fig and ricotta cake

This autumn has been all about the quince, but last year it was all about the fig. There were a few figs getting jammier by the day on my parents’ tree and we needed to pick them before the possums got to them. I made a delightful pear and fig chutney, and this cake.

You can use any plain soft creamy cheese in place of the ricotta - I used half goats cheese and half ricotta, which worked splendidly.

I really loved this cake because it wasn’t too sweet and allowed the natural sweetness of the figs to shine through. My parents, who like things sweeter, weren’t that fussed - so by all means add more sugar if you have a similar palate!

Autumnal slightly savoury fig and ricotta cake

Based on a recipe in Books for Cooks Favourite Recipes 4, 5 and 6

2 tablespoons caster sugar
6 fresh ripe figs, stalks trimmed, cut in half
175 g unsalted butter
150 g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200 g ricotta (or a combination of ricotta and soft goats cheese)
2 large eggs
175 g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
A little apricot jam, for glazing

Preheat the oven to 180 C (fan-forced). Grease and line a 24cm springform cake tin. Butter the baking paper on the base of the tin and sprinkle with the 2 tablespoons of caster sugar. Arrange the halved figs, cut side down, over the sugar.

Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla and ricotta (or other cheese you’re using) together until creamy and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and baking powder and gently fold in.

Spread the batter carefully over the figs.

Bake in the oven until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean - roughly 40-45 minutes, depending on the strength of your oven. Leave to cool completely in the tin.

To decorate, turn out the cake on to a plate or stand, fig side up. Melt the apricot jam over a low heat until soft and liquid, then brush over the top of the cake. The figs will glisten beautifully.

You can dust the top with icing sugar once you’ve glazed too, but I didn’t.

Cut into slices and enjoy with a hot cup of tea.

My figs were quite little! Hope yours are bigger.

spiced zucchini and apple loaf

Might not look like much - but it’s good!

I’m making the most of my zucchini glut, as I’m sure you’ve been able to tell!

I’m trying to ration my eggs and butter carefully at the moment, so I decided to make this cake vegan and see what the results were. And it was spectacular.

It’s a supremely moist cake anyway, thanks to the zucchini, but with the apple sauce involved too, the outside of the loaf is crusty and the middle is almost custardy. So it’s perfect for dessert as well as alongside your morning or afternoon cup of coffee.

And don’t skimp on the spices - it may seem like a lot but the whole point is that the flavour of the spices is very pronounced in this cake. If you prefer the flavours to be subtler, halve the quantities I’ve listed below. You can use any combination of baking spices you like (mixed spice, ground nutmeg, etc) but what I’ve listed below was a particularly good combination, for a spice lover like me. I’d never put black pepper in a cake before and was amazed by how just three turns of the pepper grinder gave it such a pleasant heat.

I hope you give it a try!

Spiced zucchini and apple loaf

Inspired by a similar recipe in A Basket By the Door by Sophie Hansen

Roughly 500g grated zucchini (courgette), about 3 large ones (you can even use marrow, just cut the woolly middle bit out first)
250g wholemeal plain flour or wholemeal spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
A generous grating of fresh nutmeg
3 turns of the black pepper grinder
A pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200g brown sugar
6 heaped tablespoons apple sauce or puree
100ml olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180 C (fan-forced). Grease and line a large loaf tin or two small ones.

Squeeze as much liquid out of the grated zucchini as you can.

Place the squeezed grated zucchini in a bowl and add the flour, spices and salt, stir to combine. Add the vanilla, brown sugar, apple sauce and oil, and stir together until well combined (though try not to overmix, naturally).

Pour the batter into your prepared tin or tins, and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. My oven is hotter than most so I checked mine after 45 minutes.

Allow the loaf to cool slightly then remove from the tin on to a cake rack to cool completely.

As it makes a large loaf, or two small ones, you can also happily freeze it in slices to defrost in the toaster whenever you need some comforting home-baked goodness. Which, let’s face it, in the times of coronavirus, is pretty much every day!

Enjoy it fresh or toasted, spread with butter, ricotta or left plain, and absolutely with a steaming cup of tea or coffee alongside.

five breads that are easy to make at home

Well, this isn’t quite the content I thought I’d be writing in March 2020. What strange, frightening times we’re living in at the moment.

I live in a small city where not a great deal changes, but nowhere, it seems, is immune to what is going on. Yesterday, I walked (I didn’t dare take the car) to a supermarket a few kilometres away. I was horrified by what I saw. Signs everywhere announcing restrictions on purchases, and that abuse to staff wouldn’t be tolerated (as it shouldn’t be, but it’s sad that people’s conduct necessitates such reminders). Crowds. Trolleys. People grabbing what they could, from bare shelves.

