Coffee, Walnut and Ricotta Cake

Last weekend I had lunch with some young friends visiting from America. One asked me what I thought our greatest misconception about them was. It took some thought as someone who’s travelled to the states frequently and who has many American friends. I did, however, point to a significant difference between the two populations…coffee!!

We’re a patchwork of the many streams of immigration our country has enjoyed in it’s short history. The cultures who’ve called our shores home have brought with them many of the comforts of home to stave the homesickness. Thankfully the most significant influences of these facets of home has been food.

Food and all the senses it feeds really does offer us feelings of home, culture and ritual. Australian cuisine is influenced with many of these inspirations from those who’ve joined us. Without a real cuisine of our own we’ve embraced all the new flavours brought here blending them with our own produce, much of which is unique to our land and have created a mosaic cuisine of our own.

You can almost trace our migration patterns through our short history by the food influences in various localities. Victoria, where I live, has become home to many cultures across the annuls of time and consequently developed its own regionality creating a lifestyle akin to living in a four dimensional atlas. The perfect home for a food lover…and a coffee lover.

In the fifties Melbourne became home to a huge post war influx of European migration. With this wave of new citizens came all the wonderful food you can imagine. Much of which was modified to accommodate missing ingredients unavailable here hence the blending of cuisine and produce. Where modifications couldn’t be made folks would grow their own produce, small backyard urban farms springing up throughout the suburbs. Indeed, the surplus creating a conduit for migrants to share and create friendships with neighbours. Alongside this coffee created a bridge to these bonds.

We’d previously been a largely tea drinking society born of British settlement and only having instant coffee available to us but the introduction of traditionally social Europeans and their spectacular brew coffee culture here was born. The rich full flavour of coffee pervaded many our days, percolators, a take on traditional stove top coffee from far away shores, became fashionable and coffee the hot drink served in polite settings. Today with this history in the background we’re known worldwide for the quality of our coffee, our love of the brew and passion for our regular intake.

America, like us, also enjoyed waves of migration influencing their culture and cuisine. Like us some of theirs came from Europe too but perhaps some of the biggest influences came from south of the border bringing influences from central and Latin America and with it their coffee styles. This became glaringly obvious in conversation with my young friends, both from Texas. One who’s been in Australia for a while pulled out her phone to show her pal, who’s on a brief visit, a photo from an electrical goods store in Queensland. The photo showed rows of espresso machines and one filter machine. The girls shocked told me it would be the reverse ‘at home’ where the central American influences have informed a culture of filter coffee makers. Us with our Euro influences on the other hand love espresso machine brews, even at home.

As I tried to explain our obsession I recalled my own love of coffee. Flashes of memory came back to me recalling my parents drinking instant coffee, huge in the 70’s and 80’s and of course my first taste of anything that tasted of coffee. I was a small child with Mum at her mid-week ladies suburban tennis competition. A weekly event, I was always more enamoured with the lavish afternoon teas the ladies would produce than the game itself. The table would heave with fluffy pikelets, delicate ribbon sandwiches and light as air sponge cakes sandwiched with clouds of cream crowned with passionfruit icing delectably dripping down the sides…and coffee cake. I was always intrigued by what others were eating and often asked my parents if I could try what they were having. A decidedly adult flavour my mother doubted my desire when I asked for coffee cake but happily cut me a sliver. I loved it instantly like a gate way drug and gobbled up that delicious bake to the amusement and delight of all the ladies at the table.

In later years I went on to be a passionate consumer of the brew even defending my consumption to my cardiologist, him surrendering in frustration. And I never forgot that coffee cake. Like many retro flavours, I’ve noticed it making somewhat of a comeback. Let’s face it, is there ever too many ways to enjoy coffee?

This is my take on a hearty coffee cake. Not feather light like 1970’s sponge but rather sturdy and moist with the extra Italian influence of ricotta and lots of lovely coffee and caramel flavours.

Ingredients:

220 gm butter softened

90 gm caster sugar

60 gm brown sugar

3 eggs beaten

150gm ricotta broken up and mashed with a fork

1 ½ tsp vanilla paste

¼ c strong espresso

1 Tb coffee liqueur

1 Tb treacle

225 gm self-raising flour

100 gm walnuts ground

¼ tsp bicarb soda

¼ salt flakes

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 c and prepare a 20 cm spring form cake pan greasing and lining with baking paper.

Combine dry ingredients set aside.

In a stand mixer combine butter, sugars and vanilla. Using the paddle attachment beginning on low speed begin mixing until combined then increase medium to medium high to cream the two together. Cream until very pale and fluffy, scraping down a couple of times as you go. Maybe go and find a job to do while you wait, a few moments distraction  gives your mixer the extra time with the butter we often don’t give it…or maybe that’s me. You want the sugar to be starting to dissolve and a finer grain if rubbed between your fingers.

Reduce speed and add eggs in two to three batches mixing on high between each addition. It may look a little curdled after this, don’t panic. Add the ricotta and coffee shot and mix until combine. It will now look very curdled. Stop the mixer, sprinkle over your dry ingredients and mix on low speed for a minute or two to combine. Remove the bowl from the mixer and finish gently by hand with a spatula giving it only a few turns.

Dollop the mixture into the prepared pan gently smoothing over the top. It’s quite a stiff batter so try and spread as you drop spoonful’s into the pan so as not to handle it too much.

Pop in the oven baking 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tin for ten minutes before removing from tin and cooling completely on a wire rack.

Icing:

1 c icing sugar

1 Tb instant coffee granules

1 ½ Tb boiling water

25 gm soft butter

2 tsp sour cream

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until completely combined and butter and cream are amalgamated with no little lumps appearing. I like to add the coffee granule whole (not dissolved) for extra pop of coffee flavour and I like to see them in the icing. If you prefer you can stir the coffee through water before adding it to the other ingredients for a more even look and mouth feel.

