Cinnamon marble cake

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. 

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.

Pantry crumb cake

Sometimes there is no story. Sometimes it's Saturday and you just want to make a cake. So it was last weekend. I'd had this bookmarked for a while because I love any cake with sour cream in it, Melissa Clark is reliably good and this recipe is made for these times - infinitely adaptable to whatever you happen to have on hand. So I guess I do have a story after all. Especially as friends spontaneously dropped by - as we now have the privilege to do in Sydney in small numbers - and we all had cake together. It was sunny. It was Saturday. It was glorious.

Fresh fig and ricotta cake

  

I've had my head down working for the last little while but the Sunday before Easter I took a much needed day off. With friends I made my way to a new swimming spot, a secluded Sydney harbour beach off West Head in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The occasion called for cake and this one was a winner, both before and after our dip. Not too sweet, lightly lemony, and showcasing in-season figs as stunning as our surrounds. 

Spice cake

As I get older I have a greater appreciation for simple cakes - the sort that wouldn't turn a head in a display case beside chocolate extravaganzas, towering layers of cream, or pretty pastel citrus showstoppers. These runners-up in the great beauty contest of the cake world are homely to say the least but what they lack in looks they more than make up for in flavour. This simple spice cake from Sweet is case in point, its boring brown exterior belying its complexity. Each bite contains so many different tastes - caramel from the brown sugar, tang from the sour cream, zing from the orange zest and peppery punch of mixed spice to round things off. Plain is perfect.

Nora Ephron's peach pie

Nora Ephron was a writer. Though she wasn't a food writer, all of her work, in one way or another, features food - from her screen adaptation of Julie and Julia (about how Julia Child became Julia Child), to perhaps her most-well known script When Harry Met Sally (whose most memorable scene takes place in Katz's Deli) to an early novel of hers I read just a few weeks ago, titled - memorably, perfectly - Heartburn. The book is the account of a marriage ending. Its heroine is a food writer who discovers her Washington journalist husband is having an affair while she is pregnant with their second child. It's funny, it's heartbreaking, it has recipes. Just like life.

To all those people who think making pie is hard (and that includes me), this recipe is for you. It's so simple, it's not even written in recipe form in the book, just unfolds in a few sentences. And in actuality, it really is that easy. No need for rolling pins, resting times, or chopping more than three pieces of fruit, it really is a marvel. Ephron's heroine makes hers at a lake house in West Virginia over summer, a time you're so hot and lazy you really can't be bothered to cook at all. It's the sort of thing that is perfect holiday house food - no need for fancy ingredients, or heavy reliance on an unfamiliar oven. The crust is crisp and buttery, the filling oozy and extravagant with the juicy sweetness of ripe peaches. Nora knows her stuff.

Heartburn is said to be a thinly veiled account of the end of Ephron's own marriage - to Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, memorably portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in All The President's Men. Heartburn itself was made into a film in 1986, with Meryl Steep and Jack Nicholson, and is every bit as delicious as this pie. 

Though she'd achieved so much in her career, Nora Ephron died too soon in 2012. She is survived by her husband, writer/producer Nick Pileggi, and her two sons, Jacob and Max. In addition to her screenplays and novels, she wrote a lot of essays. In one - much earlier in her life - she reflected on dying and, as ever, came back to food. The New York Times included it in her obituary of June 26, 2012:

Ms. Ephron’s collection “I Remember Nothing” concludes with two lists, one of things she says she won’t miss and one of things she will. Among the “won’t miss” items are dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and panels on “Women in Film.” The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:

“Taking a bath

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie.”

Nora Ephron's peach pie
From Heartburn by Nora Ephron, first published in 1983

I am going to just print the recipe exactly as it appears in the novel because it is perfect. A Cuisinart is a brand of food processor. Any will do. Only when transcribing the recipe did I see that it called for the peaches to be peeled. I didn't do that and was so pleased with my pie I couldn't imagine it could be any better. I'm sure Nora would approve of my minor (unconscious) adaptation.


Last summer they came to visit us in West Virginia and Julie and I spent a week perfecting the peach pie. We made ordinary peach pie, and deep dish peach pie, and blueberry and peach pie, but here is the best peach pie we made: Put 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat three egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and 1/3 cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until filling is set.

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.

Armenian nutmeg cake

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.

