Caramel Oat Bars

With emphasis on the caramel.

Imagine you are a slice living in my house. Your main goal in life as a slice is to be eaten but more importantly is to win the affection of me, Sophie so I will make you over and over again. How does a slice win my affections? Well the same way anyone does; with chocolate, caramel and enough sugar to turn a health freak into a diabetic in one bite.

This slice is a winner, no doubt about that. Sure the others I have posted about have the chocolate and the sugar aspects and are delicious but few slices can compare to one that is layered and within those layers lies a gooey caramel centre.

In the flurry of all these new slices that Mum and I have been finding recipes for I forgot about my old favourite, my turn to, my staple to impress. I am blaming my Christmas bakewell and birdseed slice for this.

Rewind back to last January and I was making this caramel oaty slice as well as my lemon krummeltorte slice at least once a week to take to friends places or as thank yous to people for letting me stay at their houses over the holidays.

I made this slice for my brother to take as a thank you for his friend Drew's parents for letting him stay a couple of nights in Tairua with them. It was this or the brownie and I was not in the mood to battle with sticky chocolatey brownie mixture.

Its pretty easy, in fact it is very difficult to get wrong unless you burn it (ok which I sort of did) or burn the caramel.

Don't let me fool you, this isn't fiddly, candy thermometer requiring caramel. This is can of condensed milk + butter + golden syrup + saucepan caramel. Easy as. Unless your tin of condensed milk decides it wants to be far runnier than usual leaving you confused and wondering whether or not it will thicken to produce a delicious caramel.

Perseverance and sheer laziness to go down to the shops and buy a new tin paid off. The caramel thickened and the day was saved.

This slice requires three components; the oath base, the caramel filling and the coconut topping.

Usually when I see things that have components I flick the page and look for something less ingredient hungry.

But this slice is different. And well worth it.

I chose to cook my base slightly longer than it says too, this made it really nice and crunchy. If you are into more cakey slices with a softer base then only cook it for ten minutes. The end result is still delicious.

Caramel Oat Bars
Source of this glorious creation completely unknown
Makes a thin 20x30cm slice

Base:
100g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats

Caramel:
395g tin of full fat, full sugar condensed milk
50g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup

Topping:
1 cup threaded coconut
1/2 cup rolled oats
50g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and line a 20x30cm (or smaller) baking tin with baking paper.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sieve in the flour the mix then add in the oats and the coconut.

Press firmly into the base of the lined tin and then bake for 10 (soft) to 15 (crunchier) minutes. Once baked, remove to cool while you make the caramel.

Place all the caramel ingredients into a saucepan and stir over a low to medium heat until the contents has turned a dark golden colour and has thickened. This should take 3 - 5 minutes.

Spread the caramel over the base.

To make the topping, place the butter and golden syrup in a saucepan and melt together. Add in the coconut and oats and stir until well coated.

Sprinkle the topping over the caramel and base.

Bake in the oven for a further 10-15 minutes or until the topping has turned crisp and golden in colour.

Once cold, cut into bars or squares.

Enjoy!

Orange and Almond Baby Bundts

Hi there!

This is really just a quick update that deleted itself whilst I was writing it on my way back home from a day at the beach.

After my very successful lemon baby bundt cakes I decided to try another flavour. I saw a orange and almond version on a website somewhere but the actual recipe itself was much larger than my Nigella one which would have posed an issue for my already very full six bundt pans.

I decided to just use the Nigella recipe is my last post and instead of using lemon zest and juice I used orange zest and juice as well as a couple of drops of almond essence.

I love almond essence. It is a very strong and potent one so don't use it as you would vanilla because it can taste very over powering very quickly. Quite literally a few drops will do. Almond essence reminds me of Christmas cake; the best cake of all. The best part of the cake of course is the almond icing that goes atop of this marvellous cake. We have just finished our Christmas cake (it didn't get iced until New Years eve) and I already miss the wonderful almondyness that it had.

So for those of you who also pine after the delicious aroma of almond flavoured things then definitely go ahead and add the essence. For those of you who cut off the icing of a Christmas cake (God have mercy on your soul) then leave it out, it is still just as delicious without.

Once again this is the easiest cake recipe you will ever make. No beaters required. So great.

Unfortunately I was running off to my friends house for dinner (hence why I made these cakes) so I don't have any pretty pictures, just one I took whilst I ran down the stairs by the side of our house.


