Chocolate truffle cake

My son was born on 12 December, a bit close to Christmas, but of course he likes to have his birthday properly celebrated.  This year he planned to have friends round for afternoon tea. As it happens, I was at my friend Joan's birthday afternoon tea a few weeks ago, and she had made a remarkably delicious chocolate cake - not one of those great big high ones, but a much denser, fudgy, chocolatey creation I knew my son would love. (After extensive research, he has decided his favourite cafe chocolate cake is Aro Street Cafe's Chocolate Nemesis - another dense, fudgy number.)   
            So I asked for the recipe. In the usual fashion, it was given to Joan by Chris, who knew it as Lilly's Truffle Cake, so it's clearly been passed on to a number of eager bakers. Not that I ever really call myself a baker - what attracted me to this recipe, apart from its deliciousness, was how easy it looked to make. On Saturday, I made it for Sunday afternoon.  

Lilly’s Chocolate Truffle Cake

(Joan's comments in brackets, and mine added in italics. Easily doubled to make a larger cake. In fact I added one third of each quantity, making a cake 25% larger, to fit my 22 cm tin - my quantities in brackets.)

200 g (270g) dark chocolate (Whittaker's Dark Ghana, what else!)

180 g (240 g) sugar

180 g (240g) butter

3 (4) rounded tablespoons ground almonds (almond meal); or flour; or for a slightly lighter cake, self raising flour
(I used 3 rounded Tbsps almond meal and 1 Tbsp self-raising flour - this worked well.)

3 (4) eggs

Icing sugar to dredge

Set oven to 200 degrees (190 fan bake).

Break chocolate into squares and place in microwave suitable bowl.  Add the butter and sugar.  

Heat by pulsing in the microwave until it just melts, stirring between pulses to even the heat.  Stop as soon as it melts so it doesn’t get cooked.

Transfer to a food processor. Blend again by whirring for 30 seconds, then add almond meal, or flour, and whirr again.   

Add eggs one at a time, whirring until everything is mixed.

 Grease a 20 cm (22 cm) round cake tin and flour.  (I lazily use cooking paper.)

(I lined my loose-bottomed tin with baking paper and it worked perfectly.)  

Pour the mixture into the centre of the tin, spread towards edges, and bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Reduce heat to 150 degrees (140 fan bake) and continue cooking a further 30 minutes.  
(Joan: In my oven I do it for only  20 minutes, as the longer time dries it out too much.)
(Anne: As I was making a larger, slightly thicker cake, I found it did take close to 30 minutes.) 

The centre shouldn’t dry out, and the top should be a little cracked and crusty. 
Undercooking is better than overcooking. An inserted skewer or thin knife should come out with a little bit of sticky inside clinging to it.

Leave in tin to cool.  

Transfer to plate by inverting onto one plate and then onto the cake plate. Dredge with icing sugar.  
(Jonathan insisted on having ganache icing, made with 150 ml cream heated just to scalding point, then poured over 150 g of broken-up chocolate pieces (more Whittaker's) in a bowl and stirred thoroughly until chocolate has melted and ganache is dark. Leave to cool in fridge for about an hour until thick enough to spread over cake.)

Joan: Raspberry coulis is great with this ... as well as, of course ... cream!  (Or yoghourt!)

Anne: Jonathan had both, and he also spread sliced strawberries over the top of the iced cake. His friends were very impressed and asked if he had bought it - but of course he pointed out that his mother had made it.  It's extremely rich, so only slender pieces were required - which was just as well, because there was some left for me later (he knew this was a condition of my making it!). Definitely worth the effort...

