 Back in 2013 I took a trip to NZ to see my family. I had a glorious fortnight catching up with loved ones, driving to the top of the north island to see my favourite pottery studios, taking my then 5 & 3yo children to the black sand beaches of my childhood. 11 years later, my son's sole memory of the holiday was going to the cinema in Auckland to see Despicable Me. Typical. Except I'm not much better, because the memory I keep returning to is a glorious breakfast I had in Ponsonby - it was a plate of gingerbread spiced pancakes, stacked high and dripping with butter and syrup.
When I returned home I set about creating my own version and it's since become a family favourite. I like to serve these pancakes with whipped honey cinnamon butter. I've added the simple instructions on how to make it after the pancake recipe - try it and I swear you'll wonder why you ever bothered eating pancakes without whipped butter!  Australians and New Zealanders love a slice. There's nowhere else in the world where a slice means what it does to us. I remember confusing my American cousin with talk of ‘making a weetbix slice’ - explaining weetbix was tough enough (there's no equivalent in the US, with all cereal being bite size), but then I also had to explain a slice! I deferred to the Australian Women's Weekly definition:
‘Somewhere between a cake and a tart and baked in a large slab, slices are sweet treats that can be made of one mixture or have multiple layers, with a base that’s covered with a topping and/or a filling’. This Blueberry Crumble Slice is so delicious and surprisingly simple and speedy to make. That's because it gives the illusion of having three separate layers; in actual fact it's just a classic crumble mixture pressed into a brownie tin then a scattering of blueberries, which are then sandwiched under another layer of crumble placed on top.  There are a few incarnations of semolina cake. The classic Persian Love Cake is a very popular version, often infused with lemon and rosewater. Some semolina cake recipes use orange and cardamom. They can be topped with a sharp and sweet citrus icing or a sticky syrup. The one common element is they almost all contain semolina, almond meal and citrus.
I wanted to give this one an Australian profile using Rosella (a type of hibiscus). I paired it with lime because it's a combination hard to resist. Not only was the resulting flavour combination fantastic but the deep pink of the Rosella (Hibiscus) syrup made it impossible not to dive in immediately. In retrospect, I should have experimented by finishing the cake with a tiny sprinkling of Tasmanian Mountain Pepperberries - I can just imagine their sharp, fruity heat adding a fabulous, unexpected dimension to the lime and Rosella. Ah well, next time. If you decide to give the pepperberries a go I would love to know how it went! It's easy, and it's a crowd pleaser. I think you'll love this cake :) Note: Remember to read through the recipe thoroughly before beginning!  There's quite a chasm between the sudden hankering for cake and baking one. A chasm consisting of finding a recipe, checking you have ingredients to hand, deciphering the recipe and summoning the motivation to tackle the various techniques and steps (my mum says that for her the most dreaded sentence in any recipe is ‘cream the butter and sugar’ to which she always answers “no. I will not be doing that” before slamming the cookbook shut.) Too often you might find yourself making do with nibbling on some cooking chocolate instead.
What if I told you that you could make a delicious cake without much bother? 15 minutes hands on at most. No creaming butter and sugar. A cake whose recipe is essentially distilled down to 2 steps. A cake that is so forgiving that if you undercook it, you're left with blissfully rich and gooey fondant in the centre of the cake. And if you overcook it, the middle stays miraculously decadent while the outside develops a delicious crunch. Still on the fence? Look at my photo of the cake. See all those pretty hazelnuts and toffee shards? That's not because I'm fancy, it's because the entire middle of my cake collapsed 25 mins into baking, leaving a solid rim around the perimeter. My cake resembled a crater volcano. This could've been caused by several things. However, it was still delicious, and it didn't look or taste like a mistake at all! In a nutshell it's this: separate egg whites and yolks. Mix the yolks with all the other ingredients, then whip the egg whites and fold it into the cake batter before baking for about 40 mins. Try it. It will become a family favourite, I guarantee.  Confession time: I don't think I've ever managed to leave a country town or weekend market without buying a jar of preserve. Chutney, mustard, jam, I am powerless to resist.
The undisputed Australian champion of all jarred preserves has to be lemon curd, aka lemon butter. And as it's peak lemon season right now, I need no further excuse to make a batch of curd myself. I'm sharing my trusty old reliable recipe that I've been using for lemon and passionfruit butter for decades. Its exact provenance is lost but I can tell you it's a combination of recipes from the CWA, my time in the Ritz Carlton pastry kitchen, and personal tweaks I've made over the years. |
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