Category: Cake

now let me welcome everybody to the wild wild west

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So, the novelty of a Monday at home is less novelty-ish when I’m coughing like a beast. Typing is a nice distraction from my chapped throat, but I’d sooner just get better. I’ve been downing tea made from lemon and ginger slices, crunching on vitamin C and echinacea, and sippin’ on gees linctus and juice. I’d had plenty of gees linctus when I was younger, but it turns out these days you have to state your intentions and hand over photo ID to get it, and it no longer comes in a pretty flask with a fancy label, but instead a tiny prescription bottle with one of those child-proof lids that are really difficult to remove.

I also have a whole mess of lozenges which are pretty good for noise control when I start coughing heaps. They were definitely useful at Tim’s graduation on Thursday. There were about forty thousand people (well, it felt like at least that many) getting graduated that night and I’m pretty sure not one of them wanted some lady spluttering during their moment of glory. In case you’re wondering, Tim was graduating with Honours in Media Studies which makes him super-qualified to do all sort of interesting things that no-one out there seems to need people to do right now, but fingers crossed that market opens up soon…Either way I’m pretty proud.
Tim’s family came down to be there for the graduation as well and his mum gifted us some bananas. There’s nothing I like more than a little unpremeditated push towards baking. Muffins felt a too obvious, but I couldn’t be bothered with anything too high-concept either. What a quandary. Then I remembered this eye-catchingly named recipe that I found while hopping from blog to blog like a frog on a lily-pad. It’s called Ponderosa Cake. According to the friendly person whose blog I found it on, the cake is named after some regional pine trees. Secretly I hope it was so named because someone wanted to immortalise their passion for Bonanza in baked form.
Ponderosa Cake
Recipe inspired by a recipe found on Chocolate & Chakra. I say inspired because I completely mucked things up as I went along – didn’t have enough butter, added 2 eggs by mistake instead of one, forgot the yoghurt till it was about to go in the oven – so the end result was almost a completely different cake…
100g soft butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2-3 large, ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda
1/2 cup plain yoghurt or sour cream

125g good chocolate, chopped roughly
1 -2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and line a square or rectangular cake tin with baking paper. Cream the butter and sugar together till fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Add the bananas, then fold in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Finally mix in the yoghurt, plus half the chopped chocolate and cinnamon. Spread it into the cake tin, then sprinkle over the rest of the chocolate and cinnamon, plus the brown sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
I’d rather have a thousand coughs than a blocked nose and lose my sense of taste, because Ponderosa Cake is incredibly good. It’s very light and tender and keeps well. The blast of heat in the oven caramelises the spiced, sugary chocolate topping slightly, providing depth of flavour and a pleasing gritty crunch to the moist, banana-y base. Happily, it used some of the treats I picked up at the recent food show – like The Collective yoghurt and Whittakers chocolate. Despite the fact that I somehow managed to get things wrong every step of the way, this is really a very straightforward cake. It’s ideal for those times where you want something a little out of the ordinary but not so far out of the ordinary that you’re up at 6am measuring the temperature and viscosity of sugar syrups.
I’m not sure if Hoss and Little Joe ever bonded over banana cake, but it’s a nice thought, right? I understand when my mum and her brothers and sisters were growing up, Bonanza was appointment viewing on TV… You know you want to hear that theme song again!
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Title via: 2Pac featuring Dr Dre, California Love. I know, it’s one state over from the Ponderosa. There couldn’t be a more obvious song that springs to mind for the sadly late Tupac Shakur, but no matter how often it’s thrashed it’s still a goodie, and one of those songs I knew all the words to (except for an embarrassingly long time I thought it was “city of corn chips” instead of “Compton”, what can I say, there was no Google back then.)
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Music lately:

The Music and the Mirror from A Chorus Line. This song is actually mostly dancing but the singing that’s there is so gorgeous – the line “I’ll do you proud” slays me a bit. It’s a song about a woman who needs a job, so she’s auditioning for the chorus even though she is good enough to be a star. Well, it seems a bit more dramatic when set to music anyway, and the original Donna McKechnie is pretty incomparable but there’s plenty of fun to be found on youtube of that amazing dance in the red skirt. If you’ve only seen the film version of A Chorus Line, they cut this song – criminal!
The Ali and Toumani album, a recently-released collaboration between the late Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. It’s…an absolute beauty.
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Next time: well, hopefully I my immune system and I become friends again. I’m down in Christchurch on Friday for Chartfest then Dunedin on Saturday for Smokefreerockquest so I can’t afford to be this germtastic.

to fruits, to no absolutes

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I had a wonderful weekend at home, but I feel a bit talked out on the subject of RENT. All the way up to Auckland in the car my family and Tim politely listened while I talked about it anticipationally, and all the way through dinner afterwards and on the drive home I was generously tolerated during my frame-by-frame debrief of the entire production. But – oh my gosh thank goodness I imagine that I hear you say – I’m not entirely out of steam. For the sake of all involved though, and because I’m probably the only person who cares what I think about this particular production, I’ll keep my review to the following thoughts: (I have more thoughts though! So many more!)

  • I was very, very happy to be given the opportunity to see the songs I love so much performed live, and the Auckland Music Theatre did a great job.
  • The vocal sound was a bit restrained which didn’t do them any favours, because in RENT if you miss one throwaway line, well there goes an entire subplot.
  • The choreography for Out Tonight wasn’t overly satisfying, and I was a little disappointed Mimi wasn’t wearing blue tights, but this seems typical of all local productions I’ve seen.
  • Some of the songs – including the difficult Contact (“Mum, there’s this giant, metaphorical…sex scene”) in which Cameron Clayton as Angel just stunned and La Vie Boheme were staged and choreographed absolutely brilliantly.
  • I didn’t like what they did with Over The Moon – while it was clever to have it more dynamic with the cast-as-audience it lost the actual audience participation. And the cowbell.
  • While the cast was overall brilliant, and it’s not fair to compare them to the original Broadway stars, occasionally a singer’s range didn’t stack up to what you expected to hear.
  • I really liked Kristian Lavercombe as Mark, he brought this narrow-hipped Buddy Holly feel to the role and led the show well.
  • The much-publicised Annie Crummer (let’s face it, there are no real main characters but if there were, Joanne wouldn’t be one) looked stunning and sounded great but her distinct vocals coupled with the slightly quiet mic made most of her lines hard to hear. If you didn’t know them off by heart already that is.
  • Go see it if you can – it’s running till May the 7th and frankly, I’d go back again if I could. We saw the Saturday matinee and I would have happily stuck around and seen the night show. I don’t say that lightly.
Oh yeah… and it was fun hearing the name of my blog in the title song.
We’re so countrified that we spent five traffic light cycles taking a photo of me in front of the Civic theatre on Queen Street. I guess since our community is now shunted into the Waikato we can officially qualify as tourists in Auckland supercity. Imagine if I ever made it to New York – but then there are probably thousands of people who take photos of the “look at me standing by this distinctive structure” variety over there.
I was also home for Anzac Day and after watching the amazing and moving coverage on Maori TV (I could have done with someone a little drier in delivery than Judy Bailey, that said, I wish I had her legs), we went to the local wreath-laying ceremony, catching up with plenty of whanau in the process. A large bag of feijoas was pressed upon us by old family friends and I managed to carefully transport them back on the plane to Wellington. Feijoas are a fairly localised fruit, I think they mostly pop up in NZ and Australian cooking but not necessarily many other places in the world. I would describe them as being similar to passionfruit in fragrance, a little like a strawberry mixed with pineapple in flavour and not unlike guava in texture. They’re basically the greatest thing on earth.
Unfortunately their relative rarity and short season (they’re one of the best things about the colder autumn days) means that recipes are few and far between. So I decided to improvise, and made Feijoa Coconut Brownies. If you aren’t within reaching distance of a feijoa I’d substitute equal weight of banana or applesauce.
Improvised on the spot though these may be, they tasted like they’d been prophesied about to come and save the world by some holy sage a thousand years ago. I’m trying to say they were really good.
Feijoa Coconut Brownies

