Corn & sour cream filo pie

December 25, 2025

   

My mum, brother and aunty visited our place for Christmas in 2025. They don't expect anything fancy of us but are always very appreciative when Michael and I cook. The weather was right for a picnic at the nearest park so we planned a menu that we could feasibly take down there. The centrepiece was a filo pie stuffed with charred corn kernels, spring onions, feta and sour cream.

I adjusted the recipe to suit my style. I thought, mid-summer, that fresh corn would be much more fun than canned. I sautéed the spring onions, instead of mixing them into the filling uncooked, because I prefer my onions tender. Dragging the pastry sheets through the thick filling seemed unwieldy, so I just layered up the filo and filling in turns as I'm accustomed to. And I used the whole box of filo, instead of the fraction suggested in the recipe, for convenience.

This pie was worthy of the occasion, standing tall and golden with a creamy and gently savoury centre. We didn't mind spilling pastry shards all over the blanket. The pie was well teamed with a pomegranate molasses-dressed tomato salad and roasted asparagus topped with capers and almonds. We followed up with bienenstich for dessert at home. 

Corn & sour cream pie

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

the kernels from 2 cobs corn

300g spring onions, finely chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 eggs

300g sour cream

200g feta, crumbled into 2-3cm pieces

100ml milk

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

salt and pepper

spray oil

375g box filo pastry

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

100g baby cornichons

Place a medium frying pan over medium-hot heat and add the corn kernels. Stir them only occasionally, allowing them to char. Before they properly burn, transfer the kernels to a large bowl. Keep the heat in the pan going, and sauté the spring onions in a bit of oil until tender; when they're ready, turn off the heat and add them to the corn in the bowl. Beat the eggs and pour them onto the corn; add the sour cream, feta, milk, baking powder, salt and pepper, stirring everything together until well combined.

Preheat an oven to 200°C and line a springform cake dish with baking paper. Unpack the filo pastry and roll it up in a lightly damp tea towel. Spray oil into the cake dish and build up some filo sheets to cover the base and sides. Spoon in about half of the corn filling, then scrunch up some more pastry sheets and spray them with a bit of oil in between; repeat with the remaining corn filling and messily layer the rest of the filo sheets with some oil on top. Give the top a final oil spray and sprinkle over the sesame seeds. 

Bake the pie for about 40 minutes, until golden on top, then allow it to cool for up to an hour, before serving with the cornichons on the side.

Coconut caramel cake

August 2, 2025

   

My chocolate-avoiding mum stopped in for a visit, and I had time to bake us a cocoa-free treat in the couple of hours before she arrived. Even better, Michael and I had time to feast at Tofu Shoten around our grocery shopping. We were hoping to find frozen grated coconut at an Indian grocer that Michael recalled being nearby but they were long gone. Woolies didn't have the coconut either, though they did have something called "moist flakes coconut" that I was hoping would do the job. We were home before I noticed that the flakes were already sweetened and I regretted my choices.

To be honest, this coconut caramel-topped cake went just fine even if I wasn't thrilled with it. The cake was warm and fluffy on the day of baking, firmed up a lot on day two, and I couldn't really taste the cardamom either way. The thick layer of coconut caramel on top was perfectly browned, very sweet and verrry chewy. The recommended dollop of plain yoghurt offered a welcome tangy contrast. I wonder if frozen coconut would be more tender - probably so, but not enough to rescue this recipe from my ambivalence. This was a good cake, but not a great cake, happily shared during a fine family time.

   

Coconut caramel cake

(slightly adapted from a recipe in The Guardian)

coconut caramel

120g caster sugar

250ml coconut milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

300g fresh or frozen coconut, coarsely grated (not 225g sweetened moist coconut flakes)

30g butter

cake batter

3 eggs

220g caster sugar

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon salt

220g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

80g butter, melted

150mL coconut milk

to serve

yoghurt

Start by making the caramel. Place the sugar in a saucepan and set it over medium heat. Swish it around intermittently for about 5 minutes, until the sugar is melted and golden brown. Gently add the coconut milk and salt - it'll sputter. Carefully stir it all together until it's well combined (the sugar may solidify and need to re-melt). Stir in the coconut and cook for a couple more minutes. Stir in the butter until melted and well combined. Turn off the heat and allow the caramel to cool.

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a springform cake tin with paper and spray with oil.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, cardamom and salt. Keep beating for several minutes until very fluffy. Sift over the flour and baking powder and fold them into the egg mixture. Gently stir in the melted butter and the coconut milk.

Pour the cake batter into the cake tin and bake for 40 minutes, until golden. Spread the coconut caramel over the top of the cake and bake for a further 15-20 minutes, until the topping is golden and a little crisp at the edges. Allow the cake to cool before releasing it from the tin and serving, with a generous dollop of yoghurt.

Sautéed rhubarb & fior di latte dressed in peppercorn oil

October 5, 2024

   

Here's the final component of our Ottolenghi grilling trilogy. This one's my favourite of the bunch and it actually hit the cast iron pan as intended. Sections of rhubarb are set on high heat just long enough to soften and char, then they're dressed with ginger honey, layered with big chunks of fior di latte, scattered with basil leaves and finished with peppercorn oil. It's tangy and creamy up against each other, shot through with sweetness and spice. I think I'd be as happy eating this for dessert as I was working it into my main meal!

Sautéed rhubarb & fior di latte dressed in peppercorn oil

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

400g rhubarb, trimmed and sliced on the diagonal into 4-5cm lengths

350g fior di latte, burrata or other fresh, milky cheese, drained and roughly torn into large pieces

10g basil leaves

peppercorn oil

1 teaspoon peppercorns

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes

flaked sea salt

2 tablespoons oil

ginger honey

90ml runny honey

15g fresh ginger, peeled and julienned

Using a mortar and pestle, lightly crush together the peppercorns, coriander seeds, chilli flakes, and a pinch of salt. Heat the oil in a small saucepan and then add the crushed spices. Cook them for just 30 seconds, then pour the spices and oil together into a small heat-proof bowl or jar. Clean the saucepan.

Set the small saucepan back over medium heat, adding the honey, ginger, a splash of water and a pinch of salt. Cook for about 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and set aside.