Very easy Dutch apple cake

Last weekend was, in case you've forgotten, election night. Harvey and I always used to select who we invited to watch the results very carefully. They not only had to share our political persuasion, they also had to be quietly devoted to watching the results. Jonathan deserted me for his own friends, so I had my neighbour over early on, then a close friend joined us.
      I planned to have soup and then finger food for later, but I also wanted to make a cake. As apples are one of the few well-priced fruits around, I thought a Dutch apple cake would be good - but I couldn't find my old recipe. No problem - one quick search online for "Dutch apple cake NZ" (local baking recipes usually work best) and I found exactly what I wanted. The use of melted butter makes it very easy to mix, and thanks to the cinnamon and sugar topping, it doesn't need icing.

Sue's Dutch Apple Cake

Adapted slightly from http://www.tuigarden.co.nz/recipe/sues-dutch-apple-cake

(I don't know who this Sue is - the site says "This apple cake is a favourite supplied by Gemma from the Tui Team.") 

2 eggs

½ cup sugar

125g melted butter

1 c self-raising flour

zested rind of 1 lemon

3 medium apples, peeled and chopped up (my apples weren't very tart, so I added a couple of tablespoons of of juice from the zested lemon)

1 Tbsps cinnamon and 1/3 c sugar, mixed together for sprinkling on top (you may not need all this, but I like it quite thick).

Prepare cake tin, greasing the sides and lining the base with bake paper. (The recipe recommends a ring tin, which gives a higher cake. I used a square tin, lined entirely with bake paper, for a shallow cake which cut into neat squares.)

Set oven to 180C bake (or 170C fanbake).

Melt the butter (a Pyrex jug works well, in the oven or the microwave) and leave it to cool.

Beat the eggs and the sugar together in a largeish bowl, then add the melted butter.

Add the self-raising flour, lemon rind and apples to the mixture, and mix to combine. 

Pour into prepared cake tin. 

Sprinkle with a generous amount of the cinnamon and sugar.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until a skewer or thin knife blade inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve with plain whipped cream or yoghurt.

This is really good, quite light and yet very moist - a cross between cake and dessert. Once again (sigh) I didn’t get a decent photo before most of the cake got eaten, and I couldn’t copy the one that came with the original recipe.  So here are a couple of photos I found online – the first is a similar cake, and the other is exactly the recipe above, but from the Chelsea Sugar site. 

Mine looked like a cross between the two. I don't think the Chelsea one has been mixed properly, because the apple seems to be all at the bottom, but the topping looks right. 

Little cakes from Toledo for Easter

I first made these little lemony almond cakes, called marquesas or marquesitas, when we had our Spanish long lunch on 2 August last year. I promised to put up the recipe - but I didn't.
      Needing a dessert contribution for a long lunch in the Wairarapa tomorrow, I decided these would do nicely. In The Food of Spain, Claudia Roden includes them in her section on "Dulces de Convento - pastries and confectionery from the hidden world of cloistered nuns", and says they are "most typical of Sonseca in the province of Toledo, where they are made at Christmas time".
       But I thought they would also be perfect for Easter. I've made them in small cupcake cases and packed them neatly into egg cartons to carry with me tomorrow on the bus (to Upper Hutt, because of line repairs) and then the train.


Almond Cupcakes (Marquesas)
Adapted slightly from The Food of Spain, Claudia Roden

5 large eggs
Zest and juice of 1 large lemon
200g caster sugar
50g cornflour
300g ground almonds
small paper cases to use in a baking tray with small cakecups
(or use medium cases in a medium-cup tray)
icing sugar for dusting

- Set the oven to 180C. (I used fan bake.)
- Separate the eggs. Put 2 egg whites into a medium-sized bowl; 1 white into a small bowl; and all 5 yolks into a large bowl. Set aside the remaining 2 whites for another use.
- With an electric beater, beat the 2 whites with 1/4 tsp lemon juice and 4 Tbspns of the sugar until stiff.
- Put the 1 egg white into the large bowl with the 5 yolks. Add the remaining sugar. Beat with the electric beater to make a pale cream.
- Beat in the grated lemon zest and the cornflour.
- Mix in the ground almonds thoroughly to make a thick paste.
(Roden says you can use a little water if it's too thick, but she didn't need to. I wanted a more lemony taste, so I mixed in 1 Tbsp of the remaining lemon juice at this point.)
- Gently fold in the egg whites.

