Kiwi[fruit] Cake

Clearly I'm not a master froster of cakes.  Yet.

I had big dreams for this post. Dreams of revelling in the glory of the All Blacks’ victory in the Rugby World Cup on Sunday night, dreams of detailing Jonno’s celebratory leaps and whoops of joy, dreams of recounting the tension and drinking to cope with the stress of the game!

And then this thing called a Critical Contingency happened. It’s kind of an ambiguous-sounding thing, isn’t it? ‘Critical’ sounds pretty important, but ‘Contingency’ just makes it all waffley and wavy and not really all that much of a worry. They really need to call it something like ‘Country-Crippling-Very-Bad-Holy-Sh!t Emergency’. But that’s too long to say when you have to talk really fast because the poo is hitting the fan and you are in charge of cleaning up the country-crippling poo.

Anyway, long story short – between the buzz from winning the rugby, the adrenaline rush of a major civic emergency and all the caffeine I’ve ingested in the past 72 hours, I haven’t been able to stop my brain since Saturday! I also have only seen my husband for a grand total of 6 waking hours in the past 72, since we work on the same team and have been rostered onto different shifts to cover phones and emails 24/7.


This keeps me alive at the moment.

You know that thing people do when they pull down all the skin on their face, starting at the top with the eyes so that they look like something out of a horror movie with their eye sockets showing? I’ve been doing that thing a lot lately too. It’s probably giving me wrinkles on top of making me look like the undead. So that’s me right now - a hopped-up, spreadsheeting, goat-hating zombie. I haven’t even put on any makeup for two days. Two days! Someone quick, send mascara stat!

~~~~~~~



This cake has come about due to a ridiculous box of fruit that showed up at my door a week ago. It’s a case of voucher regret – you go for a deal that you think “yeah, it’ll be awesome, I’ll be able to make so much with the fruit!” – without really thinking of exactly how much produce you will be getting, and that said produce will only last for so long before it starts creating a furry green bio-hazard.

The workmates loved it, the rugby crowd loved it, and you will love it.

Eat it.  Eat it now.

Kiwi[fruit] Cake

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 125 g butter
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 cup caster sugar
• ¾ cup kiwifruit, chopped (about 3 kiwis)
• 3 eggs, beaten

Cream cheese frosting

• 250g cream cheese
• 2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tsp lemon juice

2 or 3 kiwifruit for topping the cake

1. Preheat oven to 160C and lightly grease a 23cm springform pan. Line the base with baking paper.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon into a bowl.
3. In a mixing bowl, beat butter, honey and sugar until creamy.
4. Add the eggs and dry ingredients in batches and combine.
5. Fold in the kiwifruit.
6. Pour into pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cream cheese frosting: beat the cream cheese until smooth then add the caster sugar. Add the lemon juice one tablespoon at a time to bring to desired consistency, which should be thick and not runny (it shouldn’t drip off of a spoon). Chill in the fridge for half an hour before using.
8. Frost the cake when cool.
9. Slice up extra kiwifruit and arrange on top of frosting.

NOM NOM NOM.  That's an order.

Check New Plymouth Off the List

So the Rugby World Cup thing is about to end this weekend (Go the All Blacks!!) and I just realised that I still have photos from our trip to New Plymouth for the USA vs. Russia game sitting in draftland.  As this blog started as a travel blog and my Mommy will still want to know what I got up to, here's our trip in photos.

And sorry, but there is nothing food-related in this post because we went the cheapo backpacker way and mostly self-catered pizza and pasta at our hostel.

We drove up on the Thursday of the game and immediately kitted out in rugby gear. 


Gee, we're a bit wide in this photo!  Must have been the filter...

We had seats up under the overhang thankfully, since it drizzled for a while and then decided to outright rain in the second half.  Luckily it turned itself off once the game was over and we had to walk back to the bus.

There was a guy sitting near us who thought the best way to cheer on the Russians was to repeatedly yell, "Vodka, Lada, Kournikova!"  Pretty sure he was Australian.

