Coffee and cardamom pound cake

The weekend before last I flew down to Melbourne, which called for carry-on cake. I alighted on a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook Sweet (stupendous - buy it in bulk and distribute to anyone on your Christmas list who loves baking), adapted it accordingly for airline travel (basically, just halving the quantities of ingredients so it could be made in a loaf tin) and before long I was slicing it in my friend George's South Melbourne kitchen. 

As students, George and I toiled together in a suburban Brisbane café serving Saturday shoppers coffee and cake, which probably explains why all these years later we particularly delight in staying in on the weekend with a pot of tea and a whole cake all to ourselves.

This is Ottolenghi and his co-author (Australian!) Helen Goh's riff on Rose Levy Beranbaum's revered recipe for "Perfect Pound cake". Light, moist and fragrant with coffee, cardamom and cocoa, it's just as good the next day, and the day after that. If indeed it lasts that long.

Hazelnut coffee cake

Perhaps the most perfect place in all the world exists in Stockholm. On an island you can walk to from the city, in what was once the Swedish royal family's game park, is a biodynamic garden called Rosendals Trägåd. Amid the neat rows of plantings and greenhouses, and the nut-brown ladies with wispy white hair working in them, there's a café selling food made from what they grow, which you can take on a tray to picnic tables scattered about an orchard of ages-old pear and apple trees and lounge about in the dappled light, eating or reading or chatting.

I spent a week in Stockholm and went there three times. Three visits, three cakes. The first was a Swiss roll, sweet and sticky with jam. The second a fat slice of cardamom cake, speckled with spice. The third was a technically not a cake, but a cinnamon bun, so much better than any I've ever had at IKEA.

What I like so much about Scandinavian baking is its simplicity. There's nothing tricked up or fussy about it. Its modesty is magnificent - just like Rosendals Trägåd and so many other places in Stockholm. When I got home I craved it and the calm of cooking after so long away from a kitchen. So I made a cake - Swedish, naturally.

 

From Anna Brones and Joanna Kindvall's very lovely cookbook Fika (the Swedish word for the ritual of pausing expressly for coffee and something sweet) I baked the hazelnut coffee cake. This is not so much a coffee cake in the American sense, but one that contains coffee, a flavour that melds beautifully with the ground hazelnuts and butter to produce a simple but stunning cake that suitably sums up Scandinavia.

Tiramisu

My friend Tammy makes the best tiramisu. So when she became a vegan, a few years ago, I took it hard. As much as I admired her principles, I selfishly lamented the loss of my favourite dairy-laden dessert. I could have made it myself, it's true, but it just wouldn't have been the same. Luckily for me, her stance softened (she's still a very committed vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy as responsibly as possible) and tiramisu is back in my life. 

Tiramisu was big in the 80s. So much so it seems like the dessert equivalent of shoulder pads and big hair. Tammy would say it's timeless though, and she's right. There's so much to love about a dinner party dish that tastes incredible, requires only a few ingredients and can be made (and in fact must be made) ahead of time. Simple flavours that in combination pack a punch: coffee, chocolate, creamy mascarpone and booze. 

The booze is optional really - the original recipe, which can be traced back to the Veneto region of Italy in the 1960s, doesn't include it. I don't normally like alcohol-flavoured things but somehow it works for me here. Maybe because it doesn't overwhelm but melds beautifully with the other ingredients. In translation, tiramisu means "pick me up", which makes it ideal for the end of a long night... or the beginning of a new day. 

Be warned: this is not a quick fix sweet treat: tiramisu needs to be refrigerated for several hours or overnight so that the sponge fingers soften and the flavours have time to develop. Trust me, your patience will be rewarded. It's like eating a cloud. A sweet, caffeinated, slightly drunken cloud.

Chocolate pecan pie

This trip has been about people. And because of it, I’ve got to see some amazing places*. Last week I flew from the swamp to the high desert to see my friend Robin. Robin and I met a year ago in the woods in New Hampshire, at an artists’ colony, which is kind of like camp for grown-ups. But with better food. We bonded over lots of things, but mostly fiercely over our joint obsession with the chocolate pecan pie. Maryel, the chef at the colony, had prepared it for Thanksgiving, and, after going back for seconds (and maybe even thirds) we begged her for the recipe. Unfortunately I left that recipe back in Australia, not realising that it would be the perfect dessert to make for Christmas dinner with Robin and her boyfriend Don til I arrived in Santa Fe. So I winged it with help from the internet and my memory. And it worked out just fine - sweet, gooey, and all the shades of brown, which seemed appropriate in a place with that particular palette. Where that colour encompasses rust on a pick-up, the golden glow of farolitos lining the roads and rooftops at night, the warm cinnamon of the adobes, and the deep, dark brown of the Stetson I bought to keep the desert light at bay.

* And eat the most amazing things. In New Mexico: enchiladas with blue corn tortillas and green chile, Mexican hot cocoa with cinnamon, and the world’s largest, stickiest (and possibly most delicious) cinnamon roll.

Chocolate pecan pie
Adapted from this recipe, but inspired by memories and Maryel

As difficult as this is, you want to let this cool to room temperature before eating. 

3 tablespoons butter, melted

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup dark corn syrup

3 tablespoons strong coffee

1 1/2 cups pecan halves

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie shell (I used this recipe)  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt butter in a small saucepan. While butter is melting, add beaten eggs to a medium sized bowl. Stir in brown sugar, flour, vanilla extract, corn syrup and coffee until combined. Add butter when just melted.

Mix in the pecans and chocolate morsels. Stir together and pour mixture into pie shell. 

Place on a sheet tray and bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

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.