When it comes to cake, I will always go for moist and full of flavour over spongy and vanilla. Biting into outwardly stunning layer cakes at events to find a slightly dry, cardboard-like interior plastered with inches of sickly buttercream is not ok. Small is cute, but I’m also not a huge cupcake person – maybe it’s the memories of high school bake-sales with the same dryness issues or the associated girliness -and why should cupcakes seem in any way more “girly” than cake, anyway? I read this interesting article recently about how steak evolved to be “manly” while salad and dainty deserts became “feminine”, starting in the late 1800’s with specific restaurants for women to lunch and increasing magazine space dedicated to dietary and weight loss advice (which also simultaneously peddled steak recipes to please the men in your life). In some ways those prawn cocktails and trifle have just been replaced by kale and green juice and açai bowls, all under the guise of ‘wellness’. I will admit there’s also huge male wellness industry equivalent now too, heavy on the protein and keto – but those gendered food stereotypes remain pervasive. Food for thought, anyway.

Obviously these mini hazelnut, coffee and chocolate cakes are neither dry or vanilla. Freshly roasted and ground hazelnuts are the star ingredient (so please please make sure yours aren’t rancid), boosted by coffee and two types of sugar for texture (demerera and brown) then topped with a silky chocolate ganache that drips from the sides. I’ve had nothing but glowing feedback thus far – they last well for at least a few days, are rich without being overkill, and are incredibly soft and moist in texture thanks to all the ground hazelnuts and yogurt. If you don’t have mini loaf tins, you could also easily make them in muffin (regular or Texas muffin tin size) or a friand pan. I haven’t personally tried it as a cake but I think it would work in a 20cm round cake tin also – let me know if you give it a go.

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I really didn’t mean to let such a gap open up between posts – it’s been almost three months since my last recipe over here, I’m sorry. It felt like the longer it got, the more inertia there was to overcome to write something up here again. And it’s been busy. Ugh. The worst, most boring excuse in the world, I know, especially when evenings spent sleepily watching Killing Eve and Game of Thrones took priority. Six weeks in London slid past far too fast – crammed around weekdays of hospital placement were dinners out blowing any scrap of a budget I had, bargain show tickets (Nigel Slater’s Toast, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Come From Away), Sundays spent perusing various markets and afternoons spent traversing London – walking through Kensington, Notting Hill, Marylebone, up through Hackney and the canals, round my local Peckham and Dulwich. Plus fleeting trips to Dublin and Amsterdam, the latter of which I published a travel guide on here.

I arrived back in Melbourne with a thump, straight into my next rotation, intensive care. Busy and confronting and fascinating and difficult all at once. It was (is) job application season too for next year, with CVs and cover letters to be written, documents compiled and the growing sense of incredulity that my six years as a student are all but over. And to bring you completely up to speed, I’m now spending a couple of weeks back home in New Zealand on my mid-year break. Recharging amongst lots of recipe developing (or just making an utter mess of the kitchen).

That brings me right round to this cake. It’s a whole orange, dark chocolate & almond cake, rich, fudgey and not too sweet. The chocolate is perfumed with oranges, boiled whole for almost an hour until your kitchen smells like a warm citrus orchard (or what I imagine that to be). They are then combined with olive oil and blitzed in the Vitamix jug (or alternative blender or food processor) until silky smooth. Add the eggs and dry ingredients and briefly blend again, as your sunny yellow blend turns a deep chocolate brown. Meanwhile, the base of your cake tin is lined with honey-coated flaked almonds, sweet and nutty, so when the cake is finished cooking and is flipped, the ombre almonds end up on top. It’s impressive but easy, gluten and dairy-free for anyone with intolerances, and only gets better over a few days. The high powered Vitamix blender (I have the Ascent) makes it incredibly easy with minimal dishes, and also means there is no residual grittiness of orange peel that I have previously experienced with other blenders – it blends it absolutely smooth in seconds.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this cake and I promise I’ll be back here sooner than three months time! If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see more (or less) of here please let me know.

This post is sponsored by Vitamix. I received compensation, but as always, all opinions and content are my own. Thank you so much for supporting the companies that support The Brick Kitchen.