Spread evenly over cake and allow to set before serving….or not…it’s hard to wait. And don’t forget lashings of cream.

Vanilla and Apple Cake with Mascarpone Frosting

The grunts of exasperation could be heard from the kitchen over the television in the loungeroom. My brother looked at me, rolled his eyes and reluctantly hauled himself from his armchair, I leapt from the couch trailing after him curious, like him, to find out what was frustrating mum so much. The kitchen came off the loungeroom separated only by a sliding door that was rarely closed. When the door was rarely closed we knew not to go snooping, but this one night with only the three of us home my older brother, the only ‘man’ home, felt compelled to investigate. Mum had decided that after dinner would be a good time to make my 6th birthday cake. Perhaps not a time of day when one would be at their most agile in the kitchen, she had multiple ingredients spread across the round white laminate kitchen table. I climbed up onto the orange vinyl upholstered kitchen chair at her left my, then, 19-year-old brother on her right asking if he could help. Nodding, she gazed down to the famed Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book, our eyes following hers. I delightedly admired a beautiful Barbie cake standing proudly in a dress of pure white fluffy buttercream coated butter cake, jewelled with 100’s and 1000’s, multi-coloured smarties and sugar coated spearmint leaf lollies, her golden locks flowing in giant curls to her waistline of silver sugar pearl. My mum saw a baking nightmare and my brother saw an excited small birthday girl and a stressed Mum trying to create some birthday magic.

Taking charge, he tidied up what we didn’t need, ordered what we did and made a start on adorning Barbie in her dolly varden butter cake gown. Together they worked as a team sculpting the cake, whipping air through the butter cream and designing a colourful pattern of sweets for her skirts. I watched, chin perched on both hands, elbows resting on the table my knees folded under me, completely entranced by the evolution of my birthday cake. My brother’s tradesman hands worked with slow precision, his eyes darting back and forth from the book’s pictures to the slowing evolving sugary masterpiece. Mum’s shoulders slowly relaxed. She made herself a coffee and worked at his side warming to the task and enjoying the team effort. As he placed the final adornment on the cake with the ceremony of the placement of a Christmas star on a tree, we all oooed and ahhhed at her beauty. I clapped with delight, mum exhaled with relief and my brother cautiously looked at us both, a slow, satisfied and relieved smile creeping across his face. She was done! My Barbie birthday cake was complete, and she was glorious!

I learnt a few things that night. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, be prepared. I say ‘I learned’ but am not necessarily entrenched in this lesson still falling prey to a craving or whim to create something in the kitchen without all the ingredients, at an absurd time of day when I already have too much to do and not in an orderly fashion. I learnt about teamwork and the need to call on help when you’ve reached your end and to call on anyone who’d happily help even if they don’t seem like the one with the expertise you may require. Again, I learnt this one but don’t necessarily act on this one as much as I should. And I learnt about family. Pulling together to meet a common goal. Leaning on each other to alleviate stress, fill gaps and most importantly the ceremony of honouring a member’s bitrthday…and of course to create cake!

You see in our family cake was a centrepoint of family birthdays. It wasn’t a birthday without it, favourite flavours and themes. As a child drawing on the eponymous children’s birthday cake book which resided in most Australian homes I remember choosing Barbie, a teddy bear and a lolly train amongst others. And as time went on, I grew and our family became busier, and perhaps my tastes changed, cakes from specialist stores were ordered including my favourite to this day a croquembouche. I’ve tried to maintain this tradition in my own family, though we’ve veered from tradition and often enjoyed a birthday dessert including, pudding, pavlova and the like.

As much as I’ve tried to continue the cake tradition, as the family’s baker, it’s not one I’ve enjoyed myself, until this year. With my boys not here and feeling in need of a little festive cheer I pondered what I would want for my own birthday should a genie appear from a bottle to make me one and as I often do, I landed back in apple cake world…though Barbie would have been on trend. I dreamt of one I loved when I first visited the now closed Beatirix Bakes cake store with my blogging pal Kath. It was called Apple Pie Cake and was a multi-layered tower of a butter vanilla icing with a hint of salt, a thin layer of slightly sweetened apple and coated, in more, deeply, buttery, smooth buttercream. Like my mother all those decades ago it was somewhat of a spur of the moment decision requiring a bit of pivoting and still not too much effort, after all it was still my birthday.

With a few tweaks, I reimagined my Chai Cake into a fluffy moist vanilla cake. From there I pulled my copy of the Beatrix Bakes cookbook from the shelves knowing within it’s pages was a recipe to inspire a version of apple compote to be sandwiched in folds of sweet Chantilly cream between two layers of the cake and finally I whipped together a fluffy frosting of mascarpone and cinnamon.

Obviously if you just want cake without the extra work stop at the cake part and adorn in any way you prefer. Simple icing of any flavour you love, a dusting of icing sugar, chocolate icing or indeed absolutely nothing. Whatever floats you boat.

A few tips:

~If no one else in the family can make you a cake, buy yourself one or make one. It’s important!

~Like a moody teenager ensconced in her bedroom insisting on privacy, this cake also prefers the door closed. Don’t peek, leave her alone and allow her to rise to the challenge in peace. When you do remove her from the oven, like that teen, give her some space and leave her alone for ten minutes before coaxing her from her tin. She’ll reward you well I promise.

~As always, the best ingredients you can afford will always give you the best results but, in this instance particularly, grab the best vanilla you can. It is vanilla cake after all.

~When you first think “hmmm cake,” take the eggs from the fridge to lose their chill and melt the butter so it can cool before you use it. A paradox but important.

~Sift the flour if you’re not lazy like me. Otherwise simply use a whisk to incorporate the salt with a few assertive turns to aerate and loosen the flour.

