Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies

One thing leads to another – and most things lead to food. I have just read The Women in Black, a perfectly observed gem set in 1950’s Sydney. Young Lisa is a bright girl from a working class family. We meet her here poised between high school and the possibility of the great unknown, university. While she waits for her matriculation results, she takes a summer job in a department store. Through her work there, we glimpse the lives of the women in the department, from the drab Miss Jacobs to the moody and imperious Slovenian refugee, Magda, who decides to take Lisa under her wing.

Magda introduces Lisa to a lively Eastern European intellectual community, which she takes to like a duck to water, and the story of her coming-of-age, or at least a coming-just-a-little-bit-older, unfolds. One is left feeling grateful for the kindness of strangers who take an active interest in a young girl as she takes her first steps into womanhood. The story is gently comic and beautifully observed, from how different married couples converse to why people are attracted to each other to how the wealthy shop. A novel of quiet exchanges and small things, the parts hang together perfectly like an exquisitely-tailored dress.

Reading this poised, kind, insightful novel, I found myself remembering a poised, kind, insightful recipe book, Mrs Harvey's Sister in Law: And Other Tasty Dishes. I believe the author, Margaret Dunn, first wrote it for her daughters, but it was later published so that others could benefit from her stories, good humour and straightforward recipes. It’s the book your own grandmother never wrote. One of the recipes is for peanut cookies which, Mrs Dunn tells us, she ate while working in a department store during the war; they were brought to work by the lovely Winsome, who sat on a stool in the art department sucking a paintbrush.

Remembering these details (yes, my brain is stuffed full of the most useless facts), I got to thinking about peanut butter cookies, which I love… and so you can see how a quiet evening devouring a novel leads to a quiet morning baking with my four-year-old and a quiet afternoon devouring cookies. It’s true: reading can change your life, or at least your waistline.

I hope it’s not just me who cooks as a response to reading fiction; most novels lead me to the kitchen. Anything set in China (most recently, Brian Castro’s dream-like Birds of Passage; more often, a Judge Dee mystery) and I’m hungering for silken tofu or a perfect bowl of white rice. A lazy 1920’s romp, and I’m shaking a cocktail. Something set in Latin America and I’m making rice and beans for the next three weeks. The links aren’t always obvious: Magda introduces Lisa to salami with great success; and although I love salami, I wasn’t haring off to buy smoked sausage. Instead, because I already associated mid-century department stores with peanut cookies, I got busy with my grandmother’s mix-master.

Yet I like my cookies to have more texture than Winsome’s biscuits, so although she provided the department store – peanut cookie association, I used a favourite recipe from Canteen. Of course I made a few changes; what follows is my version, tweaked in several ways including but not limited to using quinoa flakes in place of oats, and a homemade gluten free flour mix.

To make gluten free flour, I follow gluten free girl’s formula, using 60% starch and 40% whole grains. For an excellent discussion of the merits of different flours in different uses, check out her page. It is enough here to say that I make up a batch of flour every couple of weeks, varying the grains and starches each time so that we eat a wider variety of foods than we would if we used proprietary blends. This week, our flour is 20% red sorghum, 20% amaranth, 30% corn starch and 30% tapioca starch and it’s been great. For these cookies, make up your own mix, use a proprietary gluten free flour, or even, shock horror, use regular wholemeal flour made from wheat which would, of course, render the cookies gluten free no more. Just to state the obvious.

(Below: Everybody needs a helper in the kitchen.)

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies - 75g soft unsalted butter - 100g coconut sugar - 100g caster sugar - 1 egg - 1 tsp real vanilla essence - 120g crunchy peanut butter (I use a roasted sugar free salt free style.) - 75g quinoa flakes - 80g roasted peanuts (if you use salted peanuts, you won't need to add salt) - 60g gluten free plain flour - 1 tsp bicarb soda - sea salt Preheat the oven to 165°C. Line three cookie sheets with baking paper or silicon baking sheets. Chop the peanuts. Cream the butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Fold in everything else. The dough will be fairly stiff. (At this point, you can refrigerate the dough for half an hour – but I can never wait. I suspect this is why my cookies are always slightly flat.) Gently form the dough into medium-sized balls, about the size of walnuts. Flatten very slightly with the back of a fork. Bake for 8 minutes, or until the edges are turning golden. Remove from the oven. Leave to cool on the trays for another quarter hour, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Store in an air-tight container. I’m not sure how long they last; I can’t ever leave them long enough to find out! Makes about two dozen cookies. (Sorry folks, this ain't local. At least most of the books mentioned are home-grown!)

Apricot and Almond Cake

 

There are times when one needs a good solid cake. Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake, while spectacular, has been done to death in our milieu, and yet I am still an absolute sucker for cake made with almond meal. This month, casting about for something to take to dinner with friends, my eye lit upon the latest bucket of apricots sitting in the kitchen. I stewed them up, took out a great dollop and, using the formula from pear and almond cake, made an apricot and almond cake.