200g butter
100g good dark chocolate
150-200g feijoa flesh (just cut them in half, scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon and mash with a fork. The weight here refers to the flesh only, not the whole fruit)
100g sugar
3 eggs
2 tablespoons good cocoa (like the Fairtrade stuff Mum gave me! Yay!)
50g thread coconut (or dessicated, the longer thread stuff gives good texture)
200g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g good dark chocolate, chopped (optional)

Set oven to 180 C/350 F. Melt the chocolate and butter together gently, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir to combine. Tip in the rest of the ingredients apart from the flour and baking powder, and mix thoroughly. Fold in the flour, baking powder and chopped chocolate if using, and spread the mixture into a baking paper lined 20x30cm-ish tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes (no less – this is a supermoist mixture, it can handle the slightly longer oven time). Allow to cool a bit, then slice into bars.
Notice my new favourite toy – a cakestand from my godmother and family. I love how clean and elegant it is – makes me feel very Scandinavian. Or at least what I think being Scandinavian might feel like. (Other characteristics: writing excellent electro-pop and sprinkling dill on everything)
These brownies were, and I don’t care that I’m saying so myself because look at them, gorgeous. The feijoa gave an acidy kick to the chocolate’s embroidered velvet pants, while the softly textured coconut buffered against the feijoa’s grittiness and provided a delicate richness of its own. They are super moist, cocoa-y and dense. They’re damn good brownies.
I had one for breakfast this morning and it felt good.
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Title coming your way via: surprise! RENT! I’m confident that feijoas aren’t the kind of fruits that Mark sings about in La Vie Boheme…and yet feijoas are undeniably one of the fruitier brothers in existence, so it all kind of works out.
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Music lately:
Just one more – Santa Fe from RENT. I don’t have a favourite, but this mellow beauty still thrills with every listen despite not being one of the huge showstoppers. I was a bit let down by the staging/arrangement of this song in the production we saw, but funnily enough Mum thought it was going to be the end of Act I, like Act II would be all about this group of bohemians and their attempt to start a restaurant out west. Looking back to when I first heard this song, I have to admit I didn’t quiiiiite pick up on the hypothetical nature right away either.
The amazing M.I.A’s new Suicide-sampling song Born Free. Watch the video if you dare (if you can find it) it’s definitely…an eye-widener.
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Next time: I’ve been given so many cool food-related things for my birthday (cake tins, maple syrup, limoncello, etc) that I’m going to have fun working out how to use them all, hopefully managing to incorporate my new cakestand in the process…

a girl has to celebrate what passes by

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I had a seriously nice 24th birthday on Saturday – my aunty visited with my very awesome young cousin (I recognise my own ardent admiration for Nigella Lawson reflected in his deep commitment to various superheroes), Dr Scotty dropped by with jaw-droppingly real champagne, Himalayan pink salt and vanilla pods, (I love how Scotty comes to our house and quotes my blog back to me, if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right) and I got more txt messages than I usually get in a whole month.

Tim was all, “I could make you a birthday cake if you want” and I was like, “the cuss you will! Don’t do me out of an opportunity to bake!” but what I made wasn’t a birthday cake, just a cake that happened to be hanging round on my birthday. Like a girl that’s just a friend, not a girlfriend…you know.


I know it seems like I say this about every cake here, and let’s be honest, I do know a lot of awesome cakes, but this cake was truly incredibly delicious. I say “was”, not “is”, because 24 hours after it was first sliced into, only a slender wedge remains.

I found this recipe for Torta Caprese on a blog called A Forkful of Spaghetti a while back, and my birthday seemed like as good a time as any to try it out. It’s one of those Italian cakes which manages to be terrifyingly elegant and artlessly down-home at the same time, but delicious either way you see it.

Sophie Grigson’s Torta Caprese


200g butter, melted and cooled a little (do this before you get anything else ready to give it time to cool down)
200g dark chocolate, in pieces
4 large eggs
170g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g ground almonds

Line the base of a 24cm cake tin (although I used 22cm just fine) with baking paper and grease the sides. Preheat oven to 180 C/350 F.

Either blitz the chocolate pieces in the food processor or chop them roughly with a large knife till you have a rubbly pile of chocolate shards and dust.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has expanded a little. Mix in the chocolate, ground almonds, and tepid melted butter until evenly combined. Spatula the mixture into your caketin.


Bake for 50-60 mins, until the cake is just firm to the touch. If it gets too dark towards the end, cover with tinfoil. I found it was quite perfect after 50 minutes. Leave it to cool in the tin, then turn it out and dust with icing sugar if you like.


I love how no-nonsense the method is – no separating of eggs, no whisking till your arms ache, just a bit of chopping and mixing but you end up with this incredibly good-looking cake as a result. It’s solid but light and amazingly buttery. Some of the chocolate melts into the cake as it cooks and the rest remain whole, as darkly rich chunks that contrast with the soft grittiness of the almonds. It’s amazing, and a bit like a really, really sophisticated chocolate chip cookie. And it’s gluten free for those of you who swing that way.