Most confronting of all was seeing an elderly couple, perhaps in their late seventies, with masks on, pushing their trolley together, looking terrified. It was heartbreaking. I got what I’d come for (the upside to taking soy milk in your coffee, it’s always there!) and then had a bit of a cry on the walk home. Fortunately, it had started to rain by then.

Australia is one of the most self-sufficient countries in the world when it comes to food. Nothing was going to completely run out any time soon - it’s because of the panic-buying that stocks have dwindled and the shelves are empty. And the elderly, the disabled, the most vulnerable in our communities - they are the ones suffering. It’s a disgrace.

Yet, at the same time, I understand why people have panicked. If you know something is in short supply, or going to be, it’s natural to want to get as much as you can, so your needs will be taken care of. It’s natural, when everything is so uncertain, to want to control what you can, to feel safe and prepared.

Every day I have to remind myself that the tightness in my chest is anxiety and panic, not the onset of the virus. I work from home 90% of the time anyway, but I am finding myself restless, unable to focus for long periods of time.

In times of stress, I turn to food, in a good way. Reading about it is soothing. Cookbooks have replaced dystopian fiction as my bedtime reading - the latter feels all too real at the moment.

And I love to cook. I can make bread, I can preserve a glut of fresh fruit and vegetables, I can make nourishing and delicious meals from the bare minimum of ingredients. Right now, it feels like those skills are very, very valuable. I am grateful to have them.

I’m also grateful for my vegetable garden which, in early autumn for us here, is still giving us silverbeet, cavolo nero and zucchini like nobody’s business. There’s even a few tomatoes left on the vine. And Tom’s work colleague gave us extra from her garden - rhubarb, carrots, apples, chillies - in exchange for some of my famous apricot and date chutney (recipe coming soon!). So we have plenty. The key is to use it well.

In a bid to be useful, I thought I’d share some cooking from the pantry ideas - as well as any interesting and helpful resources that I stumble upon.

Let’s start with bread.

I’m not surprised that one of the things that’s hardest to find in the supermarkets at the moment is flour. Because if you have flour, you can make countless things, including bread. And making bread is, in my opinion, one of the most useful skills you can ever learn.

And it doesn’t have to be complicated. I love to cook but I absolutely hate getting my hands dirty, getting dough in my fingernails or in my wedding rings, that kind of thing. Therefore, easy breads are the order of the day around here. Preferably no kneading!

These five are my absolute favourite breads to make at home. And perhaps apart from number 4, the flours are interchangeable. Use what you have! It will be slightly different of course but it will still be edible and that’s what matters!

1) Leftover porridge bread

I found myself with half a saucepan of porridge leftover from our breakfast last week, when things were still relatively normal. If it were just a spoonful or two, I’d just put it in our compost but it looked like enough for another serve, at least. I abhor waste but cold porridge was not appealing. I seemed to remember reading a recipe for bread you could make with leftover porridge, so I googled it and there it was! The brainchild of Claire Thomson, this bread is absolutely magnificent. Tom and I devoured it. Perfect with butter and jam, or just plain. It’s even nicer if your porridge was made with a hint of cinnamon in it, as ours was!

2) Seedy soda bread

I have been making this bread for years. It’s one of the easiest things in the world to make - I’ve even made it when recovering from the flu. No yeast, the lovely tang of bicarb soda and the goodness of seeds. You can add raisins or sultanas too if you like, but as my husband is averse to dried fruit, I go for all seeds. It’s amazing with ricotta and jam, or just plain.

3) Dutch oven bread

Everyone’s heard of this one, surely? There are many recipes from it, including one from the New York Times, but the one I’ve linked to is the one I’ve used the most. Lots of useful tips if you’re a first-timer. This is a bread I make all the time. Again, no kneading involved but just a longer prove so you’ll have to be a bit organised with this one and start it the night before. You can also add some sourdough starter to it if you have some. It tastes like you’ve put way more effort into it than you actually have!

4) Easy gluten-free bread

I don’t make this as often as I used to, as I find gluten-free flour more expensive here in Australia than it was in the UK (or maybe it’s because I still see the £ sign instead of $?) but it’s still a lovely easy loaf to make when you want a GF option. It’s more like making a cake than a loaf of bread, really. And if you have a breadmaker, like I do, there’s practically no labour involved at all!

I love it a day old, toasted, smothered with avocado and chilli, like the picture!

5) Banana bread

Counts as a bread, surely? If you’ve got lots of bananas to use up at home, look no further. Super easy and absolutely delicious. We all need a sweet treat right now, I think.

I hope you enjoy these and please let me know if you try any of them!

Stay well and hopeful my friends xx

peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and sea salt

I don’t know what it is about the taste of peanut butter, but it has an almost Proustian effect on me.