Set a cast iron pan over high heat. When it's hot, add the rhubarb in batches, cooking until just charred and softened and then setting aside in a bowl as you go. When they're all done, stir through about half of the honey mixture.

To serve, layer up the torn fior di latte and rhubarb pieces. Drizzle over the honey, scatter the basil leaves on top, and finally drizzle with the peppercorn oil.

Charred carrots & tofu with harissa

October 5, 2024

   

The second phase of our impromptu Ottolenghi afternoon was this double tofu ensemble, combining a silken tofu and tahini-based cream with some charred up firm tofu and carrots. We made a few simplifications from the original recipe, holding back on the spring onion garnish, but otherwise stuck pretty close to Yotam's directions. This packed a pretty decent punch - our supermarket harissa had a good kick, and you really needed the creamy silken tofu underlayer to balance things out. It was great in combination with the fresher greens and rhubarb dishes and the leftovers kept me going for a few lunches. Not a show-stopper, but a very solid contributor.

Charred carrots & tofu with harissa

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

100g silken tofu

2 tablespoons tahini

salt

50g harissa

1 teaspoon golden syrup

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons tamari

5 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

20g fresh ginger, grated

1.5 tablespoons olive oil

300g firm tofu, cut into thin rectangles

250g baby carrots, trimmed

Blend the silken tofu, tahini and salt together and set aside

Combine the harissa, syrup, vinegar, tamari, garlic, ginger and oil in a biggish saucepan and saute over medium heat for five minutes, until fragrant.

Meanwhile put a frying pan over high heat (we used our cast iron one) and fry the tofu in batches, with just a spray of oil. You want it to char up, so leave it on each side for a couple of minutes. Once it's all cooked up, pop the tofu in the saucepan with your harissa mix, along with 100ml of water and stir together gently.

In the same frying pan, char up your baby carrots until they've blackened in a few spots and softened through - the time it takes will depend on how thick they are, ours probably only took 5 or 6 minutes with a couple of turns. When they're done stir them into your saucepan as well.

 

Serve it up by layering the silken tofu cream down first and then gently arranging the saucy tofu and carrots on top.

Broccolini & asparagus with green salsa & butter beans

October 5, 2024

   

On a weekend in early October, we had the time and energy for a big cook-up. I was in the mood for fresh flavours and hit on an Ottolenghi Guardian column that I bookmarked last year about grilling (i.e. using an open flame). It was bright and all-vegetarian and we were ambitious enough to cook all three dishes!

Since we were making three multi-component dishes, it wasn't realistic to grill everything. We actually grilled (as in 'broiled') the green capsicum and garlic involved. But we oven-baked the intended-to-be-grilled broccolini and aspargus, trusting that they'd acquire a gentle crispness and char around the edges. They're served on a bed of mashed butter beans, intermingled with a spicy green salsa and topped with toasted, cumin-spiked almond flakes.

It was a savoury, hearty dish on the night we made it, still great at room temperature on the following days, and Michael even had some bonus salsa to eat with hummus on toast.

Broccolini & asparagus with green salsa & butter beans

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

250g broccolini, cut into large bite-sized pieces

200g asparagus, cut into large bite-sized pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper

green salsa

1 green capsicum, sliced into four flat surfaces

6 cloves garlic, peel still on

3 large red chillies, sliced into large chunks

30g fresh coriander

10g fresh parsley

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly crushed

salt, to taste

fried almonds

1 tablespoon olive oil

30g flaked almonds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly crushed

salt, to taste

mashed butter beans

2 x 400g cans butter beans, drained

2 tablespoons lemon juice

salt, to taste

Turn a grill onto medium-high heat. Place the capsicum pieces skin-side-up on a baking tray and add the garlic cloves. Place them under the grill until the capsicum skin blisters and turns black, and the garlic cloves have softened. Turn off the heat and set them aside.

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Place the broccolini and asparagus pieces in a baking tray, drizzle over the olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and toss everything around. Bake for 15 minutes until tender, then set them aside.

When the capsicum is cool enough to handle, peel off the skin and place the pieces into a food processor. Peel the garlic cloves and add 3 of them to the food processor. Add the remaining salsa ingredients and blend until everything is almost smooth. Transfer the salsa to a bowl and rinse out the food processor.

Set a frypan over medium heat, add the oil for the almonds, then the almonds and a pinch of salt. Saute, stirring regularly, until the almonds are golden and fragrant. Turn off the heat and stir in the cumin.

Place the butter beans in the food processor, add the remaining 3 peeled garlic cloves, lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Blend until it's all as smooth as you can reasonably achieve.

Spread the butter bean mash over a large platter. Spoon most of the green salsa over the top and swirl it around. Pile on the broccolini and asparagus, drip over the remaining salsa, and sprinkle over the almonds. Serve.

Za'atar cheese sticks

January 28, 2023

   

Between Christmas and new year we had a day trip to Dandenong with my family, including lunch at AB Bakery. I bought a cheap but large bag of za'atar on my way out and we've been seasoning things with it often. Our za'atar oversupply also brought this bookmarked Ottolenghi recipe for za'atar cheese sticks to the top of my list when I wanted to make a party snack.

The concept is pretty simple, basically a shortcrust pastry with cheese and za'atar in the dough, sliced into strips and sprinkled with a little extra cheese and za'atar. It's crumbly, buttery and salty. I doubled the recipe and it was the right thing to do.

Speaking of doubling, Ottolenghi recommends using two kinds of salt for varied texture. I thought the cheese and za'atar offered plenty of textural variety already, but did sneak some of the oregano flavoured salt we have onto the top.

Za'atar cheese sticks

(slightly adapted from a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe in The Guardian)

125g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

3 tablespoons za'atar

80g sharp cheddar cheese, grated

salt and pepper

90g cold butter, diced

1 egg, beaten

extra fancy salt (optional)

In a food processor, mix together the flour, half the za'atar, 70g of the cheese, and some salt and pepper. Drop in the butter and continue to blitz until the mixture forms a dough. Turn the dough out onto a sheet of baking paper and roll it into a rectangle of about 18cm x 14cm x 1cm thick. Transfer the paper and dough together onto a baking tray, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. Slice the dough into sticks of about 7cm x 1.5cm (I found a pizza cutter handy for this!). Spread the sticks out across the baking paper on the tray; you may need to line a second tray with baking paper to give the cheese sticks enough room. Brush the top of each stick with egg, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, and sprinkle with a little fancy salt (if using). Bake for 12-14 minutes, until the sticks are golden and cooked through. As soon as they come out of the oven, sprinkle them with the remaining za'atar.

