Fruitcake with cream cheese icing

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A full iced fruitcake on a piece of crumpled baking paper

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the photos aren’t good, having been taken on the most gunmetal grey leadenly sunless free half hour I’ve ever had in my life, but the idea is worth your attention. I’ve been even more time-overwhelmed than usual this month and was frantically planning to stay up all night to bake and ice another cake to photograph in the four minutes of sunshine yet peeking through the wrapped scaffolding enrobing my apartment before I have to run to work and it just…did not happen. And ultimately, it doesn’t really matter; these photos have no impact on the state of the world, though I wish they would. The important thing is to persevere, because this idea is a very good one indeed, and I must impress upon you calmly, yet with absolute accurate hyperbole, how EXCELLENT the combination of fruitcake and cream cheese icing is.

To that end, one of the reasons for me being overwhelmed and time-broke is also very good indeed: my debut novel Hoods Landing is shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Am elated, ecstatic, and full of cake (wholeheartedly and with a clear conscience because I’ve at last now fully recovered from the dental surgery I complained about last time and can both chew and crunch again; I celebrated the aforementioned shortlist news with a bowl of well-blended lentil soup.)

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Pappardelle with roasted carrots, hazelnuts and dill

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a fork resting on a pink and white plate of pappardelle with roasted carrots

Having emerged this week from major dental surgery into recuperation mode, I am finally afforded some time to write this blog post. I am also, unfortunately, still firmly quagmired in the soft-food-only stage for another couple days so the act of crunching or chewing anything is but a poignant memory. Which perhaps will add a yearning piquancy to my description of this pappardelle with roasted carrots, hazelnuts and dill. I was joking with a best friend that I shouldn’t be this excited to have ‘me time’ via major surgery, but such is modern life! This anticipation also distracted from fear of the real and present risk of permanent nerve damage, which, I am relieved to inform you, didn’t come to pass. One day I shall enjoy this pasta again. Luckily for you—although I assume everyone cool is probably also suffering dentally in some regard, there’s a lot of crossover—it’s so quick to make, that you could enjoy it within about half an hour if you hop to it.

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Carrot granola muffins

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A tray of carrot granola muffins with two butter knives

Though all baking has ebbs and flows of what makes the process appealing and easy for the baker, the muffin stands alone—I believe—in not being weighed down by visual pressure. By which I mean, muffins are the baked good least susceptible to yassification. Muffins should look sturdy and muffin-shaped, adorned at most with a snowfall of sieved icing sugar. No more, no less. Couple that with the necessary under-stirring and a quick oven time and they not only alleviate any baking-related stresses, muffins go so far as to alleviate other, unrelated stress you may be undergoing with their eagerness to make life easier. These carrot granola muffins do involve grating carrots, which is mildly annoying, but their flavour rewards all efforts and as you can see from the photos, you really don’t have to worry about how they look.

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Spiced Pearl Barley Pilaf

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A red casserole dish of barley pilaf with a serving spoon and sprigs of thyme in front of it

If you’re not convinced that eating barley is a great way to spend the summer, think again—unless it’s winter where you are, in which case, I guess you can just continue thinking steadily. My mother got me a second-hand Lynn Bedford Hall cookbook for Christmas—Ms Bedford Hall, the author of one of my already most-beloved, most-1980s cookbooks, and this new-to-me volume was every bit as full of camp panache and gelatine despite being published in the futuristic year of 1993. Rocket is a “trend-setting herb”, tuna mousse is “ubiquitous” but “impressive”, while chilled broccoli and apple soup has “a quiet dignity”. It’s all charming stuff. It’s also surprisingly practical, and by and large alluring to both cook and eater—even the light-refracting wobbly solidity of gelatine starts to call one’s name after some persistent repetition and my desire to “add a splash of drama to a ladies’ luncheon”. From this volume, I’ve lightly adapted her spiced pearl barley pilaf recipe and in turn, urge you to adapt it further as you see fit. This pilaf is a stunningly bolstering dinner or packed lunch, and so delicious (and cheap, or as Ms Bedford Hall would say, “economical”) that it overcomes all unphotogenic shortcomings.

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Pea, mint and feta dip

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A blue dish of pea and mint dip with pretzel crackers and mint leaves

A new year is upon us. And like so many before it, we once more stand upon the precipice of a fresh 365 where things are ALREADY dreadful, globally-wise. I myself am no stranger to the minor inconveniences that can feel like they’re setting the tone for the year ahead against your will: wisdom teeth (that I thought had been removed! At great expense!!) dancing a merry ceilidh directly into my nerves, a will-they-won’t-they of trying to find the singular nice affordable apartment to rent in this city with my girlfriend only to have previously accepted offers retracted, like riding a rollercoaster directly into a brick wall. One only has to glance at the internet briefly to put all this into stark perspective and I was still blessed with a charming and delightful Christmas and an antic-filled, if woefully brief, summer break. While I feel neither rested nor organised, I nonetheless have spatula-d myself together for 2026 to bring you this recipe for pea, mint and feta dip. Much like the summer break, it’s quick.

