Blood orange and walnut cakes

I was unbelievably excited to come across a bounty of blood oranges in the imperfect pick section (there is a special place in my heart for wonky produce) of my fruit and veg store last week. But the thrill of the find fast faded when I remembered that previous excursions into baking with blood oranges had ended in disappointment as their stunning colour is never replicated in the end product. At best you end up with something that just looks like you'd used regular oranges, at worst, baked goods the unappetising shade of a Band-Aid. So I scoured the internet searching for a recipe that promised to preserve that glorious kaleidoscope of red, pink and orange. 

I'd had some success before, with this upside-down cake. Clearly the key is keeping slices intact, so as to showcase the spectacular colour of the fruit in all its glory. This recipe for blood orange and walnut cakes, from Anneka Manning, uses a similar technique but goes a simple step further by first poaching the orange slices in a sugar syrup, which seems to even intensify the colour. The bright slices fit neatly into the bottoms of a muffin tin, the batter - ground walnuts, olive oil, sugar and the zest and flesh of a blood orange bound with a bit of flour - is dolloped on top and twenty minutes later, you have a dairy-free dessert (that can be augmented with ice-cream), an easily transportable treat and something to marvel at: sublime imperfection.

Blood orange and walnut cakes
Adapted from a recipe by Anneka Manning, via SBS Food 

Once the oranges are out of the sugar syrup, you could return the saucepan to the heat and boil the syrup five minutes longer til it's thickened then brush this on the cakes once they come out of the oven. I would have done this but I took my eye off the ball and burned my syrup so decided to do without - to no ill effect so if you can't be bothered, know that these are brilliant just as below.

Cake

75 g walnuts, toasted
1 blood orange
220 g (1 cup) sugar
100 ml olive oil, plus extra to grease
2 eggs, at room temperature
150 g (1 cup) self-raising flour (or 1 cup plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder)
cream or ice-cream, to serve, optional

Blood orange topping

220 g (1 cup) sugar
185 ml (¾ cup) water
2 small thin-skinned blood oranges (about 160 g each), thinly sliced (you need at least 12 slices)

Preheat oven to 190°C (170°C fan-forced). Grease a 12-hole 80ml (⅓ cup) muffin tin with extra olive oil.

To make the blood orange topping, combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Add the orange slices and bring to a simmer. Simmer over medium-low heat, without stirring, for 10-15 minutes or until the rind become translucent but the flesh is still intact. Carefully remove the orange slices and place a slice in the bottom of each of the greased muffin holes to line the base.

To make the cake, blitz the walnuts in the bowl of a food processor until finely ground. Zest the blood orange, then use a small sharp knife to remove the white pith. Roughly chop the flesh and discard any seeds. Place the orange rind and flesh, sugar, olive oil and eggs in the food processor with the ground walnuts and process until well combined. Transfer to a bowl and fold in the flour.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin pans over the orange slices. Bake in for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean. 

Remove from the oven and set aside for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack.

Cardamom crumb cake

When is it acceptable to eat cake for breakfast? 
a) when it's your birthday
b) when in Rome (or more literally, for me, in Stanwell Park, where I frequently stay with friends who strongly believe that cake is a legitimate breakfast food)
c) when the cake in question contains cardamom, walnuts, coffee and orange zest, all of which can be found in pastries traditionally eaten in the morning
d) when you are planning to get up at 4am for the next month to watch the World Cup and need some extra incentive to exit your very warm bed

The answer for me, obviously, is all of the above. But with the World Cup approaching, I've been stashing treats in the freezer like a manic squirrel. Because you really do want something in your stomach to help you wake up when you set your alarm for the early hours - nothing too intensely sweet for first thing, just a little morsel to comfort you in the cold. This fits the brief nicely - cardamom, coffee, and sweet orange cake topped with a nubbly, buttery walnut crumb. It's good eaten warm, whether freshly baked (and studying the form guide) or reheated (straight from the freezer to the oven) for kick off.

