Chrunchy Chai Cookies

A hasty farewell with my boy in the carpark of an outback airport and many things left unsaid. Gosh I miss him, maybe I’ll send him something from home.

A friend/neighbour making the sad trek home to the UK to farewell a treasured uncle. Gosh between her travels and ours I haven’t seen her for weeks. Must try and get her over for a coffee before she leaves.

A dear friend interstate with worrying health news. She feels so far away, I wish I could do something to support her. Maybe I’ll send her a care package.

Maybe I’ll make cookies. Sturdy, homely ones that stand up to travel and last in a cookie jar that I can make in a big batch and share out.

I was first introduced to the idea of sending a gift of cookies by Amy Minichello. Unexpectedly, in the mail, I received a package. Opening it curiously not knowing what was inside a smile crept across my face as the contents emerged. Chewy, chocolaty, delicious cookies were nestled inside with a sweet note of thanks for some work we’d done together. I was so touched by the gift and thrilled to tear open the package and tuck in. She published the recipe in beautiful book Recipes in the Mail if you’re looking for a reliable recipe to gift to someone special.

There’s something special about the gift of cookies or biscuits as we more commonly call them. Sturdier than a cake, they’re small treats that can take many different guises. I’m reminded of the famed story of the Anzac biscuits baked by women on home shores missing their men off at a war and desperate to reach across the ocean with a small treat from home. A small plate of cookies shared with a pal over a cuppa while highs and lows are shared or a snack grabbed by a loved one from a stocked up cookie jar, they’re often something that can be the start of a conversation or something to hold and nibble on while the ‘problems of the world’ are unpacked and re-packaged. They take little effort for big punch. Little nuggets of love and comfort as it were, butter sugar and a few little extras welded together.

When I first started this blog I kicked off with a cake. With a tender golden crumb, it was gently spiced and easily thrown together using a melt and mix technique. It remains a reader favourite with some of the highest downloads of all my recipes. When I was considering what biscuit I could create to share I was reminded of the qualities of that cake. Its simple collection of ingredients with the Chai doing the heavy lifting for character and keeping the method simple has made it a classic toolbox cake you can think of as a reliable stand by. I wanted a bicky with the same qualities, one that is impossible to walk past when it fills the cookie jar and one that elicits joy when opened in a surprise package.

So after some trial and error I have a bicky good for sending love, sharing and dunking in a cuppa while you share stories and company with a pal.

**I use this Chai mix. It’s one of an instant warm drink style where you combine it with hot milk like you would a hot chocolate mix rather than a more traditional chai for steeping. If Grounded Pleasures brand isn’t available to you one of a similar nature is available in supermarkets in the coffee and tea aisle.

Ingredients:

180 gm butter softened and cut into cubes

110 gm caster sugar

120 gm brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste

1 Tb honey

1 egg beaten and at room temperature

40 gm chai powder

310 gm plain flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt flakes

Method:

In a large bowl combine chai, flour, baking powder and salt. Mix with a whisk and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the soft butter, sugars, vanilla and honey. Beginning on low-med speed mix until combined then increase to med-high until creamed and lighter in colour. You’ll need to stop a couple time to scrape down to ensure it’s thoroughly combined. No need to rush this stage, keep yourself busy tidying up while you wait, a watched mixer never mixes. Scrape down again tip in the egg. Starting on medium until combined then increase to high until completely creamed and not curdled. This is why you want the egg at room temp. If you add a cold egg at this point it won’t amalgamate completely and appear curdled.

Now add in half the combined dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just mixed, there’ll still be flour at the bottom. Add in the remaining dry ingredients and continue mixing another minute or two until mostly combine. Remove bowl from stand and finish mixing with a wooden spoon or your hands. Now the agonising part if you have a cookie craving, wrap the whole lot in cling wrap and pop in the fridge for at least two hours but preferably overnight if you can. I know, I’m sorry but it really helps the dry ingredients completely absorb the moisture and cook evenly.

When you’re ready to cook preheat oven to 180c and line two cookie sheet trays with baking paper. If you have scales measure small balls of dough to 25gm each otherwise aim for small balls sized between walnut and golf balls. Place them on the tray with a little space between them and press them down using a fork twice making a cross pattern. Pop in the oven and cook 12-15 minutes, they’re done when browned evenly and hold firmly together when nudged gently. Allow to cool briefly on the tray then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an air tight container or wrap well and send to a mate.

Three Cheese Scones

Seven years ago we renovated our kitchen. My original plan was to refurbish the existing, serviceable footprint with a few tweaks. A recurring oven fault and tight squeeze around the dinner table were the tipping points, a third thermostat in 8 years on a supposedly high-quality oven will do that. While waving my arms around sharing my vision with my co-chair of Frawley Inc I noticed his distraction and, as you can probably imagine, asked if he was listening. Then he shared his vision. A far bigger project. One involving the deletion of a wall and moving of the whole kitchen to the room behind the wall.

The room in question was an under used home theatre style room we’d inherited on purchasing the home. It all seemed a bit fabulous and exciting when we bought the house, the notion of a fancy home theatre room, but in reality in the space it inhabited with young kids it just never worked. Consequently, it sat largely unused taking up space, a great source of frustration but a puzzle I didn’t know what to do with. Relinquishing the space he imagined as a haven, my husband made his own suggestion expanding the existing kitchen to be an enlarged dining and relaxation space and pushing the kitchen into the ‘home theatre’ area. In doing this we were able to deal with a pesky aspect of a staircase encroaching into the room and hide it in a butler’s pantry and most importantly take advantage of the natural light from a floor to ceiling window. With stars in my eyes imagining my new food and cooking temple I was laser focussed on appliances, benches, storage and design. It felt like my own taj mahal story, boy builds temple of love for girl, minus the tomb factor of course… a stretch? Not for this starry-eyed cook, I was on board and so the ‘project’ began.

It was a largely hurdle free project, presenting few hiccups and coming together as we imagined. My beautiful Falcon oven, engineered stone bench, stone sink and walk in pantry. She was a thing of beauty. I felt inspired and on completion stood at my bench like a queen presiding over my kingdom. After unpacking and restoring the space to a liveable workable hub for the family, my cooking life returned to normal. The flow of the day beginning and ending in our sparkling new white kitchen my routine and life revolved around the new room. I’d gained room to move and create, store my ever-growing collection of cooking paraphernalia and host friends and family. What I didn’t anticipate amidst our winter build was the warmth and light. Facing the optimal southern hemisphere northern aspect our kitchen became an area flooded with gorgeous all-encompassing sunshine fuelled light. Shadows danced across the floor and bench gamboling like an aurora, starburst patterns peaked through the trees adorning the corners of the windows and warmth flooded the room. We embarked on our renovation in winter. Obsessed with all that would come in my new kitchen dreaming only of the food and joy it would bring I never thought of the architectural aspect in any great detail apart from the obvious internal aspects. But on that first morning alone in my glorious light filled hearth of home, coffee in hand, cookbooks spread before me I was struck by my warm back. Bathed in winter sunshine, gorgeous crystal light and birdsong I was filled with joy. He was right (don’t tell him I said that), it was the perfect idea.

Born of a wonderful idea my kitchen has become home to many of my ideas. The birthplace of inspiration for all manner of creations some triumphs, some mainstays and some unmentionable ‘lessons’ committed to the ranks of ‘lessons learned.’ Thankfully the renovation was not a lesson learned but rather a triumph and has created a place for all to gather.

As a family we’ve gathered at the end of our days to debrief while I cook dinner, or on weekends to enjoy breakfast and catch up in a more relaxed fashion. With our friends we’ve kicked off many evenings in our kitchen enjoying a welcoming drink while we indulge in a pre-dinner nibble and of course we’ve gathered for a coffee and catch up with a morning or arvo tea snack. Three Cheese Scones seem to fit many of these occasions. Made small to enjoy with a glass of bubbly, perhaps hot with lashings of butter for a weekend breaky with eggs, after school to fill hungry bellies and soothe a day away or to split with a pal bathed in beautiful winter sunshine warming hearts, minds and bellies.

Ingredients:

450 gm (2 ½ C) self raising flour

½ tsp dry mustard

¾ tsp salt flakes

1 ½ tbs chopped fresh chives (dried is fine if that’s all you have, use 1 Tb)

90 gm cubed cold butter

75 gm grated cheddar cheese

20 gm finely grated fresh parmesan cheese

40 gm crumbled Greek feta cheese

350 ml buttermilk plus a spoonful extra to brush/glaze the scones before baking

Method:

Preheat oven to 200c and line a large baking sheet with baking paper.

In a large bowl combine dry ingredients and chives and mix using a whisk. Scatter in butter cubes and rub in until butter is well combined, some butter lumps are fine. Sprinkle in cheese and lightly toss together with your fingers tossing from the bottom to the top to evenly distribute.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk. Using a butter knife or palette knife mix through to a shaggy dough. Tip onto bench and using your hands, gently bring any remaining dry bits together. Once combined gently press (don’t use a rolling pin just gently press with your hands) out to a rectangle roughly 24cm x 14cm cut in half forming two pieces 12x14 and place one on top of the other. Press out gently again to form a 20cm x 15cm rectangle. Now cut into 12 pieces cutting three by four pieces. Place your square scones on the tray, brush tops with remaining buttermilk and pop in the oven. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden brown on the tops.