Ingredients:

Cake:

2 eggs at room temperature, trust me this matters

200 gm caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

150 gm butter melted and cooled. 40-50 seconds in the microwave should just melt it without overheating it leaving you waiting for it to cool too long.

120 ml buttermilk

250 gm SR Flour

¼ tsp salt flakes

Chantilly Cream:

1 cup thickened cream or whipping cream

1 heaped tb icing/powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla exract

Cinnamon Mascarpone Frosting:

250 gm mascarpone

¼ thickened cream or whipping cream

50 gm very soft butter

1/3 cup icing/powdered sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Apple Compote:

500 gm granny smith apples

30gm caster sugar

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch fresh grated nutmeg

Pinch salt flakes

2 tb water

½ tsp cornflour

1 tb lemon juice

1 tsp honey

Method:

Cake:

Preheat oven to 180c. Line and grease a 20cm springform cake tin.

In the bowl of a stand mixer or a large bowl for handheld electric beaters combine eggs, sugar and vanilla. Using whisk attachment mix on medium speed until combined, 30 seconds, then increase speed to med-high for 3-4 minutes. It should be fluffy, pale and double in volume. Decrease speed back down to medium and in a thin slow stream pour in melted cooled butter. Turn speed back up to high and whisk for 1-2 minutes until again increased in volume to an almost foamy consistency like a zabaglione. Stop mixing and add half the flour and mix on low speed until almost combined, pour in half the buttermilk while the mixer is still stirring on low. Once combined, no more than a minute for each of these steps, add the remaining flour and again followed by the remaining buttermilk. Mix until just combined. There will be a thin mote of buttermilk around the edge. Remove bowl finish mixing with only a couple of confident folds with a spatula and pour into the prepared pan. Smooth over top very gently, preserving all the lovely air and lightness you’ve created with all that whisking and pop in the preheated oven for 45 minutes. No peeking until the 45 minute mark. Test with a skewer and on the off chance the skewer doesn’t come out clean return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Allow to cool in the tin sitting on a wire rack for ten minutes before removing spring form ring and sliding from the base. Slip paper out gently from underneath and allow to cool.

Apple Compote:

This is inspired by and my take on the recipe in the beautiful Beatrix Bakes Book.

Peel, core and cube the apples. Combine all sugar, water, spices, salt, cornflour and lemon juice in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat until small bubble appear on the sides, add apples stir to combine then cover and cook on medium for 5 minutes. Remove lid, stir through honey and remove from heat and cool completely before using.

Keep a close eye on the mixture while it cooks, you may need to stir once or twice to prevent it sticking.

Chantilly Cream:

Combine all ingredients in a stand mixer. Whip on medium high until soft peaks form. Pop in a bowl and store in the fridge until you’re ready to use.

Mascarpone Frosting:

Combine very soft butter, icing sugar and cinnamon in a stand mixer. Mix with whisk attachment until combined then increase speed to med-high to combine well and lighten in colour and form. Just like you would for butter cream frosting. You’ll need to scrape this down a couple times to reach the lite fluffy texture you need. Add mascarpone and cream and again slowly to start to combine then increase to med-high to whip up to a fluffy texture. It will be lighter and fluffier than a traditional butter cream frosting almost like a thick whipped cream.

Assemble:

Slice the cake across the middle using a serrated knife (I use a bread knife) making two discs as close to an even thickness as possible. Set your bottom layer on the plate you’d like to serve on and top with whipped Chantilly cream. Using your spoon make a little indentation in the middle and pile the cooled apple mixture in the middle gentle distributing to a circle 2/3 the diameter of the cake leaving a 2cm border of cream all the way around. Gently place the remaining disc of cake on top and with a soft touch pile and spread the mascarpone frosting on top in soft, uneven peaks like clouds. You can leave it like that or dust with additional cinnamon.

Ginger Passionfruit Slice

She sat in the armchair to your right as you entered the lounge room. Close to the front door and her own bedroom door, formerly that of my parents, sacrificed for her stay with us. Morning sun glinted through the curls of her fine grey hair, often times lulling her to sleep, it’s glow wrapping her in a blanket of warmth. She’d spend her days there mostly, sometimes receiving visits from her friends accompanied by their family members or of course from her own extended family. She came to live with us for what was to be the last weeks of her life. Decades of a life lived punctuated by disease, diabetes, asthma and emphysema in consort tolling the bell of time ever more loudly.

She was a quiet matriarch in her time, not one who ruled with the proverbial iron fist but rather the carer, nurturer and rule maker. The love for her family and care she provided ran deep her love a restorative salve. She raised my mother for the most part and like the shelter and love her home proved when my mum needed, our home too was the restorative convalescence my great-grandmother needed. On her arrival we imagined ourselves offering palliative support and love to my Nan as she was known. Her frailty signalled her life drawing to a close. My parents opened their home to her as much out of love as gratitude for all shed done for mum and with great care Mum nursed her in those early weeks. As time went on glimmers of hope emerged. More and more she’d slowly emerge from her room shuffling tentatively out to share time with the family and take her meals in her special chair lap warmed by her crocheted knee rug made when her fingers were more nimble. With regular meals and human interaction her condition improved and her days in our family grew longer.

