If I'm honest, I am not that into cheesecake. But my dad, who visited recently, is. I'd had this recipe bookmarked for a while and was biding my time til he next came to try it out. The thing about cheesecake for me, apart from it being so rich, how fiddly it is to make. Biscuit bases, water baths, chilling time... But this recipe had none of those things. All you had to do was mix together a few ingredients, pour it into a tin, bake til burnt (bonus: no anxiety about that then), let cool to room temperature, and eat. Amazing!
The only slightly tricksy thing about the process is the lining of the tin - because of the eggs, the cake rises a lot (before sinking back down) so you have to use a few pieces of overlapping baking paper to ensure it's contained. Easy really but should you be at all anxious about this, just watch this video of the recipe's creator, Bon Appétit's Molly Baz, making it. If the quantities of cream cheese are horrifying to you (4 bricks!), do as I did and halve the recipe and bake it in a smaller tin. Make no mistake, this is rich, whichever size tin you use, but that's what cheesecake is all about after all. Embrace it.
I am turning into my mother. She told me it would happen, more than once, with a wicked - borderline evil - smile on her face. And now it has. I have little flecks of grey around my temples, exactly where she had them, am evangelical about public libraries... and I simply cannot bear to let the smallest skerrick of food go to waste. I am constantly making ricotta (and freezing it) with milk about to expire, or zesting citrus I need for juice (another ziplock bag freezer stash) or burying bits and pieces of wilting greens in curries. Last week I had half a carton of cream in my fridge to use up. Happily, it was exactly the amount needed for this recipe, which I'd had bookmarked for ages since first reading about it on Food52.
It's the simple cakes I gravitate most to these days. This one - dubbed Do-It-All Cake - by its author, Danish cook Nadine Levy Redzepi (wife of René, head chef and founder of Noma in Copenhagen) is monk-like in its simplicity. But that's probably not the right analogy for something so rich, delicious and slightly subversive. The latter comes from the use of salted butter, rather than the traditional unsalted, and additionally, a light sprinkling of sea salt over the batter before it goes in the oven, which perfectly balances the creamy sweetness of it all.
This cake is the very definition of something being more than the sum of its parts. All the ingredients are everyday ones, there's nothing more to making it than a bit of beating and folding but it leaves your whole house smelling amazing and tastes incredible with a cup of black coffee. I wish I could make it for my mum but it does the next best thing, by making me think of her.
I've been away from my oven for the last month and haven't been baking but one sunny Saturday in Glasgow, staying with a friend, we went all out for the Royal Wedding. Neither of us are monarchists by any means (though my Princess Diana scrapbook from childhood would tell a different story) but it was impossible not to get caught up in a cultural moment that really did capture the public imagination, even in anti-England Scotland. My contribution to our high tea - in addition to scones - was a stab at the bride and groom's chosen cake - lemon and elderflower. While I couldn't compete with elderflowers harvested at the Queen's estate in Sandringham or the 200 Sicilian lemons reportedly flown in for the occasion, I made do with the very best M&S had to offer, cake tins that didn't fit the brief (see recipe note below), a lack of kitchen scales and an unfamiliar oven and it was still spectacular. For all of you who've purchased a bottle of elderflower cordial from IKEA and haven't got around to using it yet, here's your excuse. Other than that particular ingredient, the cake itself is very simple. All the usual suspects - butter, sugar, flour and eggs - beaten into a batter, baked in two tins, each cake cut in half to form four layers, each layer drizzled with sweet syrup, then the whole lot sandwiched together with elderflower-infused icing. The end result is light and summery, and altogether elegant. The two flavours - the delicate floral and the bright citrus blend together beautifully. Not your traditional wedding cake but then this was not your traditional royal wedding. And all the more delicious because of it. Long live elderflower and lemon.
Elderflower, lemon and mascarpone cake
Adapted from a recipe by Cygnet Kitchen
The original recipe recommends wrapping the cakes in clingfilm (once cooled) and freezing for ten minutes to make them easier to cut. I skipped this step as I was less concerned with perfection (read: lazy) and it turned out just fine but if you want to do things more professionally, then this seems like a good tip. Ideally, two six inch cake tins are what you want for this but I only had access to eight inch ones. The layers were slightly thinner but the cooking time was the same.
Cake
220g unsalted butter, softened, plus a little extra to grease the tins
220g caster (superfine) sugar
zest of 1 lemon
4 eggs (weighing a total of 220g in their shells), lightly beaten
220g self raising four, sifted
pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons undiluted elderflower cordial
Lemon & elderflower syrup
freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon
100ml undiluted elderflower cordial
2 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar
Icing
500g mascarpone
200ml double cream
3 tablespoons undiluted elderflower cordial
250g icing sugar, sifted to remove any lumps
Pre-heat the oven to 160 deg C.
Grease and line two cake tins (see recipe note above).