Orange and Almond Baby Bundts
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess
Makes six little cakes

125ml (1/2 cup) plain unsweetened yoghurt
75g butter, melted
2 large eggs
zest of one orange
1/8 teaspoon almond essence
150g (1 1/4 cups) Plain flour
125g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt

For the icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sieved
juice of half to one orange
1 teaspoon of butter, melted
2 drops almond essence


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease and flour the baby bundt tins.

Sieve together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and zest.

In a separate jug or bowl, whisk together the melted butter, eggs, essence and yoghurt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently mix until no more flour clumps can be seen. Try not to overmix as this will result in a dense and chewy cake.

Fill the tins until just below the top of the centre tube (the inverse of the bundt hole), sprinkle over a little white sugar and bake for 20-25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean or and cakes bounce back when touched.

Leave to cool a little before removing the cakes form their tins. Soft, freshly baked cake is delicate and if the cakes are too hot when they are removed they can fall apart. Also don't leave them to fully cool in the tins as this can result in them sticking to the tins.

leave to cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

To make the icing, use as much of the orange juice as necessary to make a thick but still drippable mixture. If it is too runny the icing will just run off the cake and only the bench creating a very sticky mess to wipe up later.

Decorate the cakes with a few long strands of orange zest if you wish!

I think these were better that the lemon cakes!
Enjoy!!

Baby Lemon Bundt Cakes

I found the best ever score at Pak n Save yesterday. Mini bundt tins with a gorgeous pattern to them and at only $7.99 for a pack of three. I bought six. Best purchase ever. I don't know how I am going to get all my new tins and books back down to Dunedin. It is gonna be a heavy ride. Who needs shoes and a hair drier when you have cake tins and cookbooks? I swear half of my luggage allowance is dedicated to bakeware.

Anyway, my good friend Cara bought me Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess for Christmas. It was an essential book and I just had to have it! What I love about this book is the way she writes. It isn't a sterile cookbook. She puts the time and effort into explaining things and reassuring you that the products of your adventures in the kitchen don't always turn out perfect and that's ok. She even points out the flaws in the pictures features, like chunks of cake missing as they stuck to the tin. The introduction is highly amusing and well worth the read. It is probably the best written cookbook I have come across. Each recipe has its own well thought out blurb recalling where the recipe came from, misadventures she may have had when making it as well as a few useful tips.

You should get it.

I had seen the mini bundt tins a few weeks ago but I withheld the purchasing of them, convincing myself that I didn't need them. Whilst flicking through Nigella I found a recipe where she used the mini tins. I was sold! So off to Pak n Save I dashed and immediately purchased the tins!

It wasn't until I was scooping the batter into the tins this morning that I realised that one of the tins was missing and had been left behind on the shelf. Ooops! So while I only made five mini cakes today I recommend making six as they kind of overflowed a bit and were a bit larger than I had hoped. Luckily I went back this afternoon and explained what had happened and the lost tin was reunited with its brothers in my kitchen drawer.

I actually made these little cakes for my brother to take two of them on a romantic sunset picnic with his thing/girlfriend (I have no idea of their official status!) this evening. I am also making Jack some mini bacon and egg pies to also take.

He owes me one.

Anyway I went to go and weigh out the ingredients when I discovered that our electric kitchen scales were deciding to have another crazy day and refused to weigh anything properly (they don't sit on a final value). I tried banging them against the bench, taking out the batteries but alas! I was just going to wait this one out. They will sort themselves out eventually. It always happens when I plan on getting up early to bake something.

I ended up having to google the weight to cup conversion for all the ingredients. Luckily it was only the flour and sugar that needed converting (the butter was from a new pack for I could estimate using the guidelines).

I'll give you both values below just in case you don't have decent kitchen scales (which you should have!!).

This recipe is so easy to make. You don't need a beater, just a spoon. There is no creaming of the butter and sugar involved, just mixing.

So great.

If you don't have mini bundt tins you could try mini loaf tins and I guess muffin tins as a last resort. Try serving the muffin versions with the icing on the bottom side of the cake (as in turn the muffins upside down to serve). It makes them slightly more interesting to look at.

I also sprinkled a bit of sugar over the top of the batter just before they went in. This gave them a lovely crunchy base which I think is great.

