Category: Candy, Sweets, and No-Bake Sugary Goods

sugar, she’s refined, for a small price she blows my mind

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I grew up with some fully-formed ideas about, of all things, Toblerone chocolate bars. Firstly, as a kid I convinced myself that the droning chorus-y bit to Heavenly Pop Hit by the Chills was them singing “Toblerone, toblerone” over and over again. I know, what? A slight stretch of the imagination, but I was young, and there was no Google, and possibly I liked the idea of a band singing about a chocolate bar more than I enjoyed fact-checking, so I let my ears believe what they wanted. Less bizarrely, but closer to the truth, this chocolate bar was indelibly associated with other people going overseas. Yes, Mum and I went to Melbourne once when I was five to see her best friend, but that aside we weren’t given to big holidays at the drop of a pay packet. However someone at school must’ve been, because I distinctly remember talk of Toblerones upon their return, and associating them with fancy-pants overseas trips. These days you can just buy this particular chocolate bar from your corner dairy, but back in the day, when it spoke of air travel and rock’n’roll, the very idea of just having one felt unspeakably sophisticated.

I’d like to posit myself as bearing no ill-will towards the Toblerone. They’re really, really nice if you manage to get your hands on one, there’s no attitude here of “the world needs urgently a new version of the Toblerone and I charge myself with the noble duty of providing an inconvenient and slightly inferior appropriation!” Nooo.

I just like crunchy toffee nutty chocolatey stuff, and why should Toblerone be the only thing that gets to monopolise that combination?

So I made this stuff, inspired by that chocolate bar. It’s kind of a slice, kind of just melted chocolate with more sugar added, but it’s simple and seriously wonderful to eat with its crystals of toffee and bashed up toasted almonds. Fine as is, broken into rough shards, particularly effective when chopped up and sprinkled over icecream.

Toffee Brittle Chocolate


1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup salt (jokes! A small pinch of salt, that’s all)
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Whittaker’s Dark Cacao)


Firstly, toast the almonds in a saucepan over a low heat till lightly browned. Tip them into either a silicon baking dish, or a medium-sized baking dish (the sort you could fit a roast chicken into, but not two, or use a pie dish) lined with baking paper. In the same saucepan, slowly melt the sugars and the water over a low heat, and bring to the boil without stirring. Stirring causes bigger crystals to form which isn’t what we’re after here. Allow it to bubble away merrily for about five minutes until it smells like caramel and the syrup under the silvery bubbles appears to be dark brown. At this point, carefully but quickly pour it over the almonds, getting as much as you can out with the help of a spatula. Sprinkle over the salt and allow to set.


Once set, chop it all up very roughly and then transfer it all back into the baking dish. Then slowly melt the chocolate and tip it over the chopped up almond toffee, stirring to mix. It’ll look rough and like the chocolate’s not going to cover everything, but that’s all good. Pop in the freezer for a bit to set properly, then break into small pieces and serve as you wish.

Bubbling sugar and water is kind of beautiful, am I right? Just don’t get close, it’ll burn you faster than an insult from Blackadder.
It’s also quite pretty once all chopped up but before getting covered in chocolate – all golden and sparkly. I guess food blogging has conditioned my brain to think such things, but I swear it looked pretty in real life.

I’ve been keeping it in a container in the freezer, and something about the icecold chocolate makes the delicate almond crunchiness even more excellent. It’s perfect for a sweet thing after a big dinner but also, as I said, completely delicious chopped up over ice cream.

On Saturday night I went to see Rose Matafeo’s show Scout’s Honour as part of the Comedy Festival. I didn’t know tooooo much about her apart from she’s on TV and on Twitter seems like my kind of person, but in real life, on stage, she is a scream. Hilarious. She’s got some shows coming up in Auckland so if that’s where you’re from, I most definitely recommend attending. Not least because her show had tea and biscuits, and super-nice audience members. I was by myself and appreciated the rolling-with-the-punches niceness of the people either side of me. In that when I asked “can I sit here?” they said “sure” and smiled, rather than blankly staring at me, or saying no. But also: about halfway through her show she worked in a Babysitters Club joke, so, you know, free pass for life.

Luckily everyone can join in basking in the tiny, adorable splendour of Rory the kitten, one of our friend Jo’s foster cats. (Speaking of Jo, kindly check out this write-up she did of an incredible dinner we had at Hummingbird. Includes a panna cotta gif!) I can’t adequately express how tiny and sweet Rory is, but I’ll tell you this: he’s truly much the same size as he appears to be in this picture. Spent significant time adoring him inbetween episodes of Veronica Mars. So important.
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Title via: tick, tick…BOOM! the musical by a young Jonathan Larson, who would go on to write RENT, which this blog is named for. The song really is about sugar, in case you’re wondering, and it is good, especially with Raul Esparza wrapping his sweet, sweet vocal cords around it. 
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Music lately:
Woke up Saturday morning to the news that Adam Yauch, MCA from Beastie Boys had died. This is such sad news – Beastie Boys have been together longer than I’ve been alive and consistently putting out music that I love. Honestly part of the soundtrack of my life. Remote Control is one of my favourite songs of theirs. However I’d also like to call attention to this glorious rhyme from the glorious Sure Shot: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/ the disrespect to women has got to be through.”

Finally listened to some Lana Del Rey, and uh, have become mildly obsessed with her music. It’s just so utterly melancholy, I can’t help but love it.

It’s not actually him singing, but a young Johnny Depp with an also-young Amy Locane in John Waters’ Crybaby on Please Mr Jailer is worth suspending reality for. As is the heavily crushable Wanda Woodward, thanks to Kate for the necessary reminder!
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Next time: I was thinking about Gin and Tonic Ice Cream. First to catch my gin…

ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb

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When I was a kid I thought Robin Hood: Men In Tights was the last word in genius filmmaking. The very last. I rewatched it a few years ago and boo-urns, it really wasn’t that hilarious to me anymore. I guess when I was an impressionable youth, all it took was a few anachronisms and the merry men rapping their exposition and I was happy. I find it interesting what pop culture from my youth holds up to me – inexplicably Babysitters Club books yes, The Wedding Singer sadly no, despite how bodacious I thought Billy Idol was. Princess Bride, better with every watch, whereas time has not been kind to Aqua’s sound production. All 90s R’n’B without exception yes, Limp Bizkit…no. A thousand times nay. This is just me, what say you?  
I ask, because when eating a Cherry Ripe chocolate bar on the weekend (Americans: they’re like an Almond Joy with cherries instead of almonds) it became clear that it was unfairly undelicious. Weak chocolate. Nosebleed-inducing sweetness. Flavour more meh-ry than cherry. I was really, really hungry and I’d been lifting heavy things all afternoon so I ate the lot anyway. But I was sure they used to be nicer. Not that I had Scarface-level piles of cherry ripes around me as a kid. They’re only a relatively recent love of mine from the last decade or two. And yet. At first I thought it was my tastebuds evolving, and with all this “Mmm, tapenade and crackers” and “I love hummus!” and so on it had pushed out all the space available for enjoying the process of having your mouth waterblasted with sugar. But would a person who makes a pavlova and covers it in smarties say that? (I’m talking about myself, if you didn’t click that link.) I think not. So maybe it’s the fault chocolate bars? I do know a lot of people I’ve talked to are convinced Creme Eggs used to be better when they were kids. So.
Anyway I thought, to quote Jason Robert Brown: I can do better than that.

I had half a can of cherries in the fridge leftover from making Purple Jesus for Tim’s birthday last year. Coconut doesn’t cost much and I suspected condensed milk would be excellent glue to hold it all together. Finally I selected the kind of dark chocolate whose pure intensity of flavour and excellence of texture is matched only by its accessibility and reasonable price: Whittaker’s Dark Ghana. Bonus: sometimes if you’re lucky and the humidity is just so, this block of chocolate honestly sounds like a maraca when you snap it.
It worked. OH HOW IT WORKED! 
I’m not implying that if you do like Cherry Ripes we can’t hang out or anything, never! None of that. All I’m saying is: In my personal opinion I don’t like them anymore, and this is my attempt at recreating the Cherry Ripe so I do like it. So no need for hand-wringing.
Cherry-Coconut Chocolate Bars (Ah, c’mon, couldn’t use the registered brand name thingy, could I? I did consider Shmerry Shmipes, so feel free to use that.)