Allow to cool five minutes while you boil the kettle, serve broken apart not cut and spread with lashings of butter.

You could make these in smaller sized scones and serves with a charcuterie platter and drinks. They’ll also be delicious with salmon and pikcles.

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.

Spiced Apple and Rye Hand Pies

I woke to the sound of a kookaburra’s call a few mornings ago. The sentinel of his flock perhaps, a call to arms to indicate the first slivers of light appearing through the trees on the horizon. It always goes quiet after his call. It’s a long string of distinctive caws increasing in volume and energy to a final crescendo before silence falls. I imagine his fellow flock members stirring in their eucalypt branches sandy eyes blinking open winged feathers ruffling as they stretch and meet the day as he nods off from the night shift keeping watch. Is it the same Kookaburra doing this job every morning or do they take turns? Are they even so organised a species? Who knows, it’s these cerebral meanderings that float around my mind while I procrastinate from the inevitability the breaking light heralds. Probably time to ruffle my own feathers and rub the sand from my eyes.

The calls of the morning are quieter at the moment. It’s autumn and we’ve freshly switched off day light saving time. The damp cold stillness that the turn of the season towards winter brings settles over all of us. Nature its own beacon to the shift. Leaves turn all the colours of their own red, orange and gold rainbow, plants slow their growth and animals start their pre hibernation routine fattening up for the coming cold. We humans are similar in a fashion. We become drawn to foods that warm and nourish our bodies and minds. Porridge for breakfast a promise that helps draw the covers back, hot tea at morning teatime to warm from the inside out and stews and soups to comfort and nurture at the end of the day to fill bellies and fuel our bodies to keep us warm.

Not only do we look to warm hearty fair to warm us from the inside out and stoke out internal furnaces we’re also are drawn to particular flavours and their memories evoked by the season. Spices often compliment such meals the warming notes of specific extracts doing the heavy lifting. Be they in that porridge, tea, a stew or slow cook but most particularly in a bake, spices can add complexity and sensation to a dish that adds another dimension and layer to the experience. If you look through my recipe collection you’ll note it’s no secret that I adore cooking with spices. The shift in seasons and my proclivity to lean on them got me to pondering this, procrasitpondering if you will. And it occurs to me that this is not just rooted (see what I did there? Rooted? Ginger, coriander, wasabi) in my love of flavour but also the extra elements their characteristics offer to enhance a meal. Characteristics like sweet, savoury, earthiness, warmth, brightness, freshness amongst others all create a dance between themselves and other ingredients in your cooking. Much in the way music does to a song spices can create a cohesion to all the components of your culinary creations.

And so to the season. As we let go of the warmer weather and flavours like makrut lime, lemongrass, basil and mint amongst other summer flavours we turn to autumnal ones. Interestingly not only do they lend the colours of the season but flavours that settle over us with recollections and experiences whose memories come to life as the flavours erupt on our palettes. Pumpkin, maple, chestnuts, walnuts, mushrooms, apples pears and all those beautiful warming spices like ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and the like form the foundations of many of our favourite recipes that bridge our journey from hot weather to cold.

Laying in bed listening to the silence around that Kookaburra’s call, the breeze tumbling overnight rainfall droplets from the leaves on which they’d settled knowing it was cold outside I didn’t crave fruit or salad, I craved something baked. I yearned for my home to be filled with aromas of sugar, butter and spice, the cosiness that evokes and the delicious morning tea I would pull from my oven at the end of that fragrant alchemy.

Notes:

I use a blender (vitamix) to make my pastry in this instance. You can follow the same instructions in a food processor. If you have neither or prefer to use your hands employ a traditional method of rubbing butter into the dry ingredients doing the job of the blades, make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients and bring together with your hands again doing the work the blades would do and give a short simple knead to bring together.

Makes 12 Hands Pies

Ingredients:

125 gm cold butter in small cubes

150 gm plain flour

70 gm rye flour (you can substitute wholemeal wheat flour here if you prefer or even use plain white flour. If using plain white you may find you only need one Tb of the water).

1 scant tsp cardamon ground

20 g/1 Tb caster sugar

1 egg yolk

60 gm sour cream

1-2 Tb ice water

2 large green apples, peeled and cut into thinly sliced chunks

2 Tb brown sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

Pinch of salt extra

An extra egg for brushing pastry beaten with a splash of milk

Demerara sugar to sprinkle

Method:

In a blender or food processor (see above if you have neither) add cubed butter, flours, caster sugar, cardamon and a pinch of salt. Doing this step in this order, butter first then dry ingredients, is important as it integrates the butter and flour more efficiently and therefore reduces the time under mix and the chance of the dough becoming overworked. Pulse the machine a few times until the butter and dry ingredients are integrated in the way they would be if you’d rubbed them together with your fingers. A few lumps of butter is fine and in fact preferable. In a small bowl, beat together the egg yolk and sour cream. Add the wet mixture to the mixture in your blender/processor and pulse a few times again until the mixture has come together mostly. Tip the mixture out onto a bench and use your hands to finish bringing everything together gently. Pat down into a disc, wrap in cling wrap and pop in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Prepare apples and tip into a medium sized bowl. Sprinkle over brown sugar, cinnamon and salt and stir well until sugar is completely coated. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 180c and line a large baking tray with baking paper.

Remove pastry from fridge and roll out to a thickness of 3mm. Cut rolled pastry into rounds. I’ve used a tin lid of 11.5 cms across. To assemble pies, take a round in your hand, holding like a taco shell and brush the edges with the egg wash. Spoon a heaped desert spoonful of apple into the centre and pinch the edges together to seal. It will look like an overgrown dumpling. Continue this until all rounds are stuffed. Line up on tray and brush with egg wash and sprinkle over demerara sugar. Bake for 25-30 mins.

Eat warm or cold, with cream or custard or whatever your autumnal heart desires.

Pumpkin, Marmalade and Hazelnut Muffins

I did a shoot for a client recently creating Autumn content for her slow living platform. Amongst other things one of the headline features of her work is food so as you can imagine there was a lot of conversation around seasonality.

We worked on one of those beautiful trans-seasonal days where the ends of summer nudge up against a budding autumn. Cool mornings and earlier sunsets bookend the days, the first of the leaves have started to turn threaded with veins of warm tones and our appetite for autumnal foods stretches from its hibernation. Our Sicilian feast featured, amongst other delights, rich ruby coloured stewed pears, apple cake (my favourite) and some delicious vegetable jewelled salads. It was a delight to shoot such beautiful heartfelt recipes and of course ‘clean them up’ afterwards. Tough job but someone’s gotta do it and all that. In the days that followed, as I sat at my desk editing, the conversation around seasonal eating and food shopping rattled around my head. These conversations with clients seem to rise to the top in my thoughts while I edit guiding my work, but this time I found myself thinking far deeper. How on earth do we eat seasonally in a have it now world where we can manipulate nature to deliver whatever our hearts desire precisely when we do? Tomatoes in the depths of winter sure aren’t as sweet and plump having matured in football field sized hot houses but when you want a fresh tomato you want a fresh tomato right? Then there’s some foods that flat out can’t be engineered to appear on our plates out of season without having their passports stamped jetting to our shops from crops across the oceans.

There’s all the usual commonly shared advice about shopping and eating with the seasons. Shopping at farmers markets, seeking out cheaper produce which usually denotes it’s abundance at market and therefore it’s time in season and of course the inherent knowledge of seasonality that many of us have. But with all this in mind I circled back to wondering how hard it actually is in a highly curated and engineered world to live by this in practice and resist the temptation to respond to an out of season craving.

I’m the first to put my hand up as one who does eat what I feel like, fresh tomatoes on toast on frosty winter mornings? Hell yeah. Soup in summer because I feel like it? Definitely! But I’m also the first to seize on figs when they appear at the green grocer. Carefully carrying the prized plump, soft, vulnerable globes in one hand awkwardly steering the trolley with my other hand, I’ll indulge every week until they disappear from the shelves. And when those spheres of sunshine in the form of mangoes start appearing? Get out of my way sista, they’re mine!!

While all of this is definitely seasonal shopping and eating what I did realise from all this ponderous behaviour was that quite possibly seasonal eating starts in the tummy. In our hot summers we often don’t feel like eating or feel like just having something lite. We reach for salads and seafood making the most of that which is abundant to us and which our climate and location does a wonderful job of creating. As the seasons turn our appetites return. We feel cold and need warming up and start yearning for soups, casseroles and puddings to fuel our body’s internal thermostat. And of course, the ingredients for all these are indeed driven by nature’s cycles our appetites, blooming with the crops that will feed them.

Whilst the idea for these muffins has been at the back of my mind for a while, it sat in summer hibernation. I just couldn’t see the wood for the trees and let it bloom while mango juice dripped through my fingers and I imagined dinners of juicy tomato salads.

