Double citrus syrup cake

 

I've got a real affection for cakes flavoured with citrus. The acidity of the fruit spectacularly offsets the sweetness of sugar. The flavour feels bright and fresh in the colder months when it's in season. But perhaps it's just because the colours put me in mind of nasturtiums, a flower I love, that grows wild in Brisbane backyards. And some more southern ones too. I'm lucky enough to have them permanently on display thanks to this beautiful linocut by my dad, which has pride of place in my living room. 

But this cake! The recipe is by Julia Busuttil-Nishimura, who's responsible for some of my favourite bakes of recent years - this raspberry coconut and lime cake, this ginger cake with brown sugar cream cheese frosting... It uses both lemon and orange and best of all, can be made in advance, as it has yoghurt in its list of ingredients, and is drenched after baking in a syrup, both of which keep it beautifully moist. I made a 2/3rds quantity here and used a small loaf tin, but the the three egg version (the original recipe, as below) would be lovely in the round. It looks good just as is but if you've got any nasturtiums about, they do make a very pretty (and edible) topping. It's also excellent with berries and cream.

Pistachio and lemon loaf

Since my success with Nigella Lawson's lemon tendercake, I've looked to expand my range of reliably delicious cakes that just happen to be vegan. I'd come across this recipe, from Ochre Bakery in Detroit, some time ago, and it was every bit as good as I hoped. Moist and nutty from the ground pistachios, puckeringly sour sweet with lemon and in loaf form, it's an easily made and transportable picnic cake. 

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.

Pistachio cake

Though I often wish it were otherwise, I am not a terribly spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person. I arrive at airports with so much time to spare, I don't miss deadlines, I am always early to everything... which is why I love a cake you cake make a bit in advance. The sort that is actually improved with a day or two to sit and let its flavours settle. This is one of those. Pistachios are pricey to be sure but believe me, this is worth the splurge and anyway, if you buy in bulk, it's not so bad. A friend of mine who doesn't drink points out that people think nothing of spending money on a nice bottle of wine, so why not good grocery items... particularly when they're the star of the show, and such a pretty colour. I can't say enough good things about this cake. Its texture is quite unlike any I've encountered before - a dense crumb but not dry in the slightest - the oils in the nuts take care of that. The flavour all comes from the pistachios, with the sticky lemon syrup drizzled over the top a satisfyingly sweet/sharp accent to it all. It's excellent with black coffee with which I had it for breakfast this morning - an uncharacteristically spontaneous act inspired by something I prepared earlier.

Almond cake

When I moved to Sydney and, ultimately, out of home, my farewell present from my friends was a food processor. The same one is still going strong today, pulverising and puréeing like the day I got it, about eighteen years ago now. I used it last week to make an almond cake for a friend who's dairy-free. A little like a Middle-Eastern orange cake in that its keystone ingredients are whole, boiled citrus (in this case, lemon as well as orange) and almonds - both of which necessitate sharp blades to blitz and blend - it also incorporates olive oil and a small amount of flour, for leavening. Something a bit different for a kitchen work horse that I'm grateful remains exactly the same. 

Lemon poppyseed cake

I got gifted some lemons last weekend. Big, beautiful backyard fruit, befitting a cake. So I made one. Though this is an English recipe, poppyseeds in baking are by and large associated with Eastern Europe. Strewn liberally through strudels and sponges and all manner of doughs and batters, these little black speckles are striking here against the pale pastel of citrus, and lend a lovely texture to a traditional tea time treat.

Made mostly with almond meal, the cooked cake is drenched in syrup and drizzled with icing so keeps well should you have leftovers or want to bake in advance. If you're lucky enough to have a lemon tree or be friends with anyone who does, then this is definitely one for your repertoire. It's not a show-off of a cake, it's more subtle and sophisticated, even a little subversive. The beat poet of baked goods. Brilliant.

Rhubarb, honey and lemon cake

Everyday cake is not so much cake to be eaten seven days a week, but one that can be made in a pinch with pantry staples. If you have unexpected visitors or a sweet itch that needs to be scratched. Or feel like making a cake, but not going to the shops. This is that cake.

Butter, honey, flour, milk, and eggs are things most of us have on hand at any time. Most fruit bowls will contain a lemon. Rhubarb, I'll concede, isn't a regular in anyone's shopping basket but any fruit will do, though the more tart types - like raspberries - will balance out the sweetness of the honey... as does a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

The honey (in place of sugar) gives the finished cake a beautiful burnished gold exterior, and the rhubarb a pretty pop of pink. Every day should be this good.