Mmmm. The cake came out tinted gold, and was deeply redolent with apricots. We ate it for dinner with double cream and it was spectacular; it was also very good over the next day or two, demolished in great chunks until there was nothing left. The almond meal renders it very moist, and so the cake keeps well.

The recipe calls for slightly fewer apricots than a Fowler's No. #20 jar, so if you have already preserved apricots, particularly as purée, the cake will take only minutes to prepare. The remaining apricots in the jar are a perfect addition to plain yogurt – or indeed, you could warm them slightly and serve them with the cake.

You can see from the photograph that I cooked my cake slightly too long. My dinner companions, old friends all, reckoned they loved the slightly chewy bits; they're the bits I call overcooked. However, I'm never entirely convinced by the enthusiasm of good and faithful friends, so I recommend you check your cake from 35 minutes; don't leave it too long!

Apricot and Almond Cake - 8 eggs - 325g ground almonds - 275g lightly stewed apricots - 275g golden caster sugar - a squeeze of lemon - 40g slivered almonds If you have not already stewed your apricots, do so now and leave them to cool. (I recommend making extra and using it as a sauce on the cake, or dolloped onto tomorrow's muesli, or swirled into a late night yogurt.) Grease and line a 25cm spring form pan. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place everything bar the slivered almonds into a food processor, and whizz until you have a batter. Pour the resulting glop into the pan. Sprinkle with slivered almonds. Slip into the oven. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin on a baking rack. Eat plain for afternoon tea; with cream for dinner; or with a black coffee for elevenses. Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson in her terrific book, Feast: Food that celebrates life, itself a variation on Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. (Backyard: apricots, eggs, lemon. Somewhere in Australia: almonds, sugar.)

Simple Orange Cake

 

Fridays mornings are ‘time off’. My four year old is at kinder for three! whole! hours!, and I, in theory, write – but life usually intervenes. Last week I spent the time doing laundry; working my way through a backlog of mail, bills and paperwork; washing the dishes; admiring the crab apple tree just about to bloom; and baking a couple of cakes, muttering all the while.

Kinder fetes, school afternoon teas: when will they learn that modern families rarely bake? A friend of mine told me that her brother-in-law always bought cakes or biccies from the supermarket to give to the school cake stalls. Late at night, he’d unwrap them and carefully arrange them on the plastic plate. Then, labelling laws being what they are even for a community cake stall, he’d painstakingly write out all the ingredients including the food additives thus: ‘flour, sugar, cocoa, vegetable oil, emulsifier 471, preservative 282’. Not the sort of thing I’d be falling over myself to buy, I must say!

Then again, I’ve talked to other parents who recommend particular brands of cookies as having no artificial additives; thus, when copied out on the cake stall label, they appear homemade and perfectly pure. Oh, the illusions we live by.

I haven’t quite come to that; I still bake, if with a sigh. And with the glut of oranges at winter’s end, I made the easiest orange cake recipe I know, Stephanie Alexander’s Afternoon Tea Orange Cake. I need to substitute gluten free flour for the wheat flour; I always add a pinch of salt to my cakes; and I cook it in a loaf pan. Otherwise, I follow her recipe. It’s just the thing for early spring, when the fruit bowl is full of oranges and the view out the window is of blossom.

Simple Orange Cake - 1 orange - 2 eggs - 125g softened unsalted butter - ¼ cup caster sugar - 225g self raising flour(real or gluten free) - pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Zest then juice the orange. Place all ingredients into a food processor and whizz until thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with a few minuscule crumbs attached. Let cool for five to ten minutes in the tin, then remove to a cake rack to cool completely - although it is absolutely superb served warm! Alexander recommends an orange icing, but it’s not something I can be bothered with, myself. If you want the recipe for that, buy the book; it’s the modern Australian kitchen bible. (Backyard: eggs. Local: oranges. Victoria: butter, salt. Queensland: sugar. General supermarket mystery: GF flour.

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal

 

Ah, the British. We take what we want, we twist it out of all recognition, then we claim it as our own. As genocidal as this pattern has been for other cultures, on the plus side it has led to some great food. Kedgeree is one classic example; chicken tikka masala is quite probably another, although there is some debate over whether it was invented in Glasgow or Delhi.

The recipe which follows is a third. Made with cherries and white flour, we could call it 'clafoutis', or, more commonly in English, 'clafouti'. Made with other fruit and white flour, we'd properly call it a 'flaugnarde'. But gluten intolerant arrogant English bastardiser that I am, I make it with plums and almond meal – and I have no idea what I should call the resultant dish! Yet like a typically imperious colonialist, and because many of you are at least vaguely familiar with clafouti and will get a general idea of the nature of the dish from the use of the word, I will continue to refer to it as such. It certainly sounds better than 'soft eggy plum pudding thingy'.

Whatever it should be called, this dish is perfect for a sunny Sunday breakfast in the early spring when the chickens are back on the lay, and a few bottles of plums remain in the preserves cupboard. I've used much more fruit than is usually indicated because I wanted every bite to drip with plums; the batter does little more than bind the plums together.