Baby Lemon Bundts
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess
Makes six little cakes

125ml (1/2 cup) plain unsweetened yoghurt
75g butter, melted
2 large eggs
zest of one lemon
150g (1 1/4 cups) Plain flour
125g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt

For the icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sieved
juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon of butter, melted


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease and flour the baby bundt tins.

Sieve together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.

In a separate jug or bowl, whisk together the melted butter, eggs and yoghurt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently mix until no more flour clumps can be seen. Try not to overmix as this will result in a dense and chewy cake.

Fill the tins until just below the top of the centre tube (the inverse of the bundt hole), sprinkle over a little white sugar and bake for 20-25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean or and cakes bounce back when touched.

Leave to cool a little before removing the cakes form their tins. Soft, freshly baked cake is delicate and if the cakes are too hot when they are removed they can fall apart. Also don't leave them to fully cool in the tins as this can result in them sticking to the tins.

leave to cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

To make the icing, use as much of the lemon juice as necessary to make a thick but still drippable mixture. If it is too runny the icing will just run off the cake and only the bench creating a very sticky mess to wipe up later.

Decorate the cakes with a few long strands of lemon zest if you wish (I would have done this but my lemons were ugly and speckled).

Nigella says you can vary this recipe by using limes or oranges instead of the lemons. I think I might have to give them a go. This would also work really well as a syrup cake recipe. Instead of making the icing, make up a lemon syrup with say half a cup of caster sugar, the juice of a lemon and a splash of water. Simmer in a saucepan until a syrupy consistency is reached then pour the hot syrup over the cold cakes.

Enjoy!!

Black Doris Plum Syrup Cake

Sometimes baking really does make you feel better.

Today I was in one of those womanly funks that just wouldn't go away. I tried supermarket shopping, flicking through my cookbooks and I even bought a new tart tin but nothing would rid me of this bluesy feeling. 

I used this mood as an excuse to bake a cake without my mother raging at me for a) making us all fat and b) costing her the earth in ingredients. 

Recommended to me today by a family friend (as we both sat there and got our hair dids) was Julie Le Clerc's black Doris plum syrup cake from her book Favourite Cakes. It sure did look marvellous in its juicy and sticky wonder spread across the page. What attracted me most to this cake was the beautiful fluted bundt pan that it was cooked in making the most amazing pattern on the outer surface of the cooked cake. I traipsed through Mum's baking pan drawer and found one that almost equated the beauty of Julie's pan. Unfortunately our pan was a few centimetres too big for the recipe stated. I also was unable to find a 410g tin of black Doris plums, only a 820g tin. Alas!

Wanna know what I did?

I made a bigger cake.

I know they say that we shouldn't play around and that we should always use the tins specified blah blah blah. But you know what? I don't happen to have every single tin in every single size, I wish I did and I sure am close but not close enough. 

I decided to increase the recipe by a quarter. The only exception to this rule was the tin of plums, I went right ahead and used the whole 820g tin. There were just enough to do two rings of them in this cake. I also used all of the tin's juice for the syrup; you can never have too much syrup. Ok you can. Never mind. 

Below i'll give you the exact proportions that I used for my 25cm diameter bunt pan. It filled the pan almost to the top so if you do infact have a smaller pan, reduce the ingredients by a fifth and you should be sweet.

Black Doris Plum Syrup Cake

Adapted from Julie Le Clerc's Favourite Cakes 

Makes one large bundt cake (25cm)

1x 820g tin black Doris plums in syrup

230g butter, softened

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

5 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 1/4 cups plain, unsweetened yoghurt

2 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 + 1/8 teaspoons baking soda

Plum Syrup:

left over juice from plum tin

juice of 2 lemons

1/2 cup white sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake.

Drain the plums, reserve and strain the juice. Cut plums in half and remove the stones from each one. 

Grease your bundt pan and dust it with flour. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 

Add the eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated and the final volume has almost doubled. 

Stir in the yoghurt.

Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until homogenous. Make sure you use a scraper to get down at the mixture at the bottom of the bowl. 

Spoon one third of the mixture into the base of the bundt tin. dot about six or seven plum halves over the top of the mixture. Spoon the next third of the mixture over the top of the plums. Place the next lot of plums over the batter. Spoon the remaining batter over the last lot of plums. Use a spoon to flatten the mixture in the tin.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a skewer or butter knife comes out clean. 

Leave the cake to cool for half an hour before turning out onto a cake rack. To remove from the tin, run a knife around the cakes edges, and sort of shake the pan to loosen it. Even gently bang it against the bench.