Cardamom pear sour cream cake

I first discovered cardamon in sweets through Scandinavian baking. Over there, it's a dominant flavour in cinnamon buns, the reason their sort are so different to the American kind. Speckled through dough, or cake batter, it brilliantly balances out the sweetness around it, transforming what would otherwise often be plain and homely into something sophisticated. Here, it works its magic in a cake enriched with sour cream and crowned with petals of pear. It couldn't be less fussy to make or to take... I transported thick slices of this one to Sydney Swans match on Saturday night and down the south coast on Sunday for Mother's Day. I couldn't make it for my mum, but I could feed my friends, and she would have liked that.. and this cake. Very much.

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.

Polenta loaf with rosemary, parmesan and olive oil

A quick bread is just that - something you can pull together in no time to put out for drinks with some relish or chutney, or to serve with lunch or dinner to sop up sauces and stews. Toasted and buttered it makes a good base for baked beans at breakfast, and goes beautifully with bacon and/or eggs, particularly the sort with a nice runny yolk. It's grainy, lightly sweet, fragrant with rosemary, and excellent for using up the odd bit of sour cream in your fridge. There's no yeast to fret over, no dough to knead, or rising time to wait, and it's a shade of yellow so cheerful it will put you in a good mood without even tasting it. A little lift for midweek.

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.

Old-fashioned chocolate cake

If you're a kid and it's your birthday, then there's only one cake you want. And because all of us have been kids (or perhaps have never really grown up), chocolate cake brings out our inner seven year old, and we too hoe into it with gusto. Anyone who likes to bake has a go-to recipe for chocolate cake and this is mine. I'm not a parent but the average person (baker or not) with a lot on their plate can appreciate a recipe where all you have to do is pile the ingredients into a food processor and press ON. Especially when the results would indicate it was a lot more work - the most delicate crumb, a perfect balance of tangy and sweet, and a sturdy structure which allows it to be comfortably held by fingers big and small.

It's so good in fact, it befits two choruses of happy birthday - one with candles, one with sparklers. The secret is sour cream, which enriches both icing and cake and cuts the sweetness of the sugar in each. It also makes it beautifully moist, which means the slice you get to take home will be just as delicious the next day.

Strawberry sour cream streusel cake

Strawberries are a summer fruit, synonymous with Christmas and hot weather and pavlova. So why markets are blanketed in plump red berries now at the tail end of winter/beginning of spring, I'm not sure. I should probably be worried but instead I snapped up a punnet for a pocketful of loose change and made cake. Naturally. 

Until recently, I was quite sniffy about strawberries, seeing them as somehow inferior to their more rarified relatives like raspberries, blackberries, mulberries... I liked them fine but found their taste by comparison a little... well, bland. But then I learned something that changed my bad attitude about strawberries forever. It's likely you already know this but I'll share it with you anyway. Are you ready? Here it is. Don't eat them cold. That's it. Out of the fridge, at room temperature, their flavour is fully experienced and it's every bit as distinctive and delicious as those other berries that cost twice or three times the price. But don't eat too many or you won't have enough for this cake.

Rich and buttery, with a ribbon of red running through it and a crunchy, crumbly topping, this is the best kind of morning coffee cake or afternoon tea cake. You could make it with any kind of berry probably but there's something particularly sweet about strawberries, whatever the weather, whatever the season. 

Coco the burlesque wonder cake

It's been a year. 52 weeks, 52 recipes since I started a blog called Alice Bakes a Cake with a post on... apple pie. It seems appropriate then, for more than one reason, to mark the occasion with cake. And not just any cake but the most over the top in my repertoire, the fabulously-named Coco the burlesque wonder cake.

The name befits a more blousy floral adornment but I couldn't resist the bright yellow of the wattle that's all over Sydney at the moment and plucked a couple of branches from a neighbourhood tree to bring home, where it promptly shed little yellow polka dots all over my apartment. But I digress. This cake is, like all other recipes I've posted here over the last year, so easy to make - a pile-all-ingredients-in-the-food-processor kind of affair. It's basically a chocolate cake, with a rich, decadent chocolate frosting. But there's nothing basic about its taste. The magic ingredient is golden syrup, which gives Coco a lovely can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it point of difference from your standard chocolate cake. Along with the sour cream - also a feature of both frosting and cake - it gives a nice tangy intensity to the sweetness. A complexity of flavour in a cake that couldn't be more simple.