The initial period of convalescence freezing time to support her faded as it became clear our efforts had succeeded and Nan had found her second wind so to speak. We needed a new plan and routine so Mum could return to work and resume her normal life. I was a teenager at the time so absent from home for at least six hours a day and Dad still a shift worker. Mum’s job was not far from home but still this left a frail lady home alone for great swathes of time. As family’s often do the relatives rallied. Everyone taking a day to visit where possible offer company for Nan and reassurance for mum. One such visitor was my Nana, Dad’s mum. She was of a similar ilk herself, the quiet no nonsense nurturer. Every Wednesday, after leaving a cut lunch in the fridge for my Papa, she’d walk the 4 kms to our house, a baked treat stashed in her roomy handbag slung in the crook of her elbow. Having survived polio as a child her gait was slow but strong the site of our home after that last bend in the road a welcome site. Her visits were as much an act of love for Nan as it was to Mum and Dad. Her cheery voice would ‘sing out’ a greeting as she arrived, her bag carried through to the kitchen where she’d ‘pop the kettle on’ and prepare morning tea. They’d natter away catching up on their weeks and news of the day while they sipped steaming amber coloured tea, two cups frugally made from one tea bag, while they nibbled on whatever sweet treat was on offer. After lunch, also often an offering of love and nurture from Nana, Nan would nod off in the last of the eastern sunshine before the sun arced over our roof. To fill time during this restorative nap, Nana took to the duster and broom helping mum with some housework to ease her load and perhaps make a start on dinner too. Sometimes they’d take to their needles, one knitting the other crocheting comparing their progress and differing skills each wishing they could do what the other could. They’d reflect on times gone, laughing and shedding a tear here and there at shared recollections and memories. Marjorie and May forged a firm friendship during their Wednesdays spent together, Marj finding purpose in supporting mum, May looking forward to the company of a woman her own age, the two together finding previously untapped common ground and friendship in each other’s company. Opposites in many ways, from each side of our family, Dad’s mum and Mum’s Nan, found friendship in later life.

One thing they had always had in common was a love of baking. Nan loved a ginger laced bake Nana a more classic airy sponge often topped with passionfruit icing. Nan, no longer being fleet of foot, was unable to cook and so would ask Mum to purchase Gingernut Biscuits as an offering during these visits. Nana, still reigning at her oven, would still whip up a light airy sponge cake sandwiching fluffy whipped Chantilly cream, crowned with passionfruit icing.

The notion of opposites attracting was one often on our minds watching two women who’d known each other for decades in late life finding a deep nourishing friendship in each other’s companionship. Likewise, opposites attract in flavours sometimes too. Marriages in ingredients you may not always think of initially but when experimented with inspire equally revelatory relationships as that enjoyed by two women thrown together and sipping tea with ginger and passionfruit in all its guises.

Ingredients:

½ c sweetened condensed milk

50 gm butter

1 Tb golden syrup

40 gm chopped naked preserved or glace ginger

320 gm Gingernut biscuits or similar ginger flavoured cookies/biscuits with a crisp dry texture

Icing:

1 ¾ C icing sugar

Pulp of 2 passionfruit 1 tsp of seeds reserved

2 tsp boiling water

2 tsp lemon juice

20 gm butter melted

Method:

Line a 16cm x 25cm slice tin and set aside.

In a small saucepan combine condensed milk, butter, ginger and golden syrup over a medium low heat. Warm until just combined thoroughly and remove from heat.

Crush biscuits/cookies in a food processor or blender using the pulse setting crushing until a mixture of course and fine crumbs. It’s nice to maintain some texture in the crushing so there’s a variation when eating and for the mixture to absorb the wet mixture.

In a large bowl combine crumbs and warm melted liquids until thoroughly combine like thick wet sand. It should be quite thick and stiff. Spread evenly in the prepared tray and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and firm. The longer it’s refrigerated the better allowing for the most moisture absorption.

When ready combine all icing ingredients until smooth. Spread evenly over slice with an offset spatula or similar if you have one. A little tip: heat the blade briefly over a stove flame so it spreads smoothly over the icing leaving an even finish. Allow to set and cut into suitable sized pieces.

Mandarin, Raspberry and Olive Oil Loaf

It’s been a funny week. A, strangely for me, reflective one.

After posting last week’s missives, ironically also reflective, I lunched on those spinach rolls before setting off for my exercise class (who even am I). They’re a friendly mob at my gym and always greet me with wide open smiles and warm salutations. Last week was a little more sombre when the receptionist, a pal and subscriber here, greeted me quietly stating she ‘wasn’t talking to me.’ She’d read my post about my boy before work and it’d hit a nerve leaving her also reflective and sombre. We shared the hugs of mums and middle aged women who’ve lived and the stories and feelings evoked by my words of last week’s post. Tear ducts cleaned out and loads shared our keels sailed a little more evenly…or as evenly as life’s experiences allow. I little bit of a cross wind in our sails and a gentle swell under our boughs the waves not as overwhelming.

Later that day in the local hardware megastore, galloping up the aisle looking for a wonder cleaning product that keeps finding its way into my newsfeed tempting me to clean my oven door, I noticed an old school mum friend staring at the shelves. She was a gem back in the day, helping me with the load of running my kids hither and thither whilst supporting ailing parents and a husband who travelled for work, what felt like, all the time. Every community has diamonds like her, ‘salt of the earth’ women who see the need to help before those who need it even do and don’t see any bother doing so. Always ready with a warm friendly smile and good humour. I hadn’t seen her for a long time nor caught up on her family’s happenings so a ‘quick’ chat in Aisle 30 was a no brainer. We updated each other on kid’s lives, husbands’ careers and our own lives. It’s funny how updating ourselves in such conversations always comes last isn’t it and indeed I’ve noticed recently, or maybe it’s just me, is downplayed. We talked about work and the mother load, mine much lighter. She talked about her sandwich generation situation supporting an ailing older parent as well as the trenches of parenthood and her business all while riding the waves of middle age hormones and that womanly habit of raising the spinnaker one handed while steering at the helm against the prevailing gusts of wind tacking this way and that against the unpredictable weather. And then she too was in my arms clearing out those tear ducts, that middle aged load buffeting from both sides.

That night two messages from friends also came through also sharing stories and offloading a little followed by lunch the next day with a couple more girlfriends, stories of all the extras we’re carrying tabled and washed away in the hum of a busy restaurant and a couple hours of escape with comrades in similar trenches.

