Burnt Basque cheesecake

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.

Sydney cheesecake

I asked a friend of mine what sort of cake he wanted for his birthday. He said cheesecake. This threw me for a loop as I like cheesecake just fine but it's not something I ever make. And so the research began. I started out wanting to make an Italian-style ricotta one but was put off by the time involved and taste imagined of the rather elaborate pastry that encased it. I then perused my favourite American cooking blogs to see what I could find but was mildly horrified by the massive quantities of cream cheese and sugar cited by nearly every recipe I came across. And so, I did what any cook of my generation in Australia would do. What I should have done in the first place. I asked Stephanie. Or more accurately, googled Stephanie Alexander cheesecake and bingo. Though still containing bricks plural of cream cheese (and sour cream to boot) this was a lighter, significantly sweeter version of the renowned New York cheesecake, that mainstay of deli cabinets not just in Manhattan but the world over. With a base made from shredded wheatmeal biscuits, the subtle tang of lemon, and a creamy, dreamy consistency, this more than fulfilled the birthday brief.

And, as it turns out, it was the perfect cake for the occasion as the celebration was - at the last minute - postponed for a fortnight. After panicking thinking how on earth was I going to get through an entire cheesecake by myself, I remembered Sara Lee. And so the birthday cake lived happily in the freezer til it was finally laid out to eat last Saturday night. With a backdrop of city lights and a balmy almost-summer breeze, looking sunny and simple and a little bit showy it felt somehow very Sydney. And so, Sydney cheesecake.

Carrot cake

It is my firm belief that vegetables do not belong in cakes. But, according to my father, you have to change your mind sometimes to prove you have one. And so I made a carrot cake. I figured any recipe from the Bourke Street Bakery was not going to disappoint. And on this score I am pleased to say I was totally right. This cake is unbelievably light in its crumb and, incredibly, in its frosting (no mean feat when the primary component is cream cheese!). It's fragrant with spices, studded with walnuts, and flecked prettily with orange. In fact, the carrot component makes it wonderfully moist, which means its flavours deepen nicely over time and that it keeps well. Or at least I imagine it does - there were no leftovers to test this out on when I served it up at a picnic last week. 

This cake is by no means complex but it does involve a few bowls and benefits from being made in a stand mixer - unless of course you enjoy the dead arm you get from manually beating egg whites. There are certainly other more straight-forward recipes out there but I venture they wouldn't have the wonderful lightness of this one. A lightness that comes from separating and aerating the eggs, the extra light olive oil, small amount of flour, and modest quantity of frosting, which is used to stunning effect to separate the two layers. The resulting cake resembles nothing like the dense, dumpy loaf slices you see suffocated in plastic wrap in bad cafes worldwide, but is sleek, sophisticated and utterly scrumptious. Here's to open minds.

Marbled cheesecake brownies

There is nothing remotely sophisticated about cream cheese. It's kind of the sweet equivalent of mashed potato - white, soft, malleable... and oh so good. Though it comes in bricks, it's more like mortar. Bagels wouldn't be the same without it. The frosting made with it is the very reason carrot cake exists. And then there's cheesecake. Which is all very well on its own, but swirled into a brownie and strewn with chocolate chips to form a hybrid kind of sweet squidgy square is, well, definitely not sophisticated, but who cares? Sophisticated can't be tucked into the corner of a lunchbox, eaten straight from the freezer or carted to a picnic in its tin.   

Life's too short for sophisticated. But long enough that you can indulge in something this rich occasionally. You can serve these warm, or at room temperature, but for the cleanest slices, refridgerate the pan til nicely chilled then use a knife dipped in hot water to cut through. If making a whole tray of these worries you - know that they freeze well... but also know they taste good straight from the freezer. Consider this a warning.

Nanaimo bars

Canada is responsible for so many of my favourite things - maple syrup, Neil Young, Alice Munro, Anne of Green Gables... it's got the best flag, wonderful place names (Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland...), two languages and these biscuity-cheesecakey-chocolatey squares, named after a town in British Columbia.