Yesterday after our visitors left Tim and I went to engage in Independent Record Store Day. By the time we left the house most of the shenanigans were over but we still enjoyed perusing the wares at Real Groovy. I was pretty rapturous to find the original Broadway Cast recordings of A Chorus Line and Hair, as well as the Original West End cast recording of Chess (ie the one everyone knows) on vinyl for an enchantingly cheap price. Mercifully the guy behind the counter didn’t ask us about what kind of turntable we have, because at this stage the answer would be “a hypothetical one”. Hoping to change that to an actual one in the near future. We browsed at Slow Boat Records but didn’t find anything in particular to commit to. There’s also the enticing Samurai Store on Willis Street but by that stage, probably desperate for more cake, we were starting to flag and headed back home.

That night we went to see the Wellington Musical Theatre production of Miss Saigon. It’s a cleverly staged production with a very talented cast, I recommend it if you’re in the capital. I’d never seen Miss Saigon before and only had a basic understanding of the story. The music isn’t necessarily super-catchy, and sometimes it feels like it could do with a couple more high-energy numbers, but on the whole I really loved it and there were plenty of those moments where your heart jumps around the place. It made me realise how few musicals I’ve seen in the last couple of years, for all that I go on about them, and it really made me want to see more. Unfortunately, that involves overseas travel…I swear I see well-known New Zealanders sent across the world all the time in the name of travel writing for various publications, if anyone out there wants to pay for me (and Tim!) to do the same, don’t hold back…

Before the show we had some curly fries at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, that stalwart of Courtney Place, and afterwards we went to Matterhorn for some late night snacks (I don’t know why, but I feel really cool ordering food late at night). The place was full of people who had a “oh, it’s so great to be back at Matterhorn, I’m such a regular here” look about them but I think we acquitted ourselves okay, ordering a bunch of tapas and a couple of drinks without any awkwardness. It’s a very expensive place, but the food is perfectly executed, the service excellent and the setting rather gorgeous…maybe I’ll go back for dinner for my next birthday.

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Title via: The Miller’s Son from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, currently revived on Broadway with the supremely wonderful Angela Lansbury. This song is a stunner, all womanly and bolshy, and musically complex. One of my favourite versions is performed by Sara Ramirez, most people know her as Callie from Grey’s Anatomy, but hi there, the lady has a Tony Award too and can sing her face off.
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Music lately:

It’s not a tradition or anything, and it’s a completely obvious thing to do, but two songs in particular always get bandied about if one of us is aging another year…

Birthday by The Sugarcubes, ie the rock band that Bjork used to be in. It’s most famous in English but the original Icelandic sounds so beautiful. And really it doesn’t matter what language it’s in when the chorus is as wordlessly spectacular as this. I have to admit, after hearing Defying Gravity for the first time I thought “ooh, I’d love to hear Idina Menzel sing Birthday“. Maybe that’s what Stephen Schwartz was listening to when he wrote the ending?

Happy Birthday by Altered Images from their EP of the same name. It’s sweeter than birthday cake icing but I love the way it flits along noncommittally before launching into those guitars….

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Next time: I’ve been given so many exciting food-related birthday presents, including…a bottle of real maple syrup from my step-grandmother, two loaf tins from ex-flatmate Ange, a beauty of a cake stand from my godmother and family, a recipe collection from the Ashburton Fuchsia Society from Nana, and more fruit puffs from Mum…for starters. So you’ll be seeing these things all used and blogged about in the near future, no doubt.

puttin’ on the grits

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Straightforward question: what’s your favourite food?


Me: ice cream and cornbread.

A while back if you’d asked this I would have frozen up and said “ummm chocolate?” but today I was sitting around daydreaming about how I might answer various questions on the offchance that some cool magazine wanted to interview me, and I managed to narrow it down to those two. Like Kenneth Parcell (“There are only two things I love in this world. Everybody and television”) I am a throw-my-arms-around-the-world kind of foodlover, but where “most edible things” is an adequate answer, cornbread and ice cream is more specific. That said, I’m also happy to call Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake one of my favourite things to make. You would be too.



All this daydreaming about cornbread made me crave a slice of it like crazy. It’s just another cold, dark, early winter Wellington evening and I’ve got a sore throat. Who ya gonna call? Nigella, fool!

On Sunday night I bought a healthy, happy Waitoa Free Range chicken and roasted her up with white wine, lemons, butter and breadcrumbs. The cold leftovers in the fridge got turned into pasta last night with the roasting pan juices and golden sultanas soaked in sherry. Tonight I’m finishing off the chicken by going vaguely Mexican, inspired by a salad recipe from Nigella Express, with her cornbread on the side. Just saying it almost makes my sore throat better.



Mexican Chicken Salad

Adapted from Nigella Express

Dressing:

1 ripe avocado
1/2 cup sour cream (or good mayonnaise, to make this dairy-free)
juice of a lime
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and pepper to taste

Either whisk the dressing ingredients together or blitz them in a food processor.

Salad:

300g shredded, cooked chicken
1 crisp apple, diced
2 spring onions, chopped
handful chopped coriander
125g shredded cos lettuce (I used cabbage)

Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl, spoon the dressing over the top.



Like a warm, buttery yellow mattress. I could actually lie down on top of it and fall asleep quite happily. Tim and I sat on either side of this, slicing off pieces and buttering them. What remains is kind of a wonky Z shaped bit of cornbread

Cornbread

175g cornmeal (or polenta, same diff so look for either)
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
2 t baking powder
250ml full fat milk
1 egg
45g butter, melted
Set oven to 200 C. Grease whatever you’re using – a muffin tin, a 20cm-ish brownie tin, etc. Melt the butter. Stir in the milk and egg with a fork. Then tip in all the dry ingredients, mix till just combined – don’t worry about lumps – then pour into your tin and bake, for 20-25 minutes. I have made this with superfine cornmeal and the more granular stuff, and a mix of the two, anything is fine really although the granular stuff gives slightly more bite to your finished product.

It was such a good dinner. Even with all the crispness and coolness of the salad it worked in this colder weather, fresh flavours to wake you up on a dark evening. It’s amazingly rewarding to eat for the little effort you need to put in. You could replace the chicken with anything else – beef, tofu, chickpeas…you could leave the sour cream out of the dressing, use mayonnaise or yoghurt, double the quantities and drink it like a savoury green smoothie, whatever, really. The sour cream suits the avocado, their tanginess and richness going head to head like it’s Tekken 2 but instead of a nubile catsuited woman and the panda bear (my favourite character) engaging in combat, the flavours skip off hand in hand towards the sunset, singing in perfect harmony. I have a feeling, having just re-read that, that I gotta lay off the cough syrup before trying to blog, as it messes with my ability to throw down a decent metaphor.

