Recipes - Page 11 of 12 - Cloudy Kitchen

Rhubarb Almond Crumble with Kaffir Lime Ice Cream

Hiiii from where i'm still desperately clinging onto rhubarb season! Rhubarb doesn't have a season in New Zealand - it grows year round. Mum and Dad have a big plant in their garden that kind of looks after itself, aside from getting the odd dose of sheep poo on it every now and then (makes it grow so well), and getting almost entirely trimmed back whenever I am home. It's there whenever we need it, which is mainly in the winter, when the stone fruit is long gone until the next summer, so it's always a little strange to find myself in the middle of rhubarb hysteria every summer at the greenmarket. They are still selling it in our local supermarket, so as far as I am concerned, it's still here!

One of my favourite ways to use rhubarb is to pop it into a crumble. It is quick to prepare, and it really allows the flavour of the rhubarb to shine through. This particular crumble was made with my Mum in mind - every time I go home I buy far too much almond meal with great plans of making batches upon batches of macarons. Of course I never get around to it, so she is left with a pantry full of almond meal. So Mama bear - this one is for you! The almond meal gives the crumble a lovely dense toastyness, which is a nice change from the standard oaty crumble you often see. It pairs perfectly with the rhubarb, but would also make the perfect topping for any seasonal fruit. It can easily be prepared ahead, and is the perfect adaptable year-round dessert.

The obsession with my ice cream maker continues here too. I've just come out the end of 12 weeks of obsessively following Masterchef Australia, where they turn everything imaginable into ice cream, and clearly it has rubbed off on me. I wanted something delicate to pair with the rhubarb, so turned to the kaffir lime tree that Santa brought for Richard last Christmas. I was initially unsure about the flavour kaffir would give to ice cream, but was extremely surprised to find that it was just perfect - the flavour was extremely delicate, but still held its own against the tart rhubarb. I will most definitely be making it again, as it was a huge hit. We have a tree on our balcony, but you can buy kaffir lime leaves in most asian markets - look for the distinctive double leaf. If you are in a place where you can grow your own tree I highly recommend it - they do well inside in a pot, and the leaves give such amazing flavour to all sorts of dishes, both sweet and savoury.

A few wee notes:

This crumble is fairly topping heavy, which is how we like it - if you prefer a higher fruit to topping ratio, feel free to make less topping
This would work perfectly with whatever fruit you have on hand - peaches, plums, apples and berries, etc. You may need to adjust the sugar level to suit the fruit you are using.
This can be made ahead - assemble the topping, cover in foil, and store in the fridge until you are ready to bake.
Leftovers make the best breakfast!

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Answers to your baking questions

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Sour Cherry, Blueberry, and rhubarb hand pies

Are you a pie crust, or a pie filling person? I am a big fan of a well-filled pie. A solid amount of fruit with each bite. Richard on the other hand, is squarely in the crust camp. His favourite pies of mine are the ones with intricate lattices (and therefore more crust), or individual pies. The heavier the sugar coating on the top, the better.

That is, until I made hand pies. A great measure of how much Rich likes something is how fast it disappears. If it's earl grey flavoured he won't touch it, if it's chocolate chip cookies he will make them himself off the blog if they aren't already in the house. Zucchini and banana bread last less than a day. If only I had his metabolism. Life isn't fair sometimes. Pie he is a bit take it or leave it on, but these bad boys disappeared REAL quick - to the extent that I had to hide some to take to a friend the next day.

We have just started getting fruit from our CSA over the last few weeks. It's been mainly blueberries and sour cherries. This was my first time baking with sour cherries - they are yet another thing we don't really get in New Zealand. I was a little skeptical at first because these ones in particular were VERY sour, but they baked down and gave the filling a lovely brightness, requiring much less sugar than I thought! Much to Richard's delight, these were a little heavier on the crust than most hand pies, because I used a rectangle of dough, then added a lattice on top, unlike the folded over or pocket form that pies usually take. I held back on the filling a little to reduce leakage (they still leaked a little bit, but it was worth it for the pretty lattice!) The blueberries paired beautifully with the sour cherry. I also had some rhubarb in the fridge (I can't resist buying it whenever I see it), so I filled half of them with rhubarb and blueberry. This might be my new favourite way to use up summer fruit - they were a huge hit with everyone who tried them!

A few wee notes:

I didn't purposefully leave the sugar off half of the pies - I just forgot to add it after I egg washed. They are definitely better with a sugary crust, but it was a quick and easy way to tell apart the two flavours!
A good cherry pitter is your friend - I use this one, and it's the best ever.
I used tapioca starch to thicken the filling for these. It works really well for pies that have a juicy filling. You can substitute corn starch in a pinch, but if you make pie often it's really worth picking some up - it will last forever, and is a little less gummy than corn starch or arrowroot.
Halve the recipe if you only want 7 pies - one batch of dough, and one of the fillings. Once you're on a roll though, it's easy to make lots.
If you don't want to muck around with the lattice on the top, just cut out 14 pieces of pastry, and make plain hand pies - place the lid on, seal with a little water, and press down with your fingers.
Fill these with whatever you like! This is just a guide really - I used what we happened to have on hand. You can just all cherries, all blueberries, etc. Just taste your fruit, and adjust the sugar as needed.
The lattice top is very much a quide. Go nuts and make them however you like - re roll scraps to make extra lattice if needed. I did a huge range just to see how they all looked!

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Answers to your baking questions

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Chocolate earl grey ice cream sandwiches

Every now and then, my little mind is blown by something food related over here. Things that we just don't have in New Zealand. Strawberry shortcake, s'mores (we sometimes make something similar ish, but it's just not the same), and most recently, ice-cream sandwiches. I had never eaten an ice cream sandwich until I moved to America. The closest we have is two pink wafers, surrounding a slab of pre-wrapped ice cream. Totally pales in comparison to what an ice-cream sandwich over here is. The weird thing is, it's not like they are tricky to make, or require ingredients you can't get hold of in New Zealand, they just aren't a thing. That goes both ways though - there are so many New Zealand foods that haven't caught on here, things like our version of shortcake, tan square, louise cake, and savoury pies. More on the pies later - I have spent the last few days fine-tuning an epic steak and mushroom filling for pies which I will share very soon. In a classic me move, I have decided to do this right in the middle of summer, which of course involves the oven on for hours at a time. Not the most ideal, but it's going to be SO worth it, because meat pies are the best, and everyone needs them in their lives. I promise. Your hangovers will never be as bad again, because meat pies are the magic cure.

More on ice cream sandwiches - specifically, these chocolate and earl grey ice cream sandwiches. These are something special. My theory is, that if you take two things that are amazing on their own and combine them, you've hit a winner. Here we take a chocolate sugar cookie. The sugar cookies are everything you ever want in a cookie - crispy on the edges, chewy on the inside, and perfectly flat. We pair them with perfect circles of earl grey ice cream - ice cream that isn't too sweet, and has a lovely subtle hit of the bergamot flavour of earl grey, and the slightly bitter tannins of tea. I have been obsessively buying the Van Leeuwen Earl Grey ice cream for a few months now (it's a great choice because Rich doesn't like it, so it's all mine!), and I can safely say, that as an earl grey enthusiast, this tastes just like it. Sandwiched between two chewy chocolate cookies, the earl grey flavour bounces off the cookies in the most amazing way. This is the dessert you didn't know you needed.

A few wee notes:

The Chocolate sugar cookie recipe I used here is from the amazing Sarah Kieffer's book, the Vanilla bean baking book. I have made these maybe 10 times already - they never last longer than a day because they are so amazing, so when it came to finding a cookie to pair with earl grey, I knew these would be perfect. If you want a book filled with solid, reliable no fail baking recipes, pick a copy up. It's THE BEST.
If you don't like earl grey / don't want to make your own ice cream / can't be bothered with any of that carry on, you can absolutely use store bought ice cream. Simply allow it to soften (you will need 1 to 1 ½ quarts, or about a litre), spread it into a 9x13 pan lined with wax paper, and freeze until hard before you cut out using a cookie cutter. Alternatively, scoops of ice cream between cookies would also work perfectly. Don't like ice cream? Make the cookies anyway. They are epic.
I used a mixture of black cocoa and regular cocoa to amp up the chocolate flavour in the cookies. Using only plain cocoa is perfect too.
The cookie recipe makes about 24 cookies, if you use a 2 Tbsp scoop. The ice cream makes about enough for 9 circles, so you will have a few cookies left over. There will be some left over - store in a freezer safe container for scooping later.
The Ice cream base needs at least 2 hours to chill completely before churning, and then an additional 3-4 hours to solidify in the pan, so allow time for this! Don't forget to freeze your ice cream bowl!

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Answers to your baking questions

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Blueberry, raspberry and white currant pie with buckwheat crust

Happy 4th! We are keeping it super low key this year and just hanging out at home. After a massive few weeks, it's so nice to just muck around and spend time with each other. We have done super exciting things like buying a vacuum cleaner and answering emails, and last night we managed to get a walk-in table at Lilia, which was everything I imagined that it would be. It was this time three years ago that we were sitting at home replying to literally thousands of emails and sales questions after the cloud got blogged the first time on a big design blog. Our business kind of started itself a few days after the 4th of July, so it's always nice to remind ourselves just how far we really have come in a relatively short time.

After last 4th of July's crazy cake situation I decided to keep it a little more low key and make pie. I branched out a tiny bit from my standard crust, adding a little buckwheat, which added a lovely toasty flavour. The filling is simple - beautiful fresh raspberries and blueberries from the greenmarket, along with some white currants which I picked up there too to try and go along with the 'red white and blue' thing (they aren't really white but points for trying). I added some quick pastry strips for stripes and some cut out stars, and we were very 4th of July! I'm totally posting this too late for anyone to actually make it in time for the 4th, but the flavour combination was so lovely I figured I would share it, as it would make a perfect summer berry pie for a bbq, or any occasion where you need pie. Just top it with your favourite lattice and you are good to go!

Have the best week! And a quick P.s: you can nominate as many times as you like for the Saveur awards, so if you have a spare 10 seconds I would love a nomination for 'best new voice' please and thank you! xx

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Answers to your baking questions

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Mini peach pies

It's finally, FINALLY bbq season! Not that there will be much of it happening at our house - our building drew us in with an 'awesome outdoor space and amazing communal rooftop' when we were moving in, only to pull the roof off and close the outdoor space within a few months of us moving in, rendering this 'amazing space' essentially just a place to put everyone's crap from the roof. Luckily we have a few friends with nice back yards and bbqs, who are yet to be opposed to us showing up to their house with food.

BBQ season means stonefruit, and stonefruit means epic pies! Peaches are hands down my favourite things to put into pie. I made a whole load of mini pies to take to a friends birthday bbq on the weekend, and they were a total hit. The fun with mini pies is that you can play around with lattice combinations, so they all end up looking a little different. They are easy to eat, and everyone loves the idea of having their own individual dessert. Next on my list of mini pies is definitely something savoury - meat pies are everywhere in New Zealand. For some reason America hasn't caught on yet, which I am always surprised seeing how terrible they are for you!

These pies are super simple, but super delicious. I went with my favourite dough recipe, then kept the filling easy - beautiful ripe peaches, just a touch of sugar, some cornflour to help the filling set up, and some vanilla bean paste. Easy as that. The pastry bakes up to be amazingly flaky, providing the perfect base for the peaches to shine through, enhanced by the teeniest bit of sweetness and fragrance of vanilla. Because I over commit to almost everything I do, I spent a fair amount of time coming up with individual lattice designs for each one, but you could easily just do a simple lattice top on all of them, or even just a plain circle lid on each one with a few vents cut in to let out the steam. I went with a mixture of lattices, cut-out tops and shapes cut out with stamps.

This recipe is part of a fun blogger collaboration organised by the lovely Annie, Ruth and Rebecca! Check out their pages for the full list of bloggers participating, or the hashtag #summerlovespeaches on Instagram!

A few wee tips:

I used these mini pie dishes to make these - they are the perfect size for individual pies. I also made two in little rectangular pans, but you can use whatever size dish you have on hand!
I also used one of these to cut my lattice - highly highly recommend. It's super satisfying and you get lovely even strips.
I didn't peel my peaches, but if you are the sort of person who doesn't like peach skin, by all means go for it.
I lined all of the pie dishes first with pastry, and kept them in the fridge until I was ready to use each one. I filled them individually with the fruit mixture as I went, and did the lattices one at a time so that the others could stay cold in the fridge. This worked quite well, but if you are going with a quick lattice on the top you could definitely fill then lattice them all at once - just transfer them to the fridge as soon as they are done so that the pastry doesn't get too soft.
Because I was filling them individually as I went, I made up half of the filling, then once it was used up, made up the second half and kept going. The reason that I did this is because as the filling sits, the fruit releases some of it's moisture, which means that it gets a little juicy in the bowl. If you wanted to cut up all the fruit at once, transfer half to a bowl, squeeze a little lemon over to stop it going brown, and store in the fridge until you are ready to go.
I tripled my usual pie dough recipe, making it in 3 batches, and there was a little leftover once I was done. I like to end up with a little bit of dough left rather than not having enough - I roll out the bottom crust, then use the rest of the fresh unrolled dough for lattice, then go back and use the extras for stamps. Just make sure that you put the extra dough in the fridge, tightly wrapped, to have a chance to firm up before you use it again.
This recipe is easily scaleable to suit your numbers! If you were wanting to make just a single regular sized pie, use the one batch quantities for the dough, and use approximately 2-3 pounds of fruit.