Smoked fish smørrebrød

Mostly for lunch I eat leftovers. But for the weeks in which I'm not doing a lot of cooking, I  rely on a loaf of sliced rye in the freezer. In Copenhagen last year, I fell in love with smørrebrød - traditional Danish open-face sandwiches on dark rye bread. Every deli or bakery, café or restaurant sold some variation of this lunch-time staple. You can make a smørrebrød out of anything, but a typically Scandinavian topping will include something pickled or smoked. Probably the favourite smørrebrød of my stay came from a deli near the Botanical Gardens (Aamanns, if anyone is visiting) which featured a thick slab of blue cheese (as long and wide as the rye it perched on) sprinkled with hazelnuts and pickled sultanas, something I've since tried to recreate at home with limited success. This smoked fish topping, however, has been much more successful. Probably because it contains only a handful of ingredients - smoked fish, red onion, dill, lemon juice and sour cream - and comes together in minutes by mashing everything together with a fork. Its cold, salty creaminess contrasts nicely with the crispness of the toasted rye, which ably supports a nice thick trowelling of topping. Any leftover topping works well as an emergency pasta sauce, as I recently discovered after coming home late from a long day. Just wind through cooked pasta on the stovetop for one minute, just long enough to heat through.

Lemon, semolina and olive oil cake

On Saturday I made a cake. On Sunday I went on a picnic. I wrapped a chunk of cake in foil, and packed it and a pocket knife. With friends, I caught the ferry across the harbour and walked along a shady, gumtree-lined path hugging the water til we reached a perfect picnic spot, with shade and views of white sailboats skating across the blue. The cake was approved by picnickers and ants alike. And tasted just as good the next day at home. 

This cake is similar to some in my citrus repertoire but different in subtle ways. Unlike lemon yoghurt cake, it's made with olive oil, not butter. It kind of ressembles the lemon polenta cakes, but swaps a coarse yellow grain for a fine white one. It's got the nutty flavour of Middle-eastern orange cake, but the tang of yoghurt and fragrance of honey. So it's a bit of everything. And tastes better for it. Inside, outside, anywhere.

Labneh with sumac, parsley, lemon and pistachios

You know how all commercially made dips have a vaguely metallic aftertaste? You know how rock hard avocados are when you have a hankering for guacamole? You know how sometimes you can't be bothered roasting eggplants and picking off their blackened skin to make baba ghanouj? Well, the solution to all of your dip dilemmas is probably sitting in your fridge right now and you don't even know it. At least if your fridge is like mine and always contains a tub of Greek yoghurt. 

Labneh is a Middle-eastern marvel - the result of pouring some thick yoghurt (with a little salt stirred in) into a cheesecloth or muslin-lined sieve set over a large bowl and left to drain in the fridge for a day or two. It's a soft, spreadable, infinitely adaptable cheese, which works wonderfully on sandwiches (it's delicious with roast vegetables, lamb or smoked salmon), as well as in salads (especially ones made with grains). Topped with lemon zest, sumac, parsley and pistachios, it becomes the most beautiful dip. Bright, tangy and bursting with flavour. 

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.

Lemon moon cake

American cops - or, more accurately, American cops in American movies - are renowned for their great love of doughnuts. The Danish police force, on the other hand, are synonymous with the more romantic-sounding lemon moon cake, or citronmåne. To be fair, it's a cake that's most readily available in long-life form on supermarket shelves, but even still, the flavours are a little more complex than deep-fried dough (much as I love a doughnut). It's citrussy and lightly sweet and in colour, pale gold, like the Scandinavian sun.

When I came to Copenhagen I wanted to learn how to cook something Danish. And one night, in Hellerup, in the cosy kitchen of a lovely Danish family, I was taught how to make this cake. Like a lot of Danish desserts and baked goods, it's made with marzipan, something I'd previously only associated with the icing on wedding cakes. Though you can get it in Australia, I tucked a small package of it in my suitcase to take home with me, just in case. Because I needed to have this cake again. It's that good. This recipe comes from the organic bakery chain emmerys, whose wares I sampled widely while I was in town. The quantity makes one large cake, which traditionally are cut in two to make half-moons, hence the name. Each half moon easily feeds six people, or (as the joke goes) one Danish policeman.

Toasted barley risotto with spinach and herb purée

My friend Gill gives the best presents. For Christmas this year I got a year's subscription to Bon Appétit. And, through the magic of the internet, the latest issue found its way not just to my letterbox in Australia, but onto my iPad here in Denmark. I don't know whether it was overconsumption of kanelsnurre (can there be such a thing?), or the sight of all the green in the markets and on the trees, or that I'd just had the most incredible dish featuring barley (with roasted Jerusalem artichokes and pickled onions) at a local restaurant here, but when I saw this recipe, I headed straight out to get the ingredients.

