A friend of mine had a birthday recently and I wanted to make her a cake. Unlike 99% of the population, she's not a fan of icing (too sweet). While I've nothing against plain cakes (in fact I think I prefer them), for a celebration I think you need something a little bit special. An upside-down cake was the perfect solution. This one showcases plums, in season at the moment. The recipe comes from one of my favourite places in all the world, The Agrarian Kitchen, in Tasmania, so I knew it would be good. And indeed it was - the warm spices of the base the perfect complement to the tart, juicy fruit, which - once inverted - crowns the cake. A cracker.
This last lockdown I wasn't baking as much. This is partly because I lost friends to farm out food to by being restricted to a 5km radius, the ones that lived close to me went on health kicks as a result of how much I fed them last time... and there's only so much cake you can give your 85 year old neighbour without concern you might be giving her diabetes. Another reason is that I discovered the pleasure of walking to a particular food destination as a way to mark the weekend and stop everything seeming so same-y. One lovely thing about lockdown in Sydney was that many restaurants pivoted in this period to become bakeries. One of these was Fred's in Paddington, run by chef Danielle Alvarez, previously of Berkeley's famous Chez Panisse.
Fred's is a pleasant 30 minute walk from my place. On Saturdays for the last few months they've been offering up (for takeaway only) an array of delicious pastries, pies, cakes and breads. So I'd get a walk, get to support a local business and get something incredible to eat I didn't make myself. This cinnamon marble cake wasn't on Fred's menu but when I saw it on Danielle's excellent blog, I felt moved to make it as I love cakes with sour cream, had some to use up and all other ingredients to hand. Marble cakes can often be dry, but the sour cream guards against this and lends a luxury to a cake that comes together very simply and with store cupboard ingredients.
Because I read a lot of American food blogs, sometimes I get a bit out of sync with the seasons. Lately online it's been all about turkey and cider and staying in where it's warm, when here in Sydney it's time for tee shirts, swims (to cool off) and summer fruit. I had my first mango for the season this week and it was magic. But! I wasn't waiting til next year to try this cake, especially when pears are so readily available everywhere. Caramel in colour and flavour with its combination of sweet fruit and sticky brown sugar, this cake is undeniably autumnal. The oil/butter blend makes for an extraordinarily soft and smooth texture, with chunks of pear nestled into the crumb for contrast. Warm spices - cardamom and cinnamon - infuse everything and the brown butter glaze is the perfect nutty note to end it all on. If a cake can be cosy, this is it.
I had a traumatic week last week. Not world-endingly traumatic, just the kind that could be cured by cake. So I made one. During a heatwave in southern California a few months ago, I came across this recipe while flipping through my friend's cookbooks, laying low, sapped of energy by the sun. Molasses is such a fantastic sounding word and conjured up how we all felt at the time, sticky and slow. It wasn't the weather for it then, but now in November, during these days of crisp, cool, sunny Sydney weather, the time was right. The fresh ginger sings in this not-too-sweet, incredibly soft, dramatically dark cake, which goes perfectly with a cup of tea. The original recipe is for a layer cake, vanilla cream slathered between the layers and atop, but I just halved the quantities, made a single layer, dusted it with icing sugar and called it done. Delicious.
In May, I spent three days in Helsinki. Though it was spring in the northern hemisphere, when I arrived it was snowing. No sooner had I made my way to the shelter of my snug airbnb - shielding myself with an ineffective umbrella - did it stop. The sun came out and was still out til close to midnight. The weather continued in this vein - blizzard one minute, blindingly bright the next. The only constant were the cinnamon rolls, which I found everywhere - from the 7-11 on the corner to the beautiful bakery opposite the second-hand store agonisingly overstocked with antique enamel I was unable to fit in my suitcase, from the food hall by the flea market, to the café at the nearby Design Museum, and the canteen at the Marimekko outlet on the outskirts of town, where the shop assistant ringing up my purchase cheerfully advised me that for Finland in May you need both ski gear and a bikini. Maybe that's why saunas are so popular. I went to one, on the edge of the Baltic sea (thanks Ian for the impetus!), and sat in my swimsuit outside, insulated with sweat from the steam, and watched people walking by in their winter wear. Then I went next door to their restaurant and had a coffee and a cinnamon roll.
There's a reason these things are so popular. They're warm and soft, fragrant with spice, and lightly sweet, with crunchy pearl sugar on top. Not too big, not too small - they go beautifully with coffee and function in the culture as a reason to pause... always a good thing, wherever you are.
