Sometimes when I’m baking at home, the hardest thing about starting is trying to select some music to listen to. Two birthdays ago, B bought me an iPod with a cute set of speakers, as my kitchen sound system. What I did prior to this was to turn up the volume of the speakers in the lounge room, so that I could hear the music while in the kitchen, several walls away. Of course, the arrangement I have now is much better.

While B has quite a large CD collection that I can pick and choose from, I find there tends to be just a few albums that get played repeatedly when I cook. If I’m chopping or kneading, it’s usually something by the Chilli Peppers. Lately, if I’m doing any baking, I’ve been listening to Sufjan Stevens or Neko Case. This cake was made entirely with her album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood :

There’s a packet of dates (purchased eons ago) that has been staring me in the face every time I peek into the pantry. They are looking very dry now, so I didn’t fancy eating them straight from the packet.There are always some things that you find are way out of *date*, but in your mind you’re thinking, “it’s still good, it’s still good” (…this applies to several items I own, including a jar of vegemite that is two, almost three years out of date, and that I’m still working my way through). So I’d been saving these dates for a time when I felt like making some kind of date-y dish. The most obvious thing that comes to mind is sticky date pudding. But rather than proceed with the same recipe I always use, I thought it was time to try something different. In her Book of Baking, Sue Lawrence calls this a “warm date cake with fudge topping“. The sauce is made and poured over the cake half way through the baking process, and the result is a beautifully moist cake with a little something extra that sets it apart from the bog standard sticky date pudding : I don’t know if this was intended as part of the process, or maybe it happened to me by accident, but some of the sauce that was poured over the cake, formed a little chewy toffee layer around the edge of the cake, which I absolutely love.

I have owned my copy of Jill Dupleix’s Old Food for quite some time now. Many other cookbook purchases later, I still find myself returning to her book for recipes like sticky toffee pudding, chocolate chip cookies and a fine Irish boil-and-bake fruit cake that even B’s mum approves of.

After spending this afternoon doing some essential grocery shopping, all I wanted was a cup of vanilla tea and a slice of said cake. It’s a wonderful caramel coloured cake that is light in texture, moist and filled with plump dried fruit. I especially like the crusty, chewy, bloated currants embedded in the top of the cake. When using this recipe, up the cinnamon, allspice and ground ginger quotient, if like me, you’re also a spice fiend. And as you proceed to cut a generous portion for yourself, it doesn’t hurt to keep Jill’s afternoon tea philosophy in mind :

“But it’s the cake that is the heart and soul of afternoon tea, the architectural monument that bonds people, pulling them to the table and to the tea pot. Please avoid the use of all words such as wicked, naughty and sinful when thinking about, cooking, serving and eating cake. They are completely irrelevant. The correct words are well deserved, essential and invaluable.”

Jill Dupleix’s Boil and bake fruit cake :

150g butter
300g sultanas
300g currants
180 soft brown sugar
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 cup water
2 eggs, well beaten
150g plain flour
150g self-raising flour

Heat oven to 180’C.

Combine butter, sultanas, currants, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, bicarbonate of soda and water in a saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring, then cool.

Add eggs and beat well. Sift the 2 flours together, add to the mixture and beat well. Pour into a lightly buttered cake tin of 22cm diameter. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean.

Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from tin. Store in an airtight container.

If there’s one thing better than chocolate, it’s chocolate icing. And lots of it. Not too long ago, I was inspired by a thread on eGullet to finally make use of my copy of Pierre Hermes’ Chocolate Desserts book. And decided to make this, a Faubourg Pave: chocolate cake layered with salted butter caramel ganache and little bits of poached dried apricots (flavoured with lemon and pepper). The star of this dessert is the ganache – the slight saltiness is unusual but really highlights the flavour of the chocolate. For this dessert, I used Lindt because Valrhona is a little harder to get at short notice.

The following is a condensed version of Pierre Hermes’ ganache recipe:

185g Valrhona Manjari, finely chopped
120g Valrhona Jivara, finely chopped
140g sugar
20g salted butter
275g heavy cream
335g unsalted butter, at room temperature.

1. Mix the chocolates together in a bowl.
2. Bring the sugar to a dark caramel in a pot. Stir in the salted butter, and then the cream. Bring to boil and then remove pot from heat.
3. Pour half the hot caramel over the chocolate and gently stir with a spatula until smooth. Pour in the rest of the caramel, stirring. Set the ganache aside to cool.
4. Soften the unsalted butter with a spatula. Gently stir the butter into the ganache. Use straight away, or chill and bring back to room temperature before using.