Leave to cool completely before pouring over the syrup. Remember the rule: Cold cake and hot syrup or hot cake and cold syrup.

While you are waiting for the cake to fully cool make the syrup by placing all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmering until the syrup becomes thick and well, syrupy. This could take up to 10 minutes of strong simmering. 

In this hot weather you are going to want to keep this cake in the fridge.

Serve with a nice dollop of plain yoghurt (we used mascarpone but I think yoghurt would be much better) and enjoy!

Ripe's Rocky Richmond Road Slice

Summer is the season for slices.

Slices are the perfect picnic treat. They can be packed up in plastic containers and safely make their journey to a favourite picnic spot. In my family that picnic spot is anywhere that has sand (much to the annoyance of Dad) and an ocean.

Slices are durable and sharable. They don't need fancy plates, forks or accompaniments, just fingers and a mouth.

We often make up slices and pop most of them in the freezer so that the next time we head off for a day at the beach we can put out a slab, chop a bit off and go.

In the case of this slice, half went into the freezer and the other half I took on up to Nana's for morning tea :).

The one problem with Summer is the heat. Most slices have butter in them which means as the temperature rises they start to become soft and sometimes even melted. Unfortunately with this slice, it needs to be transported in the presence of a couple of ice packs. Then again, how many of us go to the beach without ice packs in our chilly bags/bins anyway.

This recipe comes from the Ripe Recipes book by Angela Redfern. It contains all the recipes for the delicious treats that can be found at the Ripe Deli on Richmond Road (hence why this is called Richmond rocky road slice) in Auckland. Out of all Mum's recipe books, this is the one that she has used the most and made the most things out of. Every week or so there is a new surprise coming out of the kitchen which had its origins in this book.

This isn't your typical rocky road, it is more of a fridge set biscuit slice. Actually, it is a biscuit fridge set slice. The only point of difference is the presence of malt biscuits and marshmallows. It doesn't involve actual chocolate either, just cocoa, butter and sugar which makes it a cheaper option that the traditional chocolate laden rocky roads out there.

This is great if you have some built up tension that needs to be worked out as you get to bash the crap out of a poor little bag of biscuits with a rolling pin. Make sure the bag is double lined or else it might split, resulting in more stress and a whole lotta mess!


Rocky Richmond Road Slice
Adapted form the Ripe Recipe's cookbook by Angela Redfern

250g malt biscuits, crushed
250g super wine or arrowroot biscuits, crushed
250g marshmallows, roughly chopped
200g butter
1 cup caster sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
3 large eggs, lightly beaten

icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons cocoa, sifted
50g butter, meted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup threaded coconut


In a saucepan, melt together the butter, caster sugar and cocoa until smooth. Add the lightly beaten eggs whilst stirring briskly and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, crush the biscuits in a large snap lock bag or a double lined plastic shopping bag using a rolling pin. Crush until the average fragment size is around 2cm or less.

Mix the crushed biscuits in with the chopped marshmallows.

Line a 20x30cm baking tin with baking paper.

Pour the liquid mixture into the bowl of biscuits and marshmallows and stir until evenly combined.

Using damp hands, press the mixture into the prepared tin.

Refrigerate the slice for two hours before icing.

To make the icing, mix the ingredients (minus the coconut) together using a bit of hot water to loosen the mixture until it is pourable but still thick.

Spread the icing over the slice then sprinkle over the coconut.

Return to the fridge for another hour or so before slicing.

Enjoy at your next beach picnic!

Christmas Cupcakes

Happy Christmas Eve!!

Ooh so exciting!

In the Edmond's house Christmas is dictated by tradition.

Each year Jack and I get a new Christmas decoration to hang on the tree. However in order to decorate the tree the whole family must be together and Christmas with Bing MUST be playing.

But the best traditions are the ones kept for the big day itself.

Even though Jack and I are 18 and 20 we still get our Christmas stockings filled with treats. Unfortunately due to our more nocturnal sleeping patterns they do not magically appear at the foot of our beds during the night and instead are found outside our doors.

For as long as I can remember both Jack and I ignore our primal urges to sleep in and wake up at the crack of dawn. Whoever wakes up first has to run into the other's room and jump on their bed and say 'Santas been, Santas been!'.

Then we sit there on our beds going through our stockings and begin the munching on treats. Funnily enough the oranges, which we get every year without fail, are eaten last.