Finnish cinnamon rolls (Korvapuusti)
Adapted from a recipe by My Blue and White Kitchen
The following recipe makes around 30 (!) rolls. I halved the quantities and ended up with a more manageable 15 - some to eat fresh and some to stash in the freezer. Wrapped in foil, you can throw them direct from there into a preheated moderate (180 deg C) oven and have your morning pause ready in 15 minutes.
2 cups + 2 tbsp lukewarm milk (preferably whole milk)
1 tbsp + 2 tsp instant active dry yeast
180g sugar
1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp + 1 tsp ground cardamom (preferably freshly ground)
1 egg
about 1kg flour
170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
for the filling
150g soft butter
6 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp + 2 tsp cinnamon
for finishing
1 egg
pearl sugar, to sprinkle
Combine yeast with a tablespoon or two of the lukewarm milk and let bloom (basically just let sit in a warm place for about five minutes until froth/bubbles form on top).
In
a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, combine the yeast mixture with the flour and add in the rest of the milk. Mix in sugar, salt, cardamom, and egg.
Add butter and
knead until well combined. Continue to knead the dough, til it comes clean off the sides of the bowl
and doesn't stick to your hand. This won't take too long - don't overwork the dough or
you'll end up with hard rolls, not soft. Shape
into a ball and cover with a clean tea towel. Let the dough rise in a
warm, draft-free place for about 1 hour, or until double in size.
Meanwhile, mix together the butter, sugar, and cinnamon for the filling. Set aside.
Line four baking sheets with baking paper.
Punch
down the dough and divide into two equal sized portions. Lightly dust
a clean work surface with flour. Roll out the first piece of dough
into a large, about 60 x 40cm / 23 x 16 inch rectangle.
Spread half of the filling evenly on top. Beginning with the long side,
roll the dough into a tight tube shape, seam side down. Cut into 15
cylinders (alternating the angle of the knife so you end up with vaguely triangular shapes) and press each point tightly into the centre with your finger. If that sounds confusing, click here for how-to photos from the original recipe.
Place the shaped cinnamon rolls on the baking sheets,
spacing them about 5 cm / 2" apart. Cover with a clean tea towel and
let rise for further 30 minutes, or until they're double in
size. Repeat with the second batch.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 225°C (435°F).
For
the egg wash, lightly whisk the egg and add to it a teaspoon of water. Before baking, brush each roll
with the egg wash and sprinkle generously with pearl sugar. Bake the
rolls on the middle rack for 10–15 minutes, or until golden to dark
brown in color. Repeat with the other sheets of rolls.
Serve warm.
It was at my friend Elizabeth's urging (via her blog) I made this cake. She promised it was easy, delicious and able to be whipped up when the pantry was practically bare. Can I tell you, it is all of those things. When I made it, I turned it out of the tin and selected a plate to put it on, reaching for one I particularly like but rarely use - one of the few things of my mum's I took with me back to Sydney after she died. It distinguishes itself by being absolutely flat - no sloping sides - and at its centre depicts an English country cottage covered in flowers. It was her mother's and sticky-taped to its underside, remarkably, is still a small piece of paper with my grandmother's name written in careful capitals (lest it be lost after transporting something scrumptious to someone's house).
Instantly, I remembered all the afternoon teas at her house after school. Scones were the main event, if I'm honest, but also on offer with regularity was an apple tea cake. Maybe subconsciously that's why I reached for that plate. Originally from Scotland, my grandmother married a bank manager and raised three children in country Queensland. Before she was catering to hungry grandchildren in her retirement in Brisbane, she was entertaining bank personnel and clients in a succession of small towns. I wonder if she found it surreal serving up on scenes of rural life so different to her surrounds.
This isn't Gran's recipe, but she'd definitely approve. It's not only effortless, but economical (one egg!) and when it bakes, it perfumes the air with the comforting scent of cinnamon. Something to satisfy all ages, eternally.
Curiously, I've become a convert to carrot cake. Not so curious perhaps, when I report that this recipe comes from a café I consider possibly the most perfect in all the world - that of the Rosendals Trägåd, a beautiful biodynamic orchard on an island in Stockholm. If you find yourself in that city, you really must go, though June rather than January would be advised. In Swedish summer, it recalls a scene from a Carl Larsson painting - nut-brown blondes of all ages grazing on cardamom-scented cakes in the dappled light of apple and pear trees.
