inward restlessness | chocolate + almond snack cake

There are times when you do more travelling than other times. Perhaps this is obvious, but travelling isn’t always a physical state, rather a state of mind. An inherent inward restlessness, wandering thoughts. When you see something that has been there every day but is really someplace else. The earliest sprigs of white tree blossom along the highway; a smoggy stretch of road between a few Norfolk towns, but not always. They seem to exist in two separate spaces, coexistence in a chaotic internal harmony. The same skies, a pebbly gray; dense, tactile cloud; watery sunshine and a lingering dampness. But this is France, somewhere on the A10 autoroute, after Paris, perhaps direction Orléans, heading south, where the air is milder and there are more green buds on trees. 

Recently I think we have had tropical rain on our minds. The real rain, that falls in crystalline sheets from towering cloud the color of a twilight sky. Pool water. Hot rain, chubby droplets, rippling the pool’s surface and distorting your view of the tiles lining the bottom. That strange similarity of being underwater and coming up for air, only to have warm rain drops in your face. Air conditioning that felt even colder on damp skin and hair as we watched the rusted trucks of the tropics turn rubble roads into rivers of muddy rainwater.

Perhaps it is because it’s easier being anywhere other than where you really have to be. There are no real feelings, no sense of time, in that dream like state. Just glimpses of places and people both completely frozen and very animate. Because slowly the line between those travels in your head and the trips you actually take becomes very blurred. So travel becomes your constant state, and you are everywhere but nowhere, all at once. 

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls” - Anais Nin 

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Hello again :) It’s been a while since I last posted but I am back, with cake. A simple chocolate cake based on a recipe for a deeply chocolatey almond cake I tried while visiting our grandparents over the holidays . I’m not sure when a cake becomes a snack cake but this little guy is very simple to make, kind of virtuous and also just a great chocolate cake for any day. It is good to have around since it keeps well for a while, too. I hope you try it.
Also, I appreciate you coming back to visit this space after every time I disappear.
Much love xx

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Chocolate + almond snack cake

1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup natural cocoa powder
1/2tsp basking soda
1/2tsp salt
4 free range eggs
1/2c honey
1/4c plain yogurt of choice (or applesauce)
1tsp pure vanilla extract 

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Preheat the oven to 170’C, 340’F*.
Prepare an 8inch round cake pan - even if it is non-stick I usually use a little coconut oil and line the bottom of the pan to be suuure the cake won’t stick.
In a large bowl, stir together the almond meal, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt until the cocoa powder is fully mixed through the flour.
In another large bowl, beat together all remaining ingredients until they’re fully combined and the mixture is smooth. If you have a stand mixer or a hand mixer and a large bowl, this would be really quick.
Combine wet and dry ingredients until the batter is dark brown and smooth. Since there is no gluten don’t worry about over-mixing, a flexible spatula is useful.
Pour the batter into your prepared pan. 
Bake 30-35 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. You won’t want to bake this cake too long, it will lose some of its charm if it’s too dry.

This cake will keep well for about a week in the fridge in an airtight container.

Tiny has appointed herself kitchen assistant

hopelessly captivated | lemon - ricotta scones

Prune has the most vibrant dreams. She’ll be fast asleep but you’ll hear her growl, the unmistakable gravelly growl of a big dog. In her sleep she’ll be running, her paws moving, her claws tapping against the floor, hot pursuit, deep in the hunt. Endless grassy meadows and shallow streams under warm sunshine, dusty tracks, mazes of cornfields where she loses herself. Other dogs to chase, rabbits, mossy forests, utopia. But she reaches the end of the track and she panics, in her somnolent way. She sees it all, the fireworks, thunderstorms, and she whimpers. Out loud, in her deep sleep. We comfort her, bring her back to now, lying on her cushion in the kitchen, she sighs, stretches and seems to shrug, like it was all nothing. Like it was just a dream and we didn’t all need to be so worried.

Suzi is a hushed dreamer. She runs a little sometimes, but for the most part she sleeps deep and quiet, her head on her paws. But she lives out loud. She goes outside and she’ll run, just to run, because she’s fast and athletic and she can. She’ll take sharp curves around the cherry tree, maybe pick up a snack, throw it in the air, shake it, hunt it, subdue it. Then she’ll lie down right where she is, prick up her ears and listen. For the first sign that something is untoward in the neighborhood, a hint of something new carried in the breeze. Guarding her place and her people. Alert and watching.

Prune sometimes won’t walk when she should. She’ll make herself very heavy when she wants to, physically and emotionally. She’s considered to be very much a Labrador - solid, often hungry, gentle. But she is highly strung in her own way. Like a Thoroughbred racehorse or a very expensive sports car she’s not easy to handle, she’s confusing to understand, and is far too precious to ever be tamed. We live with her moods, her spirited independence, her wild streak. Like a painter who has moved to live high in the mountains and is hopelessly captivated by the endless winter.

If Prune is the winter then Suzi is the sun. Burning at times. She’ll seek you out, often in the evening, and she won’t let go. Because what she really wants is affection, to lay her head on your lap, black velvet. And like the sun of spring, she’s at times timid, hesitant. It’s like she’s not sure what you’re going to do to her and the clouds win. So you volley between the scorch of summer and ripple of spring sunshine, waiting for those mellow days in June. When she’s lying on her side, waiting for you to tickle her neck. But there is a beauty in the mercurial seasons, that capricious volley, that temperamental up-down that brings the purest snow days and the cascades of spring blossom. Beauty even in the deepest winter and most despondent vernal sunshine. And like the artist in his mountain cabin, entranced by the downpour and the melt, I have been boundlessly won over, infinitely. 

