Lumberjack Cake - if you are from my generation, no doubt you hear the word “Lumberjack” and start humming Monty Python tunes. This cake is a lot more than a way to remember the lumberjack song though, it’s really quite possibly one of the most delicious cakes on the planet. No I really mean it! This cake despite it’s simple ingredient list, just knocks your socks off. It’s my family’s favourite cake hands down.

This is no light and airy confection. This cake is absolutely not suitable for anyone that is going to drink from delicate china cups with matching patterns and play gin rummy. Those people should eat macarons, meringues and little dainty white bread sandwiches with snippets of chervil poking out the side - with the crusts removed. This is a BIG MANLY cake, hence the name. This cake has hairy legs and a plaid shirt! This cake hasn’t shaved for a week!! Ok, maybe not.. but you get the picture. Chunks of apple and  moist dates, coconut on the top smothered in a topping that turns it into a crispy toffee brittle. It’s full of flavour and taste and should definitely be consumed in large hunks with a mug of something hot; seconds of this cake are virtually compulsory.

Lumberjack Cake - only for Real Men and Women

*originally found on Foodlovers

• 185g pitted dried dates, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 125g butter, chopped
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 apples, peeled, cored & diced
• Topping:
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 60g butter
• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 3 1/2 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 180C/350F
Combine dates with 1 cup of hot water and soda, set aside for at least 30 minutes. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in egg. Sift flour with pinch of salt and stir into mixture with vanilla. Mix in date mixture and apple. Spoon into a 20 cm ( sometimes I make this in a 22cm - just watch the cook time) lined cake tin. Bake for 40 minutes or until top is set.

Place topping ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until well combined. Remove cake from oven. Spoon topping over to cover and cook for 20-30 mins longer or until topping is golden and cake is cooked through. Remove from oven and cool in the tin.

I like to run a knife around the inside edge of the tin while the cake is still hot to make sure that all the little pieces of toffee coated coconut are not sticking to the side - if they stick, they take chunks of topping with them when you take the cake out of the tin.

This cake is delicious fresh the day it’s made, but also good the following day if indeed there is any left.

Put on your plaid shirt - stop shaving whatever body regions you currently shave (and NO I do not want to know which) and make the cake!

Plums, big, fat, ripe, dark plums. Black Doris plums to be exact. Snuggled into the top of a light almond Friand. Friands are similiar financiers, at least as far as I can gather. They were not something I would ever have raved about, although nice enough. That was until I met this particular plum friand.

Apparently an Aussie/NZ friand is a slightly different take on a financier - being a different shape, not based on browned butter and having different flavourings added.

The recipe is from my favourite local haunt. Everyday Gourmet. They had so many requests for their recipe that they ended up publishing it in the local newspaper, The Otago Daily Times. There is a great food column called Ask a Chef, where you can request a recipe from the local cafes and restaurants and if you are lucky, they give away their secrets.

I’ve since discovered many other delicious friands out there, this plum one however remains my favourite.

Juicy Plum Friands

These elegant little light as air Friands are made with almonds as the nutmeal and deep, dark, Black Doris plums. If you have to substitute another plum variety use something that is a dark, juicy, sweet variety. The recipe uses canned plums, but fresh would be fine too. If you are using fresh plums poach them lightly first.

• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar/powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup plain white flour
• 175 grams butter melted (do not boil)
• 6 fresh egg whites
• 6 canned or poached black doris plums halved, stoned and strained

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F

Grease a muffin or friand pan with melted butter. I used disposable mini cake pans this time.

Sieve together into a medium bowl your almonds, icing sugar and flour

Whisk egg whites in a bowl to micro-bubble stage. This is past the large bubble stage but not to stiff peaks.

Add cooled melted butter to egg whites and beat in.

Fold egg white and butter mixture into the dry ingredients and gently mix until there are no lumps. Spoon evenly into the greased pans.

Bake for 4-5 minutes and then gently place a plum half on each friand. Continue baking for another 6 minutes, then rotate the tray and cook for another 10.

20 minutes cook time in total.

Leave to cool in pans for five minutes before turning out.

Dust with icing sugar.

Makes 12.

They are wonderful slightly warm or cold. Store in the fridge.

I also need to let all of you know that my holiday has come to an end. I will not be posting daily, but still very regularly. I’m going to aim for twice a week.

I’m going to miss my extra baking and cooking time, but I’m looking forward to seeing the children that I work with and my terrific colleagues.

I’m really enjoying getting to know you all (my readers) I love the comments and the emails, so please keep em coming!

This Lamington packs a serious chocolate punch. How could I enter the Lamington contest over at Delicious Delicious Delicious and not submit the quintessential Australasian flavour combo. Jaffa. Which is Chocolate and Orange if you are not familiar with Kiwi/Aussie speak.

No frou frou and fluff on this Lamington, it’s a serious cake eaters task to get through one of these. It’s not a beauty contest winner - but if there was a tasty contest this would be giving those other Lamingtons a run for their money.

These are Jaffas. Little solid balls of chocolate surrounded by an intense orange candy shell.

They were the inspiration for this Lamington.