Beat butter, sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten egg, a little at a time, beating well in between each addition.
Gently
fold in the sifted flour and salt, adding enough undiluted cordial (3-4
tablespoons) to create a dropping consistency ( the mixture should drop
off a spoon when lightly tapped). Divide the batter between the two tins.
Put in both tins on the middle shelf of the pre-heated oven and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cakes comes out clean.
Leave in the tins to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to to cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the syrup by
combining the 100ml undiluted elderflower cordial, lemon juice and
sugar in a bowl.
Then
make the icing by whisking the mascarpone, 3 tablespoons undiluted
elderflower cordial, double cream and icing sugar together until thick
and smooth.
Once cakes are cooled completely, use a bread knife level the tops of the cakes if necessary and cut each cake in half evenly. With a pastry brush, brush the syrup on the cut side of each layer (or just drizzle it on with a spoon).
Place the base of one of the cakes on a plate or cake stand and spread with mascarpone icing. Add the next layer cut side down. Repeat with remaining layers, ensuring that the top layer is placed cut side down. For a 'naked' look, thinly spread the rest of the icing thinly around the sides
of the cake and then add on the top a thicker layer.
Incredibly, this is the 200th recipe I've posted here. For a while, I wasn't sure if I'd post it at all because in my haste to carve up this cake and serve it I didn't get a great photo but if this isn't a celebration cake, I don't know what is. Nothing says decadence like a dessert containing a budget-blowing boatload of pistachios. Roasted and chopped, they're bound with eggs, sugar, lemon zest and a dash of rosewater and baked into what is essentially, in taste and texture, one large macron - a sweet, chewy centre cased in a crisp exterior... with mascarpone cream and roasted plums piled on top. The end result is elegant, effortless, gluten-free and most importantly, delicious. Especially on a sticky Sunday afternoon in Brisbane surrounded by friends.
This weekend I was in Hobart. With two of my oldest, dearest friends. We walked, we talked... we ate. And returned to our respective mainland capitals with our bags stuffed with cherries. The markets were overflowing with them - fat and juicy, sweet, dark and freshly picked. When I got home I tumbled them into an ovenproof dish, poured over a quickly whisked batter and thirty minutes later a creamy, pillowy flan formed around the fruit. Clafoutis (clah-fou-tee) is a traditional French dessert. It's simple (you don't even have to pit the cherries), sweet (in both senses of the word) and every spoonful back in Sydney reminds me of my friends, how we met (studying French at university) and a wonderful Tasmanian weekend.
* * *
Side note: to any readers who are reading this via Bloglovin' - for some reason, last week's post did not show up there, so if you don't want to miss out on the seriously delicious Persian love cake, click here to read all about it.
I didn't mean to post - or bake - another pie so soon. But this weekend was the first one off I'd had in the last three weeks and I wanted to celebrate. I'd been invited to my friend Elizabeth's place for dinner on Friday night, I'd offered to bring dessert, and this recipe had been calling me ever since I got my hands on The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book early in the new year. Other than a dip in the ocean (which I also indulged in), what better reward could there be?
Salty/sweet is a truly magic combination. Here, the creamy custard of the honey filling is offset by fat flakes of sea salt so that the two flavours mingle in your mouth and draw you back for more, like siren song. That's what happened to us on Friday night. After consuming modest slices, we each went back in for just one more sliver...
Be warned: this pie is not for the faint of heart. There's a serious sugar component which is less a hit as it is a knockout punch. If this pie were a person (in contention for an Oscar next week), it would be Jennifer Lawrence's character Rosalyn in one of my favourite films of last year, American Hustle: seductive, surprising... and crazy dangerous. Don't make it in the science oven.
When I was a student, I had a part-time job one afternoon a week looking after three brothers ranging in age from 4-10. It involved picking them up from three different schools, driving them back home, and most importantly of all, making them afternoon tea. No matter how much they argued in the car (ranging from quite a bit to a lot), on their choice of after-school snack there was always total agreement: pikelets. Light, fluffy and happily eaten or cold, pikelets are a particularly Australian childhood treat. They're an excellent vehicle for jam and cream or butter and honey, and have a miraculous silencing effect on hungry children who stop shouting/fighting/breaking things long enough to focus all their attention on eating as many as possible. The ones I used to make for the boys I looked after were the traditional kind - white flour, sugar, egg and milk soured with a bit of vinegar or lemon juice. These, from a recipe by Bill Granger, are a healthier twist on the original and ressemble more pancakes than pikelets. And so perfect for breakfast. Especially with homemade salted maple butter.
Who knew making butter was so easy? Not me, til I happened across this recipe and was inspired to throw
some leftover cream, a dash of maple syrup and a pinch of salt in my
Kitchen Aid mixer. Ten minutes later I had glossy, rich home (if not
exactly hand) churned butter.
My former charges are grown up now. A few years ago we caught up and I made them pikelets. Some things never get old.