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Title coming atcha via: Puttin’ On The Ritz, a song that I did a choreographed and performed a tap dance to at the 1997 (1996?) Combined Schools Choir Festival. While I may not have been up to the great Fred Astaire I’m sure in my own mind, at the time, I was well on my way.
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Music lately:

What You Know About Baltimore by Ogun feat Phathead from The Wire: “…and all the pieces matter” What do I know about Baltimore? Not much more than I know about, say, Fielding I guess. This song is awesome, the delivery of the titular interrogative somehow both menacing and blase at the same time. First time I heard this song I kept swivelling my head to look out the window – I swear it sounds like someone’s yelling “Laura!” in the background of the song at various points.

Buffalo Gals by the recently late Malcolm McLaren. A prosaic choice, but to be fair, I was never exactly a walking catalogue of his work. This song is sprinkled with all kinds of good things laid over a minimalist beat that was ahead of its time – thinking about how in the mid 2000s there was that trend for songs that were almost not even there at all. It must have been an exciting life he led, and while I can’t say I thought about him on a daily basis, it was sad news – he was in many ways a drop of bright red food colouring in the plain white icing of recent music history.

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Next time: I have some tofu in the fridge that needs using…although if this sore throat doesn’t sort itself out it might be a steady diet of chicken soup and Canadiol expectorant. Hopefully I get better soon because it’s my birthday on Saturday. Any suggestions about what I could do? As always, April appears suddenly and I’m caught short without any cool ideas. I’ll be 24. Hopefully still young enough to be interesting, goodness knows there is probably some seven year old out there who’s writing a blog about making cupcakes while interweaving Clay Davis quotes and referencing some obscure early draft of Evita…any suggestions about how a good birthday is spent are more than welcome.

like a vegan (hey!)

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Firstly: HOORAY for Easter. It’s one of my favourite times of year. Four no-strings days off, plenty of chocolate, a little religious reflection if that’s your thing, lots of opportunities to bake, and it’s not long till my birthday. I’ve definitely got hot cross buns on the brain, but before that there’s this seriously good vegan apple cake recipe which I want to share. By the way, I hope it doesn’t annoy any people who genuinely shun meat, eggs and dairy when I go into vegan mode and semi-patronisingly claim, like I’m the first person to ever work it out, how good a particular recipe is. I couldn’t go full vegan any more than I could commit to eating nothing but hot buttered toast. I just like finding fun new recipes. Like this one.

I discovered this recipe on Palachinka’s blog. Her version uses grated quince, which sounds mighty alluring, but I decided to go with apples instead to make it an option all year round. It’s the work of minutes (although grating stuff is never fun) and makes a small-ish but really, really good cake.

Apple Cake

Adapted from Palachinka’s Old Fashioned Quince Cake

200g grated unpeeled apple (roughly 2 medium apples)
90mls rice bran oil (or other similar plain oil)
50g sugar
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract or cinnamon
220mls apple juice or similar
200g flour
2 tsps baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Oil a bundt caketin, sprinkle flour over it, shake it round to coat the inside and then tap out the excess. Mix together the grated apple, oil, sugar, juice and vanilla or cinnamon. Sift in the baking powder, soda and baking powder, mix everything together. Spread into the caketin and bake for about 40 minutes.

That’s all there is to it really – a bit of grating, a bit of stirring, a bit of waiting. I have a pretty large bundt cake tin so the cake was only the size of the top bit of it (as you might be able to see from the photos) but it still worked totally fine. Make sure the baking soda is really well sifted, as it gives the cake the push it needs to rise and you don’t want nasty lumps of it amongst the finished product.

This cake is seriously beautiful – soft, superlight, and keeps for days. The grated apple kind of dissolves once it’s baked but still provides a bit of body and texture. I first made this cake using water instead of juice as the liquid component but trust me, trust me, you need the juice – the cake is okay but a bit weirdly bland without it. The second time, with juice, it was perfect – fragrant and deeply apple-y without being the slightest bit too sweet. I added a spoonful of vanilla paste to add even more flavour but the obvious addition of cinnamon would also be just right. Next time I make this – because there will definitely be a next time – I’m going to try adding a handful of shredded coconut for a bit more texture and flavour. I also have a feeling that grated carrot instead of – or indeed, with – the apple could be really cool. In the meantime, it’s gorgeous just as it is, great with a cup of tea and full of enough good stuff that you could probably eat it for breakfast.

I don’t have much of an agenda this Easter – which is actually really nice – it just feels so ridiculously good having four days to relax. Especially since, O Easter Miracle, Tim got three of the four days off. We’ve watched lots of DVDs and have nearly finished Season 5 of The Wire, which, without wanting to sound like our lives are pitifully narrow, is a pretty momentous occasion. We bussed out to Lyall Bay today and attempted to walk along the beach, getting exfoliated by the sand whipped along by the brutal wind. That said, the feeling of sand underfoot and the sight of giant seagulls flying sideways is never wrong. We had an amazing late lunch (Tim: salami, cheese, tomato and gherkin sandwich, Me: brocolli, blue cheese and walnut pie) at Queen Sally’s Diamond Deli, and bought cut-price yoghurt from the Reduced to Clear shop. Finished up back on Cuba Street sharing a hokey-pokey flavoured thickshake and playing Go Fish at Offbeat Originals. Tonight I’m making hot cross buns, which will rise overnight in the fridge and go into the oven first thing tomorrow morning. I wish it could be Easter every weekend!
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Title brought to you by: Madonna’s Like A Virgin from her album of the same name, and while there’s nothing wrong with this bouncy classic my favourite version involves Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh getting vampy and campy in Moulin Rouge…can’t be unseen.
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Music lately:

On and On by Erykah Badu from Baduism. Her youthful, liquidy voice and spirituality-infused lyrics make anything she does a total joy but if you’ve never heard anything before this beautiful song is a fine place to start.

Rocky Racoon from The Beatles’ White Album, which is my favourite of theirs…one of my favourites, anyway. It was playing in some shop today and I couldn’t seem to shake it out of my mind (mostly because Tim wouldn’t stop whistling it.) I like how it’s so bizarre yet so old-fashioned sounding, like something you might have heard as a Sunday morning kids’ radio show and yet also rather sinister. And I like songs where animals are the main character.

I just watched an amazing film called The Wrestler – that is, I was blogging while Tim was watching, I don’t know that I could really deal with this film without having something else to look at while the violent stuff is happening – and Guns N’Roses’ Sweet Child Of Mine plays during a fairly pivotal scene. I hadn’t heard this song in a while and it was refreshing to hear it in a new context, removed from its usual setting, straight after Living On A Prayer on the Music to Binge Drink To compilation. Is there a more joyful opening guitar riff than that which this song possesses?
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Next time: Hot cross buns, friend. That said, by the time I get round to blogging about them, Easter will likely have passed, the need the recipe will have gone, and you’ll probably be sick of the sight of them on every single food blog. Well I, for one, am excited.

shiksa goddess i’ve been waiting for someone like you

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More cake! That’s just what it’s like living with me. There will be cake.

