Saffron, orange and yoghurt cake

I got some saffron for Christmas. I love grocery items as gifts - the sort of things that are useful but a little luxurious, that you might not include in your regular weekly shop. Saffron, which costs a lot for a little, falls squarely into this category. So when a friend had a birthday recently, I was ready with a cake. Saffron is a subtle flavour so know this recipe will still work really well without it. But what it does offer is an enhancement of colour - a warm glow that suffuses the cake. Its fine filaments are flecked through it too, little quivers of colour. Without saffron, what you get is a great everyday orange cake, easily made with ingredients you're likely to already have on hand. But saffron makes it just a little bit special, which is what birthdays - and Christmases - are all about after all. 

Double citrus syrup cake

 

I've got a real affection for cakes flavoured with citrus. The acidity of the fruit spectacularly offsets the sweetness of sugar. The flavour feels bright and fresh in the colder months when it's in season. But perhaps it's just because the colours put me in mind of nasturtiums, a flower I love, that grows wild in Brisbane backyards. And some more southern ones too. I'm lucky enough to have them permanently on display thanks to this beautiful linocut by my dad, which has pride of place in my living room. 

But this cake! The recipe is by Julia Busuttil-Nishimura, who's responsible for some of my favourite bakes of recent years - this raspberry coconut and lime cake, this ginger cake with brown sugar cream cheese frosting... It uses both lemon and orange and best of all, can be made in advance, as it has yoghurt in its list of ingredients, and is drenched after baking in a syrup, both of which keep it beautifully moist. I made a 2/3rds quantity here and used a small loaf tin, but the the three egg version (the original recipe, as below) would be lovely in the round. It looks good just as is but if you've got any nasturtiums about, they do make a very pretty (and edible) topping. It's also excellent with berries and cream.

Simple summer cake

It's been a sombre summer in Australia. Here in Sydney, we're safe from the fires but have been under a thick cloud of smoke since November. That's nothing to complain about compared to the rural and coastal communities north and south of us who've borne the brunt of this climate crisis but I lately haven't felt much like baking or writing about it. With all the footage of fires, and daily reminders of the devastation (awaking to ash blown in with the wind, birds flying indoors in search of water, a blood red sun, people in masks in the streets), it's impossible to be unaffected emotionally by all this. Baking has always been something that makes me feel better. So in an effort to do that recently I made this simple summer cake. I'm glad I did. For the short time it took to make it felt good to be doing something normal when the world right now feels anything but. In times like these it's important to be grateful for the small things. So make cake, share it with people you love, and start a conversation about what you can do.

Grapefruit poppy seed loaf

I didn't want winter to slip away without making the most of citrus. Grapefruit is one of my favourites, often overlooked in baking in favour of the more modest lemon. By contrast, grapefruits are super-size citrus, big and blowsy. There's pink grapefuit and ruby red, and of course, just regular. All are dazzlingly acidic and amazing in anything sweet. This loaf takes ingredients most often associated with lemon - yoghurt and poppy seeds - and reimagines them with grapefruit. To great success. Super easy. A celebration of citrus.

Tangelo polenta drizzle cake

Nature is clever. In the middle of winter, when everything is feeling grey and dreary, it offers up citrus. It's enough to just gaze upon the bright colours of lemons and oranges and limes and pink grapefruit and everything in between but the flavour of these fruits works the same way to shock you out of a slump.

This recipe requires a single bowl. If you don't have tangelos, oranges or lemons will do. Containing both oil and yoghurt, the cake keeps well which means you can make it ahead, or have it on hand for the week. But the colour! It's the best. Sweet and softly glowing, it's almost like eating sun.

Ciambellone

Sometimes I stray across a recipe that I'm moved to make straight away. Such was the case last week when the ever-reliable Smitten Kitchen published a recipe for an Italian tea cake I'd never heard of called ciambellone. I have no idea really how to pronounce this but in my head it sounds like cymbals being smashed together as in look and taste that's its effect. Further cause for celebration - it's a one bowl affair, oil-based (so no melting or creaming of butter) and I had almost all of the ingredients already, including (as a bonus) eggs from my Dad's chooks he'd brought with him in his carry-on luggage for a weekend visit. We'd planned a drive and no road trip is complete without a thermos and a treat to have with it. We had ours at a point in a park looking out at endless water. And again, back at home, for afternoon tea.

Orange blossom, yoghurt and cardamom cake

 

If you like to bake, birthday cake is the best. There is nothing nicer than making one for someone you love, unless that person is under ten and the cake in question has to resemble a Disney character or something similarly complex requiring graph paper, a work plan and multiple tins. I'm in awe of my friends with kids who routinely turn out these marvels. This cake was not for a kid but for a very good friend with a big double digit birthday, but there's no need for birthday cake to be grown up. All that matters is that it's sturdy (to hold up all those candles), sweet, and good enough to go back for seconds...

 

This one succeeds on all scores. As I gave as a birthday present, Hetty McKinnon's first cookbook Community, it was fitting that this recipe comes from her second, Neighbourhood. It's full of all sorts of good things (pistachios! orange blossom water! cardamom! yoghurt! cream cheese!) and presents the prettiest palette of pale orange, pink and green. I'm predisposed to orange as a cake flavour for birthdays - it's not just sweet but somehow joyful in its brightness, both in flavour and hue. 

