Mumsy's date loaf

Dear Universe,

I'm thankful for a quite a few things in this world. Last night's sleep ranks right up there. In bed at 8.30, asleep in 15 minutes and waking peacefully at 6.30am is pretty tops in my world.

I'm super happy to live in Melbourne, pretty much the best city in the world. We've got creative chefs, a vibrant arts scene and not-too-bad infrastructure (though you can shove it with the East-West super-freakway. What the hell's up with that, Universe?)

I also have a fantabulous Mum. You probably know her from such movies as, "I Tolerated Emma's Teenage Years" and "Bennetto Family Umpire". My favourite of her films to date? "I Taught Emma How to Make Date Loaf".

It's an old recipe of hers, from the Big Brown Book of Burke family recipes. That book has my name written all over it, if the tattered pages actually make it through the various house moves and kitchen throwdowns. It's a treasure trove of pavlovas, curried sausages and blowaway sponges. I'm sure there's also around 35 different versions of fruit cake, each with their different nuances. Fruit cake is not fruit cake in Mum's world.

I used to think dried fruit cakes were a bit passe. Nowadays I'm throwing them down my throat like a 70 year old diabetic in denial. I think our appreciation of dried fruit is relative to our capacity to control our bladders: toddlers in nappies are chowing on sultanas til the cows come home, then we swear them off for a good 30-40 years, and come back around when we're being wheeled into a nursing home, smearing dense slices with butter.

This is potentially the easiest cake in the history of the world. Chop up dates, mix with sugar, flour, butter, water and vanilla. Pour into a pan, bake for 45 and you're done. And seriously? It needs nothing more than a quick swipe of butter. No icing, no dusting of sugar, nothing. It's seriously addictive: it's a mellow sweetness that dates bring to any recipe. Tasty, tasty date loaf.

So Universe, of all the things you've been thanked for in this world, date loaf might be the strangest. Mum's who pass along the recipe is probably a little more understandable.

Yours sweetly,

Emma

Ingredients

1 cup chopped dates
1 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cup plain flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180º celsius.

Mix dates, sugar, butter and boiling water in a bowl until the butter melts. Stir in the dry ingredients and mix til the flour is incorporated. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Pour into a well-greased loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly.

Serve with a smear of butter.

Quince and pistachio tartlette

My friend Lesley and I have at least one thing in common: a very inappropriate sense of humour. We laugh as hard and as often as possible, quite often at the most inopportune moments.

Once, in a free meditation session at work designed to de-stress, we were doing neck stretches, turning our heads slowly side to side. We managed to face each other only once and as soon as we made eye contact we were away. We were asked more than once to stop laughing, but it was useless - I couldn't get the picture of her suppressed laughter out of my head. The snorts were unstoppable.

The 'out of order' attitude extends to our nicknames for each other: she's the Old Tart, and I'm the Tartlette. Some might be offended by these name tags, but I guess we're pretty assured of our affection for each other (either that, or we've both accepted the fact we're tarts and have moved on).

Creamy kipfler potato bake

Some nights you need to climb onto the couch and not move until someone brings you food. That food should be stodge-tastic - comforting right down the the soles of your feet.

Tonight was one of those nights. It's rainy and cold and Matty had punctured the tire on his bike. I hurtled across town to pick him up, the spuds baking away all the while. Oh the anticipation - talk about keeping yourself in suspenders!

We arrived home to this little piece of heaven coming out of the oven. We pared it with a little grilled chicken and some green beans, though I have to admit I barely touched them. The potatoes were so melty and gorgeous. It was one of those situations were you start eating and realise 20 minutes later you've consumed the better part of 500g of potatoes. Uh-huh, like that.

Kipflers are a beaut type of spud for this recipe. They hold their shape well on baking, even in liquid. But one bite and they're soft and luscious inside. They also take on the flavours they're baked in: in this case, a little cheesy, a little creamy, a lot yummy.

My word to the wise? Don't have any grand, productive plans for the remainder of the night. For the same reason you decided on comfort food, you will be completely unable to move after this dish. Pull on your fluffy slippers, queue up your favourite television shows and curl up under a blanket. You won't see the light of day for a little while. Food coma commence...... now!