Last weekend was a small miracle in that Tim and I had time together. I don’t mean to sound useless. I have friends to spend time with. I also like being alone. I welcome being alone. When I’m alone I can sing hideously to showtunes, eat more cake mixture, do impromptu soft-shoe dancing, and entertain fantasies of winning rap battles with my deft flow and astounding vocabulary. But for once Tim wasn’t making coffee for people on the weekend and so we were able to do all sorts of leisurely things, including finally seeing what’s on the second floor at Moore Wilson’s. Turns out that while there’s groceries and alcohol on the ground floor, upstairs they sell basically everything else in the world. It felt like we spent 7 hours up there browsing, each aisle bringing the fresh wonder that comes when you realise how many different kinds of bowls there are specifically for ice cream.

My favourite bit was the cookbook room, where I found myself instinctively drawn somehow to a book entitled The Jewish Princess Cookbook, by Georgie Tarn and Tracey Fine. I didn’t realise that a Jewish Princess was an established thing, but the book entirely dispells that ignorance on my behalf. Some Jewish food I love (Challah at me!) some is a little more challenging, but I definitely see eye-to-eye with the way that food seems so central to everything.

The first recipe I tried from this charming book was a Honey Cake, which rather delightfully contains four different types of sugar. Not in major quantities, but it’s still fun to say it out loud to shock passers-by. The cake filled the house with the warm fragrance of spices and honey, in fact for the duration of its time in the oven it was rather like living inside a giant scented candle. I managed to wait till the evening to enjoy this cake with a large mug of scalding but astringent green tea; it was a perfect combination. This cake is quick to make, dairy-free, and flipping delicious.

Honey Cake

From The Jewish Princess Cookbook

225g plain flour
115g caster sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
50g clear honey
115mls golden syrup (a slightly difficult measurement to come to, roughly 1/3 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons)
50mls oil – I used rice bran
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
80 mls smooth orange juice

Preheat the oven to 170 C/325 F. Grease and flour a 20cm cake tin (I used 21cm, the cake batter didn’t notice) In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and spices. Pour in the honey, syrup, oil and eggs and beat well to a thick, smooth mixture. In another bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the orange juice, stirring well (it will fizz). Quickly add to the cake mixture, spread the mixture into the cake tin, and bake for 30 – 40 minutes. I ended up baking it for 50 minutes (with tinfoil covering for the last 15 minutes).

It tastes so good – almost chewy on top with moist, dense cake underneath. The honey and golden syrup gently add complexity of sweetness and the spices make it smell incredible. It’s one of those fantastic cakes that gets better after a day or two although naturally it’s a losing battle to make it last that long. This book is awesome for any food lover, especially as it’s an American book which has a UK edition using metric measurements – genius! Don’t doubt for a second that you’ll be seeing it more in this blog.

Fittingly, two of the public figures I most admire in this world – Nigella Lawson and Idina Menzel – are Jewish. Though, Idina famously documents her lack of Bar Mitzvah in haunting song while touring and Nigella, well look at all her pork recipes. She is not a lady who shies away from a cloven hoofed animal.

If I sound a bit all over the place it’s only because we’re heading up to Auckland to see the Dead Weather tomorrow night. I’ve got a whole lot of meetings tomorrow and Thursday but am finding it a little hard to concentrate…I said over dinner tonight that while I love the Dead Weather’s music, what’s really making my heart do a soft-shoe dance of its own is the fact that Jack White is in this band and we’re going to be seeing him. Tim agreed. No offense to the other deeply talented band members, Jack White is just pretty special. We watched White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights last night, it’s a beautiful and thrilling documentary which tracks their journey performing across Canada in 2007. By the end I was even more fascinated by Jack and Meg White and was wishing that they’d spend some time in the studio again. I guess releasing this DVD and their first live album is a step in the right direction.

Title comes to you via: That man with a vatful of talent Jason Robert Brown, and his song Shiksa Goddess from his musical Last 5 Years. It was originally sung by the truly loveable Norbert Leo Butz who here seriously resembles Dexter’s Michael C Hall, yes? Who also spent time as a hoofer on Broadway? Notice you never see them in a room together? Anyway, I don’t elevate myself to the lofty ideals of the song’s title but love it all the same. This musical is pretty heftily emotional and this song is nothing but welcome humour. And I like saying the word “shiksa”. Satisfying.

Music lately:

White Stripes, everything really, but for the sake of neatness let’s pin down one song: Let’s Shake Hands, from their tenth anniversary concert in 2007 in Novia Scotia…I love the way Jack says “let’s be friends, Meg”.

Stylo, the new Gorillaz song, featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def. I’ve always loved this creation right from the start and this meditative, shuffling song is as engaging as anything they’ve ever done. From their new album Plastic Beach.

Megumi The Milky Way Above, from local Connan Mockasin’s album Please Turn Me Into The Snat. I’ve never ever been a real fan of the undoubtedly creative and talented Mockasin – his music almost makes me feel a bit queasy, like I’m spinning round too fast or like the sound is too floaty…or something. But what do you know, I really, really like this song. It’s a bit difficult to describe but it’s pretty lovely.

Next time: Tuna! In a fit of extravagance, coupled with a fear of having no omega-bla-bla-bla in our diet, I bought a juicy, crimson tuna steak and cooked it respectfully. Also you may expect a run-down of how the Dead Weather concert went…

who’s gonna keep the coffee sweet with secret recipes

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Chocolate is already so good on its own that a cake has to do a lot to really knock a sock or two off. I feel like my eyes have been narrowed and my heart hardened by all the confoundingly-dry-yet-unpalatably-rich wedges of cake stacked in cafe cabinets. Sometimes however a recipe comes along that reminds you not only what’s so exciting about this dark flavour in cake form but also that homemade stuff often tastes nicer. The recipe I found on A Twist Of Spaghetti for Cappucino Chocolate Cake is one such example of this. There’s nothing overtly flashy about this but it tastes good.

This cake very quick to put together – witness the instructions below which aren’t much more than a long-ish sentence – and it also has contains no eggs. Despite never buying anything less than a tray of eggs at a time, they always seem to be the things I run out of first.

Cappucino Chocolate Cake

Recipe care of Chef Aimee at A Twist of Spaghetti

1 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa (good cocoa – I use Equagold Premium Dutch Cocoa)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
3/4 cup strong coffee
1 teaspoon coffee liqueur
1/4 cup flavourless oil, like rice bran

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Combine wet ingredients then tip in the dry ingredients and stir till well blended. Pour into a 21cm caketin, lined with baking paper, and bake for 35 – 45 minutes.