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Answers to your baking questions

Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:

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Brown butter rhubarb streusel tart

I have always, always loved recipe books. Books in general, really. When I was younger, I would cycle through the huge shelf of books on my bedroom wall, starting again at the beginning once I had made my way through all of them. I would happily lock myself away for hours at a time, lost in a book. I often carried one with me wherever I went, and I used to read in the car on long trips (I can’t even look at my phone in the car anymore, so I’m not quite sure what happened there).

Recipe books were no different. I remember spending hours sitting at the kitchen table reading recipes and looking at photos. My parent’s recipe book collection isn’t huge, but the ones they do have are now hugely familiar to me. There was one in particular which had full spread photos of different types of beans, seeds, grains etc, with a key on the following page indicating the corresponding names. I would sit and learn them all, until I had memorised every type of grain, bean or chicken drumstick coating.

When I started to take food more seriously than just making and eating the recipes that were familiar to me, the recipe book obsession became more serious too. As soon as I knew that we were going to be staying in NYC for at least the foreseeable future, I slowly started acquiring cook books - buying those recommended to me, getting sucked in at book shops, or sneaking them into the amazon cart for Rich to buy by mistake, so I could deny responsibility for the purchase (if you haven’t tried this before I highly recommend, it’s great fun).

One of the early books that I got, which is still one of my favourites, was the bouchon bakery book. It’s massive, with huge pages filled with beautiful pictures and intricate detailed recipes. I use it often to refer to for basic recipes such as pastry cream, but it also has some insane pastry recipes. If you are looking for a book that challenges you a little, but also is filled with amazing recipes, I highly recommend this! The recipes are super detailed, and the recipes are measured in grams, which makes it super easy to follow. If you haven’t got a kitchen scale yet, just do it. It will change your life. Seriously.

One of the recipes I have been eyeing up since I got the book was one for this brown butter rhubarb streusel tart. The picture in the book is insanely beautiful - a thin layer of rhubarb, cured in grenadine, sits on a thin sweet short pastry. It is surrounded by a brown butter frangipane, and topped with a toasted almond streusel. The moment I saw it I knew I had to try it. And it wasn’t a fail! It turned out amazingly - the brown butter taste is super subtle, the pastry not too sweet, and the streusel rounds it all off and adds a little crunch. Although it seems like a lot of work and different elements (the rhubarb has to cure for 24 hours), most of them can be prepared the day before, meaning you can assemble all the elements and bake the tart on the day you are wanting to eat it. It is slightly time consuming, but totally worth it. I promise.

A few wee notes:

This recipe looks super intense, but with a little preparation, it is pretty easy to break up the steps. Allow yourself at least 24 hours for the rhubarb to cure and the pastry to rest
I put the rhubarb on to cure, made the pate sucree, and made and toasted the streusel the day before
I made this in a quarter sheet pan, as the recipe recommended, but if you don't have one you could most likely use a 9" x 13" baking tray. Quarter sheet pans are a great investment if you don't already have one!
I prepared the tart in the following steps:
1. Put the rhubarb on to cure
2. Make the pastry, and rest in the fridge
3. Make the streusel
4. The next day, Line the tin with the pastry, rest in the fridge, then blind bake
5. While the pastry is blind baking, drain the rhubarb and prepare the brown butter filling
6. Assemble and bake

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Answers to your baking questions

Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:

I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!

Apricot Shortcake

I had my first strawberry shortcake last fourth of July. I was blown away for a few reasons - one being that it was amazing, but the second being that I hadn't had it before. It's just not a thing in New Zealand. We have scones, which are different to American scones, in that they are more like a biscuit. We call cookies biscuits. It gets confusing fast. The closest we probably get to a strawberry shortcake is a scone with jam and cream, but that isn't the same.

What we refer to as 'shortcake' in New Zealand is two layers of short pastry, filled with some sort of fruit filling. Generally this is apple, and most New Zealand Grandmas have a banging recipe for it. It is drowned in icing sugar, and perfect for heroing seasonal fruit, or using up fruit that is a little worse for wear.

I have subbed the traditional apple filling for apricots, which have just started to pop up in NYC! Yaaaay for stone fruit season! Finally. Finally I can think about fruit without having to consider the over-wintered apples and pears, and start to incorporate fresh stuff into my recipes! Going to make all of the pies this year. All of them. The great thing about this recipe is that it is super versatile - i've had it with rhubarb before, and am definitely going to try it with plum or peach this season!

This is a fairly quick thing to throw together, if you don't count the 45 minutes needed for resting the dough. A quick short crust, with a hint of vanilla bean is mixed together, rolled out and placed in a pan. We then add a layer of apricots, with just enough sugar to take the edge off, and cover it with a second piece of pastry. It is then baked until golden brown, and soon after cooling, is ready to enjoy! It's the best, I hope you try it!

A few wee notes:

The pastry can seem a little fragile / crumbly. If you do get a little tear or hole in it, don't worry too much, just patch it up, it will all bake up nicely in the oven!
If your peaches aren't quite ripe, add a little more sugar in the filling. With that being said if they are very ripe, hold back a little on the sugar.
Make sure this is cooled completely in the tin before you remove it for slicing!
If you store this in an airtight container the shortbread will go soft, so if you would like it to stay a little crispy, store this out of a container lightly covered with a paper towel.

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Answers to your baking questions

Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:

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Strawberry ripple and shortbread ice cream

Happy, happy Wednesday friends! Life has been a little quiet around here for us lately, which has actually been really nice. Quiet in that we haven't done much aside from work - caught up with a few friends, occasionally left the house, you know how how it is. We spend most of our time head down, butt up, working hard to play catch-up now that design week has finished. We are back in a nice routine - up at 6 every morning, a day of work, then in bed nice and early. Rinse and repeat. It's important for me to keep a pretty strict routine otherwise my old friend homesickness will bite me in the butt. We are also coming up on 9 weeks of fostering a mama and her 5 kittens, who are slowly being adopted out to forever homes! We got them when they were 3 days old, so to say I am attached is a bit of an understatement. It's equal parts heartbreaking and happy to see them go off to new homes! I'll miss them SO much, but it's been one of the most rewarding things ever to watch them grow from tiny little rescue worms to the cute little nuggets that they are now, ready to be big cats! I can't recommend it enough, if you have space in your home or time in your schedule to take in a foster, it's an amazing thing to do!

But let's talk about ice cream. Specifically, strawberry ripple and shortbread ice cream. I am somewhat of a newbie to making my own ice cream, but I can see how addictive it can be. The sky is literally your limit when it comes to flavour combinations, and it tastes so much better than the store bought version, particularly when you use fresh, seasonal ingredients. Strawberries are just starting to come into full swing here in NYC, so it made sense that they would be next on my list of ice cream additions! I love an ice cream that is interesting enough to be a dessert on its own, rather than just an accompaniment. So to help elevate the flavours and add a little texture, I added in some homemade shortbread. The crunch of the shortbread against the creamy vanilla ice cream base and the sweet strawberry ripple is pretty awesome if you ask me. This definitely isn't going to be the last time that I add cookies to ice cream. This would make the perfect summer dessert. Or anytime dessert. I had it for breakfast yesterday. It has fruit in it, so therefore it's healthy, right?! Right.

A few wee notes:

I used an ice cream maker for this recipe. I recently purchased it (I got the attachment for my mixer) and was slightly skeptical to begin with, but i'm totally in love with it now! Ensure that you freeze the bowl overnight before making this.
I have included a recipe for a full batch of shortbread - you only use 200g of shortbread in this recipe, so if you were wanting to only make enough for the ice-cream, I would halve the recipe, which will make more than enough. However, shortbread tends to get eaten in the space of 24 hours around here (it's really good!), so I highly recommend making the full batch. You won't regret it. Promise.
If you wanted to leave out the shortbread and just have a strawberry ripple ice-cream, that would work well too!
I like to make the custard, strawberry sauce and shortbread the day before I churn the ice-cream just to make sure everything has had a chance to cool completely.
Get the freshest, nicest looking strawberries you can. The strawberry really shines in this recipe, so making sure you have good ingredients will really help this!
I made mine in a loaf tin, which tends to work best as when it comes to assembling the ice cream, you need to layer the ice cream and the strawberry sauce.

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Answers to your baking questions

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Peach and rhubarb crumb cake

I'm the first to admit it - I'm a bit of a chicken. I find meeting new people and putting myself out there a little bit scary. I'm a huge homebody, and am most comfortable tucked up at home in comfy clothes, hiding away a little bit. So you can imagine Richard's reaction when I told him I had booked tickets to go to Alabama for the weekend, to stay with someone I had never met. Trust me, I was surprised too.

In any other situation I would have totally chickened out, but I had this underlying feeling that everything would be just fine. And of course it was. Kate has been my internet person for some time now. We met on Instagram (where I meet most of my friends these days, it's like tinder for foodies), and just clicked. We lead very different lives - Kate lives in Selma, Alabama, in a real life house with her family, which includes two kids who are quite possibly some of the cutest in the entire world, while I am in a teeny shoebox here in busy NYC, which is currently filled with kittens tearing up my apartment.

It was one of the best weekends I have had in a very, very long time. Alabama couldn't be more different from NYC, and Kate is the sweetest, loveliest person. From the moment I got in the car it didn't feel like we were meeting for the first time. We spent the weekend baking up a storm. I got all the baby cuddles I wanted. Miss Aimee was a total heart melter (how can your heart not be melted by a teeny sassy two year old who calls you 'Miss Erin'). My theory that people wear full camo in the south was proven to be right. 😉 I ate a 'rib sandwich' that was a bbq rib, surrounded by 3 pieces of white bread. Come Sunday I was really bummed to leave. But of course, there was cake.

And not just any cake. This here is a Peach and Rhubarb crumb cake. It starts with a soft vanilla cake, slightly tangy and dense from the addition of sour cream. It is then covered with a mixture of fresh peach and rhubarb, tossed in sugar, and finished off with a brown butter streusel, which is quite possibly one of the best things I have ever tasted. The fruit cooks down and lightly soaks the top of the cake, and each bite is lifted by the addition of the crunchy brown butter streusel. We ended up testing this recipe 5 or 6 times, each tweak improving the recipe slightly, experimenting with different fruit and quantities of streusel. And I think we are onto a winner here. This is going to be my go-to this summer, topped with whatever fruit is in season. It is fuss-free, you can transport and serve it from the tin that it is cooked in, and it is amazing either fresh and warm from the oven, or at room temperature.

You can make this with whatever fruit you have on hand! Kate has the recipe for a raspberry and rhubarb version on her blog, while I have included a peach and rhubarb variation. Either way check out her site - the food is beautiful, and I can tell you now she's amazing in real life too.

A few wee notes:

This cake is extremely versatile - you can use whatever fruit you have on hand. I made it with frozen rhubarb as a test - keep the rhubarb frozen and adjust the cooking time slightly so that you don't lose the moisture it gives while the fruit defrosts.
If you don't have sour cream on hand you can sub greek yoghurt
It can be kind of tricky to tell when the cake is cooked, as the fruit and streusel tends to hide things slightly, and the fruit can coat your cake tester. If you notice cake batter on your tester, leave it in the oven for a bit longer, but make sure you are not mistaking fruit juice for uncooked batter.
If you are using ripe, sweet peaches, you will likely only require about 2 Tbsp brown sugar, however if they are slightly tart, adjust the sugar by adding an additional tablespoon

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Answers to your baking questions

Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:

I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!

Roasted rhubarb brioche doughnuts

Brioche doughnuts, roasted rhubarb, vanilla bean pastry cream, and vanilla sugar

This week has been ridiculous. We are currently exhibiting at design week, which all kicks off tonight. Yesterday was a 12 hour install, which is always exhausting. Usually we are pretty quick at those, but yesterday's dragged out - nothing really went wrong, it just all took forever. Thankfully we are done with that now, and can concentrate on design week fun!

Let's just take a moment to talk about doughnuts though. As much as I love cake, I think I quite possibly love doughnuts more. There is something about a perfectly fried dough, either glazed with an interesting flavour or stuffed with some sort of exciting filling that really gets me going. The contrast of the sweet filling or glaze against an enriched fluffy dough is the best. And I love how versatile they are - you can make an entire batch, and finish them off in as many ways as you would like.

Rhubarb season has just started here in NYC, and I almost feel a bit panicked to put it in as many things as I possibly can before it disappears from the greenmarket again. It grows year-round in New Zealand so I am used to having constant access to it, so this limited time period thing is kind of balls. I'm definitely going to make the most of it though - there are a few rhubarb recipes coming your way in the next few weeks so that you can make the most of it too! Including these doughnuts.

These doughnuts are really something else. A fluffy brioche dough, a vanilla bean pastry cream, roasted rhubarb, and then finished off with a vanilla sugar. The combination of flavours compliments each other perfectly. The sharp tart flavour of the rhubarb stands up to the sweet custardy pastry cream, and the vanilla sugar highlights the vanilla paste that is tossed with the rhubarb and stirred through the pastry cream. It seems like a lot of elements, but each one has a well-deserved place. Rhubarb and custard are one of my favourite flavour combinations - I could have eaten all of these in one go, so had to take the rest to Jill's to get them out of my sight.

