Get your tasting spoons ready, bakers: the sauce in this cake is something you will be unable to resist.
Donna Hay created the salted burnt honey sauce in a recent edition of her eponymous magazine. Do not underestimate the bewitching properties of this sauce: four ingredients is all it takes to lift a lovely cake into superstar mode. Continue reading
Regular readers will know that while I love baking I don’t have an overly sweet tooth. Put a mud cake or cupcake in front of me and the response is usually, meh. Place a cheese board within a 5 kilometre radius of me and watch me run and attack it.
The cake I will always eat is a syrup cake. I know – they are usually pumped full of sugar which contradicts everything I just said. What I love about them is their moistness. Part of this is due to the fact that most syrup cakes are made with semolina, almond meal or polenta, which keeps cake soft. But drenching a hot cake in hot flavoured sugar water also goes a long way in ensuring a cake stays beautifully fresh and soft.
And as is often the way, every time I make a syrup cake and offer it to the Hungry Dad he reminds me of how much he doesn’t like syrup cake – in a nice way but still #grrrrr Continue reading
Oh yes. Cake drenched inside and out with champagne. What could be finer? I made this decadent cake, from a book called Booze Cakes, to take to a friend’s party recently. Word to the designated drivers – this cake packs a punch. A real, woah-Nelly-that’s-got-some-booze-in-it punch. Continue reading
I always thought pound cakes were heavy, rectangular-shaped items. I have long loved pound cake and have fond memories of eating frozen Sara Lee pound cake with sultanas at my nana’s house (nana wasn’t a baker, bless).
Then I saw my guru Donna Hay had made a pound cake in a circular shape and my mind.was.blown. #easilyImpressed Continue reading
Hip hip hooray! It was recently the Hungry Mum’s mum’s birthday (or, the Hungry Nonna as she likes to be known. FYI she’s not Italian, just an Italian nonna wannabe!)
The extended Hungry family gathered for breakfast recently at a cafe near the Hungry Nonna’s home, and after eggs and toast and coffee and pancakes were consumed it was cake time!
Carrot cake has long been one of mum’s favourite cakes and everyone loves cream cheese frosting so this was the birthday cake. Continue reading
This Donna Hay cake is simple and impressive and can be jazzed up with the addition of a quick icing. It isn’t overly chocolaty which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about chocolate or how early in the day it is – while choc addicts would argue that it is never too early in the day for a chocolate hit I would actually disagree (ducks for cover). This cake neatly straddles the issue though – there is just enough chocolate for any time of day. Continue reading
I wish I could be paid to spend all day trawling Pinterest for delicious things to bake. I mean, I’m good at it. I enjoy it. I can and do spend hours falling down baking-related rabbit holes. But I just don’t think anyone is going to whip out the chequebook any time soon.
Sigh. Continue reading
Apples, eh? Something that looks shiny and crisp at the markets can turn out to be a fraud when bitten into. Soft. Floury. Bruised. That was our experience after being swindled at a farmer’s market recently. Before I continue let me say that I adore farmer’s markets and the farmers that produce our food. I have no idea how fraudulent apple man managed to get a stand at these popular markets but he did. Money was exchanged. Apples were bought. Disappointment on one side of this transaction ensued.
So there we were – a fruit bowl full of dud apples that Misses 7 and 9 kept boomeranging back from school each day.
If you are a follower of this blog or know me in the real world you would know that my instant reaction was to turn these fraudulent apples into a cake. Continue reading
It was my niece’s birthday and she had flown down from her home near the Queensland border to catch up with her fav cousins (misses 7 and 9) and her nana. Naturally a cake was in order but the biggest decision of the moment was the nature of the cake. As the niece is a self-confessed a sweet tooth (her mum made her a cake that used 2 kilos of icing sugar!) a chocolate cake was in order but that didn’t really help – have you SEEN how many recipes for chocolate cake lurk on the web?
The idea of rocky road crept into my mind… Continue reading
So the internet is awash with chocolate cake recipes. Dark chocolate cake. Flourless chocolate cake. Fudgy chocolate cake. Full fat with whipped cream chocolate cake. Low fat chocolate cakes. Mud cake. Chocolate and fruit/nuts/booze/ cake.
In my time I have baked and eaten many, many chocolate cakes. Many are not worthy of the time or calories. Often they are insipid. Or dry. Or forgettable.
This is the chocolate cake that you have been waiting for.
the hungry mum 