2 1/2 cups dessicated coconut
1 tin sweetened condensed milk
1 cup drained cherries from a jar
1 x 250g block very dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)

In a large pan, over a low heat, lightly toast the coconut until slightly nut-brown in parts. At this point, tip in the entire can of condensed milk and continue to stir, doing your best, over a low heat. Add the cherries – it will turn a ridiculous purple-grey, just go with it – and continue stirring till it forms a solid paste-like texture.

Remove from the heat, and tip the mixture onto a large sheet of baking paper on a bench, or onto a silicon baking sheet. Use the spatula to prod and spread and shape this forgiving mixture into a rough square, then use either a dough cutter or a knife and a fish slice to divide them into squares and shift them apart from each other.

Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a metal or china bowl that’s big enough to rest on top of a small pot of water. Bring said pot of water to the boil, which will gently melt the chocolate. Or you could microwave it, if you’ve got one. Use a teaspoon to transfer melted chocolate on top of each square of coconut, spreading it across and down the sides as per the above photo. Once they’re set, use the fish slice or a spatula or whatever to carefully flip them over, then using the remaining chocolate – which you might have to carefully re-melt, drizzle chocolate over (I use a kind of loose-wristed flinging movement which isn’t overly successful, to be honest.) If you feel like you’ve got enough chocolate you could just spread the chocolate over the bases so the coconut is entirely concealed. Store in a cool place.

All that writing makes it look like the most painfully complex recipe in history but I’m just trying to be elaborate with the instructions. This is honestly easy. There’s nothing fiddly involved, just a bit of time. 

Just a bit of stirring and spreading and slicing and melting and spreading and Jackson Pollock drizzling and verily you end up with a whole flipping jar full of delicious, chewy-sweet chocolate bars. Not too sweet, weirdly enough, despite the entire can of condensed milk (minus whatever stuck to the underside of the top of the can, which I carefully removed with my tongue). I think this comes from the toasting of the coconut, the relative sourness of the cherries, and the cocoa onslaught of the dark, dark chocolate. These morsels are best kept in the fridge, which means when you bite into them you get the full texture ruckus of cold, firm chocolate snapping into softly coarse coconut and pliant condensed milk. It’s truly splendid.
Seriously now. Try before you buy.
Nothing overly wacky to report from the weekend, as I was up in Auckland toiling away for work. Hence the post-toil cherry ripe bar which inspired all this. The time away toiling has rendered me completely useless which is why this blog post took forever to get to you. And even with all this time simmering away, it hasn’t necessarily improved. Did however have a “drawing club” at Kate and Jason’s house with what little time was left of my weekend, which was as gloriously old-timily fun as it sounds (or as awful as it sounds, depending on your opinion I guess). I got a rush of happiness from doing something I haven’t done since probably 1994 – just lying on the floor at a friend’s place drawing all afternoon. Finished the day with Jo and Laura (another one!) seeing out the first season of Veronica Mars. Leslie Knope has a hot contender for being my Favourite Fictional Hero Whose Fictionality Doesn’t Hinder Their Influence Upon Me…I can tell you.
Wait! Something a bit exciting: at our last book group, you know, the one with literary karaoke to three different versions of Wuthering Heights, I got a call from Australia’s edition of Vice magazine because they were wanting to talk to some people in Wellington about what they were up to of a weekend. Despite being genuinely excited about book club I wasn’t sure if the concept would translate particularly well, but lo: here I am in Vice! FYI, they asked me to send in a photo and I didn’t realise it’d be that big. Has my face always been that crooked? And ruddy-nosed? And, let’s face it, was my hair always that awesomely huge?
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Title via: Runaways, Cherry Bomb. I love the threatening way Cherie Curry spits out “HELLO” in the chorus. 
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Music lately:
Tim made me listen to this song by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 99 and a Half Won’t Do. Now I’m trying to make you listen to it. It’s a beauty.
Who Are You, by Julien Dyne feat Ladi6 and Parks. Brill. Complicated and straightforward at the same time. I love the twinkly triangles and swirly piano notes. 
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Next time: I’m heading back up to Auckland this week for yet more toiling, but hopefully it won’t be quite so long before I bounce back this time round. 

candy cane girl, don’t you know my name girl?

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Ever feel like what the French call les incompetents? If like me, “oui, le constantly-ment”, then I salute you. My useless actions always seem amplified – I’m much more likely to dwell on slamming into a doorframe, saying something without thinking, or hassling everyone about but not winning a blogging award. Or sometimes I’ll be walking quietly down the street and my brain will say something along the lines of “hey, remember this very specific mistake/bad judgement call/awkward situation?” When all this happens I try and steer the brain towards thinking positively, shrinkening the tiny or huge mistakes and remembering the good things. What else can you do? (Apart from not make mistakes? Which: doubties.)

I try instead to remember small things, like friends who instinctively invite themselves round for wine just when you feel like friends and wine. Like getting a tweet reply from people in The Wire or on Broadway. And like this utterly manageable Christmassy snack to go with my Christmassy movie reference. It has less ingredients than I have eyelashes after a night wearing mascara (seriously, mascara is like a tiny version of one of those weird rolly things that remove lint from your clothes…for my eyelashes) and – the snack that keeps on giving – is also charmingly simple to make, strangely delicious to eat, and aggressively festive to behold.

Make it when you’ve got people coming round and you don’t know what to serve up – especially since the two main ingredients can be bought from most corner dairies; make it when you feel like things should be more recognisably yuletide-y than they are; make it if you’ve had a hard day which can be soothed by the feeling of a knife blade plunging through solid sugar; make it when you’re wavering between “Shut up, self! Your life is good! Check your privilege and stop complaining!” and “I just want to hug a large cat and allow its soft pelt to absorb my salty tears.”

So, yes, this conversation again – I didn’t win the blogger award I was nominated for. D’oh! I feel like the Raul Esparza of blogger awards. But you can’t go round hitching your wagon to every star that rolls by. Had I won, of course, I would’ve talked about it heaps, and big congratulations to the winner. But here we are. Asking for votes isn’t something I love, and while I didn’t quite have the energy to be involved, I also didn’t have the energy not to be involved, if that makes sense. On the upside of things, it’s cool that someone/s nominated me, thanks heaps everyone who did vote because of – or in spite of – my petitioning, I’m pretty sure I got some new readers out of this (do stay!) and it’s a good learning experience.

So what even is this recipe? It’s so simple, and yet a triumph of both texture and flavour. The sugary crunch against soft chocolate snap; the spicy chill of synthetic peppermint flavouring melting into the cocoa darkness. While I have a feeling I’ve seen this recipe before somewhere other than my brain, I also can’t place it specifically. That said, I haven’t tried googling it or anything. But importantly, it’s easy, it’s delicious, it’s beautiful. In fact the most difficult part is wrangling the wrapping off the candy canes – this strange plastic, which on the candy canes is like trying to scrape off a layer of clear nail polish, and then when finally removed it floats around and clings obstinately to your eyebrows.

Candy Cane Bark

A recipe by myself

  • 250g dark chocolate. (I use Whittakers. It is both delicious, and the best.)
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil or plain oil (I like rice bran) or even Kremelta, if you dare.
  • Five candy canes
  • Salt
  • Edible Glitter (optional)

Place the unwrapped candy canes on a chopping board, and carefully, using a big knife, chop away at them till they’re reduced to peppermint splinters.

Melt the chocolate, a decent grind of salt, and the oil together gently either in the microwave or in a metal bowl that’s sitting on a small pot of simmering water (not actually touching the water.) Pour into a smallish tin – if it’s silicone you’re all good, but consider lining it with baking paper if it’s ceramic or metal or something. Once it has cooled a little, sprinkle the candy cane shards over evenly and top with glitter. Chill and slice evenly.

This is best when freezing cold, to encourage maximum crunch and minimum melting in your hand. Also good topped, if you will, with a tasteful and elegant dusting of edible glitter. You could double the chocolate, to make it thicker, or double the candy canes, to make it crunchier and prettier. Don’t leave out the salt – I know salted everything these days is getting a little blah, but its intensity not only balances out the sweetness, but also makes everything taste more of itself.

Every time I’m convinced peppermint flavouring is as fun as eating food right after after cleaning your teeth, a combination like this comes along to change my mind. While it looks like it’d make an ideal gift, it’s a little too melty to be sit around in a wrapped box for hours under the tree. Instead, whip it out when you’ve got guests and they’ll hopefully be so dazzled by the pretty shards of candy cane, that you’ll look far, far more competent than you might be feeling.

