Coconut & raspberry wagon wheels – chocolate shortbread biscuits sandwiched with coconut marshmallow & raspberry jam, and coated in dark chocolate.  Jump to Recipe 

Cookies were my baking starting point. The creaming of butter and sugar, addition of eggs and vanilla, and gentle fold through of sifted flour and raising agents became second nature long before any of the more complicated treats that grace this blog. A container of cookies on the shelf was a constant in our house. My favourite through high school was a twist on a chocolate chip cookie – Mum had been sent the recipe in an email where they were nicknamed ‘Neiman-Marcus cookies’, but I doubt the attached story regarding being ripped off for the recipe was true. In any case, they were a weekly Sunday endeavor for a while – whole oats blitzed in the food processor for extra texture, and both grated dark chocolate and chunks mixed in, lending a speckled appearance. It was a massive batch of dough – I’d get forty or so cookies from it.  They were tucked into my school lunch so frequently, tidily wrapped in cling wrap, my friends began nicknaming them the ‘Claudia Cookie’ – I brought more in to share after that.

It petered out at some point, probably coinciding with my growing desire to try out new combinations – cakes and brownies, puddings and elaborate tarts for dessert. And when I left for university, my brothers ended up with store-bought cookies more often than not – though to be fair, Mum makes a wicked ginger crunch when time allows, the boys have gotten fairly adept at the old chocolate self-saucing pudding, and Dad even tackles a fruit crumble occasionally. We are a family with a sweet tooth, that’s for sure.

So when I was invited by Natalie and Holly over at The Modern Proper to take part in their #calmandbrightcookienight – an evening of sharing our favourite cookie recipes and finding new favourites in time for the festive season – I knew it was time to bring the cookie back. I turned to a classic cookie in this part of the world – the wagon wheel – and combined it with one of the most iconic kiwi treats – the lamington. Lamingtons are a springy sponge cake cut into squares, coated in a chocolate or raspberry glaze and rolled in desiccated coconut. I always imagine the supermarket bakery section version, housed in clear plastic containers and brought to almost every single school shared lunch as far back as I can remember – but homemade versions are much better. Wagon wheels are more of an Australian and UK sweet, first launched in 1948 – shortbread cookies sandwiching a marshmallow filling with a bit of jam in the centre, and the entire round dunked in chocolate until it resembles something like a wheel.

This version is an effort – it’s not as simple as those original ‘Claudia Cookies’. But in terms of festive baking, it hits the spot. In the last few years I’ve given Christmas baking gifts to friends and family – last year dark chocolate rocky road, studded with marshmallow chunks, chopped almonds and freeze dried raspberries & cherries.  Before that it was homemade raspberry marshmallow for the kids and dark chocolate ganache truffles for adults, though I’m sure a bit of swapping went on! For Mum it’s often a jar of biscotti – chocolate hazelnut or the holiday coloured cranberry, pistachio and orange zest – twice baked in a log and then slices to last the next six weeks of coffee dunking.

If we were here for Christmas this year, I’d be gifting these coconut & raspberry wagon wheels.  Chocolate shortbread cookies sandwich a homemade melt-in-your-mouth coconut marshmallow, with a centre of firm sharp raspberry jam. They’re dunked in a thick dark chocolate coating and decked out with freeze dried raspberry crumble and coconut chips. You have to exercise a little patience while waiting for various components to set, but it is worth it in the end, and no step in isolation is particularly difficult. Just read the recipe and cook’s notes thoroughly, have all ingredients on hand, and allow yourself time to enjoy the process! Merry Christmas and happy #calmandbrightcookienight!  Check out Holly & Natalie’s post for the full list of bloggers who are participating with amazing cookie recipes. 