Made moist with oil and carrots, infused with Scandi staples cinnamon and cardamom, and lashed with creamy lemon icing, this is cake to convert anyone who believes (as was my firm opinion for most of my life) that vegetables have no place at all in baked goods. I have relaxed this stance once before, for the beloved Bourke St Bakery, whose carrot cake I've blogged already on this site. That recipe - though sublime - is somewhat fiddly. This one has the advantage of being made in one bowl, and once cooked, needs only to be cooled and icing slathered on top. Australian summers are a little harsher than Nordic ones, so keep it indoors unless you choose a mild day for a picnic. The icing is the issue and believe me, you don't want to skip that. One solution could be to keep it separately in an esky and pile it on just before serving. If it oozes a little, all the better.
There's a lot to be said for simple. Especially on a spectacularly wet weekend when your options are pretty well limited to curling up on a couch with a cup of tea and a fat piece of cake made with pantry staples and a bit of sour cream you had left over in the fridge.
My good friend who came to stay in late May had enthusiastically recommended this particular cake, a recent discovery of hers. On our weekend together, she'd scrolled tirelessly through endless recipes online to find a version of the one she'd tasted without nuts, which from our basic internet search, would appear to be quite common in Armenian nutmeg cakes but - she insisted - were not necessary. After making it, I'd have to agree - this sweet, spice-infused cake is perfect just as it is. Two textures - a crunchy base and a soft, springy sour cream crumb, sprinkled with cinnamon.
Lest you think the two texture thing sounds tricky let me tell you it's not. This is practically a one-bowl affair. The finished cake tastes like the best sort of cinnamon doughnut, even better for not having to drag out a deep fryer or be spattered with hot oil. Plus, with baking you have the benefit of both oven warmth and the seductive, slow-release scent of cinnamon. Hard to beat on a rainy weekend in winter.
There's something incredibly comforting about a loaf cake you slice and slather with butter. Perhaps because they remind me of my childhood. Of picnics with my grandparents. Of thermoses of tea and dinted metal cake tins. Of long socks and Lion's Parks on road trips. This weekend, with the weather rainy and cold, I wanted one.
This is an incredibly economical recipe, using just one egg, and a relatively modest amount of butter and sugar. All the flavour comes from the dates, their deep caramel sweetness cut with the freshness of orange zest and crunch of pecans. The spices mellow everything out, as does the wholemeal flour, which I threw in in place of half the amount of plain, which seemed right, and it was. This cake keeps amazingly well, and days later, tasted just as good as when it was fresh out of the oven. I could have kept eating and eating it but, showing remarkable restraint, stashed half in the freezer for another rainy day.
There's a lot to be said for simple. Margherita pizza. Good-quality vanilla ice-cream. A plain croissant, fresh out of the oven, with a cup of black coffee. Less is more. And then there's Yotam Ottolenghi, the Israeli-born, London-based chef du jour whose recipes read like an encyclopedia of ingredients. Crazy combinations in odd quantities that echo cultures but aren't conventional, layering tastes, traditions, techniques... More is more. It shouldn't work at all but it does. Case in point: these chocolate spice cookies.
On my last visit to Hobart, one of my Tasmanian friends presented me with a jar of homemade cookies (is there any better gift?). She's a brilliant baker, and everything in that jar looked incredible but my eye immediately went to these - dark, mysterious, intriguing... They were plump, polka-dotted, glistening with glaze and garnished with gold. Like no other cookie I'd ever seen. I took my first bite and a million flavours exploded at once - bittersweet chocolate, bright citrus, warm spices... Together, they were spectacular. I immediately went home and researched the recipe because I knew they wouldn't last long. Last week, I made them as gifts for friends who'd cheered me up after a crappy day. There's something about these you feel compelled to share.
It's been a good summer. Full of ocean walks, harbour swims, stone fruit and of course, cake. And when that cake is made with summer fruit, and eaten outside then it's a win-win-win. Though I've misleadingly pictured apricots above (because how could I not when they're this beautiful?), the cake above left is a plum cake. And a famous one at that. From 1982-89, Marian Burros' recipe was printed each summer in The New York Times. Despite a warning from editors and a final printing of the recipe in large print with a border to encourage clipping, when it didn't appear the following year the newspaper's readers rioted. Ever since, it has been a perennial recipe on its pages. I can see why. A base of pale, buttery cake rises up around dark fruit that transforms in the baking into perfectly sour-sweet pockets of jam. It looks and tastes like something you've picked up at a patisserie when really all you did was potter around in your kitchen for fifteen minutes one morning before heading out for a swim.
