loaves and lemons

Whilst camping last weekend and enjoying Sophie's delicious banana bread, Edward declared loaf the new cupcake. Cupcakes can jog on in my opinion. I think as a fad they'll pass; it's not that I'm particularly anti-cupcake, it's just that they're everywhere. And apart from fancy icing, a lot of the time they're pretty much just butter and sugar. At the moment, at least in my little bubble, loaf is the new cupcake, single is the new relationship and front is the new fringe. I'm not the only one singing the praises of loaf, plus I received some lovely feedback way back in July after loafylicious. And so, herewith heartbreakpie's very own going up going down for your Thursday.

Going up:
Loaf
One night stands Dinner dates
Flirting outrageously with the guy who makes your daily flat white
Being cooked for by friends and flatmates and baking for them in return

Going down:
Cupcakes
Long term relationships
Drunkenly calling your former boyfriend from a toilet cubicle at a concert (whoops)

But, going up: loaf. Sophie made her banana bread from the recipe right here at 101 cookbooks. She omitted the seeds and the rum, but added walnuts and it was really good.

With summer looming I've been inspired to bake as healthily as possible. I find baking incredibly therapeutic though, so lemon, honey and coconut loaf was item du jour last night. I made it a few months ago but I never shared the recipe! This one comes from Duncan, a guy I went to school with. We met up for coffee when he was in Wellington earlier this year, and he sent me off with some lovely recipes, his latest favourite poems and a City and Colour CD. Thanks Duncan!

You'll note that I cleverly photographed mine in the sunshine to detract from the fact I burnt the top. I layered some thinly sliced lemon on top before baking, which I did last time with the oranges, but I found that because of the low, slow cooking time it just leaves the top gooey. So I get impatient that it isn't quite cooked and then burn the top. You'll see above that it didn't matter yesterday - the inside was still deliciously moist and coconutty. Just keep an eye on it and do a skewer test.

This would be delicious with a little yoghurt on the side, or if you're feeling decadent some softly whipped cream. Duncan suggests lemon cream cheese frosting, or chocolate ganache, or lemon sugar glaze. If you leave it plain on top you could even lightly toast it. Oh, the possibilities! A lady at work had given me some lemons off her tree, and since I halved the sugar quantity I quadrupled the lemon intake. I'd highly recommend doing that too.

Lemon & Honey Coconut Loaf
85g butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup coconut
juice and rind of 1 lemon (I used 4 small-medium ones)
1/2 cup honey (I doubled it)
1 cup caster sugar (I halved it)
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder

Melt butter and honey, add to milk and eggs, and whisk.
Sift dry ingredients over the wet ingredients, add the lemon juice and the zest and combine. 
Bake at 160*C for 45 minutes in a loaf pan. I lightly greased my loaf pan, and mine needed a good hour.

The question remains as to whether loaf will take off as the new baking pop culture icon of the decade, but in the meantime give it a go!

das ist Aotearoa

When I was a bob-haircutted 11 year old girl guide, three other uniformed girls and I won our guide group's outdoor cookout competition. Not only did we attain glory, and an industrious badge for our sashes, we also progressed to take on other unsuspecting girls from the region. The task? Prepare a 2 course meal on an open fire, that you've dug out of the ground, started yourself, and made reach the requisite heat. Our group made it through two further rounds to finally come second overall in greater Auckland. Our dish was some fancy-angle-cut sliced sausage, done in tinned tomatoes, herb, onions, and served over pasta spirals. The water would take forever to boil. Our dessert was a winning combination of cinnamon spiced apples with a coconut crumble topping. The girls that won overall? They made chocolate orange cakes inside an in-tact orange skin wrapped in tinfoil, baked in the fire. Bitches.

My weekend was kind of like that, but with grown males and a gas barbecue. There were no uniforms or leaders making us promise to serve the queen and our country, but there was getting back to nature, embracing the great outdoors, and hunting and gathering. Plus plenty of goon and warm beer. And a long drop toilet with no door, but an incredible view nonetheless.

