Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Orange Cake

This cake has a well deserved reputation. I don't know a cake that is so well known and timeless. Three of my favourite cookbooks include this recipe: Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, Nigella Lawson's How to Eat and David Herbert's The Really Useful Cookbook. I think the original recipe was written in the 1960s.

The cake doesn't use butter or flour so is perfect for people with dietary requirements. But dietary requirements or not, people gobble this cake up.

Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Orange Cake

2 large oranges, washed (preferably unwaxed)

6 eggs

250 gm almond meal

250 gm caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

Slivered almonds to decorate (optional)

Place the oranges in a saucepan and cover with water. Boil the oranges for 2 hours. I often do this step a day or two ahead of time. (My aunt says that you can even freeze the whole, boiled oranges.)

Allow the oranges to cool, cut open and remove pips. Process in a food processor.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius and butter and line a 24cm spring form pan.

Beat 6 eggs and 250gm caster sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until voluminous and thick. Add in the almond meal, baking powder and liquified oranges. Stir together.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and scatter the top with slivered almonds. Bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a skewer can be inserted cleanly.

Leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes before turning out. Dust with icing sugar and serve. Some double cream wouldn't go astray.

Belinda Jeffrey's really good ginger cake

Earlier this year my beautiful maternal Grandmother passed away. She was a fantastic grandma. She was very good at all things "grandmotherly". She could sew, knit, bake fantastic cakes and biscuits, remove any kind of stain and iron and starch any creased garment. She spoilt her grandchildren rotten.

In her old age Grandma had to move into a home and the tables turned - I started to bake for her. She had a very sweet tooth and loved all sorts of cakes with some double cream on the side. She particularly loved this ginger cake.

Belinda Jeffrey's really good ginger cake

from June 2008 Delicious

1.5 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves (I usually leave this out)

1/4 tsp nutmeg

7 small lumps crystallised ginger, chopped finely

125g unsalted butter, softened

1 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup blackstrap molasses (or use treacle if unavailable)

2 eggs

1 tbs finely grated ginger

tsp finely grated lemon zest

1/2 cup buttermilk

1.5 tsp vanilla

icing sugar to dust

whipped cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease a 20cm square cake pan. Line base with buttered baking paper and dust with flour.

Sift the flour, soda and ground spices into a large bowl. Stir in the crystallised ginger, set aside.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric beater until fluffy. Add molasses and beat until well combined. Add eggs, one at a time. Mixture may curdle, but don't worry - it will come back when you add the flour.

Mix in the fresh ginger and zest, then add in the flour mixture. Add buttermilk and vanilla and beat until all combined.

Scrape mix into cake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in pan for a few minutes and than invert onto a rack.

To serve, dust with icing sugar.

This cake is quite rich. I use a 23 cm square pan and I normally cut it into 16 or 20 pieces. A great size to have with a cup of tea.

Chocolate Eclairs

I'm always ripping out recipes that catch my eye in magazines or newspapers. I have lots of scrappy bits of paper floating around my desk with recipes for all sorts of things - panna cotta, chocolate cake, ravioli, meat ragu sauce. I really have to come up with a proper filing system.

Anyway, this recipe for chocolate eclairs is from the Good Weekend magazine (free with the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age). It's from Cath Claringbold who is one of the founders of Mecca Bah. Despite Mecca Bah being a chain restaurant (shudder). It's a good chain ('good chain' almost sounds like an oxymoron).

Chocolate Eclairs

120 g plain flour

250 ml milk (full fat please)

pinch salt

pinch caster sugar

120 g unsalted butter

4 large eggs

1 quantity pastry cream

good quality dark chocolate (melted)

To make the pastry cream:

300 ml milk (full fat please)

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

3 egg yolks

60 gm caster sugar

20 gm plain flour

20 gm corn flour

In a saucepan eat the milk and vanilla seeds just to the boil.

Place the egg yolks, sugar and flours into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until pale and smooth.

Once the milk has boiled, remove from the heat and incorporate a third into the egg mixture. Mix and then pour back into the saucepan with the remaining milk.

Return the saucepan to a medium heat and, stirring continuously, bring the pastry cream gently to the boil. Stir for 30 to 60 seconds until it has thickened. Remove from the heat. Pour into a clean bowl and cover with cling wrap to prevent a skin forming. Leave to cool.

To make the choux pastry shells:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and sift the flour.

Heat the milk, salt, sugar and butter in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil and remove from eat. Add the flour and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, forming a ball. This takes about 20 seconds.

Return the saucepan to the stove over a low heat and continue to beat for 1 minute. Place the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat at high speed for 30 seconds to release heat and steam from the mixture. (This can be done with a wooden spoon if you don't have a mixer)

Reduce the speed slightly and add the eggs, one at a time. The finished dough should be glossy and soft.

Place the dough in a piping bag and pipe 9cm lengths onto a greased, lined tray. Bake in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes or until the pastries are golden and crisp.

Place the pastries on a wire cooling rack. With a sharp knife make a tiny slit in the end to allow the steam to escape. Leave to cool completely. (At this stage the pastries can be frozen if you wish to have them later). My pastries deflated a lot while cooling.

To assemble:

Fill a piping bag with the cooled pastry cream. Make a tiny hole in the end of each pastry. Gently fill with the pastry cream until you see or feel it reach the other end.

Melt some dark chocolate and dip the tops of the eclairs in to ice.

Decorate your eclairs. I used crystallised violets which I bought from Black Pearl Epicure. I chopped them very finely to make into a purpleish, sugary dust.