Mango & Coconut Black Sticky Rice Pudding, fragrant and tropical, plus some thoughts and photographs on Cambodia thus far.  Jump to Recipe 

Another post from high in the air: this time between the high-rise and motorbikes of Saigon and the beaches  and markets of Hoi An, Vietnam. The last week has been a blur of activity, speeding past in the way that only holidays can. Cambodia is a country I could have spent much longer in – from the sights of Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples, to the bustling energy of Phnom Penh and the friendliness of the people, who genuinely crack a smile from ear to ear on seeing us gawky tourists trying to communicate in local markets, and who would run after you if you accidentally gave the wrong payment in thousands of riel – it is a country I would recommend to anyone.

Here are a few highlights from the trip so far, along with a recipe for one of my favourite new breakfast foods – mango & coconut black sticky rice pudding.

Cambodian food tends to be milder than the fiery Thai and Vietnamese next door – more sweet, coconutty fish amok, steamed in a banana leaf bowl, and smoky chargrilled aubergine with minced pork. The Cambodians emphasise texture in food, with mouth-feel and contrasts all important. Our market breakfast bowl of coconut pork noodles included regular silky rice noodles, a thick, lattice-like noodle, flaky pork spring rolls, smaller chunks of pork mince, the crunch of roasted nuts, handfuls of fresh herbs and a fiery hit of chilli balanced by both a lime-fish sauce dressing and a hint of coconut milk. At $1 per bowl, we were back there again the next morning!

I never thought I would be a condensed milk coffee fan – but something about that cold drip coffee, sweetened and served in a plastic cup full of ice, sipped while seated on a tiny stool in a crowded market, sweat running down our cheeks and cotton sticking to our backs – has me ordering it again and again.

Waffles and doughnuts were our post-breakfast treats – but not as you know them. Incorporating more savoury components to avoid the sickly sugariness of Western versions, my favourite was a ring made of a sticky glutinous rice batter, fried and topped with a sticky, crackly palm sugar glaze – the sort that sticks and crunches between your teeth. The other was a coconut batter with a spoon of yellow bean paste piped inside and a sticky sesame glaze, all nutty, sweet and savoury at once. The waffles are still made in traditional waffle irons over coals, giving a deep, golden swirled appearance. Again unlike our versions, the waffles were made from a potato, coconut meat and sugar batter, giving a thick, more savoury pancake with heavy coconut flavour.

I finally tried a black rice pudding during a motorbike tour of Saigon two nights ago – glutinous and sticky, the rice itself was plain and topped with a scoop of coconut ice cream, melting in rivulets through the rice and finished with chunks of mango, sweeter and juicier than the winter imports in our colder climates. Though that was a version for dessert, this mango & coconut black sticky rice pudding could be eaten for breakfast, or brunch, lacking the decadence of the coconut ice cream but with cool, silky coconut cream in its place. Cooked with vanilla until tender and sticky, the purple-black rice is sweetened with coconut sugar and caramelised banana – I found that coconut or palm sugar delivered more flavour than regular white sugar could. Toppings are whatever you choose, but I kept it tropical with mango and passionfruit, and couldn’t resist the bright pop of fresh pomegranate arils.

It’s not a usual breakfast – but we eat porridge, and chia puddings, and bircher muesli – so why not rice? The Cambodian and Vietnamese people see our breakfasts of cereal and yogurt as being just as strange.

The post Mango & Coconut Black Sticky Rice Pudding + Cambodia appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Lemon, Coconut & Berry Layer Cake with tangy lemon curd, vanilla cream cheese buttercream and dollops of torched Italian meringue – inspired by Andy Bowdy.  Jump to Recipe 

A belated birthday cake for my 19th year!

The actual date was last week in the hours prior to a major exam – it didn’t give me much of chance to celebrate. More hectic days of exams, packing up my life from where it had scattered over the little square box of my college room, saying goodbyes for the summer, and heading home to Auckland followed. The first priority (okay, maybe not quite the first..but up there!) was to solidify my status as one of those people that make their own birthday cake. Is it sad? I would argue that I love the process of creating it so much, thinking of possible flavour combinations, colours, decorations – that it is like a gift in itself, an excuse to break out as much butter and sugar as I can handle and construct something really out-there, epically over the top.

I have been following Sydney’s Andy Bowdy on instagram for the past year or so, and love his style of cake decorating – the flavours he dreams up, the dolloped meringue spilling dramatically over the side, and the mounds of colour and texture adorning the top. It was only a matter of time before I tried it for myself, and my birthday was the perfect opportunity.