Then at about 6.50am we creep downstairs and put the kettle on. You see our Mum and Dad have some rules: no waking them up before 7 and in order to enter their room we must bring with us two cups of tea before we can show them what Santa brought us.

We grab their stockings (yes Mum and Dad get stockings too) and the tea and bound into their room. We all sit on their bed whilst we show them the night's loot. Then they go through theirs and without fail Mum's annual stash of macadamia nuts is opened. Something that isn't opened is Dad's jar of gherkins.

There is a funny story about these gherkins. Apparently when Dad was a kid, each of his siblings got a type of preserved produce like prunes, picked onions or in Dad's case, gherkins. I can't remember what the fourth item was.

So back in 2001 as a 9 year old, I relabelled the jar. Mum and Dad thought it was so hilarious that a new jar has never been purchased. Last Christmas we celebrated its 10th birthday. So once Dad pulls them out of his stocking, they return to the pantry for another year.

In order to go and open the presents under the tree we must then bring Mum and Dad a second cup of tea each. Once that happens everyone takes their place in the lounge around the tree.

Dad sits by the tree. He is the official present hander outer. Mum is always on the couch opposite the tree with Jack sitting beside her. I am on the couch beside the tree. I am the present assistant.

One by one Dad hands out the presents and we all watch while the present receiver opens their gift. This process lasts around 40 minutes. The older we get the less presents there are to open so we try and make them last.

The best presents are always the ones where we surprise Dad. Two Christmases ago Mum and I surprised Dad with an iPad. We wrapped it up in a huge apple (as in the actual fruit) box to try and trick him. When he got through the layers and then came to the small iPad shaped box he stopped in his tracks. He just stared at all of us in absolute disbelief. A few tears came out of his eyes. It was kind of hilarious to see someone so stoked with a gift.

I think the best present I ever got other than my Baby Born doll, Rosie, was my handmade recipe book that Mum had made for me. It is hand bound and made of hand made paper. It was given to be the Christmas before I left for Otago. Before then Mum and I shared with messy ring bound exercise book which had all our favourite recipes written and glued into it. She realised that upon my departure there would be a custody dispute over it. So she took some of the pictures from it, copied them and this lady incorporated them into the design. It was the best thing ever.

This book is filled with special recipe like my Nana's Christmas cake recipe which I got her to hand write.

I think Christmas cake is one of the best foods at Christmas time. Forget mince pies, ham and scorched almonds. The cake is where it's at. Of course it needs to be covered in the white and almond icing.

I found this recipe in the Christmas section of my Hummingbird Cake Days book. It uses fruit cake fruit, a nice dosing of the festive alcohol of your fancy and some delicious almond flavoured icing.

This recipe said to use rum to soak the fruit in. Unfortunately (very unfortunately) we did not have rum in the house hold and I thought Mum's stash of gin wouldn't be quite the same. Nana's cake recipe always uses sherry or brandy so I decided to substitute the rum for sherry to give it a more Edmond's family twist.

I also thing fruit cakes should be nice and dense with fruit so I used more fruit that it said. I also added a few more Christmas cakey spices and flavours such as almond and a bit of brandy essence.

Mum thinks these are better the day after you make them as they don't dry out like normal cupcakes. Try making the cake the day before you need them but ice them on the day.

I also didn't have any dark brown sugar, only normal lightly coloured stuff. This made the cakes not as rich in colour as I would have liked but they still tasted amazing.

Christmas Cupcakes
Adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book 
Makes 22

400g dried mixed fruit
100 ml rum/brandy/sherry
200g softened butter
200g soft dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
160g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
60g ground almonds
1 teaspoon almond essence
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
a few drops of brandy essence

For the icing:
500g icing sugar
100g softened butter
50ml whole milk
1/2 teaspoon almond essence


First soak the dried fruit in the rum/sherry/brandy for 30 minutes or overnight (overnight would be best).

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees on bake.

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale brown and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well between each addition. Beat until very fluffy. Add the essences. If the mixture looks like it is about to split, throw in a  few tablespoons of flour to help stabilise it.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and spices then add to the egg, butter and sugar mix. Mix until combined.

Add in the ground almonds and then the fruit and rum mix. The mixture will be quite sloppy.

Transfer some of the mixture into a pouring jug and fill a muffin tin lined with cupcake cases until each case is two thirds full.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean or the sponge bounces back when pressed.

