Spiced chocolate cake

September 3-4, 2024

   

I prefer collaboration over competition every time. There's a baking event within my work environment each year, and my local team choose to work on a project together rather than individually submitting entries. It's symptomatic of why I like working here so much! This year fourteen of us prepared cake with various shades of icing and sliced them into squares to form a pixelated image. I was lucky to be assigned 'almost black' - easily achieved with a dark chocolate ganache and a touch of black food colouring.

I volunteered to make something vegan, and turned to the classic Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World to try a new cake. I was tempted by the peanut butter cake and the chai-spiced cake but ultimately went for the Mexican Hot Chocolate cake, which looked like a crowd-pleaser. It aims for a slightly grainy texture and complex flavour with coconut milk, flax seeds, almond meal, cinnamon, cayenne, vanilla and almond essence all in the mix. The recipe is designed to make a dozen cupcakes sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and cocoa but a square cake with a ganache topping better suited my purpose.

This cake achieves that excellent complexity but - I chuckled to myself as I ate a small leftover piece last night - more than anything it evokes the softness of a Coles chocolate mud cake. It's the flavour of cinnamon and cayenne that set this cake apart.

   

Spiced chocolate cake

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero's

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World)

cake batter

1 cup coconut milk

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

3/4 cup plain flour

2 tablespoons cornflour

1/4 cup almond meal

1/2 cup cocoa 

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

generous pinch of cayenne pepper

1 cup caster sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon almond essence

chocolate ganache

4 tablespoons coconut milk

75g dark chocolate chips

3 tablespoons golden or maple syrup

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 22cm square cake tin with paper, or line a muffin tray with cupcake papers.

In a large bowl, whisk together the coconut milk and flax seeds. Allow them to sit for 10 minutes so that the seeds thicken the milk.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cornflour, almond meal, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb soda, salt, cinnamon and cayenne.

When the coconut milk-seed mixture is ready, whisk in the sugar, oil, vanilla and almond essence. Gradually add the flour mixture and mix well. Pour the cake batter into the baking tin(s) and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cake passes the skewer test. Allow the cake to cool before applying the ganache.

When the cake has cooled, make the ganache. Place the coconut milk in a small saucepan and heat until almost boiling. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is entirely melted. Whisk in the syrup. The ganache might look quite runny; if that's the case you can let it sit a while to thicken slightly. Gently pour the ganache over the cake(s) and allow it to set a while (although it will still be soft) before serving.

Mushroom & walnut samosas

August 29, 2024

   

Last Thursday I was trawling around for dinner ideas; I didn't seem to be in the mood for any of our usual favourites. I didn't recognise this Meera Sodha recipe for mushroom and walnut samosas at all when I found it among my bookmarks, but I liked the concept anew and gave it a go.

A large volume of mushrooms goes into the filling, and Sodha gives us the option of throwing them into a food processor rather than slowly, finely chopping the lot. It's a handy approach but I'd still recommend some patience with pulsing the mushrooms in small batches. I tried to process too many at once and ended up with an uneven, mostly very-finely-ground mixture. Filo pastry packets don't translate precisely across countries, so I just winged it with quantities that felt right and used up most of a box.

My approach generated about 30 golden packages of subtle savoury goodness. Though they're intended as an entree or snack to be shared around, we piled the samosas into shallow bowls for dinner and loved smearing them with lime pickle. The samosas also teamed brilliantly with a green bean salad that echoes the mustard seed and lime (we've been making it on and off for 18 years!). We relished two rounds of leftovers at home, where we were able to crisp up the pastries again in the oven.

   

Mushroom & walnut samosas

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Meera Sodha on The Guardian)

120g walnuts

600g mushrooms

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 large onion, finely diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon ginger, minced

2 green chillies, finely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground pepper

~220g filo pastry

spray oil or melted margarine

Grind the walnuts finely in a food processor and transfer them to a bowl. Pulse the mushrooms in a food processor in batches, until they're roughly pea-sized. (Don't over-fill the container, I did and ended up with very unevenly blended mushroom pieces.)

Set a large frypan over medium heat and pour in the oil. Add the mustard, cumin and nigella seeds. When they start to pop, add the onion and cook, stirring regularly, until soft and starting to brown (up to 10 minutes). Add the garlic, ginger and chilli, and cook for a further 5 minutes. Sodha says the onions should look like 'dark jewels'. Add the mushrooms and gently fold them through the onions, cooking for about 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and cook until all the liquid is evaporated, about 15 more minutes. (Be fussy about this! Too much moisture will make for soggy samosas.) Stir in the walnuts and cook for 3 minutes. At long last, turn off the heat and allow the filling to cool.

Preheat an oven to 220°C and line two baking trays with paper.

Unwrap the filo pastry and keep the unused bits lightly wrapped in a damp teatowel as you go. Slice through all the layers to form a rectangle roughly 23 cm x 10 cm - for me, that was the bottom quarter of the sheets. Take one piece and place about a tablespoon of the filling in the corner closest to you. Wrap the pastry upwards at 45 degrees to form a triangle; keep wrapping up and up to preserve the triangle shape and use up the whole rectangle. Apply a bit of oil/margarine to the outside and give the samosa a second wrapping. Place the samosa on a baking tray and repeat the wrapping process until all the filling is used up.

Apply a bit more oil/margarine to the samosas and bake for 15 minutes, until brown and crispy. Serve with chutney or pickle.