Allow the cheese sticks to cool a little before serving.

Confit chickpeas

August 20, 2022

   

I saw Kylie tweeting about an easy chickpea recipe that she'd fallen in love with and immediately downloaded the badly photographed recipe to add to our rotation. I should have known immediately it was an Ottolenghi - ludicrously precise instructions like "11 garlic cloves" alongside big flavours? It has his fingerprints all over it.

It's also, somewhat surprisingly, incredibly simple - the confit takes a long time to bake, but preparation work is super minimal and the pay-off predictably wonderful. It's an oily, spicy delight, with the herby yoghurt providing a bit of freshness to cut through. We served it with paratha from the freezer, but something a bit more absorbent would really hit the spot I think. This is up there with Yotam's orecchiette for me, in terms of maximising simplicity and deliciousness. We'll definitely make it again!

    

   

Confit chickpeas

(based on this recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi)

chickpeas

2 x 400g cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

11 cloves of garlic, peeled

thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and julienned

400g cherry tomatoes

3 red chillies, with a slit cut down the side

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 teaspoons cumin seeds, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle

2 teaspoons coriander seeds, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes

2 teaspoons hot paprika

1 teaspoon caster sugar

200ml olive oil

salt

dressing

small bunch mint, leaves only

small bunch coriander, leaves only

200g yoghurt

1 tablespoon lime juice, plus bonus lime wedges to serve

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a casserole dish or other ovenproof pan that has a lid, combine all the chickpea ingredients, stirring thoroughly to mix everything together. Cover and cook for 70-80 minutes, stirring everything at the halfway point - you want the tomatoes to almost completely break down by the end.

When the chickpeas are nearly done, whiz together the dressing ingredients in a food processor.

Serve, with bread or rice and with yoghurt dressing and lime wedges.

Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

March 13, 2022

   

Three years ago, I baked a housewarming cake for our friends Simon and Noni. We had such a nice time delivering and sharing the cake and meeting their new puppy that I suggested the same again when they moved this month. The cycle is a teeny bit further and the puppy is now enormous. I chose a coconut, almond and blueberry cake from Goh & Ottolenghi's Sweet for morning tea.

This cake uses melted butter and doesn't need an electric mixer so it's easy to stir together (and therefore it's no bother to your neighbours if you happen to have slept weirdly and commenced prep at 5:40am). It has the distinct moist crumb of a cake based on almond meal plus extra flavour from desiccated coconut; there's a little plain flour in there too, so it's not actually gluten-free. The butter caramelises the crust, it's all shot through with bright blueberries, and the cake is crowned with toasty almond flakes. 

It is an excellent cake that's feels a bit fancy but is actually very unfussy. I'm sure it could be veganised  and/or de-glutened with your favourite butter, egg and flour replacements. (That said, we've also got a great lemon and blueberry loaf recipe just sitting here being vegan from the get-go.)

   

Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

(very slightly adapted from Helen Goh & Yotam Ottolenghi's Sweet)

spray oil

180g almond meal

60g desiccated coconut

250g caster sugar

70g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

200g butter, melted, at room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

zest of 2 lemons

200g fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons flaked almonds

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a springform cake tin with baking paper and lightly spray it with oil.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the almond meal, coconut, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt.

In a medium mixing bowl, lightly beat together the eggs. Gradually whisk in the melted butter, then the vanilla and lemon zest. Pour this mixture into the large mixing bowl of dry ingredients and mix until almost combined. Fold in 150g of the blueberries until the cake batter is fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into the tin, lightly smoothing over the top. Sprinkle over the remaining blueberries and the flaked almonds. Bake the cake for 50-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Give the cake plenty of time to rest before removing it from the tin and serving - the original recipe recommends 30 minutes, and mine was still warm and soft in the middle after a couple of hours resting and being cycled to its destination!

Pumpkin & feta filo pie

December 24-25, 2021

   

This year our Christmas day was small, casual and content, with no pressure to put on a big, fancy meal. But with time off from work, I was in the mood to do something fun in the kitchen and planned out some dishes a couple of days ahead. This Ottolenghi filo pie was simply plucked from my bookmarked recipes and formed the centrepiece of the meal - it's filled with a comforting, crowd-pleasing combination of pumpkin, feta, caramelised onion and sage.

There are a few phases to the recipe and I got a head start a day in advance, roasting the pumpkin in cinnamon and slowly caramelising the onions. This allowed me to focus on the construction of the pie during Christmas day. I had to trim my baking paper back to get the control I needed over the filo sheets, but it all came together and held together without too much drama. Though this recipe isn't vegan, I think it would be easy to adapt: the filo could be brushed with olive oil or melted margarine, and there are some terrific non-dairy feta cheeses available now.

The golden filo pastry makes a bit of a mess when it's time to slice the pie up, but I think it's the kind of crackly, tasty mess that enhances the sense of occasion.

   

Pumpkin & feta filo pie

(slightly adapted from an Ottolenghi recipe appearing in The Guardian)

375g packet filo pastry

90g butter, melted

30g caster sugar

filling

60mL olive oil

2 onions, peeled, halved and cut into 1/2 cm slices

salt and pepper

5g sage leaves, finely chopped

10g parsley, roughly chopped

150g feta, roughly crumbled

2 teaspoons lemon zest

1/2 butternut pumpkin (~650g), seeds and peel removed, cut into 1 1/2 cm-thick half-moons

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Set a frypan over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the onions and a little salt, and slowly cook the onions until they're very soft and caramelised - expect this to take around 40 minutes. Transfer the onions to a bowl, and stir in the herbs, feta, lemon zest, and a little salt and pepper.