As an alternative to rice in risotto, barley is a revelation. As much as I love risotto, the heaviness of it is inescapable. I've no idea whether this is true or not - and no interest in my homegrown theory being disproven - but barley feels like it's good for you. It's brown for a start, nicely chewy and has a lovely natural nuttiness. The risotto technique suits it well, the lightly-toasted grains fed slowly with stock til they are plump and bursting with the fresh flavour of the herbs and spinach, bright with lemon, and rich with butter and cheese... and it still feels like it's good for you. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Like barley to your ribs.

Lemon delicious

Winter has been downright summery in Sydney this year. If I hadn't been to the Blue Mountains (for a holiday in June) or Melbourne (for work last week), I doubt my scarf would have seen any action at all. As I type this, it's sunny and 25 degrees outside. That's Celcius for any of you northern hemisphere folk, which translates as 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Really, the only sign of the season so far has been the cold I came down with over the weekend, the hordes of people in football jerseys on buses I've been on, and my craving for lemon delicious.

Lemon delicious - or lemon pudding - is a dessert my mother used to make regularly when I was growing up. Comprised of pantry, fridge and fruit bowl staples, it came together quickly, looked after itself in the oven while we were having dinner, and was ready to eat before it was time to do the washing up. A self-saucing pudding, it's baked in a deep-sided dish set within another shallower dish filled with warm water, a technique that produces a golden, sponge-like top, and a pale yellow custardy sauce below. 

Sweet and tart in equal measures, with custard and cake in perfect proportion, this is an intensely satisfying winter dessert (even if the winter in question is a little wanting). And there's enough citrus (and therefore Vitamin C) involved to allow you to overlook the significant dairy component and convince yourself that eating it is actively helping you get over your cold. The name says it all. How could you resist?

Poached quince

I wasn't sure about quinces. With their pretty pale yellow hue and bulbous prehistoric form, they always seemed more ornamental than edible. Don't get me wrong - quince paste is just about my favourite thing on earth with a slice of cheese, however when you can buy a slab of that cheaply at your local deli, there's not much incentive to make it yourself. But I had a quince evangelist staying with me on and off for the last five weeks and - hailing from the northern hemisphere (by way of Newcastle, Australia) - she was keen to soak up as much autumnal fruit as she could before returning to summer. And soak she did, submerging fat slices of fruit in sugar syrup and baking them slowly til they turned ruby red and my apartment was filled with the fragrance of vanilla. One night I tried some for dessert. They were sweet, silky and swimming in the sticky scarlet syrup of their juices. I was sold.

Let me start by saying that quinces are no fun at all to peel. Their irregular shape with all its crazy contours makes a simple task utterly frustrating. What's more, in its uncooked state, the fruit is rock hard so if you can imagine coring a rock, well, you will appreciate that the next step isn't any easier. But once that's done, so is all the hard work. After that it's just a matter of slicing them up, tossing them into an oven-proof casserole with the other ingredients, putting the lid on and sliding the whole thing into the oven. My houseguest is gone now, departed early Monday morning on a flight bound for SeaTac. The last thing she ate before heading to the airport was a single slice of poached quince, leaving me with a Tupperware container full of sweet poached fruit with which to remember her... and autumn too.

Whole lemon tart

There are some days when I've had enough of freelance life. Usually on public holidays when I'm working or when, months later, I still haven't been paid for that work. Then there's not having anyone to share a mid-morning coffee with in my office, which is next door to my bedroom. But on a day like last Friday, when I got up early, made a lemon tart to take to a friend's place for dinner, sat down and finished a piece of work, and spontaneously decided to go for a swim at 11am without having to ask anyone's permission or fill out a form, I remember that it's not all bad. To my great shame, I recently realised that I could probably count on one hand the number of swims I've had this summer. This is made worse by the fact that I live within easy walking distance of not one, not two, but three beautiful Sydney beaches. So I set out to rectify this. 

Like a good splash of salt water, lemon desserts are wonderfully refreshing. This one I particularly love because it uses the entire lemon - every single bit of it (well, minus the pips) - to give a deep, sharp, full-bodied citrus hit. With its darkly caramelised top, and gloriously golden, jammy interior, it distinguishes itself from the usual lemon tart, which quite literally pales in comparison. You'll want to dive straight in.