As a child, I rejected every other sandwich filling for my school lunchbox. In fact, I rejected sandwiches most of the time - they were dull in taste and vomit-inducing in texture, the opposite of everything I wanted and believed food to be. So for most of primary school, my usual lunch was a bag of carrot sticks and peanut butter on crackers. Peanut butter became a familiar, quotidian taste and I found it far from exciting. Once I was old enough to make my own lunch for school, peanut butter was off the menu. I’d had enough to last a lifetime, or so I thought.

But as an adult, I’ve found tasting peanut butter again quite ambrosial. I love it on apple slices, on toast, in stir-fries, in smoothies or even by the spoonful.

Peanut butter also makes a divine and, with the addition of a sprinkle of sea salt, very adult biscuit. But the method is so simple a child could make them (with a little supervision). I find making biscuits such a faff that I was determined to make these in one bowl/pan. Success.

Be warned, these are incredibly addictive.

Peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and sea salt

150g smooth peanut butter (I like Bega Just Nuts or Pic)
125g unsalted butter
65g rice malt syrup
125g brown sugar
1 egg
Splash of vanilla extract
100g desiccated coconut
270g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
120g dark chocolate chips
Sea salt flakes, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 180 C (fan-forced). Line two baking trays with baking paper.

Place the peanut butter, butter and rice malt syrup in a large saucepan (you will use this to make the whole mixture, so make sure it’s a big saucepan) over low heat. Stir occasionally until just melted. Turn off heat.

Add the brown sugar, egg and vanilla, and beat well until combined.

Add the coconut, flour and bicarb soda and stir to combine.

FInally, add the chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed through the mixture.

Using a teaspoon and your hands, roll into balls of a size to your liking (just be consistent!) and place evenly spaced on the trays. Once all the mixture is used, use a fork to flatten the dough balls slightly.

Sprinkle the tops with a little sea salt (only a little - we’re not going for a hundreds and thousands look! Just a flake will do. Be restrained and judicious here). You could also put a few more choc chips on top (as I did).

Bake in the oven for roughly 8 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown. For goodness sake set a timer, otherwise you’ll pull a groin muscle running to the oven to rescue them.

Allow to cool slightly on the trays, then transfer to a rack to cool completely. You can eat them warm(ish) but I think they’re at their best cool. They are “crisp yet fluffy”, as Tom described them.

Perfect with a cup of tea or (I imagine) crumbled over some vanilla ice cream.

pumpkin, feta and silverbeet muffins

I’m a huge fan of the savoury muffin and while I have provided a receipt for one previously, I made them in a different way to use up some roast pumpkin and feta I had lying around and OH MY WORD they were good.

I always roast pumpkin with the skin on - with this batch of muffins, it was butternut but with other pumpkins such as Kent, with thicker grey skin, you might want to double check that it’s soft and not too tough.

You can use any combination of roast veg, cheese and herbs you have lying around. You can also sub a generous handful of flat-leaf parsley or spinach for the silverbeet leaves.

Be warned, these don’t last long. You will regret only making one batch.

Pumpkin, feta and silverbeet muffins

Makes 6 large or 12 small muffins

350g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A handful of fresh or dried sage leaves, chopped
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary, needles chopped
275ml almond milk
135ml Greek yoghurt
115ml olive oil (I used some of the chilli oil from a jar of yoghurt cheese I bought, it worked beautifully)
2 eggs
200g (roughly) chunks of roast pumpkin
150g feta (I used a combination of feta and soft goats cheese)
2-3 large leaves silverbeet, shredded (not the stalks, just the leaves)
Grated parmesan, to sprinkle on top
Hemp seeds, to sprinkle on top

Preheat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan-forced). Line a muffin tray with cases.

Combine the flour, bicarb soda, salt, pepper, sage and rosemary in a large mixing bowl.

Combine the wet ingredients in a jug.

Add the roast pumpkin chunks and the feta to the flour, and make a well in the centre. Pour the wet ingredients into the centre, sprinkle the silverbeet leaves over the top. Stir gently to just combine - over-mixing will give you tough muffins, which no-one wants! A few lumps of flour are fine, don’t worry.

Spoon the mixture into your muffin cases, ensuring each one has a good few chunks of pumpkin in. Sprinkle the tops with grated parmesan and hemp seeds - “drugs?!” asked my horrified mother when I told her what was on top of the muffin she was enjoying! - this is optional of course, but I find it adds greatly to the flavour. Hemp is full of protein too.

Bake in the oven until golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean - in my temperamental gas oven, I found the large muffins needed about 35 minutes. If you’re making 12 smaller ones, you might only need 18-20 minutes. Check after 20 minutes and go from there!

Allow to cool briefly in the tin then turn out on to a wire rack.

You can eat these warm or cold. They are the perfect accompaniment to a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup.