Kapiti Kitchen Cordial and a giveaway!

Today an exciting package arrived in the Cake household:

Samples of these delicious cordials from Kapiti Kitchen! How awesome is that? These are made on the Kapiti Coast (yeah, you probably guessed that from the name) from natural ingredients. Natural and delicious ingredients, like lemon, lime, mandarin and ginger. 

The lovely Sue, who started Kapiti Kitchen (after her cordials were a huge hit at the local school fair), sent these to me. Thanks Sue! I think they look really cool - I love the labels.

Look at all the zesty goodness in that bottle. I think this is asking to be put into cupcakes. I might be making cupcakes very soon. ;-)

We tried the lemon and ginger flavour and the mandarin and honey flavour this evening and they were yummy - went down especially well after a hard gym session! I especially liked the lemon and ginger - a very nicely balanced drink, not too strong in either direction if that makes sense, but it still had some good tang going on.

You can add cold water, soda water or hot water, depending on what you're after - each of these little bottles makes up to 2 litres (depending how sweet your tooth is - my post workout sweet tooth probably won't let it stretch quite so far though!). Tonight we made them up cold but I'm especially keen to try a hot lemon, honey and ginger - and I think the ginger one will be great with soda water (Sue told me that's one of her favourites).

If you'd like to win two large (750ml) bottles of this delicious cordial couriered to your doorstep, anywhere in New Zealand, check out the website and tell me via comment which flavours you'll choose if you win. You can double your chances by re-tweeting this post on Twitter - just make sure you include @MrsCakeNZ in the tweet so I see it! Entries close next Wednesday night at 7pm.

Also, if you have a cafe and think this might be a good product for you, please email Sue - she'd love to hear from you!



Kapiti Kitchen cordials are available from various supermarkets and other distributors all around the country - see the website for details - and online at www.cordials.co.nz. Kapiti Kitchen is also on twitter - @KapitiKitchen.

Mrs Cake's Birthday Dinner

Because we've been dining out quite a bit lately, Mr Cake thought it would be nicer to make me a special birthday dinner than take me out somewhere. I was pretty happy with that idea, and so as is my habit on Tuesdays (well, habit may be an exaggeration - but more often than not anyway) I went to a class at the gym. Mr Cake fled to the supermarket to get his dinner ingredients at about 6pm - my gym class was from 6.15-7.15pm, and we live very close to the gym - so it's fair to say that my expectations weren't super high at that point (sorry Mr Cake!). However, (and I'm still not sure if he hired a team of elves to help) by the time I got home he had tidied away some of the everyday detritus which gathers, set the table, and dinner was pretty much ready.

Mr Cake: I had timed everything perfectly (almost perfectly?) to be ready at 7:25, when I was expecting Mrs Cake to walk through the door. What I forgot, however, was that entrees and mains are not served at the same time. Whoops! Luckily we were pretty hungry, and ovens can keep things warm for a time - but it did mean the lamb was a slightly more cooked than I intended. Perhaps something to keep in mind for the future...

First on the menu was seared feta salad - this, along with the main course, is from Donna Hay - Entertaining, which is an excellent book which I haven't used nearly enough. Mr Cake made sure to get goat feta, which I love (mmm, goats cheese!), and the combination of the strong, salty cheese with the simply dressed salad was perfection. If you have never had fried feta I recommend you go and buy some right now, fry it up, and make an impromptu burger or salad with it - you have to be a bit gentle with it as the lovely crispy sides can fall off but it is worth the care.

We accompanied our meal with this little beauty, which I bought from the Food Show (when was that, April? We're pretty slow to drink wine around here...). Despite being a red it is served chilled and tastes light and refreshing and delicious. The alcohol content is pretty low - only 6.5% - which is great for us lightweights (plus having just walked in from a crazy gym class alcohol is not top of my must-have list!). We'll definitely have more of this (maybe in another 6 months!) - it's really, really yummy. Very yummy - although, its probably not one for wine snobs. I seem to recall the bottle mentioned that it was "wine product", not "wine"...

I realise these pictures look a bit odd together - the single serve of lamb on a giant plate, beside a huge bowl of potato - but what matters is the taste, right (and actually I think Mr Cake did a pretty awesome job of presenting everything, anyway). The oregano roast lamb was nicely pink inside and tender and lovely, and was accompanied by a honey mustard dressing, which was scrumptious. The dill potatoes were tasty and also featured a mustard dressing, so they tied in nicely - and Mr Cake modified the recipe, as the red onion was supposed to be raw but he knows I'm not a huge fan of raw onion so caramelised it instead. :-) 

I had been eyeing up the scrummy-looking products from Dollop which have lately appeared in Moore Wilson's, and Mr Cake's keen eye apparently misses nothing so at dessert time this came out of the fridge. Look at all the vanilla beans! And the awesome bottle! (To be fair, I'm quite partial to custard myself... mmm, custard)

Instead of the pannacotta which Donna Hay had on her Greek-inspired menu, he turned to, uh, Donna Hay, this time the Seasons book, and a recipe I had flagged ages ago - glazed pears. These were delicious - cooked in a cup of honey, how could that go wrong? - although we are skeptical that two people could get through the whole recipe in one sitting as Donna suggests. Not that we're complaining - having it for dessert the next night as well was not a hardship. Our pears were accompanied by Kapiti gingernut ice-cream as well as the lovely custard - a great trio!

The whole meal was really tasty and I was especially impressed by the seemingly magical preparation - I leave for the gym and nothing has happened, but when I return, voila!, three course meal. If only something like that could happen every week... ;-)

Seared Feta Salad (from Donna Hay - Entertaining)
Ingredients
250g firm feta cheese, quartered
olive oil
2 small/1 large cucumber, seeded and chopped lengthways
2 tomatoes, thickly sliced
1/2 cup chopped flat leaf parsley leaves 
cracked black pepper
olive oil (extra)
lemon wedges

Arrange the cucumbers, tomato and parsley on serving plates. Heat a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Pat the feta dry with paper towels, brush with oil and place in the pan. Cook for 1 minute each side or until golden. Put on top of the salads, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with cracked pepper. Serve with lemon wedges. Serves 4

Oregano Roast Lamb (from Donna Hay - Entertaining)
Ingredients
650g boneless lamb backstrap, trimmed
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 bunch oregano
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup dijon mustard 

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Rub the lamb with the salt and pepper. Separate the oregano into small sprigs and tie to the lamb with kitchen string. Place on a lined baking tray and drizzle with oil. Roast for 10 minutes or until cooked to your liking. Mix the honey and mustard and place in a small serving bowl. Serves 4

Dill Potatoes (from Donna Hay - Entertaining)
Ingredients
850g potatoes, sliced and cooked
1/2 red onion, sliced
1/4 cup roughly chopped dill
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley leaves
3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Note: if you want to serve this warm, cook the potatoes when you need them. Donna recommends cooling them first and if that's your preferred option cook them ahead to take the pressure off!

Fry the onion in 1 Tbsp of the oil over a low heat until the onions are soft and caramelised - 15-20 minutes. Place the potato, dill, onion and parsley in a serving bowl and toss to combine. Whisk together the vinegar, sugar, oil, mustard, salt and pepper and pour over the salad. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

Glazed Pears (from Donna Hay - Seasons)
Ingredients
75g butter
360g/1 cup honey
2 Tbsp orange-flavoured liqueur or juice
2 Tbsp lemon or orange zest
4 brown pears, peeled and halved

Melt the butter, honey and liqueur or juice in a large, deep frying pan and stir to combine. Add the zest and pears and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until the pears are tender. Serves 4.

Maginnity's Revisited - a second chance

A little white ago Mr Cake and I went for lunch with some friends to Maginnity's - a lovely wee restaurant in the boutique Wellesley Hotel. Unfortunately we were very disappointed by our experience there and I wrote a pretty unhappy review, which I definitely don't like doing! However, about a week ago I got a very nice email from John Speak, the head chef, apologising for what happened to us and asking if Mr Cake and I would give them another chance. I'm all in favour of businesses trying to fix things when they go wrong, so of course we said yes.

We arrived at 12, as planned, and were greeted warmly and shown to our table. Our waiter was very friendly, and told us what the fish in the fish dishes was then left us to make our decision. The lunch menu has been updated since our last visit, when the menu was (I believe) the same as the dinner menu. The new lunch menu includes some 'lighter' lunch options (inverted commas as the meals were very generous!), which are also cheaper, and there are a selection of 'sandwiches', which all sound delicious - and there are some items more along the dinner lines, so you can still linger over a gourmet lunch, which might take a little longer to cook, if you prefer. I was impressed with the changes; the sandwiches and other lunchy items, aside from being potentially much quicker to serve, also make me much more inclined to take friends there, as I know not everyone values their food enough to pay $25 for lunch - and they showed that the chef had put some thought into what lunchtime diners might be looking for. :-)