The three layers of cake have a lemon base, moist and textured with desiccated coconut and folded through with berries. Between each layer is a tangy cream cheese buttercream and swirls of rich lemon curd, while torched Italian meringue as a topping adds another dimension. Fresh berries and spare drips of lemon curd finish it off.

(just be prepared for a whole load of photos…I had great difficulty deciding which I like best!)

It wasn’t without its trials, however – I had few cream cheese buttercream issues along the way. WAY too runny the first time, and I couldn’t get it to thicken, even in the fridge. I attempted in vain to stack the cake together, but the layers slid over each other, buttercream spurted out the sides, and the whole thing threatened to collapse. I did read that extra sugar can just make it even more runny because of the cream cheese forming water with it – can anyone shed some light on that for me? I ended up rushing to the supermarket (literally took me 10 minutes door to door) and making another batch – a different recipe this time, where I used equal parts butter and cream cheese. It ended up much thicker and more stable, so once I scraped the former batch off the cakes and started it again it all held together. If anyone has any cream cheese buttercream tips though, I would love to hear them – I couldn’t figure out whether you should beat it until fluffy after adding the icing sugar, or whether that would just make it runny and you should just stir the sugar in gently. So many conflicting accounts!

Apart from the buttercream struggles, the cake really it isn’t as hard as it might look – I started the cakes around 10am, finished the lemon curd as they baked, made the cream cheese icing before construction, stacked the cakes and chilled them to set the icing for an hour while making the meringue, then put it all together. If you didn’t have the day, you could easily make the cakes and lemon curd the day before (just store the cakes tightly wrapped in gladwrap in an airtight container and the curd in the fridge). And it doesn’t matter if it gets a bit messy – rustic and well-loved is what we are going for here.

The tiredness has finally caught up to me in the last few days – heavy with fatigue, my eyes seem to want to drift shut every time I sit down in the afternoon, and the screen is starting to blur – so I will sign off here. But if you need an over-the-top, impressive layer cake for any occasion (especially if someone isn’t a chocolate fan!), or are just seized with the desire to construct one, here is your answer.

The post Lemon, Coconut & Berry Layer Cake with Lemon Curd and Torched Meringue appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Plum, coconut and lemon syrup cake- moist, bright and zesty, topped with juicy summer plums and best served with a bit of yogurt or whipped cream.  Jump to Recipe 

I thought it was time to bite the bullet and write my first blog post – it seems to be one of those things that it is easy to continually put off, thinking that I am ‘not ready’ yet or my blog doesn’t look ‘quite right’. Making this blog has been a lot easier said than done: I had no idea of the time that would go into obtaining a domain name, finding a host, and setting up my site. While still far from perfect, let’s be honest – the only people that will be looking around here for the time being will be friends and family who I have specifically told about this blog (or, more likely, forced them to have a look while peering over their shoulder!). Also, as I just recently learned, new blogs do not appear on google searches for a looong time: think 6 months of blogging before google might consider featuring it.

However, to those aforementioned family and friends – please make this cake. It has been on high rotation in the Brick household this summer and has been devoured in silence (interspersed with “mmm”s – a definite seal of approval) by everyone who tries it. The tangy, sweet-sour flavour of the plums blends with the buttery coconut cake and zesty lemon/lime syrup for a spot on summer treat.The first time I made it this year, I used a recipe with slightly greater ingredient quantities, which for some reason caused the plums to sink through the batter. The cake, while still complimented, was not quite how I had pictured it, being slightly heavier and eggier than when I made it last summer (pictured below).

I switched to a slightly different recipe, with about 25g less butter, 1/4 less sugar, and slightly less of the other ingredients and it turned out perfectly. I have made it successfully multiple times now with this recipe, so if anyone knows what the difference was, please let me know!

It is a cake with a short season – here, stone fruit availability is limited to a couple of brief months over summer until by mid-February you are never quite sure when you will arrive at the local fruit and vege shop only to find that they have disappeared. However, the plums can be substituted for other seasonal fruit: in winter, tart chopped rhubarb mixed through the batter after the dry ingredients works well with the coconut and lemon flavours.  It could also be made with other stone fruit or berries, though I have yet to venture from the hard to beat flavours of ripe red plums.

The post Plum, Coconut and Lemon Syrup Cake appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.