- Using a teaspoon for the small cases, fill each case three-quarters full - or for higher cakes, to just below the case rim. (I think the height of each cake depends on the mixture and the oven as well as the size of the cases, so you may need to experiment.)
- Bake for approximately 9-10 minutes for the small cases.
They should colour only very slightly on top, but a thin knife or sewer inserted in the middle should come out clean. When they come out of the oven the cakes will be very soft when you press the top with your finger.
They will harden a little as they cool but will still be very soft and moist inside.
- Let them firm and cool a little in the tray after they come out of the oven. Dust them lightly with icing sugar and transfer them gently to a rack to cool.

Roden says this recipe makes 24-30 cakes, depending on the case size. I made 24 small cakes and 12 medium ones, following her instruction to fill the cases 3/4 full.  But to get the kind of well-risen, rounded top on each cake shown in her photo, I probably should have filled them up a bit more.
       I fancy a bit more lemon flavour, so I mixed together the leftover lemon juice, about a tablespoon of the leftover icing sugar and a splash of triple sec to make a light syrup that I can drizzle very sparingly on each cake tomorrow just before we eat them. I'll tell you how it goes.

Pear and ginger upside-down cake - remembering Judith Hosking

I've always been very fond of upside-down cakes, ever since I was a young mother trying to find easy things (within my still very uncertain culinary grasp) that everyone would enjoy. I made two foolproof kinds: one with drained tinned Doris plum halves, and one with pineapple rings.
         In 1975 we had our only Christmas in London, and Chris's sister Judith, her husband Len and their three children came up from Hampshire to stay. It snowed, and we all went to the pantomime - Treasure Island, with Spike Milligan.
          To feed us all, I made a giant pineapple-ring upside-down cake. It went down very well, and there was enough left for the kids the next day. But when I first served it, I had covered it with whipped cream and cheerfully scattered hundreds and thousands over it. Overnight the colours ran, spreading a blotchy layer of assorted colours all over the cream, like some weird technicolour mould.  The children did eat it, but with much less enthusiasm. Dear Judith wasn't the least bit taken aback - she just laughed. She and Len were extremely kind to us while we were in Britain.
          I've been thinking about her because she died on 27 March, aged 82. I hadn't seen her for a long time, but then I managed to visit her when I was there in 2013, soon after Len died. I'm so pleased I did. This recipe is in memory of her. I made it for two friends' potluck birthday lunch on Easter Sunday.

Pear and ginger upside-down cake

2 c firmly packed soft brown sugar

250g butter, melted, cooled

600g fresh ripe pears, peeled, cored, cut into neat eighths or into 2cm slices

(If the pears are still too hard and not ready to eat, poach them briefly in light syrup before using.)

1 c golden syrup

2 large eggs

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, sifted

2 and 1/2 c plain flour, sifted

2 rounded tsps ground ginger, sifted

1 rounded tsp mixed spice, sifted

(The original recipe has normal flat teaspoonsful, but I do like it spicy.)

200g light sour cream

Preheat oven to 160°C. (If you have a fan, don't use it - use bake setting.) 

Lightly grease an oblong or large square cake pan. (My tin was just right - 34cm long, 24cm wide and 5cm deep.) Line base and sides with baking paper.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the brown sugar over paper on base of pan. Pour 1/3 cup of butter over sugar. Arrange pear eighths (rounded side down) or slices in a single layer over butter and sugar.

Place remaining butter in a large bowl. Whisk in syrup, eggs, soda, flour, ground ginger, mixed spice and remaining sugar. Stir in sour cream. 

Pour batter evenly over pears. Bake for 1 hour and see if a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. If not, leave in for another 10 minutes and check again.

