Cakeophilia

The cakeings of a pastry chef in a lawyers body

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Strawberry Cheesecake Tart with Chocolate Crust

Cakeophilia is back with a new recipe!

Its been a long time in between posts! Let’s celebrate with a luscious cheesecake tart with the classic combination of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I’m a huge fan of baked cheesecake, and this year I have been riffing on Smitten Kitchen’s recipe. So far I have done a blueberry version and a mango variation, both with kaffir lime fragranced filling (more on that in a post to come). This…

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Zucchini Pecan Cake with cream cheese frosting

A carrot cake by any other name would indeed taste as sweet!

I first had a zucchini pecan cake in Bright, in the alpine region of Victoria. I was really taken by the bright green flecks of zucchini within the pale cake, and remember that it was a really lovely change to traditional carrot cake, particularly with its zingy lime zest topping. At the time I was with someone who doesn’t like cheese, including cream cheese, (which is weird), so I got to eat…

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Panettone

On December 24 this year, I went happily to look on Cakeophilia for my recipe for panettone, the glorious fruit studded yeasty cake from Italy… but I couldn’t find it. I was distressed to discover that I had been intending to blog about panettone for a whole year and had completely failed to do it. Sorry about that.

It’s a little after Christmas now, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t sneak…

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Blueberry Custard Tarts (with meringue, or not)

Blueberry Custard Tarts (with meringue, or not)

Life really isn’t anything much without a whole lot of baking that includes blueberries. They are in my top five favourite fruits.

I’ve been working a lot with pastry, and I have to say that one of the best sweet short pastry recipes I have ever made comes from Little & Friday in Auckland, NZ. They make all sorts of amazing tarts with it, and an especially nice version they do in winter is an…

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Lemon Brûlée Slice

I have no idea why nobody ever thought of putting crisp brûlée caramel on top of gooey lemon slice before.

I read once that there are two kinds of people in the world: chocoholics, or lemonophiles. This post is for the latter. I’ve propounded on the virtues of gooey lemon bars before, but for some reason, and I really can’t fathom why, it never occurred to me to coat it with torched sugar until now.

Sorry about that. On the plus side, the problem has been rectified.

This slice is a little bit of…

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Fluffy scones - add your own extras

The made to order scones at Edgewater Resort in Wanaka, NZ are kind of legendary... these are my tribute.

Most winters in the past few years I have been lucky enough to visit Wanaka, NZ. My cousin and his wife live there, and its always a bit of a bake fest at their house when I am around (it’s a bit like singing for your supper!). We’ve had brand new inventions like Neo-Neenish Tarts to Rose Rhubarb Millefeuille to Apple Caramel Moose Cake, there, and a whole bunch of other Cakeophilia favourites…

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Dulce de Leche Cupcakes

Dulce de Leche - real milk caramel gets out of the jar and into the heart of cinnamon cupcakes. Or you could just eat it by the spoon.

Heres a great thing to do when you’ve got a lot of milk and an hour or two to spare. Make your own Dulce De Leche. The real stuff, which is just whole milk and sugar (and a little cream of tartar), cooked down into a gooey caramel, hinted with just a little cinnamon.

YUM. This stuff is so much better than just boiling a tin of sweetened condensed milk for a couple of hours. It’s far less…

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Straight-up Crepes

Your new super easy French Fix!

You know those social media posts you come across from time to time which has this crazy stack of crepes sandwiched together with something nom-nom-nommy, cut into wedges like a cake? This post is a bit like that.

I mean, I didn’t go so far as to do the sandwiching and the cutting – you have to leave yourself some treats for another day, but this post is about the classic building block, the…

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Maple Coffee Gateau

It's time to celebrate the extreme virtues of cakes from yesteryear.

Here’s a new twist on a very classic gateau – layers of golden maple flavoured cake, filled with maple coffee mock cream, all decorated with old school piping and topped with maple caramelised pecans.

My big inspiration for Maple Coffee Gateau came from the Colville Cafe on the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand – probably more than 15 years ago. At the time the cafe had a pastry chef turned…

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Pepparkakor - Swedish Gingersnaps

I was busy bragging to all about my other gingerbread recipe until I went to Melbourne's Swedish Christmas Market and discovered Pepparkakor. Converted.