I know I’m always sleepy these days but lately life’s been like when you go to get Chinese takeaways and you optimistically stuff way too much food from the buffet table into your plastic container and it bulges out the lid and noodles dangle out the side, and then you insist on eating it all rather than just put it in the fridge and admit defeat about your stomach capacity. That is to say, I was busy and had amazing times, like karaoke, cases of wine appearing, skidding down a hallway in socks, dancing – possibly terrifyingly – wild and free with friends, attending book group that went on for five hours because we were talking about everything ever. Would rather have the overstuffed $7 buffet container than a single crabstick off the menu any day (wait, that metaphor makes no sense, let’s just finish things here.)

Finally, I don’t know how many times you’ve seen Home Alone but that’s what the Les Incompetents quote comes from – I was talking to someone on Twitter about how I’d wanted to use it on my blog for a while, and lo, the universe provides me with lots of incompetency to not so much quote it as turn it into a thematic motif for my life, or something.

Title via: People, there are just not that many songs referencing candy canes, which makes no sense to me. Luckily the White Stripes not only made a song, they basically devoted their working life to resembling peppermint-flavoured candy.

Music lately:

Ladi6 released a beautiful video for her beautiful song Jazmine DL. She’s so awesome I can’t even talk about her properly without a good night’s sleep so I’ll just link through to the video and leave it at that.

The song that always, always makes me feel better, but especially during an attack of the les incompetents: Die, Vampire, Die.

Next time: I was going to tack it on as an afterthought but I like it so much it’ll get its own post, and hopefully act as a nice buffer between all the Christmas overload. I’ll leave you with one word: Capsimato. (Also these parentheses and this explanatational colon: it’s roast tomato inside roast capsicum. Just in case capsimato wasn’t working for you.)

no boy, don’t speak now you just drive

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Last time I promised a Christmas Cake – and recklessly did I make one, at 11pm after an evening of Viognier (where I learned both how to pronounce “Viognier” and also that I like Coopers Creek’s stuff). But even more reckless was my thinking that I could blog about the cake before this weekend just gone, where Tim and I drove up to Waiuku for an important family party, when we’ve had stuff on every night of the week. Perhaps reckless-est of all, on Sunday night after nine hours of travelling, I tried to blog. I didn’t achieve the state of sleeplessness-fueled focussed intensity I was hoping for. I just fell asleep. So finally, here we are.

And instead of Christmas Cake, today’s subject is Road Trip Snacks. I’ve never been on a road trip before – I know, what kind of friendless, half-hearted Kiwi am I – and this was really just a long trip which occurred via road but I’m claiming it and you can’t take it away from me. I’ve learned that writing on a laptop while in a car with barely-existent suspension and handling isn’t the easiest; the slightest tension is magnified by your ability to stare endlessly into the ever-approaching horizon (except Tim was all “yeah, nah, I didn’t notice that” so clearly whatever I was tense over was so subtly conveyed he didn’t notice it, meanwhile I thought I was being totally, point-makingly huffy.) Another thing I noticed is that when I’m in Wellington I put some effort into my clothes, but as soon as I get out of town I’m happy to shuffle round in trackpants, jandals and a saggy old singlet. And let us not forget the proliferation of roadside shops selling local crafts. I swear there’s more sheepskin shops per capita than there are both sheep and capita.

And snacks are of great importance. I started off trying to think of something healthy, veered towards “morale boosting” instead. When you’re several hours in and the countryside around you really isn’t providing much variety, a snack is as good as a holiday, not to mention if you actually have no driving skills, it allows you to feel smugly like you’re also bringing something to the table. Snack #1 is from one of my favourite new cookbooks, the brilliant Kitchen Coquette, and involved white chocolate, coco pops, and peppermint essence. Yes. That’s right. I’m a devotee of the white chocolate so I was expecting to like it and all, but I wasn’t anticipating this: it’s one of the more perfect things I’ve ever eaten. Honest.

If you can, try to get decent white chocolate since the taste of it is so prominent here. I use Whittakers because it’s extremely delicious. But also relatively affordable. White chocolate is a little fiddly to get right, and some stuff out there is loaded up with weird oils and flavourings in lieu of whatever it actually is that gets it to taste so magical. But not Whittakers. On the other hand, use the cheapest coco pops you can find, as they’re all much of a muchness and breakfast cereal is expensive than perfume. The nearest supermarket to me gatekeepingly only had the proper stuff, but the finished recipe was so good it was worth every cent.

White Chocolate Coco Pops Slice

(It’s called Peppermint Crispies in the book but with ingredients like this I really want to list them in the title.)

From Kitchen Coquette, by Katrina Meynink. I highly recommend it.

250g good white chocolate.
1 cup cocoa pops, puffs, snaps, or whatever you call them.
2 teaspoons peppermint essence (unless your pants are fancy and you have Boyajian Peppermint Oil, in which case use a couple of drops.)

Carefully melt the chocolate on the stovetop in a metal bowl sitting on top of a small pot of water that is half-full of simmering water. Throw the essence in and stir it round, which may make it sieze up a little – inexplicably – but persevere, tip in the coco pops and stir as best as you can.

Tip out onto a sheet of baking paper, flatten as best you can – try pressing down on it with another sheet of baking paper over the top – and don’t worry about rough edges or anything. Allow to set, then slice up. It will break naturally into rough jigsaw pieces instead of neat bars – all part of the charm.

Note: I feel the white chocolate + peppermint aspect of this is crucial, but if you’re unable to eat dairy, this would still be super alluring made with dark chocolate.

While I am not normally one to reach for the peppermint essence – it always makes me feel like toothpaste has fallen into my food – here it works stunningly, its icy heat cutting through the vanilla richness of the white chocolate and yet somehow, each mint-cooled inhale also enhances its buttery, melting-textured wonderfulness. The airy crunch of the coco pops amongst the surrounding white chocolate is surprisingly habit-forming, like edible bubble wrap. Something about the peppermint actually does wake up the brain a little as you trundle along. All told, a superior snack, and one that I feel truly lucky to know of.

Over on the other end of the snack horizon are these stunning Sesame Garlic Roast Almonds which I invented myself first to use in the Sexy Pasta back in March, but have adapted for more specific nut-eating purposes. Because they’re too good to just scatter over pasta. Scatter ’em over your tastebuds too (but not the floor of your car because the scents of garlic and sesame are persistant.)

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Sesame Garlic Roast Almonds

You could of course use any nut here, but almonds have a sweet edge and a popcorn-crisp texture once roasted and they’re very reasonably priced in bulk at Moore Wilson – which is why they’re my go-to fancy nut.

2 cups whole almonds, labelled “Dessert Almonds” on my bag.
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 heaped teaspoon brown sugar
Generous pinch salt

Set your oven to 200 C/400 F. Mix everything together in a bowl before tipping it out onto an oven tray. Putting a sheet of baking paper on it before doing this will save you a lot of dishes hassle. Roast the nuts for as long as you dare, until they’re darkened somewhat and smell amazing. Keep an eye on them though because it’s a fine line between roast and burnt. Allow to cool then tip into a container.

Also rivetingly good with their snappish texture and Inception-like nuttiness within nuttiness. And garlic, with its rich, rounded oniony flavour, is a far more suitable friend of the nut than chili, in my opinion. In case you’re wondering what the stuff in the photo is, I just threw the sugar over without mixing it in properly, which meant that lumps of it bubbled up under the oven’s heat and turned into a kind of garlickly brittle – strangely good. While the White Chocolate Coco Puff Peppermint slice has the edge in terms of immediate appeal, every time we brought these out to snack on we ended up grabbing them by the handful.

All that aside, we did have a terrific time up home – I got to hang out with my dear Nana a lot; see Tim dressed up as a Disney prince (veered between calling him Prince XYZ since they were never that interesting in the movies anyway, and calling him Prince Floribund which I just thought was funny) for the party we went to, which was a cartoon-themed dress-up one, in case you’re wondering what brought this alarming behavior on. I was Sleeping Beauty, Mum and Dad were an Ugly Sister and Dick Dastardly respectively, and my brother went as Jack Skillington. There was also a massive supper, a pudding buffet, beautiful speeches and a very cool birthday lady dressed as Sailor Moon. Absolutely worth the harrowingly long drive there and back!

