A week or so ago a friend of mine had a birthday. Here in Sydney, as in so many places around the world at the moment, anything but essential travel is banned so though it was possible for me to make him a cake, it wasn't possible for me to deliver it personally, even though he was just across the bridge. In any case, there suddenly wasn't any flour to be found seemingly in all of Australia so cake too seemed impossible. But then, in an effort to distract myself from the news, I strayed across this recipe for a chocolate, buttermilk and raspberry cake. Miraculously it was flourless. And all the ingredients were store cupboard staples, or could be crafted from them with a bit of ingenuity. The recipe was from (the ironically-named, given my dilemma) Flour and Stone, a beautiful bakery in Woolloomooloo. Buoyed by this discovery, I made the cake and booked a courier... because if you have to be alone on your birthday in the apocalypse then there should at least be something sweet and celebratory you can stick a candle on. It turned out beautifully - luxuriously dark and fudgey, studded with soft, sour-sweet berries, the prettiest pops of red. It arrived a day late and smashed to smithereens, but I'm told still tasted good, and I guess was an even bigger surprise for all that. Best laid plans... If this interlude has taught us anything it's to throw them out the window... and adapt! See recipe head notes for useful hacks on the other key ingredients, should you need them.
When I travel these days I'm more drawn to supermarkets than musuems. I could spend hours wandering the aisles, entranced by unfamiliar packaging, exotic ingredients and produce from opposite seasons or different climates. My best souvenirs come from here. I brought back juniper berries from Denmark last year, apricots from Tasmania in January and a few days ago, in Portland, I picked up some cacao nibs. I couldn't wait til I got home to open the packet. An opportunity presented itself to make a cake and I jumped on it. Lately I've been
experimenting with different kinds of flours. The wholemeal chocolate chip cookies started it all, but then there was an apple, rye and ginger teacake that left me with extra rye flour for another project. And in
the January 2015 issue of Bon Appétit I found it.
It called for cacao nibs, something I'd looked for in Sydney without success. I'm sure they're somewhere to be
found in the city but with a deadline looming, a suitcase to pack and
little point in making a cake just before getting on a plane, I decided
to pick some up on my holiday.
Cacao nibs are cacao beans that have been roasted, separated from their husks and broken into little pieces. They taste chocolatey but not sweet. A little fruity, a little nutty, they're like the thinking man or woman's chocolate chip. Here, they add a bittersweet crunch to the crumb topping, a beautiful contrast to the rich, smooth, darkly sophisticated cake beneath. Made with both yoghurt and buttermilk, it's incredibly moist and keeps well for days if you store it in an airtight container. This is good news for anyone with people coming for dinner on a weeknight or a school bake sale to cook for. It was good news for me, just eating a piece outside in the cold with a cup of drip coffee and a view of a snow-covered mountain that came out from behind a screen of cloud as if just for me. And when I make this cake again back on the other side of the world sometime, I'll remember that moment.
Chocolate rye crumb cake
Adapted from a recipe in the January 2015 issue of Bon Appétit
As it contains more essential oils than other flours, rye flour is best stored in the fridge or freezer.
Crumble
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup rye flour
1/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons cacao nibs
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt (or 1/8 teaspoon table salt)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and chopped into pieces
Cake
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup rye flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt (or 1/4 teaspoon table salt)
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup Greek yoghurt
First, make the crumble: whisk sugar, both flours, cacao nibs, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl til blended. Work in butter with your fingers to form large clumps - there should be no dry spots. Cover and chill.
Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Grease a 9 inch springform tin and line the base with baking paper.
Now to the cake: whisk both flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, cream butter and both sugars til light and fluffy (about 5 minutes in a mixer). Mix in eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla and stir til blended (another 2 minutes). Fold in half the dry ingredients, then the buttermilk. Once combined, add the remaining dry ingredients, followed by the yoghurt to make a stiff batter. Scrape into prepared tin and scatter crumble over.
Bake, rotating once, til cake starts to pull away from sides of pan and a tester inserted in the centre comes out clean - about 60-70 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on a wire rack before turning out.