Eat Pierogi Make Love III

August 15, 2024

   

This is just a small post to note that we've collected the set! We've tried all three vegetarian pierogi at Eat Pierogi Make Love. We probably got to the classic, top-of-the-list Ruskie Pierogi ($24) last because they're stuffed with two foods offered abundantly across the menu: potato and cheese. (Rest assured, we've eaten potato and cheese in some form every time we've visited.)

The pierogi are served simply: boiled, plonked on a swirl of sour cream and sprinkled with fresh dill. They don't offer the brightness of the kapusta or the ziemniak pierogi, but they can't be beat for squidgy, starchy, savoury comfort.

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You can read about one, two of our previous visits to EPML.

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Eat Pierogi Make Love 

161 Lygon St, Brunswick East 

8394 5240 

menu: special menus, alcoholic drinks, drinks, & food for vodka, small plates, mains, pierogi & toppings, side salads & desserts 

http://www.eatpierogimakelove.com/ 

Accessibility: There is a flat entry with a shallow ramp. Furniture inside is densely packed, a mixture of fixed booths and a high bar with backless stools; we didn't visit the outdoor courtyard or the toilets. We ordered at the table and paid at a high bar.

Pickles Milk Bar III

August 8, 2024

   

Pickles Milk Bar aren't sitting still, with a slow, subtle rotation of options on their printed menu and high rotation of specials on their texta-ed shop tiles. I picked up a couple of new-to-us options for a weekday lunch.

On the left is the already-rotated-out Honey Boo Boo special ($18), where a chicken schnitz is teamed with slaw, honey mustard and pickled jalapenos. It's a good combo, but didn't surpass the vegan schnitzel we know well from Nico's. 

On the right is our first foray into the breakfast sandwiches. The Hot Breakfast #2 ($15) is overall a sweet, smoky and saucy (but not too sloppy) affair with thin-cut smoked tofu bacon, a hash brown, cheese, pickled onions, mayo, bbq sauce, hot sauce, and garlic butter.

Everything's vegan and nothing thus far has been a disappointment. We're lucky to have Pickles so close by, ready to brighten up any work-from-home day.

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You can also read about one, two of our previous visits to Pickles. It has also been reviewed favourably by That Vegan Dad.

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Pickles Milk Bar 

1008 Lygon St, Carlton North 

menu 

instagram account 

Accessibility: There is a small lip on the door and a relatively spacious interior with a low counter. There is a line of bench seating along the wall, with small low tables and low backless stools. I ordered, paid and picked up my food over a mid-height counter. I haven't visited the toilets.

Makan

August 2, 2024

   

We were in the city for a Friday night Wheeler Centre event and needed an after-8pm dinner. Michael googled around for Indonesian food and Makan rapidly came up with available seats. Others will know it because it's run by the Seger sisters from My Kitchen Rules, or simply because they're more on top of the city dining scene than we are! As so many Melbourne restaurants are, Makan is tucked a fair distance down a laneway, so spontaneous walk-ins are surely less common. It's got a very familiar contemporary atmosphere with polished concrete, neon lights, pastel finishes and a prominent cocktail bar.

   

To my delight, they're on top of their mocktail game as well. All seven options appealed to my tastes and it was the novelty of the Coco Pandan Highball ($12) that I ultimately had to try. It was a super-sweet close sibling to the soda-and-condensed milk Es Soda Gembira I recently sampled at Sendok Garpu, with the bonus texture of grass jelly.

   

Michael observed that vegan wines were well-marked amongst the drinks, which is funny because we couldn't see markings for dietary requirements on the standard food menu. Nevertheless, plenty of it looked veg-friendly, and we chose one dish from each of the subsections.

First, there was Bakwan Sayur ($21) from the Plates, a very battered tangle of shredded vegetables accompanied by green chili mayo. These were fun but ultimately a touch too oily for me.

   

I was less ambivalent about the Roti Serabi ($10) from the Bites. Described on the menu as 'coconut crumpets', they're made from a batter of coconut milk and rice flour, are perfect for soaking up the rich and spicy gulai sauce, and are garnished with serundeng (spiced and roasted shredded coconut). Just my kind of snack!

   

From the Large offerings, it had to be the Tempeh Lodeh ($32) for us. Here was another lovely coconut broth, holding the most tender, flavourful tempeh pieces, plus browned cauliflower and okra, garnished with crisp tempeh chips. We made sure most of the broth was soaked up in our Side of Nasi Serai ($7), and brightly flavoured bowl of rice with lemongrass.

   

We had room to negotiate one dish from the Sweets. Again, I was torn in several directions and ultimately we were both satisfied with the Teh-ramisu ($17), a cutely layered cup where the sponge fingers are soaked in a subtly sweet Indonesian jasmine tea, interspersed as usual with mascarpone cream, and then garnished with chocolate shards. It's less assertive than a traditional coffee-infused tiramisu but has its own charm.

Having no prior knowledge or expectation, finding a comfortable seat and kinda-fancy last-minute vegetarian meal at Makan was the best case scenario for our Friday night out. We'll certainly file it away for future reference.

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Makan has also received a positive review from Kulture Kween.

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Makan

Collins Way, Melbourne CBD

9642 3109

food, mocktails 

https://makaninmelbourne.com.au/

Accessibility: Makan has a step down from its Collins Way entry into the main restaurant floor. (Michael thinks there is potentially another flat access point from elsewhere in the building, but prior arrangements might be needed with the staff outside of business hours.) The tables are regular height and generously spaced, with a mixture of padded benches and backed wooden chairs. We ordered at our table and paid at a low counter. Toilets are gendered and include an accessible option.