I ordered the fish (tarakihi) and chips, while Mr Cake opted for the beef burger. They sound boring, yes, but both were excellent (I do love fish and chips, though I always feel a bit daft ordering them in a restaurant!). My fish was tender and perfect, with crispy, hot beer batter, not overly greasy, and the serving was generous, with three large pieces of tarakihi. The sauce tartare wasn't overwhelming and went well with the fish - and it's always nice to have a bit of salad with this type of meal! I wasn't in love with the chips but there was nothing wrong with them - my affections in the starchy vegetable section may have been diverted to the side dish of roast buttercup pumpkin we ordered. This was oh-so soft, so caramelised and the hazelnuts went really well with the pumpkin. The only problem here was that actually our mains were already plenty big enough and it was impossible to finish everything!

Mr Cake's burger made a pretty quick transition from his plate to his belly, and the little bit I convinced him to part with tasted great - the beef was cooked really nicely, not dry at all (as so many burger patties can be) and well seasoned. I'm a sucker for caramelised onions and think all burgers should include some, so the onion jam was a winner too.

The waiter asked if we would like dessert or coffee, but although the desserts did look very tempting (brulee with caramelised pineapple, anyone?) our bellies were fairly bursting, and Mr Cake wasn't keen to spend too much time away from work since he has a busy week, so we waddled back to our offices, thoroughly satisfied. We had a delicious lunch, and I arrived back in the office 45 minutes after I left so speed was definitely not an issue today. Both of us really enjoyed our meals and would choose to go back there should a suitable occasion present itself - and I just might have to make that visit sooner rather than later so I can try that brulee! (creme brulee is a fully balanced meal, especially when served with caramelised pineapple. You know it's too good not to be true...)

We were very impressed today but without the chef's email would never have gone back - whats's your policy; do you give restaurants a second chance or is it one strike and they're out?

Maginnity's is located in the Wellesley Boutique Hotel, 2-8 Maginnity Street, Wellington, ph 04 474 1308, www.wellesleyboutiquehotel.co.nz. Mr and Mrs Cake dined as guests of Maginnity's.

Caramelised White Chocolate - Like Caramilk!

Who remembers Cadbury Caramilk? I think it came out sometime in the early 90s for a couple of years, I used to love it. There was an awful TV ad for it which involved a kid with a cow, which (if my memory serves me correctly) he gave caramel to, then used a handle to rotate the cow. Anyway, the chocolate (which probably had very little if any actual cocoa solids in it) was basically caramelised white chocolate, and it was utterly delicious. So when I spied a method for making this at home I knew it had to be done. This is very simple, just requires some vigilance and caution. It doesn't end up quite at a normal eating chocolate consistency but it's so good you won't care - and it could be used in place of white chocolate in recipes, or in its melty state to make an awesome ice-cream topping.

I originally spied the technique on David Lebovitz's blog, and he recommends an oven temperature of 120 C. I traded one of the instant read thermometers I got for my birthday for an oven thermometer (it's not excessive to have three different types of kitchen thermometer, is it?) and given the sensitivity of chocolate I thought this would be a prime opportunity to break it out. Pleased I did, as before the oven thought it was up to temperature it hit 130 degrees, so I turned it way down. You just spread the chocolate out on a tray, then every 10 minutes take it out and stir it, to break up lumps and make sure it cooks evenly.

Unfortunately for me even my lowered temperature wasn't enough to make my first batch a success - it was quite chalky from the outset, very hard to stir on the tray - not the gooey delicious mass I had imagined but as I had never made it before I wasn't sure what to expect. However, when it seemed to be getting to caramelising I put it back it for what I thought would be it's last stint - and it burnt! Argh! I didn't get a photo of it on the tray because a) I was pretty annoyed and b) it was dinnertime as well. When I came back into the kitchen I scraped it into a pyrex jug to see if remelting it in the microwave would redeem it.

Not really... I spread it out to set and have broken it into little chunks, which will probably still be delicious in cookies, but they are a little bit bitter. As you can see it's pretty lumpy, too. Hmm.

So for round two I reduced the temperature even further - about 110 C according to the oven thermometer, or 90 C according to the dial. If you don't have an oven thermometer just err on the low side - it might take longer but that beats burning it!