Cook’s notes

• Recipe makes 24 wagon wheels. Can be halved to make 12.
• The amount of chocolate and coconut oil you use for dipping is up to you – to fully coat all 24 you may need the max quantities (500g chocolate, 2 tbsp coconut oil), but you can also half-dip the wagon wheels if you prefer.
• Start the cookie dough the night before so it can rest in the fridge. In the morning, bake the cookies, make the marshmallow and sandwich together.
• You need an electric or sugar thermometer to make the marshmallow, and read the recipe carefully and have everything prepped before you start so it doesn’t get stressful. Once the marshmallow is done, work quickly to pipe it on the cookies and sandwich them as it will set fast.

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Rhubarb, Raspberry & Dark Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding cake – rich brioche pudding layered with roasted rhubarb, flaked almonds & dark chocolate chunks. Top with vanilla bean custard for a festive dessert!  Jump to Recipe 

As I type this, I’m sitting on a fold out camping chair with the sun beating down, under a big outdoor umbrella and a wide brimmed straw hat. I burn easily – a jandal tan line is already emerging. But I’m not camping, or looking out at the ocean, or at a barbecue – the view is of a busy suburban street and the chair is on the footpath. Morning traffic crawls past. Red and green buckets line the fences, and even though I’ve just swept the sidewalk, it feels like it is already covered in a carpet of pine-needles again. It’s a Tuesday, so this job is quiet – a few people have stopped by to choose their Christmas tree, and I’ve sold a few dozen homemade fruit mince tarts to bypassers. I wonder sometimes if I look in any way festive to people driving by: face hidden by my hat brim, typing away madly on a laptop, and occasionally donning long sleeves through the heat – scratchy pine tree needles give me a wicked rash!

We get a mix of buyers: my favourite are the families with young children who are dead set on finding a Christmas tree, no matter how pretty it is. They can’t wait to decorate it, and their parents are focused on getting them home as quickly as possible – they’re not picky.  The people on the opposite end of the spectrum are the worst: we have competition down the road, and yesterday someone drove back and forth between the 2 tree sellers about 5 times before finally making a decision. I’m not exaggerating. Let’s be honest, once a tree is covered in baubles and fairy lights, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart. It’s a study in human nature – and I think I’d rather be like the easy going folk who make Christmas tree shopping a breeze, than the picky, anxious, fussy people who turn it into an nightmare ordeal in an almost certainly fruitless search for perfection.

At least it’s sunny: I’ve done this for a the past few summers, and sometimes the chair is in the garage as rain buckets down while I’m soaked to the skin from lifting sodden trees. On the other hand, the sun makes the trees droop and gives them a forlorn appearance by late afternoon – so there are downsides to both. It’s a very different job to cafe baking bulk doughnuts last year and accidentally burning huge and expensive batches of biscotti  – much cruisier, really. I just keep reminding myself how much I’m saving for future brunch trips and holidays next year!

Last week I catered a dinner for 12 with chermoula-rubbed butterflied lamb cooked on the barbecue, a lentil pomegranate salad, smoky babaganoush and homemade mottled turkish pide to mop up bowls of the smoothest hummus I’ve ever made. The secret was to make it properly – and by that I mean to soak and boil the chickpeas with baking soda, rather than the quicker option straight from a can. Thank you, Ottolenghi! 

With all that going on, it was a relief to have dessert prepared ahead time with this raspberry, rhubarb & dark chocolate bread & butter pudding cake. It’s a step-up from your traditional casserole pan of pudding, and would make an ideal Christmas day dessert made the night before. Brioche slices (I made my own, but you could buy it) are layered up in a cake tin along with roasted rhubarb, tart raspberries, dark chocolate chunks and almond meal. It’s all soaked in a rich, eggy custard, and then baked until slightly puffy, springy and golden. When cut into, pale pudding is broken up with wavy lines of melted chocolate and raspberries, and the enriched brioche gives a lovely creamy texture, contrasted with the crunchy flaked almond & raspberry topping. Drizzled with a vanilla bean custard, it’s heavenly.