But as the crisp mornings have greeted me on morning walks recently I’ve noticed a yearning for the flavours of the season and started cooking some of those warmer delights. So bloom, these muffins have. Autumnal sweet pumpkin roasted first, marmalade and crunchy hazelnuts all meld together to make a light muffin with a spiced streusel flavour cap on top that dust your fingers as it crumbles. Don’t be put off by what seems a longish list of bits and bobs below or a fiddly step in the middle, it’s so worth it and makes the first delicious bite with a warm drink all the more wroth it.

If you’re not a marmalade fan like I wasn’t for the first 45 years of my life, try subbing in apricot jam. It will still play tart foil to the sweet pumpkin without the bitterness of marmalade.

Streusel:

1/3 c plain flour

1/3 c brown sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp salt flakes

40 gm butter

1 tb finely chopped hazelnut pieces (I buy them pre chopped, but you do you. If chopping your own go slowly to try and achieve small similarly sized pieces.)

Ingredients:

200 gm pumpkin peeled and cubes into small pieces around 1-1.5 cms

2 c plain flour

¼ c plain wholemeal flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp grated nutmeg

¼ tsp ground cardamon

¾ tsp salt flakes

½ c brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarb soda

¼ c hazelnuts lightly chopped in large pieces

½ c oil of your choice, I use whatever I have, if you prefer olive oil go for it, if you lightly flavoured also fine. There’s enough flavour in the spices to mask a strongly flavoured oil like extra virgin.

2 eggs beaten

1 tsp vanilla

¾ milk of your choice. Non-dairy works fine here if that’s your preference.

2 Tb marmalade. If yours is chunky or the peel in long strands you may need to cut them. I leave the measured amount in a small bowl and plunge clean kitchen scissors in to snip them to smaller more manageable sized pieces.

Method:

Line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cases.

Preheat oven to 190c.

Toss cubed pumpkin in 2-3 tsps of olive oil. Spread in one layer on a lined baking sheet and roast in the oven for 15 minutes or until just soft and mashable with a fork. Allow to cool.

Combine streusel ingredients, except hazelnut pieces, and rub butter in until completely combined and resembling wet sand. Using your fingers mix in hazelnut pieces. Refrigerate until required.

In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients for the muffins and stir with a whisk to thoroughly combine. In a second bowl combine oil, eggs, vanilla and milk and whisk.

Halve roasted pumpkin pieces and mash one half reserving the other in whole cubes. Whisk the mashed pumpkin into the wet ingredients.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the combined wet ingredinets and gently fold together until dry ingredients are almost combined. Over the top of the batter dollop drops of marmalde and give the mixture a few more gentle folds.

Take your prepared muffin tray and half fill each case with batter. Top each case of batter with a few cubes of pumpkin, roughly 3-4 each, then top muffin with the remaining batter. Don’t worry too much if the pumpkin cubes aren’t all covered as the streusel will sort this out. Sprinkle streusel over each muffin evenly using up most if not all of the streusel. Pop in the oven 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clea,

Serve warm with butter because YUM or store cooled in an air tight container.

Lemon Shortcake

Some weeks, Thursdays are a bit like the start of the weekend for me. I’ve usually sent this out early and generally don’t schedule any deadlines. Sometimes I may have a shoot booked but generally it’s an admin day or exploratory one in either the kitchen or studio. When the calendar allows though, it’s also a good day for catch ups. More often than not, if I am catching up with someone I’m heading out and fitting it in around other commitments. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to try new restaurants and venues.

Recently however I enjoyed a Thursday catch up with my Aunt and Uncle. Though not much older than me they’re both retired and very social so I knew it would be a fun and lovely morning tea.

The day dawned with all the promise of the sort of spring morning that puts a pep in your step and leaves you lite of mood. I had several errands and admin tasks in the morning to get through but as is my wont was convinced, I could complete my list and pop something in the oven to take along with me. A hostess gift if you will, ‘never arrive empty handed’ the mantra that plays in my head whenever I’m visiting someone. To my great embarrassment I neither completed my list nor arrived at their door with a ‘plate’ in hand. I’ve also just outed myself, both my aunt and cousin read this. The great aussie tradition of ‘bring a plate’ and never arriving empty handed crashed into each other in my head.

I’m not sure where the idea of a hostess gift originated, though perhaps it goes back as far as ancient times when travellers and explorers would make offerings when entering new lands and territories. It’s something that can be traced through the ages in various forms and cultures and in many ways persists today. In some cultures, the traditions are quite definitive and act as a guideline of their own in both budget and content. Whilst perhaps not inviting creativity countries where the expectations are established simplifies the process and sounds pretty attractive in a busy world. The Australian tradition of ‘bringing a plate’ seems to be ours. It’s one that’s tripped up many a newcomer to our shores in the act of establishing new lives and networks. The stories of many a new pal originating from overseas, obediently, though confusedly, arriving empty plate in hand, perhaps even sympathetically so empathising with the dilemma of a hostess not having sufficient dinnerware for guests are almost folklore. We’re an odd bunch really but of course we know that plate should actually carry a contribution to the meal. Perhaps a salad or side, a small cheese or charcuterie platter or even a dessert all common requests. I’m always confounded though whether I should also bring a small gesture of gratitude for the invitation and effort entertaining brings to busy lives. Some little homemade treat to be enjoyed in private after an event or a bunch of flowers maybe. The act of inviting someone to your home and cooking for them is such an act of affection for but likewise arriving with a gesture of gratitude in hand “is an investment in the relationship,” (I’d like to claim responsibility for that pearler but it’s from one of the plethora of websites I trawled researching the concept).

I’d considered flowers on that recent Thursday morning but was unsure about their movements in the days following in their busy retired life or perhaps even something to be enjoyed later but the morning slipped through my grasp. Greeted at the door by their enthusiastic and warm welcome my embarrassment slipped away as we immediately leapt into our long awaited catch up. A grandbaby on the way cousins careers progressing and all the other ups and downs and adventures of my 30 something year old cousins all updated. All the while over coffee and a Lemon Shortcake, proudly showed off by my aunt who declares herself “not a baker.” A dish she mastered many years ago from a treasured recipe book created by the mothers of preschoolers she taught early in her career, it’s one she makes frequently and she promised was easy. I whipped out my phone to capture Lemon Shortcake by Anne Tempest from long ago. I’ve made a few tiny tweaks to dear Anne’s recipe though her sweet bake remains just as delectable.

I think it will go on my list of ‘bring a plate’ dishes when I’m assigned a dessert next time I’m lucky enough to be welcomed into the home of a pal and maybe, if time has escaped me again it will be so delicious it will be thank you enough.

Ingredients:

115 gm butter softened

115 gm caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg, room temp if you can be organised

Pinch of salt

115 gm plain flour

115 gm self-raising flour

½ cup lemon curd. I always use this one, it’s fool proof and perfect as you’d expect. You could also use store bought for a quick bake.

https://www.smh.com.au/goodfood/recipes/lemon-curd-20111018-29wiz.html

1 tsp whit sugar

1 tbs almond flakes

1 egg and a splash of milk extra for glazing.

Method:

Preheat oven to 220c. Grease and line a 20cm spring form cake tin.

In the bowl of a stand mixer combine soft butter, sugar and vanilla. Beat on medium high until light and fluffy, scraping down sides as you go as necessary. Add in beaten room temp egg and beat again until amalgamate. Watch it carefully as you want it to be emulsified but not split. At this point remove bowl from mixer and tip in combined flours and salt. With purposeful movement fold together using a spatula until completely combined. Tip onto a lightly floured bench and work with your hands in a light kneading fashion similarly to how you would for scones. Divide dough in half. Refrigerate one half for ten minutes during the next step. Take the remaining half and push it into the base of prepared tin working it evenly with your hands covering the whole base creating a bottom layer disc, neaten the edges. Pour the lemon curd into the centre of your disc and spread evenly leaving a 1.5 cm border free of curd. Brush edges with egg wash. Remove your remaining dough from the fridge and, on a floured surface, roll out to a matching sized disc. Gently work the edges with your fingers to neaten. Lift carefully and gently place over base and lemon curd, softly pressing edges to seal. Brush over the top with your egg wash, sprinkle with sugar and almond flakes. Place in the oven and immediately turn heat down to 200. Cook 15-20.

Allow to cool in tin and transfer to a serving plate when completely cooled.

Serve with lashings of cream, sour cream or yoghurt. You may also like to serve warm with ice cream as a dessert but not hot, that curd will burn your tongue if you let anticipation take over.

Apricot and Cardamon Sweet Buns

Earlier this week I was coaxed out early in the morning for my walk by the sudden burst of warm spring weather. My usual listening wasn’t available at the earlier hour so I searched for a podcast to keep me distracted. I was up to date on all my usual favourites so thought I’d search for something new and landed on this one. Listening to Ruth and Julia chat all things food was obviously right up my alley but the premise of the podcast and where that went was of greater interest. Julia invites older women (she’s 61) on Wiser Than Me, to chat about life and what it’s taught them. I was taken with the conversation enjoying listening to Ruth’s recollections on her career in food writing, but one statement jumped out at me, “the only thing that really keeps you young, is constantly doing things you don’t know how to do.” Somewhere in my subconscious I knew this to be so. We’re advised to do puzzles, learn a language or even a musical instrument to stay young, but hearing an older woman (she’s 75) who I admire, state it as her greatest piece of life advice brought it to the surface.