Ingredients

1 kg kipfler potatoes
250ml cream
250ml chicken stock
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tbsp mustard
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Chop each potato to around 4cm square in size.

Heat the cream and chicken stock over a low heat. Once the cream begins to simmer, add the mustard, paprika and cheese. Add the potatoes and seasoning and place into the oven. Bake for around 1 hour or until liquid has reduced and potatoes are soft.

Canelles - the epic meeting treat

Ever sat in a meeting, nodding along like "Aw yeah, I'm with ya, I'm hearing whatcha bleatin'." But really, it's all in one ear, swirling about an empty cavity and out the other side? Ya, that's me on a semi regular basis.

Thankfully, I shed my inhibitions a long time ago. That, and the shame that goes with asking, "What? I totally wasn't listening." Today was one of those days.

I regularly daydream of winning tattslotto and what I'd say to my colleagues if I did. Truthfully, it's something along the lines of, "You guys were actually fun to work with and, I'm not yanking you chain when I say this, I really did learn a lot." I actually like my job.

A lazy day baking

So what are you guys up to today? Slaving away for the man, taking timed toilet breaks and drinking insipid instant coffee over a crumb stained desk? I thought so. I, meanwhile, have been tucked away in my warm little house, baking and watching cooking shows. It's a hard life.

Two days off (on top of the three we had for the long weekend in Victoria) has proven incredibly fruitful for my baking stocks. I've made some sausage rolls (pork with pistachio and sage), cronuts (uh-huh, those cronuts), regular donuts and some sneaky treats for a meeting at work. Happy days. But my greatest success over the last 5 days? A new brioche technique.

Banana brioche bread and butter pudding

I love aliteration. But onto more important topics.

My favourite episode of overeating - there have been so many I can narrow down a "favourite" - was at the Melbourne meateaters institution Vlado's. Meat on meat on meat. And a side salad. By the time dessert rolled around (strawberry crepes) I was actually nearly crying. I had, as Joey Tribiani would call it, the meat sweats.

I was at the stage in my life where I felt it would be rude to leave food on my plate. I'm over it now (mostly). Growing up, we were the family that couldn't leave the table until our meals were finished. On the positive side it taught us to sample different foods and be a little adventurous.

Brown sugar meringues with roasted rhubarb

It's been rough. Real rough.

I'm working my way out of a haze of (excuse the French) snot and sleep. Normally a cold, for me, goes something like this: sore throat for 24 hours, runny nose 48 hours and generally light crapiness for another 24. That's four days of illness, two days off work at the most. I've had six straight days now of intense Crapfest-3000 cold.

I've done it all: water, soup, chillies, ginger, garlic. I made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, for god's sake. It didn't make a dent in my snot supply. Gross. Sorry. I'm just fed up.

Sponge cake with creme patisserie and chocolate glaze

I'm sorry. Yesterday did not happen well for me. No major disasters, mind. Just an intense tiredness that I could not shake all day. I busted out my longest (albeit slowest) run ever on Sunday and I'm pretty sure I didn't drink enough water. A late night watching Eurovision today made for an exceptionally achy day.

So today's post is a cheat post. All I want to do is climb into bed, close my eyes and nod off. I haven't felt like this in months. Months, I tells ya.

When I get tired like this, all I can do is whinge, breathe loudly and eat. Today I managed to scoff about six pieces of fruit, a bag of popcorn intended for five people, a chocolate frog, vegetable soup and takeaway curry for dinner. None of these servings were small either. No matter: run in the morning and all will be right in the world.

But fear not - the recipe's still a corker. It's just some old components re-imagined into a new concoction. Look, even my words are vaguely making sense. I said vaguely, right? It's a three way you'll be totally into: creme patisserie, chocolate glaze and sponge cake. Ain't nuthin wrong with that combo, amiright?

I whipped up this cake for a workmate's birthday recently. My one hint? Make this on the day you intend to serve it and do not leave it out of the fridge for too long. Oh and don't ride a bike with it in your basket. That was like three hints, right there. You're welcome.