Almond meal replaces regular flour, as almonds and plums are a delightful match. Between the extra fruit and the almond meal, the dish is much more moist than a regular clafouti, but the resulting heaviness is very satisfying: it will ward off any winter chills which still wreath through the morning air. If, however, you want a lighter clafouti, reduce the amount of fruit and replace some of the almond meal with coconut flour; click here for a more standard recipe.

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal - unsalted butter - approximately 2 cups quartered bottled plums, or fresh plums quartered and lightly stewed (this is the equivalent of a Fowlers #20 Jar; for notes on bottling plums, click here - 4 eggs - 1¼ cups almond meal - 1¼ cups milk (low fat is fine) - 1 tbs sugar - 1/2 tsp proper vanilla essence (none of that thin chemical stuff) - a pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm porcelain tart dish. Drain the fruit well. Drink the juice if you like; it's rather yummy. Place the other ingredients into a food processor or blender. Whizz until all is light and frothy. Pour the batter into the greased dish, then gently spoon the plums over the batter. Slip into the oven, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until it is golden. Serve warm or cold. Adapted from a formula by Mollie Katzen in the now out of print Still Life with Menu. (Local: plums, eggs, milk. Not local: butter, sugar, almond meal, vanilla essence, salt.)

Hot Cross Buns

When I was a child, we’d go to church first thing on Good Friday, and then the entire congregation would descend on Dawn’s house. Dawn had been up since the crack of, well, dawn, making hot cross buns for a hundred people. Endless steaming trays came out of the oven; then the buns were slathered in butter and passed around. I’d normally knock off six or seven – I have never met a hot cross bun the equal of Dawn’s and there were always more than enough.

Sometime during the Easter festival, my family also dyed eggs, drawing on them with wax crayons then dipping them in bright Greek egg dye. But very early one Easter morning, I had an idea. I’d read how you could dye eggs by boiling them in onion skins, and decorate them with the image of parsley by tying a sprig tightly against the egg with a stocking. My parents were still sleeping; my sister and I were bored; so we found some old stockings, picked parsley from the garden, then peeled all the onions in the pantry. We tied the parsley against the eggs, and set them to boil in a small saucepan with the brown onion skins.

Being children, we left the ends of the stockings dangling out and so, of course, they eventually touched the gas flame and caught alight. After flapping our hands around for a while, I thought to turn off the gas, and happily for everyone the flames soon went out.

When everything had cooled down, we fished the eggs out, and they were so pretty. But the ends of the stockings had melted to the saucepan and when my parents finally woke, we got into Deep Trouble. It is one of the times that I felt that I had done something terribly, terribly stupid.

Now I am an adult and developing traditions of my own. When it comes to eggs, I can’t be bothered fiddling around with stockings and onion skins. Well, I can be bothered but that memory of fire at six o’clock in the morning is enough to make me a bit anxious even now, and so I have gone back to using the Greek dyes when we meet with friends every Good Friday to dye eggs and make hot cross buns.

Meanwhile, I have engaged on a decade-long search for buns as good as the ones from my childhood. This year I tried Nigella Lawson’s recipe from Feast. The buns are scented with orange peel and cardamom, making kneading the dough a heady exercise as fragrant wisps of cardamom curl up with every push. They were delicious, not quite as good as Dawn’s perhaps – but then, I suspect a thirty year old memory will always taste better than reality. The recipe is available here.

Our kids breathlessly anticipate Easter. Between dyeing eggs, baking buns and staying up for Saturday night’s church service – which is followed by champagne and a midnight feast – there’s lots for them to think about. I hope that one day they will look back fondly on their Easter traditions and tell stories about them, too.

Super Duper Moist Lemon Cake

 

Australia Day, an excellent day for a picnic at a friend's property where we sit and gaze at the rolling hills and listen to the wind. A place where kids run across fields, climb fallen blackwoods, or go wading in the creek. A place where we stop being city dwellers just for a moment, and instead rest on the land which supports us and holds us and whispers secrets beyond hearing. If only we knew how to listen, we might just understand what it has to say.

I have just read Strandloper by Alan Garner, which tells the story of escaped convict, William Buckley. Buckley lived for thirty years with a local indigenous tribe, who recognised in him their deceased elder, Murrungurk. In Garner's version, having been through local initiation rites in England before his deportation, Buckley is initiated into the tribe and discovers deep resonances; the Dreaming is universal. Through the story, Garner suggests that all healthy people are able to embody the sacred in their every action, and recognise the spirituality of the land and their infinite dependence on it; and he suggests that ruptures in the Dreaming caused by the violence of colonialism must be answered by a new Dreaming, yet to unfold. As to how it will, with the loss of the ancestors who teach the art of listening, well, that is a mystery. Perhaps Strandloper is a good place to start.

It's a beautiful, difficult, thought provoking and sad book; I came away with a deep sense of loss both for the indigenous tribes which were ripped apart by colonialism, and for my own lack of a traditional heritage. A sense of connection with the land and knowledge of the rituals associated with it have been lost to so many of us thanks to generations of successive displacement; but loving and paying attention to one particular place over many years must be a beginning point for a new relationship with the land. And for my family, our particular place is our friend's property. 'This,' said my three year old, 'is my favourite super duper place' , and that just about sums it up for me.