I love winter. But after a while it can get a bit monochromatic. Which is perhaps why I found myself drawn, as if by magnetic force, to a tray of tangelos in my local supermarket. I'd never made marmalade before (or indeed anything with tangelos), but as luck would have it, my mother - a master marmalade maker - was down staying with me, so I took advantage of an in house consultation. And in reward she received a still warm jar to take back with her on the plane to Brisbane. My reward was a breakfast the next morning that was bright and sunny, sugary and sharp, a blaze of orange to obliterate the grey. This recipe uses spices for extra warmth. They're subtle, but still, a nice calm counterpoint to the juicy sour/sweet of the citrus. Smeared on toast, with a cup of black coffee, it's the tastiest cure for seasonal affective disorder, not to mention oh so pretty in that sleepy winter morning light.
Cinnamon smells like morning. I've been seeing quite a bit more morning lately, courtesy of my hectic football-watching schedule. And when you're getting out of bed while it's cold and dark outside, you need a little extra incentive.
Cinnamon buns were something I'd always asssociated with America. Maybe because inevitably the first thing you encounter after getting through customs at the airport is a Cinnabon franchise selling enormous, puffed-up, heavily-frosted buns. I like a bit of excess from time to time but that much sugar too early in the morning threatens to put you back to sleep rather than wake you up. When I was in Copenhagen recently - a place with no shortage of delicious pastries - I was pointed in the direction of Café Rosa by the brilliant English-language blog A Guide to Copenhagen, which introduced me to so many of my favourite places when I was there. Linn, who writes the blog (as well as her own super-cute cooking one which you can check out here) is a Swede living in Denmark and claimed that the buns sold here were as good as any she'd had at home. I'd only had the American version to compare to, but really, after the first bite, there was no comparison. Speckled with cardamom, lightly sweet, with a ribbon of buttery cinnamon threaded through the interior, the Swedish cinnamon bun is pretty well perfect. Especially with a cup of strong black coffee as you watch the sun rise in Sydney, and set on screen in Rio.
In this, my first week in Denmark, I've become a little obsessed with skyr. I first became aware of it when I saw it on the menu at Grød, a cafe on the street I'm staying in, where it was offered as an accompaniment for porridge. Intrigued, I returned to my apartment and did a little research. It turns out skyr is a cultured dairy product from Iceland, dating back to medieval times. If that wasn't enough to make me go out in search of some immediately, it's also made with skimmed milk, so has an extremely low fat content but somehow the same delicious tang and texture as Greek yoghurt. On the way back from the supermarket with my Icelandic treasure, I passed one of the Middle-eastern fruit and vegetable stands scattered all over this neighbourhood and spied quinces for sale. Poached in a sugar syrup til ruby red (if you want the recipe for that, click here), with the skyr they were incredible. So incredible they were gone all too quickly. And that's where rhubarb came in.
Even though I'm bundled up in winter clothes, signs of spring are everywhere in Copenhagen: flowers pushing up through the frozen ground in the Assistens Cemetery, people sitting at sunny tables outside cafés, and at the farmers' markets at Torvehallerne, where I purchased the most stunning stalks of rhubarb I've ever seen: slender, pale pink, perfect. I wanted both a recipe that didn't mess with their natural beauty too much, and - of course - something that would go nicely with skyr. Nigel Slater had just the thing. The rhubarb is cut into short lengths, and roasted in a low oven with the honey, cinnamon, star anise, and the juice and squeezed halves of a blood orange. Thirty minutes later, dessert was ready. Or breakfast. Sweet and sharp, gently warm in spice and shade: the taste of spring.
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.
I never got French toast. The appeal of soggy, milky, eggy fried bread was lost on me. Everything changed when I was introduced to this distant cousin of the original by my own distant cousin on my first trip to the United States. The difference here was that the bread was soaked not in milk, but orange juice (though an egg was still involved). It was not fried, but baked. And even better than that, the underside crisped and caramelised as it cooked, with no supervision required. I've made this French toast for years now and it has many converts, including my parents, who have been known to break with their routine porridge/muesli breakfast for it on my visits home. It's a great way to use use odd ends of stale bread, or oranges after you've used the zest for something else. I like to serve it with a dollop of yoghurt to undercut the sweetness, some raspberries and pistachios for texture (other combinations of fruit and nuts would work just as well I'll bet), and maple syrup for tradition. Any old ovenproof dish will do to bake it in but in my experience it tastes best (like most things) cooked in a cast iron frypan.
I first posted this recipe in September last year but somehow - in one of the great mysteries of the internet - it got knocked back into the draft section of my blog. So I'm reposting it, with better photos taken from this weekend, when I had the honour of making it for its creator - the one and only Ann Darling - who is visiting Australia and staying with me at the moment.