Also this week this substack dropped. I love reading Kate’s words, always beautiful describing her world and observations in a captivating and artful way. She described her experience of being stopped in her tracks, quite literally while driving from home through country Victoria, by the captivating site of a landscape jewelled by shades of gold and emerald. This moment in time that drew her to the roadside to inhale the ‘wonder’ of its beauty was the theme for her ponderings this week. Wonder and it’s importance in life, in moments and in the everyday. It felt both fitting and in keeping with the thoughts of Ruth. Wonder and knowledge and a fulfilling life.

A month or so ago I enrolled in and began an online course to improve my baking skills called The Science of Baking. I have a reasonable knowledge base for baking but lots of gaps and no real understanding of the chemistry of the ingredients I use and how everything interacts. Working my way through this course has been both enlightening and exciting. I know, very geeky of me but we all have our thing right? Anyway what’s been most exciting is the learning, joining the dots, filling the gaps and gasping at all the ‘lightbulb’ moments. Whilst educational it’s been enlightening and invigorating.

With a lifelong innate sense of curiosity flavour ideas often come to mind. Some work, some don’t. Sometimes my curiosity is driven by an unusual recipe with an ingredient combination I may not have previously tried or one I can’t even imagine tasting. Like the ‘Secret Ingredient Spaghetti” recipe, spoiler alert, dark chocolate in Spaghetti Bolognese doesn’t work. Other times classic combinations reimagined into something new is a delight and revelation all its own.

My newly acquired skills have inspired many flavour ponderings recently. Often popping in my head in the middle of the night, hi there hot flushes and insomnia, remembering these can be a challenge, “sit down brain fog.” Sometimes though I do manage to retain the idea and see it through to fruition.

Golden tangy apricots came to mind when my face was warmed by all this premature balmy weather. Juice dripping from glowing orbs one of summer’s great joys. But alas not yet. Still weeks to go until they, with their orchard fruit family, appear in stores, but the dried variety are ever present and available. Richer in flavour I remembered enjoying them in a sweet, yeasted bun as a child, encased in fluffy sweet dough and drizzled with white chocolate, they were a favourite bakery treat. As is my wont however, and armed with my burgeoning knowledge of yeast and wheat I pondered a reimaging of sorts of my much-loved childhood favourite. Imagining a more mature flavour pairing than the one of my youth I mixed and measured, waited and shaped and waited again. Like that child with anticipation, I perched near my oven, its light on, peering through the glass watching the ‘show’ of yeast, sugar and all their comrades at play growing into plump, fluffy yeasted buns of my own.

And there it was…wonder!

The union of learning and wonder colliding to create delight and awe. The invigorating realisation that at any step in our day and journey there’s always something round every corner to learn and take our breath away.

Seeing an idea evolve to a successful completion is a wonder all its own and one urge you to try. Don’t be shy of trying to cook with yeast. It’s an ingredient that can intimidate even the most skilled and experienced cook but one that is the root of some the most delicious foods in life and that has endured throughout centuries.

Ingredients:

Buns:

120 gm Dried apricots, roughly chopped

500 gm bread flour

3 tsps dried yeast

½ tsp all spice

2 tsp ground cardamon

80 gm golden caster sugar (white is fine if that’s all you have)

100 gm of very soft butter

200ml of room temp milk (you can microwave this for 30 seconds if you’re in a rush or baking spontaneously)

2 eggs, room temp again please

50 gm candied citrus peel

Finely grated zest of one orange

1 heaped tsp salt flakes

Icing:

2/3 c icing sugar

2 Tb sour cream

2 tsp orange juice from the zested orange.

Method:

In a small bowl cover apricots in boiling water, set aside to soak while you prepare your other ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer combine all other ingredients. Drain, apricots and press you’re your hand to squeeze out remaining liquid and add to the bowl with other ingredients.

Set stand mixer to med low until all dry ingredients are amalgamated, 1-2 minutes, then increase speed to med and knead for 8 minutes. It’s quite a sticky dough, don’t be tempted to add flour, just let it do its thing. I like to stop a couple times during this part and scrape the sides down to help things along.

While the dough is mixing, grease a large glass bowl with butter (see notes), set aside.

When kneading is complete, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Again, don’t be tempted to add more flour, just a light sprinkling if it needs help to not stick to the bench and your hands. Give the dough a light knead by hand just to make sure the fruit is evenly distributed. Place smooth side up in the greased bowl loosely covered with cling wrap and set aside in a warm draft free spot to prove until double in size.. see notes.

If proving in the oven, remove. Preheat oven to 180c and line a baking tray with baking paper.

When doubled in size (about two hours) turn out onto a lightly floured surface again. The greasing in the bowl should help this along. Gently divide the dough into 12 equal sized pieces shaping into ball shapes. Line up on the tray and leave in a warm spot again with a tea towel over the top. This will let them puff up slightly and relax after being handled. Rest them for 30 minutes.

Brush with an egg wash and bake for 30 minutes.

Allow to cool completely and ice with combined icing ingredients. You may like to sprinkle with roasted almond flakes or toasted coconut flakes.

Or you could rip one open hot and slather in butter and enjoy with the oozy butter running between your fingers, your choice.

Notes:

If it’s cooler where you are or you lack a warm spot for your dough try this tip. Turn the light on in your oven when it first occurs to you to cook buns. The ambient warmth from the light will be just right for a consistent temperature to help your yeast along and of course an oven is guaranteed draft free.

While your dough is in the mixer fill the glass bowl with hot tap water to warm it up. The dough will be a nice temp from mixing to kick off the proving process, warming the bowl first ensures the dough isn’t ‘shocked’ by being transferred to a cold bowl.

Pecan, Date and White Chocolate Blondies

In 2008 Jessica Seinfeld published her first cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. Born of the frustration of feeding small fussy eaters, she devised a wide variety of recipes addressing all the usual nutritional concerns of parents. Her creations were low in sugar, high in nutrient density and full of vegies and supposedly loved by her kids, her and her famous husband alike. Seemingly the perfect combination. Hers was a not a particularly unique niche except for the big ticket item in her mix and the meaning behind the clever title of the book. Her recipes were not only vegie forward and loaded but the veggies were hidden. And not just a rudimentary disguise but at almost where’s wally, espionage level disguises. Vegetable purees were added to a plethora of dishes not normally noted for their vegetable content and smug parents the world over patted themselves on the back for their ingenuity and trickery. Parents 1, kids 0!

I remember buying the book fascinated by the concept thinking that I too could trick my kids into believing a vegetable loaded brownie really did taste as good as the more traditional style. With budding enthusiasm, I opened that tome convinced I could beat those boys at their own veg resistant game. I was soon deflated. Have you read it? In order to embark on the Santa Claus style deceit, I was going to need to purchase an additional fridge to store the enormous range of fruit and vegetable purees I was going to be required to keep stored to stir through her recipes. I was then going to smile and wave as I handed my kids ‘treats’ containing all sorts of smoothly pulped, pre-cooked potions. Whilst a great concept it honestly sounded more time consuming than the dinner time disputes we were engaging in and frankly I was pre-occupied enough with the parental ruses of Santa, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.

Aside from the time load I envisaged this method creating, front of mind for me, was the possibility that this would also make my boys unfamiliar with vegetables and therefore even more unlikely to eat them. When you search “hiding vegetables in food” in google the web offers up 9,000,000+ suggestions. As parents, we’re clearly not alone in our pursuit of vegetable love by our kids. It’s one of the many we seem to have aspired to as, enen by parents who perhaps even themselves don’t love veggies. Like sleep and toilet training it’s on the list of things we know as parents we’re meant to tick off. The list of tactics and strategies is long, full and often amusing. Spaghetti Bolognese with handfuls of grated veg, hamburgers or rissoles also loaded with grated veg, multi-coloured smoothies and my personal favourited sausage rolls with, you guessed it, grated veg. Who could even parent without a grater?

I had my own collection of strategies and recipes for fostering a love of veg with varying levels of success, or perhaps I should say ticking that veg quota box. We had ‘rainbow slice’ a collection of grated and diced veg encased in an egg and cheese mixture, also known as zucchini slice, but I wasn’t going to use the Z word. It’s a vague riff on this one, maybe I’ll share it with you soon. I also made ravioli soup, a simple pumpkin soup with kid size veg ravioli, corn and peas. Just between you and I, it was pumpkin soup loaded with pumpkin, carrot, potato and sweet potato for the ‘non pumpkin eaters.’

Like the short list of veg happily consumed here, introducing new fruit could also be a precarious path. But like veg, I had my ploys….or maybe I missed my calling as a quick thinking James Bond type spy. In an ‘adventurous’ moment as a mum I thought I’d try medjool dates with the lads. Reaching into the fruit bowl with curious little fingers and trepidatious eyebrows raised my son picked up one of the wrinkly squishy little blobs and asked what he was holding. I had one of two choices to make, honesty (as if) or another santa clause style fairy tale…. ”Oh, that’s caramel fruit!” I nonchalantly replied. “You know them. They’re the ones I use to make sticky toffee pudding.” It worked, he ate the fruit and I ran off to the pantry to hide while I silently fist pumped a parenting win.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating the veg puree laced cakes and treats. Frankly they don’t really taste that great, at least not in my experience. I’m not singing the praises of parental deceit either, though a little white lie here and there, in everyone’s best interests won’t really harm. I’m just a mum sharing a little parenting hack or two from the other side. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy a box grater and Caramel Fruit.