 

On Thursday, as I quietly mused about place and belonging, seven of us stood silent in the derelict old shack, peeking through holes in the windows and walls and watching a wedge tailed eagle circle lower and lower as it investigated the remains of a dead wallaby. Finding it rather too far gone, it soared upwards on a thermal and disappeared; and we, praying that the wind would soon change and the wallaby no longer haunt us, unpacked our lunch.

Reflection always makes me hungry; and, like food for reflective thought, food for the block needs to be sturdy, as the only access is up a severely rutted old logging track. Having just scored a big bag of lemons from a neighbour, I brought a heavy lemon cake. It may not be the most ecologically responsible food nor is it particularly connected with the land, but to this European born on the other side of the world from her ancestors, it is gently restorative, nevertheless.

Super Duper Moist Lemon Cake - 200g unsalted butter at room temperature - 200g + 4 tbs granulated coconut palm sugar - 180g ground almonds ½ tsp baking powder - 2 large lemons - 4 eggs Preheat the oven to 160°. Position an oven rack in the centre of the oven. Line a loaf tin with baking paper, or butter it well. Slice one of the lemons crosswise into circles. Place it in a small saucepan with 2 tbs of the sugar and 4 tbs water. Bring it to a gentle simmer, and let it bubble away for 5 to 7 minutes, shaking from time to time, until the liquid has almost disappeared and the lemon becomes sticky. Do not let it burn! Take it off the heat and leave to cool. Whisk together the ground almonds and the baking powder. Place the butter and 200g of the sugar into a mixmaster and beat until they are fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, until all is combined. Zest one of the lemons and chop the zest finely (or use the tiny holes on a grater). Add the zest to the mixture and beat once more. Remove the bowl from the mixer. Gently fold in the ground almonds and baking powder, scraping from the bottom to keep the mixture as light as possible. Place it into the prepared loaf tin. Arrange the lemon slices along the top of the cake, and drizzle any lightly toffee'd liquids over them. Slip into the oven, and bake for 50 minutes or until a knife slips out clean. While the cake is in the oven, place the juice of the zested lemon and the last 2 tbs of sugar into the same saucepan as was used to cook the lemon slices. Warm very slightly, just until the sugar has dissolved. When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and poke it with a toothpick left right and centre. Now spoon the lemon and sugar mixture over the cake, letting each spoonful be absorbed before adding the next one. Leave the cake to cool in its tin. Delicious on its own, or with an artery-blocking splodge of double cream. Adapted from a recipe in The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. (Local: lemons, eggs. Mysterious provenance: ground almonds. Not so local: baking powder. From Indonesia, but organic, delicious, full of healthy minerals, and far more sustainable than cane sugar: coconut palm sugar.)

Pear and Almond Cake

Last week started out so well. I spent the weekend away with a group of women performing a rite of passage for a cherished thirteen year old; I found a snakes head fritillary at a country market; I bought the most beautiful tea cosy in the world; then I came home.

And the world went to pieces. I learned that a friend’s mother died; she needs her mother more than most people need their mothers; this death is appalling and not to be borne; and yet it must be borne. Meanwhile, it was the anniversary of my own mother’s death; I heard some difficult news from an old friend; the kids had threadworm; and a few other things went so deeply, sharply wrong that I was given Veuve Cliquot and sent flowers from Berlin. The extraordinary extravagance of these actions suggests just how pear-shaped my week turned: believe me, I am not in the habit of drinking French champagne nor of indulging in massive bunches of tulips.

But I’m tired of illness and death and worry and care; I’ve had too much of it. So instead of wallowing, I shed a few tears then turned my attention to cake. When life feels impossible, I figure one may as well have something decent to nibble on.

I needed an easy cake that could be whizzed in the food processor with very little effort from me. Preferably it would use up more than a few eggs since our chooks just won’t stop laying (do Isa Browns ever moult?!), and possibly too the pears from our tree that I stewed back in January with a good shake of cinnamon and which have been gathering permafrost in our freezer ever since.

So I went to the recipe books and flicked until I found what I was hoping for. And what a beauty it is! I varied Nigella's recipe for damp apple and almond cake, itself a variation on Claudia Roden’s classic orange and almond cake, by changing the fruit once more from apples to pears. And when I took a bite I realised instantly that it was quite possibly the best cake I have made in a long lifetime of baking. All this for a new recipe on a Tuesday afternoon, shoved carelessly in the oven while I crooked a phone on my shoulder and wept.

Tulips and champagne; pear cake and pain; and a bucketload of tears. What a week.

Pear and Almond Cake - 8 eggs - 325g ground almonds - 375g or so stewed pears with cinnamon - 275g golden caster sugar - a squeeze of lemon - 40g flaked almonds Grease and line a 25cm spring form pan. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place everything bar the flaked almonds into a food processor, and whizz until you have a batter. Pour the resulting goop into the pan. Sprinkle with flaked almonds. Slip into the oven. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin on a baking rack. Eat plain for afternoon tea or any time you need; it is also lovely with double cream. Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson in her terrific book, Feast: Food that celebrates life, itself a variation on Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake in her classic, The Book of Middle Eastern Food. Incidentally, between eggs, pears and almonds from our garden, and lemons from over the road, this could be a very economical cake; sadly, I was too lazy to grind my own almonds. (Local: almonds, pears, eggs, lemon. Not so local: cinnamon, sugar (fair trade).)

