Sometimes plans are well considered and made, executed to a tee and expectations are met. Other times spontaneity rules. Then there are the situations where everything happens by coincidence, this date loaf could be used as a case study for the outcomes of coincidence. No, the browned butter and sugar didn’t have an accidental collision in a mixing bowl, but I do wish that would happen more often.

Firstly I read Julia @ Melanger’s post which transported me back to my childhood eating slices of slightly stale date loaf spread thickly with soft salty butter. Then my friend Julia told me about her Grandma’s date loaf and we shared a bit of a nostalgic moment for this very Grandmotherly cake. Then, in quick succession she also told me about some very reasonably priced dates available here. Maybe this post should be called “How the Julia’s inspired an experimental date loaf”.

I made this tarted-up old-fashioned treat on a coincidence inspired whim, before summer in Hanoi hit, during my browned butter love affair phase. It is amazing how simply adding heat can add such a nuttiness and astounding complexity to butter and changes the entire feeling of the finished cake. This isn’t Grandma’s recipe, no. It is more complex, tender and just a little bit fancy.

This loaf is quite fragile but loaded with flavour and texture. The browned butter makes the whole thing more decadent and removes the requirement for buttering when fresh. After a few days I would recommend toasting the loaf, I like to do it in a pan over a medium flame to develop optimum crispiness with a minimum of char.

A happy coincidence.

Browned butter date loaf
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan, from Baking: From my Home to Yours via Julia @ Melanger

2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
250g unsalted butter, browned
90g cream cheese, room temperature (I used ricotta, because cream cheese here is expensive)
¾ cup (packed) light brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup soft pitted dried dates, each cut into 8 pieces
4 Tablespoons very strong black tea

Brown the butter:
Melt butter in a medium pan over medium heat. When melted keep cooking until the little milk solids floating around in there turn brown and the whole thing smells nutty and so delicious you just want to whack a hunk of bread in there and eat it. Keep an eye on it, it might take a while. As soon as you think it is ready pour the brown butter into a bowl to cool. Don’t strain it because you will remove all the good tasting bits. Put butter in the fridge to re-solidify.

Make the Cake:
Preheat oven to 160C. Butter a 9 x 5 inch (22 x 12 cm) loaf pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess.
In a small bowl stir dates and tea together. Set aside.
Stir the flour, baking powder and salt together. In a separate bowl beat the browned butter (should be cooled and set again but still soft) and cream cheese (or whatever) together until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar and cream together until sugar has dissolved and mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.
Fold dry ingredients into wet lightly, being careful not to overbeat. Fold date and tea mixture through the batter lightly.
Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cake sit for about 10 minutes in pan before turning out onto a rack. Cool. Keeps well for a few days, toast cake in a pan on top of the stove or in the oven if it starts to go stale.

Molasses, yet another long derided, overlooked and misunderstood ingredient in my kitchen. It reminded me of Little House on the Prairie, wholesome for humans and horses both. In other words, not my kind of comestible. Growing up we always had a jar of blackstrap molasses hanging around. It was an essential ingredient in PMum’s revolting morning porridge concoction, otherwise known as her freak-fest. Without going into too much detail, you can imagine my disdain for molasses when my introduction to it also involved wheatgerm, lecithin, yeast, gelatine, coconut oil and cod liver oil, all mushed together into long cooked squidgy oats first thing in the morning. PMum was obviously eating for health, and didn’t foist her breakfast on us, but nevertheless it turned me off porridge and molasses, and horses, for years.

Plus during my research for this here little piece of internet heaven I learned about the Boston Molasses Disaster. In Boston one unusually warm morning in 1919 a tank of molasses burst, the ensuing high speed flood of gloopy sweetener killed 21 people. Drowned by molasses. Utterly terrifying.