Preheat an oven to 220°C while you slice up the pumpkin. Place the pumpkin pieces in a large baking tray, drizzle over 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and sprinkle over the cinnamon and some salt and pepper. Toss the pumpkin pieces around to get them coated in the oil, and bake them for up to 30 minutes, until tender.

Turn the oven down to 190°C. Line a springform cake tin with baking paper and brush it with the melted butter. Use a little more than half the filo pastry sheets to line the base and sides of the cake tin - brush each one with butter as they go in, sprinkle them with 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar, and stagger them around the tin so that the base is well covered, all the sides are covered, and the sheets extend beyond the top of the cake tin. This process should use up about half of the melted butter.

Arrange half of the pumpkin pieces across the base of the cake tin, breaking them up as needed to fit them into the spaces. Spread half of the onion-feta mixture over the top of the pumpkin. Repeat with the remaining pumpkin and onion-feta mixture. Scrunch another sheet of filo onto the top of the fillings and brush it with butter. Fold over a couple of the overhanging filo pieces, add another filo sheet and brush with more butter. Continue this process until all the overhanging filo is gathered up, and all the filo sheets and butter are used up.

Transfer the springform tin to a baking tray, and place it all in the oven to bake for 50 minutes. Gently remove the outer springform walls from the cake tin and bake the pie for a further 20 minutes, until it is golden brown all over. Allow the pie to cool for around 15 minutes before slicing and serving.  

A pineapple & sage mocktail

November 25, 2021

   

We recently joined some friends in their home for a fun and slightly haphazard night - there was an online wine tasting class for two booked, and those of us who weren't drinking wine shared some mocktails. Low/no alcohol beers, wines and spirits have absolutely exploded in Melbourne this past year, and I used this as an excuse to buy some Brunswick Aces 0% alcohol gin. (It's made right in our suburb, and they've got a nice-looking bar that I'm keen to visit.)

The gin smells like citrus and cinnamon to me, and it's very astringent on its own. We all thought it was terrific and summery with tonic water and a slice of frozen grapefruit. I had also prepared in advance the components of this pineapple and sage mocktail, which we'd enjoyed once before with our Ottolenghi Club.

The original cocktail recipe would have us infuse the gin with cardamom pods and sage, but I wanted to keep the gin unsullied for other tastings and future mocktails. Instead, I added the cardamom pods and sage into the clove infusion of the sugar syrup. I wasn't much impressed with the aroma of the syrup on its own (the sage made it weirdly... seaweedy?) but it tastes very sweet and pleasantly herbal.

   

The other big commitment here is the pineapple. It's roasted in foil on high heat for three hours. By then the flesh has mellowed and darkened a lot. It's easier to peel and slice, and the core is highly visible. I would love to try doing this again for a dessert.

The gin, syrup, pineapple and some lemon juice mix together into a complex, fruity mocktail that's fun to share and ideal at this time of year. The recipe below has very uneven quantities: pineapple for maybe a dozen glasses, syrup for two dozen, and lemon juice for no more than four...! So I'll be mixing and matching my leftovers in the coming weeks.

   

A pineapple & sage mocktail

(slightly adapted from a recipe on Ottolenghi's website)

1 large pineapple, skin on but leaves trimmed (1.4 kg)

250 g caster sugar

4 whole cloves

4 cardamom pods, roughly crushed

22 sage leaves

gin (we used Brunswick Aces 0% alcohol Hearts Sapiir)

juice of 1 lemon

Preheat an oven to 200°C. Wrap the pineapple in foil, place it in a baking tray, and roast it for 3 hours. Allow the pineapple to cool. Cut away and discard the pineapple's skin and core. Puree the pineapple flesh in a food processor, then set it aside (potentially in the fridge).

Place the sugar in a small-medium saucepan with 250 mL water. Bring the mixture to the boil, then turn the heat down to low. Add the cloves, crushed cardamom pods, and 20 of the sage leaves. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly, and then set the syrup aside to cool. Strain out the cloves, pods and leaves.

When you're ready to drink mocktails, shake together 100 mL of the gin, 50 mL of the pineapple puree, 25 mL lemon juice, and 20 mL of the sugar syrup with ice. Split the mocktail between two glasses and garnish with a sage leaf to serve.

Raspberry & halva crumble slice

November 7, 2021

   

Restrictions have eased a lot, but I'm emerging slowly - seeing friends occasionally, in small groups, and most often outside. I'm still spending plenty of time at home and allocating some of it to baking. The halva I needed for this recipe was a nice excuse to walk to a more distant supermarket and browse their novel groceries early in the morning when the aisles were still quiet, then potter around the kitchen in the afternoon.

I made a couple of easy substitutions to render this vegan and gluten-free: margarine instead of butter, and a gluten-free flour blend instead of wheat-based plain flour. I feared this might make for a crumble slice so crumbly it couldn't hold together, but it held up fine. Eaten warm from the oven, I reckon this slice was indistinguishable from a buttery, gluteny version. Eaten cool a day later, it was a slightly less convincing shortcrust but still a very good snack.

The recipe promises lots of contrasting flavours from raspberries, tahini and halva, sumac and rosewater. The raspberries definitely dominate, and the halva has a moment here and there, but the sumac and rosewater got a bit lost in the bake. They might have had a better chance if I'd included the optional unheated raspberry drizzle, but it just seemed messy and unnecessary at the time. These are both flavours I've enjoyed in other pink, fruity desserts so I'd like to see them shine here too!

Happily, I was able to share this slice with friends - we had one spontaneously pop in for a coffee while this was in the oven, and I packed some for a walk with another on Sunday.

   

Raspberry & halva crumble slice

(a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi published in The Guardian)

225g plain flour (I had good results with a gluten-free blend)

105g caster sugar

50g brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

175g butter or margarine, melted

40g tahini

1 teaspoon vanilla

300g raspberries, fresh or defrosted from frozen

1 tablespoon cornflour

1 1/4 teaspoons sumac

1 teaspoon rosewater

200g halva

Preheat an oven to 170°C. Line a 22cm square cake tin with baking paper.