Stand for 10 minutes. Place a large platter over the tin and turn the whole thing over, so that the cake comes out neatly with the fruit on top. 

To serve, cut into neat squares. Though it's not at all necessary - this is a very moist cake - a little whipped cream or yoghurt or creme fraiche is definitely good with it. 

Here's mine just before I carried it off. Like most of my baking, it was a bit woggly, but delicious all the same.

Flawless flourless chocolate cake

It was my turn to host my book group this week. We have informal rules about supper that we sort of stick to: cheese, crackers, maybe dip or pate, and something sweet. I know one of the members is gluten free, so there are always rice crackers - but what about that "something sweet"? So I hunted through my cake file and found a flourless chocolate cake I'd never made before, from Ray McVinnie. He says he got it from Glenn, a colleague at the School of Hospitality and Tourism at AUT. He says it's "the true chocoholic's cake, which needs nothing with it except cream...a little goes a long way." You really do need an electric whisk or beater for this - unless you've got Wonderwoman arms.

Glenn's flourless chocolate cake

300g dark chocolate, chopped 

(Annoyingly, one block of Whittaker's Dark Ghana is 250g - I reckon you could probably get away with that.)

5 eggs

90g brown sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

finely grated zest of 1 orange

2 Tbsp brandy

150ml creme fraiche, whipped to soft peaks (don't overwhip), then refrigerated

cocoa and whipped cream, for serving

- Preheat oven to 175C. Line the bottom of a 23cm diameter non-stick cake tin with baking paper.

- Either put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and melt it slowly over a saucepan of barely simmering water, then stir it until it's smooth; or put it in a large heatproof glass jug and microwave it for 2 minutes, then stir it gently with a wooden spoon until it's smooth. (If it hasn't quite got to melting, give it short bursts of time - say 30 seconds. The pieces don't look as if they have melted, but when you start to stir them, you find they have.) Set the bowl or jug of chocolate aside.

 - Get out your electric whisk. Put the eggs, sugar, cinnamon, zest and brandy in a stainless steel bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water, and beat until the mixture is very thick, pale and creamy. This takes what seems like quite a long time.

- Take off the heat and  beat with electric whisk until cold - or put into electric mixer and then whisk it. Add chocolate in a steady stream (this is where the jug comes in handy), whisking continuously. 

- Fold in the creme fraiche. Pour mixture into cake tin. Boil a jugful of water.

- Place cake tin in a large roasting pan. Fill pan with enough hot water to come 3/4 of the way up the sides of the cake tin. Let mixture settle for 10 minutes.

- Place roasting pan with cake tin in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes, until set. Remove from oven and take cake tin out of water. 

- Cool cake completely before turning out onto a serving plate, bottom side up. Peel off paper and dust cake with cocoa through a sieve. 

Serve in wedges with whipped cream.

I didn't turn mine upside down as I should have, as the photo shows - but it still looked good and tasted sensational. Not fudgy, just very dense and dark and rich. I'll be making this again - wonderful for dessert, though I think in that case I might disobey Ray and serve it with a little fruit of some kind - maybe apricot puree - as well as the whipped cream.

Orange and almond dessert cake

I didn't want to think up a clever title for this post - this cake can speak for itself. I've written about it in my forthcoming food memoir. It's now steadily progressing through the publishing process at Awa Press -
I'll be talking about it in Blenheim on 26 March, for New Zealand Book Month.
      I made this last weekend for a special visitor and as always, it turned out perfectly, a rare record in my erratic baking career. I split the mixture into two so I could take a small one to a pot-luck lunch later, so the main cake was only about 2 cm high. But that worked out very well, giving lovely slices of exactly the right size for our dessert.
       It comes from my beloved Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Food. It's a Sephardic cake, a traditional recipe from the Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal. They had lived there for a thousand years, but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Spanish Inquisition drove them to flee to the Middle East. In fact it's a Passover cake, using ground almonds instead of flour (of course you wouldn't use flour for the tin if you were making it for that purpose). There;s no extra fat in it - the almonds provide enough oil. It's extremely easy to make, and Roden says it never fails. In my experience, she's right - but it's so moist that if you want to keep it for more than a day or two, it needs to go in the fridge.