Finally, and importantly, I saw Poppy the Kitten again who has grown just a tiny bit and has mellowed out slightly – she’s less of a baby raptor now, and will actually let you hold her without trying to claw out your nostrils. I did wake up with an ominous paw resting on my neck, but it turned out she was just using me as an overbridge so she could have a punch-up with the curtains. At 3am.
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Title via: Bic Runga, lady of big achievements, with her early song Drive. I’ve loved this quiet, thoughtful song ever since Dad made me watch it on Video Hits or Max TV or something, saying “she’s going to be huge one day.” Shrewd, Dad.
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Music lately:

I didn’t have time to make any kind of iPod playlist, and Tim’s sister’s car, which we swapped for on the way up as our ute drinks up petrol like it’s coming from one of those refill cups at Burger King, didn’t have anything to plug the ipod into. We ended up listening to National Radio and learning a thing or two, because we couldn’t find anything music-wise despite flicking obsessively through the stations.

On the last stretch of road home, having swapped back to the ute where we could plug in the ipod, we listened to Gil Scott-Heron’s Winter In America and I’m New Here – ideal music for anytime, not just cars. But it felt particularly right just then.
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Next time: the Christmas cake! That said, I have to taste it first to make sure it’s okay. But I also want to ice it. Dilemma. 

girls would turn the color of the avocado when he would drive down their street in his el dorado

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Magical things, avocados.

But first a BIG thank you, as big as the words Thank You made out of colourful rubber and inflated to the size of a forty-foot building, with a noble capybara balancing on top of it looking thoughtfully into the distance, for all the nice comments and emails about my last blog post. From the bottom of my chocolate-iced heart.

Back to avocados; aren’t they exciting? Like nature’s version of rich creamery butter, kept in an endearingly curvaceous, bumpy casing. Nutty and smooth and yes, buttery, I love it mashed into guacamole to be scooped up with corn chips, spread on toast for a breakfast treat anytime of day, or sliced into a bowl of salad so that you can try and surreptitiously dig for it all with the spoons when serving yourself.

But to turn them into pudding? Inconceivable!

Conceive of this. I know I go on about Hannah at Wayfaring Chocolate a fair bit, so I’ll try and squash down the enthusiasm a little here so I don’t sound like some kind of creepy person who waits outside your window and cries “the hunter has become the hunted!” No, it’s not like that. It’s just that she’s got one of my favourite food blogs in the world, is all. And while I’ve heard of using avocados in non-savoury recipes, it was she who prised open my eyes to how delicious and non-threatening it could be. Through the medium of raw vegan brownies. Regular baked brownies have their place (and that place is a table marked “DELICIOUS THINGS HERE, PLEASE”) but it’s fun to push the limits of creativity in the kitchen sometimes by restricting your parameters. Which is what Hannah did with this amazingly delicious recipe.

Yes, those are useless-ish stripy novelty straws: they make my heart soar, and what price soaring? Occasionally I buy into pretty things, and occasionally…I literally buy them. Treat yo’self.
A daring mixture of dates and nuts are whizzed up in a food processor with cocoa to form the base, and then the power of a whole avocado is harnessed to create the icing. It’s amazing – you add golden syrup and cocoa and suddenly it turns into this creamy, darkly chocolatey, shiny ganache-like substance.
Unfortunately when I busted anticipationally into the avocado it wasn’t entirely usable – instead of two bowl-like halves offering up smooth, unbroken greenness, there were significant portions that were bruised and horribly stringy. I scooped out what was salvageable, and this is why the layer of icing on my brownies is sadly thin. But another time, another avocado. 
Raw Vegan Chocolate Brownies with Spectacular Avocado Icing

Adapted slightly, and respectfully, from Hannah’s recipe which she adapted from another recipe of her own anyway: inception! Feel free however to just click through to hers.

2 cups nuts: I used a mixture of almonds and pecans, but near-on anything would suit. 
2 cups dates, roughly sliced
1/3 cup cocoa powder

Blend the living heck out of these ingredients in a food processor. It may take some time to come together. Eventually it will be a fine-ish, crumbly mixture of tiny ingredient particles. Turn it out into a baking dish, roughly 20cm square or a little bigger or smaller. Press down on it with a spoon, freeze while you make the icing.

1 ripe, perfect avocado
2 tablespoons golden syrup 
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (optional, by which I mean I forgot)
Small pinch of salt

Thoroughly clean out your food processor, then blend all of the above till smooth and shiny and amazing. Add more of anything to taste, then spread evenly across the base. Return to the freezer, slice once ‘set’.

I admit: I had issues making this. I increased the base quantities a bit from Hannah’s recipe and I don’t know if it was because of that, but the food processor just Would. Not. Break. Them. Down. Rather than being sliced up, it was like the blades were some kind of carnival ride for the dates and nuts to scoot round on. I’d be processing the heck out of it, take the lid off, look in: perfect, whole almonds and dates. Stir it round, repeat. Look in: perfect, unblemished nuts and dates. So confusing. I’m not sure if I should’ve soaked the dates first or something but eventually, eventually, they started to break down. This is why I recommend you chop them first.

But despite that, as long as you own a food processor these are a complete breeze to make, and even though I’ve only eaten a few pieces I know I’m going to make this again, and often. For one thing, to get a better quantity of icing. For another thing, to try out all the different flavours (except carob, I can’t go for that) like having maple syrup in the icing or walnuts in the base. This is incredibly delicious stuff – a little crumbly, although I suspect that’s my own fault – but caramelly and dark and biscuity and cold and wonderful. Something about the texture of the dates and the intensity of the cocoa makes it taste and feel almost like solid chocolate. And the icing – oh my. Even with the mean scraping of it across the top it’s almost aggressively luscious, showing how avocados in sweet things makes total sense – the buttery flavour, its yielding texture, and whipped-cream body. And they’re vegan and gluten-free! (Well I’m not sure if golden syrup is strictly vegan, but it seems to be…if not, just use maple syrup as per her recipe.)

Thanks Hannah – and I urge you to run, not walk, to her blog and read through all the other good things she’s come up with.

What have we been up to lately, apart from eating all this brownie? Went to the SPCA to drop off some newspapers but also to hang out with the beautiful cats and dogs there for a bit – seriously, I want them all. Baddddd. Words can only hint at how cool the cats were and at the depths of love in the dogs’ eyes. I just wish we had the space! We were a little slow-moving that day though because what started off as a spontaneous BYO dinner to toast Jo’s job success on the previous night had escalated into a spontaneous-er wingding at our place. On Sunday I went with Tim to the Wellington Phoenix’s first football game of the season (The Pheen, as I call them, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on). It almost didn’t happen – the internet cafe I usually go to was inexplicably full, then when I finally found another one my e-ticket refused to print for ages. The upshot of it was that arriving late to the stadium meant I didn’t suffer that mid-point slump – as I really don’t like sports in the first place, my attention span is not cut out for ninety minutes of people running round kicking a ball. Anyway, they won, which was super pleasant. Hooray for weekends.
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Title via: The laconic and shambling but nonetheless exciting Pablo Picasso, by the Modern Lovers. LOVE this band. Not least for the fact that they use the word avocado in this song.
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Music lately: 

Shout, Isley Brothers. I know I say this about so many songs, but this has just got to be one of the best songs in the world. It’s beautiful.

Badd Energy, Third Eye – am a huge Coco Solid (she who makes up part of this act) fan so clicked through the moment I saw a link to this. While it stands up easily on its own, if you can watch the video you’re in for some fun times. Fun cats-wearing-robes-and-shooting-at-you times.
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Next time: I tried making quinoa balls tonight, kinda like meatballs, and while they predictably fell to bits what was there tasted SO SO good and so that’ll likely be my next blog post.

clean clear crisp, we got a love like this water

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I don’t want to come across all “Oh hi old friend, haven’t seen you in so long, oh wait I’ll just put my shiny new iPhone on the table there for everyone to see while opening up the FriendPal app, which I paid $3 for, it takes a photo of the person in front of you so you can talk to them while looking at a picture of them on your phone” etc. But I really, really love the FoodGawker app, which is where I found this recipe for Chocolate Mousse. While all the food that I blog about here makes me happy, sometimes I find an exciting recipe that just fills my thoughts constantly, because I’m so curious about it. A recipe that makes people’s voices slower, plane trips delayed, busses late and traffic more congested because they’re all standing between me and my kitchen.