Rhubarb is notoriously sour, so I roasted it with a little vanilla bean and sugar to help take the edge off. It also makes it the most beautiful colour, and any leftover is perfect stirred through yoghurt, eaten with granola, or just straight up spooned into your mouth.

A few wee notes:

The pastry cream is best made the day before or at least a few hours before you begin to make the doughnuts, so that it has time to cool completely.
Rhubarb can be roasted while the doughnuts are proofing - just make sure that it is cool before you fill the doughnuts with it
I made these using a stand mixer - you can most definitely do it by hand, but it will take a serious amount of elbow grease, and you will need to ensure that the butter is extremely well incorporated when you add it in.
The vanilla sugar ideally needs a little time to dry out, so make it just after you put the brioche dough on.
A thermometer will be your friend when you are frying dough. I love this one - it has an alarm on it which makes it super easy to use.
Most of the recipe is in grams. Ounces don't tend to be specific enough for pastry recipes. A kitchen scale is an excellent investment.
I love using vanilla paste in my recipes - My favourite is this brand (I buy it by the litre), but the seeds of a vanilla bean will work just as well.
Ensure that you do not over proof the doughnuts once they are cut out. The sign of a well proved doughnut is a small ring of pale dough around the middle of the doughnut.

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Cheeseboard with zucchini relish

It's happened. It almost happened overnight. New York has become a smelly, sweaty puddle of angry people, AKA summer. Yesterday I was wearing leggings and a long top (as per usual - I look like I have been dragged through a bush 90% of the time), and today I am all of the sweaty. So gross. I closed the windows and snuck the aircon on today 'for the kittens', because mama cat gets too hot and crazy stressed as soon as I even think about turning on the oven, so I gotta keep it pleasant for her. That's what i'm saying anyway. The kittens are suddenly almost 6 weeks, and have grown up so fast from teeny little squirmy sausages to the cutest things IN THE WORLD. I am low key obsessed with them, and I am already scared about saying goodbye to them. Does anyone want to adopt them? Ideally you will be ok with me coming around every day to snuggle them. I'll bring treats. I promise!

One of the only good things about this gross hot weather, aside from day drinking and excessive amounts of rosé, is cheese boards! Actually, that is a lie, cheese boards are amazing all year round, but there is something about sitting outside with friends and having an epic cheese board!

I usually have at least 5 types of cheese in my fridge at any given time, because I am often hungry when I go to whole foods and therefore have zero control, which results in excessive cheese purchasing. The number of cheese I have at any given time has only increased since I started spending time with my New York Mum, who is the cheese wizard. Every time I go around to her house I try a new crazy sort of cheese that she has, get addicted to it, and have to immediately make a special trip just to buy it. We went on a little adventure yesterday and ended up at a whole foods, where I got even more types to try! The best.

I tend to just throw whatever I have in the fridge on the board. I usually try to go for something soft, something harder, something interesting, and something goaty, and then just some interesting add-ons, something sweet, and some sort of relish. This time I went with a cumin seed gouda, a marinated sheep and goat feta that I am OBSESSED WITH and you must try immediately, and a Vermont Creamery Coupole. I had plans to also pop on a bit of sharp cheddar, but I think I got hungry and carried away, and found it on the bench after the shoot. I also added some almonds for a bit of texture, a really nice salami, and some preserved lemons, because they go on / in everything these days since I made a giant jar a few months ago. Then there was a little brick of home-made quince paste, which I inadvertently made a GIANT TRAY of back in quince season (will share the recipe this season), so we are still working our way though it 6 months later. Luckily it keeps well. I finished the board off with some crackers, a little fresh mint, and a home-made zucchini relish, which has become a total fave in our house!

The relish is a cheese board game changer. When we have guests round for dinner (which is usually 2-3 times a week because I much prefer having people round than going out), I plonk whatever cheese I have in the fridge on a board, and pop a jar of the relish next to it, so everyone can just make their own snacks. The relish is a lovely combination of sweet and tart, and is crazy easy to make. I always, always get asked for the recipe, so figured I would finally pop it up here! Provided you grate and sweat the zucchini and onion ahead of time, the actual cooking process is only about 20 minutes, and is super easy to scale if you were wanting to make a bigger batch. It's also great on sandwiches, sausages, scones, stirred into quiche, anything that needs a little lift in flavour.

A few wee notes:

If you are planning to store this, make sure that you have sterilised jars. I tend to use pint-sized mason jars, and I give the glass jars 15-20 minutes in the oven to kill any bugs. Make sure that you always use new lids - these can be bought separately.
Use a larger pot than you think you will need - this has turmeric in it, so splashes can stain easily. I like to also use plastic or metal utensils rather than wood to avoid turning them yellow.
Provided you get a good seal on your jars, this can be kept at room temperature until you are ready to use it. Once it is open, store it in the fridge.

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Sage salted caramel ice-cream pops

I got a couple of exciting things in the mail the last few weeks. I finally took the plunge and got an ice cream attachment for my kitchenaid, and, because it's finally starting to feel warm here, which means it's nearly ice-block season, I got a popsicle mould that doesn't suck like my last one did!

The most exciting thing that came in the mail though, which prompted the purchase of the other items, was the lovely Lily's new book! I have yet to meet Lily in person, although we have met over facetime a month or so ago when I offered up Richard's adobe expertise (poor guy, it happens often), and I can't wait to finally meet IRL one day! Lily has a beautiful wee corner of the internet where she shares amazing recipes, and her book is the most perfect extension of that. I've already made the roasted strawberry and basil cream pie, and I am eyeing up loads more recipes to make in the coming months.

Lily's book is everything I imagined it to be, and so much more (Plus it arrived packaged with a bag of lavender oat bath soak, meaning that it also smells amazing). It is divided into chapters by herbs, and each recipe is accompanied by an amazing story. Although the first thing I made from the book was from the basil chapter, I had been eyeing up the sage section since long before this book was released. And it did NOT disappoint. I took my ice cream maker and popsicle moulds on their maiden voyage, and made the sage salted caramel ice-cream from the book. The recipe in the book is just for regular ice-cream, but I couldn't resist popping some into my new moulds, just to make sure they worked!

This is quite possibly one of the best ice-creams I have ever tasted. It starts with a sage salted caramel (which is amazing in itself, and i'm totally making again to put on everything), which is then added to a sage infused custard. The whole lot then takes a twirl in the ice cream maker, and the result is nothing short of incredible. It is rich, but also delicately flavoured. The sage cuts through the creaminess perfectly, and the whole thing is rounded off by a drizzle of extra caramel. I made it both in a freezer-safe container as scoop-able ice cream, and also in the moulds to make ice-cream pops. Both worked perfectly!

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Raspberry, lemon and almond cake

Raspberry and Almond cake - a perfectly dense almond meal cake, lightly scented with lemon, and with a layer of fresh raspberries baked into each layer. Layered with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and more fresh raspberries. perfect for Mother's day or any other special occasion.

Spring is finally here! There's rhubarb, and ramps, and peonies, and lilacs, and green things at the farmer's market, which for me is a sure sign that shitty NYC winter is gone, and shitty NYC summer is on it's way! Living the dream, I tell you. I have been spending the majority of my days smack bang in front of the kitten's cage. I just can't believe how quickly they have grown - we now have 5 energetic little pocket rockets, who all have their own personalities. I am so in love with each and every one of them, and have a strange feeling I am going to have a very, very hard time saying goodbye once they are old enough to be adopted.

Something else that is also on the way is Mother's day! Even though my own Mum lives a zillion million miles away in New Zealand, I put this one together with her in mind. It sucks being so far away on special occasions (and all occasions really, it just sucks in general). She isn't a fan of chocolate, or anything too sweet (clearly I inherited Dad's taste buds), so I went with an almond meal, lemon, and raspberry combination, with minimal amounts of buttercream. I had been keeping it in the back of my mind for a while, and then when the lovely Sarah surprised me with this beautiful pink cake plate in the mail, I knew exactly what had to go on top!

This cake tastes like spring. Layers of cake, dense from the almond meal, are lightly scented with lemon, and then offset with the tartness of a good handful of raspberries pressed into the top of each layer. I wanted the flavours to really shine, so I sandwiched the layers with a small amount of vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, and finished with more raspberries. I decided to keep things naked this time. Ayyyeeee. The overall finished product is a cake that isn't too sweet, and perfect for any celebration. The cake batter itself is fairly neutral flavoured, so I would think that it would work with berries, stone fruit, rhubarb, etc. You could probably even pop some apples in the top. I can't wait to try it with some lemon curd between the layers too! Yummmm. I have a feeling this is going to be a standard go-to when I am needing a non-chocolate cake.

A few wee things:

I made this in 3 6 inch cake tins. It resulted in three quite tall layers, so therefore a fairly high cake once it was stacked with buttercream. It could definitely be made in two 8 inch layers, and stacked up to make a shorter cake - just make sure to adjust the baking time.
I went with a naked finish which uses a fairly small amount of buttercream. If you were wanting to frost this on the outside of the cake, increase the ratios of ingredients in the buttercream to 140g egg whites, 140g sugar, and 4 sticks (450g) butter.
If fresh raspberries aren't in season, frozen work just as well in the top of the cake, and you can either leave them out between the layers, or use frozen, although be aware that they will bleed when they defrost.
I initially decorated this with baby's breath, but was slightly unsure on the look, so went with a pile of raspberries instead, which are great for adding a little freshness when serving. I popped a photo of the baby's breath version down below for you to see too though!

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Carrot cake with cream cheese icing

Easter weekend!! We don't really have a huge amount planned - work as usual! We are meant to be getting some foster kittens tomorrow (!!), but they have cancelled on us so many times that I'm not letting myself get excited until they are actually here. Aside from that we might make a few photography surfaces - we are having a surface making weekend soonish with some friends, so Rich and I just want to have a sneaky wee practice first to make sure there aren't any big hurdles that we haven't thought about before we get to the real deal!

I did however make a carrot cake yesterday, which to me is the perfect easter cake! (I'm not sure why though, maybe because rabbits eat carrots? Who knows). I just went with my standard carrot cake recipe, baked into 3 six inch tins. The thing that I really like about this recipe is that it bakes very flat, so there is minimal leveling to be done once it comes to stacking time!

I also had a play around with some cream cheese icing recipes. In the past my cream cheese icing has been super floppy and soft (yummmmmm hahah), which makes it hopeless when it comes to piping and transportation. However if you add too much butter or sugar, it loses that punchy cream cheese flavour and you end up with something that tastes more like American Buttercream. So I made three different batches, each with different ratios of cream cheese : butter : icing sugar, and I think I managed to come up with a happy medium! This recipe still has a cream cheese taste, isn't too sweet or grainy, and sets up nicely in the fridge. It also pipes well, which to me is a huge win.

I was originally going to decorate this with a few blobs here and there, but once I got started I realised that it was far too fun piping the blobs, and I had icing to use up, so I went for it! Mini eggs somehow made their way on there too at some point. This method of decoration is super easy and crazy effective - I just filled four piping bags with different coloured buttercream. Each was fitted with a different size french piping tip, and from there I just piped blobs all over the cake, adding in mini eggs here and there! I used an ateco 866 tip, and three wilton tips - the 32, 4b, and 21, but you could really use any size here, these were just the ones that I pulled out of my decorating box first! You can't go wrong with this decorating method - it's a great way to use up excess buttercream, you don't have to worry too much about a super smooth under coat, and it would be a fun project to make with kids! Plus. Carrot cake and cream cheese. Can't go wrong really.

A few wee things:

I made this in 3 6-inch cake tins. I totally understand that not everyone will have these, so you could also make it in two 8-inch tins, or just do it all in one 10-inch tin and slice it in half before filling! Just ensure that you adjust the cooking time accordingly if you make it in a larger tin - approx 45 minutes for 8-inch tins, and 50-60 minutes for a 10-inch. Check it with a skewer in the centre of the cake - you want it to come out clean.
The blobs use up a fair amount of buttercream. If you were just wanting to do a standard carrot cake with cream cheese icing and not have the blobs, I have included two quantities of ingredients down below. It would also look nice with just a super rustic coat of icing, and topped with some easter eggs.
I found that the trick to a nice firm cream cheese icing which was best for piping was to use cold cream cheese, and butter that is only just at room temperature, to make sure that it stays nice and firm. I also popped it in the fridge while I was waiting for the crumb coat of the cake to chill down, and just gave it a good stir before using it again. If at any time you find it is getting too soft, just return it to the fridge for 10-15 minutes. The icing in the piping bags was at room temp for well over two hours, along with being handled, and still held its shape well though, so you should be fine!

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Espresso Honey S'mores

Honey marshmallows and dark chocolate sandwiched between espresso graham crackers. The perfect anytime treat. Amazing toasted, or as they are.

S'mores aren't really a thing in New Zealand. We don't have graham crackers, and our marshmallows don't go anywhere near as melty as the American ones. So our versions were always kinda crappy, but still delicious and sugar coma inducing nonetheless. Whenever we went on holiday to the States, they always seemed like a huge treat.