Banana, date and walnut loaf

I do not like banana. My mother claimed this is because she fed me too much of it as a baby. She had a lot of weird theories so I've no idea if this is in any way accurate but for whatever reason I've long steered clear of banana bread, banoffee anything or that "one ingredient" ice-cream people swear is just like the real thing but to me tastes only of its one ingredient - blended up frozen bananas. Blechhh. But I had this tin.

It was my grandmother's. I can't remember what she made in it. Possibly nothing in my lifetime. By the time I came along, she'd retired a lot of her repertoire and mostly stuck to scones. But I always remembered the tin, which Mum inherited - specifically having to fossick around it in the cluttered cupboard full of bakeware to get to the more regular round ones. But there comes a time in your life when you yearn for something different. Something cylindrical. Something showcasing what you've eschewed for an eternity. 

To say I've been converted would be a bit much. In truth, you can't taste the banana at all in this and for me, that's all to the good. What shines through strongly are the dates and the walnuts - caramel and crunch in one perfect mouthful. The banana binds it together, keeps it moist. It has its place and I wouldn't think of substituting it. Not when it works so well. Especially sliced thickly and slathered with butter.

Sour cream coffee cake

I am fortunate to have good friends. Unfortunately, many of them live a long way away from me, so I don't get to see them as much as I'd like... but when I do, as a bonus I get to experience amazing new places. A few weeks ago, I flew to Los Angeles, took a bus from the airport to Union Station, a train to San Diego, and an Uber to a friend's place in Bird Rock, California. Over the next five days, I survived a heatwave, swam, ate Mexican food, walked straight into a screen door in a jetlagged haze, made her kids laugh when I did it again a day later, saw seals (and many more tourists watching seals), learned a lot about Lego Ninjago, oh... and baked.

Coffee cake is quintessentially American. It does not contain coffee, but is made to compliment it. Specifically, the black drip coffee that's the life blood of every kitchen and diner across the country. It's a simple cake, a tray bake really - a buttery sponge, tangy with sour cream, topped with sugary, crunchy streusel strewn with nuts.

Its simplicity is perfection. And oh, is it moreish. As addictive as watching the sun set over the ocean. So good.

Sour cream coffee cake
Adapted from a recipe in The New York Times

This keeps well, due to the sour cream, which stops the cake from drying out.


cake
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 ½ cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking (bicarb) soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

topping
 ½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
⅓ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 

In a separate bowl, sift flour with baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with sour cream and vanilla until just combined. Do not overmix. Pour batter into prepared baking pan. 

Make the topping: Combine sugar, cinnamon, flour and nuts in a small bowl and mix well.
Sprinkle the topping evenly over the cake and bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in centre of cake comes out clean. Cool, cut into pieces and serve.

Calabrian walnut cake

Sometimes, words are hard to come by. And for those times, there's cake. This one happily requires very few words as there are but four ingredients: walnuts, eggs, sugar and lemon zest. Brilliantly simple, deeply delicious and gluten and dairy free to boot. Make it and marvel.

Calabrian walnut cake (torta di noci)
Adapted from a recipe on Food52 from Ada Boni's Regional Italian Cooking (1960)

This is the sort of cake that gets better with age, so is improved by being made ahead of time.




3/4 pound (340 grams or about 3 cups) shelled walnuts
4 eggs, separated 
1 cup (225 grams) caster (superfine) sugar
zest of one lemon
icing (confectioners') sugar for dusting (optional)   


Pulverize the walnuts in a food processor until you have a coarse meal, the texture of sand.

Grease and line a round 9-inch cake pan.
 
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and creamy. Add the lemon zest and walnut meal and stir to combine. 

Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until they form stiff peaks. Fold the whites bit by bit into the walnut mixture until well combined.  

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake at 375º F (190º C) for about 50 minutes, or until the top is firm and browned nicely. Let cool completely in the pan before removing and dust with icing sugar to serve.
 