 
 
 
Foodgawker is a site with page after page of thumbnails of stunning food photography, each photo linking to the recipe it depicts on the blog it came from. You’ve got to self-submit, and you’ve got to be good. Possibly related: they’ve consistently rejected all my submissions over the last year or so. But still I return, using it like Google for recipes. Their iPhone app condenses all this into a format that fits on your phone, and it’s a grand way to fill in spare time – although it helps to have some free Wi-Fi, I bet all those high-res pictures chew through the megabytes.
 
The reason this recipe caught my attention, while browsing through the app in an airport recently, was its ingredients. Or lack of.
 
 
 
 
Chocolate, water, juice, honey. (The honey was a total pain to scrape off the baking paper, by the way, and I didn’t even achieve visually what I was hoping for! Hopefully I learn from this.)
 
You get chocolate mousse out of hardly anything at all. I wish I’d known about this recipe a few years ago as a student – a little chocolate, turn on the tap, and you’ve got pudding. No eggs, no cream, no nothing. It’s amazing. As the German man on Tim’s and my train to Warsaw said when he found out we were from New Zealand: “Oh my gosh, that is further away than I could ever have imagined!” As they say in [title of show], “For anyone who’s ever dreamed, it’s time to believe in dreaming again….It’s time. Dream. Believe.” (Oh come on, it more or less applies to awesome chocolate mousse. Also: [title of show]!)
 
 
Water Chocolate Mousse
 
With a huge thanks to the Mess In The Kitchen blog where I found this recipe. I’ve adapted it slightly.
 
100g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
1/4 cup juice (any flavour, I used more of that strawberry juice)
1/3 cup water
2 teaspoons honey
 
Bring the liquids and the honey to the boil in a pan, then remove from the heat and tip into a bowl. Break up the chocolate and add it to the bowl, stirring till the heat of the liquid melts it and you’ve got a shiny chocolate puddle.
 
Refrigerate for 10 minutes or so. Just before you take it out, fill your sink with a couple of centimeters of cold water, and add a handful of ice cubes.
 
Sit the bowl of chocolate in the water, and whisk. Whisk and whisk and whisk and eventually it will aerate, turning paler and thickened and – pa-dah – into chocolate mousse. If you end up with what looks like overbeaten whipped cream, just whisk in a little hot water till you get the consistency you want. Divide amongst two smallish bowls/glasses and serve.
 
Serves 2
 
 
Most recipes involving chocolate will stress that you can’t let any water get into it or it’ll seize up and turn all gross. So, it was with slight consternation that I mixed the two together. Through some miracle of science, the melted chocolate, rapidly cooling with every flick of your whisk, absorbs the liquid and becomes a soft, velvety pillowy pile of mousse, with the clean, unsullying water making the dark cocoa flavour so definite it’s like every single one of your tastebuds is wearing 3D glasses.
 
 
 
 
In terms of excitement-causing, second only to the astonishing minimalism of the ingredients is this recipe’s versatility. With no eggs or dairy or gluten, this could also serve as icing on a cake, the filling in a pie shell, or as a base for whatever flavour you want to push upon it – use orange juice, add vanilla or peppermint extract or cinnamon. If you don’t have juice or honey, I think you could use water for the entire liquid content, and just use two teaspoons of sugar.
 
 
 
 
And for interest’s sake, I tried it with white chocolate instead of dark. Apart from the sort of muddy colour (from the strawberry juice) and a softer-set texture, it worked amazingly well and now calls me, siren like, from the fridge.
 
 
 
Title via: Ladi6’s high-achieving single Like Water from her beautiful album The Liberation of…
 
 
 
Music lately:
 
Kiss From a Rose, Seal. OMG this song is good. Although it’s really hard to blog when you’re singing along to it. It requires all your concentration.
 
HAIR. While I appreciate that I’ve mentioned it a million times, it’s only because it’s really, really good. And I’m obsessed anew thanks to the arrival from America of the Actors Fund of America Benefit recording and the vinyl record of the 2009 revival cast. “All the clouds are cumuloft, walking in spaaaace”
 
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, How Can You Love Me. As commenter Pete20Pedro on Youtube says, “what a jam!” And their album came with a free tshirt, one of those nice ones with really soft fabric, even.
 
 
Next time: Nigella’s recipe for coconut macaroons…unless anything dinner-y overtakes my interest before then. That’s if I’m not asleep in every spare moment. Had another weekend away for work – fortunately, didn’t hit my head again, but I did have a weird sleepless night in my motel, which I’m still catching up on now.

don’t feel so alone, got the radio on

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So, the Royal Wedding on Friday night. I seriously didn’t think I’d be watching it, I really wasn’t more than passingly interested, and even then only so far as it was a big thing happening in my lifetime, as opposed to being all “Wedding!! Fairytale princess!!!!” Tim and I went out to dinner with good friends that night, and when I got home there seemed to be only moments between casually but curiously turning on the TV “just to see the dress”…and me sitting in bed, mug of tea in hand, crocheted blanket and hot water bottle on lap, tweeting complete strangers about Princess Bride references and Victoria Beckham’s choice of hair extension and having txt conversations with Mum that went like “awww” and “:D”.


Anyway, earlier that day I inadvertently ended up making something not a million years removed from Prince William’s choice of wedding cake. Inadvertently, despite having read about his choice of cake already and, despite-er still, having read a recipe referencing it at the Kitchen Maid blog. I’m not trying to cash in on the wedding, I promise. Because the reason I wanted to make this recipe, is the following story.

I was on Wikipedia one time, and I was clicking on links and clicking and clicking and clicking as you do, and somehow I found myself reading about Radiokaka or Radio Cake, a type of Swedish confection “launched with the advantage that it can be eaten without a sound, without nibbling, which was an advantage when you listened to the radio with headphones…” That this doubly advantageous cake was thusly promoted to children appealed to me massively. I like the pragmatic approach; the radio needs to be listened to and cake needs to be eaten, here there is minimal imposition on either act.

Fact: a charming piece of information like this is the difference between me looking at a recipe and thinking “yeah, nah, boring” and me thinking “I need this in my life without delay”.

To find the recipe, I had to translate a whole bunch of Swedish sites, and it became pretty clear that butter, Copha or coconut oil were the emollients of choice. I know butter’s expensive these days but it’s cheaper than coconut oil, and to me feels less creepy than Copha. That said I grew up ingesting Kremelta in various party-foods (and Mum’s seasonal treat “White Christmas”) so go for your life if that’s what you’d prefer. For me: butter. On that note, it’s probably best to just look at the ingredients, take it in, and then move on. There’s no getting around them. And if it’s good enough for generations of radio-listening, silently nibbling youthful Swedes, it’s more than good enough for me. And there’s really nothing here that you wouldn’t find in a cake.

I normally don’t even go down the biscuit aisle at the supermarket, in fact if Tim so much as glances sideways at them I’ll inevitably roar “you want biscuits? I’ll MAKE YOU BISCUITS” but in a friendly, couplesy in-joke kind of way, well I hope. However we saw some plain ones going cheap a while back and I grabbed a couple of packs in case of future cheesecake. Their presence in my cupboard seemed to make it all the more obvious that I should make this recipe.


The recipe itself I cobbled together from various translated sources, it seems there’s not a heck of a lot of variation but I’m happy to be proven wrong. In a nod to the coconut oil, I added some threads of coconut to the chocolatey, biscuity layers. I think if I was making this again I might stir in a couple of spoonsful of good cocoa too, just to give a bit more of a dark edge to the chocolate. The recipe below might look really long and complicated but it’s truly not – a bit of mixing and layering, is all – I just wanted to talk you through it, and through any potential hurdles.

Radiokaka (Radio Cake)

200g dark, dark chocolate. I use Whittakers Dark Ghana.
200g butter
2 cups icing sugar (loosely heaped, not tightly packed or anything).
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut, either dessicated or thread
1 packet plain biscuits, like superwines. If you’re in the US, pop culture would suggest…Graham Crackers?

Take a loaf tin, and line with either baking paper or plastic wrap.

Break chocolate into pieces and gently melt it with the butter over a low heat. Or if you like, get a small pot of water simmering away and then sit your pot with the chocolate and butter in it over that. As soon as it all starts to collapse, you can probably take it off the heat and leave it before stirring together, as the general heat will continue to melt everything.

Meanwhile, thoroughly whisk together the eggs and icing sugar until thick and very pale. Carefully pour in the chocolate mixture, continuing to whisk briskly (so that it doesn’t sieze with the heat. Pour some into the base of your prepared loaf tin – enough to cover it properly, a few milimetres – making sure it goes right to the corners. Set this aside to cool and slightly solidify.