While I was yet to be converted to a molasses lover, I am a die-hard ginger fan. I used to work in a juice bar where I’d mix up a killer ginger and orange juice tonic, almost too spicy to drink, whenever I felt slightly under the weather. My favourite cold weather dessert here in Hanoi is glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with black sesame and coconut swimming in a sweet, hot ginger soup, called Banh Troi Tau. Super fresh, thin skinned ginger often makes an appearance in the markets here, perfect for this famous ginger cake that has been on my radar for a while now. Just one missing ingredient: Molasses, impossible to find in Hanoi.

I substituted molasses sugar and golden syrup which resulted in a light and airy cake that exploded with spicy tongue-tingling ginger and deep dark sweetness. The seemingly weightless crumb belies the intensity of flavours it carries. No wonder this cake is famous. I’m a molasses convert now.

David Lebovitz’s Fresh Ginger Cake
David Lebovitz famous ginger cake, via epicurious, adapted only slightly.

1/2 cup fresh ginger
1 cup mild molasses (I used Lyle’s Golden Syrup as molasses was not to be found here in Hanoi).
1 cup sugar (i used Billington’s Molasses Sugar)
1 cup vegetable oil, preferably peanut (I actually used a mild olive oil and found the flavour complimented the spiciniess nicely)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup water
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 eggs, at room temperature

- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a 9×3″ round cake tin or a 9.5″ springform pan. I used a regular sized loaf tin and and a small round pan for the excess batter. The batter is very runny, so be careful when using a springform tin, and make sure you line it, I didn’t line my round pan and there were tears, soothed by delicious broken cake.

- Peel slice and finely chop or grate the ginger.

- In a medium bowl mix together the molasses, sugar and oil. In another bowl sift together the flour, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper.

- Meanwhile, bring the water to the boil in a small saucepan. When it has just boiled stir in the baking soda and remove from heat. Mis the hot water into the molasses mixture. Stir in the ginger.

- Gradually fold the dry ingredients into the wet. Add the eggs and mix until thoroughly combined.

- Pour batter into the prepared pan and back for about an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

- Cool the cake for at least 30 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack.

- It tastes good warm or cold. Alone or with cream.

Being introduced to new ingredients is like meeting people for the first time. There are those you dislike immediately and hope never to meet again (fried spiders or cheap grainy chocolate), some that grow on you (anchovies or pawpaw) and others you like from the first hello (Cafe Sua Chua or soursop). To be honest I tend to like food more than I like people, so while I like discovering new ingredients, I love making new friends. When those new friends are foodaholics (they’re addicted to foodahol!!) and can introduce you to new flavours and products, then all the better.

I’ve been lucky enough to make a few good friends in the past year who have introduced me to Vietnamese food, amazing cakes and margaritas (thanks Julia!) as well as a range of Lebanese delicacies.

I actually made this cake last year, before I left Australia. In a flurry of emptying the cupboards I re-discovered my stash of Lebanese groceries bought months earlier when my new friend Fouad took me on a Lebanese food tour. Well, we weren’t really new friends, but had recently reconnected thanks to our blogs; yet another wonderful aspect of food blogging. From a small unsigned grocery shop in a neighbouring suburb I bought rose and orange blossom water, moghrabbiyeh, tahini and carob molasses. Only the poor lonely carob molasses stood unopened. While I loved carob buds in primary school (10 for 10c if I remember correctly), I had no what I would turn this tin of deep just-sweet stickyness into.

After trawling the internet I found this cake recipe. Simple. Highlighting the complex carob flavour, which is no substitute for chocolate but should stand tall, delicious in its own right. This cake is comparatively healthy, when talking about cakes, and is delicious when warmed up and paired with some sweetened full fat ricotta, a great lunch dessert. Or perhaps a good birthday cake for a new thirty year old who is potentially more health conscious now. Happy Birthday Fouad, I hope you you’re getting a better birthday cake than this today!

Carob Molasses Cake
Recipe from miranda chelala (see comments). This cake has no added sugar, eggs or dairy and so can be dry. Please warm it up before you eat it as it has an unpleasantly sandy texture when cold. I made this cake again with about 1/2 cup of tahini added and the result was certainly more moist and nutty. I would recommend adding the tahini, but I’ve not included it in the recipe as I cannot remember exact quantities. Experiment!

2 cups plain flour
2 cups semolina
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup corn oil (I used grapeseed oil)
1 1/2 cups carob molasses

- Heat oven to 180 C. Line a loaf tin with baking paper.
- Place dry ingredients in a bowl mix togther. Add oil and molasses and mix well.
- Put the cake mixture in the tin and smooth the top with wet hands.
- Bake cake for about 20 minutes or until set.
- Cool cake on a rack, be careful it will be quite crumbly.
- Serve warm!!

Honeyed Ricotta
Ricotta
Honey

Mix em together. Hah! No.
You want to use thick creamy ricotta, not the thin grainy packaged supermarket stuff. Why not make your own?. You need about two tablespoons per person. Fold through a fruity honey. Don’t combine completely this is best if there is a bit of a swirl going on.

Serve cake warm with ricotta and strawberries. Or stewed rhubarb would be great too.

Excuse me please, things have been a little bit crazy over here. Trying out loads of new food has been taking up some time (from ‘Vietnamese’ BBQ to frozen margaritas), there has been the farewelling of friends (you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to send a dog to America from Hanoi), and now I’ve got a job. Employed, again after so many months of freedom and I think my new job title should be ‘Child Wrangler’. So please forgive me for allowing the occasion of my 200th post slip by unnoticed. It is not terribly unexpected though if you recall my 100th post. In some kind of strangely frightening symmetry my 101st post which celebrated just missing my century was published on April 7th, 2009, one year ago today, exactly. Spooky.

I’m not going to lie and tell you that these were celebratory brownies baked with this particular milestone in mind. Nuh uh. I made them really to see what all the fuss was about, I made them because good quality cocoa is relatively cheap here and I had a hankering for something chocolatey, chewy, sweet. There are plenty of Vietnamese desserts, Kem Xoi (pictured below) is sticky rice, ice cream and crunchy nutty toppings, a favourite, but sometimes chocolate is a necessity. So I baked Alice Medrich’s Cocoa Brownies and they did not disappoint.

Kem Xoi, Sticky rice with ice cream.

These sweet treats are easy, budget friendly, quick to make and surprisingly decadent. I had intended to refrain from blogging about them given the current cocoa brownie saturation (is there anyone who hasn’t heard about these?), but there is a reason as to why there are brownie crumbs on bloggers lips worldwide. Just make them.

PMum came home while they were still cooling on the bench. She stopped, turned, averting her eyes. Glaring at me she pointed behind her and through gritted teeth asked”What. is. that?”. She needn’t have worried, this batch did not last long enough for her to give in and sample a square. Now I just wish I had some more with which to celebrate my 201st post.

Recipe is available from  The Wednesday Chef or Smitten Kitchen or Lemonpi

I love hot cross buns, but while their wintery spices and warming wholesomeness are perfect for the autumnal southern hemisphere conditions, it doesn’t quite gel where the weather is getting progressively hotter. Plus, hot cross buns are available in Hanoi, but not in the quality or quantity of Sydney, so I would have to make my own (which I eventually did, with the help of a friend, they were delicious and PMum even commented excitedly that “they look real!”). Instead a recipe for jammy mandarin and cinnamon buns caught my eye, still kind of hot cross bun-like in a cinnamon spiked yeasty manner, but brightened with a tart homemade jam, oh yes.

Cooking is all about balance, I know this oft repeated mantra sounds played out, but it is widely stated for a reason. I left these rolls in the oven to develop the caramel and brown the tops, which unfortunately made the insides dry. The divinely caramelised edges and citrus swirls outweighed the dry and unappetising dough, but only for so long. After the first day I had no desire to eat them, but in a flurry of frugalness I turned them in to a pudding. Oh yes. Slice the rolls thickly and arrange in an oven-proof dish. Whisk together a few eggs, some sugar, and any remaining glaze. When well combined add some cream and/or milk and stir well. You need enough liquid to just about cover the rolls. Bake at 160C until the custard has set. I found that the dry rolls were more than willing to soak up the liquid and form a comforting old fashioned dessert of the kind one sometimes craves, of the kind that is still around now for a reason. Because it is delicious.

If you feel the need for something yeasty and comforting this easter long weekend that isn’t dotted with dried fruit and heavy with mixed spice then give these sweet, tart, citrus spiked rolls a burl. Don’t worry if you overcook them like I did, just make the pudding described above, which I think I enjoyed even more than the original.

Orange and cinnamon buns
Adapted from Gourmet Traveller’s Jammy mandarin and cinnamon buns.
I was totally seduced by this recipe and set out to make it before I remembered that I was in the Northern Hemisphere now, and mandarins probably wouldn’t be in season. I was right, not one to be found the day I made this, but my heart was already set. So I replaced the mandarins in this recipe with the equivalent amount of orange juice. The jam was a touch runnier, and yielded less, but it was still delicious.

For Rolls:
100 ml lukewarm milk, plus extra for brushing
1/4 cup raw caster sugar, plus extra for dusting pan
1×7 gm sachet dry yeast
3 eggs, at room temperature
450 gm (3 cups) plain flour
50 gm very soft butter
For dusting: demerara sugar

For Mandarin (or orange) jam:
8 mandarins (or replace with orange juice)
2 each oranges and lemons
220 gm (1 cup) white sugar
60 ml (¼ cup) orange liqueur (I used campari, it was all I could find in a small bottle. While I like cointreau, I couldn’t really justify buying (and subsequently drinking) a whole 700ml bottle when I only needed 60ml for this recipe, but it would have only cost $18!)

For: Cinnamon glaze
150 gm pure icing sugar, sieved
30 ml orange juice
10 gm butter
¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Make the jam: Peel and segment four mandarins. Remove seeds and set them aside. The seeds in the will be added later to release their pectin and help set the jam. Juice the remaining four mandarins into a measuring jug and set aside. Peel and segment oranges and lemons over a bowl to catch juices, then squeeze any remaining juice from pulp, again reserving those precious seeds. Combine all juices to yield 1 cup and pour into a heavy-based saucepan with sugar. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves. Tie seeds in a small piece of muslin. Add seeds and segments to the pan and simmer until syrupy (about 30 minutes). The jam doesn’t need to have set all the way, but it shouldn’t be watery. Remove seeds, stir in liqueur and cool to room temperature.

Make the Dough:Combine milk, sugar and yeast in a bowl, stir together until yeast dissolves. Add the eggs and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and mix until thoroughly combined. Add flour, stir in and then mix the softened butter through until incorporated. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. I added a lot more flour at this stage because the dough was quite wet, please don’t! Add a minimum amount of flour to stop the dough from sticking. It should take about 8 minutes of heavy kneading to make the dough the correct consistency. Place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and stand in a warm place until it has double in size, about an hour.
Preheat oven to 180C
Turn dough out onto a floured surface, knock back and roll into a large rectangle about 20cm x 60cm. Ensure the longest side is facing you, then spread with 1/3 to 1/2 of the jam, leaving a 3cm border along the longer side. Roll into a long cylinder and cut into 12 even pieces. Arrange rolls in a buttered and sugared cake pan (the original recipe says 20×30cm pan, but I used 1x regular loaf pan and a 23cm round tin). Cover with plastic wrap and stand in a warm place until doubled in size, about 30 mins. Brush with milk, dust with sugar and bake until golden, about 30 mins. Turn out immediately and cool on a wire rack.

Make the glaze: Combine all ingredients in a small pan and stir over medium heat. Stir until smooth, then drizzle over cooked rolls. Check out the recipe on the Gourmet traveller website. I have no idea how their glaze is white, how could it be?

Serve with butter and extra jam.