Over the last year or so I have made my own marshmallow a few times. I am always super surprised at how it becomes this bouncy pillow of squishy amazingness, with the ability to totally destroy your kitchen (Trust me on this - never attempt to put marshmallow in a piping bag without some sort of aid. I found it in my ear like, a week later, and had to wipe down 3 of my 4 kitchen walls). However, I have managed to develop a couple of coping strategies that makes marshmallows a much less stressful situation than they used to be, so now I make them on the regular! The super fun bit is that you can flavour them with anything that is liquid / soluble in liquid!

These S'mores were a product of another amazing baking day with my friend / NYC Mum Jill! We always have the best time ever - and we are slowly getting more productive as the days go on, which can likely be attributed to the fact that the days are getting longer, which prolongs the race to get the last few shots before the light fades. However, Jill just got a new PUPPY who is the cutest ever, so productivity levels are TBC for the near future I think, which I'm totally fine with, because PUPPY.

We were both lucky enough to have been sent some beautiful patterned rolling pins from our friends over at Propped, so we wanted to come up with something which would help show them off. We used a graham cracker recipe from Dorie Greenspan's amazing book, riffing on it slightly and adding espresso to give the crackers a deeper flavour profile. We paired them with some honey marshmallows, drizzled them in dark chocolate, and there we were! And oh my goodness. The flavours compliment each other perfectly - there is a little honey in the graham crackers, accentuated by the lovely honey flavour in the marshmallow, and the dark chocolate ties it all together. 100% would make again. (100% have made again, and it's only been a week since we made these!) The rolling pins also did an amazing job at imprinting the cookies with their pattern - we carefully rolled the pin over the dough just before placing into the freezer.

A few wee things:

We added espresso to the crackers - if you aren't a coffee person, simply skip the coffee, and up the cinnamon to 1 teaspoon
Marshmallow can be super sticky and messy if you let it. A good way to avoid this is to have everything ready to go before you start - have your tin greased, and some "marshmallow dust", which is equal parts icing sugar and corn starch, ready for dusting.
A lightly oiled spatula will be your best friend when you are smoothing down the marshmallow. Once it is fairly flat, you can also get in there with wet fingers and finish off the smoothing.
When you cut the marshmallow, dust the knife with marshmallow dust between cuts to help reduce stickiness.
Take care to not over whip your marshmallow. 5-7 minutes seems to be the sweet spot!
You need a stand mixer for the marshmallows, because they tend to take some heavy whipping. A candy thermometer is also super important. I use this one, which is perfect for me because it has an alarm on it! A scale will also be handy - measuring volume of honey sucks. Weighing it is way easier. Trust me.
We made the marshmallow in these photos in a 9" x 9" tin, however I re-tested with a 9" x 13" and found that it made a much more manageable size when it comes to eating them!

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Earl Grey Buns

An earl grey infused dough, filled with an earl grey and brown sugar mixture, baked until caramelized, then finished with an earl grey infused glaze. A slightly different take on the classic cinnamon roll.

This week has been kinda weird. We have had three weeks straight of visitors. Which has been amazing, particularly as 10 days of that was my Dad! We had the best time ever. The downside though, is that going back to reality isn't really a whole lot of fun, particularly with Dad leaving. I am TERRIBLE at saying goodbye to him.

I have been struggling with really bad homesickness the last year or so. Like, REALLY bad homesickness. Which is kind of strange and hard to explain, because living on the other side of the world is definitely finite for us, and plans are in place to move home in the next two years or so (When the L train shuts?). Something will set me off, and it becomes a pretty quick downward spiral to being a non-productive shit. I find leaving New Zealand super tricky, and the slightest thing at home or in my life here can trigger it, which in turn triggers this weird anxiety. While staying home and hiding is the easiest option, it's not productive nor helpful for the situation. I have found that keeping busy, and sticking to a really strict routine helps. A 7am gym class that I force myself to go to regardless of how shitty I am feeling. Dinner at approximately the same time each evening. A time period that vaguely resembles a bedtime. All these little things really help to keep me grounded. And tired enough that I sleep well.

That and friends here in the city, who are always down to hang out! Living in a big city and working from home can get mighty lonely, but it seems a lot of us are in the same boat. I have met some incredible people through the food community, who have become IRL friends as well as instagram friends. Special shoutout to Jill, who has let me adopt myself into her family, and is always there with the hugs, cats, delicious food and the comfiest couch ever when it is needed. We have the best time totally trashing her kitchen, and some happy messes always come out at the end of the day!

A plus side of staying at home a lot is that you can obsessively recipe test. These buns were made in my kitchen on three different occasions throughout the week. The best. I dunno about you, but earl grey buns three times in a week is definitely something that I can get behind.

If you haven't had earl grey in a baked good / dessert before, you are seriously missing out. Unless you have a serious aversion to the flavour (mum reckons it tastes like swamp water?!?), it is a lovely addition, which takes the flavour profile up a notch. Personally I think it should be added to everything that can be infused - does it have milk or water in it? Yup? Infuse with earl grey? Does it have coffee? Yup? Sub it out with strong tea! I also like to add Bergamot extract to help enhance the flavour a little more.

I incorporated the earl grey into these in a few ways. I made an earl grey infused sugar, which went into the dough, filling and glaze. The milk in the recipe was infused with tea, which lightly coloured and flavoured the dough and glaze. I also added a little bergamot extract into the dough, which just helped pick the flavour up a notch. Even with the earl grey in all these forms, it's still not a kick-in-the-face flavour, just nice and subtle. The filling melts down to make a sticky earl grey situation at the bottom of the buns, which is just the best ever. Perfect straight out of the oven, with a hot drink.

I baked these in a 10" cast iron skillet, but they would work just as well in a lined cake tin or baking dish. I rolled out a 21 x 16" rectangle of dough, which resulted in a fairly long, skinny roll, which yielded 10 buns. If you wanted these a little bigger, I would make the rectangle of dough a little smaller (to make them a bit fatter), and cut into fewer pieces. Either way you can't go wrong.

If you were wanting to make these ahead of time, you can either do the first proof in the fridge and then roll out, fill, roll out and proof the next day, or you could get them to the filled and rolled stage, then do the second proof overnight. Just be sure to give them an hour or two on the bench to warm up slightly, and make sure they have puffed up and expanded in size before baking.

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Blood Orange Chess Pie

Far out. I am SO ready for spring. So, so done with this winter business. AND I'm totally being an ungrateful bastard, because we bailed back to NZ for the month of February, so we don't really have anything to complain about seeing as we weren't even here for a month of winter. But STILL. I can't wait for our CSA to start, and for there to be more fruit than just last year's apples, (Rhubarb!?!), and the start of fresh berry season, and just for my eyeballs to stop feeling like they are going to freeze.

The only good thing about this winter sticking around situation (apart from not having a sweat moustache on the subway), is the citrus! I was kind of worried that I had missed blood orange season while we were away, but I was so stoked to come back and see that they were still here! I love the colour of them, and the amazing flavour that they lend to whatever you put them in.

Single Crust Pie - Blood Orange Chess Pie

I had been eyeing up the lemon chess pie in the Four and Twenty Blackbirds pie book for a while (best book ever BTW), especially after the lovely Tessa made such a pretty version! I had some blood oranges that needed using, so I subbed the lemon juice in the custard for blood orange. It came out the most amazing pink colour! I was a little nervous baking it, as it was my first chess pie, but I made sure to watch it super carefully in the oven to make sure that it didn't overcook and cause the custard to split. The top of the pie went a nice golden brown colour, and underneath there was the pretty pink custard, which was lightly flavoured with the orange. So so good, and such a nice change from the double lattice pies I am used to falling back on.

The crust for this pie is par-baked before the filling is added in. I followed Tessa's tip and added a braid after the par-bake, but before the filling. I went for my usual trick and ran the dough through the pasta attachment on my kitchen aid, before doing a five-strand fishtail braid. I managed to get long enough pieces that I could do the braid all in one go, but I had to enlist the help of Rich to give me a bit of a hand! We made sure to calculate the circumference of the pie tin before we began, to make sure that we had enough braid to go the whole way around.

If you want to keep this as a lemon pie, just sub the blood orange juice for lemon! Easy as.

For more recipes with Blood Orange, check out:

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Blueberry Lavender Pie

We are baaaaack! It's a super weird feeling. Each time we are in New Zealand I don't want to leave a little more than the last time, and this last trip I was somehow homesick before we even got on the plane to come back to America. Rich got a fever on the plane and was super sick, so we got minimal sleep. I of course managed to catch it off him, and it turned out to be this gross super cold so we have both spent the last week hiding away trying to fight it off. Not quite the idea I had in my mind of hitting the ground running and jumping straight back into routine to combat homesickness, but these things happen.

It feels like this year has already been all allocated! I had a grand plan to somehow make it to Italy this year, but I already feel kinda stressed about fitting it in! My goodness. It just feels like we are busy already?

What is coming up soon though is Pie Day! The 14th of March is the big day! I find it kind of funny because in New Zealand we write the date with the day first, so if we had it our way then pie day couldn't exist, but for now this is the one time I am grateful for the confusing way America writes things. I was looking through my instagram the other day, and for pie day last year I made my very first Pie crust! It was a total piece of crap and 100% fell apart, but I was very proud of myself. I like to think I have come a little way in the grand scheme of pie in the last year - it's currently one of my favourite things. I love how versatile it is, it's easy to make ahead, and provided you have dough and some form of fruit, you can totally make a recipe up on the fly. I have a couple of pie ideas hiding up my sleeve, so I will try and get them all up before the 14th!

This one is super simple - a blueberry lavender pie. Although blueberries aren't in season in America at the moment they most definitely are in New Zealand. They tend to be readily available still in supermarkets in the U.S. though, so if you were wanting a little hit of summer in this gross winter, this is for you too! Blueberries alone are amazing, but accentuated with a subtle hint of lavender, this pie has another level of flavour to it. If you are not a lavender person by all means feel free to leave it out. (I love it, but totally understand that some people think that it tastes like hand cream). The fruit cooks down to an amazing jammy texture, and pairs so well with the flaky pastry.

I used pie stamps on the top of the pie - they are a really easy way to make the top look super pretty. You could do a simple lattice, or just cut out rounds with a shot glass and arrange them on the surface of the fruit. Anything goes really, provided you end up with some sort of crust arrangement on the top of the pie!

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Chocolate stout cookies with coffee german buttercream

We are on the home stretch on our time in NZ! And OH MAN I am not looking forward to going back to NYC. I love our life there, but there's just something about New Zealand thats so much more 'home'. Hopefully if we get all of our ducks in a line we can move home in a few years - we have already put some of the wheels in motion in order to move so the next few years will be focussing on getting everything together to make the move. We met with a mortgage consultant today - even though we are married, live in a different country and have a business, the concept of borrowing money feels like EXTREME adulting in comparison! It also gives me a great excuse to look at real estate on the internet, which is easily one of my favourite activities, along with making pinterest boards about my future kitchen!

Another thing that has been so amazing about being home is the food. The first week was filled with fresh fruit, real fruit ice cream and all the things we had missed, then I went down to Wellington for a few days. For those not from New Zealand, Wellington is the capital city, and has an amazing food scene. I was staying with a friend who is just as interested in eating as I am, so we had an incredible time trying all of the new places that have popped up since I was here last!

While I was there I was also lucky enough to be a small part of a pretty awesome collaboration that was happening! If you haven't heard of the shoe brand Allbirds, you owe it to yourself to do a sneaky wee google. They are a San Francisco / New Zealand based business who make crazy awesome shoes from Merino wool! I have a couple of pairs - they are crazy comfy, and the companies morals and ethics are incredible. I was lucky enough to come across the lovely Lucy on Instagram, and after a bit of back and forth we worked out that we would both be in Wellington at the same time so should probably do something exciting together!

Allbirds did a special collaboration with three amazing Wellington based businesses - Coffee Supreme, Wellington Chocolate Factory, and Garage Project Beer. They had a bunch of events, and designed a shoe inspired by each company! I was there for the launch party right at the beginning, which was a huge amount of fun. My wee contribution was to design a cookie recipe which would be the takeaway 'goodie bag' of the evening - something which encompassed all three of these companies and the amazing product that they create.

And this was the result! I went with a dark chocolate cookie, which has a solid amount of dark beer in it, making it soft and almost whoopie pie-ish, sandwiched together with a coffee infused german buttercream. The cookie is rich and dark, with a teeny hint of beer, and the buttercream is not too sweet and silky in texture, so ties everything together perfectly. I developed the recipe and then Lucy had a local bakery in Wellington make them. This was my first time developing a recipe for someone else to make on a large scale so I was a little nervous but they turned out amazingly!

Thanks so much to Allbirds for having me! I had the best time ever.

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Honey lavender cake with vanilla german buttercream and lavender ganache drip

Honey lavender cake with vanilla german buttercream and lavender milk chocolate ganache drip

Honey lavender cake with vanilla german buttercream and lavender chocolate ganache drip

Honey lavender cake with vanilla german buttercream and lavender ganache drip

We made it to New Zealand! I have been eating ALL of the food, and visiting all of the supermarkets. So much fun! So much amazing weather too. Every time I come home I forget how much I have missed it. I'm already dreading leaving, particularly with all the shit that is going on in the States right now. It is our job to stand up and fight, but my goodness it is tempting to just hide in my safe little country forever.