Cook’s notes:

• You need a very tight springform cake tin – mine leaks a little, so I lined it with baking paper that extends underneath the springform rim for a tighter seal, then wrapped the bottom of the tin with foil to catchy any extra drips.
• Brioche is the best bread to use – white bread risks a gluey texture. Make your own, or buy it.
• It’s a big cake , serving 10-15 easily with generous slices.
• Make or buy a vanilla custard, but it is very easy to make a much-better-than-storebought custard ahead of time and keep in the fridge (1-2 days) until ready to use.

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Lemon, Almond & Raspberry Layer Cake with cream cheese buttercream and pink white chocolate ganache drips. Gluten free option. Jump to Recipe 

I’m not sure what this lemon, almond & raspberry layer cake is celebrating. Maybe it is a half way mark cake – marking the start of the second half of my university degree (2.5 years to go!), or just a much-too-fancy afternoon tea cake. Though I have been making it on and off all year as a 21st birthday cake, there was no such event or excuse this weekend. Just a desire for cake, the time to spend on icing and layers, and the willingness to sit and create silky drips of ganache, sliding gently down the sides. It’s not as sleek and precise as many these days, with the drips imperfect, the buttercream with edges and nicks, and the whole entity threatening to tilt on a slight angle – but it is one of the best tasting cakes I have discovered. It’s the sort of cake that improves over a day or two and having it dry out is never a concern – ground almonds and berries add moisture, lemon zest and juice infuses it, and the tangy cream cheese buttercream is the sort you could eat straight from the bowl.

The sort of cake that always makes your day a little brighter.

I wish life in the hospital was as simple as that – giving patients cake for a miraculous cure, or at least a smile. Hospital food is dull. The smell wafts through the wards as we finish our rounds, lunches of watery, pale orange pumpkin soup and overcooked broccoli, accompanied by some unidentifiable curry – or, if you are diabetic, it is dry wheat sandwiches, vaguely soggy with tomato and cheese. Anything eaten in the hospital never tastes as good anyway, even if it formerly was. Maybe it is the smell – antiseptics and sterility and something I can never quite put my finger on but is instantly recognizable as the scent of illness.

Then patients have to deal with us – a whole group of doctors and students, from the registrar to the interns, the fifth year trailing along with the notes, scribbling away madly, and the third years just following like sheep. We surround their bed, standing there all healthy and harried, distracted by all the other patients on the list and ticking them off like an itemised box on the morning round. If you’re in a room of four, privacy is non-existent – a thin curtain separates you from your neighbour. I can’t imagine trying to recover from illness surrounded by the voices of other patients, nurses and visitors on top of the constant beeping and hum of equipment.

It’s strange as a student too. Like being an observer to some of the toughest times of people’s lives, not really contributing anything but there for the purpose of learning. Privy to the most personal of conversations and procedures – the older man with chronic pain and suicidal thoughts, the young woman in with infection but struggling with an ongoing drug habit, the woman with teenage children and a new terminal cancer diagnosis.

It’s hard to remember, rushing around on wardrounds between thirty different patients, that these are people just like me – with complex situations, with family and friends and thoughts and opinions, with LIVES outside this hospital room. It is all too easy to switch off and brush over them as a condition to diagnose, rather than a person in pain. But I can see that there has to be a balance too, because doctors also can’t take on that suffering themselves – to an certain extent, they have to be able to leave the cases and patients behind when they go home.

Enough of the rambling – we’ll get back to the cake. It’s a lemon, almond & raspberry layer cake with cream cheese buttercream and white chocolate ganache drips, flowers optional. I’ve made it a few times in much bigger forms for birthdays – see instructions below on how to achieve that. Not too rich, so a perfect daytime cake, and full of juicy raspberries and the scent of lemon. The sort of cake that makes your day a little better.

