Chocolate Rum Balls | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I spoke of my five-layer cakes - using a dozen eggs - my spun-sugar sweets, chocolate rum balls, sponge cakes with pots of cream. Cakes made with good white flour - not that cracked-grain and bird seed stuff we were using at the time.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows

I did the very much condemned notion of watching this movie before reading the book. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society happened to come up on Netflix last year and catch my eye. It's an okay movie, but basically left me wanting to move to England and live in an island and be constantly grumpy while baking pies. Pretty much my life's goal.

I picked up the book not that long ago and sped through it on a work trip, managing to inhale the entirety of it within a single flight. It's quite simply written but delightful to read. While the notion of attempting a potato peel pie did cross my mind briefly, it soon disappeared when the description of the tantalising treats that Clara Suassey spoke of, which had her kicked out of the literary society, came to my attention on the page. Spun sugar, five-layer cakes and chocolate rum balls, an array of delicious sounding delights that immediately set my mind wandering. It settled quite firmly on chocolate rum balls - a treat that I remember as being very Australian, very much available around Christmas, and very much not containing rum. Though my memory of eating them is primarily based around the primary school years and may be a little skewed.

I wanted to step away from my childhood memory of rum balls and instead concentrate on ones that would have been most appreciated possibly on Guernsey as Clara Suassey read out loud her recipes. Ones without the outside coating of coconut, very much filled with a rich spiced rum and intensely chocolate-y.

*Note: I used coconut condensed milk and chocolate ripple biscuits for this recipe - both which happen to be plant based!

Chocolate Rum Balls
Makes approx. 12 - 16
Ingredients
1/4 cup of raisins, finely chopped
3 tbsp spiced rum
1 cup cocoa powder
2 cups desiccated coconut
250g chocolate biscuits, *see note
320g condensed milk, *see note
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp sea salt

1. Combine the rum and the finely chopped raisins, set aside for around 10 - 20 minutes and let the rum soak into the raisins.

2. Meanwhile, using a food processor or blender, crush the chocolate biscuits until they're basically powder. A few chunks here and there are okay.

3. Place chocolate biscuit powder, 1/2 cup cocoa, desiccated coconut, condensed milk, rum soaked raisins, vanilla extract and sea salt in a bowl together and mix until well combined. The mixture should be firm enough to mould into a ball - if not, add a touch more cocoa.

4. Using the palm of your hand, roll spoonfuls of the rum ball mix into balls, placing them onto a a piece of baking paper on a tray. When all mixture has been rolled into balls place the tray into the fridge for a few hours or until mix has set.

5. Place the remaining cocoa and icing sugar into two seperate bowls, and roll the prepared balls into them to coat (separately that is, unless you want to combine the icing sugar and cocoa, all means go ahead). Enjoy with a good cup of tea!

Mushrooms on Toast | Wild Pork and Watercress

I liked doing things for Aunty Bella, she was a real good sort, and made the most beautiful brawn you've ever eaten. And she could turn a bucket of ordinary old mushrooms into the most delicious bacon-y creamy toast-soaking stuff you could image. She had a bit of magic, Aunty Bella. She was my best friend as well.
Wild Pork and Watercress
Barry Crump

I went through a phase I'm sure many did when they were young, where mushrooms were possibly the vilest food imaginable. That was, until, I read and subsequently became obsessed with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. This new knowledge that my absolute favourite creatures (I'm quite short, I think I likely thought I was a hobbit at this age) were obsessed with mushrooms and craved them incessantly? Well then, guess what my new favourite food became?

The absolutely gorgeous book, Wild Pork and Watercress, from which the above quote has been taken from, inspired this late lunch this past Sunday. The book itself is a beautiful story set deep within the bush of New Zealand, any fans of Taika Waititi's work have likely seen Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which is based upon this book. The thought of going mushroom picking and then indulging lavishly in your findings feels like a distant dream when living in a city.

I have faint, faint memories of being young and being dropped at a family friend's house, spending the day with the other children running off into the neighbouring farms with a bucket, hunting down the wild mushrooms that we could find. Returning, only to have the mushrooms cooked and mushed down into almost pate that we spent the afternoon devouring.The recipe below isn't quite matching up to that memory exactly, but instead something that has become a sort of staple over the years for my own dinner. Affectionately called, stuff on toast. As it is hard to find a decent vegan ricotta or cheesy like spread without spending a small fortune, the below cashew cream spread recipe has become my go to, the perfect tart-y and creamy differentiator between the crisp toast and buttery mushrooms.

