Raspberry, coconut and lime cake

 

A sign of a good cake is how often you make it. Since the recipe for this one was published on The Design Files mid-October of 2020, it's been in heavy rotation in my repertoire and has come to be associated with bright spots in what was undoubtedly a challenging year. The first time I made it was to take with me to see my dad for the first time since January in the border bubble between Queensland and NSW. In early November I caught a plane to Ballina, he drove down from Brisbane to pick me up at the airport and we pulled over at the first sign of a picnic table to eat this cake, a belated birthday one for him. I made it again it to take to my cousin and his wife who'd just had a baby (once they got home from hospital, where visitors weren't allowed) and, more recently, when a Victorian friend I hadn't seen all year because of their state lockdown, swung by Sydney on her way to Byron Bay for Christmas with her family. We ate it for dessert after dinner and the next morning I packed her off with a few fat slices for the road. Loaf cakes, as all this attests, are incredibly portable. Maybe it's partly the emotion of the occasion but there's something really joyful about the combination of flavours and colours in this cake - the tropical feel of the coconut, the pop of pink raspberry and the the zing of the lime. I'm always partial to sour cream in cakes, because of the taste and also as it keeps well.. which means it's both brilliant for leftovers and can be made in advance.

Lemon coconut snacking cake

Cakes that contain sour cream are almost guaranteed to be good. I first heard about this one on the Home Cooking podcast. Samin Nosrat was raving about it so I paid attention. Samin - of chocolate midnight cake and Ligurian foccacia fame - is someone to be taken seriously. In addition to the sour cream and Samin's seal of approval, this cake also had going for it that it was super simple and featured lemons, which are cheap and plentiful right now in Australia. When I made it I wasn't disappointed - it's zippy with citrus, unbelievably soft from the coconut milk and sour cream, and in squares, easily transportable. I made it one weekend to take up to the Blue Mountains on a day trip, and the very next weekend to take across town on the train for dinner at a friend's. Its other advantage is that because it's an oil-based cake, it keeps really well and I imagine would freeze well too. Should you have any left over. I can almost guarantee you won't.

Danish dream cake

In May I spent three weeks in Copenhagen. It was surprisingly sunny, even warm (I say this as I had a suitcase full of woolen clothing and a raincoat). Unsurprisingly, my Danish did not improve despite daily one-on-one lessons from a bilingual four year old (though I did learn rather more than I wanted to about Frozen). I did decode some language mysteries - for instance, that the V is always dropped in words like havn, or Torvehallerne (my favourite food haunt, so therefore something I said a lot). I spent time with so many impressive English speakers, canoed on the harbour (havn!), and ate my fill of cinnamon buns and smørrebrød and sausages. Back in Sydney, in grey midwinter, it all feels a bit like a dream, which makes this cake all the more appropriate. With its cornerstone ingredients of sponge and coconut, drømmekage, or "dream cake" in Danish, is - to Australians anyway - a bit like a caramel lamington. Here, the coconut is tangled in brown sugar and butter (rather than chocolate) and crowns the cake rather than coating it. This makes it infinitely easier to whip up spontaneously for afternoon tea or school lunch boxes - a tray bake, essentially. I can't think where the coconut came from - it's certainly not a traditional Scandinavian ingredient. I can only imagine this cake - a staple of supermarkets - was conceived as a way to conjure up a tropical island in the darker winter months. So serve with cream and coffee and dream of summer. Or in my case, Scandinavia.

Granola bars

On Tuesday I travelled to Newcastle, a port town 160km or so north of Sydney. My train left at 7.15am. The friend I was meeting was making me breakfast on arrival at 10am. I didn't want to set the alarm so early to make myself a pre-breakfast breakfast. I didn't want to spoil my actual breakfast with some overpriced, underbaked muffin from Central Station. So I packed a granola bar, for a snack as good as the view.

Sure, I could have bought one, but making them (the day before) had the advantage of using up all the bits and pieces of dried fruit and nuts I had in my pantry. Plus, these taste way better than any that come out of a box. You might say, on reading the recipe, that that's because of the butter and sugar involved, to which I'd say - wouldn't you rather know what you were eating rather than puzzle over some indecipherable chemical on the side of a packet? You might say, don't those mystery ingredients make them last longer? But I'd say the homemade sort freeze beautifully and defrost quickly. Not that you should rush to that storage solution - if you're a regular snacker, these will last at least a week in an airtight container out of the fridge. Provided you don't eat them all at once, as you may well be tempted to do.

You can use whatever combination of fruit and nuts you like. In this batch I tumbled in almonds, pepitas, dried apricots, dates, shredded coconut and raisins. The chunkier ingredients I chopped roughly. Feel free to improvise any way you like. Swap fruit for dark chocolate or cacao nibs, nuts for chia or sesame seeds. Put in peanut/almond butter or leave it out. It's entirely up to you. And that's the best reason of all to give them a go.