In a medium-large bowl, stir together the flour, 70g of the caster sugar, the brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the melted butter/margarine, tahini and vanilla until everything is well mixed. Measure out 300g of the dough and place it in the lined cake tin, using the back of a spoon and/or your clean hands to spread it out into an even layer. Bake the biscuit base for 20 minutes, and refrigerate the leftover dough.

While the base is baking, get out a medium bowl use it to stir together the raspberries, remaining 35g caster sugar, cornflour, sumac and rosewater.

When the biscuit base is baked, retrieve it from the oven and raise the oven temperature to 180°C. Crumble the halva evenly across the biscuit base, then spoon the raspberry mixture over the halva. Retrieve the remaining biscuit dough from the fridge and scatter it in pieces over the raspberries. Bake the slice for 45-50 minutes, until the crumble is golden and the raspberries are bubbling. Allow the slice to cool a bit before slicing and serving.

Rum & raisin cake

May 29-30, 2021

   

On Michael's birthday this year, Melbourne entered another pandemic lockdown. There were a couple of social arrangements to cancel, but we figured out some good takeaway food and cooking projects across the weekend to compensate (more to come!). I was also ready to bake his pick from Goh and Ottolenghi's Sweet: a rum and raisin cake.

This cake is intended to be baked in a bundt pan. The cookbook shows a decorative cake with the icing in motion, following the neat channels of the cake form. A springform cake tin is a plainer, easier alternative. The cake's preparation isn't complicated, though I had a couple hiccups - the morning was cold, the butter was cold, and my electric beater just wasn't up to the job.

The finished cake had a magnificent texture on the day of baking - crusty at its edge, soft all the way through and just a little fudgy right in the centre, with plenty of rum-soaked raisins scattered throughout. It settled into something firmer and more uniform over subsequent days. I only poured half of the icing over the cake, because the remainder looked likely to just spill onto the plate, and I kept the leftovers in a jar to spoon over one cake slice at a time. The icing has a lovely caramel and rum flavour, but I think I'd be just as happy not bothering with it, since the cake already carries these flavours well itself.

While this cake could certainly be veganised, we've actually got a ready-to-go vegan rum'n'raisin cake recipe on the blog already! Whichever way you bake it, it's a comfort during another locked-down winter.

   

Rum & raisin cake

(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake

200g raisins

120mL dark rum

300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

250g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

250g brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

200g sour cream

icing (I recommend halving the recipe, or even omitting it)

60g butter

80g brown sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon dark rum

100g icing sugar

A day in advance of baking the cake, mix together the raisins and rum in a shallow plastic container, cover them with a lid, and let them macerate overnight.

Preheat an oven to 190°C. If you have a 23cm bundt tin, grease and flour it. Instead, I used a ~23cm round springform pan, lining it with paper and greasing it.

In a medium-large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric beater. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs. With the beater on a low speed, add in spoonfuls of the flour mixture and sour cream in turns, until everything is well mixed. Mix in the raisins and rum until just mixed through the batter. Pour the cake batter into your tin and smooth over the top. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

To make the icing, melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the sugar until well-mixed. Add the milk and bring it to a boil. Turn off the heat, whisk in the rum, and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Sift in the icing sugar and whisk until smooth. Gently pour the icing over the top of the cake.

Herby zucchini & peas with semolina porridge

 January 16, 2021

   

One of our green-thumbed pals offloaded some of her excess zucchinis on us and we went digging around for a new recipe to use them in. Of course Ottolenghi has a series of courgette-focussed columns. We picked this dish out of one of them and gave it a shot. It's a pretty simple recipe - once you've chopped up your zucchini and herbs it takes no time at all to cook. And it's wonderful! The zucchini dish is bursting with flavour from the basil and tarragon, with a hint of lemon sneaking through, while the semolina porridge is a slightly creamier base akin to polenta - hearty and delicious. It was so good that we made it again before I even got around to blogging it!

Herby zucchini & peas with semolina porridge

(from Ottolenghi's Guardian column)

50g butter

5 garlic cloves, crushed

1.2kg zucchini (about 6), sliced into half moons

200g frozen peas, defrosted

25g basil leaves, shredded

15g tarragon leaves

zest of 1 lemon

600ml milk

600ml water

180g semolina

100g parmesan, grated

50g pine nuts, lightly toasted

salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Once it has melted, fry the garlic for a couple of minutes until it just starts to go golden.

Add in the zucchini with a good sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes until the zucchini starts to soften up. Reduce the heat and cover the pan and leave to cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the peas and - after a minute - kill the heat, stir through the herbs and lemon zest and set aside while you make the semolina.

Combine the milk and water in a medium saucepan with some salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and then add in the semolina, whisking constantly to avoid lumps forming. In 3-4 minutes, it should have thickened up into a smooth porridge. Kill the heat and stir in most of the parmesan.

Serve the porridge, topped with the zucchini mix and sprinkled with pine nuts and the leftover parmesan.

Revisiting Ottolenghi's Simple

 January 13, 2021

   

I've been off work the past couple of weeks while Cindy's been hard at it, so I put Wednesday aside to make a big ol' Ottolenghi feast. The centrepiece was this old favourite - quinoa salad with Persian dried limes - but I wanted to fill it out with a couple of new dishes from Simple. We chose a couple of nice, easy veggie sides - the kind of dishes that need company and suit a big, fancy feast.

   

First up: roasted asparagus with almonds, capers and dill. This relies on butter-fried almond slivers and the crispy capers to punch up some straightforward roasted asparagus spears. It's an effective combo though, with the capers' acidity cutting through the buttery richness of the nuts and the earthy asparagus. It's super easy - you can get the almonds and capers ready while the asparagus is roasting.

   

Our other side was roasted beetroot with yoghurt and preserved lemon, which had the added bonus of making use of some preserved lemon a kind friend had given us. This one takes a bit longer, with our beets taking a full hour to roast to tenderness. The dill and preserved lemon give this some strong flavours, but they worked really well with the more subdued quinoa salad.

The whole meal took a while to put together and used up all of our saucepans twice over, but there's nothing tricky here - it just needs you to be a bit organised timing-wise. And the pay-off was phenomenal!

Roasted asparagus with almonds, capers and dill

(from Yotam Ottolenghi's Simple)

600g asparagus, woody ends trimmed off

3 tablespoons olive oil

30g butter

20g flaked almonds

30g capers

10g dill, roughly chopped

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C. 