This cake always reminds me of home - It was the top tier of our wedding cake (which was a monster, and was my first ever stacked cake! I made it out only mildly traumatised), so holds a very special place in my heart. I always pair it with german buttercream, which in my opinion is the perfect buttercream - not intensely butter tasting, and you can infuse it with anything because it is custard based, so you can steep the milk with whatever you like before turning it into pastry cream. I went with an ombre finish on the cake, which is actually way way easier than it looks - you just crumb coat the cake, then spread lots of one colour at the top, lots of another at the bottom and then a mixture in between, then smooth it out and you are good to go! You can do whatever colour you like, and if you aren't happy with the finish, it is super easy to just spread on more colour where needed and re smooth!

I finished it off with a ganache drip, which I infused with more lavender. I love drip cakes but somehow never get around to doing them. I find that making sure the cake is very well chilled and the ganache a little more set than you think it needs to be always helps. Allow a good two hours to set your cake before you add the ganache drip, or under-compensate when you are adding them, because they will drip further down than you expect!

I added a little baby's breath on the top becuase I am a sucker for fresh flowers, but you could totally sub these for your favourite flower, or leave them out. Just ensure that if necessary, the ends of the stems are well taped before touching the cake.

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Triple Lemon Cake

Zesty lemon yoghurt cake, lemon curd, and lemon curd swiss meringue buttercream

Are you a new years resolution person? I used to be. I would carefully make myself a secret list, and then would head into the new year with great intentions and expectations, only to of course drop the ball about mid February (about the same time the gym starts to empty out after the January 'resolutioners' rush), and end up disappointed in myself. I tend to be way way too hard on myself, and end up working myself up into a big mess. This year I'm just going to try and do more of the things that make me happy. Which involves staying in on a Saturday if I want to (who are we kidding here, thats not an uncommon occurrence), and spending all day crocheting endless piles of wool while binge watching terrible shows when the need strikes. It also involves dinner parties on a Friday (possibly my favourite activity in the world), making more things, worrying less about what people think, and concentrating more on what I want. (Maybe I am still a resolution person?) I have also set myself a little goal of making an attempt to be more on time for things. I hate rushing, and somehow always end up putting myself in a situation where I am scrambling to get somewhere on time. I've started getting up five minutes earlier than I usually do, which means that I arrive at my 7am spin class with enough time to not be rushing in stressed. And damn, it is a good feeling!

This year also involves going a little easier on myself. I feel like the need to not have huge expectations of myself and the inevitable disappointment is even more important now that I live far away from home. It's a really weird feeling living a country so removed from home, and knowing that for at least the next few years, this is where you are going to be based. I've been here for two and a half years, and I feel like I'm still not used to parts of it. It's even more weird when you outstay lots of your friends - a lot of them come on one year visas, which then expire, and they head home. It's a very strange cycle of people entering your life, having an amazing time with them, and all of a sudden it's time for them to go home, and you are still here, still doing the same thing, just without those people in your life. It means that there are phases when there are a lot of people around and it is amazing, and then also phases when it feels as if theres nobody left here. Of course there are still friends here, it's just different.

Especially in winter. We all seem to just put our heads down and try and get through winter, myself included. And it gets quiet. It's when it's quiet that the homesickness sets in. I am a HUGE homebody. There's nothing I love more than hanging out with my family. We are all incredibly close knit, and I have a huge extended family who I am very very close with. I always find that during the winter when communication from home is filled with people enjoying the beach and the summer, things start to feel a little weird. Nothing seems exciting anymore, I get really really sick of the cold, and I have this underlying feeling of just wanting to be back in New Zealand. It also just happens to be a solid 25 hours of travel to get home, so it is times like that when the distance really becomes obvious. I usually end up trying to ignore it, and slowly just reverting into a little hole filled with all the things that I can find to make it bearable, followed by a minor meltdown, realising that I am homesick, and then making an effort to snap myself out of it. And then, I rinse and repeat. So this year is about recognising all of this early, and taking the steps to try and prevent the inevitable. We head home in two weeks for a good month at home, which is going to help a lot.

I am so, so lucky to have some amazing friends here though who really, really feel like family, and of course Rich, who is everything I could ever ask for. I spent the day yesterday with my amazing friend Jill. She has taken me under her wing a little and made me feel a part of the furniture at her place, and I honestly can't be more grateful. I always feel a little silly when I get upset about being far away from home (I'm 25, time to put on my big girl pants), but sometimes it just happens, and you need your Mum. Yesterday was exactly what I needed - we made pie and fluffed around in the kitchen chatting, then Rich came around for dinner with her and her family. When you are so used to a full noise family, you really miss being surrounded by people and food, and it was the most amazing feeling being back in that environment.

Cake always gives me a sense of family - I often make it to take to events. There are few things that are more comforting than providing food for others to enjoy. It's what I grew up associating with family.

This cake was a birthday present for a close friend of ours. The cake within is a dense lemon yoghurt cake that is a favourite of mine (it was the second tier of our wedding cake!) and the layers are sandwiched with punchy lemon curd, and fluffy swiss meringue buttercream which has more of the curd beaten into it, giving it a light and delicate lemon flavour. Curd and meringue based buttercream are the ultimate dream team - the curd uses egg yolks, while the buttercream uses up the whites, eliminating leftover whites or yolks that inevitably get thrown out despite your best intentions.

This recipe makes a large 8 inch cake, which would do you well for 12-14 servings, so perfect for a party. You could easily halve the cake recipe and bake the mixture in 6 inch tins, yielding a smaller cake. I finished this cake with a texture which came from an icing comb on the edge of one of my cake scrapers, but it would look amazing with a smooth finish, or with a rustic coat of buttercream. This cake actually did end up with a rustic coating - I rushed out the door with it before cooling it properly, meaning the buttercream was still a little soft, and the layers slid around a little on themselves while we were in the uber, making for an interesting re-structure once we arrived at our friend's. I managed to put it back together and gave it a quick rustic finish, and it looked like it had never had a fail!

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Gluten Free, Dairy Free Peanut butter cookies

My goodness, this week has been a shit show. Both Rich and I got hideous colds. Not just bad colds but the In bed for a week colds. THE WORST. Thankfully early January isn't too busy for us so we were able to hide away in our apartment until we weathered the sick storm. Of course now it is safe to come out it's bloody freezing outside. Can't win.

Today I finally felt better, so of course it was time to make cookies! I have made these a bunch of times but never gotten around to sharing them. bought a few sometimes from our local smoothie shop without realising that I had the recipe sitting at home. They are from the Ovenly cookbook, which is one of my faves, but I also took a lot of notes from the Queen herself, Deb of Smitten Kitchen. These cookies only have four ingredients - Peanut butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla. You simply whisk it all up, scoop them out, and bang them in the oven and it is a done deal! They are fudgy on the inside, and a lovely level of sweetness, balanced out by flaky sea salt on the top. They also happen to be dairy and gluten free, by some sort of happy accident (which in my opinion is the best way!). THE BEST EVER AND YOU HAVE TO TRY THESE.

I followed Deb's tips and froze the mixture both before scooping and before baking to help keep the striations on the top, but you can most definitely just scoop them out straight away if you are strapped for time / aren't as worried about the look of the tops. I used a ¼ cup sized cookie scoop, which gave me 12 cookies, but you could use a 2 Tbsp scoop to make twice as many. If you don't have a cookie scoop in your life, I strongly suggest that you get one right away, they are a game changer (I have about four and use them all as much as each other)

Ovenly suggests that you use Skippy peanut butter, which is, for those not from America, a smooth, more heavily processed peanut butter, as it helps them hold their shape well (For NZers, Kraft Smooth would work really well, otherwise any smooth peanut butter will work perfectly! I'm a big Eta or sanitarium fan)

I converted both the peanut butter and sugar measurements into grams because I dunno about you, but measuring peanut butter with a cup seems to be a recipe for disaster. If you don't have scales, I highly suggest spraying the inside of the cup measure with a little baking spray before you start so that the peanut butter slides out nicely. Trust me on this one, it makes things much less sticky. And there is far less chance of getting it in your hair (Trust me on that one too)

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Lemon and lime no bake cheesecake

How was everyone's christmas? We had the best day! It was our first Christmas with just us, so we had a bunch of friends around, and ate allll of the foods (including a last minute decision to make a cake in the shape of a tree), and fluffed round for the day, which was AMAZING. The day ended with a serious game of Settlers of Catan (If you haven't played this before you gotta get on it, it's the BEST) followed by a few ridiculous rounds of Uno before everyone went back to their respective homes for a stage 5 food coma. On Boxing day we caught the train up to Providence and had three nights with our friends from Uni. We are now back, and i'm in that weird time between Christmas and New Year where i'm just a bit unsure about everything. Unsure about what our plans for next year are (lets be honest here it will likely include a lot of the same as the last few years), and just a little uneasy about what is to come. I have been distracting myself with trying to have a big clean out of drawers and wardrobes, but so far this has resulted in lots of jobs started and not finished. OH WELL. I can leave it until next year 😉

One thing I am not unsure about however, is citrus cheesecake. "No bake" cheesecake is very much the standard in New Zealand, unlike the states (Or in NYC at least) where cheesecake generally tends to be baked. Both are delicious, but I just can't go past the simplicity and ease of a no bake cheesecake. You can adapt it almost any which way, it doesn't require a water bath or worrying about it cracking, it comes together incredibly quickly, and is super easy to make ahead. I am a huge fan of making dessert ahead of time if we are going somewhere or having people over, and cheesecake is perfect for this - you can make it the morning of, or the evening before.

The base to filling ratio for this is a little on the heavy side as far as the base is concerned, so if you are a thin base person, feel free to dial it back. If you don't have easy access to limes (I know they are hideously expensive in NZ), then just double the lemon quantities and leave out the lime all together. Make sure that you use full fat cream cheese to help with the stability. I used graham crackers for my base, but you can use any sweet biscuit which processes to fine crumbs. I find it easiest to make this in a spring form tin that is lightly greased, which helps hugely with serving - you can just unclip the sides and lift off the outer of the tin, and serve it straight off the bottom of the tin.

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Earl Grey Shortbread

It is unlikely that there is a recipe that is closer to my heart than the original of this recipe. It is my Grandmother's shortbread recipe, and for me, embodies everything that is the holidays. My Grandparents used to live right on the beach, and we used to go and stay with them for six weeks every summer. I am the second youngest of 18 grandchildren, and my Grandma was most definitely the head of the family. I have so many incredible memories filled with noisy family gatherings, lots of laughs, and loads of food. Coming from a big family who always had communal meals most definitely cemented in me that food was made for sharing with those who you love, and is something that will be with me for the rest of my life.

My Grandma was the biggest advocate of showing love through food. She was not only an incredible cook, but you could tell that what made her happiest was providing food to those she loved. And her shortbread. My goodness, it really was something else. There was always a big jar of it in her pantry, and it seemed that it was always full. It used to come out every time a cup of tea was had (which in my family is fairly often). It was an absolute favourite with all members of the family. An even bigger treat was being allowed to help her make it. I got some of my love of baking from her, with many many happy hours spent standing on a chair pulled up to the bench, eating as much of the mixture as I could while helping mix the bowl.

I now have my Grandma's recipe book, and it is easily one of my most treasured possessions. Most of the recipes are hand written in her loopy writing, and there is something about the way that the method is written out that means that when I read it back to myself, I can hear her saying it.

This shortbread recipe actually came from my Great Great Grandmother. I have tweaked it slightly with the addition of Earl Grey, which adds a delicate floral flavour without being too overpowering. The earl grey flavour comes from very finely ground tea leaves, accented with a little bergamot extract (which is totally optional, I am a die hard earl grey fan so love having a strong flavour in there). I initially tried infusing the butter with tea, which produced a crazy green butter, but also shortbread with a weirdly wet exterior, which I think was due to the tea absorbing the water in the butter, which changed the consistency of the butter, resulting in a strange shortbread. Ground tea and bergamot extract yielded a much nicer finish.

For regular shortbread which is just as amazing as it's earl grey counterpart, omit the ground tea and bergamot extract.

I am so excited to be participating in the #calmandbrightcookienight virtual cookie party, which is hosted by the lovely Natalie and Holly of The Modern Proper! This year over 30 bloggers are participating, and you can check out the other posts either on TMP's own post, or by searching the hashtag on instagram.

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Christmas Baubles

Have you got your Christmas tree up yet? WE DO! It is very, VERY exciting. I have been telling Rich all year he needs to prepare himself for a christmas tree that is way bigger than what reasonably will fit into our apartment. He thought I was joking, I assured him I was not, then of course he was rudely surprised when I picked out the BIGGEST one at the corner stand and made him lug it home for me. (Its nine feet tall. We live in a NYC shoebox.) There's Christmas trees for sale on so many of the corners here, and it makes it feel so lovely and seasonal! Not to mention that christmas trees are a different species here (we have boring old pinus radiata in NZ, which is the same as what we export all over the world for wood) but the trees here smell SO GOOD and are so so pretty!