Also, the USA captain's last name is Clever, and actually pronounced clever, not cleaver.  Either way it's funny, but "Captain Clever"?!  Come on, comic gold!  Apparently he plays in Japan, so that's why no American has ever heard of him before, but now we know!!

It's still weird to me that the US and Russia play rugby. 

The next day we had a bit of a drive around the area, and stopped to check out the big old hill thingy that sits at one end.  There's are some stairs and a path up to the top, but who does that when they're on holiday? :)

We checked out Puke Ariki and learned about the history of rugby in the Taranaki area - did you know that they've been playing it since the late 1800's?  Apparently players would ride their horse for a half-day to get to the game, play hard rugby, then ride home again.  Hard men! 

My keen sense of observation saw this shark hanging from the ceiling, decked out with an All Blacks scarf which you can barely see in this photo.  I wonder where they got it from, and what the reaction was from the person supplying it, "Yeah, we're going to need a 3-meter long scarf in All Blacks colours to go around our shark for the Rugby World Cup." 

Even the shark at Te Puki is rugged up for the rugby!

Rugby World Cup flags are everywhere! 

All the RWC decorations are kinda making it feel like Christmas, or at least how the US does Christmas - over the top and absolutely everywhere.  Even most of the tiny towns we drove through on the way up had flags and signs strung up in the stores and along the streets.  New Zealand is really putting on a good show!

We thought it would be quite romantic to take a stroll through Pukekura Park at night while they had the lights on, and it was quite amazing to see all of the plants and trees lit up in all the colours of the rainbow.  But then we realised that it was just a large outdoor make-out park for teenagers.  They were pashing around every bush, I swear. 



I don't even want to think about the electricity bill for this!

On the last day we walked down the Coastal Walkway for a bit, looking for this bridge that we absolutely had to see, only to get lost and have to ask for directions.  The walkway is fantastic though, all paved and great for bike rides or those people who like long runs, weirdos.  

Pretty coastline, plants, hills, and then bam - ugly smokestack.

We had to drive down to find the bridge, which is built to look like whale bones and is quite stunning, especially when you look down it back towards the volcanoey thing that is plonked smack in the middle of the Taranaki.  The only thing was that the grounds around it were so beatifully manicured and carefully planted that it reminded me of an American golf course, rather than the wildness of New Zealand's flora.  Oh well, you can't have it all, can you?

Looking up at Mt. Egmont from the belly of the whale.

We drove the Surf Coast highway on the way home, and we *may* have stopped at a natural gas processing station and we just *might* have gone into their visitor centre to see how they drill for gas offshore and pipe it back inland.  Yes, we are nerds, but we do work in the natural gas industry, so it's almost mandatory knowledge!

Fun fact: on the Maui Offshore Gas Platform, they have two of this quick-launch (6 seconds!) lifeboats that are completely enclosed and fall down into the water and then pop up and speed away from the burning fireball that would be the platform if these were ever needed.  Mo-om, I want to go on that ride!!

Weeeeee!

We also stopped at a few of the galleries that Taranaki is known for, and I snapped some photos of pieces that I really liked and felt I could create something similar to, but then Jonno told me I probably shouldn't coz then they would think I was trying to copy their art.  Naw man, I was just appreciating it!

Anyway, now I can check New Plymough off my list of places to go in New Zealand, mission accomplished.  Next stop - Auckland, for the Food Blogger's Conference in November!

Coconut Yogurt Cake on a Lazy Sunday

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day, or so they say. 

Last Sunday dawned absolutely gorgeous and sparkling, cruelly mocking those of us who had partaken of the adult beverages while attempting to scream the Welsh to victory over the bloody French.  Our vocal support was to no avail – the silly Coqs kept the mighty Dragons down, albeit only by one point, and our heads were slightly the worse for wear after our own efforts in front of the TV screen.  So the only logical thing to do was throw back the curtains and let the sun shine in. 

Spice is doing the Kitty Paddle during her sun bath.

It took us at least an hour to get ourselves mobilised and out the door, still in a zombie state, but a little buoyed up by this Yogurt Coconut Loaf from Allyson Gofton’s book Bake.

Sweet, sweet hangover food.