Orange and almond cake
(Adapted from A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden)

2 large oranges
6 eggs
250g ground almonds
250g white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
butter and flour for tin

Wash the oranges and boil them gently in a little water in a lidded saucepan for nearly 2 hours, until they are soft. Check them every so often to see if they need a little more water.
[You need to remember that this long lead time is required - but you can do it the day or the morning before you make the cake.]
Let them cool, then cut them open and remove the pips. [I forgot to do this, but no one noticed!]
Turn them into a pulp, either by rubbing them through a sieve or putting them in an electric blender or food processor.
Butter and flour a loose-bottomed cake tin. Heat oven to 190C. [Don't use fan bake, just bake.]
Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add all the other ingredients in the order given, and mix thoroughly.
[I pour the beaten eggs into the orange pulp in the food processor bowl and add the other ingredients one at a time, whizzing enough to mix well after each one and scraping down the bowl carefully between each addition. The baking powder should be added last, using a small sieve, to make sure it's evenly distributed.]
Pour carefully into the cake tin and bake for about an hour. If it is still very wet, leave in the oven for a little longer. [I cooked one shallow cake and one smaller one side by side - because they were both so shallow, they took only about 40 minutes to cook through.] A thin skewer poked into the middle should come out almost clean when the cake is done.

This is absolutely heavenly. If you like, you can put a little orange liqueur or orange blossom water into the accompanying cream when you whip it. But creamy Greek-style plain yoghurt is very good with it too. Or nothing at all, just the cake...

California sunshine

For a professed non-baker, the number of cake posts seems to be increasing rather fast, but that's just too bad - or good. For a dessert last week I made one I found years ago in a US vegetarian cookbook. (I kept only this one recipe and have since lost the book, so I can't recall who wrote it.) I know New Zealand oranges are really out of season, but as it's a Californian recipe, I thought it would be okay to use Californian oranges.      
        The original quantities contain mysterious US measurements like "a stick of butter" (about 60 grams, so my American friends tell me). The recipe also specifies " "buttermilk" (I use half milk and half plain yoghurt) and "pastry flour", which is apparently halfway between "cake flour" (only 8 to 9 percent protein) and normal flour (11% protein or more). We don't have either cake flour or pastry flour - well, I've never seen any here - but I just use normal standard flour and it seems to work fine.

Californian orange and raisin cake

2 oranges
1 cup seedless raisins
60 g butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup milk, mixed with 1/3 cup plain yoghurt
2 cups sifted white flour
1 tsp baking soda
another 1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup orange flavoured liqueur (I use a cheapish triple sec, it's less sweet)

- Set oven to 180C.
- Prepare cake tin - a well greased ring tin carefully lined with paper on the bottom works well, or use a medium-sized square tin lined with baking paper - have it coming up the sides and extending a little beyond the rim so you can lift the cake out easily later.
- Juice the oranges, strain juice and set it aside. Grind the two orange rinds in a food processor with the raisins.
- Add all other ingredients except the orange juice, and process just to combine.
- Spread evenly in tin and bake for about 45 minutes - a square tin takes a little longer - until a skewer ot thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- While cake is baking, mix 3/4 cup of the orange juice, the second 1/4 cup sugar, and the liqueur in a jug.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, spoon this liquid evenly all over the top.
- When the cake is almost cold and has absorbed the liquid, either lift it carefully out of the square tin using the bake paper, or for a ring tin, turn it carefully out onto a plate and then immediately invert it onto another plate so the top is again on top.