Glaze (optional)

Melt together 2/3 cup chopped dark chocolate and 2 tablespoons coffee liqueur, and drizzle over the cake. My drizzling kind of failed so I went for the “thickly smear” option instead.

This cake is moist, light, and keeps for days, despite not having an awful lot holding it together. The coffee flavour wasn’t flamboyant but intensifies all that cocoa very pleasingly. It’s the sort of thing that you can whip together in moments for when someone announces they’re dropping by, and according to the recipe source the yoghurt can be replaced with a soy alternative to make it dairy free.

Miracle of miracles, Tim isn’t working at all this weekend. Apart from when he requests the time off months in advance, it’s the first time he’s had a weekend off since roughly…February 2006. What do couples even do on the weekend these days?

Title coming at you via: Finale from Broadway musical In The Heights – the music is so gorgeous, I can only imagine that it’s pretty brilliant live. Lin-Manuel Miranda won a Tony for writing the score when he was only 28! Seriously.

Music lately:

Buffalo, the brand new offering from locals The Phoenix Foundation. Would I like this song as much if it were not sung from the perspective of a buffalo? Probably, because the music itself is fantastic, both driving and twinkly at the same time. They’re offering a (limited) free download of the song on their website so get in there if driving and twinkly sounds like your thing.

Bring Me Coffee Or Tea by wurstrockers CAN from their album Tago Mago… mysteriously good.

Next time: I actually don’t know. Guess I’d better cook or bake something this weekend then…but after all this talk of the Cappuccino Chocolate Cake I’m in the mood to make it again. Which would be nice for me, not so useful for the blog…

it’s all so sugarless

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I once read that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys went through a troubled stage where he ate half a birthday cake every day. With all due respect to Wilson, I’d happily eat a whole birthday cake every day and I’m fortunate enough to not even be feeling particularly troubled at the moment. If only cake had any nutritional value. I know – want, want, want. A solution of sorts – there’s this recipe for vegan banana bread on the gorgeous Savvy Soybean blog which turned my head. Last week, with bananas rapidly browning in my fruitbowl, I got round to making it. Oh yes. It’s another post where I semi-patronisingly assure you that a vegan recipe tastes pretty good, even though it contains no butter.

But really. This banana bread is delicious stuff and you expend hardly any energy while making it. The finished product is really quite good for you especially if you can get your hands on the agave nectar, which somehow manages to be sweeter than sugar but with a much lower glycemic index. What an overachiever. Most important: it tastes so good.

Vegan Banana Bread

Recipe adapted from The Savvy Soybean

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup agave nectar or runny honey
2 cups flour
2/3 cup coconut (optional) (but nice)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Set the oven to 180 C and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Then, very simply, mix together the bananas, applesauce and honey, then fold in the dry ingredients. Don’t overmix. Turn the batter into the tin and bake for one hour. Pa-dah! Applesauce can easily be made by simmering one large, diced apple in 1/2 – 1 cup water for about fifteen minutes (keep an eye on it, it may need more water added) before roughly mashing with a fork. The original recipe included 1 cup chocolate chips which I didn’t have, I’m sure they’d be an amazing addition but it was delicious without all the same.

The bananas, applesauce and agave nectar or honey keep this moist and light. Combined with the cinnamon, this will fill your kitchen with a proper, comforting, wish-I-could-bottle-it baking fragrance. It keeps for ages and is very easy to slice. While it’s lovely as is – okay, a little chewy as opposed to straightforwardly cakey – it really comes into its own when toasted in a sandwich press. These warm, crisp slices of banana bread are brilliant with sliced plums and maple syrup any time of day, or with any other fruit really, plums is just what I got right now. It is, in fact, so very good toasted that next time I make this I might just slice it, bag it up and freeze it for whenever I require a slightly puddingy snack (which is often…really often).

I’ve been feeling a bit lethargic and brain-heavy lately – like I need to take a whole day out and just sleep before I can get on with everything properly. At any rate, I’m definitely going to need my energy this month – on the 17th Tim and I will be getting up close and personal with Jack White at the Dead Weather concert at Powerstation in Auckland. It’s been five years since we saw the White Stripes at Alexander Palace in London and while both of us are all “make new music together already, Jack and Meg” the Dead Weather is still a very, very anticipation-worthy engagement. Maybe eating more vegan banana bread will help perk me up?

Title comes to you via: Hole’s Celebrity Skin  Although the Spice Girls had my heart, I wanted to be Courtney Love so badly after MTV Europe came to New Zealand TV for a few brief but heady months. If I’d had a disposable income in 1998, there was not much I’d have wanted more (apart from a Spice Girls polaroid) than to lunge around the place wearing floaty dresses, with flowers in my hair and sparkles stuck on my face, holding a guitar. Actually I still do, let’s be honest. 

Music to cook to:

I found Miss World while trawling through Hole music videos. Forgot how much I love this song. I think I’m going to be buying some Hole albums.

Going to DC from Gavin Creel’s album Goodtimenation. I love love love Gavin Creel but to be honest this album doesn’t get played an awful lot, I just haven’t really connected with it. This song is the exception…I love how it’s all bouncy and adorable and ska-ish. And involves Gavin Creel.

I’m Waiting For the Day by the aforementioned Beach Boys from the incredible Pet Sounds. The drums! The fake ending! I didn’t actually think I even liked the Beach Boys until I heard this album. It’s breathtaking stuff.

Next time: I made this ‘tofu balls’ recipe of Nana’s which was wackily delicious, and even though it sounds dubious I’m pretty sure I’m going to share it with all of you too. It will either be that or the coffee ice cream that I made this weekend with rapturously good results. Or I’ll be too busy eating cake to post again…

such a little thing makes such a big difference

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There comes a point, when you’ve absent-mindedly eaten half a bowl of raspberry flavoured buttercream icing while spooning it ungracefully into an icing bag and are starting to feel a touch queasy, where you start to question the rationality of embarking on cupcakes at all. Luckily cupcakes are pretty things and the sight of them makes you remember why.

Can you tell where I started getting ideas above my station?

I’ve spent the last two days prepping for and working at the Big Day Out music festival in Auckland and partway through all the madness it seemed like a brilliant idea to make cupcakes when I returned to Wellington. It was a fantastic, and I think successful day, but also very very long and draining, and I haven’t been feeling so well this week. For some reason my brain delivered me “cupcakes” as the comedown cure for all this. Who am I to argue with myself? It has been a long time since I’ve made any- the last time would have been when my flatmate was filming the intro to the Rising Star award for Handle The Jandal and needed my assistance.