Once this has happened, carefully place a layer of biscuits on top of the chocolate. I realised halfway through that the biscuits weren’t the right shape and I needed to carefully slice them in half. A bit of crumble-age isn’t a big deal, it’s just getting covered with chocolate anyway. Sprinkle with coconut (toast it if you like first) and then carefully spoon over some more chocolate. The chocolate may have set a bit by this point and will need some handling. Spread it evenly over with the back of a spoon – be rough, don’t worry about the coconut staying put. Layer up biscuits and chocolate again, making sure you leave enough chocolate to cover the top. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

To serve, turn out and slice fairly thinly – about 1/2 to one inch gives you plenty.


Considering its ingredients it’s pretty astonishing that the Radiokaka doesn’t taste aggressively sweet. What it is, is rich. Rich rich rich. It’s a good richness though, and the silky dark chocolate flavour, broken up by the almost-crunch of the softening biscuits and the relatively neutral coconut is a pretty extraordinary combination. It’s a wonder the Swedish kids could concentrate on their frequencies at all. It keeps well (you can even freeze it), slices like a dream and is fancy enough to serve up at a dinner party but could also be served up for kids to demolish happily.


It’s one week since Tim and I got back from our trip overseas and as I guessed, it’s feeling more like a zillion years ago. However small things like making chocolatey Swedish recipes, flicking through the Musicals section of the vinyl selections at Slow Boat Records and watching the dogs being walked on the waterfront makes me glad to be back in Wellington, and just glad in general.

I guess there is a decent segue to be found in that this cake could be described as “a bit wicked” and then I could talk about Wicked the musical but as I really hate using “wicked” to describe food (worse still: “wickedly indulgent”) and I can’t think of a segue that doesn’t irritate me, I’ll just say – Wicked was incredible. You think you know something every which way to Sunday and then…seeing it live, I felt like that moment in the Wizard of Oz movie where Dorothy steps out from her black-and-white house into the world of Technicolour. Everything was heightened, more impressive, both funnier and sadder, given more meaning. By the end of the first act, when the crucial Defying Gravity scene happens, I was shaking, and I didn’t even realise it. Another thing I didn’t realise was that in Tim’s and my travel blog it might’ve sounded like I didn’t like it that much. What I was trying to articulate was, that a lot of people don’t like musical theatre, but if you were one of these people there was still a lot to enjoy in the scenery and production values alone. I honestly didn’t think it would impact me that much – there are many better-written musicals out there and there’s music that affects me much more on a day-to-day basis than Wicked’s score. But in person it delivers so hard that all I could think, once it was over, was that I needed another hit. Which means traveling to Australia…or even better, New York…maybe the next trip?
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Title via: the kind of adorable Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers with Roadrunner, one of my favourite songs ever. Something about it – simple, repetitive, conversational – I can just listen on repeat over and over again and not get weary of it.
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Music lately: sadly the branch of Real Groovy – across the road from where Tim and I live – is closing down at the end of this month. It’s a place that I’ve spent heaps of time (and money) ever since we moved here in 2006. I’ll miss it. They seem to be largely fleeced of most decent stock but I managed to pick up some Liza Minelli and Judy Garland on vinyl, plus some other bits and pieces. Liza Minelli’s title track from Liza With a Z shows some serious work ethic in terms of actually delivering the song at all…it’s so fast she’s practically rapping.

Chico, by The Concretes. Tim’s mum and sister came down from Palmerston North yesterday and this song was playing at the place we went out to get pizza at. I hadn’t heard it in so long, and even though I normally like my songs to have a bit more, erm, concreteness to them, but with a bit of distance I was struck by how pretty it was – the twinkly bells and dreamy-woozy vocals make it feel like you’re drifting off to sleep, which is very occasionally what I like in a song.
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Next time: In the name of good value, we bought 2kg of yoghurt the other day so you can most definitely expect some yoghurty recipes soon, including a really delicious cake recipe. Plus some more slow-dripped travel stories.

better get that dough sister

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Not all food blogs are created equal. Some get abandoned, their last update around the May 2009 mark, often saying something like “I’ve been so busy lately…” Some have light pink text on a dark pink background, briskly searing the eyeballs like marinated tofu laid in a hot pan. Some get book deals (pick me!) And some are resources that continuously inspire with their fresh perspective, genuine wordsmithery, love of food, and crack up humour. Like Hannah’s blog, Wayfaring Chocolate. Here’s yet another recipe via her writing that I’ve appropriated cuz it looked so good.

Although maybe I should say sounded so good. Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles sounds wildly delicious, at least to me. But. Because I gave my almonds and brazils a once-over in a hot pan, and they hold their heat, the chocolate melted and dispersed through the mixture in the food processor. Instead of bordering-on-adorable chocolate studded balls of cookie dough like Hannah’s, mine were…uniformly brown. After eating one I moved on pretty fast though. They really have a cookie dough flavour, but in a rich, textured way as opposed to the more instantaneous sugar rush of that which this imitates. If you were feeling up for it (and possibly if you’re serving them to guests) you could actually dip these or drizzle them with dark chocolate. And if you’re feeling super up for it, you could probably chop these up and stir them through vanilla ice cream. But they taste mighty amazing unadorned, whether or not you find them attractive.

I actually tried dusting them with this vanilla sugar I got given for Christmas but by the time I got the camera sorted the sugar had kind of absorbed into the surface. So I moved on.

No-Bake Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles

With thanks to Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate

  • 2/3 cup almonds
  • 2/3 cup cashews (I used brazil nuts which I figured gave a similar texture)
  • 2/3 cup oatbran (blitz oats in the blender to make this if you haven’t got it)
  • 1/4 teaspoon (or more) ground cinnamon
  • Pinch salt
  • 1/4 cup agave nectar (I used golden syrup)
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • About 50 grams dark chocolate (has to be dark stuff to make this vegan, but do as you please) roughly chopped

Toast the nuts in a pan over a low heat if you like – gives intensity of flavour, although definitely makes this ‘not raw’ if that’s what you’re going for.

Process everything up until the syrup into a fine-ish rubble.

Add the syrup, vanilla and chocolate and process again till the mixture comes together. If it’s looking super dry, add a tablespoon or so more syrup.

Roll into balls in the palm of your hand – it will feel like it won’t stick but keep rolling, it works.  Freeze…then eat.

They taste absolutely wonderful, which is why I present them to you without any fear of what they look like. The nuts themselves give the truffles luscious body and softness (and in fact they’ll probably do the same for your hair) their texture giving an almost-chocolatey bite to complement the actual chocolate. I know oatbran doesn’t sound so fun but it gives general bulk to the truffle mix and whatever dusty oat-ness is there disappears into the rest of the ingredients, as well as adding to the general, but genuine, cookie dough stylings of this recipe. Don’t leave out the salt, it means whatever flavour’s there hits you that much faster, as well as hinting at that salted-caramel thing by bringing out the best of whatever form of syrup you end up using.

These are fantastic when you arrive home seriously hungry (or as a hasty breakfast on the run if it comes to it – all those oats and nuts keep you going for a while) and obviously keep just fine for ages, stashed in the freezer. If you’re the kind of person who makes and freezes meatballs for a later date (and I am, very occasionally, that person) then…make sure you label things correctly. Biting into a frozen meatball while simmering these beauties in tomato sauce would be a grim outcome for such efficiency.

At this point in three weeks, Tim and I will be in London! We’ve still got a few nights’ accommodation to book there but apart from that we’re suspiciously organised. And, loving the sugary sweet names of the hostels we’re staying at in Berlin and Warsaw respectively: The Helter Skelter and Oki Doki. A bit like how I like to make stupid words like “ham” when I’m playing Scrabble rather than trying to win, I can’t lie that their respective names influenced me to want to stay there.

Yesterday Tim and I spent most of the day on the waterfront at the Homegrown festival, the first one I’ve ever attended instead of working at, and the first time it has rained on the day. Wasn’t a thing though, as the bands were performing in big sturdy tents, and we mostly loitered between two in particular. Took in such excellence as Coco Solid, PNC, The Phoenix Foundation, The Clean, Nesian Mystik (I’m pretty sure It’s On could’ve been released yesterday instead of 2002 and still be as smooth as freshly churned butter) ending the festival with a loud, aggressively athletic and seriously fun set from Die!Die!Die!.

