Pantry crumb cake

Sometimes there is no story. Sometimes it's Saturday and you just want to make a cake. So it was last weekend. I'd had this bookmarked for a while because I love any cake with sour cream in it, Melissa Clark is reliably good and this recipe is made for these times - infinitely adaptable to whatever you happen to have on hand. So I guess I do have a story after all. Especially as friends spontaneously dropped by - as we now have the privilege to do in Sydney in small numbers - and we all had cake together. It was sunny. It was Saturday. It was glorious.

Lemon tendercake

If you're a baker, words that will strike fear into your heart are "I'm a vegan". A cake without eggs or butter, or any sort of dairy at all seems somehow lacking in essential joy, not to mention texture or taste. At least that's what I would have said last week. 

A good friend of mine recently had a birthday. She had also recently become vegan. As luck would have it, I'd just seen an episode of one of Nigella Lawson's cooking shows in which she'd made something she called a lemon tendercake. It looked absolutely delicious and amazingly, happened to contain no animal products whatsoever. Better still, it called for no strange substitutes, featured flavours I loved and honestly couldn't have been easier to make. The miracle ingredient here is coconut. The creamy milk binds the batter and a yoghurt made from it (you don't have to make it yourself - it's readily available in supermarkets) serves as a sort of icing, adding an thick tang to the lighter than air lemony cake below and the sharp sweetness of the blueberries above. All together, it really does look quite spectacular and it made my friend very happy. This is a great cake not just for vegans but for all of us trying to reduce our dependence on animal products in the midst of this climate crisis. And an extraordinary cake in its own right.

Simple summer cake

It's been a sombre summer in Australia. Here in Sydney, we're safe from the fires but have been under a thick cloud of smoke since November. That's nothing to complain about compared to the rural and coastal communities north and south of us who've borne the brunt of this climate crisis but I lately haven't felt much like baking or writing about it. With all the footage of fires, and daily reminders of the devastation (awaking to ash blown in with the wind, birds flying indoors in search of water, a blood red sun, people in masks in the streets), it's impossible to be unaffected emotionally by all this. Baking has always been something that makes me feel better. So in an effort to do that recently I made this simple summer cake. I'm glad I did. For the short time it took to make it felt good to be doing something normal when the world right now feels anything but. In times like these it's important to be grateful for the small things. So make cake, share it with people you love, and start a conversation about what you can do.

Blueberry, almond and lemon cake

 

 
Blueberries were bountiful. Saturday I was going to the Blue Mountains. I snaffled Simple from the library. All signs pointed to me making this cake. Miraculously, my apartment managed to stay cool enough for me to bake on the rogue 35 degree day last Friday. It was fractionally cooler on the weekend, and cooler still up in the mountains. Cake felt like a good reward for surviving the heat, and the trip out of town in which we crossed the Harbour Bridge twice by heeding Google and not instinct.



This is a full-size version of the little lemon, almond and blueberry teacakes from Sweet and it's every bit as good - lemony, nutty and bursting with berries. It's hard to compete with nature - especially when the bush is in bloom with waratahs - but this was definitely a highlight of the day.

Lemon, blueberry and almond teacakes

It may have something to do with the season, but I have never embraced a cookbook as much as I have Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's recently released Sweet. In Sydney, in late December, I made rhubarb yo-yos and orange and star anise shortbread as holiday gifts. A few days later, in Hobart, I collaborated with a friend (and fellow Ottolenghi disciple) on the rolled pavlova with blackberries and peaches for dessert on Christmas Day, and on a hot, sticky Brisbane afternoon just before new year, I whipped up these lemon, blueberry and almond teacakes with expert bakers Alice (10) and Emily (5) in their new kitchen in Fig Tree Pocket.

Well, to be honest, I really did nothing more than supervise, passing eggs to little hands to crack, reading from the recipe about what to add when and overseeing the distribution of blueberries in batter. Though these look fancy as fancy can be, they are super easy and super fun to make, and showcase the beautiful berries so plentiful at this time of year. You don't need any specialist equipment - they're made in a muffin tin and simply inverted and iced to make little cakes (genius!). Though they're not strictly gluten-free, you could easily make them so by substituting more almond meal for the very minimal amount of flour in the recipe. They're sweet, light and unbelievably good. This recipe makes twelve, which seems like a lot but having had one, you will almost certainly want another. Get in quick.

Lemon, blueberry and almond teacakes 
Adapted from a recipe in Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh

I'm sure you could swap the 45g of flour for the same amount of almond meal if you wanted to make this gluten-free - just make sure the baking powder and icing sugar you're using are gluten-free. Most are, but best to read the label, or check online.


190g unsalted butter, at room temperature
190g caster (superfine) sugar
finely grated zest of one lemon (1 teaspoon)
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
190g ground almonds
45g flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
60ml lemon juice
100g blueberries, plus 70g to garnish

icing
160g icing (confectioners') sugar
35ml lemon juice


Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease and flour all 12 holes of a muffin tin.

Beat butter, sugar and lemon zest together til light and creamy, then add eggs and ground almonds in three or four alternate batches. Fold in flour, salt and baking powder, then finally add the lemon juice. Spoon batter into the muffin moulds and divide the 100g of blueberries between them - pushing the berries down into the batter a bit.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until edges are golden and a skewer inserted into the middle of a cake comes out clean. Remove from oven, let cool in tin for ten minutes then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely, making sure they are sitting upside down (ie: smaller end on top).

Sift icing sugar into a bowl and add lemon juice til mixture is thick but pourable. Spoon icing over cakes and top with remaining blueberries.