes are not too different from a muffin. It is a fairly dense mixture though and I almost added some milk, but quite liked the almost pudding texture the dense mix gave. I used walnuts but you could also use pecans or hazelnuts and if you like dried fruit you could add sultanas or raisins (I don’t so I didn’t!).



I iced the cupcakes with cream cheese icing to which I added a teaspoon of Heliala vanilla paste. I love the little vanilla flecks! I then drizzled the icing with a simple caramel sauce – not so healthy after all!

These cakes are very yummy. You could leave the icing off and serve them warm with custard or even with whipped cream and more of the caramel sauce.



Apple and Walnut Spice Cakes (adapted from Julie Le Clerc recipe)

100ml rice bran oil
1 egg
½ c sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 c flour
½ tsp each of cinnamon and mixed spice
¼ tsp baking soda
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
¼ c toasted walnuts, chopped

· Beat together oil, egg, sugar and vanilla.
· Stir in remainder of ingredients and then spoon into cupcake cases (I made 9 cakes)
· Bake at 170c for 18 minutes
When cold, ice with cream cheese frosting and drizzle with caramel sauce made by combining ¼ s brown sugar, 25g butter and ¼ c cream over a low heat until sugar dissolves, then simmer for 3-5 minutes

No TWD for me this week

We went down to New Plymouth in the weekend to see my father-in-law in hospital, so I didn’t get a chance to make my TWD challenge for this week. It was florida pie – a coconutty take on key lime pie. I had even bought the limes and everything! I look forward to making it another time. You can see how the other TWDers did here.

I did do one small bit of baking on Friday night though. I made these ginger kisses to take down to my father-in-law. I haven’t made ginger kisses before. I adapted the recipe which was in Cuisine last year some time. I made more like a soft biscuit rather than a spongey cake kiss like the ones in the shops. They were slightly crisp round the edges but soft in the middle. After being joined together with the buttercream they softened up nicely. The buttercream was flavoured with the syrup from a jar of preserved ginger and diced preserved ginger. They were quite yummy and I hope my F-I-L liked them.

Last night for dinner we had fresh gurnard with a walnut sauce (recipe is in the latest Taste Magazine) with roasted mushroom and potatoes (a Dish magazine recipe) and a baby spinach leaf salad. The roasted mushrooms and potatoes were delicious – basically re-hydrated porcini stir fried with fresh field mushrooms and some thyme, then roasted in the oven with sliced waxy potatoes. A yummy winter dish.

masterbaker - vanilla challenge

The masterbaker challenge for April is vanilla. People are often asked whether they prefer vanilla or chocolate and I think it is an unfair choice! While I would almost always choose chocolate first, vanilla is definitely my favourite spice. I love the smell of vanilla and the taste of real vanilla adds so much to otherwise bland foods such as ice-cream, custard and whipped cream. Actually there are only two perfumes that I wear – eternity which I mostly wear, but sometimes for a break I use body shop vanilla. The fragrance I fill my house with is also called cocoa and vanilla which I adore! So, yes to chocolate but equally yes to vanilla!!





Anyway, back to the challenge. Last year I bought some vanilla jam from Q Gardens in Waitara. The jam is made with melon as a base and has flecks of vanilla bean through it. It has a lovely vanilla flavour – you cant really taste the melon, I guess it just gives the jam the pectin for setting. I decided to put it to use in my vanilla creation for March.

I love little jam drop cookies, but wanted to do something a bit different, so I used mini muffin tins to bake the cookies, making little vanilla jam tarts. These taste like a cross between a biscuit and a tart base. They look kind of cute for a change. I added poppyseeds to the dough to give a little bit of crunch and it is also flavoured with real vanilla extract (the heilala brand I always use). These little bites are deliciously filled with vanilla jam. I used the end of a wooden spoon to make the indents – I find it works better than my finger. If you didn’t have vanilla jam you could fill them with any other flavoured jam – plum would be nice or the peach and vanilla jam I made earlier in the year.