Are these blondies healthy in the traditional sense? Depending on what philosophy you’re living on, probably not. Do they contain fruit? Well yes. Yes they do. They have caramel fruit.

Ingredients:

220 gm white chocolate chopped

225 gm butter chopped

220 gm brown sugar

120 gm white sugar

1 tsp vanilla (because can you really bake without it?)

4 eggs beaten

220 gm plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt flakes

125 gm pecans chopped

100 gm medjool dates chopped ( toss in a sprinkle of flour to help them separate)

70 gm white chocolate chopped extra

¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

Preheat oven to 160c (140c for fan forced). Grease and line a 19cm x 30cm baking tin, the sort you’d use to make slice/lamingtons/brownie.

In a small saucepan, combine chocolate and butter and melt until just melted and combined, don’t let it cook too long or heat too much, it should be lukewarm. Pour into a large bowl to cool. In a second smaller bowl, combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt.

Once cooled, add eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla, nutmeg and salt to the cooled melted butter and chocolate. Gently fold everything together with purposeful but gentle folds ensuring everything’s combined but not overmixed. Sprinkle in pecans, dates and white chocolate, again folding gently with only a few strokes. Pour into the prepared tin and bake 35 minutes or until the edges have pulled away from the tin and look slightly browner and crispy and the centre is just firm, but a skewer comes clean.

Cool completely in tin and cut into squares of your preferred size

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.

Nana’s Chocolate Fudge Cake

I’ve lost my son’s birth certificate. There! I’ve said it. It’s been missing for a while but being a positive person who genuinely believes everything works out in the end, I honestly thought it would turn up with a more concerted effort on my part to hunt it down. He called from the outback on his adventure around our big island recently asking if I’d found it, plotting adventures further afield. “No problem,” I assured him, “it’ll be here somewhere.” Spontaneously, one morning recently, I set about pulling my room and closet apart convinced I’d be imminently victorious. As the morning dragged on and the mess of my efforts grew it became painfully obvious that my positive attitude may well have been misplaced on this occasion. A birth certificate is perhaps the most important document we carry through life, A document denoting the moment in time of our entry into the world. Whilst I’m not the first mother in the world to lose one and certainly won’t be the last after, what was stretchin out to a full day of hunting, I was becoming deflated and frustrated and frankly very disappointed.

Always one to look for silver linings however, I was spring cleaning (in Autumn) as I went through things. The piles of donate, keep, dispose of were growing and if nothing else that alone would make the search worthwhile. As the hours ticked by and I moved from one shelf to the next box my focus was waning and the effort to keep searching methodically leaving me rapidly, until I opened a camphor chest that sits in a corner. One of those big, in interior decorating in the late 80’s early 90’s, that I’ve hung onto for its practicality if nothing else. It’s filled with my Nana’s recipe collection amongst other curio. It’s one of those piles carefully stored though, if I’m honest, in desperate need of curating. Easily distracted particularly at this point of the search, I sat down to have a little peruse through the collection. Small snippets from magazines and newspapers fell from books heavy with text but scant with imagery. Retro recipes featuring ingredients and concoctions not enjoyed readily today brought a smile to my face. I scooped up all the little cuttings as they fell from the well thumbed pages replacing them from where they tumbled except for one small frail piece of blue notepaper. As I reached for the faded scrap of paper the old fashioned handwriting caught my eye enveloping me in nostalgia. I could imagine her in her humble kitchen sitting at her table, back warmed by sun through the kitchen window as she jotted down the recipe on a small piece of paper possibly cut into note paper size from an old envelope or other packaging, a habit from her frugal ways. She could never have imagined, at the time, the jou this quicky penned list would bring me so many years hence. Though acutely unwell she left us quickly and unexpectedly. I wrote about her here and the legacy of memories she left us and indeed reflected on the lost recipes and regret I carry not having spent more time in the kitchen with her as an adult. I wish we’d cooked together as women, my young sons at our feet, her instructing me and imbuing me with her wisdom both food and life. I wish I hadn’t been consumed with misplaced confidence that we had time and that I truly appreciated the hands of time taking moments from us. Seeing this little slip of paper fluttering from between the collected pages of other clippings she’d accumulated was like pennies from heaven, life a feather fluttering down gifting me this sweet creation of hers and a gentle hand guiding me, one I miss immensely.

The irony of this find is not lost on me, while looking for the birth certificate of my first son, born 14 months before my Nana’s premature departure a handwritten note of hers finds it’s way into my hands serendipitously. As excited as I was to find her little note from the past, I couldn’t remember having enjoyed chocolate cake at that white laminate table. None the less, following her instructions to the letter that first time I cooked her cake making sense of some measurements and instructions translating them to modern quantities and techniques. After a not so patient wait for the completed cake to cool I took my first bite of the buttercream topped cake and was flooded with memories of a flavour and texture as familiar to me as the handwriting that had guided me to this point. It’s a strange thing the memories our senses carry and the visceral feelings and emotions they evoke, almost like the familiarity long seen handwriting carries, the knowing and identity ever present.

I’ve followed and shared Nana’s recipe to the letter, though I’ve doubled the cocoa and increased the butter a little. Unlike her suggestion I’ve cooked it in a loaf tin rather than a lamington pan, doubling the cooking time. She’s a sturdy loaf with a rich fudgy centre and sweet crisp crust. I have taken nana’s suggestion of a butter cream adornment though have added some melted dark chocolate for a smooth luscious frosting. It’s a meeting of the minds if you will, across the decades, her delicious creation with my embellishments.

Now to make a cuppa and have a slice of cake while I contemplate what to do about that missing birth certificate.

**If you’re lucky enough to still have a treasured elder in your life maybe you could make them a chocolate fudge loaf, take it with you to visit and ask them all the questions you’ve wondered about. Trust me It’ll be an afternoon well spent xx**

Ingredients:

80 gm butter softened

1 c caster sugar

½ c milk

1 egg beaten

1 ½ c self raising flour

2 Tb coco ( dutch process, unsweetened)

¼ tsp salt flakes

¼ tsp bicarb soda

¼ tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla paste/extract

¼ c boing water (I leave the kettle to cool slightly while I’m mixing. Adding that boiling water to a mixture containing an egg still scares me)

Method:

Preheat oven 180c. Grease and line a loaf tin with a few cms overhang each side to lift cooked cake from pan later.

In stand mixer with paddle attachment beat butter until colour is beginning to lighten and it’s starting to turn fluffy. Add sugar mixing on low until just combined, increase speed to med-high and cream until light in colour and fluffy. Pour in milk, vanilla and egg mixing on low until combined to prevent splashing, increase to medium for a minute once it looks like it wont splash out of the bowl. Stop mixer, tip in dry ingredients and again mix on low until everything’s mostly wet then increase to med-high and pour in boiling water. Whip for a minute until it reminds you of the smooth creamy consistency of a packet cake mixture. Pour into prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes.

Do not open the oven door before the 40 mins. If left alone this cake with rise to a pleasing even rounded top with a fine crack down the centre when ready. Open the door too early and she’ll collapse slightly in the middle. Still delicious but lacking that smooth satisfying top.

I’ve topped mine with a butter cream recipe adapted from Emelia Jackson’s most excellent book Frist Cream the Butter and Sugar. You might like to try it with a Ganache or even a simple chocolate glaze

Buttercream:

40 gm dark chocolate melted and cooled. Do this first an allow to cool while completing the other steps. It needs to be properly cooled with setting as it may set into fine grain like pieces of chocolate when combine with cool butter.

80 gm icing sugar

1 scant Tb cocoa

60 gm soft butter

2 tsp of full cream milk.

Pinch of salt flakes

Like the cake whip the butter to lite and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients, melted chocolate and milk, mixing on low until combined then increase heat to high for one minute or until increased in volume, fluffy and spreadable.

Autumn Drop Scones

When life gives you lemons, make cake, though in this instance not the cake you’re probably expecting me to describe.

I must be in some kind of existential mood during autumn days marked by morning fog, afternoon sunshine and showers of red, gold and orange leaves. Between last week’s cat and mouse metaphor and this week’s ‘lemon’ like week in the kitchen.

It all started with the purchase of a baking book by famous author and chef Alison Roman. It’s a most luscious book with a plethora of gorgeous recipes I’m dying to try. One in particular, featuring raspberries, seemed like a pretty good place to start. The juicy little ruby like jewels are my favourite fruit and always draw my attention in any baked good or dessert and indeed any recipe, so what better place to start. Well somewhere else seemed to be the answer. It was an epic fail. No reflection on Ms Roman’s delicious sounding recipe, indeed it’s known as the cake that started it all. Trying to nut out what went wrong sent me down a rabbit hole reminiscing about another raspberry cake recipe I used to love and how I could give it a new twist. After a lot of reading, I was convinced I was onto something and gave my idea a go. Two attempts later, two cakes in the bin and I was starting to think I was jinxed where raspberry cakes were concerned. Google suggested one of two problems would be responsible for blonde bakes, not enough sugar or too low an oven temp. Neither appeared to be a problem, then, in what felt like a scene out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie, moments from the preceding raspberry cake episodes and a somewhat blonde roast chicken of a few days prior flashed before my metaphorical eyes. It had to be the oven. Like a tenacious dog with a bone I dropped everything and ran to the store to purchase an oven thermometer. Armed with this most vital instrument inserted front and centre on the middle rack I turned the oven on, perched on the floor watching through the glass door of the oven like a child watching their favourite tv show, I waited for the patiently for the all-important click to tell me the oven had reached the set temp, but as you’re probably expecting we weren’t even close to the required heat.