Title via: Even though I never actually once really liked the music of Pink, Mya, or Christina Aguilera (Lil Kim, you’re fine by me) somehow the whole was greater than the sum of its parts and I still have a fondness for their melisma-tastic take on Lady Marmalade for the film Moulin Rouge (possibly because at one point in time I watched this film at least once a week. Possibly also the amazing Missy Elliot’s work on it – I distinctly remember driving somewhere with Dad one time, and him turning it up on the radio and telling me to listen to the production values.) And let’s take some time to appreciate the original by Labelle, who wore costumes no less astonishing.

Music lately:

After Homegrown we went back out to Happy to catch the back end of a quadruple bill raising money for Christchurch, namely Brains and Mammal Airlines. We’d never seen Brains before but liked them a lot, lots of dark moodiness and full-on drums and I’m very tired so that’s as far as I’ll try to go describing what we saw. Go listen and make up your own mind here.

Defying Gravity, from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Wicked, which belongs to the wonderful Idina Menzel. I hadn’t listened to this song in so long, and I know it’s prosaic, but for want of a better decision I’ve set my ringtone to the vertigo inducing coda of this song (if you can’t deal with sung dialogue, maybe skip to the final minute and a half or so.) Everyone call me!

Next time: saw this recipe for mango chutney after it was linked to on Twitter, and as luck would have it, mangoes were going reasonably cheap at the market today and as such, I’m pretty sure this is up next.

i wear my leather jacket like a great big hug

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Homemade plum fruit leather. Like rollups (in texture, anyway, they look more like Yonks here.) We didn’t really get too many popular kid-type snacks in the lunchbox when I was growing up but I do have a distinct memory of folding a rollup and pressing it across my teeth like a slowly dissolving, sugary mouthguard. It’s mildly surprising that I still have any teeth after that. This plum leather is like those rollups except super sour. Like DYC white vinegar in handy chewable form. It’s a snack that you can’t eat absent-mindedly, I’ll give it that.
Even though we’re well into January by this point, I still haven’t shaken the whole new year contemplation vibe. Is there such thing as a good year? Being such a long stretch of time, it’s fairly impossible not to accumulate some form of difficulty and sadness. Even if – just imagine somehow – every single person in the world was somehow able to not murder, attack, assault, rob, or cause any kind of physical or emotional harm or discrimination, and overwhelming poverty and lack of education was overcome with the help of many…well there’s still Mother Nature to contend with. No amount of goodwill can hold back the earth’s movements. And like most years before it 2010 was an absolute shocker, from the most orchestrated actions of humans to the unpredictability of nature.
On a personal level however, 2010 for me was pretty damn fantastic. Bragging, sure, but some decent achievements really did stack up for me last year and I’m pretty proud of myself.
– I was featured in a CLEO magazine article about food bloggers
– I was nominated for a CLEO/Palmolive Wonderwoman thing
– I was interviewed for the Morning Glory show on 95bFM
– I was nominated for a Wellingtonista Award for ‘Best Contribution to the Internet By A Wellingtonian.”
– Tim and I became cafe reviewers for Sunday Star-Times (the lower North Island edition). For what it’s worth, I like our reviews better than any other Wellington-based ones I’ve seen round. You might too…
– I got a small but thrill-making mention in Rip It Up magazine, especially considering the high company my fairly nondescript tweet keeps on their quotes page.
– The seriously lovely Lisa from Sky TV just up and sent me Nigella Lawson’s book Kitchen. Seriously.
– Tim and I started up 100sand1000s which has provided nonstop joy, from interviewing and feeding cake to Grayson Gilmour to staring quietly at gifs for hours.
– Tim and I hit the five year mark! Woo! And we got to spend our first Christmas together.

***Edited 13th Jan because I’m such a forgetful and ungrateful clod; clearly it’s a decent year when all the nice things that happened to you start to tumble out of your brain like icing sugar in a sieve.

As well as the above, I was also invited to the launch of Wellington On A Plate by the fantastic Angela Moriarty. I got a nametag with my blog’s name on it. I met Angela Walker from Sunday Star-Times and possibly alarmed her with my gratitude. I met the amazing Millie and Florence from Gusty Gourmet, who coolly quizzed a cheesemaker about pasteurising and taught me how to eat oysters. And then the three of us had the singularly thrilling experience of meeting Ray McVinnie, one of my food idols – in fact, one of my idols from any genre of leisure activity – seriously I don’t know how I forgot this from my list.

Angela M also gave myself and Millie the opportunity to meet up with such overwhelmingly legit aussie bloggers as Peter from Souvlaki for the Soul, Helen from Grab Your Fork, Billy from A Table For Two, plus the lovely Andrea from Auckland’s So D’lish. In an unrelated piece of organisation, I also got to meet up with some truly lovely and inspiring Wellington food bloggers (check my sidebar).

Go me. Now that I’m back in Wellington, (working again and lamenting the fact that the beach feels like it’s several solar systems away), I’m hoping that 2011 will bring some similarly awesome opportunities and that I’ll be able to keep blogging, hard. It has been a slow start but today I bring you this plum leather. I happen to get a kick out of making things that already basically exist. Like butter. Or marshmallows. But as far as it goes, homespun fruit leather seems like an alarmingly resourceful task, the sort of thing (like haircuts!) best left to the people paid to do it.
I found a good looking recipe though, the fruit it calls for is easy to get hold of right now and even though I’ve never felt any real suffering for lack of fruit leather, I felt drawn to making it.
It’s basically plums simmered into paste, spread onto a tray and then baked in an oven set to low, about the temperature of heavy mouth-breathing. The only real taxing bit is all the time and patience involved. Plums are cheap as this time of year and apparently this stuff lasts for up to five months so you could make tons now and store it up for the year ahead if you’re feeling particularly organised.
It’s a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsal recipe, and while I know who he is and that he does good things, I’ve never actually tried any of his recipes. Having been kindly sent the River Cottage 2011 diary from Lisa and the good people at Sky though, which is filled with the sort of recipes – a generous three per month! – that make you nod frequently and think “I want to cook all those things”, I have no excuse not to give him a try.
However I’ve noticed he’s also – and it might just be the brief nature of the recipe layout in the diary – not one to make recipes super simple. The plum leather recipe could have done with slightly more information, which I can hopefully fill in for you now that I’ve tried it myself.
Spiced Plum Leather
1 to 1.5 kilos of plums
Honey
Cinnamon

Roughly slice your plums, discarding the stones, and place in a large saucepan. You can be pretty cavalier with the quality of your plums but cut away any really bad bits that look like they’re well on the fermenting-into-Moonshine process. Add enough water to just cover the base of the pan, and heat gently till the plums collapse a bit and release a lot of juice – around ten minutes although it all depends on your plums.

Push the pulp through a sieve into a bowl. No-one ever tells you what an excruciating job this is. There’s no way to speed up the process or to make it feel like you’re not wasting heaps of fruit, but persevere – I used a colander, the sort you’d drain potatoes with, sat over a bowl and a spatula constantly stirring and pressing. You should end up with a seriously good looking, deep cerise, thick liquid.

Scrape this back into the pan and simmer till thickened somewhat, stirring occasionally. Hugh doesn’t give a time for this but I found it took about half an hour and even then, there was no dramatic change in the look of the puree, it had just reduced slightly. Add a little honey and a dash of cinnamon at this point.

Finally, spread thinly and evenly across two paper-lined baking trays using your spatula and bake for as long as you can in a very low oven (around 60 C, which feels like barely turning it on). You’re supposed to leave it for 12 hours, but I couldn’t psychologically deal with having the oven on overnight, even if it is so low. Maybe make this early in the morning when you know you’re going to be hanging round. However it can also handle being baked in a few bursts when you have the time. Allow to cool completely in the oven, at which point you should be able to peel it off the baking paper, however you can roll it up and cut it into slices in its paper. Use within 5 months.
It looks truly gorgeous, especially when held up to the light, and has a strong jammy flavour from the slowly heated plums, tempered by an intense fruitish sourness.
But yeah, there’s no denying this is fairly time-consuming and takes some effort. While I’d be hard-pressed to say that the flavour entirely outweighs this, if you were one of those kids who ate lemons or always went for the sour gummy worms then you’ll love this. I’m sure you could add sugar to the fruit while it simmers without it coming to any harm – I mean, rollups were just toffee dressed up to look like a legit snack. And whatever the flavour may lack in accessibility, it’s made up for with the extreme sense of accomplishment you’ll probably feel once it’s all done.
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Title via: local long shadow-casters The Chills and their memorable 1986 tune I Love My Leather Jacket.
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Music lately:

The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry as covered by Tourettes and Caoimhe for the aforementioned Morning Glory show on bFM. You even have the excellent option of downloading a massive selection of such songs for free here.