I use a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s, and variations or repeats of it appear in every last one of her books. I often wonder about cupcakes, (especially given what I guess you could call their pop-culture status) whether they were invented by some entrepreneurial type who hooked their thumbs thoughtfully into their belt-loops, rocked back and forward and then said in an auspicious manner, “Team: today we sell sponge cakes. Tomorrow we’re going to make them one twelfth of the size but sell them for six times the price. Trust me. People will blog exclusively about them, replace their wedding cakes for them, and consume them in an influential manner on shows about sassy New York women in high heels.” I mean I wonder, but not enough to actually google the history of the cupcake in case my well-rounded theory gets shattered. I’m tired. Let me have this.

The making of these cupcakes meant I got to try out two of my Christmas presents – a jar of vanilla paste and an icing kit. The vanilla paste is summin’ else, its intensely vanilla fragrance rising up and curling round your head as soon as you open the jar lid. It’s a thick syrup, dark and gritty with vanilla seeds and smells so heavenly that I sincerely want to smear myself with it and run down the streets flinging it at people by the spoonful. Luckily for the good folk of Wellington, it’s too expensive for that kind of behaviour. The cupcakes were gratifyingly studded with vanilla seeds, almost as though someone had dropped iron filings into the batter (not entirely implausible, knowing how clumsy I am.) You can find some mighty tempting and elaborately iced cupcakes in shops, but these are a humble and relaxed version. And they’re not audaciously priced.



Spot the vanilla seeds!


Cupcakes

From every single Nigella book in existence.

  • 125g soft butter
  • 125g sugar
  • 125g self raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Tablespoon milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract, optional

Set your oven to 200 C or 390 F and line a muffin tray with paper cases. Or in my case, use the very nifty silicone cupcake liners gifted by family members a year or two back. Put all the ingredients in the food processor and blitz till it’s looking good and batter-y; or do as I do and cream the butter and sugar, and once they’re light and airy beat in the eggs. Add the flour, the milk and the vanilla and beat together. Drop spoonfuls into the paper liners and bake for 15 – 20 minutes till golden and puffy. Allow to cool before icing however you like.

These are wonderfully buttery, tender, spongy little cakes, and the vanilla flavour really shone, through the simplicity of the ingredients. Topped with pink, raspberry flavoured icing they’re quite the delightful mouthful. They’re not exactly useful, but they do taste fantastic and I feel distinctly soothed and defrazzled now that I’ve made them, like someone has taken a GHD straightening iron to my life. That said, I’m still not 100% unsick. These cupcakes are more palliative than completely restorative in nature but it’s a start.
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Title comes at you via: Morrissey’s song Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference, which you can find on his gem of a live album Beethoven Was Deaf. a typically cumbersome-of-title tune. Like the cupcakes, it’s been a while since I’ve quoted Morrissey and it’s so rainy and cold here in Wellington even though it’s supposed to be the middle of summer that it just felt right to put him in here.
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On Shuffle while I type/sneeze

Downtime by locals Kidz In Space from their EP Episode 001: Chasing Hayley, who were seriously fantastic while occupying our stage at BDO. A head-nodder if ever I heard one.

Gershwin’s Stairway To Paradise as sung by Rufus Wainwright. Tim and I, (both feeling under the weather) were watching a Broadway documentary and it occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to any Gershwin in too, too long. A difficult choice but I think Stairway To Paradise is my favourite song of theirs. So optimistic…so beautiful.
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Next time: well, hopefully I’ll not be feeling so seedy. I really don’t like being sick in the middle of summer (admittedly, the weather here in Wellington is hopeless) but unfortunately my immune system is unmoved by the stern telling off I’m giving it. I’m usually fairly robust so I’ll surely bounce back from whatever this creeping malaise is. I’ve also bought what’s probably the last of the season’s asparagus to make what Nigella calls Pasta Salad Primavera…which is making me feel perkier just typing it out.

hot lunch jam

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Disclaimer: this particular post is photo-heavy, so if your internet browser has all the thrust of an electric toothbrush you may want to consider coming back another time. Although, these photos were all hastily snapped on the Automatic setting so they probably aren’t that big, pixel-wise. You should also know that I’m still in a stumbling haze of fullness and am quite, quite sleepy on top of that. Who knows where this heady combination could lead us. But – tonight’s post will be – hopefully – a kind of recap of the day that was the Flat Christmas Party. I’ll return to what you could call regular programming with the next post. I guess now is as good a time as any to be a new reader – if you can handle all this then we’re going to get along just fine!

My assessment is that yesterday’s lunch was our best Christmas dinner yet – although each year has its fond memories. (Like the rugelach of 2007….that’s all I can think about right now actually)

THE FEASTENING



Nigella’s Soft and Sharp Involtini from Nigella Bites, minus the feta but with many toasted macadamias, pecans, almonds and hazelnuts added. In my experience, involtini is basically stuff wrapped around other stuff, in this case slices of seared eggplant (one of the more boring jobs of the weekend) rolled around spoonfuls of herbed, nutty bulghur wheat and baked in tomato sauce. I was smugly eating it cold for lunch today at work – it’s even better after a day or so.

The roasted chooks. I love the way they’re sitting here in the same roasting dish as if they were buddies. It’s also partly necessity – our oven isn’t very big. We got two plump Rangitikei Free Range Corn Fed chickens, and according to the Rangitikei website the chickens are lovingly raised and are able to safely roam in the grass. The site is certainly convincing and I have no reason to believe these chickens weren’t raised in a safe, humane way – I find it very difficult to buy meat these days that hasn’t been.

Stuffing for said lucky chickens. On the left, Cornbread and Cranberry Stuffing from Nigella’s Feast, and on the right, the (dairy-free!) Pear and Cranberry Stuffing from Nigella Christmas. Both divine – the butteryness of the cornbread stuffing would be bordering on ludicrous if it wasn’t for the sharp berries interrupting each mouthful. The pear stuffing is moist and lusciously rich without being overwhelming, because it’s basically just fruit and nuts.


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Silky, slippery roasted Capsicums with Pomegranate from Nigella Christmas – I bought about five packs of past-their-best capsicums from the market yesterday morning, then completely forgot that the recipe needed pomegranates. Never mind – we also needed coffee, ice and a loaf of bread so we picked up the pomegranate from Moore Wilson’s straight afterwards. (Where we are now Silver Customers on their loyalty programme!) Pomegranates really are excitingly Christmassy. But to be fair, before I got into Nigella pomegranates were linked in my mind, for some reason, with other mythical things like unicorns and reindeer (okay, reindeer actually exist, but they sound like they shouldn’t). How things change. Avocados were also cheap and perfectly ripe at the market – so they were added spontaneously to the feasting. Avocados are never not a treat.