Mix the asparagus with a tablespoon of the oil, salt and pepper and lay out on a baking tray. Roast for about 10 minutes, until it has softened and started to brown up in a few places. Set aside.

Heat the butter in a small saucepan over medium high heat and throw the almonds in once it has melted. Fry the slivers, stirring constantly, until they've gone crunchy and golden brown. Pour the almond and butter mix over the asparagus. 

Fry the capers in the rest of the olive oil over high heat for a couple of minutes - you want them to go a bit crispy if you can (it helps to pat them dry before you pop them in the hot oil). Scatter the fried capers on top of the asparagus along with the dill. 

Roasted beetroot with yoghurt & preserved lemon

(from Yotam Ottolenghi's Simple)

1kg beetroot, scrubbed but skin on

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 red onion

1 preserved lemon, finely chopped

2 tablespoons lemon juice

15g dill, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon tahini

150g Greek yoghurt

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Wrap each of the beets in foil and roast for 30-60 minutes - you want a skewer to go through easily - ours took a full hour. Unwrap them and let them cool a bit before peeling and cutting into 1/2 cm slices. 

Heat the olive oil in a small plan and fry the red onion with the cumin seeds for 2-3 minutes, until the onion has softened and the seeds have started to pop (Ottolenghi leaves the onion raw, but fried is better I reckon). Pour the oil, onion and cumin seed mix over the beets and add the preserved lemon, lemon juice, most of the dill, salt and pepper. Mix together well and transfer to a serving platter.

Stir the tahini and yoghurt together and then dollop it on top of the beetroot in a few places, mixing gently and topping with the leftover dill.

Tahini & halva brownies

January 5, 2021

   

   

I had one of my very occasional urges to make sweet stuff this week. We wanted something portable, and Cindy suggested these brownies from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet. We'd been lucky enough to eat them before but we'd never actually made them. They're fancy, but super easy - there's no separating egg yolks and whites, no complex techniques, just pretty basic baking.

They're incredibly rich, stuffed with halva on top of all the chocolate, butter and sugar, but they're really, really good. 

Tahini & halva brownies
(very slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet)

250g butter, cut into small cubes
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups of caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g halva, crumbled into 2cm pieces
4-5 tablespoons tahini


Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease a 30 x 20cm baking tin and set aside (you can line with paper too if you're cautious, but mine came out fine).

Gently melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan until you've got a thick, shiny sauce. Set aside to cool down to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and caster sugar in a large bowl until creamy, about 3-5 minutes with electric beaters. Gently fold in the chocolate mix.

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt into a small bowl and stir them together. Fold this dry mix into the chocolate mix and combine. Gently mix in the halva pieces.

Pour the mixture into your baking tin, smoothing it out with a spatula if necessary. Dollop the tahini onto the mix in 10-12 places and swirl them with a skewer to make a marbled pattern.

Bake for 20-25 minutes - it will come out looking like it needs more time, but will set as it cools. Leave for at least half an hour before cutting it into brownie sized pieces. 

Blueberry & cream cheese crostata

 November 28-29, 2020

   

For the first time in more than a year, our Ottolenghi cooking club met in person and shared food together. In a common pattern for our club, I volunteered for dessert duty early and with enthusiasm. The most appetising, picnic-friendly recipe I could find was this blueberry and cream cheese crostata, which was published online to coincide with Fourth of July festivities.

It starts with a shortcrust pastry that's very heavy on the butter - I found that it absorbed the full quantity of flour without including any of the water in the recipe. I'm a devotee of food-processed shortcrusts but I washed my hands thoroughly and dug in as directed here - it worked out fine, though I'm not confident it was worth the extra messiness. The dough was sticky and challenging to handle on a hot day, and I'm glad it was always intended to look a little rough around the edges.

The shortcrust pastry is topped with a cheesecakey layer, tangy with lots of lime juice and zest, and then macerated and slightly mashed blueberries. I was supposed to hold over a little zest and icing sugar for a last-minute garnish but that was more fuss than I could stretch to, and I don't think any of us missed it.

This crostata was a big success with the club - the pastry was crumbly and toasty, and the cream cheese and blueberry layers played back and forth with richness and freshness, sourness and sweetness. I would definitely make this again, especially for a picnic setting, and I can't help wondering how a vegan adaptation might go.

Blueberry & cream cheese crostata

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

pastry

100g plain flour

50g wholemeal flour

30g icing sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

145g butter, cold

65mL water, ice-cold (I didn't use this)

extra flour, for working the dough

milk, for brushing

cream cheese filling

200g cream cheese, at room temperature

50g icing sugar

2 teaspoons cornflour

3-4 limes, to make 1 tablespoon zest and 1 tablespoon juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

blueberry topping

200g blueberries

20g icing sugar

Prepare the pastry dough in a large bowl. Sift together the flours, sugar and salt. Chop the butter into 1.5cm cubes and squish it into the flour. Ottolenghi recommends leaving butter chunks intact, then using the water to bring the dough together. I ended up rubbing the butter through until all of the flour was incorporated, not including any water at all.

Scatter the flour over a work surface and a rolling pin. Roll the dough out into a 30cm x 20cm rectangle, fold the shorter sides into the centre and roll gently over them. Repeat folding in sides and rolling over the pastry twice more. Wrap the pastry in plastic and refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes (I left mine overnight).

Beat together the cream cheese filling in a medium bowl: start with the cream cheese, sift over the icing sugar and cornflour, and add the lime zest, juice and the vanilla. Beat thoroughly, until smooth.

In a small-medium bowl, sift the icing sugar over the blueberries and stir them together. Partially crush the blueberries with a fork, leaving some whole.

Lightly flour a long sheet of baking paper; unwrap the pastry and place it on the paper. Roll the dough out - Ottolenghi aims for a 32 cm-diameter circle, and I went for an oval that I could fit onto my baking tray. Transfer the paper and pastry onto a baking sheet. Spoon the cream cheese filling into the centre of the pastry, spreading it out but leaving a 1-2 cm border of pastry free around the edges. Dot the blueberry mixture across the cream cheese.

