I’ve said it before, but it was a whole month ago, so it’s time to say it again:
Chiffon cakes are the best cakes.
And this particular chiffon cake is pretty damn good. Look at how tall and beautiful it is! It’s not just pretty though, it’s also delicious.
Chiffon cakes are the best cakes.
They are, seriously.
They’re light, they’re fluffy, they’re not too sweet, and (unlike sponge cakes) I can actually bake them. They’re so lovely and have the nicest texture.
I had bought beetroot with the intention of shredding them and eating them raw in a salad. And then… they sat in the pantry for a while. After a certain amount of time had passed (and I’m too ashamed to tell you exactly how long) the thought of eating them raw was, well, not good.
What to do, what to do.
And then I had a brilliant thought – brownies! Because that’s a logical next step isn’t it? Salad ——> brownies.
I bake a lot of banana cake.
They’re such a dumb fruit. They go ripe so quickly. Even though I’ve gradually trained myself to eat them riper and riper, I still really only like bananas when they’re just ripe. I push through by eating them with something else (peanut butter, yessss) to reduce that ripe cloying flavour. Even so, I still end up with more bananas than I can eat so I’m always on the look out for interesting recipes.
It was Alastair’s birthday in late March, and as per tradition for the past seven years, there was birthday lasagne to celebrate.
A LOT of birthday lasagne. Like… four litres of bolognaise sauce a lot. (Go big, right?!)
Of course, it wasn’t just us eating birthday lasagne. I invited a few people over and naturally there had to be birthday cake. Not for Alastair, because he doesn’t like cake that much, but for everyone else since it’s “not a birthday without birthday cake”.
Baking is easy.
Well, mostly. There are some things I definitely can’t bake – you may remember the disaster that was macarons. But cakes are mostly easy. Except for my nemesis:
Guess what? It’s the FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of my blog.
!!!!!!
Holy crapballs, I can’t believe I’ve been posting on Off the spork for so long. I NEVER suspected that I would still be here five years later. That’s half a decade, man!
Here’s another recipe to use up sad, too ripe, fruit. This time: bananas.
Sure, there’s a billion recipes out there for banana cake. Why should you make this one? Because it has caramel. Caramel! Yes yes!
Autumn means persimmons. My friend Maz has a persimmon tree in her backyard – one year she gave me 5kgs of persimmons. Holy crap. What can you do with so many persimmons? I’m the only person in the house who’ll eat them, and even then I prefer the non-astringent Fuyu type.
This year she asked if I wanted any. I firmly told her that I only wanted a few. She countered with an offer of twenty – I’m guessing her tree is rather prolific.
I grudgingly agree to twenty.
She showed up with a box. There were *definitely* more than twenty. I should’ve counted them out and made her take the extra home. 😉
How long can a cake stick in your mind for? In the case of this cake, it was weeks. Several long weeks.
Something about the dark cake, the creamy looking cream cheese icing – as soon as I saw the post on The Kitchn, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Despite the fact that this cake is in no way paleo, I knew I had to make it.