It has a really fruity, moist texture and tastes beautifully orangey, but not too sweet - I use less sugar than the original recipe. I'm afraid this is the last slice (yes, once again I forgot to snap it before we ate it), and it's a bit fuzzy - the photo, not the cake. If you have leftover cake, keep it in the fridge and take it out ahead of time, or warm it up gently, if you want to serve it for dessert - it shouldn't be eaten really cold. You can serve it with whipped cream, slightly flavoured with orange liqueur, or with yoghurt - vanilla is nice.

The path to creme caramel

Last week I had the luxury of a live-in caregiver for Harvey, the wonderful Marjorie. The idea was for them to get used to each other and what needs to be done while I roamed happily around Wellington. With the willing co-operation of friends booked in to keep me company, it all worked very well, from ....

Petone, and GoBang's rhubarb and custard brioche, to...

Willis St, and Cafe Neo's mini cupcake - I love it when you can have something delicious but small - to...

Porirua, and Pataka's chewy apricot slice...

Brilliant exhibitions at Pataka, go and see them. Two are by women, and "SHEEP - NZ Icons in Art" features lots of work by women too. The one that struck home for me was the "triple portrait", the heads of three raggedy, venerable sheep, all looking haggard and angry, painted in sinister shadings of green and magenta. It's called "The Mothers".

So after all that, I was quite happy to stay home this weekend and do some cooking. For ages I've been yearning after creme caramel, but I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to boiling sugar. So I use a clever microwave version from a really good book Harvey's mother Betty passed on to us in 1989, when she got it as a free gift from Reader's Digest. (She didn't need it because she didn't have a microwave, but her neighbour did. So when Betty gave her one of the ducks Harvey's brother had shot, the neighbour tried to cook it in her fancy new oven. The lead shot exploded, destroying both the duck and the microwave.)

Creme caramel (from Good Housekeeping Microwave Encyclopedia, by Susanna Tee)

For the caramel:

3 tablespoons caster sugar

3 tablespoons water

glass jug

round or oval ceramic dish which holds 750 ml

Mix in a glass jug and microwave on high for 5 minutes until the caramel turns brown. Watch it very carefully - I gave mine 4 minutes, then 30 second bursts and finally 10 seconds. Stop as soon as the sugar begins to darken. Pour the caramel immediately into the bottom of the dish.

For the creme:

450 ml full milk (not trim) in larger glass jug

3 eggs

2 tablespoons caster sugar

natural vanilla essence

Microwave milk on high for 90 seconds, just to warm it.

Lightly beat the eggs with the sugar.

Add the eggs and sugar to the milk and mix in a few drops of vanilla essence. (Or, if you have a vanilla bean, you can heat the seeds with the milk.)

Strain the milk and egg mixture carefully over the caramel.

Cover with two layers of cling film and place in a larger dish which will fit in the microwave.

Using a jug and a funnel, pour boiling water into the larger dish until it comes halfway up the smaller dish.

Microwave for at least 25 minutes until the custard is lightly set. My recipe says to do this on low, but that didn't seem to be hot enough to set the custard, so I used medium low instead.

Leave to stand for 5 minutes. Remove the dish from the water, take off the cling film and leave to stand for 30 minutes.

Refrigerate for 4 to 5 hours until set.

I didn't even try to turn this out, as I'd used an oval dish. I just started eating it straight out of the dish. I could do this because Harvey doesn't like it, so it was mine, all mine. It was a bit too wobbly still, but it tasted and felt exactly as it should, slippery creamy blobs of custard bathed in golden caramel. It should serve four, but I ate half of it yesterday and I'm going to finish it off tonight.