My chauffeur/husband dropped me off at the Frank Kitts Underground Market for a wee bit of retail therapy, and look at the pretties I found!!

Some recovery was needed after that strenuous shopping expedition, so we parked ourselves on the waterfront and stared for a while.

So preeeettyyyyy.

Eventually, we had this conversation:

C: Huh, the water’s is really shallow.

J: Yeah, you’re right.  Guess the tide’s out.

C: I can see the bottom.

J: Lots of rocks.

C: Hnnnhhhhh....

Riveting, I know.  We’ll write the great American/Kiwi novel one day, we will! 

Stare at this long enough and it becomes a headache.

Out of sheer laziness and the desire to stay outside/not go home, we took a little drive up the Brooklyn hill to the wind turbine.  Working in the energy industry, we’re both kind of nerds about alternative power.

Wellington on a good day!

The rest of Sunday was much more exciting what with the All Blacks beating dirty old Aussie, but I’ve already told you about that!

Yoghurt and coconut loaf

from Allyson Gofton’s Bake

• 1½ cups caster sugar
• 1½ cups self-raising flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ¾ cup desiccated coconut
• 1 cup thick natural unsweetened yoghurt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 Tbsp dark rum
• 3 Tbsp light oil

Passionfruit icing

• 25g butter, melted
• Pulp from 2 ripe passionfruit OR lemon juice
• 1¼-1½ cups icing sugar, sifted

1. Sift the sugar, flour and baking powder into a bowl, stir in the coconut and make a well in the centre.
2. Beat together the yoghurt, eggs, rum and oil and pour into the well in the dry ingredients. Fold into the dry ingredients.
3. Turn the mixture into a well-greased and lined 23cm x 13cm loaf tin.
4. Bake the loaf in a 180°C oven for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. 
5. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cake rack to cool. When cold, spread the top of the loaf with passionfruit icing and serve in thick slices.  I didn't have any passionfruit around the house, so I just used some lemon juice to counter the sweetness of the icing sugar and that worked quite well.
6. To make the icing, mix the melted butter with the passionfruit pulp. Gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar to make a smooth, slightly runny icing.  Pour the icing over and enjoy!

Pots Gone Wild!

Welcome to Christina’s House of Vessels - I promise these won’t hit a reef and crack down the middle and spill tons of oil into the Bay of Plenty. How terrible is that??

I remember reading one thing that the conservationists learned from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was that it really doesn’t help the wildlife if you de-oil them, especially birds, because by the time they are cleaned up, the toxins have already started to soak in through their skin and they just end up dying anyway.

At least the penguins will be ok, but the rest of the wildlife up north is having a pretty hard time of it.

Well, I certainly just killed the mood, didn’t I? Sorry! How about something juicy and salacious to make us all feel better?

I give you: Pots Gone Wild!!!!

It all started off innocently enough: our pots were glazed and then stacked into the kiln as usual. But then, two days into a five-day firing (*cue dramatic music*) the kiln broke. “Broke?!” she wails. Yes, the giant energy-eater committed a wee bit of kiln-o-side.

But all was not lost, for the pots inside were “underfired”, and could be put back into the kiln once it was fixed. So the nice man came with his tools and tinkered with the big ol’ machine and tested to make sure everything was in proper working order. Or did he?

The pots were put back into the kiln and the firing process was restarted. And two days later, what did our lovely Pottery Teacher discover but that the kiln was hotter than it should be! “Hotter”, she said, “how can that be?!”

Here’s the real-world answer: Kilns have a probe (hehe!) inside that measures the temperature, which is connected to an external computer that is programmed according to whatever type of clay is being fired then. That’s important coz different clays fire at different temperatures.

Here’s my answer: Mr Man who fixed the kiln failed to take the rogue nature of pots into his calculations, and when my little beauties were forced (yes, forced) back into that box of hellfire they rebelled and smuggled in some naughty potty juice in their bellies. A party ensued as the pots enjoyed their secret libations, and vessels began to get naked and sassy with each other. A pair of vases were caught necking by a jealous ewer some dishes ran away to spoon in the corner, and a certain overly-tipsy jug began to do a jig. The jigging jug reeled and wheeled all over the kiln, bumping into mugs and spinning into cups, when finally he teetered a little too far over his big juggy belly and fell. It wasn’t much of a fall as falls go, more of a tip over, but a deadly tip-over it was as he tumbled against the probe. He flailed and struggled to right himself, getting tangled in the probe and other pots’ handles, finally getting back on his foot* and settling down. But all his thrashing about had caused a bit of damage to his fellows and to the precious probe that helped regulate the temperature in the kiln.