Vanilla Jam Tarts

125g butter
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp Heilala vanilla
1 ¼ c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp poppyseeds
2 tbsp milk
jam to fill

· Cream butter and sugar, add vanilla
· Stir in dry ingredients and then milk to make the dough
· Press small balls of dough into greased mini muffin tins (I got 20 little tarts)
· Press an indent into each tart and fill with half a tsp of jam
· Bake at 170c for 18 minutes or until golden
Leave for at least 5 minutes before removing from the tins

Gifts given and received

A couple of weeks ago we had two good friends have babies. Both from out of town and both with other small children. So, as well as the baby’s present I sent some little cookies for the other wee ones to enjoy. I wanted to make something small and fun and these chocolate freckle biscuits fitted the bill.





They are basically chocolate cut out cookies, spread with melted chocolate and scattered with hundreds and thousands and other coloured sprinkles. I think they looked pretty cool. They certainly tasted yummy!!





My little sister, Hayley, has just been to Melbourne for a holiday and being the gorgeous sister that she is, she bought me the most perfect present!!! Teal coloured cachous from the Crabapple Bakery and this gorgeous tea towel printed with cupcakes. And, not only is it covered with cupcakes – it is pink, my favourite colour!!! I don’t think I have mentioned my tea towel obsession before, but I love lovely and interesting linen – especially tea towels. Not sure whether I should mention this or not, but I have even started a collection of new tea towels for our new house. A little bit sad actually! But this cupcake tea towel is too beautiful to use, so I think I will make it into an apron! There was instructions in the latest House and Garden magazine with instructions on how to do this. I’ll let you know how I go.

Last night for dinner we had pork schnitzel (Havoc free range pork – it tastes like real meat) which I dipped in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, then panko crumbs and pan fried, served with roast kumara and a simple red cabbage salad – quarter of a red cabbage shredded and mixed with a sliced apple and a dressing of 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp wholegrain mustard, 1 tbsp evoo and 2 tbsp sherry vinegar. It was great for a change – the sharpness of the salad cut through the richness of the pork. A great late autumn meal.

The Savoury Edition

Recently I have only been blogging about sweet treats, but I have also been cooking savoury things of course, so I have decided to dedicate this entry to some of the things I have made in the past week. I also want to mention that Helen Jackson who runs the foodlovers website has asked me to do some writing for foodlovers. I cannot tell you how excited I was when she asked me!! My first piece on jam making was put on the site this week. If you havent already, you need to visit foodlovers. There are fabulous recipes, articles and a great, friendly forum. Helen does a marvellous job!

First off in the savoury stakes are these cheeseymite twists pictured above. These are a bit of a play on the bakers delight cheeseymite scrolls. Last week for book club I felt like I needed one other savoury thing to go with my cheese board and carrot cakes, so I made these little twists. They are basically a cheese straw, spread thinly with vegemite and then twisted and baked. They were really delicious! I think you may like these even if you're not a big vegemite fan as the vegemite gives a savoury taste rather than a strong vegemite flavour. The recipe is below.





Last Saturday night was another rare night at home with just the two of us. I cooked my husband, mussels in a light Thai inspired coconut cream sauce. I had a salmon kebab. I also made this delicious filled flatbread. The recipe is in the latest Dish magazine. The recipe makes two flatbreads – one filled with caramelised red onions and the other with feta and herbs. I used Bulgarian cows’ milk feta which I get in a 1kg tin from the Takapuna market. It is quite a strong feta but has great texture. It was perfect for these flatbreads which don’t contain any yeast so are quite quick and easy to make.

Lastly on Tuesday night I had two girlfriends over for dinner (my husband is away for work this week). For nibbles I cut up some pita bread, sprinkled them with ras al hanout (a Moroccan spice mix) and baked them to make pita crisps and served them with a hummus in which I used quite a bit of ground coriander and paprika to make it a bit different.



The main was roast vegetable and ricotta tart. I actually bought the pastry – usually I make my own. But, seeing it was after work and I was in a rush I bought pastry sheets. I bought Edmonds pastry as I find it to be fantastic quality. The tart was really simple, a filling of 300g ricotta, 2 eggs, parmesan cheese and herbs and then a topping of roasted vegetables and feta. I used eggplant, red onions and red peppers, but you could use whatever you wanted. I served the tart with a walnut and mesclun salad with a lemon honey dressing. And dessert was my daring baker cheesecake pops.