Traditionally, Nanaimo bars are a no-bake affair but this recipe, which I discovered on a Canadian food blog, calls for a tiny bit of oven time and takes a few liberties with ingredients. The end result is well worth it - a chewy, nutty biscuit-base wrapped in the aroma of toasted coconut, a robust, lightly sweet cheesecake filling and a rich, skating-rink-smooth layer of dark chocolate ganache to top it all off. What else is there to say? O Canada.

Red velvet cake

A few years ago now, I visited Copenhagen and discovered there was nothing about Denmark I didn't like. From the exquisite care taken in the design of every little thing - whether a chair in a furniture museum or a rake in a hardware store - to the open-face sandwiches on dark rye bread. The neat cobblestone streets of the pedestrian-only city centre, and the flocks of bicycles coursing by in specially designated lanes (ridden by impossibly tall, good-looking Danes) outside it... In this comparatively tiny country, there's a palpable and understandable sense of national pride among the population. So much so that it's traditional to festoon birthday cakes with miniature versions of their distinctive red and white flag. Red velvet cake is in no way Danish and alas neither am I - though I'm hopeful there's some Viking mixed up in my Scottish ancestory somewhere - but this week it was my birthday. I got a bicycle, so a picnic in the park was in order. We wheeled around on the grass, climbed trees, and played cricket with a tennis ball. It seemed only appropriate to add red food colouring to the mix. Besides, this particular cake with its startlingly red interior and pale cream cheese frosting perfectly matched these sweet little flags, carted back from Denmark as a souvenir. Clearly, it was meant to be. Even if, in my haste to document my slice so I could eat it, I neglected to orient the flag the right way around. If you're Danish, I do hope you're not offended. But I feel confident you'll forgive me if you make this cake.

Transcending novelty value, red velvet cake is seriously good: moist, sweet and tangy. From the outside, and in taste, it ressembles a chocolate cake, emerging from the oven cocoa-brown. It's not til you cut it that you understand the meaning of its fabulously decadent name. I can assure you, it more than lives up to it.

Rugelach

Every week when I come to write my post I feel like I'm repeating myself. Inevitably at some point I'll have to go back to check if I've used the phrase "these come together in no time" or "this takes no time to prepare" too recently. This week is different. This cookie - while certainly not difficult in any way - is a little bit more complicated than the usual mix-a-batter-and-drop-by-spoonfuls-onto-the-baking-sheet type of affair. There's more of a process involved. But I'm here to tell you it's totally worth it. I had rugelach for the first time at Zabar's (which for my money is every bit as good as any museum by way of cultural experience) in New York, when I was looking for something small and sweet to accompany my mid-morning coffee. I probably didn't know how to pronounce it (and still kind of don't) but just pointed dumbly at one of the little rolled cookies in the display case. Biting into it, I tasted fruit and nuts and jam and some sort of tang in the crumb that beautifully cut through the intense sweetness. It was chewy and sticky and, in its elegant swirl, a thing of great beauty. I was so absorbed in my enjoyment of it all that I almost missed seeing Bill Cunningham (the eternally youthful, 80-something fashion photographer for The New York Times and subject of a great documentary) ride by on his bike. I was not photo-worthy but had he seen the rugelach, he surely would have stopped. But it was too late. I'd eaten it all.

Florida orange pie

I love old postcards. And I love pie. Somebody who knows these two things about me recently sent me this: 

 

The oranges against the orange background are amazing, as are the scalloped edges, on the postcard and the pie.  Even better, the recipe was on the back.  I knew instantly I had to make it. Though pie by name, this is essentially a cheesecake, an old-school one at that - moreish biscuit base, fluffy cream cheese filling and "baked" in the refrigerator, rather than the oven.  It's the kind of dessert you'd find in the slowly rotating glass display case of a diner (another thing I love).  You might not notice it at first, in amongst all the towering meringues, and lattice crusts, and struesel toppings barely containing their berries below, but your eye would be drawn to it eventually, its orange tint enticing.  If you ordered it, you'd be rewarded: light, smooth and bursting with the bright tang of citrus, this is a pie worth posting - both with a stamp, and on a blog.