Short. Sweet. Recipe below:

Ingredients

2 blowaway sponges
Creme patisserie
1 tsp gelatine, soaked in 2 tbsp cold water
1/4 cup cream
300ml cream, extra
Chocolate glaze

Slice both sponges in half horizontally. Heat the 1/4 cup of cream and add to the gelatine. Stir until dissolved. Whip the 300ml cream until soft peaks form and add the gelatine. Fold through the creme patisserie. Refrigerate overnight.

Spoon 1/3 of the creme patisserie in between the bottom two layers of sponge. Repeat for the next two layers of sponge.

Top with the chocolate glaze, drizzling over the top and sides.

Doughnuts with chocolate sauce

There are two generations in this world. Those that remember life before the Simpsons, and those that cannot. I fall into the former category (just). I can remember the first episode screening in Australia. My Mum was being released from hospital from a long stay for a fairly decent back injury.

The drive home was excruciating. For us kids. Though I'm sure it wasn't fun for Mum either, slipped disk and all. I'm certain, to this day, that Dad was driving as slow as possible to avoid the possibility of another cartoon being worked into our viewing schedule. Losing battle if I ever saw one.

Beetroot and kale chippies

My name's Emma and I'm a chipaholic. Some families grow up eating popcorn or sweets while watching movies. Other will have chopped up fruit (booooooring) while some would indulge in homemade cookies. Not my family. It was salt and vinegar chips. All. The. Way. Crinkle cut or thins, it no matter. Though Sarah would argue Light and Tangy flavoured wins (and I'm happy to concede if she's buying) to me, the sharp and salty goodness of the S'n'V.

Not too long ago, I would have scoffed at the suggestion of an alternative to potato chips. Part of me still doesn't want to believe it: a salty snack that's not a total carb/fat fest but still delicious. Not that there's anything wrong with a carb and/or fat fest. I'm the least qualified person to judge in the trial of diet missteps.

The challenge: Blowaway sponge

Have I introduced you to Barry the bike yet? He's my beautiful baby. Since I've been riding to work, I've felt energised and crazy enthusiastic about everything (emphasis on the crazy). He's red and shiny (and therefore faster) and I recently bought a beautiful copper bell to ding-a-ling as I ride to work.

Riding beats driving or public transport by a long shot. I'm getting fit (sexy bike riders legs - oh er!) and I'm not crammed into a smelly, slow tram for an hour every morning (apologies to tram users, but... erm... deoderant?). Despite what a lot of people say, riding on the roads in Melbourne is not too bad - I pick pretty quiet streets or straight bike lanes and I've never had too much trouble. That said, I signal like a mega-nerd, never ride on the footpath and generally try to ride as mindfully as I can. Total riding goodie-two-shoes.

Hazelnut espresso cakes

I consider myself incredibly fortunate. I've got a job I love, a fiance who rocks my world, sweet friends and a super cool family. I'm healthy and happy. I've got a bike I love to ride, I run a few mornings a week, I bake up a storm on weekends and my buddies are always keen to check out new bars and restaurants. Lucky, lucky duck.

The downside? I feel like I haven't had a moment to exhale in the last few months. I had four days off last week, with grand plans to sit, watch TV and catch up on some sleep. Instead, they were spent running, cooking, riding and typing. I feel energised, but just need a moment to unlock my jaw.

Shallot and goats cheese tart with rough puff pastry

You may know by now, but I love me a farmers market. When a new one kicks off up the road in Coburg, I know how I'll spend my Saturday morning (total rager, right?). Matt and I met up with his sister Sarah, brother in law Tim and gorgeous niece Claudia for a fossick about the Coburg North Primary School for an hour or so. The thing is, I can't trust myself at a farmers market: I see all the gorgeous produce and can't resist. Must. Buy. Food. This one was no exception.

The market is held twice a month (every second and fourth Saturday) and the first event was pretty special. My favourite butter guys were there (yep, I have a favourite butter guy), loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, meats, oils and ready made food. I picked up some bagels and, in something of a premonition, I sense you'll be seeing more of them later in the week.

Wandering around, I came across a sweet little bag of shallots and pounced. I had visions of them caramelised whole - roasted? In a pan? No matter - the real question was what would accompany them. A second vision and I was set. I remembered reading about Karen Martini's recipe for a rough puff pastry online. Like a 24 year old guy at a cheap nightclub, I knew a tart was in my future.

Peeling shallots is one of life's more tedious tasks. Peeling baby shallots is a chore sent from the pits of hell. The papery skin either sticks to your fingers or stubbornly stays put on the shallot. Even when you think you've removed all traces, you toss them in olive oil and about thirty pieces suddenly appear out of nowhere. But, as with all things in life, the harder the task, the greater the rewards.

A regular puff pastry is a dough with layers of butter folded carefully in between. It requires hours of effort and an exacting touch to perfect. The rough puff is a simpler beast and results in such a flakey crust, it's hard to see why you'd make the real thing. It still does take a couple of hours, but most of that time is spent chilling the pastry between folds. Plenty of time to peel shallots. Or watch a Jennifer Aniston rom com. Your choice.

The biggest test of this whole recipe is definitely not in the pastry. When you yank the shallots from the oven, you will not be able to resist popping a couple in your mouth. But try as hard as you can: they work so well with the light, flakey pastry it will be worth the wait. Pile them as high as you can and drizzle with a little balsamic reduction. If you've been lucky enough to travel to Modena and snag the real stuff, a teaspoon here is worth the investment.

Shallots and their big cousins, onions, are just starting to come into season. The small shallots are the perfect mix of sweet and savoury and with the salty kick of the goats cheese are as close to perfection as you can achieve with a vegetable. This recipe is a bit of a celebration of the old allium, normally kept in the shadows of his showier recipe counterparts (much like Judy Greer in... every movie she's been in).

The thing with shopping at a farmers market is this: you're never buying out of season. Everything's perfect now because it just wouldn't be sold any other way. I'll admit that I do buy a heap of stuff from supermarkets, but when I look in my fridge on a Sunday night, it's the stuff from the farmers market that's been eaten. Which is a good thing, because there's usually not a stall for Doritos and Barney Bananas and I need all the incentive I can get to ditch that 'food group'.

Ingredients

Rough puff pastry
Adapted from Karen Martini

375g plain flour
300g butter
170ml water
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt

Combine the flour and salt in a food processor. Add the cold butter and pulse until the butter is just combined. Add the lemon juice and half the water. Pulse briefly to incorporate. At this stage, check if more water is necessary - dribble as much in as you need.

Pour the dough onto the bench and knead just to bring it together. Shape into a rectangle and roll out to approximately 40cm x 30cm. Imagining your dough in three equal sections, fold the right third over the middle third. Brush off any excess flour. Fold the left third over the middle and again, brush off the excess flour.  Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Once chilled, remove from the refrigerator and roll out to 40cm x 30 cm. Repeat the folding as above and chill again for 30 minutes. Repeat this step one more time and chill for a further 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Roll the pastry out to 50cm x 30cm (or around 3mm thick). Slice a rectangle around 15cm x 8cm. Chill for 15 minutes in the freezer. Pop in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until slightly golden on the edges and puffed up nicely.

Roasted shallots

1 small bag of shallots (around 200g)
2 tbsp olive oil
3 sprigs of rosemary
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Peel the shallots and place on a roasting pan. Remove the leaves from the rosemary and chop roughly. Thrown in the with shallots. Pour over the olive oil and add the salt and pepper. Toss to cover the shallots with the other ingredients. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour or until the shallots are golden and soft.

Assembly

2 tbsp goats cheese
Roasted shallots
Rough puff pastry
1 tsp balsamic vinegar, or a balsamic reduction

Place the puff pastry on a baking sheet. Crumble the goats cheese over the pastry lightly. Place the roasted shallots on top. Bake at 180ºC for around 15 minutes or until the edges of the pastry are golden brown.

Remove from the oven and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar.

Anzac caramel ripple cake

So the Anzac is a simple biscuit. Oats, coconut, flour, sugar etc etc. It's to be enjoyed with a cup of tea or an instant coffee. It's not fancy or ostentatious. Until I went and did this.

Have you ever enjoyed a chocolate ripple cake? Chocolate ripple biscuits sandwiched together with cream, then slathered with even more cream? That always seemed so indulgent to me, but then I had a brainwave. I could out-indulge the over-indulgent. Mega indulgent, so to speak.

This idea must be credited to a lovely lady I worked with a few jobs ago. Pat was such a gem: reliable, great bawdy sense of humour and totally calm in very stressful situations (she may have been my exact opposite, except for the bawdy part). She was even more beloved when she brought a gingernut caramel ripple cake to work. It was out of this world: soft, a little spicey and so, so creamy.

Salted caramel mousse and chocolate glaze with chocolate truffles

Image courtesy of Jacquie Davenport

Is there anything better in this world than salted caramel? I love it so much that when I bought a salted caramel macaron today that tasted more of chocolate than caramel, I had a bit of a sookie-la-la. Damn you Lindt! As delicious as the macaron was, it wasn't the salty hit I was after.

People get a bit freaked out by making caramel. Yep, it can be easy to burn, it can go grainy and on more than one occasion I have gone waaaay overboard with the salt. Like, salt and vinegar chips salty. Eeek. Would have been better smeared over roasted beef than in a layer cake. But after a couple of goes at this recipe, I can make it recipeless (totally a word, despite what the red squiggly line thinks).

This caramel has been served with a plethora of desserts: apple cake, chocolate tart with banana icecream, popcorn. But this might be my new masterpiece. With most of the caramel mixed through a silky mousse and then rest left to moisten the ginger fluff sponge, the caramel flavour is pronounced and the texture just right for the light layers.

The Burke clan's Ginger Fluff - for the manly, manly cake

When Matty and I were first engaged, we visited my Mum's family in Buninyong for a picnic at "The Gong". The day was perfect - sunny, a little chill in the air (you're not in Ballarat if you're not shivering) and a brilliant spread of food. Wine was flowing freely. So much so that Matt's face fell off in front of the extended family in a slow but very familiar way. Nothing a sausage roll and a piece of ginger fluff sponge can't fix.

Aunty Margaret whipped up this staple that's served at all Burke family events. Unfortunately I was on a sweet food ban with the gang from work and could not enjoy a slice of ginger fluff. Luckily for me, Mum had made a date loaf that I decided was out the realm of "sweet food" (clutching at straws, ya?). I ate almost the entire loaf. Smeared with healthy wedge of butter, I'm pretty sure I did more damage that I would have if I just had a taste of the sponge. No matter. There would be sponge in my future, and not of the dish-washing variety. I had snagged me the recipe. Oh yeah!

Manly cake and the pâte à cigarette

So we've been here before. Remember Facecake? Whatever pâte à cigarette loses in its gross-sounding name, it makes up for with its amazing decorative versatility. Forget an ashtray full of butts. It's a sweet trim in whichever colour you prefer.

What does pâte à cigarette translate to, I hear you ask? Well, pâte means paste. That chicken liver pate doesn't quite have the same ring to it when you have to call it paste, now, does it? The nearest translation I can get for this term is cigarette biscuit, which, to be honest, leaves me no closer to a sexier rationale for the name.

Ginger fluff layer cake with salted caramel mousse and chocolate glaze

I love a cakey project. My favourite kinds is a free reign request: the go-for-your-life attitude really gets me going. Equal parts excitement and pressure. Their reaction could be "I never expected that!" Or "I never expected that...."

The hardest thing about my latest cake request? Making a 'masculine' cake. I don't mean a sponge with two tickets to the gun show or even a layer cake with a pair of bosoms on top. Nope, I mean a nice, classy-looking cake with limited frou-frou. You see, I'm big on girly-looking desserts. I love pink, fairy floss, delicate icing sugar and love hearts. When it came to baking for a guy, I was stumped.