What a weekend it was. After an amazing feast of tapas (haloumi salad, kumara chips with smoked paprika, the ripest avocado, roasted asparagus and eggplant with feta, smoked fish, chorizo and delicious turkish bread) on our deck and then Trinity Roots on Saturday night, early early Sunday morning saw me emerge bleary eyed and haphazardly pack in about 5 minutes for the overnight rugged camping trip to Ngapotiki Station, White Rock. The Rimutaka Hill Road on a slight hangover is never a good idea, especially from the back seat, but I'd managed to not repeat last Saturday, the night before thankfully. That, combined with a coffee stop in Martinborough (one of my all time favourite places) sorted me out. Breathing in that salty air gets me every time too.

Once we walked in over the track, we settled in to the old deerstalkers hut and had pre-made meat patties with brie and rocket in bread rolls. I read for the afternoon, while one boy attempted to hunt, and two of them dived. We read, Sophie had baked, we saw some Orca whales, took some photos and got some sun. Whilst eating paua fritters made with paua caught by the boys that evening, listening to the Black Seeds, someone declared "das ist good, das ist summer, das ist Aotearoa" (it apparently stemmed from an angry woman shouting "das ist Scheiße!" at them over some heavy drum and bass at 2am on a Europe trip last year. Such gags tend to escalate).   

Everyone laughed, but it was Aotearoa, and it was an excellent beginning to what is shaping up to be a fun-filled summer. We also had venison medallions, pre-caught and marinated by Jimmy, as well as barbecued asparagus. Sophie had also made a particularly tasty kumara salad. It was a cobweb filled hut, and it was rock-offs for the mattresses, but the food definitely made it glamping.

Sophie's Kumara, Cumin and Chickpea Salad


Take some kumara and cut into chunks. Place in a roasting tray with some melted honey, some cumin seeds, a little olive oil and salt and pepper.  
While that's roasting, put two crushed garlic cloves in a pan with a little olive oil. Add a tin of chickpeas and sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper. Toast some walnuts, and when the kumara is done, mix it all together. So simple and so tasty.

The morning saw us debate the intricacies of how best to plunge coffee while camping, and Sophie whipped up pancakes which we enjoyed with cinnamon cooked bananas. Lunch was more paua, sliced thinly with garlic and butter, held together with grainy bread. Jimmy boldly declared Mackenzie bread better than Vogel's, but he was alone on that one. It's great bread that's for sure, but better than Vogel's? Come on.

So, sun-kissed and relaxed after getting out of the city, this week I promise an overdue review of Cafe Polo and my continued professing of my love of loaves. Stay tuned.

one step forward, two steps back

Sometimes the stars align. You know that feeling when you meet someone, and you're not gutted by how your hair looks, or what you're wearing, and the conversation flows and they're taller than you? And excitement builds, you feel on-form and ready, you're laughing, they're laughing, they tell you you look like Zooey Deschanel (possibly the single greatest compliment you've ever received?), you high-five over being the tallest people at the party, you swap business cards, and then his mate offers you a vodka. You can't really be bothered battling strangers through to the fridge; you think a vodka lemonade is a great idea! You drink it, and as the conversation continues, that familiar sweetness takes you back to 5th form and downing $10 bottles of gutter-vodka in Cornwall Park out of McDonald's cups with your big sister's friends.

You remember that after your morning gym session, you had beautifully home-cooked scrambled eggs and tomato with basil on some toasted baguette, but nothing else really to eat all day. You had a celebratory crate beer with your friend who's down from Auckland, to celebrate his birthday on your sunny deck, and you realise that at the barbecue, you've had the better part of a bottle of Rose. You also realise that that jager-shot at 5pm was a bad idea, and the lovely and enthusiastic vodka-jelly-shot wielding girl in the beautiful new season Kathryn Wilson heels, was evil in making you and the birthday girl finish all the pink jelly shots, leaving only yellow ones on the tray.