I decided this year that I was going to make my own christmas baubles! We had a bunch of clear baubles left over from a project that we did, and I have a shelf of jars that is overflowing with spices, beans, grains, dried flowers and sprinkles, so I put two and two together and it came out amazingly! It was crazy easy, and they are so much fun to do!

We got the 2", 2 ⅝" and 3" baubles, and it made a really nice mix of sizes. They should sell them at most craft shops too! They are very inexpensive (4 for $5), and you can fill them with literally anything you like, provided it is small enough to fit inside the hole! I went with fairly neutral coloured things (apart from the one filled with hundreds and thousands), but you could go crazy filling them with different coloured sand, glitter, sprinkles, bits of cut up paper, whatever you want! I found that dried flowers looked AMAZING. Next year I might go for dried flowers, and other baubles with glitter inside. Another great thing is that when you are done and would like to change your theme, you just empty them out and fill them up again!

Go crazy with the things which you put inside! Just bear in mind that they can get a little heavy if you fill them too full, so either hold back a little on things like beans and rice, or make sure that they are on really supportive branches.

A few things that I filled my baubles with:

Peppercorns (black and pink)
Dried flowers (bachelor buttons, daisies, jasmine)
Whole cloves
Tapioca pearls
Allspice balls
Cinnamon sticks
Rice (black rice, glutinous rice, white rice)
Chilli flakes
Sprinkles
Dried beans
Cardamom pods
Star Anise
Cacao Nibs
Dried Lavender
Sesame seeds (white and black)

We went for a fairly minimal tree this year, it also has a garland made from felt balls which I threaded onto some string using a sharp needle (We both aren't big tinsel fans so this works perfectly), some really small LED lights on a copper wire, and some amazing mushroom ornaments which my friend Aron from Facture goods made for me!

Obsessed! Excited for next year already.

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Peppermint bark brownie cake

Its finally almost Christmas! So exciting! This will be our first one in the city, which is kind of weird seeing it is my third and Richard's fifth one in America! We always end up either spending it at home in New Zealand, meeting our family somewhere that's warmer than NYC, or going to Canada to spend it with our Canadian family when the trip to NZ is too long. I am so excited to finally be starting our own wee Christmas traditions. We are getting a tree this week, then spending the actual day with a bunch of friends who also aren't spending it with family. I can't wait.

Christmas being so close also means that it's time to start busting out all of the holiday recipes! This year I am working with Williams-Sonoma and The Feed Feed to bring you a recipe using their amazing Peppermint bark! Small confession - I had never tried it before until it arrived in the mail! It's not really a big thing in New Zealand. But OH MAN. It is amazing. It is the perfect balance of chocolate and peppermint. Totally addicting.

And what better way to highlight peppermint and chocolate than with more peppermint and chocolate? I paired the bark with a super rich brownie cake, layered with Italian buttercream and crushed bark, and finished with bark shards on the top! This would be perfect to take to a holiday party or to serve on Christmas day. The richness of the brownie means that you only need to have a little bit, making this perfect to feed a crowd! (or you know, just eat by yourself!)

I went with a petal technique with the buttercream on the outside of the cake. This is simple and effective, and only requires a piping bag and a small offset spatula (or you can use the back of a spoon or a knife). You could also just give the cake a smooth layer of buttercream and it would look just as effective!

I used Italian buttercream in the recipe as I wanted something that I could make super red to reflect the red and white in the bark. I have found that the best way to make buttercream really vibrant colours is to add the food colouring to the sugar syrup that you use in the recipe. That way it is all nicely dissolved, and you don't have to worry about it not incorporating (buttercream has so much fat in it from the butter that sometimes it makes it tricky to totally mix the colouring in without it having a 'grainy' look to it). The way that I did it meant that I needed to make two separate batches of buttercream. If that isn't for you then you can just double the recipe of the white buttercream and divide and colour it after you have mixed it.

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Flourless Chocolate Cake

Damnnnnn things have been so so busy! We have been crazy busy over at the studio - a couple of huge projects coming up coupled with general christmas rush means that we have been pulling some intense hours. All we have to do is make it through until Christmas, then January is always nice and quiet so we can have a little break, then in February we are going to New Zealand!

We have been having some fairly epic 3pm slumps in the studio, so I have made sure that there is always some sort of treat around for everyone to have a nibble on when they have a wee break from cloud land. This cake is the perfect cure for the 3pm slump - it is a straight hit of dark chocolate, mellowed out by a little butter, and held up by whipped eggs. I halved the original recipe to give a smaller, higher cake, which I think works well in comparison to the majority of flourless chocolate cakes which are fairly flat. The simplicity of this is what makes it amazing - it is literally just chocolate, butter, eggs and sugar, which really allows the ingredients to shine.

The final product of this depends entirely on your chocolate quality. I use a Callebaut 70% chocolate which is Belgian - I would recommend something that has at least 70% cocoa solids. The cake has a solid half a pound of chocolate in it, and it really stands out, so you need to make sure you use something which tastes good alone as well as in baking.

If you do choose to double this, pop it in an 8 inch pan - it should end up a similar height! I halved the original recipe because I feel as if there are far too many massive cake recipes out there - this would be perfect for having a few people over for dinner, or taking around to a friends house, or just having for a 3pm studio slump pick-me-up! It serves about 6.

I have adapted this recipe from Mast Brothers cook book - weird controversy aside, their book has some bomb recipes in it for all sorts of chocolate situations, both sweet and savoury! I love it. They have a beautiful space in Williamsburg where they make (I went and watched them grinding the beans) their chocolate from scratch.

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Apple pie cake

Milk bar's Apple Pie Cake has layers of apple cake, liquid cheesecake, pie crumbs, and cooked apple. This milk bar cake is the perfect dessert for apple lovers.

Milk Bar Apple Pie Cake

My lovely friend Lisa was staying with me this week! I originally met her in a facebook group I was a part of, where we bonded over our love of all things sweet, and just food in general. We then somehow managed to become part of the best girlboss gang ever, the Sugar Hoes, comprised of both of us, and our friend Bets, who runs a badass cake shop and sweet cafe in Auckland! (They have some of our clouds there, making it the coolest cafe in NZ)

Lisa is an incredible pastry chef, and it also happened to be her birthday while she was staying! So of course, cake was a must. I must admit that I secretly felt a huge amount of pressure making a pastry chef a birthday cake, but at the end of the day I ended up roping her into helping me so everyone won!

I recently (I am aware that I am a good four years late to the party) got the Milk bar cook book, and after a failed attempt at getting peaches from the farmers market for a cake for Lisa, we ended up with a bag of apples, and this book open on the table. I had been wanting to try making something from the book for a while, but was low key intimidated by the aspect of acetate within the cake rings to help hold everything together, so figured there was no better time than when I had a trained eye helping me!

Components of Apple Pie Cake

The Apple pie cake has what feels like a zillion components to it - A brown butter cake which is cooked in a sheet pan, a cider soak to help keep the cake moist, liquid cheesecake (barely cooked cheesecake mixture), pie crumbs, then an apple pie filling. You then rinse and repeat this three times until you have a super complex looking wee stack, then top it off with some buttercream which has blitzed pie crumbs in it! What a mouthful (quite literally).

The resulting cake however, is nothing short of amazing. Everything ties together perfectly, and we ended up making six miniature 3 inch cakes rather than one six inch like the recipe, and OH MY they are too cute!! I used six three inch cake rings which we lined with strips of acetate. You layer all of the things in the lined rings, then pop them in the freezer for about 12 hours, peel off the acetate, and you have the prettiest layer cake ever! I love that you can see all of the individual components up the side!

Milk Bar Apple Cake

I pretty much followed the recipe from the book, except I skipped the apple cider soak, and in it's place used reduced cooking liquid from the apple pie filling component, thinned out with a little apple cider. I would also highly recommend making the pie crumb with brown butter - it gives it an amazing nutty taste which ties in well with the cake flavour.

Because this recipe is very component heavy, and there is also a freezing time in there (which helps to make the acetate removal nice and tidy), this is definitely something you are going to want to make the day before, and assemble the evening before you need it, so that it has time to freeze. I ended up doubling the recipe in the book to give me six teeny baby cakes, so this recipe will make two six inch cakes, or six three inch cakes. I would definitely halve it (the original recipe) if you are making just the one six inch cake - these are super sweet, and I still have three in my freezer I am slowly giving to people!

With that being said, it doesn't actually take much longer to make double the recipe, and this keeps well in the freezer, so you can definitely have some now and save some for another time! I had a fair bit of cake scraps leftover, but they are sitting in my fridge next to the leftover buttercream, ready to be made into cake pops!

One more thing - this is the sort of recipe where if you don't use a kitchen scale, now is the time to start. I am a huge fan of working in grams (Partially/extremely biased as I grew up using them and my brain is having a hard time changing over), because they give you a level of accuracy that you can't get with cups - everyone scoops a different sized cup of flour so grams help keep it all consistent.

Happy happy birthday week Lisa! Thanks for coming and hanging out with me in NYC! xx

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Lemon Soda

Homemade Lemon Soda is super easy to make and has only four ingredients. Easy lemon soda is super refreshing.

Homemade Lemon Soda
Lemon and Basil Soda
How to store Lemon Soda
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Homemade Lemon Soda

I catered the first day of school for Richard's old masters programme a month or so ago, and needed to make a non alcoholic drink that was cheap and easy, and that people could put together themselves. I wasn't too sure as to what to use, then when I was making this cake for one of our episodes of distant kitchens, I popped a little bit of the orange thyme syrup into my soda water and suddenly realised that it worked perfectly.

(I am in no way trying to claim ownership for inventing simple syrup here!) Half pissed off at myself that I hadn't thought of infused simple syrup and soda earlier and half stoked that I had found a drink I could use for the event, I played around with a couple of combinations and ended up serving a couple - a rosemary syrup, an orange thyme syrup, and this here Lemon and basil combination. They were a giant hit - I served the syrup in pour bottles alongside a big drink container of soda, and guests were able to mix up their own drinks.

Lemon and Basil Soda

There is something about herbs in drinks - I love it! The taste of the herbs gussies up boring soda water, and also offsets the sugar of the simple syrup. The possibility of flavour combinations is literally endless - simple syrup is a 1:1 sugar to water ratio. If you are infusing with a herb then add that, and if you are flavouring with a juice, sub out some of the water for the juice, and there you go!

How to store Lemon Soda

The syrup, due to the high sugar content, keeps really well in the fridge, so is great to have on hand for adding to drinks or cocktails. You only use a tablespoon or so at a time when serving, so a little goes a fairly long way. I am yet to add alcohol, but I honestly can't see that going badly.

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Pesto and Feta Scrolls

Pesto and feta scrolls are the perfect savoury bread recipe. Fluffy homemade bread dough is filled with pesto and feta.

Pesto and Feta Scrolls

Aside from the fact that I am next level Jet lagged, we just got home from the best holiday! There was a wedding, (and a wedding cake!), lots of walking, shopping, and swimming in the Lake. Lots of food happened too - mainly stone fruit pies and far too many doughnuts. Its was so amazing having people there to eat it rather than me having to force it upon everyone that I meet. It always sucks a little saying goodbye to everyone as NZ is so so far from NYC, but we are going home for the month of February to escape the gross winter so at least I have that to look forward to! Goodbyes are dumb but I'm really looking forward to getting back to my kitchen where I know where everything is. I have lots of exciting things coming up which I can't wait to share with you!

A super versatile roll dough

In other news, how about these scrolls? The amazing thing about scrolls is that you can literally fill them with whatever you would like! The original recipe is for raspberry jam buns, and is from Julia Turshen's "Small victories". I found the recipe online, then ordered the book half way through making these, so it should be waiting for me when I get back! I love the idea of only needing one good dough recipe that you can adapt to whatever you feel or have in the house - both sweet and savoury. This would be amazing filled with a cinnamon and nut mix, or raisins, or you could spread a tomato sauce on it and then top with salami and cheese for a pizza scroll kind of situation.

Pesto and Feta Bread

My take on them is a simple pesto and feta combo, which is one of my absolute faves. The salty feta stands up really well against the fresh pesto. I have made my own pesto here, but you could totally use jarred if you like! If you haven't tried making your own pesto before I highly recommend it - it's super simple and lasts for ages! I always make it in bulk and have a big jar in the fridge ready to throw into dressings, onto pizza or over pasta.

I used a cast iron baking dish to bake these in but it would work just as well with them snuggled together on a baking tray, just ensure that you allow room for them to rise when arranging the rolled up dough.

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Lavender and Pistachio Brioche Doughnuts

Lavender and Pistachio brioche doughnuts. Homemade brioche doughnuts are easy and fun to make, and these are dusted in a lavender pistachio doughnut sugar.

Lavender and Pistachio Brioche Doughnuts

Doughnuts are another thing on the list of "things I only recently realised are very easy to make at home". This list also includes ice cream, almond milk, mozzarella cheese, and a whole heap of other things.

Recently Richard's parents were visiting, and we took them to Chelsea Market in NYC. It has to be one of my favourite places in New York, aside from the green market. There are so many amazing things all jammed into one building and its just the best! We got some teeny baby doughnuts from The Doughnuttery, and one of the flavours was called "Paris Time" - Vanilla, pistachio and lavender. If you know me you know that anything Lavender gets me all heart-eyes, and these were no exception. Of course as soon as we got home I had to recreate my own version.. so here we are!

