Lumberjack Cake

A friend on facebook recently pointed me in the direction of this lovely and rustic looking cake.

I did some googling and found a number of recipes with variations on the amount of sugar, green apples and dates and eggs.

The first recipe I found on a favourite blog. I made it for Melbourne Cup day and it was quite a hit satisfying all our cravings for a sweet hit in the afternoon. The first one I made I served with the caramel sauce and cream.

Today I went for simplicity and varied the quantities on the sugar, eggs and apples. So my version of the cake is so:

For the cake

200grams of dates chopped

1 cup of hot water

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

125grams of butter softened

1 cup castor sugar

1/2 tsp of vanilla paste

1 egg

2 green apples, peeled and diced

1 1/2 cups plain flour

For the topping

3/4 cup shredded coconut

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons of butter

Turn on the oven to 180 degrees (160 fan forced).

Place chopped dates, hot water and bicarb of soda in a non-metallic bowl and leave till cool.

Butter and flour a square pan or a round one and line with baking paper. Mine was a large round one about 26 cm in diameter.

In another bowl, cream sugar and butter till pale and fluffy, add lightly beaten egg and vanilla and mix through. Then add flour, date mixture and apples alternately till combined.Transfer to baking pan.

Cook for 45mins or until skewer inserted in middle comes out dry.

While cake is cooking, combine topping ingredients in a small saucepan till butter melts.

Remove cake from oven and spread over the topping. Return to the oven for 15 mins until topping is brown.

Cut when cool and serve with cream.

P.S the beautiful yellow day lilly is from our front garden. Its taken nearly a year but they have finally flowered and are gorgeous. Gabi cut off two to give to Di our lovely neighbour as a thank-you for the beautiful hibiscus that she scored from her last weekend.

Paul's duck salad

A very, very, very late evening for us last night cooking a Thai feast. We started with pork rice rolls, and chicken spring rolls and Thai Mojitos, then we had this duck salad, the Thai red lamb shank curry from the previous post, a cucumber salad and then a trio of desserts - coconut creme caramel, mango and lemongrass tart and vanilla bean icecream. A marathon of cooking, eating and entertaining hence why I will leave it till later this week to post the recipe for the duck salad a Paul special. Our guests left at 2am and I got up at 5am that morning to track down the many ingredients. It was a breeze to actually serve as we did all the preparation in advance.

I couldn't resist posting the picture of the beautiful hibiscus as well. Paul and Gabi went next door for a swim and while there the lovely Di (our neighbour) went to cut two of her hibiscus for her own purposes. Gabi has a sharp eye and immediately asked for one, while I am happy to have one, I feel sorry for Di having to give it up to Gabi. However Gabi does have a good eye and appreciates natures beauty so its not being wasted with us and indeed being imortalised on the internet!.