Chocolate orange date truffles

Food presents are my favourite. Among the best I've received in recent years: vanilla beans from Bali, a catering-size container of corn relish from Tasmania, biscotti baked in one hemisphere and mailed to another, home-roasted coffee beans, a dozen hot cross buns from my favourite Hobart bakery, a tin of homemade biscuits to last through Christmas and beyond, my mother's green pawpaw chutney (which I'm lucky enough to have a lifetime supply of thanks to her obsessive need to bottle everything she ever grew), and last week, a huge haul of premium grade cocoa from my American cousin Amy, transported across the Pacific Ocean and lugged halfway around Australia by her parents, who've been out here visiting. To thank them for being such good-natured cocoa-mules, I wanted to make them something with it to say thank you. I wanted to make something the gluten-free giver of the gift could eat, even if she wouldn't get to taste this particular batch (her folks are heading home on a three week cruise). Something to showcase the cocoa, in all its dark, bitter beauty. Happily I had just the recipe. It required only a handful of ingredients, all easily available: dates, orange, walnuts and cocoa. Blended together, rolled in extra cocoa to make an elegant truffle that just so happens to be gluten-free and dairy-free too. There's no refined sugar but the natural sweetness of the date and the orange in combination with the richness of the nuts and the cocoa create a taste not unlike the very best dark chocolate... which if you've recently OD'd on supermarket-grade milk chocolate Easter eggs, you will appreciate all the more. Just like a thoughtful gift*. 


* special shout out to my friend George too, for the beautiful plate these truffles sit on, which may not be edible but makes anything that goes near it infinitely more so.

Pomegranate molasses butter cake

My friends bought a house. After years of slogging through the Sydney real estate wilderness, ruining their weekends inspecting overpriced, dark, dilapidated terraces and missing out at auctions, they ended up in the perfect place: not in Sydney.... but close enough to commute. Instead of aircraft overhead they have hang-gliders drifting silently down from an impossibly green escarpment up above, instead of staring at their neighbours, they now look at the ocean, and instead of abandoned shopping trolleys on the streets of their neighbourhood, there are swings rigged from trees (mostly with views). There's a lot to celebrate. A cake was called for. 

I came across this recipe just recently via the New York Times Cooking app on my iPad (which I highly recommend for its free access to the newspaper's entire database of recipes as well as handy videos on technique). I loved the simplicity of it - a basic butter cake kicked up a notch by a glamorous (yet inexpensive) ingredient - pomegranate molasses. This dark, sticky syrup is incorporated into every part of the cake - the batter, the frosting and even into the caramelising of the nuts on top - its distinctive sweet/tart zing offsetting the buttery richness. A lovely diversion from the expected, and all the better for it.

Walnut and halva cake

I set a dangerous precedent. A few years ago, when flying down to see friends in Victoria, I brought a cake in my carry-on luggage. Now, it's not possible to visit without one. The rules of carry-on cake are as follows: no delicate sponges, or sticky icing, no layers or fancy shapes. And by fancy, even round counts here. Loaf cakes only need apply, and sturdy ones at that - the sort I can wrap tightly in tinfoil, stow in a tote bag and slide under the seat in front of me. The sort that will survive take-off, landing and turbulence. The original carry-on cake, lemon yoghurt, fits this brief beautifully, as does the superlative pear, pistachio and chocolate. And now another one to add to my repertoire courtesy of Yotam Ottolenghi: walnut and halva cake.

Halva is a dense yet crumbly confection made with tahini, a mainstay of many cultures from the Middle-east to eastern Europe. My mother used to buy it for us when we were kids to satisfy our craving for something sweet after school. I don't remember having much of an opinion on it then. I'm sure I liked it fine but it was never coveted, more something that would do when we couldn't have what we actually wanted (chocolate! ice-cream! chips!). As an adult, I like it rather a lot. So much in fact that I will only buy small amounts at a time as if it is in my fridge, I will eat it: with coffee, crumbled over vanilla ice-cream, and now, in cake...