Chilean Guava Choc Chip Banana Muffins

I hate waste. That's one reason I love my chickens so much: they turn that flabby uneaten lunchtime sandwich, squished into the yogurt container and kept in a warm schoolbag for the last six hours, into fresh eggs. They also eat buckets of compost from our local organic veggie store: outside leaves of cauliflowers, slightly wilted stalks of rainbow chard, bruised avocadoes and other goodies. The veggie store saves on garbage disposal costs, and my chickens stay happy.

My aversion to waste also means that, although we try to eat a significant proportion of food from local sources, when I see squishy brown bananas going cheap at that same veggie store, I buy them. They're terrific for after-school smoothies and, of course, muffins. Unlike Barbara Kingsolver's household, which had a total banana ban during their year of local food (see their fascinating book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), I tell myself that squishy brown bananas are waste to be used up, and I can save them from the trash for only a dollar or two. It's kind of like dumpster diving, only a day earlier and slightly more expensive.

Our latest squishy banana muffin experiment has involved the Chilean guava, also known as the myrtus berry. Here I must admit that, a few years ago, I bought a Chilean guava bush then promptly forgot to water it the first summer; predictably, it died. But Chilean guavas do grow well in Melbourne; we've devoured a few punnets from Coburg, and they pop up at farmer's markets from time to time. You can also buy the less local Tazziberry, which is the Chilean guava carefully bred, and re-named and re-branded as a Tasmanian fruit.

Chilean guavas taste like, well, guavas. That is, they are a bit pineapple-y, a bit apple-y, a bit strawberry-y, with a hint of vanilla. They are headily fragrant, and a punnet will send tendrils of fragrance through your kitchen.

The fruit look like little red blueberries. Because they are so small, Chilean guavas are eaten whole. They can be a bit rough in your mouth, slightly grainy but not unpleasant; however, where they really shine is in muffins. The fruit soften and swell, retaining their scent, so that muffins come out sweetly fragrant and studded with little explosions of juicy fruit.

What follows is a straightforward recipe, very easy and very delicious. As with all baking, muffins come out lightest when the ingredients are at room temperature. If you have a little milk in your fridge starting to go sour, even better; your muffins will come out ethereal. Between sour milk and squishy bananas, what follows is a brilliant way to use up leftovers.

Chilean Guava Choc Chip Banana Muffins - 2 squishy bananas - 125g brown sugar - 1 egg - ¾ cup slightly sour milk, or buttermilk - ¾ cup vegetable oil - 250g self raising flour - pinch salt - 1 punnet Chilean guavas (aka Tazziberry or myrtus berry) - ½ cup choc chips (optional) Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease or line a muffin pan. Mash the bananas with a fork. Mix in the brown sugar. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg, then mix in the milk and oil, and add this to the bananas. Place the flour and salt into a large bowl and whisk them together. Make a well, and add all the banana glop at once. Quickly mix with the fork, then add in the Chilean guavas and the choc chips. Combine quickly but gently. The batter is very wet. Slop it into muffin pans – I get 15 small muffins, but a sensible person with larger children would make 12 big ones. Slip them into the oven for 25 minutes. The muffins are done when their tops are slightly springy to the touch. Incidentally, the photo shows my waste-not muffin on a waste-not plate – discovered on the side of the road during a hard rubbish collection. It leads me to ask what sort of maniac puts eight English willow side plates, dusty but unchipped, out in the rubbish?! You're crazy, whoever you are, but thanks anyway. I think I'll take my muffin and eat it on my waste-not bench. (Local: Chilean guavas, egg. Saved from the bin: squishy bananas, souring milk. Not local but fair trade: choc chips (can you believe it?! I must admit they are not as large nor as deliciously melting as other choc chips, but that's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make for fair trade.). Mysterious provenance: flour, brown sugar, vegetable oil, salt.)

Chocolate Zucchini Loaf

In principle, I hate masking vegetables. I think they are beautiful, delicious and healthy, so I present them in simple forms over and over and over again, and expect my kids to eat them until they like them.

In practice, some veggies defeat me. Take zucchini. We have a zucchini glut, but no matter how delicately it is prepared, I cannot get my two younger children, in particular my four year old, to eat it. Against my principles, I have begun shredding zucchini and hiding it in the base of pasta sauce, and have discovered this has its rewards. The philistines gobble it up, and my seven year old, who is in on the secret, sniggers and rolls her eyes at me through each such meal; such bonding is special, in its own way.

Yet my four year old loves to cook. She loves chocolate, and she loves cake, and I began wondering what would happen if we made a chocolate zucchini cake. On the weekend, we needed an activity, so we gave it a go.