Lemon yoghurt cake

Whenever I visit friends at their homes, I like to take a cake. To get to my friend Gill's house for a weekend with our mutual friend George, however, I had to fly, so the cake in question had to be something I could pack as carry on. Nothing fussy with frosting or layers. Something that could easily be stowed in the overhead bin or under the seat in front of me. And, most important of all, (for my own standards) it had to taste amazing. Fortunately, I had just the recipe. I've been making lemon yoghurt cake as long as I've known Gill, since we were film students together, and George and I were working part-time in the same café while sharing a house in a leafy pocket of Brisbane. All these years later, much has changed. For a start, none of us live in Queensland anymore. I'm in Sydney, George in Melbourne and Gill... well, she's just bought a little shack on the Great Ocean Road on the Victorian coastline. But I'm still making lemon yoghurt cake and we all still like hanging out.

...which is lucky, because hanging out with Gill these days means getting up early to check the surf, watching her paddle out into that cold dawn water, then waiting patiently for her to come in for breakfast. But it's no hardship posting to be sitting on a beautiful, almost deserted beach watching the sun come up, or your friend catch a wave all the way in to shore, or to be rewarded afterwards with her house speciality - a doorstop of a bacon sandwich, which wouldn't taste nearly as good if you hadn't been up for hours, breathing in all that sea air. It makes you HUNGRY, I tell you. Which is why that lemon yoghurt cake came in handy.

This is absolutely the best kind of everyday cake: sweet and tangy, the colour of sand and sun, light yet sturdy - perfect for carting on a plane or on a picnic, packing in a lunch box or just tucking into when returning ravenous from a day at the beach, sand between your toes and skin sticky with salt water.

Conchiglie with saffron, capers and raisins

There are a million reasons not to invite people over for dinner. Your apartment is too small. You don't have enough time. Or nice enough plates. Money for fancy ingredients. Mastery of complex cooking techniques. It doesn't help that the top-rated shows on television at the moment are ones featuring so-called "home cooks" poaching salmon in temperature-controlled olive oil baths, or constructing edible towers strewn with micro-herbs or native berries. If that's your idea of a good time, then great. For me, having people over is about being together, and it should be easy and fun, generous and relaxed. I love to cook but I want to spend time with my guests, not be stuck in the kitchen all night, then into the early hours of the morning with the washing up. 

So on Saturday I had some friends over. One of them was a vegetarian. I made pasta. Most of the ingredients I already had on hand (except celery, which I purchased for the grand total of 69 cents), which is the beauty of this particular dish by Israeli-born, London-based chef Yotam Ottolenghi. It's as if he'd came up with it by pulling random grocery items from his fridge and cupboards and throwing them all together. It's a crazy combination of flavours and textures but it works - salty, sweet, crunchy, soft, strident, subtle... It takes no time to make, tastes good hot or cold (one of my favourite parts of having people over are the leftovers the next day) and makes everyone happy. Even those who hate raisins... of my four guests, there were two of these, who both enthusiastically dug in for seconds.

Lemon polenta cakes

Though there’s nothing more satisfying than a slice of cake, it’s often excess to need to make a whole one to entertain just one friend, or two.  To counter the temptation to eat leftovers for breakfast, lunch and tea - not that there’s anything wrong with that - I (sometimes) scale down the size.  Lemon is a favourite flavour of mine in cooking, whether it’s the kick of the zest in pasta, the combination of the juice with olive oil in salad dressing or the simplicity of a wedge squeezed onto a slice of grilled haloumi.  And then there’s the magic that happens when you combine it with sugar.  Sweet and sharp is the order of the day.  Here, the yellow of the polenta goes nicely with the colour scheme, and cuts the smooth density of the almond meal with unexpected texture.  Similarly, the addition of the sugar syrup on top provides a satisfying crunch.  The other obvious advantage of making smaller cakes is the reduction in cooking time.  These can be whipped up without breaking a sweat in the hour before guests arrive. They’re as good warm as they are at room temperature or even refrigerated… just in case you do happen to have one left over to eat the next day.

Sardinian ricotta cake

Like a lot of white middle-class people of my generation, I have a few too many university degrees. My first tertiary study was an Arts degree with a double major in French which I undertook perhaps partly to legitimise my avid reading of Paris Match (and its extensive coverage of ageing French pop stars and minor European royalty). The main things I got out of those three years were two friends called Joanna and this recipe, given to us by a boy in our class. I'm not sure where he got it from - it's way more sophisticated than any 18 year old has any right to be.  But he was French, so perhaps that explains it. The three of us quickly incorporated it into our baking repertoire and all these years later, it's still being made with regularity. For good reason. It's simple, elegant and utterly delicious. Somehow it manages to be both densely squidgy and light, its lemon flavour is subtle yet striking and it works equally well as a showstopping dessert or as an everyday cake, one which tastes especially fine with a cup of the inkiest black coffee. Voilà.