Suddenly, the heat began to rise as the computer could no longer talk to the probe and the kiln went out of control! The pots began to weep as they overheated and their nice shiny coats of glaze began to darken and run. The terrible heat sucked all of the water out of the air and the poor pots shrivelled up to a fraction of their starting size – big vases were now little bud vases, serving bowls turned into shallow saucers, and cups wilted down to shot glasses. Worst of all, the glazes puddle at their feet, causing them to become virtually glazed to their shelves. They were stuck!

Luckily, the Pottery Teacher noticed the unusal heat surrounding the kiln and turned it off before the pots inside evaporated into dust. But many were quite fragile and most had to be chiselled from their perches in pools of glassy glaze.

*funny, because the bottom of the pot is actually called the ‘foot’

Here are my pots that survived the Kiln Disaster of 2011.


Two of the real survivors: a shrunken bowl and what is now a double-shot glass. I shall call him Shotty.



The Smurf mug that only holds 3/4 of a cup of coffee.

Anyone else noticed that I seem to have a bit of fascination with naming things after the Smurfs?  Must have been all those Saturday morning cartoons.

This mug looks fine, until you closely examine the bottom to discover....

...a broken foot!  How will she ever dance again?

This is one of the poor babies that had to be chiselled, with an actual chisel, from the shelves.  Sad.

This bad boy put on a bit of a belly while in the hotbox, look at those lovehandles!

It used to be twice that size!!  I guess pots get reverse "shrinkage", since they get smaller when it's hotter rather than icy cold.  Heh.

Finally, we have these two, whom I like to call the Fat-bottomed Twins.  Think Queen would approve?


You make my rockin' world go round!

They were supposed to be jars with lids, but the extreme heat melted the wax that was separating each jar from its lid and instead fused them together, like so:


We have seepage!

So they are pretty much just big old paperweights now.  Except I had this problem, see, in my kitchen, see, with my cookbooks that kept falling over, see, so I put these babies on either side of those blasted books and now I don't have any problems with them taking a dive off the bench in the middle of the night.  My pots are like hired toughs, there to keep everyone in line.  Heh.

My brain just realised how this photo could be construed as slightly...wrong.  In a NSFW kind of way.  Or is that just me?

(Sorry for typing like a Jersey mobster, it's how it came out in my head!)

Here's the whole sorry bunch, troublemakers that they are.  I'll put them to use and punish them for the greivous misdeeds.

The Usual Suspects.

Now I just have to come up with things to do with them!  I think the ugly one hiding in the back might just be a cactus planter one day soon.  That'll teach him to misbehave!

Blue Trees and Purple Bushes

A few weekends ago, I went to the market for some cheese and milk and came back with a bunch of fabric. I may have gotten lost and gone to the wrong market. But this one was much more fun and colourful, like my own personal wonderland! By ‘this one’, I mean the Frank Kitts Underground Market, which has been going in full swing on both Saturdays and Sundays during the Rugby World Cup. It’s been great for the stallholders, but bad for my bank account, because it makes it too easy for me to roll up and get my fix for the week.

And by ‘fix’, I mean fix of pretty.  And cute.  And gorgeous.  And life-force giving.

I found this fabric at Stichbird's stall, and I had to have it.  Well, I had to have it so I could make a present for my friend who is due to bring a human into this world in a few weeks.  I felt this new human would need some pretty so she could get her fix too.  It's something you learn early on.

And here’s what I did with it. One fabric, two ways, lots of colour and fun and pretty for one’s fix.