Use a knife to make 2 cm deep cuts in the pastry border at 8 cm intervals. Gently fold each pastry section over and inwards, so that they slightly overlap and form a thick edge. Refrigerate the crostata on its tray for 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 230°C. Brush the edges of the pastry with milk, and bake the crosata for 10 minutes. Turn the oven down to 180°C and bake for a further 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden and cooked through. After letting it rest on the tray for 5 minutes, transfer it to a biscuit rack to keep the pastry as crisp as possible. Allow it to cool for another 30 minutes or more before serving.

Tahini shortbread cookies

September 12, 2020

For the weekend's lockdown baking, I wanted to keep it low-key. I was trying to remember what the second great Ottolenghi cookie was that we had at that summer barbecue; I was pretty sure it had tahini in it and that the recipe would be available online. I'm not convinced that I actually found the same thing, but these tahini cookies were the closest match to my memory.

In their favour, these cookies are easily made vegan, can be prepared by hand in a single bowl when vegan, and have ingredients that I usually stock. However, I was dredging the bottom of the tahini jar where the oil had separated from the solids, and I didn't successfully smooth out all the lumps in the dough when I was mixing by fork. The extra little pockets of tahini in the finished cookies were pretty fun, like a burst of halva.

Otherwise these are just simple shortbread cookies with a welcome extra flavour, easily baked within an hour and popped in an airtight container to share with a friend or snack on mid-afternoon. Their major rival in my baking repertoire is this recipe, which I'll generally prefer but for the effort of buying macadamias.

Tahini shortbread cookies
(adapted from Welcome Ba(c)kery,
where it's credited to Ottolenghi & Tamimi's Jerusalem)

150g margarine
130g caster sugar
110g tahini
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
270g plain flour

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line baking trays with paper.

In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar - you can use an electric mixer, or simply a fork. Beat in the tahini, vanilla and cinnamon. Ideally the mixture would be smooth, but don't worry if it's difficult to smooth out every last lump of tahini. Sift in the plain flour, and mix well to form a dough.

You're supposed to give the dough a bit of a knead, but I was lazy and went straight to forming biscuit balls. Take generous teaspoons of the dough and form them into spheres 1.5-2 cm in diameter. My dough was a bit crumbly and I found a pressing action using my fingertips a bit more effective than the usual rolling between my palms. Space the dough balls out on the baking trays, and lightly press them down with a fork to slightly flatten them. Bake for 15 minutes, then cool on a tray.

Gingerbread with lemony apples & crème fraîche

July 25, 2020

Our Ottolenghi Cooking Club met online for dinner over the weekend. This mode of meeting is suboptimal in one important way - we can't share each other's foods and therefore try six or more dishes! It was still such a pleasure to chat to everyone, and to marvel at the chocoflan that our host spent all afternoon preparing.

For our part, we cooked our dishes a day early and ate them as reheated leftovers. For the main course, Michael revisited the over-the-top lasagne with four kinds of mushroom and five kinds of cheese. For dessert, I decided upon this Sweet recipe. It's a tall, warm gingerbread cake served with apples and crème fraîche.

The cake is simply put together, and doesn't require an electric beater. It's intended to include pieces of stem ginger, which is a new ingredient to me. I didn't have the energy to make my own, and substituted uncrystallised ginger instead - it sank to the bottom of the cake, but provided the right boost of flavour. In the apple recipe, I traded dark rum for the intended brandy to use what we had on hand. The apples ended up tasting more strongly of lemon juice than liquor anyway, so I've performed a substitute on their name too.

This recipe is just as filling and comforting as I'd hoped, and looks a little special without being excessive. The cake would also make for a fine unpretentious afternoon tea without all the trimmings.

Gingerbread with lemony apples & crème fraîche
(very slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet)

gingerbread
300g treacle or molasses
100g brown sugar
120g caster sugar
220g butter, melted and cooled slightly
3 eggs
zest of 1 orange
400g plain flour
1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
300mL boiling water
100g stem ginger (I used 100g uncrystallised ginger), roughly chopped into 1/2 cm pieces

lemony apples
5 golden delicious or pink lady apples
50g butter
120g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of 1 lemon
50mL brandy or dark rum
50mL lemon juice
pinch of salt

400g crème fraîche

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Choose a cake tin - options include a 20cm square or round springform tin, or a 23cm bundt tin. Grease/flour a bundt; line a springform tin with paper, going up beyond the height of the sides, and grease it too.

In a large bowl, whisk together the treacle/molasses, brown sugar, caster sugar, and melted butter. Check that it's not too warm from the butter, then whisk in the eggs and orange zest. Sift over the flour, bicarb soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt, and stir to combine. Pour over the just-boiled water and whisk thoroughly to combine. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 50 minutes, until the cake passes the skewer test. (I think I baked mine for 60 minutes.) Allow the cake to cool for at least 10 minutes before it is transferred to a serving plate.

During the second half of the baking or while the cake is cooling, peel and core the apples and cut them into 1-1.5 cm slices. Set a large frypan over high heat and add the apples. Cook them, tossing them around every couple minutes, until they're golden. Transfer the apples to a bowl and return the frypan to the heat, turning it down to medium. Melt the butter in the frypan, then add the sugar, vanilla and lemon zest, stirring well. Add the apples back into the pan, stirring to coat them in the sugar mixture. Add the brandy/rum, lemon juice and salt, and cook until the sauce is thick.

Serve the cake in warm slices with spoonfuls of apple and crème fraîche on the side.

Sicilian fennel & parmesan dumplings in tomato sauce

July 18, 2020

We've been getting big fennel bulbs in our veggie boxes pretty regularly this winter, which has challenged us to shift away from our regular stable of meals a bit. We've made a fennel and walnut pie and a fennel-quinoa salad and this week we dived into another new dish: Ottolenghi's fennel and parmesan dumplings in tomato sauce. Even in work-from-home times, this is a weekend dish - there are quite a few different processes and the whole thing is the kind of fiddly that nobody's got the energy for on a work day.