After a few days wait, expecting to be rewarded for my patience with an immediate repair, the technician casually informed me I had another ten days to wait for the part to arrive and a return visit. Like a child who’s lost their favourite toy I felt bereft, like part of me was missing. Dramatic? Much! But seriously, this was akin to having my camera removed from my grasp (yes it needs a service and a clean as much as my oven door but I can’t bring myself to find a week or two to live without it). You’ll be happy to know I drove to the warehouse to collect the part myself and as you read this it’s being installed…but I digress.

Not normally a naval gazer I found myself ponderous. A lot of people would be relieved to not be able to cook. I can cook my around a problem and usually enjoy a challenge so what was driving my foot stamping angst. Was it the technician’s casual ‘oh ten more days’ comment? Given my 30 minute proximity to the spare parts warehouse and frustration, quite possibly. Was it my unfulfilled love of creating for you guys? Well absolutely, yes. But more importantly losing the oven or indeed my camera for a service, should I actually unhinge myself from it, also takes away my pull to creativity. I was both stifled and frustrated by a lack of integral instrument for creation. One friend mentioned she could go weeks without using hers which made me realise mine is on most days, used for all manner of cooking. Like my camera that often travels everywhere with me I often walk into the kitchen and turn on the oven while a recipe idea unfolds and this made me realise how creating of all manner is integral to my joy and fulfillment.

This is so for many people with a plethora of ways in which they express their creativity. The creative arts, performing arts, gardening, food, writing, the list is long and varied as are the reasons.

Creativity can free your mind from the everyday allowing your brain and body to enter a different realm from that in which you dwell on a daily basis. Often our routine lives can be mundane or lacking fulfilment. Creating can deliver this to us in big and small ways whether it be as an act of meditation keeping hands busy and minds distracted or the ‘return’ of joy when our creativity comes in the form of something we can share with others like cooking or gardening. It can obviously offer yields in the form of income too, when one chooses to follow creative careers but most importantly as Elizabeth Gilbert says in her book Big Magic, “In the end, creativity is a gift to the creator, not just a gift to the audience.”

Gilbert also suggests that living a life of creativity is one driven more by curiosity than by fear. This notion of curiosity brings me back to my cooking dilemma, wanting to concoct a sweet treat for you, dear readers, that you’ll enjoy and that is interesting and not too difficult and one that doesn’t require an oven. Autumn sunshine warmed my kitchen, glowing through my one and only deciduous tree ablaze in red leaves. Mandarins, bright, shiny, glowing orange orbs adorned the fruit bowl atop my kitchen bench and an idea took shape. I recalled this cake from last year I still love and wondered on a notion of reforming it into a small bite size snack with a cuppa. Gazing fondly on china in my Nana’s crystal cabinet, a notion took shape into the form of Autumn Drop Scones, or Pikelets depending on where your Nana is from….but that is quite possibly another essay for another day.

I hope you enjoy my fluffy and buttery drop scones dotted with plump little currants and warming citrus notes from early season juicy mandarins.

Ingredents:

¼ c currants

Rind and juice of 1 mandarin

25 gm unsalted butter

1tbs honey

1 c self-raising flour

¼ c caster sugar

¼ tsp salt flakes

¼ tsp ground cardamon

50 gm Greek yoghurt

1 egg

¼ c milk, any milk is fine, I use almond but you do you

1 tsp vanilla paste/extract

Method:

In a small bowl, combine currants, juice and rind, butter and honey. Stir a few times to just combine and microwave 40 seconds. Yes you read that correctly, just a quick zap in the microwave until butter is barely melted. Stir well and leave to return to room temp while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, give them a quick whisk to aerate and combine and set aside. In a third bowl (sorry) whisk together yoghurt, egg, milk and vanilla. Pour into the butter and currants mixture, stir then fold into the dry ingredients mixing until just combined as you would for a muffin mixture.

Heat a large heave based fry pan over medium heat with a greasing of neutral flavoured oil and a dob of butter. When just foaming drop dessert spoons of mixture into the pan shaping and lightly smoothing. Flip when edges are cooked and underside is browned.

Serve warm with a spread of butter. They’re also delicious with some honey or even some marmalade. They’ll keep well for a few days in an airtight container…if they last that long.

Anzac Bicuits

**For the purposes of this story I’ll be using the Australian word “biscuit” for the baked treat I’ll discuss otherwise known outside Australia as cookies**

As autumn descended on the battle-scarred fields of the western front and cold winds began to blow through the trenches signalling an impending third winter in the elements, my grandfather’s war came to an end. Enlisting early in the four years of the great war he served the bulk of his nearly four years of service in France Via Cairo. The failure of the Gallipoli offensive, that he thankfully was spared from deployment in, saw his battalion broken up, reformed and moved to the emerging theatre of the French western front. By the time his service concluded, he’d spent 22 months in the often muddied, overcrowded and stench ridden trenches of the Somme with only three days of R&R. He’d served in other theatres of war in Franco offensives with a couple of periods of convalescence from injury and ill health spent in Britain, his birthplace, but the greatest period of his time away was served in the relentless conflict of area famously referred to as The Somme.

He was a gentle man, loyal to a fault, softly spoken, kind and endlessly patient. He was never boastful and rarely spoke of his time in the army. Signing up was a rite of passage at the time, service in the great war seen as a young man’s adventure. Something hard for us to imagine through a modern lens of instant information and 24 hour news cycles where live images of war are streamed globally, but an adventure it was to the young men of the early 20th century. It was the first war of modern times to traverse years, not months or weeks. It was a relentless conflict who’s breadth seems unimaginable by today’s standards and one that changed the lives of many.

Papa’s time at war came to an end three weeks before the signing of the armistice that brought the fighting to an ultimate end. Three weeks before quiet descended on the devastated landscape of the French countryside, when young men looked to each other in shock and awe that what had probably felt never ending was suddenly over. When adrenaline ebbed away in floods and exhaustion took it’s place. Perhaps shock and quiet descended on their souls too before the joy of a return home bloomed, a sense of doubt that it could possibly have come to an end.

As children we saw our Papa as a hero and somewhat of ‘celebrity’ of sorts having fought in the First World War. But his personal reflection of his time away was anything but that, indeed he never spoke of it, deflecting anyone’s interest with comments like war is nothing to celebrate or look back on. This was the way he lived his life for all 66 years of the life he lived after the war. Except for two days each year in which he allowed himself some reflection. One of those days, his annual battalion reunion, when together, servicemen gathered at the tree planted in their honour at the Avenue of Honour in the forecourt or our Shrine of remembrance. And the other day, our national day of remembrance and honour ANZAC Day, when ex-servicemen from the joint Australia and New Zealand forces reflect on the many conflicts they’ve contributed to, a day born out of that first modern conflict. It’s a day deeply ingrained into my soul and the DNA of Australians. It’s written on our culture and history and is the one way we hold dear, in perpetuity the service of those who went before us to build the freedom we enjoy today.

One of the many ways our military history has instructed our culture is, as always, through food. The ANZAC biscuit was one sent by those left behind in care packages to the troops as small acts of love and nurturing from home. The first love language perhaps. The original recipe is a little different from the one we’ve come to know and love. Oats and coconut were not in the iteration of the Anzac, perhaps a reflection of the lack of provisions and a nod to the innovation of home cooks. In the years after the war as prosperity returned oats were introduced to the recipe followed by coconut. The bones of the recipe though remained, butter and golden syrup, golden caramel flavours of comfort. A formula that survived the long journey across the oceans to the battle fronts and the tyranny of time to today, still forming the foundation of the iconic bake we know and love.

My Grandfather never shared his very personal story of the conclusion of his service, ironically only weeks before the end of the war itself. It’s one that emerged through research since his passing. It’s a deeply personal story that would resonate with servicemen through the ages and one I wish I’d known when he was still with us. I wish he’d been alive to see what we know today of the effects of war on our service people and know that his service is as respected and honoured as every comrade he served with. It’s his story and not mine to tell, one that always brings a tear to my eye.

But next Tuesday on ANZAC Day after watching the march on TV I’ll have a cuppa and a couple of ANZAC bickies and reflect with pride on his treasured legacy.

My version of the iconic Anzac Biscuit is inspired by a well-thumbed Australian Women’s Cookbook purchased for me when I was a child. It’s the seed of the one I baked for him growing up and have baked for my own children as they grew up and enjoyed the many storied our my wonderful Papa.