A baby-changing mat!  That's not exactly a square!  More of a wonky parallelogram really!  Oh well, little baby girl Evans will learn the finer points of geometry at a tender young age then - I'm contributing to her early genius.  She will also learn that trees are blue and bushes are purple, and will be sorely disappointed when the real world doesn't live up to this rainbow pallette.  She'll learn to accept disappointment at a tender young age too then.

You wouldn't know that I have never made one of these before, would you? (Heh heh.)  Yep this design came totally out of my own brain.  Much as all of my one-off hair-brained crafty ideas do.

And look, isn't that clever, it rolls up!  *Pats self on back*  I'm so clever.  :)

Here's basically what I did:

1. Sandwiched some quilty/batting-type stuff that I failed to take a picture of between this jungle fabric and the complementary (I hope) blue leafy fabric.
2. Measured out enough ropey stuff to go around the outside, then turned it into piping by some more of the blue leafy fabric around the length of the rope.  [Really should have taken photos!]  Sewed that piping to the inside quilty/batting stuff, then folded over the outside fabrics and sewed them so that the blue piping was showing around the edge.
3. Made a strap out of an extra piece of blue fabric and quilted down the length of it.  Attached velcro to the ends of it so the mat can be rolled up and velcroed into a tube for easy transport.  Or so my brain thinks.
4. Quilted around the edges of the animals to keep all three layers in place and show off my less-than-stellar skillz with the sewing machine. 

With the rest of the fabric I created some wall art.  You can never have enough wall art!

Just frame some scenes in cheapo wooden embroidery hoops, paint them if you like, then decorate to your heart's content.  

I decorated them with some ribbony bows to conceal the screws, and then staple-gunned the smaller ones to the bottom of the larger ones. 

Look at that giraffe, he's so happy to be living in a land of candy-coloured plant life.  You're living the dream, my friend, living the dream.  Just watch out for the lion that smells like chocolate, I'm pretty sure that's a trap.

Winner Winner, Chicken (with Penne Pasta) Dinner!

Yesterday started like any normal lazy Sunday, with a good lie-in til the sun was well past the midday mark, but don't tell my mother that! It ended with my husband dancing in the street and us staying up til 1am and beyond like naughty children because we were way too buzzed to go to sleep.

In case you're wondering what all the fuss was about, the All Blacks smashed the Wallabies in the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup. 

It was like Christmas Eve when you’re 5, only you don’t drink two more Dark & Stormies just to calm your nerves when you’re a yay-high. The productivity level of New Zealand will be at an all-time low this week, I’m predicting. At least it will be in our pod at the office coz the rugby is all we can talk about!

Here’s a little taste of last night’s celebrations:



Lightning-fast arms of joy!



The cider and the beer may be gone, but there was still some rum to calm the nerves post-game!

Before all that happened though, there was a brilliant dinner (if I do say so myself). This comes straight from The Pioneer Woman’s blog, which I love and can't get through the day without reading, otherwise I might melt. This dish was freakin’ easy – about 15 minutes of prep time, then 1.5 hours in the oven and boom! – and so tasty you’d think it took a lot more work than it does. It also doesn’t take many ingredients, which our bank account rather appreciates as the cost of food continues to climb.  Serve with some broccoli or other neutral green vegetable, you don't want to take the spotlight off this chicken.  Crusty bread is also recommended for cleaning your plate of sauce.  No dish soap necessary!

I wanted to take a bath in that sauce.

Penne with Chicken Thighs
from The Pioneer Woman, original blog post here, with step-by-step photo instructions,  witty commentary and a printable (and more precise than I can be bothered with) recipe

All it takes is some chicken thighs, some bottled marinara sauce of your choosing, onions, garlic, and some penne pasta. 

• Season chicken thighs, then brown in a little bit of oil in a large skillet (oven proof!) or Dutch oven, a few minutes per side.  Set aside on a plate.
• Chop up an onion or two and a couple cloves of garlic.  Saute the onion for a few minutes, then add the garlic and let the wonderful aromas waft through your house. 
• Add bottled (or your own homemade) marinara sauce to the pan and then reintroduce the chicken.  Pour the juice that may have accumulated on the plate into that pan too, you'll thank me later.
• Cover and pop into a 180C oven for 1 to 1.5 hours.  Go put your feet up, or if you're like me, decided that it's time to rearrange the pictures on your walls.
• About 10 minutes before the chicken is done, pop some penne into boiling water and cook as per directions on the packet.
• Plate it up and try not to burn your tongue on the hot chicken!

And go the All Blacks!

Chocolate Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake or Cupcakes for Sweet New Zealand

It happened to me in the Woolworths in Brighton when I was living in Melbourne. I cried because there was no pumpkin in a can.

It’s not easy cooking in another country. I’m sure many people have had similar experiences that I’ve had, when you go to the grocery store on the hunt for a certain ingredient that you know should be there, because hell, it’s always stocked at your grocery stores at home, only to be completely stymied by the non-existence of said ingredient in your new country.

And just to clarify, I didn’t cry much, just a few sniffs really. I just wanted to make something nice from home for my flatmate, who was incidentally from somewhere north of Auckland, and I thought pumpkin pie would be perfect. Something quintessentially American, but easy and comforting for me, the newly-living-abroad-still-naive American. I had no idea how different Australian (and later, Kiwi) cooking was to good old ‘Merrican home cookin’. (Say that like George W, then it makes more sense.)



Three little ducks, all in a row, ready for my tummy.

Fall (as in ‘autumn’, but we’re lazy and say ‘fall’) is just getting into itself over in the US of A, at least according to the bloggy world. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t post some recipe that includes the ubiquitous pumpkin-in-a-can. Pumpkin coffee cake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin etc etc etc. Colour me green with jealousy, I’m about to go into importing pumpkin in a freakin’ can.

Except that I totally just emailed my mommy a recipe for pumpkin coffee cake to make when I’m in the States at Christmas, and she said that she couldn’t find any at the store. Quelle horreur! Is there no canned pumpkin left in the world?! Have all the food bloggers squirreled it away for their own nefarious bloggy purposes?? I’m sending my trusty detective Mommy to investigate...

Meanwhile, I have decided to pursue some purely Antipodean baking, since I can get those ingredients here. The first time I had sticky-date pudding (SDP for the lazy) was at my friend Matt’s house in Melbourne, and his mom Lydia still makes the best SDP in my (somewhat limited!) experience. It is to DIE for. Anytime I would get invited for dinner I would get excited in my tummy for her foods. Since there’s a whole big ditch called the Tasman Sea in the way of me and sticky-date pudding bliss, I thought it would be a good place to start on learning how to bake like a Kiwi/’Stralyin.



Chocolate sticky toffee pudding cake - enough adjectives in there for ya?

This is a great take on the traditional SDP with the addition of a little dark chocolate, and absolutely must be served with cream, or even better – custard. Must.

I made this for the workmates last week when I got chocolate in the mail and actually had dates waiting in the cupboard just for this purpose, but never got to store for the essential cream/custard and so I didn’t quite get the glory I deserved for making such a beautiful cake for them. My bad. Then I had to bring something for our last pottery class, so during the night my brain decided that this cake in cupcake form would be a winner, especially since I still have ingredients left over. Add a little butterscotch-buttercream frosting on top in place of the cream and/or custard and everything would be golden. Heh. Turns out I was right.

Rustic-looking background = my porch.  Who's resourceful?? This girl!

Chocolate Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake


Cake

• 300 ml boiling water
• 150 g chopped dates
• 150 g dark chocolate – the darker, the better
• 100 g unsalted butter, softened
• 150 g brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 225 g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder

Toffee Sauce of Glory (for cake)

• 275 g golden syrup (about half a bottle)
• 275 g brown sugar
• 225 ml cream (could use milk in a pinch)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Butterscotch Buttercream (for cupcakes)

• 100 g unsalted butter, softened
• 2 c icing sugar
• ¼ c custard powder
• 1 tsp salt (sounds like a lot, but trust me)
• 150 g maple syrup
• Splash of milk to mix

Cake/cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 180. (Cake) Grease and line a 20cm springform pan. (Cupcakes) Put liners in your cupcake tin.
2. Put boiling water in a saucepan, reduce to a simmer and soak the dates in it for about 10 minutes. Once they’re done, just take them off the heat.