I am off to Savour New Zealand on Sunday – I am so excited and will report back next week.

Cheeseymite Biscuits

1 ½ c flour
1 tsp mustard powder
125g butter
1 c grated tasty cheese
½ c evaporated milk (I used lite)
vegemite

· Stir the mustard and flour together and rub in butter
· Stir in the cheese
· Stir in the evaporated milk with a knife to make a firm dough
· Roll out dough into a large rectangle. Spread the dough with a thin layer of vegemite and fold in half
· Cut into strips, twist once or twice and place on baking tray
Bake at 200c for 12 minutes or until golden brown

ANZAC biscuits

Anzac biscuits are a symbol of remembrance, remembering the soldiers who fought in world war one and world war two and the subsequent battles. The word Anzac refers to the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp. The biscuits were known during the first world war as soldiers biscuits, as they were sent across the world by the women in Australia and New Zealand to their soldiers fighting in Europe. They were ideal to send, being hard and flat and long keeping as they didn’t contain any eggs. The key ingredients are rolled oats and golden syrup.

We remember the Anzacs on Anzac Day – 25 April, being the day that the NZ and Australian troops were decimated in the landing at Gallipoli. Each year I like to make Anzac biscuits to remember (my great grandfather fought in world war one and my grandfather in world war II). I have a history degree as well as my law degree and so have always been fascinated by the wars and the lives and times of the people who lived through them.

I have never really been a great Anzac biscuit maker – I often make them too flat, too soft or a bit overcooked. But this year I tried a new recipe from the Australian womens weekly book “Sweet”. The recipe said to grind the rolled oats to make them more like oatmeal, which I did. I am not sure if that helped the texture of my biscuits, but they were great, exactly what I like in an Anzac biscuit – crispy but chewy and a lovely light golden syrup flavour. I did have to add a bit more melted butter to the recipe to get the dough to stick together. I will be making this recipe again next year.



I am home alone this week. Last night I made myself a delicious salad for dinner. I based it on one in the latest cuisine magazine, but it ended up being quite a different recipe. I ate half last night and saved the rest for tomorrow’s lunch. It’s a pretty healthy salad. I cut a beetroot into batons and steamed it in the microwave with some crushed ginger. To this I added about half a cup of almonds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds toasted in a mixture of brown sugar, ground cumin and coriander, sea salt and a little olive oil, a drained can of chickpeas and some chopped flat leaf parsley. I love beetroot and the crunch of almonds. There was something quite cleansing about this salad.



Anzac Biscuits (adapted from AWW Sweet)

90g butter
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp golden syrup
½ c rolled oats, slightly ground in good processor
¼ tsp baking soda
½ c flour
½ c castor sugar
1/3 c dessicated coconut

· Melt butter and golden syrup together and then add the baking soda and mix well
· Stir in remainder of ingredients
· Roll into balls and flatten slightly
· Bake at 150c for 15-18 minutes
Cool on trays

TWD - Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

The TWD challenge for this week is fluted polenta and ricotta cake. The cake is a thin, tart like cake made with polenta and studded with dried figs. I love fresh figs, but I am not such a fan of dried figs, so I substituted the dried figs for dried apricots. Instead of making one large cake I halved the recipe and made 6 mini tarts. I have put all but one of these in the freezer for another occasion.

The cakes were lovely – the polenta gives them a nice crunch and I used a native bush honey which gave the cakes a lovely honey flavour. This particular honey has depth but not strength, so you could taste the honey without the cake being too sweet. The cake was lovely and light which is perhaps what the ricotta added? I think using buttermilk or yoghurt would possibly give the same result. The recipe also said to dot small pieces of butter on the cake – I left this step out.



I really like this recipe. It is quite a plain cake though and does need some whipped cream or even ice cream to be served with it. I think it would be best served warm as a dessert. See how the other TWDers did here.