If you are a meat eater, I would highly recommend cooking up some bacon to go with this and then cooking your mushrooms in the leftover bacon fat. I believe the results would perfectly summarise the delight of Aunty Bella's mushroom dish. 

Mushrooms on Toast(with cashew cream)
Makes approx. enough for two servings
Ingredients
400g mushrooms, any kind of mushrooms will be delicious with this, sliced
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 lemon, juiced
150g raw cashews
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
2 slices thick sourdough toast
2 - 3 sprigs fresh thyme
Sea Salt
Fresh Pepper

1. Soak the raw cashews in water for at least two hours - you can hurry this along by breaking them up into smaller pieces.

2. Drain and rinse the cashews before placing them into a blender or food processor, along with the cold water, juice of one lemon, apple cider vinegar and a good few twists of salt and pepper. Blend until smooth - it will likely have a few cashew chunks throughout, if this doesn't bother you feel free to leave as is. Place cashew cream to the side.

3. Heat a frying pan on medium heat, adding in the butter. Let the butter melt and start frothing slightly before adding in the sliced mushrooms, thyme and a few twists of salt and pepper. Cook for around ten minutes or so, moving the mushrooms around the pan to prevent them sticking, adding in a few squeezes of lemon juice. They should soak up the butter and appear a lovely caramel-y brown colour. When cooked, remove from the stove.

4. Get your toast ready and spread a good, thick layer of the prepared cashew cream on before placing the mushrooms on top. Season with a little extra salt and pepper or lemon, if you like. Enjoy!

Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake | The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop. The house was quiet.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Aimee Bender

I turned 30 at the beginning of this year. It was an interesting milestone, that assumption that one should be filled with dread at the prospect of their thirties, the end of their carefree twenties. There's a slightly different feeling I have about it though, because in all honesty I think I probably had the mentality of someone in their thirties for the last six years. Declining any big nights out to instead stay in with a new television show, a book or a particularly delicious take away meal.

My 30th wasn't much different. After an incredible 10 course dinner at a local restaurant, my night was spent greedily watching reruns of Buffy (I forgot how amazing that show is) and scoffing slices of the lemon rosemary bundt cake I'd made earlier that day.

The inspiration for the cake came from a book that I surprisingly had many people recommend to me, insisting I'd find many meals I'd be wanting to recreate from its pages. Well, I had already read it and they were correct. I'd been wanting to find an excuse to make a lemon cake, I much prefer to the tartness of it compared to other cakes, and the glimpse of my copy of the book as I wandered past the bookshelf was enough to have me bundling up lemons at the local farmers market, and picking twigs of rosemary from a neighbours front yard.

This cake is quite delicious, enough so that between myself and my partner we practically demolished it within the day.

Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake
IngredientsCake
2 1/4 cups plain flour
2/3 cup raw caster sugar
Zest of one lemon
2 sprigs of rosemary, stripped from the trig and diced very finely
1 tbsp vinegar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter, softened
190ml milk
3 tbsp yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze1 cup icing sugar + extra just in case
Juice of one lemon

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 180C and prepare a 22cm bundt pan (if you have a different size one - it'll likely be totally fine) by greasing the inside thoroughly and then sprinkling a light scattering over flour throughout.

2. Combine the vinegar, yoghurt and the milk, leaving to the side for five minutes or until the milk curdles into buttermilk.

3. Sift the flour and cornflour together into a large bowl, adding in the bi-carb, baking soda, diced rosemary and salt.

4. In a seperate bowl cream together the butter and raw caster sugar until light and fluffy. Adding in the vanilla, zest and curdled milk, combine until well mixed.

5. Slowly add in the flour, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go and transfer into the prepared cake tin.

6. Bake for around 40 - 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for at least 10 minutes before gently transferring it onto a cooling rack. Leave to cool completely before glazing.

Glaze

1. Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice into a bowl and mix until it is a firm glaze. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or a little more liquid - depending on how runny you want it to be.

2. Drizzle over the the cooled cake. You can garnish with some sprigs of rosemary, lemon zest or lemon slices - what ever you want. Enjoy!

Oliebollen | The Miniaturist

She hands Nella the first olie-koek. It is still warm, and the fried crust breaks apart under Nella’s teeth, releasing the perfect blend of almond, ginger, clove and apple. ‘And Marin still loves him?’ Nella asks.
The Miniaturist
Jesse Burton

This recipe is coming in quite late, due to just…nothing. I’ve been oddly exhausted at all times lately, napping as soon as I get home from work and not finding the energy to manage anything. I’ve been determined from the next week to ensure that the (now) normal collapse into bed doesn’t occur. Instead I want to focus my energies on completing things that actually cause me to feel excited.