3. In the meantime, melt the chocolate either in the microwave or over a double-boiler, then set aside to cool a little.
4. Cream your butter and sugar together, then add eggs one at a time.
5. Mix in cooled chocolate.
6. Sift dry ingredients together, then mix into wet mixture in batches. Add the soaked dates and their soaking liquid and incorporate gently.
7. (Cake) Pour mixture into cake tin and bake for 50 minutes. (Cupcakes) Fill cupcake holes about 2/3 full (or maybe a little more!) and bake for 25 – 30 minutes.

Toffee Sauce

1. Put all ingredients into a saucepan on a high heat and boil for 4-5 minutes, stirring to prevent sugar from burning.
2. Serve the cake warm with toffee sauce poured on each slice. This will make plenty of sauce for everyone!

Buttercream

1. Cream butter and icing sugar together.
2. Add salt, maple syrup and a splash of milk.
3. To prevent this frosting from being too sweet, use the custard powder to thicken. The consistency should be decently thick, thick enough to pipe through a large tip.
4. Spoon frosting into a piping bag with a large tip or into large plastic bag, snip the tip off the plastic bag and pipe big spirals on your cupcakes.

I tinted my buttercream a golden yellow because between the butter and the maple syrup it wasn’t white anymore, more like a sickly cream colour, and with it being spring and all I wanted a more cheerful cupcake. Enjoy!

I'm submitting this double recipe for Sweet New Zealand, hosted this month by the lovely Couscous & Consciousness.  I've been a fan of her blog for a while now, and recently she's been posting great (read: easy for me, a sometimes-lazy cook) spring recipes, like this one I'm going to attempt on Sunday - Cauliflower Soup. 

Choux Pastry at La Patisserie

Something terrible happened to me recently. Are you ready to hear about it?

I was accused of being a “girly-girl”.

Gasp! I nearly had a fit of the vapours, I was so shocked! Me, a girly-girl?! Never!

I had to know – “WHY do you think I’m a *shudder* girly-girl?!” The answer: “Because you wear skirts and makeup and brooches on your coat, and you like to bake.”

All true things, but I must add caveats to each: I wear skirts because they’re fun and comfy and I’m not into pants at the moment; I wear makeup because I have to thanks to my invisible eyelashes and little eyes, seriously I could never be one of those backpackers who doesn’t bring her makeup with her; brooches are fun!; and of course I like to bake, I married a Baker, and also many many humans of the male persuasion also bake, so therefore it is not inherently girly. So there. You have no grounds for your argument. :)

My aversion to “girlyness” started back when my mother decided to dress me in blues and yellows as a baby, and people would think I was a boy. When I was 8 and my sister was 4, we were given boy-short pixie haircuts, and we both mistaken for boys constantly, not helped by the fact that we would dress ourselves and didn’t wear very girly colours. Read: nothing ever matched at all in any way – one of my favourite outfits was a lavender/blueish sweatshirt with bears on it with hunter green dinosaur sweatpants. My seester and I, we are blue-and-gray girls. BTW – “seester” is not a misspelling, it’s her official title.

I did sports and got dirty and didn’t wear socks for a whole school year. One whole knee is covered in scars from bike accidents. I didn’t understand the value of blow-drying my hair until I was in college.

I am NOT a girly-girl.  Maybe I was influenced by Arnold too much - Kindergarten Cop was my fave.  Even my cupcakes are frosted in non-girly primary colours!

I don’t have a problem if you might be one, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round, but it’s just not me.

And then I learned how to make choux (sounds like shoe!) pastry. It’s light, it’s French, it can be filled with all kinds of fancy cream fillings, and to me it seems very very girly. And I’m ok with that. But just this once, coz while it is sooooo good, I’m still not a girly-girl.

I went with the Wellington Foodies Meet-up Group to La Patisserie in Miramar, the only true French patisserie in New Zealand, according to chef-owner Marie Loic Monmont, who is cute as a button and highly entertaining. She only uses completely organic, local ingredients, with the sole exception of hazelnut and pistachio pastes, the best of which is made in northern Italy. She also employs actual French boys to help out in the kitchen, tre authentic!

