Tag: Cake

Fruitcake with cream cheese icing

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A full iced fruitcake on a piece of crumpled baking paper

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

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

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Absolutely nothing chocolate cake (with a cookie variation)

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A square chocolate cake drizzled in melted chocolate

Given these vile economic times that we find ourselves unwilling pawns in, I’ve resurrected this absolutely nothing chocolate cake recipe which uses no eggs, no butter, and no substitutions after a long time between bites. And it really does come together out of various dusts and a bit of tap water to form a cake that isn’t just surprisingly good, it’s just a good — and functional — chocolate cake. Now, the last thing I want to do is bring you a recipe that I’m obliged to damn through faint praise, and I was somewhat uncertain as this baked away in the oven. Yes, it’s based on the recipe that fed my childhood, but given that I also used to make myself tomato ketchup and cheese sandwiches, microwaved until either the cheese or the plastic plate was volcanically bubbling, and pretend it was pizza, I’m not sure my tastebuds’ memories can be trusted in that regard. I then repurposed this recipe for my 2013 cult hit eponymous cookbook, published through Penguin — but that was a long decade ago, and then some.

After a further, and for now, final tutu with this recipe, I am happy to report that it tastes genuinely, beguilingly fantastic. Whether a birthday is looming ominously or a vexing (or celebratory) day requires dessert, you deserve cake, regardless of possessing the means to make one. This can be that cake.

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