Double Chocolate Jaffa Lamingtons

The Orange Cake

I made up my favourite citrus and coconut cake, the recipe is over here on this page with some small modifications for the Lamington base.

• Use two Oranges - not Tangelos
• Bake in a 32 cm x 21 cm (13 inch X 9 inch) rectangular pan.
• Omit the syrup steps entirely.

It will not take as long to cook in this pan, so keep an eye on it.

Leave to cool completely before you attempt to make Lamingtons with it.

Orange chocolate Ganache

While your cake is cooking make your chocolate ganache. This is a soft ganache, it will not set firmly.

• 250 grams dark chocolate broken into squares
• 200 mls of cream
• 1 Tblspn Grand Marnier (optional- if using, reduce the amount of cream slightly)

Place your cream and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water. Stir continuously.

Once your chocolate starts to melt remove from the heat, stir until all your chocolate has melted and the chocolate and cream have amalgamated.

Add in your Grand Marnier if you are using it at this point.

Set aside roughly 1/2 a cup of the ganache and place in the fridge to cool and thicken. Leave the remainder at room temperature - you may need to reheat this slightly before you use it to dip your Lamingtons.

Coating your Lamingtons

• 6 Cadbury Flake chocolate bars - If you cannot get these coarsely grated chocolate is a fine substitution

Cut your orange cake into squares roughly 2 inches/4 cm square. Take some of your cooled ganache from the fridge and spread on the top of one square. Sandwich another on the top.

Gently reheat the ganache that was not in the fridge till it is a runny consistency.

Using two forks dip your sandwiched cake squares into the bowl of slightly warm ganache to coat. I used a small measuring cup and poured over the top of the squares to minimise the cake crumbs in the ganache. You can place them in the fridge for a few minutes at this point to solidify the ganache a little if you wish.

Roll into the crumbled chocolate flakes and pat more on gently where there are gaps. Place carefully on a plate.

Store in the fridge in a covered container for up to 3 days.

You’d like to see the inside?

I have to warn you, these are impossible to eat in a tidy manner, but then again, half the fun is licking copious amounts of chocolate off your fingers.

After roughly 10 minutes - this was all that was left of a batch of these.

It was hard to get a photo and my photography skills are pretty shaky at the best of times - seriously, they went so fast.

There was also another slight variation on the one you see above with Almond Gianduja as a filling.

I love these home-made Lamingtons. New Zealand and Australian Bakeries - please stop selling the stale and crusty versions! To those Bakeries that sell lovely moist Lamingtons - keep up the good work!

Until I married Kit, I’d never eaten an American brownie. A brownie in NZ was a Peanut Brownie, which is a type of cookie. I’ll tell you all about those another day though. Kit told me he missed eating them, so dutiful wife that I am (actually they sounded awesome and I wanted to try them), I decided I would make some for him.

My first batch was of course completely overcooked, since I just assumed that they should be cooked through the same as every other cake type thing I had ever made.

But in the last 12 years I think I’ve got pretty good at making them, if I do say so myself. I’ve tried quite a lot of brownie recipes and honestly it’s hard to pick a favourite, since they are delicious in all their wonderful variety.

I thought I would share this one with you today since it seems to be one hundred percent reliable and is fast and easy to make, as well as incredibly delicious and completely fattening of course. But I think that is something that contributes to their delicious nature, that little bit of guilt that goes along with them! I have Judy Rosenberg to thank for the basis of this recipe.

Chocolate Chunk Fudge Brownies

• 6 oz of chocolate
• 1 cup of butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1 tspn of vanilla or vanilla paste
• 4 large free range eggs
• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of chopped chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and grease and line a 9 inch square pan  with baking parchment.

Melt chocolate and butter together gently in a bowl over hot water

place the sugar in a medium bowl and mix in the chocolate and butter

Add in the vanilla and the eggs one at a time and mix until smooth and velvety

Add in the flour and mix through, stir in the chocolate chunks.

Bake roughly 35- 40 minutes.

This brownie is ready when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out with moist crumbs attached. If the skewer is clean - you have overcooked the brownie.

Cool slightly before cutting and sprinkle liberally with icing sugar if you wish. I love the look of dark brownies with white snow like sugar on top. But you may prefer them without.

This is the view outside my window in the evening at the moment, the sun going down over the hills, the sea melon-coloured in the distance. One of the wonderful things about living here in New Zealand is that it really is the most beautiful country, and where ever you look, even outside your window, there is a marvellous landscape - I think we Kiwis take it for granted.

Every now and then when I get a moment to stop and reflect on my life, I just need to look around, to see what a truly beautiful place I live in. I love living here. It may not be the most exciting country in the world, and there are many things in other countries that I am envious of, but sitting here listening to the birds chirping in the almost silence, with a warm breeze coming in the door really is serene. Of course the serene thing only lasts as long as Isaac is in bed, when he’s up and about it’s a whole different story.

As I am about to have a small break from my work over Christmas, I want to show you some pictures of this little country at the bottom of the planet, since I will have a little more time to be out and about. I’m looking forward to showing you where I live.