Just as a postscript to last week’s TWD recipe – the carrot cake. The cakes went down well at book club. The cakes kept really well and I think they actually improved with age.

Dorie does it again

At the end of each weekend I always ask my husband what was his favourite thing that he had to eat over the past two days. This weekend, despite that I had cooked him Bluff oysters on Saturday night, his favourite thing was Dorie’s pecan and sour cream biscuits which I made for lunch yesterday. In fact he said that they were “magnificent”!

In New Zealand we use the word biscuit for cookie – ie a piece of shortbread is a biscuit. In the States it seems that their biscuits are what we call scones. Dorie has both scones and biscuits in her book – the difference seems to be that scones have eggs in them. In NZ our scones don’t necessarily have eggs in them.



The biscuits were deliciously flaky, slightly sweet because of the brown sugar and with a lovely slight crunch from the pecans. I didn’t have any sour cream in the fridge so used natural yoghurt (I used Cyclops thick and creamy – I often substitute it for sour cream as it is a similar texture but is creamier and has less fat). We ate them hot from the oven, barely waiting for them to cool. I had mine just with butter but my husband had his with the peach and vanilla jam I made at Easter. The jam is lovely as it is slightly tart so not too sweet and is flecked with vanilla seeds.



I will definitely be making these biscuits/scones again.

Cupcakes for Georgia

Bev from book club’s daughter, Georgia had her 16th birthday party last Saturday night. The theme was black and gold and Bev asked me to make cupcakes to match the theme. The cakes ended up looking quite simple, but I hope quite sophisticated! The cakes were a very chocolatey almost mud cake like texture. I used the crabapple bakery recipe for mud cake which described the cake as a lighter mud cake for those who don’t like their mudcake too dense. I actually love dense mud cake, but I think for cupcakes you need something a bit lighter.

The cakes were put into gold cases and then topped with chocolate ganache and little gold cachous. I hope everyone at the party enjoyed them!

Chocolate Mud Cupcakes (from the Crabapple Bakery Cook Book)

3 tbsp instant coffee
¾ c hot water
250g butter
300g dark chocolate
4 eggs
1/3 c neutral oil (I used rice bran oil)
½ c buttermilk
2 c flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
2 ½ c sugar
½ c cocoa

· Dissolve coffee in hot water
· Melt chocolate and butter together; stir in coffee
· Whisk together eggs, oil and buttermilk
· Stir in dry ingredients (I sifted the four and cocoa)
· Stir in coffee/chocolate mixture
· Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for about 20 minutes at 180c
When cold, ice with chocolate ganache (I use a ration of 3:1 chocolate to cream)

cake decorating - first class

Last week I did the first two nights of an intensive Wilton cake decorating course. This was course one for butter icing. There is a royal icing course and then a fondant one. I didn’t really know what to expect – I love baking, but I am not the most artistic person in the world and as you know by now if you have been reading my blog for a while, I tend to do things a bit quick!!!

Well, the first night was demonstration only - which I quite liked as it meant I didn’t have to display my inadequacies!! Then for Thursday night we had to make a cake, fill it with some kind of filling and then cover it in butter cream, ready to be decorated at the class. I decided to make Dorie Greenspan’s perfect pound cake which was one of the Dorie recipes that was baked before I joined TWD. The cake turned out well. A nice plain cake that was solid enough to be easy to ice. I filled it with thickened cream mixed with raspberry jam as that was really all I had in the fridge!



The next step was icing the cake with butter cream. I was kind of disappointed with how I did here – although shouldn’t really be for my first attempt! I did find out though, that I iced the cake in medium consistency icing when I should have used soft. You live and learn. My cake didn’t end up looking too bad, but next time I am aiming for a smoother surface.



Then, at the class I got to learn some decorating skills and decorated the cake. I don’t think it is too bad for my first attempt. Although my flower stems leave a lot to be desired – still, you know me, everything a bit quick!!! I quite enjoyed the decorating part and even in that one lesson I picked up a few tips that will help me out in the basic decorating that I do. I really enjoyed the class and am looking forward to next week.



I took the cake into work on Friday morning. It actually tasted really yummy as well. The cream and jam filling was yummy.