“She was my darling. Difficult, morose, but still my darling”     - Vladimir Nabokov 

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Hi :) Been a little while since I was here buuuut I have scones. These scones are cute triangular shafts of citrusy sunlight so they’re kind of well suited to the time of year. I have seen ricotta in a few scones recipes so wanted to try it out aaaand I was really pleased with how they turned out - the ricotta makes these scones quite sturdy but not too dry. They are also more simple to make than it may first seem and come together very fast.
Anyway. Love you xx

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lemon - ricotta scones

2/3c almond meal
2/3c oat flour
2/3c brown rice flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2tsp salt 
2T coconut sugar 
Zest from one lemon
2T olive oil
1c ricotta cheese (or thicker type of yogurt could work)
3T fresh lemon juice 

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Preheat oven to 180 C, 350 F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
In a large bowl combine flours, baking powder, lemon zest, salt and sugar. Stir until sugar is completely mixed. In another bowl, beat together the ricotta, oil, egg and lemon juice.
Combine the wet and dry mixes until a workable dough forms. Sprinkle some flour over a work surface and tip out the dough. Using your hands, shape the dough into a circle, around 3cm (1inch-ish) thick.
Cut the circle in half, then quarters, then again so you have 8 kind of triangular pieces.
(carefully + gently) move the scones to the baking tray and bake for around 15 minutes - they will have become a little golden with some browning on the edges.
Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. On their own the scones are not super sweet but are still great. They are equally great with honey or jam.

In an airtight container they will keep for a few days in the fridge but can also be frozen and defrosted.

my two princesses

the untameable | orange + cardamom sherbet

So. Another new year. What people should’ve done last year, what they should do, the quickness of it all, things on people’s minds. Mine too, of course, but for now I’d rather linger on the end of last year. A trip, a place far away in so many senses. I didn’t have my camera with me in Bangalore and for some reason I’m averse to phone photography so I have no photos this year. Which is a shame. Because India does visuals so well. The pastel paintbox houses, each a shade from coriander to peach, stacked so geometrically. The saris drying on clothes lines, silver pots and pans heating up in the sun, dogs panting in the shade, motorbikes and rickshaws idling. 

The ladies with jasmine woven into their dark braids; carrying chubby infants in expert hands, cows with flower garlands wrapped loosely around their horns, hand-painted trucks and tractors. In a small road in the village, teenagers chat. The cool boys on their motorbike with their snazzy collared shirts and slicked back hair doubtlessly inspired by a Bollywood hero. A girl carrying a puppy, the center of attention. Two old timers sitting on an iron balcony, presiding over it all, reminiscing. Heavy and rising afternoon heat. 

Inside the gated compound everything has grown. The tropical pines are thick and towering, the palms proud and facades of houses freshly whitewashed. Trees are dripping hibiscus onto the luscious lawns where nannies supervise the toddlers. There are cats prowling the boundary fences, the toms brawling in the evening as prayer bells ring and the smell of roasting spices floats out of every kitchen. 

It is early morning. Airless and sultry, the day’s heat building after it barely subsided. Like so many things in India, winter’s changing. I’m out running, soon I’ll be joined by other neighbors, racing a tropical sun . There’s a gentle glow from street lamps where moths gather, a faraway crane is lit for the holidays, clouds hurry past the waning moon. There’s another person out, a grandfather. It’s more than 20 degrees but he’s wearing a white scarf wrapped over his head and face, cotton like his billowing shirt. He regards the morning suspiciously, seeing the high rises all around us like he was hemmed in, a look of passive disdain on his weathered face. Maybe he was thinking about the vastness of home, the untameable north of the subcontinent.  Miles away, a lifetime away. To him the year passing would be an inevitability, a grain of sand in the desert, or one of the thousands of stars that crowd the sky above it.

‘far and wide the vernal breeze wafts sweet odours from blossoming trees to distant lands’ Sanskrit Proverb 

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It seems we’re starting the year with sherbet. It is in a sense like a sorbet since it’s a frozen fruity thing (often citrus) but has dairy to make it smooth and creamy which sorbet doesn’t. You could also call this recipe frozen yogurt but I thought sherbet sounded nice. Anyway it’s a very simple recipe and if you don’t have an ice cream maker you could make cute yogurt pops instead. You can adjust the amount of cardamom according to your taste but if you leave it out altogether you might want to add some vanilla instead. It’s also kind of healthy so if you ever wanted ice cream for breakfast… like Drake said, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
Happy New Year. Hope this one is what you want it to be. Love you xx

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Orange + cardamom sherbet

2c natural yogurt of choice
3T fresh orange juice 
3T honey
1/2 - 1tsp fresh ground cardamom 

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Put all ingredients into a blender and blend to combine.
Pour into ice cream maker and churn according to ice cream maker’s instructions. Make sure you freeze the bowl-part of your ice cream maker in advance (it varies but often 24 hours before churning).
Make sure you use a freezer friendly container to let your almost-sherbet finish freezing. It will keep for a long time.

It may help to take the sherbet container out of the freezer a few minutes before serving so it’s less icy and easier to scoop.

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