The above loaf was double glazed, sprinkled with poppyseeds and slipped into the oven. For forty agonising minutes, there was a gentle scent of warm honey in the air. All I wanted to do was star-wipe to the moment when I would be sitting down to a plate of fresh challah French toast. Soon, soon.

In truth, I don’t eat much French toast or even bake challah very often. But over a bowl of oatmeal the other morning, I found myself fantasising about a pile of fried eggy bread, dripping with honey and sweet blueberries. (Yes, I often think about other foods I’m not eating as I eat. Doesn’t everyone? Some things are a little harder to attain at short notice though.. like a fresh fish breakfast from Tokyo’s Tsukiji market or one of Pierre Herme’s magical Ispahan macarons.)

The general lack of fresh baked challah in our home probably stems from my fear of braids. Having lived most of my life thus far under the same bowl haircut, you could say what was lacking was sufficient childhood braiding experience. For the purposes of this exercise, I used Rose Levy Berenbaum’s traditional challah recipe from her book, which you can also find here. After gravely contemplating instructions for the 6-braid loaf, I wimped out and opted for the simpler 3-braid, which still managed to get screwed up slightly.

But I did learn a few things along the way.

If you prepare the dough the day before and chill it overnight, you can bake it the next day, just in time for morning tea. There are several subtle things you can do to enhance the quality or flavour of the loaf. Substituting honey for sugar makes the baking bread smell *amazing* and the flavour in the end product is really lovely and delicate. Melissa Clark uses orange juice and extra virgin olive oil in her recipe, which I can imagine must also make for a very delicious loaf. If you’re considering making this, go for 6-braids. There’s even whispers of a 9-braid loaf for the most daring.

Do it, and let me know what time I should be over for breakfast.

Two months into Autumn and I’m finally getting a sense of the season we’re in. Chestnuts are in the shops, along with fuzzy yellow quinces, mandarins and gorgeous ripe persimmons. It strikes me that chestnuts and quinces in particular are two things that require a bit of work before they bridge that gap between why-bother and food-nirvana. I couldn’t resist combining the two in a dessert for friends recently, and know just how laborious it is to cook with them.

Prior to being taught more about quinces, I’d only ever thought of them as the sugary rubbery stuff usually served with cheese. Now every year, I cook them slowly in a not overly sugary syrup, and store them in jars, to be folded into steamed puddings, ice-cream or baked as tarts. When the last bit of cooked fruit has been scooped from the jar, the remaining liquid is then used to soak a sponge, make a custard (Eliza Acton’s recipe for quince custard uses the poaching liquid, egg yolks and not much else. No dairy!) or even reduced to glaze a ham. If you don’t have the patience or the dessert gene, try the lamb and quince tagine from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Fruit instead. The fragrant fruit makes such a statement even in that simple savoury dish.

Today, I really wanted cake, so I made one based on a recipe by Claudia Fleming in her book, The Last Course. This cake is somewhat like an over-sized financier, and has a tight crumb with a deep caramel-like flavour of brown butter. You could serve it with cream or ice-cream, but really I think it’s perfect with just a simple cup of tea.

Quince brown butter cake :

115g butter, browned, strained and kept warm
120g icing sugar
130g buckwheat flour
pinch of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground long pepper (if you don’t have this, use a spice of your choice)
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
150g egg whites
finely grated zest of 1 mandarin
1 large slow-cooked quince, sliced

Grease and line the base of a 7.5″ round pie tin. (see note below)
Preheat the oven to 190’C.

Combine the icing sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, spices and zest in a bowl. Whisk in the eggs whites thoroughly, then gradually whisk in the warm brown butter. Pour the mix into the prepared tin. Top with slices of quince. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Once cooked, allow to cool on a wire rack. Brush the cake with some of the quince cooking liquid, and just before serving, dust the top with a little icing sugar.

[To cook quinces : Wash and peel the quinces, cut in half and place them into a pot with a solution of 3 water : 1 sugar. Add sliced lemon, 1 cinnamon stick, a few crushed cardamom pods, and a split vanilla bean if you wish, and bring to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, turn the heat down, place a cartouche (circle of baking paper) over the quinces and continue to cook on very low heat for several hours until the fruit is completely cooked through and have turned a deep ruby colour.]

[Note about baking tin : I used an unusual sized tin for this cake. You can use a larger one or bake individual cakes, and adjust the baking time accordingly.]