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No-churn brandy snap ice cream

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A tin of ice cream with a spoon resting in it and green baubles behind it

This may not be my final blog post of 2025 but it probably will be my last one before Christmas (and may I take this opportunity to remind you of my recent 15th annual edible gift guide). So, I might as well stay right in my box of paints by offering you a no-churn brandy snap ice cream recipe that lends itself to post-Christmas-dinner carousing but which I’d be delighted to eat year-round. Being true to form begets itself; I’m also writing this at 2.30am on a school night because honestly, at this point, completing one blog post in 2025 at a normal hour would be the habit-forming equivalent of getting sunburnt all summer and finally applying some SPF15 to your left ankle the day before autumn kicks in.

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The 15th Annual Hungryandfrozen edible gift guide with 60 recipes for you

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A jar with a ribbon around it surrounded by baubles.

Something we can all count on, or at least, that we can all count: The 15th Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Guide is back! This year you have a round-up of:

  • 60 delicious gift-ready recipes
  • Many also-delicious off-the-shelf ideas if you hate cooking or are simply not up to it at this juncture
  • Gift guide suggestions and further worthy places to powerfully channel whatever consumer dollars you may have

Although it’s hellacious to format I love the work of making this annual list because it serves to disabuse you of the notion that Christmas gifts have to be things. People love food, and food gifts are nothing but upside. They have immediate practical application, they will eventually cease taking up space in the recipient’s house, and it’s a simple way to demonstrate care, appreciation, and love especially in this continually punishing economy. My fifteen-year accumulative model was getting excitingly close to three figures, but in 2025 I respect your time more than mine and have whittled down the list so you have fewer decisions to wrestle with and less scrolling.

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Blonde Redhead Cookies & Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies

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Different cookies on a mint green dish with two bright green Christmas baubles

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the spectre of Christmas approaching one month hence, to say nothing of the ghost of my debut novel Hoods Landing—in that the canonical biscuits mentioned therein, which I made as offerings for my recent Auckland launch, inspired these two Christmas Cookie recipes: Blonde Redhead Cookies and Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies. They’re both exceptionally easy to make, I should know; I baked three batches of the unadorned originals the night before my launch party while in a state of extreme hecticness. And look, you don’t actually have to cordon them off to Christmas alone, useful if you neither condone nor care for that specific holiday; but I certainly was doing my best to evoke the season’s flavours and there’s rarely a more useful time to have some minimal-stress cookie recipes and indeed, cookies at hand.

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Chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad

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A top-down shot of a leaf-shaped bowl of salad with a fork on a dark wooden board

Now that my debut novel Hoods Landing is past-tense launched in Wellington and Auckland, normal transmission must resume, and yet! Every time I blink an hour has passed and it’s next Thursday and a certain flat the-party’s-over malaise threatens.

Nonetheless I’m clambering onwards like a self-absorbed and energetic goat with a food blog, and bring you a salad of such glad tidings that it could only be inspired by a hedonistically carefree Silver Palate cookbook, whose authors address the reader as if we all have holiday homes in Portugal and the Hamptons, and let’s face it, the government still hasn’t worked out a way to privatise and flog off one’s personal vicarious thrills so you might as well get them while you can. And although it has a lot of words in the title, this chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad is more or less practical, and can make quite a lot out of a little lux-ness.

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2 x Hoods Landing Cocktails

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Two cocktails in tall glasses with mint garnish and four books in the background

Although my debut novel Hoods Landing is now out, alive, sharing the same realm as us; I hope you’ll permit me one more literary-culinary flourish ahead of Thursday’s launch party in Auckland. For what it’s worth, despite actually being a double flourish of two cocktail recipes, I’m going to keep this relatively succinct as I am no less feverish and hectic and wild-eyed than I was eleven days ago when we launched it for the first time (and exceptionally so) in Wellington. Thus far I can tell you that the life of a novelist involves a lot of refreshing notification screens and being immensely humbled and grateful. To celebrate that launch, I made chocolate mousse; to féte Auckland, an Old Fashioned variation that I call the Hermit; plus a bonus reminder of the Hoods Landing Punch recipe that I shared on Instagram before the last launch in a fugue state of optimistic tangential self-promotion.

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