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A tahini caramel & chocolate tart with sesame brittle, all crisp buttery pastry, vanilla and tahini caramel and rich, smooth swirls of chocolate ganache.  Jump to Recipe 

As part of most medical school programs, the final year includes a short elective rotation where you can organise to go (almost) anywhere in the world – a chance to experience a different health system from your own. I’ve just landed back in London for mine – partially an excuse for 6 weeks of restaurant hopping, weekends abroad and catching up with friends from my stint in Oxford last year. (I am actually really looking forward to the elective itself too!). It’s only been three days, but they’ve included stopping off for coffee and flaky citrus morning buns at my new local, Brick House Bakery; oat milk flat whites at the Shoreditch Grind (first time trying Oatly, not entirely convinced but also not bad); early jet-lagged runs around misty, boggy Dulwich Park, all rugged up in layers; keep-cups of Monmouth coffee (the best) and purchases of smoked Maldon salt and Aleppo chilli flakes at the Borough Market; a hearty bowl of dahl with eggplant and flatbread at 26 Grains; and gazing in at the cake displays of my dreams at Ottolenghi Spitalfields – it already feels like I barely left. I also already feel like I underestimated my food budget… (budgeting is really not a strong point over here).

I have a couple of side trips planned so far: one to stay with a friend in Dublin, and one to Amsterdam, so any recommendations for either of those places would be very much appreciated – to eat or to see!

Now to the recipe: a tahini caramel chocolate tart with sesame brittle. I made it multiple times to get it right, and each time one component struggled – once with a shrinking, crumbly pastry, the second with a far too chewy caramel, a few more times for luck – thank goodness I had family, housemates and work colleagues to feed it too (and luckily they didn’t mind/notice the flaws as much as I did). It’s a quick short and sweet pastry, buttery and crisp, blind baked and topped with a silky tahini and vanilla scented salted caramel sauce. Swoops of creamy chocolate ganache and nutty shards of sesame brittle top it off. Yes, it’s rich and intense and a bit of a sugar rush, but it’s a proper dessert, and you can always serve small pieces – a little goes a long way (though some will want seconds – i.e. me). My dad told me it was possibly the best dessert I’ve made, so I’ll take that. (Admittedly, he does love rich chocolate and caramel, so if you’re a fruit person you probably won’t agree!).

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I read an interesting article the other day, followed closely by a post by Erin from Cloudy Kitchen, which made me think a little about the way we consume content – both generally and about food. The gist is that it is has gotten faster and faster. We expect things to happen quickly and in abundance. We scroll past hundreds of photographs on Instagram or Pinterest in a day, expecting to hop straight over to a well-tested recipe in a few seconds. We scan a pages of news briefly on our many open laptop tabs, before skipping onto a new email, then maybe a text, back to the news and then back to work. Distraction arrives swiftly and easily. What does this mean for food content and food blogging?

It used to be more commonplace to sit down and have coffee over a lengthy magazine or newspaper article, accompanied by a recipe that you might tear out and keep in a folder, crumpled and stained. Or to page through a prized cookbook in the evening, earmarking recipes to attempt. Then blogs arrived, and we started to consume online blog posts as well as paper material – but the writing was still of importance. It seems as though this has shifted again in the last few years towards “Instagram content”: popular photos are those that grab attention on a quick scroll past, and might get themselves a double tap or comment (hello, beautifully lit gooey cookies and chocolate cake). Fewer people take the leap to the home of the blog itself, and those that do are less likely to read whatever the author has written above the recipe. Complaints about too many photos, too many ads, not wanting to “read your life story” and too much scrolling is common. (Obviously this is a generalisation, and I know many people still pore over magazines and blog posts – but I think it is safe to say it is to a lesser extent).

I would argue that there are two main things contributing to this. One is that it is easy to forget that all this content is free. Bloggers are, for the most part, unpaid. We spend time creating and photographing recipes because we love it, and if that means we put up a few more photos, add ads for some side income, and write down thoughts above the recipe that aren’t quite as well edited as a magazine, then that is our prerogative. There is no paywall, subscription, or cookbook price on these recipes.

The other is that living in an age of fast content means we aren’t as practiced at focusing. There is more frustration at anything (writing, ads, slow links) that slows down our rate of content consumption – too much friction, as they described it over at Vox. We are less likely to sit down to read, more distracted, and more likely to reach for our phone at every moment of potential boredom. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’ll be making an effort to consume content with a little more awareness of the person behind the screen, make it my focus, and reach for my phone a little less.