A few things occurred to me. The cliches of middle age I’d heard as a child and young woman spoken about by my mum and her friends in hushed tones over afternoon tea weren’t actually cliches. Womanhood while wonderful and full and unique to the life led by our male counterparts is largely ruled by hormones which present mountainous waves to surf at the most inopportune periods in life and most especially that opportunities for bemoaning and debriefing in those hushed frustrated tones with coffee and cake aren’t as available as they once were.

It's one of nature’s greatest flaws that at a time when a woman is enduring what feels like a second round of puberty with a quarter of the energy to do so is often also a time of other major life changes for those she’s supporting. Ailing parents, teens in their own sea of hormones, older offspring launching their own adulthoods, empty nests and partners in the throes of their middle age woes all seem to circle like conflicting weather fronts at this most inconvenient period of our lives. Likewise, our parents or older relatives will increasingly need our support or even their hands held as the pages of their last chapters slowly turn. All the while we’re tired, perhaps not sleeping well, we’re hot, so hot! We just want a moment to ourselves, our patience is stretched and the winds of middle ages are blowing our hair all over the place but we don’t have a free hand to grab a hair tie and pull it out of our faces…metaphorically speaking.

So all this leads me to my point. What happened to afternoon tea? Taking an hour out of the week to have a cuppa and slice of cake with a pal? To off load, debrief, catchup? A photographer pal who also happens to be a psychologist was telling me about a lecture she’d been to recently sharing research into middle age. They found that, universally, across all cultures the one commonality was a sense of sadness. This could be a whole discussion and essay of it’s own but the big take away was the need to shake things up and disrupt! Now afternoon tea may not seem like a big revelation but perhaps it could be a start and perhaps it’s a seed to hatch a plan from your shake up or help a pal shake her world up. One slice of cake at a time.

My Mandarin and Raspberry Loaf is the perfect bake for anyone wanting to catch up with a friend. It’s super easy and requires no fancy equipment, ingredients or skills. Maybe baking could be your disruption or maybe you could have a friend for coffee and cake and a not so hushed tones debrief, hug and tear duct clean out.

Ingredients:

1 1/3 C (220 gm) Plain Flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarb soda

½ tsp salt flakes

¾ C (180 gm) caster sugar

200 gm Greek yoghurt (full fat)

2 eggs at room temperature beaten

100 ml olive oil, mild flavoured

1 tsp vanilla extract or paste

1 tb mandarin juice (one mandarin)

2 tsp mandarin rind finely grate (2 mandarins)

200 gm whole raspberries

Icing:

1 ½ C icing sugar

50 gm butter melted

¼ tsp vanilla extract or paste

¼ tsp salt flakes

Juice of the remaining mandarin from the cake batter

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease and line a loaf tin, set aside.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt, set aside.

In a second large bowl combine remaining cake ingredients except raspberries. Using a balloon whisk, stir them together gently initially then when combined exert some energy and whisk all those frustrations into your batter combining to a smooth mix with no lumps, sugar almost dissolved and the yoghurt completely mixed in. Now that you’ve got that off your chest with a gentle hand fold in the raspberries and flour until completely incorporated and all the flour lumps are smoothed out, much like all those life humps you’ve been smoothing out.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 55 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for ten minutes before using the baking paper overhang to lift it out and cool completely on a wire rack, gently slipping the paper out from underneath so the bottom doesn’t get soggy.

To make icing, combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and mix until thickened and completely amalgamated. Spread in swirls across the top and serve with that cuppa, a hug a box of tissues and maybe even a cheeky glass of dessert wine or bubbles if the weather prevails.

Afternoon Tea Loaf

I’m 51. I dwell in the middle, the space between the seasons, between two phases of life. The one where summer’s glow shrinks away awaiting a new dawning in spring, towards summers of the future and the next phase.

I wake nightly, eyes springing open, alert. I toss and turn searching for a return to slumber, desperately trying to keep my mind in the inert state of the wee hours and rest. Though I fight earnestly my brain springs into action, alert awake. The hours pass, thoughts trawl, the ‘problems of the world’ turned over tenfold solved and rehashed. Oudtside my window in waving eucalypts the birds start to stir, their song rising from a murmur, the rousing call of a kookaburra calling the chorus to a crescendo. Then the choir recedes and the dawn emerges as my eyes heavily fall into the nothingness of sleep. I wake soon after, the the day slowly gathering it’s usual cadence. Reluctantly flinging the doona off I arise and start the day expecting fatigue and exhaustion to sweep over me. Though in need of coffee the wave of fatigue hasn’t quite found me. I’m tired but awake, not as tired as I expect my mind is alert though foggy the night’s strange mix of wakeful sleepiness hanging from my shoulders like a cape I’m not keen to wear. Ideas sparked through excite me though I need to reach through holes in the fog to grasp them and bring them to life. Joints ache and waves of ‘summer’ sweep over me making my hand flap like a fan to relive the sudden flush of heat. While my mind and heart remain in a youthful place my body gently reminds me I’m entering an autumn of sorts. One where deep restful sleep eludes me and bright sparkling sunshine begins to wain to make room for the waxing of a new type of sunshine and life’s second summer.

It's no surprise then that I reflect on life in such a metaphorically manner this week. The warm balmy summer days drawing to a close here making room for the shift in seasons. Nature begins her pack down in preparation for hibernation and rebirth this week. Autumn started here yesterday. It’s a topsy turvy season, a space in the middle. Where some days dawn cool and brisk, the world moving a little slower and things a little less bright. Then as if to remind us nature hasn’t quite shifted yet our weeks are punctuated with days illuminated with warm sunshine and vigour until eventually the hibernation arrives and the earth settles down for a rest preparing for spring’s bud and summers bloom.