Together, we measured ingredients. Together, we grated zucchini and together, we mixed it in. To my astonishment, despite the highly visible bright green shreds of zucchini she not only tried the cake but loved it. Further, having discovered zucchini is not such a big deal, she later ate some in a couscous salad with only a very little fuss.

Yet again I have learned that my principles are bunk. A little masking, a little fun with a vegetable, and life is so much easier – even at arsenic hour, aka dinnertime.

Chocolate Zucchini Loaf - 125g fair trade* 70% cocoa** chocolate - 3 eggs - 2 cups white sugar - 1 cup vegetable oil - 2 cups grated zucchini (about 2 medium, or 1 large, or ½ a gigantic one...) - 1 tsp vanilla essence - 2 cups plain flour - 1 tsp baking soda - 1 tsp ground cinnamon - ¼ tsp ground cloves Preheat the oven to 175°C. Grease two 10cm x 23cm (9x5in) loaf pans and line with baking paper. Break up about 30g chocolate and place it into a shallow cup. Zap it in the microwave, removing regularly to stir, until it's just melted. Place the rest of the chocolate into a food processor, and pulse-chop it into small chunks. (Alternatively, you can chop it with a good heavy knife; or, of course, you can just use chocolate chips, but it's hard to find fair trade chocolate chips and the history of chocolate is a history of exploitation, so this is why I do what I do.) Break the eggs into a large bowl, and whisk. Add the chocolate, sugar, oil, zucchini and vanilla essence, and mix well. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, the baking soda and the spices. Whisk to combine. Stir in the chopped chocolate, then turn the contents of this bowl into the other. Quickly and gently fold everything together, then pour and scrape the batter into the tins. Bake for an hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for twenty minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Serve warm or cold. This loaf keeps well; it is still very moist the next day. The recipe is all over the internet; I tweaked one of the many versions found at allrecipes.com. * Because, you know, those people work really hard and their children should get to go to school. ** If you have a sweet tooth, use chocolate with a lower cocoa ratio. (Local: eggs, zucchini. Not local: everything else.)

Christmas Cake

My grandmother made Christmas cakes every year. She would mail one to us across the Nullarbor, or persuade a travelling relative to squeeze it into their suitcase. I loved the thought but, I must admit, not the cake. It was always a little dry; and I could never get enthusiastic about glacé cherries or mixed peel – but I'd eat it for my grandmother.

My mother had her own recipe, a hearty thing full of raisins, decorated with glacé cherries and brazil nuts, and glazed with apricot jam. It was pretty good, but even it lacked a certain something.

For the first ten years that I lived out of home, it didn't occur to me to make my own cake; yet my Christmases felt strangely bereft. Meanwhile my sister had an annual date to make fruit cake with a friend, and each year I'd taste the latest recipe: one year, a fruity cake made with pineapple; another year, something lighter. They were lovely enough, but a few years ago I realised that, with girls of my own, I wanted a recipe that I can make year after year and which will one day taste like home.

In homage, I tried my grandmother's recipe, and my mother's, but I wasn't entirely happy with either of them. So then I read and fiddled around until I found a cake that I like. It's based on Nigella's recipe in her fabulous book, Feast. Her cake is more moist than the cakes of my forebears, and more delicately fragrant.

As good as it is, I have altered it to suit my taste. Unlike Nigella's, our cake is studded with ruby red cranberries and, thanks to the addition of quince marmalade, it has the faintest aroma of quince. I've upped the orange zest, and once the cake is made I drizzle it with Cointreau to keep it moist.

Made in November, the cake cures for at least a month in the linen cupboard. I bring it out in late December, and enjoy a small slice in the afternoon with a piece of hard cheese, or a sliver late at night with a soothing cup of Rooibos.

As part of developing our own tradition, I've involved my girls in the making of the cake. This year's attempt was like a Buster Keaton scene. My six year old was in a grump; my two year old threw plastic measuring spoons into the mixture and fell sideways off her stool; and my four year old wandered in picking her nose, then plunged her hand into the mix.

Why, I cannot tell, but after the initial screaming I philosophically resolved that as the cake was going to bake for four hours, it made no difference. In any case, it's a good story, the very stuff of family tradition – and it has another advantage. I absolutely adore this cake, scented as it is with cranberries, orange and quince; and with the intrusion of my daughter's grubby finger perhaps this year I'll get it all to myself. Or will you want a slice?