Huge thanks to everyone who's eaten things I've cooked for the blog over this last year (I couldn't get through all those cakes and pies single-handedly), as well as to those who've read it, commented on it, and most of all, made things from it. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. The biggest pieces of cake go to my good friends Elizabeth, who inspired and encouraged me to start a blog, and to Tammy, whose IT help and photography favours have been so appreciated. Like any good speech, I'll keep this short. It's time to tuck in.

Pear pecan streusel cake

Just last month, I went to the Blue Mountains for the weekend with friends. It rained. And rained. And when it wasn't raining, the fog set in - so thick as to obscure all trace of the majestic escarpments the area is famous for. So we hunkered down inside, in the holiday house we'd rented in Blackheath. The six of us, inner-city residents all, wandered from room to room marvelling at the sheer space, which was to our eyes as vast and impressive as the tourist vistas we didn't see. A table that seats more than three comfortably! A kitchen several people can be in at a time! A front and back yard! A separate living room! With a fireplace!

And so, in the end, we were more than happy to stay in. Playing board games and charades. Twirling sparklers on the terrace in the drizzle. Launching paper planes out into the misty backyard to see whose could fly furthest (not mine). Answering trivia questions. Sampling stouts, drinking red wine and coffee made from home-roasted beans. Roasting marshmallows. And eating this cake by the fire.








I hadn't made this particular cake before and quite honestly, wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. It was so modest in its list of ingredients - just one pear, a single egg, a mere two tablespoons of butter... I was apprehensive. But as it turns out, it's one of those cases where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Together, all those humble elements combine to make one lovely, rustic, truly memorable cake. The pear is pillowy soft, the pecan topping crisp and crunchy and the spices suffuse it all with a wonderful warmth, as satisfying as a fire on a rainy winter weekend. Regardless of the weather, this is cake worth staying in for.  

Chocolate prune brownies

There are a lot of brownie recipes out there. So if I'm going to post about something gooey, and chocolatey and square, it ought to be worth your while. And let me tell you, this is. It's not just any old brownie recipe, but one from a favourite place of mine in Sydney, the Bourke Street Bakery. There are a number of them now, but the original bakery café, on leafy Bourke Street, Surry Hills, is on my route to the office I've been writing at lately. Sometimes I stop in for a coffee and exercise all my self-restraint to not order something else to go with it.

And then, after all that, I come home and bake something from their cookbook. This week it was somewhat justified as I was going to the Sydney Film Festival with friends. There's not much time in between sessions, and limited dining options in the immediate vicinity other than popcorn, so indoor picnic supplies are called for. A brought-from-home sandwich or thermos of soup are all very well and good, but afterwards, what you need to power you into the next film, is an intense hit of chocolate. One that's easy to pack in your bag and eat with your fingers in the darkness of a cinema. 

Brownies are the perfect portable dessert - at a festival or a friend's house, on a road trip or a picnic... or as far afield as your own kitchen, transported all the way from the tin to your hand (then your mouth). What sets these brownies apart from all others - other than the sour cream, which imparts a smooth richness - are the prunes. Shiny, sweet and silky, and impossibly soft and moist from three days of soaking, they're a perfect match with dark chocolate, adding an unexpected, exquisite, sophisticated texture to the familiar dense, squidgy square.

Orange loaf

So I had some sour cream to use up. A lot of the cooking I do starts this way. As an effort not to waste things. I can't remember now why I had sour cream in the fridge, but I couldn't let half a carton sit and spoil, no matter that it did cost all of $1.25 or thereabouts. I once made batch after batch of chutney just to empty a glass vinegar bottle, which - with its pretty embossed leaf pattern - I had designs on repurposing as a water jug. A good friend pointed out, quite sensibly, that I could have bought the bottle and just tipped its contents down the sink - but I just can't bring myself to waste anything. Besides, it's a good excuse to cook. So. The sour cream. I could have made cornbread. I could have baked a potato. But with all this glorious sunshine Sydney's been enjoying of late, I had organised a weekend picnic, so it seemed a cake was called for. This one I'd bookmarked from a blog a while ago, being a fan of all things orange, in colour and in cooking.

This recipe uses both the zest and juice of the fruit for a full-bodied citrus flavour. The sweetness of the orange is tempered nicely by the tang of the sour cream, which also gives the cake a stunningly smooth texture. It's light yet robust, and in its loaf form, eminently transportable - the perfect picnic cake. I'll be making it again (and again, no doubt as then I'll have the other half of the sour cream carton to use up).