It's in the space in the middle, in the wee hours when my mind decides rest is for the young and the old and not the ones in the middle, that if I allow it, ideas are born. Where I imagine the next chapter and my next bloom that I also imagine what that will look, feel and taste like. Renewed energy and vigour, fresh ideas and ambitions and days filled with different flavours.

I imagined this Afternoon Tea Loaf during one such interlude in sleep. Where a mixture of summer’s fruits dried in dry parched sunshine were plumpled with dark malty sweetness and salty melted butter folded together with spices and a combination of flours, eggs and yoghurt to form a rustic loaf to compliment a moment of down time in the afternoon, perhaps with a pal or on a picnic adventuring in the wild. She’s dark flavourful, rustic, nutty and just a little spicy, sturdy and resilient she’ll last and brighten your day and make you smile.

Ingredients:

210 gm mixed dried fruit chopped.

200gm butter

¾ c (180gm) dark brown sugar (regular brown is fine if that’s all you have)

2 Tb treacle

2 tsps cocoa (unsweetened, dutch style)

1 c flour

½ c spelt flour (the wholemeal type is tastier)

½ c almond flour/ground almond

1 tsp ground cardamon

½ tsp allspice

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarb soda

2 eggs

½ c Greek style yoghurt

1 tbs oil (neutral flavour, I’ve used grape seed)

1 tsp vanilla extract.

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c (fan forced) grease and line a loaf tin, 9.5cm x 20cm.

Combine butter, fruit, sugar treacle and cocoa in a medium saucepan over low heat until butter is melted and sugar mostly dissolved. Pour into a bowl to cool.

In a large bowl combine dry ingredients and whisk together with a balloon whisk to thoroughly combine and aerate.

I another small bowl combine eggs, yoghurt, oil and vanilla and whisk together to completely combine.

Pour all the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and fold through to mix together until just combined. Tip into the loaf tin and pop in the oven for 50 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. You’ll need to check the cake at the 30 minute mark and perhaps cover with foil. There’s a lot of sugars in the mixture which burnish and form a lovely crust quite quickly but will burn if left uncovered.

Allow to cool in the tin for ten minutes before using baking paper to gently lift from the tin and cooling on a rack. Serve with or without butter…but it’s much nicer with butter…or even a thick spread of ricotta.

Whiskey and Orange Cake

My Dad, always loved a little nip of whiskey after dinner. Not a big glug or many glasses of such just a little splash, neat, to relax him and warm him up he’d say. He had his own bottle on the bar at his local footy club and a bottle at his local freemason’s lodge. It was part of his persona and one of the things his friends and I remember fondly about him. He also loved cake, until the day he passed away he fondly enjoyed a ‘sliver’ of cake. The nostalgic flavours of his favourites remained one of the things his dementia addled brain never was unable to ravage as I reflected on here.

Waddling around these last couple of days with a stiff sore back needing heat packs and a little something to offer some comfort I was reminded of my dad’s small daily rituals of a dash of warming scotch whiskey and cake, usually enjoyed separately. Well I’ve rolled them together. Warming rich malty whiskey and fresh squeezed orange juice warmed with honey and poured over dark squishy sultanas and currants. Combined with brown sugar and butter and the usual cake suspects I’ve created a light fluffy cake that feels like a warm hug.

Both warming the whiskey and cooking it again in the oven cooks out any alcohol content so if for any reason you need to avoid that this is will still work for you. The whiskey creates a richness to the flavour rounding out the almost caramel like notes of the dried fruit and honey rather than that usual harsh burn of a strait drink of the spirit. This cake is also dairy free for anyone needing to avoid that too.

Ingredients:

80 gm sultanas

80 gm currants

Juice and zest of an orange

100 whiskey

1tb honey

½ tsp bicarb soda

2 eggs

120 gm brown sugar

1 tsp vaniaa

75 gm butter melted and cooled

180gm self raising flour

¼ tsp salt flakes

½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c. Line and grease a 19 cm springform pac.

Combine dried fruit, orange zest, nutmeg and bicarb soda in a medium bowl set aside. In a small saucepan combine whiskey, juice and honey and warm over medium heat until small bubbles begin on the edges of the surface. Immediately pour over fruit mixture and set aside to cool to room temperature.

Using a stand mixer with whisk attachment mix eggs, sugar and vanilla on medium high until lighter in colour and frothy. Drizzle the melted butter in while still whisking and mix briefly until its combined but before it splits, mere seconds.

Gently tip flour and salt in and using a hand balloon whisk fold into egg mixture until almost combine. Pour in fruit mixture and all the liquid and continue folding together briefly.

Pour into prepared tin and bake 40 minutes.

Cool in tin five minutes then remove from spring form. Served dusted with icing sugar and if you’re really feeling fancy a drizzle of caramel like this one.

Many hours sitting in waiting rooms this week means many hours scrolling, I don’t want to think what my iphone screen time report will look like this week. A few beauties stopped me in my tracks and are on the to cook list. This spicy easy dinner will be a hit with my lot. Not sure if this veg number will be but I’ll love it and will come back to it for Christmas entertaining. Likewise this dip which is my husband’s idea of food hell, and my idea of food heaven, venus and mars right there. Reading is the other great way to keep busy in those busy waiting rooms. I finished this much anticipated stellar sequel this week and LOVED it. I also whizzed through this light aussie read this week. I’ve enjoyed all of the authors book previously and this was no exception.

White Chocolate and Raspberry Mud Cake

I was woken a few nights ago by magpies carolling. Calling to each other in the dark still of night, still cold and frosty I wondered for their safety. Were foxes out prowling? Was there some kind of territorial stand-off with larger beaked more resilient kookaburras? These weren’t questions that would allow me to rest so as one does is 2022, I reached for my phone and started googling. It’s mating season, no danger just the natural rhythms of nature and one of the first calls of a shift in the seasons. I drifted off to sleep to their carousing, their lullaby rocking me to my slumber.