Aloe Blacc’s Miss Fortune from Good Things…even though there’s a fair bit of effort, time and money involved we’ve booked ourselves in to his Auckland show later this month, I seriously can’t wait.

Heidi Blickenstaff performing Kander and Ebb’s Sing Happy at some one-off gig in New York…sigh. She’s so lovely. Lucky New Yorkers, where things like this casually happen all the time.
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Next time: I made an awesome bean salad, hopefully by the time my next blog post rolls around I’ll have worked out a better way to describe it though.

it’s that orange blossom special

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I try to keep things relatively practical and user-friendly on here, but every now and then a recipe comes along which, even though I can’t really work out what I’d do with it, sounds so pretty that I just go ahead and make it anyway. Like them marshmallows. Really, if I want to cook something badly it’s pretty easy come up with some kind of justification, however dubious.

I found this recipe for Orange and Saffron Confit in the latest Dish magazine. I always thought confit was something submerged in fat for purposes of preservation and deliciousness, but this is basically slices of orange simmered in syrup. I guess it’s for the best, although you know I wouldn’t turn my back on orange slices in a jar of melted butter. It sounded like so much fun, and even though I didn’t really have any need for it in my life I really wanted to try it.

It’s pretty cheap to make, and even if you never, ever use them, the jar looks unbelievably pretty with its tangerine-bright layers of orange spooning in their glossy liquid.

Saffron is admittedly really expensive, and the reason I’m relaxed about using it is because I’ve received it as a Christmas or birthday present so many times (I looooove getting food as presents FYI) that I’ve got plenty I can use. If you don’t have saffron to hand I reckon this would be amazing with a vanilla pod or a couple of cinnamon sticks (for a very cheap option) as a replacement.

Orange and Saffron Confit

From Dish Magazine (the current one with the pumpkin on the cover)

  • 2 large seedless oranges (I used 3)
  • 3 1/2 cups water (just under a litre)
  • Pinch of saffron threads, or whatever substitution you’re using
  • 2 1/2 cups caster sugar (I used regular)

Trim the ends off the oranges. Cut into 1/2 cm thick slices and place in a wide saucepan with the water and saffron threads. Bring to just below boiling point, let it simmer away gently for about 20 minutes. Then sprinkle over your sugar and continue to cook gently for about 30 minutes, until the liquid has reduced a bit. Occasionally you could spoon some of the liquid over the oranges but don’t try stirring them or they’ll fall apart.

Let them cool in their syrup, then carefully transfer the slices to a clean jar or two and pour over the remaining syrup.

Warning: You and your benchtop will get covered in sugary syrup. There is no way of avoiding this. This is what I’ve learned in my travels around the kitchen, anyway.

It smells so good while it’s simmering away, and for very little effort you end up with soft, gleaming slices of intensely flavoured orange and a gorgeously golden syrup flecked with red saffron strands and fragrant with that grassy, saffron-y perfume.

In case you’re thinking “yeah nice, but now what?”, well apart from loudly admiring your handicraft whenever someone walks past, Dish suggests a few options for using this confit. These include decorating cakes, accompanying chocolate mousse, or serving over ice cream. For a while there I was thinking it would be fun to give someone you were only pretending to like a jar of this as a present, so you could imagine them fumbling round trying to (a) come up with a use for it and (b) act like they’re sophisticated and orange confit is something they understand and deal with on a daily basis. However there’s actually plenty of uses for this stuff. Today I decided to chop up a few slices to use in a fruit cake of Nigella Lawson’s – but this cake is amazing on its own so don’t feel that the first recipe here has to happen before you can do the following one.

And if you can’t be bothered making the orange slices to go with this, take comfort in the fact that even though they look pretty, they make slicing the loaf a total pain.

Fruit Tea Loaf

From Nigella Lawson’s very amazing Feast

  • 1 x 250ml cup black tea
  • 375g dried fruit (I used half dates, half sultanas)
  • 125g brown sugar
  • 250g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch ground cloves (I used cinnamon)
  • 1 egg
  • Optional: 3 slices of orange from the above confit recipe, roughly diced, plus extra slices for decorating.

Make the cup of black tea (I used English Breakfast) and pour it into a bowl with the dried fruit and sugar, stir well, then leave sitting overnight. I know, I’ve just told you that you can’t have this cake until tomorrow. If you’ve got a microwave, you can try blasting it in there for a little bit to speed up the absorption process, letting the fruit cool a little before doing the rest of the recipe.

Set your oven to 170 C, and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Beat the rest of the ingredients into the dried fruit (retaining the liquid) and then spoon the mixture into the loaf tin. Bake for around an hour or so. If you’ve got some orange confit kicking round, drape a few slices over the cake and spoon over a little syrup.

  

I can’t even emphasise with words (only by gesturing wildly with my hands) how easy and delicious this cake is. If you haven’t got much in the bank for baking fancy things, this is the cake for you – dried fruit like sultanas, dates and apricots are always cheap. There’s no butter in it and only one egg. But it comes out of the oven tasting like one of those special Christmas cakes which have had days of effort and paychecks going into them. It’s really moist and fruity and rich, and the orange slices lend a sunny zestiness. For all that people get up in arms about Nigella’s recipes which have lots of expensive ingredients in them, if you take the time to properly read her books there’s a complete goldmine of practical, cheap things to fill your stomach with. And come to think of it, this cake would make a genuinely lovely gift to someone, at any time of year.

I really hadn’t thought about what I’d do with the slices of orange as I start cutting into the loaf. Guess I’ll just have to try hacking them up as I go? Or maybe I could push them further and further back as I slice more off the loaf…but it looks pretty. Speaking of pretty, I am a bit in love with that plate of ours which (you can’t see because there’s a slice of cake on it) has a guy and a girl earnestly playing tennis. Picked it up for a dollar from an op shop in town. The joy I feel whenever I see it is dampened a bit by how old it makes me feel that I get worked up about really ugly plates.

Last night Tim and I went to an evening of Rogers and Hammerstein with the always-awesome NZ Symphony Orchestra and West End conductor Martin Yates, with songs performed by West End soloists Jacqui Scott and Andrew Halliday. It was a fantastic evening – Tim and I probably lowered the average age of punters by about forty years – but I will point out that the Michael Fowler centre is awful, with its semi-circular seating arrangement meaning that 40% of the audience can’t see a thing, and for the price they were making people pay, you’d think Kerry Ellis or even Elaine Paige herself were going to be there.

The NZSO were in good form, providing a lush, expansive amble through some of Rogers and Hammersteins best-loved musicals, and songs like Shall We Dance, Some Enchanted Evening, Oklahoma, Climb Every Mountain, and Soliloquy were performed through the evening. The two singers were fantastic – Halliday had a rich and smooth Gavin Creel-esque sound and Scott was blessed with a powerful soprano voice. Gotta say even as a hardcore musical theatre person the Oklahoma can sometimes be a bit much for me – all that talk of how “birds and frogs’ll sing altogether and the frogs’ll hop”. The darkness of Carousel is more my scene, and to their credit, without any costumes or scenery and only marginal context, the two singers were great at switching characters between songs. If anyone’s listening, an evening of Sondheim would be seriously awesome. I probably wouldn’t even complain about the price of seats.

Title via: Johnny Cash, who sung Orange Blossom Special at Folsom Prison and San Quentin prisons. There is some incredibly good footage on Youtube of him performing, if you’re ever sitting round wondering what to do with your time you could definitely do worse than entering his name into the search bar.

Music lately:

King Kapisi feat Mint Chicks, Superhuman – a seriously meaty collaboration between two of Aotearoa’s finest acts. I’ve been lucky enough to see both of them live (Mint Chicks at SFBH in 2006 and earlier this year, and King Kapisi at Pasifika Festival at Western Springs in 2000 or 2001, my memory fails me – anyone else remember?), hopefully there’s the opportunity for people to see them perform this song together at some stage.

Speaking of collaborations, still loving Nas and Damian ‘Jr Gong’ Marley’s diamond of an album, Distant Relatives. Truly. Find it.

Next time: I made Nigella’s Coca Cola chocolate cake today…will be blogging about it soon.