Way back when I was a student and working part-time in cafés, muffins were big. Literally. Huge, puffed-up, cricket ball-size sugar bombs. There was always some sort of vague attempt to present them as a healthy option (often by just placing them next to cheesecake, mudcake or caramel slice), especially if there was fruit involved. Apple cinnamon was popular, as was blueberry, and banana, but the hot seller was triple chocolate. There would have been more nutritional value in eating the tin. While all this was going on, my mother was having a muffin moment of her own. And hers couldn't have been more different. As a teenager, it's your duty to treat with deep suspicion anything a parent makes and tries to sell as good for you. My mother's version of the muffin was dense with bran, and wholemeal flour and fruit and just about anything else she had lying around and needed to use up, causing me to not-so-affectionately refer to them as compost muffins. Mum, I'm sorry. Especially when now as a fully-fledged adult, I'm drawn to a recipe that looks not so different to yours. Plus or minus a bit of brown sugar. And buttermilk. Deb Perelman posted this recipe - from Brooklyn's Blue Sky Bakery - a few weeks ago on her blog Smitten Kitchen,
and ever since I'd had a craving. And, after a few failed attempts to
find wheat bran, I finally got to satisfy it Saturday. I wasn't
disappointed.
These muffins may not be quite as virtuous as the ones my mother makes, but they're a nice in-between: chewy bran, fresh fruit, and a satisfying sweetness. You can use any fruit you like (fresh, frozen, overripe, underripe), they come together in five minutes, bake for not much longer, and freeze well, which means... I can save some for my mother's next visit. It's the least I can do.
I think I must have been a member of the CWA (Country Women's Association) in a past life. How else to explain the fact that there are four different homemade jams in my fridge at the moment? First there was cherry. Then came plum, after the cherry was such a success. And what happened next was Tasmania. Two separate trips, two different jams with apricots foraged from a backyard tree in January and blackberries from the side of the road in March. So. Four jars of jam, and more in the cupboard. It seemed like as good a reason as any to make biscuits. Not biscuits as the CWA would know them, but as found deep in the American south. There, they serve them with fried chicken and smothered in gravy, but I've always been fond of them as a breakfast food, and as a gloriously flaky, lightly leavened, subtly sweet... vehicle for jam.
So on Easter Saturday, the day in between hot cross buns and chocolate, I had a jam gathering: a tray of buttermilk biscuits, an array of jams, and a combined effort on the quiz in the back of the Good Weekend.
Biscuits must be in the
zeitgeist at the moment. Everywhere I turn online, people seem to be making them. Ordinarily I would have tried these or perhaps given these a go, but when it came down to it, I'm loyal to my original recipe which comes from the Macrina Bakery in Seattle, one of my favourite places in all the world and no better authority on a baked good. Good being the operative word.
We all have favourite places. Places we return to again and again because they make us feel inspired, or comforted, or even just plain old happy. Macrina Bakery in Seattle is one of these places for me.
Though there are three stores now, the original, down on 1st Ave is the one I head for like a homing pigeon whenever I find myself in town.
I've clocked countless hours there having breakfast, coffee (well, never just coffee) or lunch with people I love, or by myself either staring out the window or writing postcards at their chrysanthemum adorned tables.
A couple of years ago, Macrina published a cookbook, generously sharing their recipes, and making it possible for those of us who live far, far away and can't just pop in as much as they might like to, to have a little piece of our favourite place right here in our kitchen.
You can make this with whatever seasonal fruit is to hand - apples, nectarines, plums - but I particularly like the silkiness of the pear against the chewy crumb of the cake. With its caramel crown and dark, brooding beauty, it looks far more high maintenance than it actually is. It comes together quickly and is eaten just as fast.
About this time last year, my father and I did a road trip in the American midwest. I was researching a project of mine and he came along for the ride. Well, technically speaking, it was me who was doing the riding as Dad drove most of the time. On the agenda were Minnesotan lakes (for me) and notable regional architecture (for him) - from dilapidated barns, to a Frank Lloyd Wright gas station (with an observation deck for you to look over the countryside you've just traversed), to the most beautiful bank in all the world, in Owatonna MN (designed by Louis Sullivan). We clocked up a lot of miles, saw a lot of pretty leaves and ate a lot of pancakes. Most days we'd start the morning perusing a laminated plastic menu while sipping bottomless cups of lukewarm coffee, the Rand McNally road atlas open on the table between us.
Dad came down to visit recently. We looked at photos from our trip. And I made him pancakes.
There's something about pancakes for breakfast that is inherently
exciting, hence the inclusion of the exclamation mark in the title of
this post. There are endless variations on the basic combination of eggs, flour, milk and sugar (fruit, nuts, grains, ricotta... the list goes on and on) but when I'm making them at home, I like to keep it simple.