Today as I write this, my back is warmed by the north sun. Unencumbered by clouds, not tempered by rain it’s beams thaw the winter chill from my bones though my lap is cosy under a crocheted woollen blanket still. Shadows dance in my kitchen drawing my gaze through the window, the wattle is blooming. No longer a tree adorned with small chartreuse coloured buds the little golden pompoms have exploded all over the tree like tiny little golden fluffy pearls. Sunshine and wattle a beacon reminding me spring is wriggling its way out of a cold hibernation and bursting forth.

The pruned rose bush and hydrangea is also budding, the earth is warming and the suns daily sweep across the sky is climbing, bathing our terrace in warmth inviting us outward.

I’m reminded of the joy of outside dining, taking a break in the garden with a coffee and baked treat, hosting a long leisurely Sunday lunch, or balmy nights passing platters and clinking glasses. It’s coming round again, the time to host, celebrate and entertain. Until then cake and coffee will do.

As a child one of my favourite chocolate bars was one called a Milky Bar. A bar of creamy white chocolate it was always one that could make me smile and indeed still does. Today white chocolate is frequently paired with raspberries in muffins, their tart pop a perfect foil for the richness of the chunks of white chocolate. These are lovely of course but I like to level it up. White chocolate mud cake and raspberries are a whole other story. Whilst this cake bakes beautifully in a 20 cm round tin it is rich and indulgent and can be hard to polish off cut into traditional wedges. I like to make it in a brownie/slice tin as a slab adorned with raspberry flavoured cream cheese frosting cut into little squares…..or not so little as the occasion requires. A cake/slice Hybrid if you will. It’s a super moist cake allowing you to make ahead and will eat well for up to a week locked away in an air tight container, though if iced I suggest the fridge…if it lasts that long.

Ingredients:

150gm White chocolate chopped

250 gm butter chopped into small cubes

1 ½ c caster sugar

½ tsp salt flakes

½ c milk

½ c sour cream

1 ½ c plain flour

½ self raising flour

2 eggs beaten

1 heaped tb white hot chocolate powder

200 gm raspberries

Method:

Preheat oven 160c non fan forced. Grease and line a 30cm x 20cm brownie/slice tin.

Combine butter, chopped white chocolate and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and slowly heat until all ingredients melted and sugar is dissolved. You made to taste test a couple times to check the sugar….call it quality control. Stir through vanilla, milk and sour cream until combined remove from the heat and allow to cool. I always decant into a cool jug or bowl to speed this part up. Allowing it to cool in a hot saucepan will only slow this process down.

While that’s cooling, in the bowl of a stand mixer, combine dry ingredients and hand whisk to thoroughly mix. Whisk together eggs in a small bowl. Add to bowl with cooled chocolate and butter mixer. Using paddle attachment on your mixer, mix on low speed for one minute or until thoroughly combine. You only want the ingredients to just combine we done want to overmix it.

Pour into the prepared cake tin and dot with the fresh raspberries. Bake in the oven 1 ¼ hours. It will be golden brown and have a crisp sugary crust. Check the cake after 45 minutes to make sure it’s not browning too much on top. Pop a loose sheet of foil over the top the rest of the bake if it does look like its cooking too quickly.

Allow to cool completely in the tin before removing.

Icing:

My kids love this cake uniced and dusted with icing sugar. You might like to try this too, especially served with thick cream.

If you prefer something a little more luxurious, you might like to ice it with a raspberry cream cheese frosting.

250 gm cream cheese softened

100 gm soft butter

Raspberry powder

Combine all ingredients in a stand mixer using whisk attachment and whip until light and fluffy.

Raspberry powder can be hard to get. I make it using crisp freeze dried raspberries whizzed in a vitamix and then sieved to remove seeds. If this is a bridge too far for you, you can use raspberry essence found in the cake making section of supermarkets or a couple spoonfuls of raspberry jam though the flavour will be more subtle and the icing a little thinner.

Notes:

You can of course make this in a 20cm round or square regular cake tin. It will need to be one of regular height and will take 1 hour 40 minutes to cook though I suggest checking it at 1 ¼ hours to see how it’s going. If it’s browing quickly pop a loose sheet of foil over the top.

You can also fold the raspberries through the cake. Do this very gently to try and keep as many as you can whole.

If raspberries aren’t in season try dropping teaspoon sized dollops of raspberry jam randomly across the top of the cake mix before popping in the oven. Using a skewer, gently swirl them through the batter distributing the jam through the ‘mud.’

Fast Chocolate Cake

As she reversed out of the driveway waving, concern etched on her face, I worked hard to maintain my poorly palour waving a reassuring hand back to her. Once the car was gone and I was sure I was alone I turned and walked to the fridge, retrieved my prize and turned on the television. The year was 1984, I was 13 and the LA Olympics were the first to be broadcast to the extent that the Hollywood games were. I’d pulled it off, I’d convinced my mum I was too sick for school and should definitely stay home for the day for the first time on my own and I’d managed to avoid a day of that teen angst and uncertainty of the firwst year of high school, which I wasn’t loving. Chocolate cake on the coffee table, Olympics on the screen, I was set. Now I’m not promoting the great aussie ‘sicky’ (that’s a fake sick day at home for overseas readers) nor am I promoting the health ‘benefits’ of a sedentary day on the couch with chocolate cake. What I am suggesting is that sometimes a slice of chocolate cake is the greatest comfort food and the greatest escape. Not too sweet, chocolatey, a little squishy, crumbly on the palate, the perfect salve on days when a little bit of comfort food is the only answer.