You then hit a wall. You are staring at what you hope is straight ahead, and you are absolutely devastated that you've let this happen. You must have excused yourself. You leave he-of-the-cute-smile and his friend, and the packed, fun, thriving party, and head upstairs. You have flashbacks to smashing half a sausage-in-bread, and it strikes you that you may have mustard on your face, or tomato sauce on your cute new cardigan. The birthday girl assists you in losing what little dinner you had, and then you decide a wee nap in her bed is absolutely in order. Her boyfriend, a good friend of yours, comes up and you have a heart-to-heart about life and love and doomed relationships (one in particular). You remember declaring, tourettes-style, 'we swapped business cards!' before they cajole you into getting up again. You are you! You are single! You are awesome! Things were going well! Get downstairs! You sit up, victorious, for your stomach appears to have settled. You fix your fringe, straighten out your top and try not to stumble down the stairs.

He's still there, you note, but - what's that? Oh, he's pashing someone else in the lounge.

The conversation can't have been going that well then, right? Timing is everything. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes we blow it. Sometimes the cute guy you meet at a party pashes up your mate in the corner. Sometimes things just aren't meant to be. Pfft, talk about feeling like you're in 5th form again, who pashes at parties these days anyway? Bitter? Maybe a little.

When Beyonce's 'All the single ladies' comes on during your Monday morning gym session, shame and alcohol seeping from your pores, you wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something.

The party was still lots and lots of fun. And earlier in the day, I made the birthday girl chocolate cookies sandwiched together with peppermint icing. They were delicious. Happy birthday Lu! And thanks for holding my hair back and letting me nap in your bed. I'll try and hold it together next time, I promise.

Chocolate peppermint delights (the basic biscuit recipe is from Edmond's, but these were inspired by my recent visit to Queen Sally's Diamond Deli in Lyall Bay)

125g butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tblsp cocoa (use the best you can find, or next time I'd try melting some dark chocolate into the mix instead)

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla together until light and fluffy. Add egg, beating well. Sift flour and baking powder and cocoa together and mix into creamed mixture. Roll heaped teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and flatten with a fork. Or, roll out some of the dough and use a cookie cutter to make some shapes. Place carefully on an oven tray. Bake at 190*C or until pale golden. Cool on a wire rack.

For the peppermint filling, I put about a cup of icing sugar, some butter, a teaspoon of peppermint essence and some boiling water together in a bowl, and mixed it really well. Spread on the cookies when they're cool and sandwich together.

The weekend wasn't a total loss. In fact, I still had a really fun Saturday night. I also enjoyed getting laughed at by my good friend and my flatmate over coffee on a rainy hungover Sunday afternoon. I'm just lucky I gave the cookies away, because as we all know nothing cures the shame and embarrassment of over-indulging like more over-indulging.

chocolate cake #1

In honour of my flatmate's declaration that he was having a birthday weekend rather than simply a birthday, I did my part by making his birthday cake a day late. With an international holiday to save for, cakes are my current gift of choice. I bulked up his present with a block of his favourite chocolate and some coffee for the plunger to enjoy on his day off. After taking some chocolate cake related twitter advice, Laura suggested Nigella's Guinness cake, which is next on my to-do list!

On the basis of availability of ingredients alone, I went with Kimberley's best chocolate birthday cake. Using 85% cocoa Lindt dark chocolate, it was deliciously bitter - almost as bitter as I was when my eyes got assaulted this afternoon by a couple aggressively pashing while waiting to cross the road. The cake was also fudgey, rich and luscious - everything a chocolate cake should be. Because it uses ground almonds, it is also gluten free, which is a bonus if you or your favourite friends are that way inclined. It would make a delectable dessert, especially sidled up with berries and yoghurt, but it also stands brilliantly alone. Happy Birthday Aidan!

Chocolate Almond Cake  from jumping tangents
180g dark chocolate (make it the best you can, at least 70% cocoa)
175g softened butter
125g unrefined sugar (I just used raw)
200g ground almonds
4 eggs, separated

Icing:
100g dark chocolate and 100g butter

Heat oven to 150*C. Line a 25cm springform pan with baking paper, and grease the sides.
Break the chocolate into pieces, and melt in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Don't boil the water or you'll burn the chocolate. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until soft and creamy. Add  the ground almonds, egg yolks and melted chocolate. Mix thoroughly then set aside.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then add them to the cake mixture and fold everything together with a big metal spoon (be careful not to break the air in the egg whites).
Pour mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. The middle will be squishy, allow to cool a little before removing from the tin.
To make the icing, melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl, then drizzle over the cake and leave to set.
As you can see I garnished this one with fresh mint, but you could do what you like really. It's a chocolate lovers dream, and it's just so good.