Homemade Brioche Donuts

Brioche doughnuts bring a whole new element to the doughnut game - they are buttery and tender and just the right amount of sweet to hold up against being drowned in pistachio and lavender sugar. Normally I have a little bit of whatever I make then give it to friends, our staff at the studio, the doormen, etc (If you live in NYC and like baking hit me up because theres always extra), but not these. My goodness. The combination of brioche, pistachio and lavender is one of my favourites.

Tips for making Brioche donuts

If you are planning on making these, you will need to make the dough the night before and give it its first rise at room temperature, and then the second in the fridge overnight, then shape the doughnuts and give them their third proof the next day before frying and sugaring them. You could also use non brioche dough if you wanted these to be ready the same day you make them - Deb's recipe is my favourite. The dough recipe I have used here comes from the Bouchon bakery book, which is soon becoming one of my most reached for books. All the recipes are in grams, which I LOVE (My brain works in kilograms and grams, and I struggle so so hard to swap over to pounds and ounces), and the recipes are so well written and easy to follow. If you are looking for an amazing pastry book, this is my current fave!

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Lavender and Pistachio Brioche Doughnuts

Blueberry Streusel muffins

These easy blueberry muffins with a streusel topping can be made with fresh or frozen blueberries. This is the perfect homemade blueberry muffin!

Blueberry Streusel Muffins
Muffins with Streusel Topping
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Recipe for Blueberry Streusel Muffins

Blueberry Streusel Muffins

Far out this year has gone so, so fast! All of a sudden its September. Pretty sure last time I checked it was like, March or something? Goodness. However September does mean that the end to this gross humid summer weather is in sight. Just don't mention that I was complaining about the heat when its February and i'm freezing my ass off.

However we go to Canada on Monday morning, which I am SO excited about. We have family there who live on a lake on Vancouver island, which is amazing enough, but theres also going to be a wedding! Which I am making the cake for... a little bit nervous but I managed to make a monster for our wedding and have had a lot of cake practice since then so it should be fine! I hope.

These blueberry muffins are a giant hit in our house. They are a take on the blueberry muffins that Mum makes. Mum is an incredible cook. I am so lucky to have grown up in a household with amazing parents where it was standard practice to make everything from scratch.

Somehow she manages to whip them up in about 30 seconds flat, and before I know it they are in the oven and cooking. And they always taste amazing. I will never get over how she manages to just produce food out of nowhere whenever anyone even mentions coming for a visit. Its incredible. Her scones are another thing that just materialize out of nowhere, but i'll save that recipe for another day. The recipe comes from the great baking goddess herself, Alison Holst. I think the book it comes from is called "marvelous muffins" or something along those lines. She has written a zillion books on everything from bread to baking to mince, and she's like the grandmother of NZ cooking. Amazing.

Muffins with Streusel Topping

I have added a streusel topping to these, because streusel makes everything better. The recipe here makes a generous amount, so feel free to dial it back if you don't want a huge amount on your muffins, or leave it out completely. Either way these come together super quickly, theres no waiting for butter to soften, so you can pop them in the oven and have muffins in about 20 minutes! What a giant win.

A small tip with muffins - make sure that when you are incorporating the wet ingredients to the dry, you want to mix them to the point where they are just combined, and there are no more dry bits. Any more and they won't turn out as lovely and fluffy and light.

I used these cute wee Muffin moulds to make these. If you make them in a tin make sure that you give the cups a really good grease or spray with baking spray to ensure easy lifting. Sometimes I like to pop a strip of baking paper in the hole so that I can grab it from either side once the muffins are cooked and remove them easily. Or you can also use paper muffin cases in the holes, which make clean up significantly easier, seeing as washing muffin tins sucks!

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Homemade Muesli

This easy muesli recipe can be adapted to suit your personal muesli preference. Homemade muesli can be made ahead for an easy homemade breakfast.

Easy Homemade Muesli
Dad's Muesli Recipe
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Homemade Muesli Recipe

Easy Homemade Muesli

Ever since I was really small, my dad has made his own muesli. He makes it in two big bowls in the microwave, with oil and honey. He always uses the same big silver spoon that belonged to my gran to measure the honey, and he warms it up in his cup of tea before he uses it to make sure the honey slides off easily.

All the ingredients are in little zip-loc bags, and jammed into an ice cream container that lives in the fridge in our washhouse. I always used to make him let me know when he was making it (it's normally really early in the morning) so that I could get up and help. I was allowed to help measure out the ingredients, stir the muesli (which always ended with more on the bench than in the bowl), and push the buttons on the microwave.

If it was winter time, he used to let me burn a magazine in the fire a page at a time, which is still one of my favourite things to do when the fire is lit. When it got to a more reasonable time, I was allowed to carry a cup of tea down the hallway to Mum. Mornings with him were, and still are, the best.

Dad's Muesli Recipe

When I moved to New York I continued to make Dad's muesli. This is my take on it! The great thing about this is that you can literally add whatever you would like to it! You can fill it with any variety of seeds, nuts, dried fruit, the list is endless.

I like mine to be quite 'hard' (lots of nuts and seeds and crunchy things) but if you were wanting it to be a little less chewy you could stir through some puffed wheat and cornflakes. I love it as a quick breakfast if I don't feel like making something hot, and more recently I have been throwing some into a mason jar with some greek yoghurt and fresh fruit or jam, and taking it with me for a breakfast on the go.

This recipe doubles/triples/quadruples really well. I generally make about four times the recipe that I have listed here, which makes a HEAP of muesli, but with little extra effort than if you were making the smaller amount. Just ensure that you use a large enough tray in the oven (I use a large deep roasting dish). It makes amazing care packages and gifts for friends, people always always love receiving it!

I did a little research on the difference between muesli and granola - In New Zealand we call any oat based breakfast cereal Muesli, but apparently granola is much more clumpy, whereas muesli is looser. You learn something new every day!

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Homemade Muesli Recipe

Galaxy cupcakes

Easy Vanilla Bean Cupcakes topped with Galaxy Style American Buttercream frosting. These are the perfect space themed cupcakes!

Space Themed Cupcakes
How to make Black Buttercream
Vanilla Cupcakes with American Buttercream
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Space Themed Cupcakes

I made these space themed cupcakes for a friend's studio opening and they were a giant hit. I've been asked a few times for the recipe so thought I might as well pop it up here! I had seen something similar on the internet a while back and decided to give it a try! They would be amazing for a children's birthday party, or anything space themed. You can also use the same technique with different colours for a non 'galaxy' look - I have done it with pastels before and it looks amazing!

How to make Black Buttercream

The first time that we made space themed cupcakes, Richard was given the job of colouring the icing. I didn't realise that he had gone hard on the black food colouring until everyone who ate a cupcake ended up with black teeth. Thankfully nobody minded. However I have tweaked the recipe slightly, using black cocoa powder in the black part of the icing rather than food colouring. If you can't get your hands on black cocoa powder (its just super dutched cocoa, the stuff that they use to make oreos!), you can use black food colouring, just be aware that it takes a LOT to achieve a true 'black'.

Vanilla Cupcakes with American Buttercream

I went with a vanilla cupcake and an american buttercream. Normally I would use a swiss meringue buttercream for cupcakes, but I find that it never holds really vibrant colours as well as american, and for this I wanted them bright and strong. I made two batches of buttercream - one with the black cocoa, and one plain batch, which I divided into three and coloured with two shades of blue, and purple.

Once they were piped, I covered them in flecks of white food colouring to represent "stars" - I just used my finger dipped in the colouring and flicked it on with my finger. I then sprinkled on a small amount of food safe glitter to give it a little sparkle. Make sure that you do this process somewhere that is fairly easy to clean up - the white tends to go everywhere, and the glitter is even worse. I generally turn a bowl upside down in the sink, then sit the whole cooling rack on top of it so that afterwards everything can be washed away.

I used a vanilla cupcake recipe, but these really can be made with whatever you like. I also chose to make mini cupcakes, but feel free to make these whatever size you would like!

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Orange Thyme Cake

Orange thyme Layer Cake has a brown sugar buttermilk cake, an orange cake syrup, and a raspberry german buttercream frosting.

Orange Thyme Layer Cake
Raspberry German Buttercream
Tips for Orange Thyme Cake
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Orange Thyme Layer Cake

Another episode of distant kitchens! We decided to go with cake this time! I'm so, so excited to continue on with this wee collab with Stacy and see what it brings us. Yet again we managed to come up with totally different things to each other - I had one big cake whereas Stacy had an entire entourage of baby ones!

What better place to get a cake recipe than Tessa Huff's book 'Layered'. I have had the book for a while, and was so excited to finally make something from it! It is the most incredible book, and Tessa is not only super lovely, but INSANELY talented! If you haven't checked the book out already I really can't recommend it enough, it has one of everything - you will always be able to find a cake for every occasion in there!

We chose an Orange and Thyme cake. And we chose well! I would never have thought to put thyme in a cake, but it just goes so well with the orange. The cake is comprised of a brown sugar buttermilk cake, brushed with orange and thyme syrup, filled with a raspberry buttercream, and finished with an orange glaze. The original recipe called for blood oranges but as they are not in season at the moment, both Stacy and I subbed regular oranges. I also added a little raspberry juice to the glaze to give it the lovely pink colour.

Raspberry German Buttercream

The original recipe called for a swiss meringue buttercream, but I just so happened to have a batch of German buttercream (which is based on a pastry cream and is a little less common than our friend swiss buttercream) in the fridge, so I used that instead, and it seemed to work beautifully! I am a huge fan of German buttercream, as it isn't too intensely buttery, and it stands up super well to heat! We used it for our wedding cake and I am so glad we did! Zero meltage. I added raspberry puree to most of the buttercream and used that to fill the cake, then reserved some unflavoured white buttercream to use on the outside of the cake. If you prefer to use a swiss buttercream, you can find Tessa's recipe online, or the one that Stacy used on her blog.

A quick tip - when making the glaze for the top of the cake, make sure that you make it a lot thicker than you think you will need! It runs a lot further than you would think, particularly if it is a warm day.

Tips for Orange Thyme Cake

The buttercream recipe makes a fair amount so you will likely have a little left over depending on how thickly you frost your cake (I had about a cup and a half) - however it freezes amazingly so I always like to keep some in the freezer for another time. I like to make the pastry cream for the buttercream while the cake is cooking so that they both have time to cool.

A wee note about leftovers - the syrup is AMAZING as a drink in a little soda water.

Enjoy! And please don't forget, if you give this a go to use the hashtag #distantkitchens when you share your creation!

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No churn Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Homemade hokey pokey ice cream is super easy to make. Made with an easy no churn ice cream base and honeycomb chunks.

Homemade Hokey Pokey Ice Cream
Easy No Churn Ice Cream
Tips for Hokey Pokey Ice Cream
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Homemade Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Do you ever find that there are things that you didn't know that you missed until you had to go without them? For us, that was hokey pokey ice cream. Its a classic New Zealand ice cream flavour, and I am yet to see something like it. It is chunks of honeycomb (which we call hokey pokey) in vanilla ice cream, and it is the BEST. Truth be told i'm not a huge ice cream eater, but you really can't beat hokey pokey ice cream on apple crumble.

It took us a good two years for me to realise that I could probably just make my own. And turns out its not that difficult at all. Plus you get to eat all the extra hokey pokey, which is one of the few situations where the intense risk of cavities is greatly outweighed by how good it is.

Easy No Churn Ice Cream

Can we also please just take a moment to appreciate no churn ice cream. SO easy. For some reason I have always been low key frightened of making my own ice cream (I honestly have no idea why, ice cream gives me a little bit of a sore tummy so maybe i'm just scared of ice cream in general?) so this is a great first step. Or perhaps it is a gateway drug to just making every sort of ice cream ever. We shall see.

I used golden syrup in the hokey pokey, because that is what I grew up using. I had to end up ordering it online, as I was unable to find it in shops here. Golden syrup is made from concentrated cane sugar juice. I am unsure if you can interchange it with corn syrup, but if anyone has tried I would love to hear your experience! Either way, its amazing made with the golden syrup, and totally worth having to ship it in.

Tips for Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Make sure that you have everything ready before you make the hokey pokey - a lined tray or tin to pour it on, and pre-measured baking soda. As soon as you add the baking soda to the hot sugar mixture it froths like crazy and you need both your hands to stir it as quickly as possible. Try to incorporate the baking soda but don't stir it too much or the mixture will deflate.

Once you add the hokey pokey bits to the ice cream, don't be surprised if you go to eat some and they look kind of dissolved - this is meant to happen, and the dissolved bits are the best bits!!

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Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

Homemade Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie is super easy to make and can be made as one large skillet cookie or as mini skillet cookies.

Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie
Mini Skillet Cookie
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Recipe for Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

A sign of an epic cookie recipe is that it is super versatile. In this case, if it is just as good in a skillet (I may even prefer the skillet version a little more) as it is in regular cookie, form, you have hit the jackpot. This is the same recipe as the chocolate chunk cookies I posted recently, but just cooked differently. I found it on Smitten Kitchen, but the original recipe is from Ashley Rodriguez's blog, Not without Salt.

