KEY POINTS:
The first cake I was taught to make at cooking classes in primary school was a sponge, which is quite hard to get right.
There is something deeply reassuring about beating butter and sugar together then adding eggs and flour - it works in every sense, every time.
When I was little I couldn't understand how gloopy stuff went in an oven and came out a cake.
Where did the other stuff go?
The smell of good cake-making, like the sound of flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and happiness.
It is very therapeutic to depart from reality now and then, and go right through the looking glass with your cake making.
It may only be a trifle (so called because it was meant to be trifling and easy) or it might be a chocolate and almond cake, but it will clear the kitchen and your mind of any lurking boredom and stagnation.
Then of course there are the unapproachables - the haute-cuisine, fabled, near-quixotic cakes like Paris-Brest or Black Forest cake.
When I was in my 20s, the name of the game was to show off, so I made insane things like apple strudel from real pulled strudel pastry, which bears no resemblance to the filo pastry it is normally replaced with.
You get to pull this thin pastry over the entire surface of the dining room table, make an accidental hole in it and in frustration, slit the throat of the person nearest you.
Cake making is a minuet of graceful movements where no conversation is needed. A warm room, the spirit of your grandmother and the old rituals bring serenity.
If you want to experience the happiness of traditional, plain cake-making in New Zealand, you have no further to go than a good, old-fashioned A&P show.
There are women who enter cakes in these shows at the cost of 20c per entry, whose mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers did before them.
And guess what? The cakes haven't changed much.
ALMOND BUTTERFLY CAKES
South Kitchen
Makes 20 small cakes
125 g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup milk
whipped cream
raspberry jam
icing sugar
1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line small muffin trays with paper patty cases. Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale.
2. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well. Fold in the almonds and flour, then gently stir in the milk.
3. Spoon mixture into the cases - filling 3/4 full. Bake for 10 minutes or until the cakes spring back when lightly touched. Let cool then slice the tops off and cut in half.
4. Whip cream and put a teaspoonful on top of each cake, top with a little raspberry jam, arrange the "wings" and dust with icing sugar.
FRESH LEMON AND OIL CAKE
Peta Mathias
Serves 8
1 cup caster sugar
finely grated rind of two lemons
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup rice bran or grapeseed oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup plain unsweetened yoghurt
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup lemon juice, extra
1/2 cup caster sugar, extra
Greek yoghurt to serve
1. Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 22cm ring tin.
2. In a large bowl mix the sugar, rind, eggs, oil and salt together with a wooden spoon until well combined.
3. Add the yoghurt and juice and mix, then sieve the flour into the bowl and fold in.
4. Spoon into the tin and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
5. Stir the lemon juice and caster sugar together.
6. After the cake has cooled for for 5 minutes, pour this glaze over the cake. Serve with Greek yoghurt.
- Detours, HoS