The Miniaturist is a book that had been sitting on my shelf for the better part of a year - I grabbed it at random one day as I was heading out, realising that I had finished my last book I was keeping in my bag. I think I finished it within the week. It is an incredible book, that manages to draw you in close, leaving me to read it in secretive bursts over a cup of tea or coffee at work, determined to get to the end. I mentioned to a friend that I was wanting to try to make the delicious fried dough that Nella dines on during the novel, Olie Koek, and she immediately got excited. Turns out, she’s half Dutch, and Oliebollen (what they are now known by) are the traditional food her family would make every New Years. I can’t describe the delight I felt when she exclaimed they tasted exactly the same as the ones her family would make.

I changed a few of the ingredients around from what Nella mentions in the book, these did not contain almonds for example, and I wanted them to be a bit more full of spices. Otherwise, these doughnuts are amazingly light and fluffy, with chunks of apple and raisins throughout. 

Oliebollen
Makes approx. 12
Ingredients
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp white sugar
250ml lukewarm milk
2 tbsp caster sugar
250g plain flour
4 tbsp raisins
1 apple, peeled and diced into small pieces
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mixed spices
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil, for frying
1 tbsp icing sugar, for dusting 

1. Combine the yeast, white sugar and warm milk together. Leave to sit until the mixture turns frothy.

2. Combine the flour, raisins, apple, spices, salt, vanilla and caster sugar together in a large bowl. Mix well.

3. Add in the yeast mixture to the flour and mix to combine well. The mixture will be quite sticky and wet - which is fine. If it's too close to liquid add in a bit more flour.

4. Place a clean cloth over the top of the bowl and leave to sit in a warm place to rise. It should take approximately an hour to double in size.

5. Heat the oil in a deep pan to around 180C - I recommend using a thermometer for this as it can be hard to ensure that the oil remains the same heat while cooking when its on the stove.

6. Using a metal spoon that has been dipped in the oil, scoop out balls from the dough, dropping them in to cook for around 3 - 4 minutes before turning them to cook the other side. They should be a light brown in colour - I recommend testing the first one to see if the length of time is enough to cook the inside.

7. Dust with the icing sugar and enjoy hot!

Almond & Pear Cake | The Landlady

“‘Good gracious me,’ he said. ‘How absolutely fascinating.’ He turned away from the dog and stared with deep admiration at the little woman beside him on the sofa. ‘It must be the most awfully difficult to do a thing like that.’

‘Not in the least,’ she said. ‘I stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away. All you have another cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you,’ Billy said. The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.”
The Landlady
Roald Dahl

The days are slowly warming, the scent of Australian pollen is beginning to fill the parks of Melbourne and the urge to run away to the countryside is coming in full. I would argue that there is no better place to experience Spring within Australia than Victoria - the brisk edge of chillness still lingers throughout but the days seem to stretch longer.

I took a trip to Daylesford to celebrate the warming weather, spending a weekend tucked away in a tiny studio airbnb, following random bush walks that seemed to stretch for hours, and lounging the afternoons away in a hot chocolate apothecary with numerous books. The town was delightfully quaint and brought about a few moments of reminiscing about my own childhood in a similar setting.

As most children, I adored Roald Dahl - I’ve gone on about my love for Matilda before (and assumption that I should probably have developed telekinetic powers since I also read a lot as a child). But, his short stories are oddly what remains firmly etched within my brain. I think I likely picked up a copy of his short stories from my parents bookshelf when I was around 14, expecting something similar to the children’s tales that I had devoured before, and was shocked to encounter stories of murder, horror and general…weirdness.

Picking up a book that contained the completed short stories of Roald Dahl was something special, and a recent reread has left me remembering the delights of his writing. Despite reading it previously, it seems that every short story’s end comes as a complete surprise, much like when I first read them.

While I promise this cake contains no secret ingredients that a particular character from one of his short stories is fond of - it is instead delicious. Moist, crumbly and perfect with a cup of tea and a good book on a spring afternoon.

Almond and Pear Cake
Makes one 8” cake
Ingredients
100g plain flour
125g butter
125g caster sugar
90ml milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
100g almond meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bi-carb
3 pears, peeled, cored and cut in half and thinly sliced
50g flaked almonds
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Grease an 8” cake tin, lining the bottom with a circle of baking paper.