Above: The gorgeous Scotty! Not only visual proof that we actually have friends, Scotty is modelling the Poinsettia cocktail, or at least my simplification of Nigella’s recipe for it in Nigella Christmas. I upended a bottle of dry bubbles and a bottle of cranberry juice into a large bowl, and topped it up with Cointreau and ice. The bubbles were kindly provided by Ange, the cranberry juice by Megha and Ruvin, and the Cointreau…well, we’ve been nursing that bottle since Ange’s sister left it at our old flat a few years back. The Poinsettia is intensely drinkable but not overwhelming – ideal whether the sun is over the yard-arm or not. If you’re wondering where his natty headwear is from, Anna and Paul brought along some gorgeous Christmas crackers which, once pulled to shreds, produced silver hats of such crisp quality and hatmanship that Tim and I decided to hold on to them for next year’s party. The jokes were woeful though. “Q: What do you get if you cross a skeleton and a detective? A: Sherlock Bones.” So wholesome and inoffensive it’s bordering on sinister.

As well as this there was a vat of boiled new potatoes with mint from our garden (which is where the only near-disaster of the day happened – I turned the gas on under said vat of potatoes without realising there was no water in the pot yet. Luckily an angry sizzle alerted me to this fact; apart from the occasional scorch mark the potatoes were unharmed) the Ham in Coca Cola from How To Eat (which was from the butcher in Waiuku, gifted to be by Mum and flown back to Wellington with me and frozen last time I went up home.) It was perfect pork – not weighed down with fat and gristle but utterly pink and deeply flavoursome from the Coca Cola. Also there were salad greens, roasted root vegetables, and a loaf of Heidelburg bread.

After all this eating we all kind of staggered round in a dazed stupor, bodies weighted to chairs by all the food. Blinking slowed down, just breathing in and out became unhurried and meditative. We chose that moment to have dessert.

Chocolate Pavlova from Nigella’s Forever Summer. As I complained about on Twitter, I did something wrong and while enormous, the pav wasn’t very high. However, whatever I did made it taste amazing. I wish I knew! I drizzled it in dark chocolate, covered it in cheap strawberries from the market, and served the whipped cream on the side for those who wanted it. The plate that the pav is sitting on was a present from Emma, a Dunedin-based former flatmate who was also at the very first Christmas Dinner we had in 2006.

Chocolate Pavlova

Forever Summer

6 egg whites
300g caster sugar
50g good cocoa
1 tsp balsamic or red wine vinegar
50g dark chocolate, chopped roughly

Set oven to 180 C. Do the usual pavlova thing: Whip up the egg whites till satiny peaks form, then continue to beat them while adding the sugar a tiny bit at a time. Once the sugar is all added the mixture should be thick, shiny and stiff. Sift in the cocoa and sprinkle over the vinegar, folding in carefully along with the chocolate. Spread mixture into a 23cm circle on a baking paper lined tray. Immediately turn down oven to 150 C and leave for about an hour. Once done, turn oven off and leave pav to cool completely.

If I don’t tell you, no-one will – I made this entire pav just using a whisk. You, however, are more than welcome to use electric beaters or a cake mixer. It doesn’t make you a bad person, just a person who can, unlike myself, locate their electric beaters.

Neither of the ice creams let me down – the chocolate coconut version was rich, intense and bounty bar-esque, while the ginger ice cream was described as “ridiculous” by Ricky – call me when you find yourself offered a better compliment for your ice cream.

Despite nearly everyone saying they don’t like candy canes (and fair enough, it’s like eating toothpaste) we somehow all ended up chewing thoughfully on one by the end of the day. Also bolstering the pudding table were some amaretti that we bought on sale from the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown (on sale because their best-before date was ages ago but I don’t believe in worrying about that sort of thing) and some dark chunks of Whittaker’s Chocolate. Eventually people started to leave until it was just Tim, myself, Scotty and Ange playing spirited and politically charged card games. Our flatmate Jason arrived home from doing film work at the cricket in the rain and we chilled with him for a bit (and had already saved him a plate of food from before). While it was a shame he couldn’t be there during the day, as the Christmas Dinner is about flat solidarity, but there was no way around it – Sunday was the only day the majority of us were free to make it happen.

Tim and I after the stragglers left at around 5.30pm. Please bear in mind that I was up till 1am the night before somewhat manically stuffing slices of eggplant with bulghur wheat. I’d like to think I own my inability to take a decent spontaneous photo. By the way, the eyepatch came in one of the Christmas crackers, it’s not a regular accessory for Tim. Although, what with his diabetes and all that ice cream, he might as well get used to the feel of it. Kidding! We spent the evening watching Glee, nibbling at leftovers, and reading over all the lovely comments I’d got on my blog since I was fortunate enough to be on the front cover of the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine.

So, like I said, the Christmas dinner (even though it was actually a lunch, I’m just affectatious that way) was a roaring success, with people already locking in their availability for 2010. I didn’t intend it to become a giant homage to Nigella Lawson, although in hindsight…I probably did. An enormous thank you to everyone who came, who contributed with their fantastic presence and also with actual things that I asked to be brought along. Again, if there are any new readers drawn here after reading the article in the Sunday Star-Times, welcome welcome welcome and hope you see something in this madness worth sticking round for.

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Title of this post comin’ atcha via the great Irene Cara and the hyper-percussive Hot Lunch Jam from one of my favourite films of everrrr, Fame. Also known as “that film that really didn’t need remaking at ALL.”
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Music that’s happening to me these days:

My Doorbell and Passive Manipulation from the White Stripes’ wonderful wonderful 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan. We had a DVD of them playing live on while I was writing this, Jack and Meg White are both mesmerisingly compelling (LOVE it when Meg sings) and if there are any spelling mistakes in this post I blame them entirely.

The entire Time Is Not Much album, the seriously stunning debut from local MC, the soultastic Ladi6. Every time it finishes it feels like it should just…be started again. It’s that good.

Shout Out by the Honey Claws. Just try to listen to this song without jiggling. It can nay be done. ________________________________________________

Till next time: I’ll be doing a bit of dedicated basking in the truly nice feedback I’ve received about the article/cover story in the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine. Lest any astute readers notice that Nigella Express was the only book of Lawson’s that didn’t get a look-in this Christmas and start to suspect something (I’m not sure what, just…something) I made a Spanish omelette using a recipe from said book and leftover potatoes this very evening. If the photos turn out okay you’ll probably be seeing it up here before long.