This is a beautifully light sour cream cake, embellished with caramelised walnuts and a layer of smooth, sweet halva. It's simple but a little bit special. Easy to carry on, and to carry off.

Spiced coffee, date and pomegranate loaf

A while ago, I bought some pomegranate molasses. It was so long ago I'm now no longer able to remember what I bought it for but it had been languishing lonely in my cupboard for some time, so when I happened across this Karen Martini recipe in the Sydney Morning Herald, I knew I had to make it. But not just because of the pomegranate molasses. The list of ingredients sounded intoxicating - orange, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coffee, sesame seeds, dates... all the flavours of the Middle-East combined in a cake. 

Dark, dense and deliciously sticky, this is a Middle-Eastern take on the traditional date loaf (if you want a recipe for that, go no further than Elizabeth's). The pomegranate molasses shellacked glossily on top gives a tart kick that balances the sweetness of the cake, blends beautifully with the spices, nuts and fruit within, and adds a touch of glamour and mystery to what would otherwise be a pretty plain looking loaf. If you don't have any pomegranate molasses in your cupboard, head to your nearest Middle-Eastern food store and pick up a bottle. Or two. Once this is in your repertoire, you'll need them.  

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.

Spaghetti alla Foriana

I love a good nationally televised event. The sort of thing that's an excuse to have people over for an informal meal - to eat, to drink, to shout at the screen. The Ashes have come and gone, and while I count the sleeps til next year's World Cup, I'll make do with what's on offer and last Saturday here in Australia, that was the federal election... which really in the end, was all about this pasta. It was simple, delicious and - unlike Australian politics last weekend - completely surprising.

Surprising because of how few ingredients the recipe called for and how unexpected their combination. Nuts are par for the course in pasta (pesto being case in point), but nuts with sultanas is more commonly trail mix than main course. And dried oregano, while standard in Italian cooking, isn't an obvious pairing with either of those two. But together, somehow, they work. The nuts are crunchy, the garlic fragrant and the sultanas like little bursts of sweetness perfectly complementing the salty bite of the parmesan.

A note to all of you sultana/raisin-phobes out there - I served this to one of your kind Saturday night (after first giving them the option of a different sauce, which they bravely declined) and they not only had seconds but went searching for extra sultanas at the bottom of the serving dish! What did I tell you? Surprising!

Pumpkin and feta pie with olive oil pastry

A week ago daylight savings ended in Sydney. It was as if someone flicked a switch and the curtain fell on summer. All of a sudden, the leaves were curling on the trees, I was reaching for jumpers in my wardrobe, and seeing pumpkins and leeks everywhere. Autumn is far and away my favourite season, a magical time of year when you can sit at the table with the windows open and the light streaming in (if you live in an apartment like me and don't have a backyard) and enjoy something hot from the oven. Perfect for long, lazy, Sunday lunch.

This pie neatly encapsulates my cooking for friends philosophy managing to be both a bit special and totally unfussy at the same time. It's substantial (the pumpkin purée bolstered by cheese and eggs, the olive oil pastry surprisingly sturdy) yet not too heavy. It goes beautifully with a salad and fills you right up while leaving plenty of room for dessert. And it goes without saying I made dessert. But that's a story for another day. This post is all about pie... and this time, it's savoury.

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.

Afghans

In the biscuit world, there are the elegant – the macacrons, the madeleines, the sablés… (the French have it all sewn up basically) and then... there are these.  Hailing from New Zealand via Bedrock, these delicious pebbles of chocolaty goodness are fabulously low-rent, containing as they do, a certain secret ingredient: cornflakes!  I can imagine Fred Flintstone throwing down a few on his coffee break at the quarry, but they’re equally appropriate to serve to friends who come over with their fancy cameras (and IT skills) to help you with your blog.  Ironically, the photographs that resulted make these biscuits look as chic as their more high-class relatives.  But so much more approachable.