Chef Marie Loic Monmont - aka deliverer of heavenly delights.

You know how at parties, there are always people who don’t leave the kitchen? That’s me. I don’t do chatting in groups very well, so I make myself useful instead. Inevitably someone ends up in there with me and we have a blast just one-on-one. And if people start to catch on to the fun happening in the kitchen? Oh, there’s something in the bedroom that I mustbedoingrightnow. 

That's me, getting all up into the pastry, piping like a pro!

So being that person, going to a Meetup Group event was pretty intimidating. If you haven’t heard of Meetup Groups, it’s an online forum where people of similar interests start and join groups with a specific focus and then hold or attend events. I am also a member of the Circa Theatre Meetup Group, and it’s really great for people who enjoy going to plays but don’t have someone to go with them. The Foodie group is really active and constantly organising new activities, like attending cooking classes together and doing dinner parties. So like I said, walking into a group of people I don’t know, on my own, with no one to lean on or keep me from hiding in the corner, yeah that was big.

And not as scary as I thought it would be! Probably because the reward of being a big girl and talking to new people was getting to eat the best éclairs everrrr. I made myself take 10 minutes to eat mine, there was a lot of savouring to be done.



That green stuff is pistacio-flavoured creme patisserie and it's the best green thing I've ever eaten.

Here is Marie’s recipe for choux pastry – it’s very exact, because according to her, “Cooking may be love, but pastry is science. It’s a chemical reaction happening in your pan, in your oven.” A scrumptious chemical reaction!

Pate a choux
from French chef Marie Loic Monmont @ La Patisserie, Miramar Wellington

• 250g cold water
• 110g unsalted butter (you can use salted butter, just omit the salt)
• Pinch of salt
• 180g flour, sifted
• 360g eggs (because eggs are different sizes, and this can also vary through the year

1. Put the water and butter in a saucepan and bring to the boil and mix, then take off the heat.
2. Add the flour and whisk it up into a ball. This will take a lot of muscle!
3. Transfer to a mixing bowl, and add eggs one a time, mixing well after each one. The batter should be pretty thick, as it will be piped, so definitely not runny at all. *You can use a mixer with the paddle attachment for this step! Saves arm strength.
4. Using a very wide piping tip and large bag, pipe thick lines of 12-15cm or golf ball-sized dollops onto a lined baking tray. Keep tip pointed down at tray, not at an angle.
5. Make a quick egg wash by beating one egg. Brush over the top of the piped choux to even out the bumps and lumps.
6. Finish by raking a fork down the length of the choux.
7. Bake in 180C oven for 20 minutes or so, depending on how hot your oven runs – watch the choux to make sure they don’t go too brown, but DON’T open the oven as this will let all your precious steam out, and it’s the steam that helps these pastries rise with their bubbles inside.

And if you want to fill your delectable pastries (and what sane person wouldn't?), Marie also provided a recipe for fancy filling!

Creme Patisserie

• 1/2 L milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 125g sugar
• 60g flour
• 1 vanilla bean, split open

1. Bring the milk to boil in a saucepan with the vanilla bean.  Take off the stove and wander over to your bench.
2. Stir in egg yolks, sugar and flour.
3. Put saucepan back onto the stove and cook until the cream is thick, stirring constantly with a whisk.

Aaaaaand what éclair wouldn’t be complete without a chocolatey topping?!  None, that's what.

Chocolate Ganache

• 100g cream
• 100g chocolate

1. Bring cream and chocolate to the boil in a saucepan together and stir together.
2. Smother on top of those glorious choux....what's the plural of choux?

For a chocolate filling, mix chocolate ganache with some crème patisserie, and add a pinch of cocoa powder and a pinch of icing sugar!

To fill: poke a hole in the bottom of the baked choux. Put your filling into a piping bag and pipe into choux.

Shove one into your mouth and collapse into dreamy bliss.

You’re welcome.

OR if you can’t be bothered doing all these crazy things yourself, swing by La Patisserie in Miramar, but be warned that they only make enough to sell for that day and because what they make is so good, it does sell out. Go now!  And please bring me some too.