2. Combine the apple cider vinegar and milk - leave to sit for five minutes, or until it begins to curdle.

3. Combine butter and sugar in the bowl of a mixer, and cream together until pale and fluffy. Slowly add in the prepared milk mixture while beating.

4. Remove the sugar mix from the mixer and fold in the flour, bi-carb, baking powder, almond meal and cinnamon. Mix until combined.

5. Pour the cake mixture into your prepared tin and arrange the slices of pear on top neatly (or messily - it’s your cake).

6. Place into the oven and bake for 25 minutes before removing it to scatter the flaked almonds over the top. Return the cake to the oven and cook for another 10 - 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Though do be careful not to poke the skewer into one of the pear slices.

7. Leave to cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from tin. It is particularly good with a cup of tea and some coconut yoghurt. Enjoy!

Dumplings | The Kitchen God's Wife

Back home, I told the cook girl to boil enough pots of water and to chop enough pork and vegetables to make a thousand dumplings, both steamed and boiled, with plenty of fresh ginger, good soy sauce, and sweet vinegar for dipping.
The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan

I don’t think I’d ever really eaten a dumpling of any kind, before I moved to Melbourne. While there were a few Chinese restaurants in the country town I called home, my family never really frequented them. Instead most our eating out consisted of milkshakes and burgers at a local cafe, or fish and chips on a Friday night, called in ten minutes early to the fish and chip shop in the tiny neighbouring town that was closest to our house.

When I moved to Melbourne though I discovered the deliciousness that is a dumpling. While there may be many disagreements for where the best dumplings in the city are, my vote goes to Shanghai Dumpling House. Terrible service, tissues on tables instead of napkins and food that is usually thrown on the table without a word - however, there’s no better place to devour plate after plate of deliciously hot dumplings during the cold days, filling up on the decadent plates (15 dumplings for $7 is pretty great) and refilling cup after cup of the free tea.

I think I devoured most of Amy Tan’s novels in the same way - trying to hide away during winter and read as much as possible at once, frantically trying to finish so I could see how the story would end. It was once I’d finished, and looked back at the mentions of food throughout that I realised I’d never made dumplings. It was the following weekend that I also realised that my local asian grocer had an entire fridge utterly filled with different kinds of dumpling wrappers - if I believed in signs from the universe, this would have been a sign.

*Note: Depending where you go there may be lots of different types of dumplings wrappers available. Try and get the jiaozi ones - it’s what I used and they were perfect.

Dumplings
Makes approx. 3 - 4 dozen
Ingredients
Dumpling wrappers *see note (at least a pack of 50)
3 tbsp vegetable oil + 1/4 cup
2 tsp minced ginger
1 brown onion, very finely diced
1 carrot, finely grated
2 cups shiitake mushrooms, very finely diced
1/2 head white cabbage, very finely sliced
1 cup gallic chives, very finely sliced
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp white sugar
Fresh pepper
1/2 cup of water
To serve (whatever you want really)
Soy sauce
Sweet vinegar
Chilli oil

1. In a large wok or frying pan heat 3 tbsp vegetables oil and add in the ginger and onions. Cook for a few minutes or until onion is translucent.

2. Add in the mushrooms, cooking for around 5 minutes until just tender. Add in the carrots and cabbage and continue to cook until all vegetables are tender - remove from heat and transfer to a bowl.

3. Add into the bowl the garlic chives, sesame oil, fresh pepper, soy sauce, sugar and remaining 1/4 cup oil. Stir until all the filling is nicely mixed (if the mixture is a bit too wet at this stage, I tend to pop mine in a fine meshed sieve and let a bit of it drip out so the dumplings aren’t too soggy).

4. Now for the fun part: assembling them. Dip your fingers into the water and dampen around the edge of the dumpling wrapper before spooning a small amount of the vegetable mix into the middle. Working from the edge, pinch together the sides of the wrapper using the water to press the edges together more when necessary. Place onto a lightly floured surface when done. Repeat with all remaining vegetable mix.

5. To steam the dumplings, you can either use a bamboo steamer or a regular vegetable steamer - just make sure you place a bit of cheesecloth inside the steamer first or otherwise the dumplings will stick badly to the pan.

6. To fry, heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a frying pan, placing the dumplings into the pan when the oil is hot. Allow them to fry for about two minutes before adding a small layer of water to the pan, reducing the heat and covering so they can steam. Once the water has evaporated you can remove the cover and let them fry for another couple minutes.

7. Serve immediately with your choice of dipping sauce.