This chocolate, pear and hazelnut babka is one that I teased over on instagram recently and was inundated with recipe requests for. It seems like I’ve been chasing babka perfection around the world this year, and it felt like time to make my own. In London was the gorgeously tall and light version by The Good Egg, changed up with dates and walnuts, and then the denser, dark and intensely chocolatey iteration by Honey & Co. Later in Israel there was the buttery individually sized halva and chocolate babkas at Dallal Bakery, and perhaps the most famous version at Lehahim Bakery (the original Breads Bakery in NYC) – only available by the entire loaf, and constructed with croissant dough for crisp layered interiors. I wasn’t going to ask anyone to make croissant dough at home (especially considering that I’ve never even made it myself), and so went with an easy overnight brioche. It took a while to perfect the ratios of dough to loaf tin size, brioche to filling and fluffiness to intensity, but I think I’ve gotten there.

It’s a buttery, fluffy brioche dough swirled up with a rich chocolate filling based on that of Honey & Co and layered with chopped toasted hazelnuts and sliced pear. While it’s still hot, a sugar syrup is brushed over – don’t skip this. It won’t make it soggy or too sweet. And it’s really must easier than it looks – see the step by step photographs for making the twisted shape. From my failures, I also know that even if you roll it too thin, or can’t quite fit it in the tin, or it looks little squashed – when you pull it out of the oven, it always looks 100x better and still tastes great. Christmas morning bake, anyone?

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Christmas season has officially hit! Without the heavy coats, mugs of hot chocolate or the snow and fairy light dusted branches that I’ve been swiping past, here in Auckland it’s more muggy spring rain and barbecues. Pine needles are lining the footpath outside (thanks to the Christmas trees being sold by my brothers) and the Christmas mince tarts are rolling out the door – buckets of brandy and spice laden fruit spiked with dark chocolate, and tray after tray of buttery sweet pastry. Topped with a star and a light shower of icing sugar, they’re pretty festive – I’ll be hard pressed not to eat one a day until the 25th. Do let me know if you’re in New Zealand (Auckland in particular) and you’d like to order a dozen or two.

So if last week’s post was the anti-dote to all the sweet baking I’ve been doing, this post is one of those sweets. This week I’ve worked with Vitamix to create this Salted Peanut Caramel Slice. It’s the perfect recipe for any Christmas party, potluck, morning tea get-together, or simply to indulge in with coffee – it’s a hit in any situation, and I haven’t found someone that doesn’t like it. It starts with a slightly salty, buttery miso shortbread base, topped with a rich dark-roasted peanut caramel – like a regular caramel sauce but with the addition of homemade peanut butter and chopped peanuts stirred through for crunch. Normally when I make caramel slice I go for the classic condensed milk based caramel, but I think this is my new favourite – much less risk of sickly sweetness, and a bolder caramel flavour, matched with the slightly savoury peanut butter. It’s finished off with a layer of dark chocolate and a hint of sea salt. It’s addictive, sweet, sticky, salty, nutty and rich – everything I want in a slice!

The Vitamix Ascent with the new Blending Cups and Bowls makes this slice even easier: simply use the pulse function to blitz together the shortbread ingredients in the jug, and then use the new Blending Cup to make a quick, homemade dark roasted peanut butter for the caramel. I haven’t stopped using the Cups and Bowls with my Ascent since I received them – it means you can blend smaller quantities of ingredients that wouldn’t work so well in the full size container (like this small batch peanut butter, salad dressing, chopped nuts and individual smoothies) AND means less dishes. The Vitamix Ascent is my go-to blender and I use it almost daily – it blends the thickest acai bowls and icy sorbet, makes super smooth almond butter, you can make soup from scratch (it even heats it up!) and it comes in handy for the big batches of hummus I make regularly. Christmas present anyone?

This post was created in collaboration with Vitamix, and I received the high-performance blender as a gift. As always, all opinions expressed are my own, including my appreciation of this versatile blender! Thank you so much for supporting the companies that support this blog.

Baker’s Notes:

•  The homemade small batch peanut butter works extremely well in the Vitamix Blending Cup. It means you know exactly what is in it and can roast your own peanuts – it tastes better than any store-bought nut butter I’ve tried. If you MUST, you can use a dark roasted store-bought peanut butter, but make sure it is a smooth nut butter that is just peanuts (± a little bit of oil and salt). If you use a peanut butter with lots of extra fats, additives and sugar it will affect your end result.
• Make sure the base and caramel are cool and set before you add the next layer on top. Pro tip if you are short on time – place the tin in the freezer. The base will chill super fast, and the caramel will set within an hour or two.
• Keep the slice in an airtight container in the fridge and bring out just before serving. If kept at room temperature, the caramel layer gets too soft. It’ll last at least a week.

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