Enter salted caramel.

Brioche with pate and plum paste

The reign of the brioche is coming to an end. I thought we'd finish with a big ol' fatty bang. And their ain't nothin' in this world as banging as pate. Pate makes me tingle all over, and it's not because the livers are past their used by date.

Let me be clear: this is teaming one butter-rich ingredient with another butter-rich ingredient. It's butter squared, and that's the way I like it. To cut through the crazy-richness, we go on a sweet ride with plum paste.

Plum paste goes with pretty much all the great things in life: cheese, pate, steak, rillettes. You know, the good stuff. It's sweet and sticky and helps to bring down the fat-factor of the brioche and pate. You can test how the paste is going by popping a teaspoon or so in the fridge to see if it sets. But I personally think that's a fast track to Burn Town, because by the time you've popped it in and pulled it out again, the mixture bubbling away on the stove could be turning to toffee. Get a thermometer. You'll use it all the time, trust me.

Brioche three ways

I'll apologise in advance for this. To your bathroom scales and to your ability to say no. Brioche is pretty much the best pastry product. Ever. And with most awesome things in the food world, it's really, really bad for you. None of that "everything in moderation" palaver. This stuff is basically butter on butter. And it's hella good.

What it lacks in nutritional value, it makes up for with versatility. It's got versatility out to yin-yang! Burger buns, toasted with jam (pretty close to my favourite weekend breakfast treat), a vehicle for pate, a swirly chocolate pastry. Yep. It gets better than just being plain old delicious.

If you've got an electric mixer, it's pretty much a crime to not make these. If it's not a crime, I know people who know people. You'll be pulled over for a seemingly minor traffic violation and voila! Twenty to life. All because you refused to make that buttery treat. Won't somebody think of the children?!

If you don't have a mixer, but you do like a challenge, I say go for it. It's a pretty sticky, messy dough but not unheard of to whip up. I know you're hesitating, but you will embarrassed when I tell you my six year old niece, the beautiful Eve, helped me make a batch by hand just the other day. Now, I'm the first to admit Eve is exceptionally talented, but she's six. She made brioche without a mixer. Pull the finger out, whingers.

Now I'm done chastising you, I'll get on with the more persuasive side of the brioche argument. Have you ever eaten bread and thought "I wish I were eating cake right now"? Or perhaps you were enjoying some cake and went "Bread would be awesome". Well, ladies and gentlemen, here is the answer to all your prayers. It's basically cake bread. Tasty, tasty cake bread.

Plus, it's totally exotic. It's from that far away land, France. (Bare with me. Living in Australia makes pretty much any other country in the world "a far away land"). Brioche translates to "sweet bun" in English. I won't tell you what prendre de la brioche translates to, though. OK, OK. It means "to develop a paunch". Don't say I didn't warn you.

Ingredients

Adapted from Shannon Bennett

500g plain flour
5g salt
25g fresh yeast
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp milk
6 eggs
375g butter, softened

1 egg, lightly beaten, plus splash of milk, for egg wash.
2 tbsp pearl sugar
Raspberry jam, to serve

Combine flour, salt, yeast, sugar and milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix briefly until combined. With the mixer on medium, add the eggs one at a time. Make sure they're all incorporated before you add the next. Add the butter, one tablespoon at a time. Once all butter is incorporated, turn the mixer to high and beat for 2 minutes.

Turn the dough into a large greased bowl. Cover with plastic and refrigerate for 20-24 hours, or until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Grease one tin (15cm x 10cm) or two smaller tins.

Flour your bench top and turn the dough out. Knead for 2 minutes to loosen dough. Divide into three. The first dough will be for your basic loaves today - you can refrigerate (or freeze) the others until ready to use. Shape the dough to your tin and leave to rest in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

Glaze your loaves with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the loaves.

Place the loaves into the oven. Bake for 20 minutes at 200ºC and reduce to 170ºC and bake for a further 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

While warm, slice open. To go the double whammy, spread some butter over a slice. If you're feeling conservative, just go with raspberry jam. It's delicious either way.