Once cooked, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once fully cooled, cream together the icing ingredients until light and fluffy. More milk or icing sugar might need to be added. Make sure you sift the icing sugar especially if you plan on piping the icing on.

decorate with some festive sprinkles and enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy x

Delicious Delicious Date and Coconut Cake

I don't make enough cakes. It's always cupcakes, slices, biscuits but no decent discs of great cake.

I am aiming to change that.

The only problem with cakes is that you kind of need a reason to bake a cake and a significant number of people so that you don't eat the whole thing by yourself.

I found out the other day that I got into the honours program for my food innovation degree. I thought that was a good excuse as any to bake a cake. I had dreams of the whole family sitting around the table to eat cake.

Alas that is not the life of the modern day working family.

I had also made chicken and sundried tomato fettucine for dinner to be ready at 6ish. My brother and I waited and waited but the parentals did not turn up. We gave up waiting and had our portions just us. Then finally at 7ish Dad walked in. Then nearing 7.30 Mum walked in. There goes the family dinner.

Oh and then Dad complained that we had eaten all the dinner. No Dad, that is what half of the chicken mixture looks like. Exactly half. Aah then their were complaints that their fettucine wasn't cooked. We thought we were doing them a favour, afterall who likes half cold stodgy pasta?

Then I watched in agony as Dad attempted to boil water and cook the fettucine, asking every thirty seconds whether it was cooked or not.

They say girls marry their fathers.

I will certainly not be marrying a man who does not know when his pasta is al dente.

Right, where was I? Aaah Cake.

Right so the time that everyone had come home, Jack's and my stomach had empties sufficiently to fit in some delicious cake. Unfortunately Mum and Dad at this exact time were beached like whales on the couch full of creamy pasta and nursing their food babies. They did not feel like cake.

Epic failure.

So I ate cake by myself. It was just as delicious as if I was eating it with company. Also no one could judge me whilst I ate a second piece. Mmmm so moist was this cake.

Oh yes, what type of cake did I make?

I recently purchased Julie Le Clerc's book; Favourite Cakes. It is full of wonderful looking cakes, from chocolate cakes to syrup cakes to cheesecakes to celebration cakes. The best part is that it only cost me $20. Win!

I love dates, they are so great. So anything with dates in it I naturally love also. I also love that delicious caramelly coconut topping that sometimes makes an appearance on top of slices or cakes.

This magical cake had both dates and the magical coconut topping! What a match made in heaven!

Mum used to make a cake similar to this one except it also had apple in it. She used to make them before she got all boring and worky and Mum and Dad actually had friends come over for lunches and the like. Seriously it was a delicious cake, who wouldn't have friends willing to come over at every possible moment if you can make a cake like that?

When I started making this cake I thought the recipe was a bit odd. The cake batter only called for 50g of butter, and you were supposed to cream this with a great deal more sugar. I tried to cream the two but it just wasn't working for me. I decided to add 20 more grams of butter. That seemed to do the trick.

So once all the egg, butter and sugar was fluffed together, you then had to ruin this beautiful aerated emulsion by pouring in all the dates and their cup of hot soaking water turning the fluff into a sloopy (yes sloopy) mess. Arrg??? so much confusion.

Anyway the end result was absolutely devine! Well worth making. It is very rich so I don't suggest you have it after a heavy meal such as our cream laden fettucine. The topping is supposed to have orange blossom water but unfortunately I felt too poor to go and buy some. If you do have some, add a tablespoon or so into the topping and let me know how it turns out! I also am having a bit of a thing with making things nice and spicy. The recipe said to add just cardamom but I went ahead and added some nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger. I think it is just the time of year when everything is nice and spicy, why not let this cake join in on all of the fun?

Also, just to note that I used a 22cm tin rather than the 20cm. This means my cake was a little flatter than it was supposed to be. It just meant a greater topping to cake ratio haha.

Arabian Date Cake
Adapted from Julie Le Clerc's Favourite Cakes
Makes a 20cm cake.

170g pitted dried dates, chopped
1 cup water
1 teaspoon baking soda
70g butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly baked soft brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Topping:
50g butter
2 tablespoons cream
1/2 cup firmly packed soft brown sugar
1 1/2 cups of long threaded coconut.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and prepare a 20cm spring form tin with baking paper.

Place the dates, water and baking soda in a sauce pan and bring to the boil, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for 3 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add in the egg and beat until nice and volumous.