Ingredients:

1 C (100 gm) rolled oats

1 C (150 gm) plain flour

1 C brown sugar (200 gm)

½ C (50 gm) desiccated coconut

½ tsp salt flakes

1 tsp vanilla paste/extract

150 gm butter

2 Tb golden syrup

1 Tb water

½ tsp Bicarb soda

Method:

Preheat oven to 150c. Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

In a large bowl combine oats, flour, sugar, coconut and salt, whisking well to combine thoroughly and break up any lumps. Set aside.

In a small pan, over med-high heat, melt butter pushing it to just browned (you can pop over here to see a short link on how to do that if browned butter is new to you). Remove from heat and quickly whisk through syrup and water. Return to a low heat and sprinkle soda into butter mixture. It will foam quickly, remove from heat immediately and pour over dry ingredients. With a light but efficient hand mix ingredients until thoroughly combined. Roll into small bowls the size of walnuts. Space out on the two trays and cook 20 minutes.

Allow to cool five minutes on the trays before moving to a rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Coffee Slice

I live in the coffee capital of the non-italian world. A somewhat arrogant self-appointed moniker but deserving none the less. Café’s and roasteries abound on what feels like every corner, queues spilling out the doors of the most popular ones, a beacon to where to hunt out a quality morning brew. Everyone has their favourite, both for an ‘on the go’ cup and many, like myself, a favourite ‘dealer’ for the best beans. Indeed it’s a language all it’s own rivalling the finest wine tasting experiences with ‘tasting notes’ and notes of this and characteristics of that. The list of orders for a takeaway coffee is just as long and complex, and a language of it’s own with it’s own dialects from country to country, something that tripped me up on one visit to San Francisco many years ago, but I digress. Like many of my fellow Victorians I too have become a coffee tragic, though I don’t really speak the language, and no I can’t taste notes of passionfruit or blackberry in my coffee. What I can taste is morning bliss in a cup and like anything, I can taste what I like and what I don’t.

It wasn’t always like this however. Like many countries born of British heritage we were a coffee wasteland. Under the influence of British culture we were once staunch tea drinkers. My own parents, though the offspring themselves of tea drinkers, were coffee drinkers. Monthly they would buy a large tin, the size of a paint can, of powdered instant coffee. A fine brown powder that dissolved instantly in boiling water creating a watery drink with a flavour reminiscent of coffee but only vaguely so. Some even had ‘percolators’ elegantly presenting them at the table with what was considered the height of continental sophistication.

Whilst many remain with the whimsy of tea drinking the influence of mid-century migration from European countries brought with it a plethora of culinary delights creating an evolution in our own eating and cooking culture and preferences, and notably our beverage culture. Not only have we enjoyed the influence of Mediterranean cuisines from Italy and Greece amongst others, but also the delights of accompaniments with those meals of wine and coffee. We have one of the largest and most respected wine industries in the world and of course our coffee culture.

With only instant coffee at home I remained a tea drinker until my late teens. I was however curious enough to keep trying having enjoyed a sip of my mums ‘fancy’ cappuccinos complete with froth moustache and coffee and walnut cake at her tennis afternoons as a child. A burgeoning career in hospitality and the accompanying long hours made caffeine a necessity. And in love with coffee I’ve remained.

The origins of this slice remain under some dispute. It’s my take on an old recipe of my Nana’s which always appeared at the heaving Christmas table. Her version, sans coffee and with another flavour I’ve never been able to pin down. In my memory I called it Caramel Slice though it bares no similarity to the much loved gooey caramel slice we all know and love. So I’ve take a turn towards coffee and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Ingredients:

Base~

100 gm butter

60 gm castor sugar

1 Tb cocoa powder ( unsweetened, dutch style)

1 egg beaten

150 gm wheatmeal biscuit/cookies crumbs ** (We aussies call cookies bisuits, these ones are commonly known as digestive or granita biscuits)

45 gm dessicated coconut

30 gm chopped pecans

Filling~

90 gm softened butter

1 tsp vanilla extact/paste

500 gm icing sugar

20 gm custard powder

40-60 ml espresso coffee

Topping~

180 gm dark chocolate

50 gm butter

Method:

Grease and line a pan measuring 19cm x 29cm. Extend the length of the baking paper some length up the side on each side in order to be able to use those lengths to pull the slice whole out of the tin.

In a small saucepan combine butter, cocoa and sugar and stir over a low heat until butter is completely melted and sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and, working quickly, whisk through the egg until completely combine and smooth. Stir through biscuit (cookie) crumbs, coconut and pecans. Press into prepared tin and smooth out to a flat surface and refrigerate until very firm.

When base is firm, cream butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add 1/3 icing/powdered sugar and combine on low speed until combine then increase to high whipping until fluffy. Add half the coffee and combine slowly increasing once combine and until fluffy again. Repeat with remaining sugar and coffee until all combine finishing with sugar. Spread evenly over base again refrigerate until firm.

Finally melt chocolate in a bowl over gently simmer steaming water. When nearly smooth add butter and stir constantly until smooth and butter completely melted and combined. Spread evenly over slice and again refrigerate until completely firm.

Cut evenly into slices of sizes of your choice and keep refrigerated.

**Do this in a food processor or blender if you have one. If not pop them all in a bag and take out the day’s frustrations on those cookies with a rolling pin bashing them until finely crumbed.

White Chocolate and Vanilla Cookies

As you cross the freeway from one side of the verdant hills of Gippsland to the other the landscape opens up. The road becomes a little rough reminding you that you’re on that ‘road less travelled,’ pot holes and bumps slow you down, the road narrows and the hum of commuter traffic recedes. Fields stretch out left and right, dairy and beef farms, wineries and small hamlets dot the landscape as you climb in to the hills and towards one of the area’s loveliest bush walking destinations.

We’d set off in this direction a second day in a row having checked out a winery in the area the previous day. Visiting dear friends who’ve embarked on their own tree change we were keen to get out again, explore the area and stretch the legs. My husband suggested this jaunt, one, taking us up into the gentle rolling hills of Bunyip State Park. Through winding roads lined with eucalypts and ferns the route ascends the park’s eastern trail with views sweeping out across to the west horizon. The route is shaded by the canopy of towering mountain ash and fringed with stunning emerald green fern forming home to a diverse range of small wildlife. You quite literally feel yourself breathe out reaching to let the car window down a little taking in the birdsong and cool forest air as you drive the sweeping bends. After a small disagreement with google maps we found our destination, setting off, the Mr, myself, our friends and their three adult daughters found the small opening in the roadside growth and began our walk. Lush rain forest greeted us only a few steps in, the music of waters gently meandering the bordering streams, our soundtrack. We naturally break into two groups, the young and fit up front and those preferring to take in the scenery at a gentler pace, shall we say, bringing up the rear. Fallen leaves form a carpet for our footfall and release an earthy fragrance with each step up the slope of the trail. Moist earth creates a home for fungus and cools the air as we walk, talking, solving the problems of the world and also just taking in the forest calm…whilst inhaling the fresh mountain air….or puffing and panting labouring up the hill side climb….whichever way you want to look at it. Sometimes the forest is silent but as the path twist and turns forward the whooshing of bubbling waters encourages us onwards, the occasional sound of a distant car reminding us we’re not too far from civilisation. Before too long the sounds of gushing water grow nearer and the happy voices of the forward party rejoicing at reaching our destination become louder as we approach, edging us to our destination. We’re rewarded with the stunning view of waters cascading over boulders, a soft mist moistening our faces and a breeze coming off the rushing torrent. After stopping a while taking in the view we start the trek back. Taking the view from the reverse perspective always shows a landscape in a different light. I stop to take more photos having already shot many along the walk in. The walk back a seemingly easier one, a trek that feels like it’s all downhill, in the best possible way.

Or maybe the walk back to the car and picnic ground was easier, with the knowledge that a morning tea picnic awaited. Whilst beautiful, our walk did get the legs working, filling our lungs with fresh forest air and working up a bit of an appetite and one deserving of the cake and bickies I’d baked the day before. Thinking about those treats on the walk back, hungry, I started imagining some other ideas for baked goods I could try. Remembering a can of condensed milk in the pantry at home I considered a slice perhaps, but then wondered if you could make cookies with it.

We gobbled up the goodies I had made but over the next couple days, many baking trays and a few large jars full of variations on the theme I’ve come up with the quickest, yummiest vanilla white chocolate cookie I’ve ever made. One you can throw together in a hurry when an impromptu country drive and bushwalk beckons.

Ingredients:

150 gm of soft butter

½ C sweetened condensed milk

¼ C brown sugar firmly packed

1 tsp vanilla paste/extract

2 tsp miso paste

300 gm SR flour

150 gm white chocolate chopped

Method:

Preheat oven to 160c (fan forced). Line two large baking trays with baking paper and set aside.

In a stand mixer or large bowl using electric hand beaters, combine butter, milk, sugar, vanilla, and miso. Mix on low until everything has just come together then increase speed to med-high and beat until light and fluffy. Stop beaters, add flour and mix on low speed until just combined. Add chopped chocolate and continue folding together with a wooden spoon until completely combined.

Roll into walnut size balls spaced on the trays to allow space for a little spread. Pop in the preheated oven and bake for 12-14 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few mins before laying out on a wire rack to cool completely, though quality control tasting while still warm is always ‘essential.’