I also suspect that the chocolate I used in the first batch was slightly different - though I believe both were Callebaut, the internet tells me the first batch (which was from a block) might have had lower cocoa solids, and according to Mr Lebovitz, more = better as far as cocoa solids are concerned. I'm also wondering if maybe it was a bit old - the chalky texture which occured pretty much as soon as heat was applied was weird. The very first time I took the second batch out of the oven I could tell it was working better. It melted to a liquid, as you'd expect (this also made it a lot easier to deal with).

Each time I took it out of the oven I scraped it all into the centre of the sheet, to make sure it was evenly mixed and smooth, then spread it out again. Here are the progress pics:

The colour change is pretty subtle but you can tell. Taste testing is definitely compulsory for this task - I may or may not have done more of that than was strictly necessary. ;-)

Colourwise, it is pretty close to peanut butter when it's done - get your peanut butter jar out for comparison if you need to as a tiny bit of extra cooking can turn it completely. With the second batch I stopped when I got to that peanut butter colour, but put a little of it back on the tray for another 6-7 minutes; this photo shows the difference between the stuff I'd taken out and what I put back in (the 'good' one is really pale - perhaps a bit overexposed but it's a good demonstration of contrast - that colour changes very quickly!). Again, the overcooked stuff was a bit bitter - that dramatic darkening of colour is not desirable!

The finished product will set firm, though it takes a lot longer than normal chocolate to do so (several hours at room temperature), but can be warmed back to a liquid consistency in the microwave or double boiler as you normally would. Now my challenge is to decide what to make with it - what recipe do you think would best benefit from this delicious caramelly goodness?

Caramelised White Chocolate (to make one cup of liquid chocolate)
Ingredients
340g white chocolate, min. cocoa solids 28% (the Callebaut bits, available from Moore Wilsons, are 28%) 

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 100-110 C (err on the low side if unsure of accuracy). Spread the chocolate (chopped into small pieces if from a block) over a clean baking tray. If you don't have a perfectly clean tray line it with baking paper as the chocolate will pick up anything on the tray. Bake for 40-60 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes for the first half hour, then every 5-6 minutes. Stop when the chocolate is the colour of peanut butter. Use liquid or spread on a tray and break into chunks to put in cookies. The set chocolate will keep for a while (at least a month or so) and can be melted as normal when required.

Daniel's Carrot Cake (or Mrs Cake's other birthday cake)

I really wanted to emphasise the vegetable theme when I made the kumara cake, and working in a very large office meant I wanted to bring a second cake anyway so there was enough to go around. Carrot cake is always a favourite and I have two recipes in my trusty folder - I made the other one a little while ago as cute mini cakes, and felt this one needed an outing. I got the recipe from a friend in Christchurch a few years ago (hope you don't mind me broadcasting your recipe, Daniel!) after he made it to bring on UCanDance's annual Hanmer trip and I experienced its lusciousness. This is a super moist cake, as carrot cake should be, and would actually be fine without icing if you were trying to be a bit healthier (though if I were to intend it to be un-iced I might add chopped walnuts and a bit more spice to add texture and some extra flavour - these additions would be fine either way, actually, but would be more prominent if it was served plain).

 An optional process is to soak the carrots with some lemon juice and brown sugar for an hour or two prior to using them - this sweetens them up so makes a yummier cake - and we all want that. When you're ready to make the cake just drain the liquid away and you're good to go.

Another really easy recipe - this uses part butter, part oil, but the butter is melted completely before being added so the mixing can all be done with a spatula or wooden spoon. All the better for baking with kids, or just if you can't be bothered fiddling about with beaters and things!

The secret to the wonderous texture of this cake is the inclusion of pineapple. I understand there are those who think this is a compulsory addition to carrot cake, and those who think it's obscene. I think it's fantastic in terms of texture and keeping the cake moist, and it's a lot healthier than the sour cream my other carrot cake uses for these purposes (though please understand I am not claiming it is actually healthy, but, you know, there's a sliding scale...).

The recipe calls for bran, which we didn't have, so I added extra wholemeal flour which worked perfectly well. I also must confess that although I have given you the recipe for cream cheese icing which came with the recipe, my technique for cream cheese icing is adding about 30g of softened butter to 250g of cream cheese, beating until smooth, adding icing sugar to get the right thickness, then lemon juice or vanilla to taste - the most important thing is to add a bit of butter (which must be soft enough to beat into the cream cheese but still give structure), because otherwise you'll need a mountain of icing sugar to get any stiffness, and the sugar can overwhelm the delicious cream cheese. 