Christmas Cake (26 cm tin) - 1 kg sultanas - 375g raisins - 175g currants - 250g dried cranberries (good ones from the organic shop, not those nasty craisins) - 180ml sherry - 350g butter, slightly softened - 300g brown sugar - 4 tsp orange zest (zest of 2 oranges) - 6 large eggs - 4 tbs quince marmalade - 525g plain flour - 1 ½ tsp mixed spice - ¼ tsp cinnamon - ¼ tsp salt - 2 tbs Cointreau or other liqueur Combine the fruit and the sherry in a large bowl and leave it to soak overnight. (I use an enormous ancient bowl that was my mother's; you may need to dash out and buy a large plastic tub.) Preheat the oven to 150°C, and position a rack at the lowest rung. Wrap the tin in a double layer of brown paper extending to 10cm above the rim of the tin; you will need a child or friend to hold it steady while you tie it on. Line the tin with baking paper, also extending 10cm above the rim. This will prevent the top of the cake from catching or drying out during the long baking. Cream the butter and sugar with the orange zest, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each egg. Add the quince marmalade and mix well. Fold in the dry ingredients, then gently stir the mixture into the fruit, scraping up fruit from the bottom until well combined. Use a very stout wooden spoon; a plastic spatula will snap. Scoop the mixture into the tin, gently smoothing it to the edges. The batter will be very stiff. Place into the oven and cook for an hour; then lower the heat to 140°C and cook for another three hours or until a tester comes out clean. When it is done, brush the surface with two tablespoons of Cointreau or the liqueur of your choice. Wrap the entire cake, tin and all, with foil and leave to cool. When it is completely cold, remove the wrappings and the tin, and rewrap in foil. Place in a cake tin, if you have one big enough, and leave it to cure somewhere cool and quiet for a month or so. Note: For an 18cm tin, use approximately one-third of the ingredients and cook at 150°C for 2 hours; for a 23cm tin, use two-thirds and cook at 150°C for 3 hours. For exact measures, or for a slightly different cake using other aromatics, see Feast. (Local: sultanas, currants, orange zest, eggs, quince. Not local: raisins, cranberries, sherry, butter, sugar, flour, spices, salt.)

No Egg Apple Cake

My husband is a very intelligent man, yet sometimes he asks silly questions. Like, how many apple cake recipes do you have on your blog?

It was innocent enough, and the answer is, not many (yet). But from a man who adores apple cake in every way, shape and form, to a slightly defensive woman who likes to cook it for him and do the dishes afterwards, it was perhaps a question better left unsaid.

Lucky for him, my passion for apple cake obliterates any hint that I have too many recipes. After all, there is an apple cake for every eventuality. There is Kay's Apple Cake, dense with mixed spices and served with vanilla hard sauce, perfect after dinner. It tastes deeply American, and every time I bite into it I am taken right back to Kay's kitchen, where I revel in her conversation and bask in the most joyful, infectious laugh I have known.

There is my mother's Apfelkuchen, a simple cake topped with overlapping rings of apple, which brings back memories of childhood in a little house full of people and papers and orange carpet tiles.

There is also her Danish apple cake, a favourite with adults and especially my father. Mum poured half the cake batter into the tin, layered it with apples, walnuts and ground ginger, then spread the remaining batter over the top. It looks lovely when you slice it, and is heady with ginger; I made it last year for an anniversary picnic held in her memory.

There is the beautifully moist and failsafe apple cake in The Ultimate Cook Book, which I have made dozens of times in a dozen different ways: with white, brown or coconut sugar; with walnut or vegetable oil; with sultanas and without; with cinnamon, cloves, ginger or a mix. Its dense texture makes it very portable – a good one for a picnic – and its size, great for a group.

And then there's this cake, the unobtrusive cake which tells a Wednesday friend that I love them without being splashy; the cake that makes children smile and adults settle into their chairs and begin to tell stories. It's a morning cake, no big deal, just something to share over coffee; or to slip into a lunchbox near the end of term when kids are flagging and could use a little lift.

It happens to have no egg and no dairy, so it's handy for kinder parties and allergic children, not to mention those hairy vegan friends who could use a little sweetening.

No Egg Apple Cake/Vegan Apple Cake - 150g sultanas (optional)     - 350g apple sauce or apple purée (I use canned apples, and leave the chunks intact) - 180g sugar - 280g plain flour - 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda - 1 tsp ground cinnamon - ½ tsp ground cloves - pinch of salt - ½ cup unflavoured vegetable oil (NOT olive oil) - 2 tbs golden syrup If you are using sultanas, boil the kettle. Place the sultanas in a small bowl, and barely cover them with hot water. Leave to soak for at least 15 minutes, three days if you get sidetracked as happened to me recently. Place the apple purée and sugar into a large bowl, stir well, and leave to macerate for 20 to 30 minutes. While things are soaking and macerating, position the oven rack near the bottom of the oven. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and flour a ring tin. Sift the flour, bicarb soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt into a bowl. Whisk to combine. Add the oil and golden syrup to the apples, and mix well. Add the flour mixture and sultanas, including any dribbles of syrupy water*, and fold together quickly and gently, lifting up mixture from the bottom of the bowl as you stir. Pour the mixture into the cake tin. Smooth it gently with a spatula, then quietly slide it into the oven. Close the oven door with dignity. Because the raising agent is bicarb soda, it begins to rise the instant the liquid hits the bicarb. If you bang it about, you will lose the bubbles and thus the rising. Be not afraid, but be quiet. Bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edge, invert over a cake plate, and serve. *If you did not barely cover the sultanas with hot water, but instead drowned them, drain them before adding them to the mixture. (Local: sultanas, apples,. Not local: sugar, flour, bicarb, spices, salt, oil, golden syrup.)