Cook’s notes:

• If rhubarb is in season, it also works beautifully – just cut the rhubarb stems into 1-2cm pieces and fold into the batter after the lemon juice and zest
• I made it in 2 x 15cm tins, which resulted in a deep cake and a darker crust than usual  – though initially concerned it was overcooked, I had comments that the crust, caremelised and dark, was the best bit. However, to avoid this, make it in 3 x 15cm tins for 3 more even layers. This also avoids having to split the layers in half.
• You could also make the cake in 2 x 20cm cake tins for a thinner, double layer cake. Watch the baking time carefully as it will probably only take about 20 minutes.
• For a large celebration cake to serve 60-80 people (see picture here):
  • Make 3 x 26cm layers, each using a 2/3 mix (200g butter, 4 eggs per cake)
  • Make 3 x 20 cm layers, each using a 1/2 mix (150g butter, 3 eggs per cake)
  • Make a double mix of cream cheese buttercream.
  • Stack together the same way, but you may want to use a couple of skewers to make the height a little more stable!

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Lemon Curd & Raspberry Brioche – pillowy overnight brioche, cream cheese, tangy lemon curd and juicy berries – no kitchen equipment required!  Jump to Recipe 

Photographs are powerful things. Those coloured pixels on the screen had us in hysterics last night after stumbling across images from past holidays, captured moments both candid and posed. You don’t notice how much your family changes until you see pictures – I guess because those changes are gradual and subtle. Although now my brother’s haircuts are better and they have all surpassed me in height, some things don’t change – they still automatically contort their faces when a camera comes out, and whether age 5 or age 15, the same cheeky grins remain. Some of those photos definitely warrant saving for 21st birthday parties!

I write this back on another airplane, the end of a spur of the moment trip to a surf town for the long weekend to meet up with the rest of my family. This time I didn’t manage to take many photos, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t quite capture the power and beauty of the eastern-most point of Australia. The two metre high swells rolling steadily around the headland were diminished by an iPhone screen, and the fury and strength of foaming white water rebounding off rocky outcrops seemed more tame behind a lens. It couldn’t convey the power of the wind gusts and salt spray pushing and pulling at hair and clothes, almost forcing us off the narrow paths, or the deep rumble of huge breakers out at sea.

I’m not sure it is possible to photograph the experience in the water. Cold, but warm enough to get used to with the sun beating down on your shoulders, until an oncoming wave suddenly splashes and chills your midriff. The next forces you to dive underneath, gripping onto handfuls of sand, stomach pressing against the ocean bottom in an attempt not to be swept backwards. The wave curls and crashes over, rolling and churning the water above your head. The water blocking your ears muffles the world, silent and gurgling, until you push off and up, back to the surface to gasp in another breath, moving forward a few strokes until another wave forces you underneath again. Out past the break, out past the surfers, hundreds of them like a black neoprene-suited sea colony waiting for the wave.

Coming back in, the waves are our transport. Kicking hard on its smooth surface, moments before it breaks, and accelerating forward, picked up by the wave itself. Sliding down the wave face, hand-outstretched and skimming the water, getting in a last mouthful of oxygen. BOOM, and the white water engulfs your head as the heavy tons of water crash down in a shifting, boiling mass. But you’re out the front again, breathing and moving forward, streamlined and one with the wave. Fast, until suddenly sand grates your stomach, and it deposits you on the beach. Sometimes it goes wrong, and it churns you up and flips you round, arms and legs in every direction, water stinging up your nose – until choking and flailing you make it back to the surface, the wave carrying on as if you never encountered it.

These brioche were the perfect beach holiday treat. And I know, I know – probably not many people are willing to make brioche while on holiday. These are relatively simple, however – I managed to make and photograph them in a ramshackle bach/apartment with a oven that kept cutting out, no rolling pin (I used a coconut milk can..) and no stand mixer (my brothers pitched in for the arm work).