Picking up the pieces

I had a tiny taste of the Christchurch earthquake last week. Ironically, it happened because I'd tried to do some earthquake-proofing. My kitchen clock was bought for me by my mother at the vast Farmers' store in Auckland, not long before it closed (I've been trying to find out when - I thought it was 1991). So last week, thinking about earthquakes, I decided I'd better stick on a blob of Bluetack to fasten it more securely to the wall. But I must have done it wrong, because that night the clock suddenly leapt off the wall and crashed to the floor. Its glass was broken, but otherwise it's okay, so maybe I can have it fixed. But on the way down it managed to smash my lovely old china salt box. It's not a family treasure, I bought it years ago in a "collectibles" (junk) shop, but I was very fond of it.

These small breakages made me think how sad it must have been for so many people to lose all their loved, familiar things in the earthquake - not on a par with losing your house and job, I know, but still distressing.   

I've recently worked out a good remedy for when I'm feeling a bit down, as I was after this happened. I take myself off to Martha's Pantry, in an old brick building on the corner of Cuba Street and Karo Drive. It's beautiful, full of flowers and sunshine and white embroidered cloths, and it's quiet - the fabrics soak up sound so that all you're aware of is a quiet murmur of conversation and the gentle tinkle of teacups and spoons. You get your own teapot, in a knitted cosy - they have a good range of teas, plus the usual (good) coffees - and a selection from their vast collection of pretty cups and saucers. And plates, of course - for something to eat from their range of gorgeously retro cakes.  A few times I've had the pleasure of introducing it to friends who've never been there before. They sell things, too - old-fashioned games and toys and lots of pretty flowery stuff. You do see the occasional chap in there, but it's definitely women who love it most - from bright young ones and mothers with kids to, well, mature women of my vintage. Macaroons, butterfly cakes, hot chocolate with the teacup tealight you get late on a winter afternoon... brilliant.

   

Let them eat cake

So, Melbourne. Let's start with the cake.

Monday afternoon: we're flagging after our very early morning start (3.10 am in my case), so I lead my friend R. to Koko Black in the Royal Arcade off Bourke Street. Inside it's exactly like a classy Belgian chocolatier, everything is brown.

We divide the little $5 chocolate platter (I remember it from last time I was here): two small shortbreads trimmed with chocolate, a neat little mound of chocolate mousse, and a small chocolate cake. The hot chocolate is incredibly rich and smooth. We've scoffed everything before I think of taking a photo. Sorry.

Tuesday morning: It's fine, so we catch the free tram to Fitzroy and stop at Hudson's Famous Catering in Gertrude Street for coffee and a little something.

R. is more tolerant than me, but I can't help noticing that no one seems to be able to make a proper flat white like the ones back home. But as for the yoyo...mmm.

Wednesday morning: Damp, windy and cold, perfect for the art exhibition that's the excuse for our trip, but the gallery doesn't open till 10. Brunetti's is in exactly the right place for morning coffee. Not the glorious big one in Carlton, just the little one in City Square off Swanston St. R. has a modest biscuit, I have a sort of Italian cream horn, only it's filled with ricotta studded with lemon peel, not sweet at all, just right.

Wednesday, 5 pm: Grumpy after a fruitless trawl through Myers and David Jones (unlike R., I am not size 14), I go through The Causeway, the lane our hotel is named after, into Little Collins St, and on the corner I discover the glorious Laurent... and its macaroons.

Unlike the other cakes, they're only $2.20, and they're only little. Slightly crunchy outside and softly chewy inside, around the cream filling, with intensely pure flavour. Raspberry, vanilla, chocolate, mango and passionfruit... I take coffee and lemon back for afternoon tea. R. doesn't want any. Something tells me to save the lemon one for dessert that night. (See the next post...)

Thursday morning: Our last day. I cunningly inveigle R. to Laurent for morning coffee. It's too early for macaroons. So she has a passionfruit curd tart, and I have a raspberry frangipane.

Thursday afternoon: It's 2.45 and our shuttle is coming at 3.30. But Laurent is almost opposite our hotel (another really good reason for staying there). Time for one last afternoon tea, with macaroons. Very hard to decide, but I choose orange and lime. I don't regret this. Maybe I can learn how to make them...