All that said there’s nothing worse than needing to satisfy that yearning but being short on time and motivation. Now if you guys have made my Chai Cake you’ll know I love a melt and mix for a quick fix and this one is no different. In the oven 15 minutes after the urge hits, she’ll be out of the oven by the time you’ve finished cleaning up. A bit of time to cool, crowned in oozy chocolate icing and you’re good. Don’t forget cream, no cake is complete without a good dollop.

Ingredients:

150gm butter melted and cooled

50 gm dark chocolate melted and cooled ( do this in the microwave, work smarter not harder)

1 ½ c self raising flour

100 gm caster sugar

100 gm brown sugar

½ tsp baking powder

¼ cocoa powder (the unsweetened variety)

2/3 c buttermilk ( or full cream milk with a 1 tsp lemon juice left to stand for 5 mins before using)

2 eggs at room temperature beaten

1 tsp of vanilla

Pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 c. Line and grease a 20cm round springform cake tin.

Melt butter and chocolate separately and leave to cool while you assemble all the other ingredients.

Combine all dry ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and stir with a balloon whisk to combine thoroughly, break up any lumps and add a little lightness. You can sift them all together if you less lazy than me if you wish but it doesn’t make a huge difference.

Pour over all the wet ingredients and begin mixing in a stand mixer on low to bring everything together then increase to high speed for 30 second- 1 minute or until everything is just combined.

Spoon into prepared baking tin, smooth over top lightly and bang on the bench a couple times to move any big air bubbles.

Bake 50 minutes or until the old skewer inserted comes out clean.

Cool in tin placed on a wire rack 15 mins then remove from time cooling right side up on rack until completely cooled.

Top with icing and tuck in.

Icing:

1 ½ c icing sugar

2 tb cocoa (dutch process please)

100 gm soft butter

1-2 tb milk

Combine sugar, cocoa, butter and 1 tb milk in the bowl of a stand mixer. Combine on slow until it’s all wet enough( you may need some or all of that second Tb of milk for this) to not leave you in a cloud of icing sugar when you increase speed. Increase too high and mix until light and fluffy. We’re aiming for something resembling chocolate butter cream though lighter in texture, silky and indulgent.

Brown Sugar and Streusel Muffins

Earlier this week, as I moved through the early morning, I heard the sweet sounds of excited little voices returning to school. Our house borders a popular walking track that leads to a much loved local primary school who welcomed back hundreds of excited little students returning to what will hopefully be a more settled and familiar school year. Listening to the giggles, rollicking chatter and eager feet running down the path I was transported back to those days of the first morning wake up and school run of the year. The day where it felt like long languorous summer days ending and the new year had really began. I used to love summer holidays, waking up with no plans and letting the weather and day take you where it would. It always felt indecent having to resume the normal routine and grind in weather that would induce a hot shimmer on the road and leave little bodies hot sweaty and tired. Coupled with this sense of sadness at the end of summer fun was always the annual motivation of renewed vigour to improve my lunchbox game. I think at one point I owned every single lunchbox cookbook, magazine and newspaper liftout ever printed. With that recipe collection was a million attempts at muffins, the lunchbox stalwart. I’m ‘blessed’ with one fruit lover and one fruit avoider so finding the muffin sweet spot was always tricky. So as my kids, both now adults, return to work and study my mind has wandered back to baked treats for packed lunches and after work/uni gobbles.

In creating this muffin recipe I was driven to reproduce the first ever American style muffin I ever tasted. Growing up in Australia the only muffins I knew were the English style ones. Bread like, with a large open crumb they were served toasted and topped with lashings of melting butter and vegemite or jam or a Sunday fry up of eggs and all the trimmings. So in the southern summer of 1989 my family jetted north to the USA to fulfill a dream of a white Christmas. Ensconced in a cottage at historic Gurneys Resort in Montauk, Long Island (which at the time more resembled a scene from the movie dirty dancing than the luxury high end resort it is today) we awoke the first morning to snow outside our windows and a breakfast basket delivered to our door. I will never forget that first buttery crumbly taste of cinnamon spiced streusel atop a warm cakey breakfast treat.

I think I’ve come pretty close with my Brown Sugar Streusel muffins. Eaten warm from the oven with a spread of butter or packed in a lunch box, either way they’ll suit all the happy little feet trouping off to school, and bring back memories of warm breakfast baskets.

Ingredients:

Steusel topping:

1/3 cup plain flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

½ tsp of cinnamon

¼ tsp of salt flakes crumbled

40 gm of butter

Muffin Mix:

2 cup plain flour

½ tsp of cinnamon

¾ tsp of salt flakes

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp of bicarb (baking) soda

100 gm butter

1/2 cup buttermilk at room temperature

2 eggs also at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

Method:

Preheat oven to 200c and line a 12 whole muffin tin with muffin wraps.

Combine all streusel ingredients in bowl rubbing together with your fingertips as if rubbing butter and flour together to make scones or pastry. Once the mixture resembles clumped wet sand pop the bowl in the fridge while we mix everything else.

Melt butter to just melted, we don’t want to hear up too much, and allow to cool to room temp.

Combine all dry ingredients and mix well. I always use a whisk to do this (thanks for that tip @_michellecrawford), which breaks everything up and adds air like sifting would.

Once butter is lukewarm, in a second bowl, add to room temp buttermilk, eggs and vanilla. It’s best to try and do this with all ingredients close in temp to prevent the butter resetting and forming lumps.

Pour wet mixture over dry and gently fold together until just folded. It can be tempting to keep mixing until it looks more like a cake batter. But please don’t, back away from the bowl once combine.

Divide mixture amongst the muffin cases, about 2/3 full. Top each with 1 tb each of streusel topping and bake immediately 15-18 minutes. Remove from oven and lift each muffin from tray and cool on rack.