Stir in the cooled date mixture forming a sloppy and sloopy mixture.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg and stir gently to incorporate into the mixture.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer, when inserted, comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven whilst you prepare the topping.

In a small sauce pan, melted together the cream, butter and sugar. Heat until a medium dark to golden colour is formed. Stir in the coconut.

Spoon this mixture over the top of the cake evenly and then return the cake to the oven for another 15 minutes so that the topping turns a wonderful golden brown.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin before serving.

Serve with a nice big dollop of whipped cream. That would be great.

Enjoy!

Spice Crisps

I recently went on a cookbook buying binge.

Owning cookbooks is a bit of an obsession. I decided that I was going to one day have an epic collection of cookbooks and they would all be arranged in a magnificent bookcase in my wonderful kitchen.

I remember reading an article about people's obsessions with cookbooks in The New Zealand Herald Canvas magazine (I think). How many of your mums own cookbooks but have made only one or two things from each one? I bet they bought them because they liked the look of the things inside. We buy cookbooks that have nice rustic pictures with beautiful platters and table settings because we crave the lifestyle portrayed by those books. We crave those lazy Sunday mornings where a wonderful rustic inspired brunch is whisked up. We want to lead the lives of those people who are always entertaining friends and family over  a late lunch or evening meal with seemingly perfect meals that they just whipped up from this and that.

When we buy cookbooks, we buy the ideal.

Or so the article said.

Sure the best part of cookbooks are the pictures. I tend to dislike cookbooks that don't have a picture for almost every recipe. I like being able to see what my food should look like in the end, afterall we eat with our eyes. We choose what we want to eat based on how it's texture and colour appear.

Cookbooks to me are also a source of knowledge. If you take the time to read the blurbs before each recipe and the page or two written by the author you may or may not find yourself learning something new. A new technique, a new trick, anything. The authors take the time in the first few pages to talk about their inspirations for the book. That may be their childhood, recent travel adventures or friends and family. It is actually an interesting read. Books that are published by cafes tend to have a bit at the front that tells the story of how the now successful cafe or restaurant came to be and hurdles that had to be overcome.

One of the recent purchases I made was Ladies a Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston. This book is particularly interesting as each recipe comes with a mini history lesson on how this recipe came to become a New Zealand household classic. Photos of old Women's Institute cookery books and school fundraiser cookbooks are included. The recipes included are the ones that our nanas used to make and the pages provide a real sense of nostalgia.

While I find I might not make the majority of recipes in this book it is still a really good one to have in my collection. What makes this book special is the amount of detail and effort that went into sourcing and researching these recipes.

I love gingernuts. They are so great. Dunked into a nice hot cup of tea they are amazing (except when it crumbles to the bottom of your teacup and in the last gulp of tea you get a mass of soggy crumbs. Gross!).

I tried making ginger nuts from the Edmonds Cookery Book but unfortunately they did not have the same crispness that the good old Griffin's biscuits provide. These ones however are delicious. Before you bake them you roll them in sugar which gives them an excellent crispness. They are nice and spicy and I guess are quite a perfect little treat to make this time of year. The smell of them baking in the oven is amazing! It is one of the best baking smells to have wafting around the house.

These are super easy. The method says to leave the mixture in the fridge for at least and hour to firm up. I went to the gym whilst I was waiting to them to cool and I have to say it did make a huge difference when rolling them. They formed perfect smooth little balls which then flattened into perfect circular biscuits when they came out of the oven.

The recipe said to use treacle but unfortunately I still have not invested in treacle. I used golden syrup instead and they still turned out great.

These make a good homemade substitution for the trusty Griffin's gingernut and are best consumed when still slightly warm! Dad was most stoked with these biscuits. He is always one to complain about how the Griffin's gingernuts hurt his teeth but these ones are much more pleasant on the dental work.


Spice Crisps
Adapted from Ladies, A Plate by Alexa Johnston
Makes 48

170g butter, softened
200g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg
100g golden syrup (or treacle)
280g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 cup extra white sugar for rolling

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, egg and golden syrup (or treacle) and beat on high until very fluffy.

Sift in the flour, baking soda, salt and spices and mix until combined.

Glad wrap the bowl and place in the fridge to cool and firm for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees on bake.

Make large marble sized balls of dough by rolling well between the palms to make a smooth ball.