I can't believe I haven't made this cake more often, because it is fantastic - something about the ingredient composition of this recipe means the crust is unusually light, which is yet another factor in its favour as a cake which can be served icing-less (naked?). Because it's so golden looking I didn't want to cover the whole thing - I usually ice cakes completely - so I just dolloped the icing on top and scattered a few bits of walnut over it.

Completely unsurprisingly, based on looks alone this was the cake my colleagues chose if they were early enough to have the choice - and though I think in flavour the kumara and ginger cake edged out ahead in terms of flavour there wasn't much in it - they're both fantastically easy to make and delicious with and without lashings of cream cheese on top!
 

Daniel’s Carrot Cake
Ingredients
1 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup sugar
¾ cup bran (or extra wholemeal flour)
160g butter
¾ cup oil
4 eggs
1 tin (~450g) crushed pineapple, drained
3 cups grated carrot (3 large carrots)
(optional) 1 Tbsp brown sugar
(optional) 1 lemon

(optional) Grate carrot and cover with water in a bowl with brown sugar and lemon juice. Leave to stand for two hours. When ready to proceed, drain water off. This softens the carrot and improves the taste.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius. Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the wholemeal flour, sugar and bran.  Melt butter, and stir melted butter and oil into mixture. Beat the eggs, then add eggs, pineapple, and carrot. Bake in a 23cm cake tin for 50-65 minutes.

Icing
250g cream cheese
110g butter, softened
500g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
Lemon juice to taste
(optional) walnuts to decorate

Cream butter, then beat together all ingredients until creamy and smooth. Spread on cooled cake, and top with walnuts if desired.

Blueberries are vegetables, right?

There's something about Thursday night which makes making dinner seem super unappealing - perhaps because we're almost-but-not-quite through the working week, and feel we need to conserve the last scraps of energy to get through Friday. Tonight in the Cake household this resulted in pancakes for dinner. Oops. ;-)

A while ago we went to an Annabelle White dinner (one of our Wellington on a Plate adventures) and I won a carton of buttermilk. Somehow with a very well-fed month and a couple of weekends away we still had this languishing at the back of the fridge - I had made sure we had plenty of frozen blueberries to make delicious blueberry buttermilk pancakes, but we'd never quite got to making them - and the recipe is even on the side of the carton. So it seemed a natural progression, really. (don't think too hard about the logic of making a batch of pancakes and hovering while they cook instead of making a simple dinner as it might not appear to be logic at all - just go with it!)

I knew the buttermilk had a really long best before date - and hey, it is supposed to be curdled, right? - but turns out we overshot by two days. Oh well -  it was fine, and though usually it doesn't get to be an issue for us I'm not super precious about these things; it does depend on the product but commonsense usually counts a lot more to me than the numbers on the packaging.

The recipe is pretty straightforward - plonk everything except the blueberries and butter in a bowl, mix it all up, then add the last two ingredients, combine, cook. Easy peasy.

Though the recipe calls for the blueberries to be mixed through you could choose to scatter them over the batter once you put it in the pan if you like a less swirly, blue effect; it's inevitable that as soon as you start stirring the juice will go everywhere. I think it looks kinda cool, though.

This is a very thick mixture, so I should have been using a lower heat since it takes longer for them to cook through, and some of mine got a teeny bit too dark... Oops! Being so thick they are also tricky to flip - I'm usually able to flip pancakes without the help of a spatula but with these it was more like a spatula on each side, ease it over and they still liked to crumple! But they are luscious and thick, and it's the taste that matters (mostly).

I like my pancakes quite dark so my zealous application of heat to frypan worked out well for me. Mr Cake, on the other hand... Well, he likes his like this:

Cooked on one side only. I kid you not. He asked for this little baby one when it was only half way through. Is he mad or am I mad for thinking he's mad? You be the judge. ;-)

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes (adapted from the Tararua buttermilk carton)
Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
zest of 1 lemon
45g butter, melted
1 cup blueberries

Mix all ingredients except butter and blueberries together until well combined. Add remaining ingredients and fold together.

Add butter to a frypan over medium heat (the butter is optional if you have a non-stick frypan but I love the flavour too much to omit it) and scoop batter in. Cook until bubbles begin to form (you'll only see a couple, probably) then turn and cook until browned to your liking. Serve with lashings of maple syrup, or lemon juice and sugar. Makes 2-4 servings, depending how hungry you are! ;-)