Makes 40 small cookies

Notes:

*For a different flavour you can add peanut butter in place of the miso.

*Soft butter? Let’s face it, most of us don’t plan for butter creaming and whipping indeed the call to bake something yummy usually comes out of the blue. If you’re like me and not an organised baker you can slice up the cold butter, pop it on a small plate and warm it in the microwave on 10 second bursts, checking after each 10 seconds to make sure you don’t overdo it and melt the butter. But hey if you do, keep going until you brown that butter and make this instead.

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.

Blueberry and Spiced Frangipane Galette

In the way I spoke about creative block a few weeks ago, this week the creativity was free flowing but the frustration ever strong. I knew what I wanted to create and I knew the basics and mechanics of those elements and was sure it should have worked. Sadly though the frangipane wasn’t set. The flavour was exactly where I wanted it but the texture was all wrong. Falling away from perfect at the outer it was sludgy in the centre and frustratingly oozy. I love Frangipane and have made it many times so you can imagine how annoyed I was. It took me back to my twenties when I was trying all sorts of new cooking techniques and recipes in my own home and my own first small and humble kitchen. With a much narrower skill base but boundless interest and motivation the breadth of things I would try and create was almost as great as the depth of failures. I would have, what amounted, to tantrums almost. Sitting at the table with my then boyfriend (now husband) sullenly eating a meal I could see in my mind’s eye but not taste at the end of my fork, almost annoyed at his fervour for the meal he had been presented with and his lack of acknowledgement of my ‘catastrophe.’ This frustration was most probably the catalyst for my cookbook collection and my passion for cooking. An interest and persistence born out of frustration pushing me ever forward.

The irony is not lost on me that blueberries feature at the core of the frustration of a few weeks ago rising up as the resolution to my rut then and this week as the source of my frustration. Their sapphire like spherical form are one of nature’s cleverest creations. Rich deep hues, sweet almost lolly like flavour reminiscent of blue heaven milkshakes and crowned with a flower like window where the bud has bloomed into berry. Likewise their delicateness is frustrating farmers at the moment as their buds soak up the relentless rain. Though they remind me of giant cabochon gems they’re not quite as tough. A reminder that whilst eating seasonally can be fraught with the fragility of being at the mercy of nature.

They require a gentle touch in cooking. My first attempt at this tart was laden with fruit it’s flesh collapsing to a jamlike puddle in the centre. Whilst this sounded like a good idea it’s ooze moistened the frangipane hampering it’s setting. Much googling and a few tweaks and we have a moist set frangipane, or almond cream as it’s also known. I’ve also used rye flour in the pastry to add a delicate nuttiness to the flavour of a short crisp casing. While the blueberries are indeed flavoursome at the moment, they can always be enhanced. The marriage of blueberries and rye had a Nordic air about it which led me to lace the frangipane with cardamon and lemon zest, creating an almost citrusy fragrant freshness.

You can enjoy still warm with a lovely vanilla ice cream, drizzled with a thin stream of lemon ice swished all around like ribbons or plain with cream, my favourite.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

120 gm plain flour

80 gm rye flour

20 gm caster sugar

100 gm cold unsalted butter, cubed

60 gm sour cream

1 tsp vanilla paste or extract

1 egg yolk

Pinch of salt

Frangipane:

80 gm butter softened

125 gm caster sugar

Finely grated rind of 1 lemon

½ tsp of ground cardamon

1 egg beaten

1 tsp vanilla

125 gm of ground almond/almond flour

30 gm plain flour

Pinch of salt flakes

200 gm fresh blueberries

1 egg extra beaten with a splash of milk for pastry glazing

1 tsp demerara sugar

Method:

Pastry

In a food processor or blender combine flours and butter and pulse on high until combined looking like breadcrumbs, some lumps are find. Beat together sour cream, egg yolk, vanilla and salt and add to food processor/blender. Pulse again until just combined. Tip it all out onto floured bench and bring together with your hands. Need briefly until just smooth and form into a thick disc. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.

When ready roll out to a round sheet roughly 30 cms round, this should be roughly 3-4 mm thick. Gently lift using the rolling pin and lower onto a tray lined with baking paper, set aside.

Frangipane/Almond Cream

In a stand mixer beat the butter on med-high on it’s own until lighter in colour and starting to turn fluffy. Add the sugar, vanilla, lemon rind and cardamon and cream together until light and fluffy again. Add egg and beat until it resembles custard. Remove the bowl from the mixer and gently fold in the flour and almond.

Spread the Almond cream mixture over pastry in a circle roughly 2-3 cms from the edge of the pastry disc. Evenly sprinkle blueberries over the cream and fold edges up as pictured.

Brush pastry edges with egg wash and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake 45-50 minutes checking half way through cooking time.

Muesli Bars

The cheers of my friends 7 year old screaming “ he’s walking” erupted from the lounge while we adults chatted in the kitchen. We rushed to the see what all the commotion was about to find my friends young son teaching my 11 month old to walk. It was our second wedding anniversary and not only had she brought us flowers to celebrate but her gorgeous boy had helped our son reach one of those much anticipated milestones. He’d rolled early, ten weeks, he’d babbled and chatted on schedule, gobbled up all that was offered and now was on the move. We all cheered and sat on the floor with him reaching our arms out to him encouraging him forward happily rejoicing with every step.

Parenthood is like that isn’t it? Anticipating all those milestones and all the rejoicing when they arrive. Some arriving on time, each one ticked off the list, others arriving on their own schedule sometimes causing anxiety and efforts rallied to help your young ones forward. Each rung of the ladder is exciting and each one marks the passage of time. No matter what others tell us in the midst of these exciting and busy years we do watch and wait with a mix of emotions.

As each one arrives so too does our own days and routines. Running around after mobile toddlers, taking them to preschool, starting the school days and all that brings including all the educational goalposts and extra curriculars. These milestones all act as building blocks to their lives and in turn our own.

As the early years of our children’s lives unfolded all the parenting moments and milestones of my emerged. Some challenging me others working to my strengths. As my eldest edged towards starting school I imaged myself creating all the gourmet lunches you could possibly think of. My young fella had a good palette and loved a wide range of foods. I couldn’t understand what other mothers bemoaned. To me I thought it was going to be a creative boon for this food lover. I soon learnt yet another lesson from parenthood. Coming up with variety and emptying picked through lunchboxes at the end of busy days soon became old. Each year would begin with purchases of the latest ‘lunchbox’ cook books and magazine special editions determined to do better and find new ideas. In turn each year would end with vegemite sandwiches and apples as we dragged ourselves to the finish line.

Then, in what felt like the blink of an eye, the school years were coming to an end and the lunch box ‘grind’ was too. I rolled through that first summer without a return to school and two adult men inhabiting the space formerly consumed by little boys with all the fervour of and excitement of a woman released from self-imposed shackles. Until I started to crazily miss it. Was it a metaphor for the loss of the little boys no longer running around? Probably. I’m immensely proud of the strong, self-sufficient and hard working men they’ve become but finding your place in the lives of your adult off spring can be a milestone of it’s own and a tricky path to navigate. But here’s the thing even adults still need parenting, it just looks and feels different and has a different scale.

At night as the boys prepare for the workday to follow and lunches are compiled, by htem now, I still often hear “mum what can I make for lunch?” you’ve read before about this one which has become one of Boy 1’s go to’s. But he also loves a hand held version, as it were, to munch on in the car on the way to work, as the sun rises over the suburbs and he sips his takeaway coffee in traffic. No longer taking shaky steps in the lounge room to outstretched arms but leaping through life away from the arms that now cheer him and his brother on in awe.

Ingredients:

120gm unsalted butter chopped

2tb honey

¼ c brown sugar

1tb olive oil

1 c rolled oats

1/3 c sunflower seeds

1/3 c pumpkin seeds

1/3 c chopped raw almonds or sliveded almonds

80 gm dark chocolate chopped

½ c dried fruite of your choice (I’ve used currants and chopped medjool dates)

1/3 c shredded coconut

¼ tsp salt flakes

Method:

Preheat oven to 160c (140c fan forced) and grease and line a 19.5cm x30cm slice tin.

Over a med-low heat, gently melt butter honey and sugar together until sugar is just dissolved without letting the mixture bubble. It will need your undivided attention as you may need to hold the pan off the flame a few times and swirl a little to keep it off the bubble. Set aside and allow to cool to room temperature. If you don’t mind an extra dish to clean pouring the mixture into a wide bowl like a pasta bowl will speed this up.

While you’re waiting for that to cool, combine all remaining ingredients ensuring any sticky ingredients like dried fruit are broken up and covered in the dry ingredients.

Once wet ingredients are suitably cooled pour over the dry and stir to mix thoroughly until there’s no sign of dry ingredients. Some of the chocolate may soften and even melt a little. This will depend on how cool your butter was and how warm/soft your chocolate was. So long as the chocolate is still mostly whole it’s fine. In fact it will even help flavour the bars. Press into prepared tin pushing down to flatten. Pop in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes.

Allow to cool almost completely in the tin. Gently lift out of the tin onto a rack and slide paper out from underneath.

When completely cool cut into the shape and size you desire. The outer pieces will be crispy and the inner ones chewy. The perfect mix for families of various tastes