Roll each ball in sugar before placing on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Don't flatten them with a fork as they will flatten themselves but make sure they are well spaced.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until they are dark golden in colour and the tops have cracked just be sure not to overcook them.

Transfer to a cooling wire rack to crisp up.

Enjoy!!

So many noms.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

I love gingerbread.

Its so great. I love the crunchy crust that forms on the top. Oh and when it is still warm and the butter melts into it. Ahhh so good.

It's another one of those Christmassy treats that can be made this time of year for no proper reasoning other than that it is Christmas time.

I basically made gingerbread. In a cupcake case. That had stripes on it. Cool eh?

And what makes everything better?

Cream cheese icing.

That's right, sooo delicious.

We are all moving Nana into her new place tomorrow so Mum asked me to make something to fill her tins that we could snack on during the day. She asked for cupcakes, or gingerbread or something.

Two birds. One stone.

I got this recipe here from my Cake Days book (no surprises there). You guys really should buy it. So worth it. The recipe said to add black treacle. Unfortunately we didn't have any here, I just substituted in the same weight of golden syrup. This makes the final sponge not as dark as it should and the black treacle would have lent a deeper flavour. But never mind, there is always next time. Which there will be! These are delicious!


Gingerbread Cupcakes
Adapted from Cake Days
Makes 12-16 regular sized cupcakes or 20 scalloped cupcake case sized ones

140g softened butter
200g caster sugar
120g golden syrup (or 60g black treacle and 60g golden syrup)
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
310g plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoon baking powder
240ml hot milk

Icing:
50g cream cheese
50g butter
400g icing sugar, sieved
A couple of tablespoons of milk
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line two muffin trays with cupcake cases.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the golden syrup (and treacle), eggs and egg yolks and beat until fluffy.

In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture in three lots, alternating with the hot milk.

Once all the ingredients have been added, beat until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the cupcake cases until they are two thirds full.

Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Once they are cool, prepare the icing by creaming together all the icing ingredients until light and fluffy.  Add as much milk as you need to smooth the icing out.

Enjoy!

I did :)

Festive White Chocolate Rocky Road

This is festive if you live in the Northern hemisphere where in Winter at Christmas your roads are actually white.

I saw the idea for white chocolate rocky road on Instagram and Pinterest a while back and I really liked the way it looked. It made the nuts and other fillings you add to it really stand out against the white. Especially the cranberries and the pistachios.

The normal rocky road my Mum makes involves melting butter into the chocolate. I couldn't really be bothered to do that and so took the easy road out and just used straight white melting chocolate with nothing else added to it. This ensures that it sets nice and hard so that it can be cut into nicely defined pieces.

Now the beauty of this recipe is that you can add anything you want! (Well within reason I guess).

One of my best friends, Cara, was up in Auckland for the week (for her Med interview! Smartie pants!) and we found ourselves in need of something to do. So we scoured the Pak n Save bulk bins for some exciting treats to pave our road with.

With this rocky road, try and look for ingredients that will have an interesting cross section against the white chocolate. So really the more colourful the better. I love the way jube lollies look when they are cut in half. Same with pistachios, the vibrant green is really cool!

If you find yourself with a lot of filling ingredients, you may need a bit more chocolate to coat everything in. We found ourselves increasing our chocolate amount to 500g from 400g to ensure everything was well cemented together.

Use this recipe here as a guideline for your own Christmas road!



Cara and Sophie's White Chocolate Rocky Road
Makes a 20 x 30cm trays worth

500g white chocolate melts
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup dried strawberries
5 dried figs, chopped into chunks
1 1/2 cups jubes
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1/2 cup natural macadamia nuts
1/2 cup pistachios
3 cups marshmallows (130g)
1/2 cup natural almonds

In a double boiler (a bowl above a saucepan of simmering water) melt the chocolate slowly. Make sure no water gets into the chocolate or else it will seize. Also make sure the water is not touching the base of the bowl.

Chop all the larger ingredients into smaller pieces. Place them in a large mixing bowl and mix them around.

Line a 20 x 30cm slice tin with baking paper.

Pour the melted chocolate into the bowl of chopped filling and mix to coat everything.

Transfer into the lined tin and press down to form a nice even slice.

Leave to cool in the fridge for an hour before slicing into nice chunky pieces.

Personally, I found the strawberries and the blueberries not very economical choices of ingredients. I would add in a few more jubes and cranberries instead if I were you.

Enjoy! x