I thought I knew about good gingerbread. After all, my other gingerbread recipe is super tasty. But then, I discovered Pepparkakor. 

I hate to be disloyal to one of my own recipes, but frankly, Pepparkakor is to my mind, the definitive gingerbread. The biscuits are thin and crispy, with a wonderful light texture and the perfect level of spice.

The dough is beautifully spiced, with quite a…

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Chocolate Log, Strawberry Gel and Ganache

If you go down to the woods today you'll certainly find a Chocolate Pohutukawa Log (or when it's not Christmas, the Chocolate Roulade). It's one of Cakeophilia's signature Christmas desserts, and has a cult following.

One of the traditional Christmas desserts at my house when I was growing up was Chocolate Log. It was my brother’s favourite. Mum made a chocolate sponge roll filled with jam and mock cream, coated with chocolate icing. In other houses, it went by the name of yule log, or chocolate sponge roll. If you were being really posh, you might also call it chocolate roulade. Actually a chocolate roulade…

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Brown Butter Cake with Brown Butter White Chocolate Frosting

You know that amazing sizzle smell of butter as it browns in a pan? Now you can enjoy it with your afternoon tea or coffee.

How do you turn a simple vanilla cake into something unbelievably special? Its super easy – and is even kind to those who sometimes let things burn!

In this case, the butter gets burned – well, allowed to caramelise – on purpose. The result is absolutely heavenly, taken to the next level with amazingly delicious brown butter white chocolate frosting. It’s sweet and a little salty with a…

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Vanilla Tofu Sponge Cake with Passionfruit Icing

I never thought I would be doing this, but today I am advising you that it is by no means a dumb idea to add pureed tofu to sponge cake mixture... You saw it here first.

Here’s a brand new recipe to try, and its kind of weird. Vanilla Tofu Sponge Cake. It’s a simple, homey kind of cake, but I promise, it’s super delicious.

How – or why did I come up with it? Well, I had “tofu donuts” for the first time the other day. For the record, they were amazing. I had no idea that you could put tofu into baked goods – beyond perhaps the addition of tofu to cheesecake I…

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Old Fashioned Cheese Straws

Long promised and finally delivered, Old Fashioned Cheese Straws.

Theres only one savoury biscuit that I ever really want to make, and the recipe is as old as time. Cheese Straws.

Cheese Straws are a perennial favourite in my family, with perhaps the biggest fan being my Dad. They are just INSANELY moreish, and no surprise, because they are basically made from cheese pastry. They are tender and flaky and crispy and, as I like to put it, scrunchy-munchy.

I…

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Salted Caramel Nut Tarts - Gluten Free

The spoils of just another moment when all my baking dreams came true.

There’s an old ad for Snickers Bars, where Mr T says “get some nuts!”. My Salted Caramel Nut Tarts are like that, only better.  Five types of nuts and four different seeds get coated in salty caramel and tipped into tiny, mini muffin sized tart cases made from a crisp rice flour pastry that has a little bit of bite to it. They are the perfect little sweet cocktail nibble, and the rice flour…

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Lemonade Loaf - whole lemon and almond cake

Words simply cannot describe how good my new Lemonade Loaf is. I'll say this again. I've made three in a row.

While I was moving house a few weeks ago, for some reason I got to thinking about those whole orange cakes that anti-glutenites always get offered at work birthday parties (because that is one of the two GF cakes that most places make (the other one is flourless chocolate cake)). And it got me to thinking: can you do that with lemons?   My first act of baking in the new kitchen was to find out.…

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Banana Meringue Pie

You've never had a pie like this one before.

Over the summer holidays I took some time to plunder my mother’s personal recipe book. It’s full of spidery handwritten recipes, most of which are all-time family favourites. It’s a bit of a skill to read mum’s writing, but the squinting is always worth it. One of the recipes I found harks back to my early childhood: Banana Butter. This is a sweet, buttery, bananary  spread that I used to have on…

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