Luckily, the result is something really, really good. The cooked down fennel is rich and almost sweet, with the parmesan cutting through with some sharpness. The sauce is a pretty simple tomato sauce, but it works perfectly with these dumplings. If you can bring yourself to deal with the faffing involved, you'll be richly rewarded.

Sicilian fennel & parmesan dumplings in tomato sauce
(slightly adapted from an Ottolenghi recipe via his Guardian column)

dumplings
1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and diced finely
1/3 cup currants
1/4 cup pine nuts, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly toasted and crushed
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
breadcrumbs from 2 slices of bread (we used 2 crushed Weetbix and it worked fine)
50g parmesan, finely grated
grated zest of 2 lemons
2 eggs, beaten
30g dill, finely chopped
20g basil, finely chopped
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

sauce
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, diced finely
~250g tomatoes (the original recipe specifies cherry tomatoes, but we just used regular sized ones chopped up a bit)
180ml passata (we used jar sauce, the lazy option)
1 tablespoon caster sugar
10g basil leaves, finely chopped

Cook the fennel in a big pot of boiling water for fifteen minutes. Add the currants and cook for five more minutes and then drain everything into a colander or sieve. Transfer the mix to something like muslin (we use a clean Chux wipe) and squeeze out as much liquid as you can - you'll squeeze out heaps. The less moisture left in the mix, the better your chances of your dumplings staying together later on. Refrigerate your mixture until it's cold.

Stir the rest of the dumpling ingredients together in a bowl and refrigerate that mixture as well.

Now you can make your sauce. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the garlic, onion and a good sprinkle of salt. Cook for five minutes, stirring regularly, until the onion has started to go golden. Add the tomatoes and cook for another three minutes, until they've softened. Pour in the passata and stir through the caster sugar and basil, plus 3/4 cup water. Bring to a simmer and then turn the heat down, gently cooking it all for 20 minutes. 

Leave the sauce to cool for a bit and then stick-blend it all until it's smooth. Now it's dumpling time.

Combine the two sets of dumpling ingredients into one big bowl and mix everything together thoroughly. Use your hands to form it into eight equally sized dumplings - they'll be pretty big. Compress them as best you can - a couple of ours fell apart during the frying phase and the tighter you can pack them the more resilient they'll be. 

Heat your veggie oil in a frying pan and, when it's hot, gently place the dumplings in the pan. Fry for about 8 minutes, turning regularly to get it all nice and golden - you'll have to be super gentle, because they'll want to fall apart. Once they're cooked, gently combine them with your tomato sauce - try to get them all coated in it (again, be careful not to disintegrate them). Heat everything up to a light simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes and then serve! We ate our with pearl couscous, but any kind of carb-y accompaniment would do I think (they'd actually make for an amazing meatball sub filling!).

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream

May 28, 2020

It's just as well Michael had a big birthday bash last year, because our options were a bit more restricted this time around. We did pretty well: there were presents and fancy crumpets in the morning, Smith & Deli in a park for lunch, followed by a bike ride and afternoon game of Wingspan. He requested black pepper tofu for dinner. In my free moments around the edges, I baked a birthday cake.

Michael picked this one out of Goh and Ottolenghi's Sweet. It looked a little intimidating, but all my lockdown baking had prepared me perfectly for the egg separating, white beating, and cake layering that's needed.

The cake component is an unusual one: it's made mostly from eggs, sugar and chocolate, forming something with the texture of a sponge cake without any of the flour. There's an anxious moment of mixing watery coffee into melted chocolate which creates a very strange, almost rubbery, texture. Unfortunately we couldn't really taste the coffee in the finished cake, so it probably wasn't worth the drama. The best trick is that this layer cake doesn't require any lengthways slicing: it's all achieved by making a huge rectangular sheet of a cake, and dividing it into three stackable rectangles.

In between sponge layers, there's rosewater whipped cream and walnuts. I was wary of the large rosewater dose, but it was balanced out well by the other flavours, and not too perfumey or soapy. The walnuts are an essential counterbalance of crunch and subtle bitterness, but they also prevented the cake-and-cream layers from sticking to each other properly.

The coffee and the construction are well worth reworking, because this is a fabulous cake! It looks fancy without being finicky. We got eight thick slices out of it; each time we'd launch into the cake's light texture with gusto, and be thoroughly satisfied by the time we finished the thick buttery top with its candied walnuts.

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream
(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake
120g walnuts
6 eggs, yolks and whites separated
215g caster sugar
215g dark chocolate
2 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
50mL hot water

topping
30g caster sugar
40g walnuts

rosewater cream
380mL double cream
2 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rosewater

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 35cm x 25cm Swiss roll tin (for me, this was just my regular baking tray) with baking paper, and spray it with oil.

In a small baking tray, spread out 120g walnuts and roast them until fragrant, about 8 minutes. Allow them to cool, roughly chop them, and then set them aside for the final assembly.

Turn the oven up to 200°C.

Gently melt the chocolate using your preferred method. Dissolve the coffee in the hot water. Very gently stir the coffee into the chocolate.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks and caster sugar for several minutes until very pale and fluffy; Ottolenghi and Goh reckon it should triple in volume. In three batches, gently fold the chocolate mixture into these yolks.

Using clean equipment, whisk the egg whites to form stiff peaks. Gently fold the whites into the chocolate mixture. Spread the mixture out in the Swiss roll tin as evenly as you can. Bake for 20 minutes, until the cake is cooked through but not blackening at the edges (it was a close call with mine!). Allow the cake to cool completely.

Line a small baking tray with paper. Place the topping ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook them, stirring regularly. Gradually, the sugar will melt, coat the walnuts, and turn golden brown. Keep a close eye on the mixture to avoid burning! When all of the sugar is melted and brown, spread the nuts out across the baking tray to cool. When the nuts have cooled, roughly chop them and set them aside for the final assembly.

Whip together the rosewater cream ingredients to form soft peaks, and refrigerate until the final assembly.

To assemble the cake, slice the chocolate cake into three stout rectangles of the same size. Place one layer on a serving plate and spread it with one third of the rosewater cream. Sprinkle over half of the roasted walnuts. Repeat with a second layer each of cake, cream and roasted walnuts. Repeat with the third layer of cake, the remaining rosewater cream, and top with the candied walnuts.