As far as I am concerned, if you can put anything in a skillet, it automatically becomes more awesome. These are no exception. I tested it in both a teeny tiny egg sized skillet, and also a 6.5 inch skillet. The results are very similar - a perfectly baked cookie that is gooey and soft on the inside, but has a lovely light brown crust on the outside, just begging to be loaded up with ice cream. They are super fun to eat straight out of the skillet. There is a certain novelty about being served up your own individual frying pan!

The recipe makes enough to fill three 6.5 inch skillets, about nine mini skillets (I will be very impressed if you own that many), or you could definitely put the entire thing into a larger skillet (a 10 inch or similar would work perfectly), just be sure to adjust the baking time - I would estimate about 25-30 Minutes.

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Cherry Galettes

Homemade cherry galettes have an easy homemade pie crust and are filled with a fresh cherry pie filling

Mini Cherry Galettes
Super Easy Pie Crust
Tips for Cherry Galette
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Mini Cherry Galettes

I've never really been a home made fruit pie girl until recently. And I don't know why. Its not that I didn't like them, maybe I just didn't appreciate them enough. I can happily say that I am now a changed lady! Nine times out of ten there is a block of dough in my freezer, and because I tend to go nuts at the greenmarket every time I go and buy EVERY sort of fruit ever, pies have become a semi regular thing in our house.

Even easier than pies, but still great for using up dough, is wee galettes! You literally just throw whatever fruit you would like in them, fold them up and bake them until they are golden brown and delicious! We have had a couple of types this week, but the cherry ones were our fave so far! I can imagine that there will be many more to come this summer. They are super easy to take places as they are less awkward to transport than a pie, and can definitely be made ahead and either warmed up, or eaten cold.

Super Easy Pie Crust

The pastry I use is one that is adapted from four and twenty blackbirds pie book, AKA the best book about pies I have ever read. Its amazing, super versatile, and is great if you want to make a lattice or braid, as the dough is really easy to work with. They use a little apple cider vinegar in their crust, which gives it the most lovely tenderness and flavour. You can totally use any fruit here, and fill them a little more/less than I have. I sweetened each one individually as I went so that I wasn't left with a bowl of fruity sugar syrup (all the best bits) and all the nice flavour and juice ended up in the galettes.

The pastry is best made a day ahead but if you are in a pinch you can rest it in the fridge for two hours or so. I like making a big batch and wrapping it up into portions and freezing it so its always on hand ready to go for when I overcommit to fruit!

Tips for Cherry Galette

Make sure you keep everything super cold! If the pastry gets too soft, just throw it back in the fridge to warm up. I normally work on two at a time, and keep the unrolled pastry and finished unbaked galettes in the fridge to prevent everything getting too sticky. I also like to rest the galettes in the fridge for 10 minutes or so before baking them to help them hold their shape.

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Doughnut sprinkle cake

This super cute chocolate layer cake is covered with a vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream, and finished with homemade royal icing doughnut sprinkles.

Doughnut Sprinkle Cake
Easy Chocolate Layer Cake
How to make Royal Icing Sprinkles
The best food coloring for Royal Icing
Tips and Tricks for homemade sprinkles
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Doughnut Sprinkle Cake

First of all, is it Donut, or is it Doughnut? I had a cheeky google, and it got my brain confused.

I hid inside all weekend because it was CRAZY hot. Apparently NYC is under some sort of 'heat dome'? Whatever that is, it sucks. Our neighbours a few apartments down from us have a pool, and I spent most of the weekend thinking up ways to introduce myself in a non-creepy way, and somehow come up with some sort of baking trade in return for the use of their pool. So far I am coming up with nothing, apart from perhaps flying Richards drone over there with a note... but even then that seems a little creepy. I guess we shall have to live with intense pool FOMO for the next little while.

Here is a cake, with little wee doughnuts on it! A while ago we spent a Saturday night in (who am I kidding, we spend most Saturday nights in) making sprinkles! I was inspired by sweet ambs, who is the queen of royal icing. Turns out I do not have quite the same skills to create teeny little fiddly versions of food, but I CAN pipe circles, pipe more circles on top, and sprinkle them with hundreds and thousands! And so doughnut sprinkles were born! We also made Poo emoji sprinkles, but that is a story for another day.

Easy Chocolate Layer Cake

I used a super light chocolate cake here, but feel free to use anything that you like! Or not even use the sprinkles on a cake. I just think that they look extra cute this way. I went with homemade swiss meringue buttercream, but like I said before, go nuts with whatever suits you! I prefer a non crusting buttercream here over something like american, as it seems to hold the sprinkles on much more securely.

How to make Royal Icing Sprinkles

The recipe for the royal icing makes enough for a LOT of sprinkles. We ended up with about 250 little doughnuts. They are pretty quick to do once you get going, and once they are dry they keep in an airtight container for a very long time, so I prefer to make a lot all at once, and have enough for multiple cakes. I used meringue powder in the recipe as it is super easy, but any royal icing recipe should work here, provided it is nice and thick. It should come off the mixer the consistency of cream cheese, and you can then water it down to piping consistency from there.

The best food coloring for Royal Icing

Gel food colouring will also be your friend here as it is more intense and will not water down your icing too much. I used disposable piping bags, fitted with a round piping tip in a number of different sizes. For the doughnuts themselves I used a wilton #5, and then for the glazes I used whatever slightly smaller sized tips I had on hand. It doesn't matter what size you use as the icing is viscous enough that it shouldn't run everywhere, but anything between a #2 and a #5 should work well. That being said, if you don't have a small round tip, you can carefully chop the tip off an icing bag and get the same effect.

Tips and Tricks for homemade sprinkles

The sprinkles do take some time to dry out before you use them, so allow either a couple of hours or overnight for this. Drying time may vary depending on your humidity.

I made a wee template on the computer to put underneath the parchment paper to use as a guide. You can either freehand it, or if you would like to use mine, you can download it here!

Have fun! I would love to see the results if you give this one a try!

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Banana cake with chocolate buttercream

This easy homemade banana cake with chocolate icing is a birthday party classic. The banana layer cake is quick and easy to make and pairs perfectly with the chocolate american buttercream.

Banana Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
The Best Banana Layer Cake
Easy Chocolate Buttercream
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Recipe for Banana Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

Banana Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

I feel as if this cake is a childhood memory for most kids that grew up in New Zealand. Homemade Banana cake, covered in what we affectionately refer to as "shitty chocolate icing". You know the stuff - icing sugar, cocoa, a little bit of butter, and then a little bit of boiling water which inevitably turns into adding too much, having to add more icing sugar, overshooting that, adding more water, etc etc. The best. We often had this as our birthday cakes when we were kids, but would have 'plain' icing instead that we were allowed to colour ourselves - I have very strong memories of managing to get half a bottle of yellow food colouring into a bowl of icing and having THE most bright yellow cake ever. It was awesome.

Turns out Rich has even more ties to homemade banana cake than I do - he went to boarding school and quite often his mum would make him a banana cake with chocolate icing to have in his 'tuck box'. Lucky for him, I tend to be useless at remembering to use bananas up before they go brown, so banana cake/bread/shortbread happens extremely frequently in our house.

The Best Banana Layer Cake

Rich also happens to not be a huge fan of buttercream. I have learnt to turn my back while he scrapes most of it off a cupcake into the bin. For this reason, (because he is the primary banana related baked goods consumer in our house), the ratio of this cake is mainly cake:not much buttercream. It is essentially two banana cakes, glued together with a teeny bit of buttercream. I like to run a line of piped buttercream between the two layers to tidy things up, then load up the top with icing sugar, pop on some rosemary, and we are away laughing. He requests it for his birthday every year, which makes life significantly easier on my part!

The cake itself is super simple. It is a great go-to. (as are most recipes from the Edmonds cookbook). If my bananas are super ripe, and I would like minimal dishes, I throw them in the stand mixer with the creamed butter/sugar mixture rather than mashing them by hand. If they aren't crazy ripe, mashing them by hand helps.

Easy Chocolate Buttercream

The buttercream is a slightly more fancy variation of "Shitty chocolate buttercream". I like using butter straight out of the fridge and 'softening' it using the mixer, as opposed to softening it before you use it. It gives you a slightly colder finished product that is easier to handle. However I haven't tried this without a stand mixer, so if you are using an electric beater, it may be easier to have the butter already soft. The recipe here will leave you with some buttercream left over, which I figure is probably helpful as most people like a slightly higher ratio of buttercream to cake than this, so feel free to spread it on the top/sides. If you make this into a four layer cake (and slice the cakes into two), doubling the buttercream recipe would be beneficial.

This is a fairly large recipe, so if you only have a couple of bananas, or are looking for something smaller, halving it will work beautifully.

Ps how great is the crown cake stand?!? My Mum got it for me the last time I was home, from a teeny pottery shop near Nelson (my hometown). Its a one of a kind, and is inspired by Max's crown from "Where the wild things are". It also turns up the other way and can be used as a bowl! I LOVE it! Thanks Mama Bear! xx

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Recipe for Banana Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

American Flag Cake

This Vanilla American Flag Cake is the perfect celebration cake. Made from a Vanilla Layer Cake and Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, this American Flag Cake is cute and easy to make.

American Flag Cake
How to Pipe Swiss Meringue Buttercream
The Perfect Vanilla Layer Cake
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American Flag Cake Recipe

American Flag Cake

Happy 4th of July weekend! To celebrate, Amy from Aheirloom (aka amazing cake stands) and I have teamed up to bring you something special, this American Flag Cake! Every time I go to visit Amy I am blown away by the new incredible things that they are working on. I used the new 12 inch maple wedding cake stand for this cake.

This is a great cake to take to parties, or any 4th of July celebrations that you may be attending. While it looks super complicated, the thing that I love about the 'petal' buttercream method is that it only involves a piping bag, some tips and an offset spatula. It is much less fiddly than it seems! I have used Swiss meringue buttercream (based on the Bravetart recipe) because I like how smooth it is. However, feel free to use your favourite style of buttercream here - I made about fifteen cups total. It seems like loads, but its much better to have a wee bit too much than not enough.

How to Pipe Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I used an 845 ateco closed star tip (Slightly larger than a Wilton 2d) for the "stars" section of the cake. Then I used an 805 ateco round tip for the 'stripes' section. I used 3 large disposable piping bags, with a coupler on one of the bags so that I could switch from the round to the star tips easily for the white color of buttercream. You could easily use whatever tips you have on hand, and play around with the sizes!

The Perfect Vanilla Layer Cake

The Cake is an adaptation of of my favourite vanilla cake from the Ovenly cook book. I have made it countless times so far and it turns out great every time. (It was even the bottom tier in our monster wedding cake). I have tried creating my own version of a vanilla cake a couple of times now, but nothing tops this one. That being said, any flavour cake will work perfectly inside this. You just want to make sure that you have two 8 inch cakes that are at least two inches tall each. This recipe can also be easily scaled if you are wanting something slightly smaller. I am sure that this style of cake would work amazingly with a 6 inch cake too! The Cake takes a while to cool so ensure that you plan ahead!

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American Flag Cake Recipe

Banana Shortbread

This Banana Shortbread recipe is super easy to make. It has a brown butter shortbread base, and the dough is made with roasted banana. It is finished with a simple brown butter icing glaze

Easy Banana Shortbread Recipe
How to make Banana Shortbread
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Recipe For Banana Shortbread

Easy Banana Shortbread Recipe

Our holiday has nearly finished! Tomorrow we fly back to New York. I'm a little bummed its over, but I can't wait to get back! I've missed making food, and I have so many exciting collabs coming up that I can't wait to share!

This is a recipe that I came up with a couple of months ago. It took a whole load of tweaking until I was finally happy with it, but I can happily say that it tastes awesome (well, I think so anyway!).

Brown Butter would have to be one of my favourite things. I love how applicable it is to so many dishes, and how it adds an extra level of complexity to the flavour profile. I add it to almost everything I can, and this was no exception. The nuttiness in the brown butter pairs beautifully with the caramelised banana, and the whole thing is topped off with a brown butter based glaze.

How to make Banana Shortbread

I adapted my Great Grandmothers shortbread recipe to accommodate the banana and brown butter. It still loosely follows the 3:2:1 butter:sugar:flour ratio of traditional shortbread, but because of the banana it is slightly softer and less dry. Ideally it should be left in the oven to dry out for an hour or two to help it go a little more crunchy.

I like to use an oblong tart tin with a removable bottom that is approx 13 ¾" 4 ¼". This makes removing the shortbread before you glaze it really easy. If you don't have one of these, you can use a cake tin, just make sure that you line it well so that you are able to use the paper to remove the shortbread from the tin.

Feel free to decorate this any way you please! My absolute favourite way is with dried edible flowers, but it would look great plain, or with some simple sprinkles or dusted with icing sugar. Go nuts! (Or Bananas. Really I mean, go bananas)

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Blood Orange Chess Pie

Single Crust Pie - Blood Orange Chess Pie

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Milk Bar Apple Pie Cake

Components of Apple Pie Cake

Milk Bar Apple Cake

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Table of contents

Homemade Lemon Soda

Lemon and Basil Soda

How to store Lemon Soda

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Pesto and Feta Scrolls

A super versatile roll dough

Pesto and Feta Bread

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Lavender and Pistachio Brioche Doughnuts