  

spring salads and tasty bread

I realised with utter despair the other day that my trusty ipod classic (a full to the brim 30gb) has outlasted my relationship. I thought ipods only had about a two year lifespan, but it would have been four years this month. I know this not because anniversaries are something we celebrated, but because my dear friend Kennedee had a baby at the same time I got my first boyfriend! After some drunk yabbering last night I was abruptly told to stop counting, and fair enough too. But speaking of dear friends and babies, one former had one latter on Wednesday; congratulations Eleanor!

On the food front, with the warm weather I have been embracing salads and eating asparagus at every opportunity. I've been grating beetroot, slicing red cabbage, slivering silverbeet and mixing them all up with lentils, chickpeas or anything that takes my fancy. Saturday afternoon saw a couple of friends and I have a wee picnic in the sun on my lounge floor. Roasted asparagus with olive oil and cracked pepper and salt, roasted eggplant with feta, homemade hummus, and the salad below was shaved nashi pear and thinly sliced fennel, dressed with olive oil and finely grated parmesan. It was really good.

I've also embraced making bread. I never realised quite how easy and enjoyable it is. There's something about leaving the dough to rise, and getting really amongst the dough, kneading it out. The recipe I've been thrashing is from the latest Dish magazine. The title is a bit of a mouthful, but it's so simple and so delicious.

Caramelized Red Onion, Black Olive and Herb Bread (from Dish #32)

Onions:
2 tblsp olive oil
a knob of butter
3 large red onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tblsp brown sugar
3 tblsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped black olives

Dough:
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp instant dried yeast (I used active yeast at it was absolutely fine)
1 tsp ground fennel
1 tblsp finely chopped rosemary
3/4-1 cup lukewarm water
2 tblsp olive oil

To assemble:
Olive oil
Sea salt
Cumin seeds

I found the best way to approach this was make the dough, then caramelize the onions during the dough's resting time.

Dough:
Combine the flour, salt, yeast, fennel and rosemary in a bowl, and make a well in the centre. Add the 3/4 cup of water and the olive oil and mix to form a soft dough, adding the extra water if needed. Tip onto a lightly floured bench and knead lightly for two minutes. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place to double in bulk.

Onions:
Heat the olive oil and butter in a saute pan. Add the onions and garlic with a good pinch of salt, cover and cook until soft, stirring occasionally. Stir in the brown sugar and balsamic vinegar. Cook gently, uncovered and stirring occasionally, until the onions are thick and sticky, with no liquid left in the pan. This can take a good 25-30 minutes to caramelize properly. Stir in the olives and cool.

To assemble:

Preheat oven to 200*C.
Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured bench to a 30cm x 30cm square, then transfer to a lined flat baking tray. Spread the onions evenly over the dough, leaving a 1cm border around the edge.
Brush the border with cold water then fold the dough over twice to make a rectangle. Brush generously with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and cumin seeds.

Bake for 25mins until golden and the bread sounds hollow when tapped. Lightly brush again with olive oil when it comes out of the oven. Serve warm, or at room temperature. Dish says it's best eaten on the day of making, but I doubt you'll have any leftovers.

You can really get creative with the herbs, I've used variations in the bread itself and with what you sprinkle on top. I've also made it with white onions instead of red, and without olives. Get practicing for summer barbecues, an afternoon snack with drinks, or alongside some salads for an easy lunch. Enjoy! And stay tuned - coming up this week - chocolate cake, amongst other things.

saturday coffees at kreuzberg cafe

I caught up with my friend Mike this morning at my new favourite place for coffee - Kreuzberg outdoor summer cafe, at the top of Cuba Street, Wellington. It serves it's peoples's coffee out of a caravan, and the picnic tables sit alongside a garden centre. The coffee has stayed a bargain at $3.50 despite the recent rise in GST, and it's just delicious. It's served in dinky retro cups; Mike and I talked travel and life plans in the sun over two cups each.

I've just taken some caramelised onion and herb bread out of the oven, Saturday is looking good!