 

Though fittingly celebratory, this is actually quite a modest cake, requiring only two eggs, a small (but sufficient) amount of icing and seriously, no technique at all - the butter is melted, so it's just a matter of combining the wet ingredients with the dry and bundling the resultant batter in the oven. Minus the candles, it's an effortless everyday cake, good for lunchboxes and picnics, easily cut and carried. Equally suited to forks or fingers.

Grapefruit and olive oil cake with bittersweet chocolate

I've been away. From this blog, from my apartment. While I was gone, some interstate friends came to stay at my place. Sadly, our paths didn't cross, but I had just enough time before leaving for the airport to make them a cake so I felt like there was a little bit of me there to greet them.

Though I was headed for summer later that day, it was winter in Sydney and that means citrus. The seasonality of that food family is consistently strange to me as its bright burst of flavour seems more suited to warmer months (when you feel like quenching your thirst with orange juice, tucking into grapefuit for breakfast or squeezing lime into gin and tonics) than the colder ones but maybe in these darker parts of the year we need it more. I'm sure nature had some sort of plan. 

This cake is made with grapefruit, an underused citrus, in my opinion. It's fresh and zingy and pretty orange-pink (if you use the ruby sort, which I'm powerless to resist). The flavour comes from both its zest, and juice - which is intensified by boiling it down to half its quantity. No need to dirty a food processor or a stand mixer. Two bowls will suffice - one for the wet ingredients, one for the dry. The two come together, chopped chocolate is added and it bakes in the oven for just under an hour, enough time to pack a suitcase or have a cup of tea and read the paper (having packed well in advance), depending on what type of traveller you are. But whatever type that is, odds are you'll think about that cake all the time you're away and make it again upon your return... and eat two slices for morning tea with the heater on watching the rain, half in summer, half in winter, which through the haze of jetlag seems somehow very right.

Chocolate rye crumb cake

When I travel these days I'm more drawn to supermarkets than musuems. I could spend hours wandering the aisles, entranced by unfamiliar packaging, exotic ingredients and produce from opposite seasons or different climates. My best souvenirs come from here. I brought back juniper berries from Denmark last year, apricots from Tasmania in January and a few days ago, in Portland, I picked up some cacao nibs. I couldn't wait til I got home to open the packet. An opportunity presented itself to make a cake and I jumped on it. Lately I've been experimenting with different kinds of flours. The wholemeal chocolate chip cookies started it all, but then there was an apple, rye and ginger teacake that left me with extra rye flour for another project. And in the January 2015 issue of Bon Appétit I found it. It called for cacao nibs, something I'd looked for in Sydney without success. I'm sure they're somewhere to be found in the city but with a deadline looming, a suitcase to pack and little point in making a cake just before getting on a plane, I decided to pick some up on my holiday.

Cacao nibs are cacao beans that have been roasted, separated from their husks and broken into little pieces. They taste chocolatey but not sweet. A little fruity, a little nutty, they're like the thinking man or woman's chocolate chip. Here, they add a bittersweet crunch to the crumb topping, a beautiful contrast to the rich, smooth, darkly sophisticated cake beneath. Made with both yoghurt and buttermilk, it's incredibly moist and keeps well for days if you store it in an airtight container. This is good news for anyone with people coming for dinner on a weeknight or a school bake sale to cook for. It was good news for me, just eating a piece outside in the cold with a cup of drip coffee and a view of a snow-covered mountain that came out from behind a screen of cloud as if just for me. And when I make this cake again back on the other side of the world sometime, I'll remember that moment.


Chocolate rye crumb cake
Adapted from a recipe in the January 2015 issue of Bon Appétit

As it contains more essential oils than other flours, rye flour is best stored in the fridge or freezer.


Crumble
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup rye flour
1/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons cacao nibs
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt (or 1/8 teaspoon table salt)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and chopped into pieces

Cake
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup rye flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt (or 1/4 teaspoon table salt)
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup Greek yoghurt


First, make the crumble: whisk sugar, both flours, cacao nibs, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl til blended. Work in butter with your fingers to form large clumps - there should be no dry spots. Cover and chill.

Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Grease a 9 inch springform tin and line the base with baking paper. 

Now to the cake: whisk both flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, cream butter and both sugars til light and fluffy (about 5 minutes in a mixer). Mix in eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla and stir til blended (another 2 minutes). Fold in half the dry ingredients, then the buttermilk. Once combined, add the remaining dry ingredients, followed by the yoghurt to make a stiff batter. Scrape into prepared tin and scatter crumble over.

Bake, rotating once, til cake starts to pull away from sides of pan and a tester inserted in the centre comes out clean - about 60-70 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on a wire rack before turning out.

Persian love cake

As the name suggests, this is a cake to make you swoon. Almond meal is the cornerstone ingredient, cleverly incorporated into the two different textures  - a crunchy, caramelly base and a smooth, tangy torte laced with nutmeg and studded with pistachio. If that sounds complicated, trust me, it's not. 

No need for food processors, all you need is a bowl and a wooden spoon. It takes less than ten minutes to make, and about half an hour to bake. The most difficult part about the whole process is waiting for it to cool to room temperature to eat.

It's like a cheesecake, without the bricks of cream cheese, bought biscuits or complicated water baths. It's simple, sophisticated and incredibly, gluten-free. Make it. Fall in love. What better way to start the new year.