Feijoa cake

Feijoas are plentiful at the moment. We've had some great feijoa recipes on the Kiwicakes blog in the past (use the search function at right to find). This recipe comes from our friends at Chelsea.

Ingredients

4 Feijoas

1 cup Chelsea white sugar

125g butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup sultanas

2 Tbsp sliced crystalised ginger

Method

Heat oven to 180°C. Scoop feijoa flesh out in small chunks and mix with sugar in a bowl. In a separate bowl, blend the melted butter and beaten egg together. Add this to the feijoa mixture along with the dry ingredients,a adding the ginger and sultanas last.

Bake in a well greased tin for 50 minutes.

Summer strawberries - chocolate dipped with chocolate transfer detail

Chocolate dipped strawberries can be transformed with the use of chocolate transfers. It's quick and easy to do. Chocolate dipped strawberries are a fond memory of Valentines Day for me. My now hubby presented me with a bowl of strawberries for Valentines day that he'd dipped himself way back in the 1990s when we first started dating. At the time I was suitably impressed that he'd taken the time to make something for me. I'm still impressed today when I'm given a home made gift, made with love.

Chocolate transfers elevate the simple chocolate dipped strawberry to a whole new level. Chocolate transfers come in a wide variety of colours and patterns, to suit every occasion. You can view our entire selection here.

Simply melt your chocolate over a double boiler, dip each strawberry and place down on your chocolate transfer sheet. Once cool, lift your strawberries away from the sheet and place on your serving dish (I do not refrigerate my strawberries, as this makes them ooze juice).

Any portion of unused transfer can be reused for your second round of dipping, simply place your next strawberry down on any patch of colourful transfer, avoiding the clear spaces, where the colour has been removed by the previous strawberry.

Spiced Plum and Honey Cakes - Kids in the kitchen

I arrived home a few days ago to my daughter Poppy (10 years old) having made this plum cake. My hubby has been trying to educate our family to work more with seasonal ingredients and it's something the children are taking part in with great enthusiasm. Grandma Kiwicakes plum tree was raided for this cake.

The smell upon entering our home was incredible. Poppy tells me this was the most complicated recipe she's ever tackled. She said nothing was hard, but for her there were a lot of steps.

Poppy decided to make a cinnamon honey whipped cream to go with it. She tells me she "just added cinnamon and honey to whipped cream, until it tasted right". By the time I arrived home the cake had already been sampled, however Poppy had taken photos for me.

The recipe is from my recently purchased book Love, Bake, Nourish by Amber Rose. It's been a great find. Amber Rose offers great tips on the health benefits of many of the ingredients listed. A lot of the recipes exclude sugar and refined flours and there are great gluten free options too.

Recipe reproduced with permission from Love Bake Nourish by Amber Rose, with photography by Ali Allen. Published by Kyle Books and distributed in New Zealand by New Holland, RRP $45.00

Spiced plum & honey cake

This cake works particularly well made with smallish dark red plums that are really sweet. The plum season comes just as the evenings start to get shorter and you can feel a chill in the air. I really enjoy this time of year, when the leaves turn a golden amber and dew-laden spiders’ webs line the woodland pathways. It’s the onset of the season for comfort food and best-loved jumpers.

serves 8–10

180g white spelt flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking powder

130g ground almonds

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cardamon

½ teaspoon ground star anise

5 large free-range eggs, separated

240g unsalted butter, softened

210g honey

400g plums, halved and stoned

Unrefined icing sugar, for dusting (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and flour a 22cm loose-bottomed cake tin.

Start by mixing all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks, butter and honey with an electric hand mixer until thick and smooth. Gently fold in the dry ingredients.

In a separate, very clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold them, a third at a time, into the cake mix, ensuring that they are thoroughly incorporated.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with the back of a spoon or a palette knife. Place the plums cut-side down on top of the cake mix. Transfer to the oven and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before carefully turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Dust with icing sugar, if you like.

As a tea cake this doesn’t seem to need anything else, but if you are eating it as a pudding, it’s very good with a little cream or Greek yogurt sweetened with honey.

Caramel Crusted Rhubarb Pudding

Wondering what to do with all the rhubarb, this is a wonderful crunchy dessert option. So good with custard or cream or dusted with icing sugar.

As a child I detested rhubarb yet I’m not really sure if I ever tried it. I think it's likely to my mothers horror, I declared I didn’t like it, without even tasting it. As an adult I discovered it tasted like berries, apple and lemon all rolled in to one and now I love it, in fact I may spend my adult life trying to catch up with all I never ate as a child. This dessert is equally lovely in summer & winter. My rhubarb variety (above) is more green than the the red you might be used to seeing, however the taste is the same.

Recipe is reprinted with permission from our friends at Chelsea Sugar. (Photo above from Chelsea)

Ingredients

3/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup Chelsea white sugar

100g butter melted

4 cups diced rhubarb stalks

3/4 cup Chelsea soft brown sugar

1 Tbsp cornflour

1/4 cup boiling water

Method
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add rolled oats and White sugar, then mix in melted butter to make crust mixture. Put diced rhubarb into a greased ovenproof dish, such as a small lasagne dish or deep pie plate. Sprinkle crust mixture evenly over rhubarb. In the discarded bowl, combine Brown sugar and cornflour. Spoon over the crust mixture. Carefully pour the boiling water over the top. Do not stir. 

Bake for 30 minutes at 180°C.