The brioche dough is mixed up the evening before you plan to make them. A loose, non-fussy dough, it requires 6-8 minutes of firm stirring (waaay to sticky to knead, trust me) before being plonked in the fridge to prove overnight. In the morning, divide it into rounds, roll them out and let rest for 15 minutes. Then go crazy – smear on vanilla cream cheese and tangy lemon curd, sprinkle with raspberries and flaked almonds, and throw them in the oven. 20 minutes later you have puffy, pillowy brioche, creamy and lemony and fragrant. Best holiday brunch ever.

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No-churn passionfruit raspberry pavlova ice cream – creamy vanilla ice cream layered with tangy raspberry coulis, passionfruit swirls & meringue shards.  Jump to Recipe 

Life changing.

I cannot believe I have never tried no-churn ice cream before. I had been a little ‘above’ it, assuming churned gelato was obviously superior, that pasteurising and aging and specific temperatures were all aspects worth consideration – and consequently never made it. The prohibitive time and effort meant a trip to Gelato Messina was far easier!

I think it was the sweetened condensed milk involved that put me off for a while longer – like, how could something with sweetened condensed milk be a real ice cream?

My new answer is IT CAN. IT SO SO SO CAN.

Because this passionfruit raspberry pavlova ice cream is one of the best I have ever tasted. Creamy, sweet vanilla ice cream base is layered with tangy raspberry coulis, passionfruit swirls and crispy edged-fluffy inner crushed meringue shards. It takes all of 10 minutes to make once the meringue and raspberry coulis are done, and then 6 hours freezing time later, you have a batch of ice cream that rivals anything storebought. The meringue and coulis recipe actually make enough for 2-3 batches of ice cream, so you will have leftovers to use in something else (meringue, berries and cream jars?) or just to make more ice cream with.

The possible flavour combinations that could be used with this ice cream base are endless- I’m thinking espresso chocolate with brownie chunks, roasted pear and rhubarb, apple crumble, lemon curd and blueberry swirls, caramel with sticky date pudding chunks…

AND Christmas is only ONE week away now. If your city/town/area is anything like Auckland right now, everyone (and everything) is going insane. The traffic is awful, the shops are packed, the stress is practically palpable, the radio is crammed with Christmas advertising, work is crazy busy (like, why does everyone suddenly want doughnuts the week before Christmas?) and most of the joy and family focus of Christmas seems swamped with a tide of commercialism.

For my part, I am incredibly unprepared thanks to those 9-12 hour doughnut shifts – Christmas dessert for 25 people is on me (!) and planning and Christmas shopping have yet to happen. If this is you as well, this ice cream is perfect. Make it a couple of days ahead (a couple of batches if you are feeding lots of people), and scoop it in the sun after Christmas dinner. Pavlova is an iconic dessert here in the Australia and NZ, but can be challenging in humid weather when you are trying to use the oven for 1000x other things in the days before Christmas. This way you can incorporate an easier meringue (made ahead, or even store-bought), into an easy but impressive ice cream to relieve dessert pressure on the day.

It could also be a worthwhile addition if your main dessert is something like Christmas pudding or trifle, which can be a little divisive (especially among the under-20s!) – have it on hand for those who aren’t fans of the traditional brandy-soaked puds. Even if you aren’t as disorganised as I am, you could still serve it at a relaxed dinner on Boxing Day, or around New Years celebrations – summer is all about beaches and barbecues, right?

If you are one of those Northern hemisphere people enjoying a white Christmas, feel free to experiment with more wintery flavours – chocolate, caramel, roast apples & pears, sticky date….

This recipe is part of a virtual Christmas lunch party with other Australian (and NZ) food bloggers, all serving up amazing recipes that you could use on the day. A big thank you to Bec at Dancing Through Sunday for organising it! Check out the other dishes here:

• Dancing Through Sunday – Vegetarian Stuffing Balls
• Champagne and Chips – Ice Cream Terrine
• The Alimental Sage – Festive Summer Salad 
• 84th and 3rd – Nectarine Almond Streusel French Toast 
• Whats for Eats – Sugar Crunch Cookies

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