Scones

 

I love Mondays. Grandpa picks up my six-year-old from school, the four- and not-quite-two-year-olds sleep, and I get to do stuff. Actually, I doze on the couch, fluff around on the computer and bring in the washing, but it's lovely just the same.

When everyone's home and the younger girls have woken, we're ravenous. And having been saved an hour and twenty minutes by not doing the school run (ever walked a mile with a four-year-old?), I graciously donate 15 minutes to making scones.

As they come out of the oven, kids and Grandpa rush to the table and choose a plate from our op shop collection: sprinkled with flowers, pink with blue polka dots, cornflowers and butterflies, or blue peacocks. They open the honey and the jam and wait for the cloth-covered board bearing its hot little bundles of puff straight from the oven.

"Wooooow!" says the toddler. "Yum!" says everyone else as they break open their scones and the steam swirls up.

O wonderful me!

Scones are very easy to make, but if you bash them around and moon about, they will be stodgy. The trick to making little clouds of pleasure is to be light and quick. Don't mix them, but combine with a knife; don't knead them with the ball of your hand, but with your fingers; don't roll them out, but pat them down gently. And get them into the oven as fast as you can!

This quantity makes 8 or 9 medium-sized scones. They don't keep well. If you do have leftovers, you can re-heat them in the microwave – but it's better to invite a neighbour over, or Grandpa, and demolish the lot in one sitting.

If you want to make more, make two batches – you can move quicker and faster and they will come out lighter than if you make them all in one big batch.

Scones - 2 generous cups self raising flour - pinch sugar - 1 tbs butter - 1 scant cup sour milk. (The best scones are made from milk which has soured slightly. You can use off milk, off yogurt, off cream thinned with water, or buttermilk. If you don't have any sour dairy, use milk but squeeze a little lemon juice into it before you start. You can even use soy milk – it's a very forgiving recipe.) - butter and/or cream and/or honey and/or jam to serve Preheat the oven to 220C. Whisk a pinch of sugar into the flour, then rub in the butter. Make a well and add all the milk (cream, yogurt, soy milk) at once. Using a knife (I have an ancient flexible bone-handled knife which is perfect), combine the milk and flour with a slicing motion, then turn the mixture onto a lightly floured bench and knead lightly until fully combined. Gently pat into a disc about an inch thick. Using a scone cutter, cut out your scones; or use a knife and slice it into wedges. If you use the cutter, gather up the remaining dough and lightly shape into extra scones. Don't use a glass to cut them out, as it will compress the dough and make the scones stodgy. Place scones on a greased tray, or a tray lined with a silicon baking sheet. Brush gently with milk and slip into the oven for 9 or 10 minutes, depending on your oven. To check they're cooked, tap one on the bottom. They are ready when they sound hollow. Bundle them into a clean tea towel to keep them warm, and eat as soon as possible with butter and honey, jam and cream, honey and cream, just butter, butter and jam... oh, just gobble them all up! (Local: flour if you're lucky, milk, honey, jam, cream. Somewhere in Victoria: butter. Non-local: sugar.)

Apple Cake

It was a public holiday, time for a picnic. Other people were bringing soup, a savoury tart, a chicken, some wine. I was asked to make dessert. With a house full of apples, the only difficulty was choosing which apple cake to make!

This is our current favourite. The secret ingredient is walnut oil; it makes the cake beautifully fragrant. But if you're feeling thrifty, the cake is still lovely made with vegetable oil instead.

Lately I've been fooling around with palm sugar. With its light floral scent floating above rich toffee flavours, it tastes absolutely wonderful. I thought it would go beautifully with the apples and walnut oil, and it did. But I must admit I had an ulterior motive: I was hoping a particular friend would come to the picnic – and I thought I could tempt her with a slice of cake if only I could say 'it's low GI'! Palm sugar has a GI of 35.

Apple Cake - 6 apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1 cm dice - 1 cup sugar (plain or palm) - 2/3 cup walnut oil (or vegetable oil, or a combination) - 2 eggs, at room temperature - 3 cups plain flour - 2 tsp baking powder - 1 ½ tsp cinnamon - ½ tsp baking soda - pinch salt Preheat your oven to 175C/350F. Grease a large cake tin; I use a 24cm spring form pan. Combine the apples and sugar in a large bowl and leave to macerate for half an hour – or, if you're short of time, you can zap them in the microwave for 5 minutes, then leave for another 5 minutes to cool down. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt into a bowl. Whisk the oil and the eggs in a separate bowl until they are light and creamy. Scrape into the apples and combine, then fold in the dry ingredients. This very stiff batter has snapped at least one of my spatulas, so take my advice and use a sturdy wooden spoon! Scrape the batter into the cake tin and bake until lightly browned, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. This will take between 45 minutes and an hour depending on your oven – start testing at 45. This cake is superb with a dollop of thick cream. Adapted from The Ultimate Cook Book: 900 New Recipes, Thousands of Ideas by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarborough. (Local: apples, walnut oil, flour, eggs. Not local: baking powder, baking soda, salt, veggie oil. Also not local, but at least it's fair trade: sugar, cinnamon.)