brown sugar cake with brown sugar cream and oven roasted strawberries

brown sugar cake with brown sugar cream and oven roasted strawberries

19 Oct 2026

To celebrate the publication of Simple Too by Ottolenghi and Verena Lochmuller, a number of recipes appeared online including a recipe for a brown sugar cake topped with brown sugar cream and sumac roasted strawberries.

It's peak strawberry season here so this cake was on the top of my 'to bake' list. I already have a killer oven roasted strawberry recipe courtesy of Nadine Ingram so I made a batch with which to top the cake. I made some creme fraiche and I was good to go.

Ottolenghi cake recipes are usually very reliable but I had problems with this one.  The batter made with melted butter was very loose and when baked, it rose around the edges but sank in the centre leading to a dense texture. I find this happens quite often with wet batters leavened with baking soda so I remade the cake. This time I used the creaming method and I used self raising flour instead of plain flour with leavenings. I also increased the quantity of flour just a little. I made the second cake the old fashioned way using a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon and it came out perfectly.

Here's the recipe for you, adapted from an Ottolenghi recipe, which makes a 16-cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. The linked recipe is the original recipe whilst the recipe below is the adapted version.

Brown sugar cake with brown sugar cream and oven roasted strawberries 

Strawberry compote

¾ tbs dried mint

Scant ½ tsp pink peppercorns, crushed

4 cardamom pods, cracked

55g caster sugar

1 lemon, zested

3 dried hibiscus petals

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

250g washed and hulled ripe strawberries

Cake

100g unsalted butter, room temperature 

150g brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs 

140g SR flour

½ tsp fine sea salt

50g creme fraiche or plain yoghurt

Brown sugar cream

125ml cream

125g creme fraiche (or use 85g pure cream and 40g yoghurt instead of 125g crème fraiche)

1 tsp vanilla bean paste 

25g brown sugar

To serve (optional)

Fresh mint sprigs and icing sugar, to serve  

Strawberry compote

Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grind the mint, peppercorns and cardamom in a spice grinder, but you could also use a pestle and mortar.  Add this to the sugar along with the lemon zest, hibiscus petals and the seeds from the vanilla bean. Toss the strawberries in a large bowl with the sugar mixture and spread evenly over the base of a large baking tray. Add the scraped vanilla bean and roast in the oven for 20 minutes, giving the tray a little shake halfway through to distribute the syrup. Remove the strawberries from the oven and cover and allow to cool, reserving the juices. If you like, you can reduce the juices by cooking over a low heat in a small saucepan for about 5 minutes, until they’re syrupy.

Cake

Preheat the oven to 190°C, conventional. Grease and line the bottom and sides of a 16-cm round cake tin with baking paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer cream the butter, brown sugar and the vanilla extract until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat to incorporate. The mixture might look a little curdled at this stage. Sift the flour and salt together and add to the butter mix in thirds, alternating with the crème fraiche and mix until just combined.

Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin smoothing the top. Bake on the centre rack of the preheated 190°C, conventional oven for 30–35 minutes, or until springy to the touch. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack before unmoulding.

Brown sugar cream 

Place all the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk to soft peaks.

Assembly

Remove the cake from the tin and put on a serving plate. Just before serving dollop the cream on top, and spoon over the strawberries and drizzle with the reserved juice. Decorate with mint sprigs and then dust with icing sugar, if using.

The baked sponge will keep for 2 days, tightly wrapped. The cake is delicious served plain and it would work well sandwiched with jam and cream. The cream is best prepared on the day, and once the cake has been decorated, it needs to be served immediately.

I shared the cake with my neighbours, who enjoyed it as did I. The brown sugar cake was just lovely unadorned, served with a cup of tea.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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lemon drizzle and blueberry friands

lemon drizzle and blueberry friands

12 Oct 2026

To celebrate the publication of Natalie Paull's new book, Sweet Heart, I booked into a cooking class run by Natalie which took place at the Sydney Seafood School. I'd not been to a cooking class since I was 9 so I had no idea what to expect. 

We were given recipe sheets for the 2 confections we were to make in the class, raspberry jelly lamingtons and lemon drizzle financiers or friands. I was paired with Sue and Ash, a mother/daughter duo and between us we tackled both recipes. 

The raspberry jelly lamingtons were a triumph but the lemon financiers stuck to the tin. My friands always stick unless I grease and flour the tin first then place a small piece of baking paper in the base. I know just greasing the tin isn't enough so why I didn't prepare the tins my usual way in the class, I'll never know. Natalie was mortified and although not picture perfect, the friands were still delicious.

Looking to redeem my reputation, I remade the financiers at home. This time I made sure to grease, flour and line the base of the tins with baking paper and the friands came out perfectly. Hunting through the fridge I found some candied lemon slices which I used to decorate the friands but that's definitely an optional extra. I also found an unopened packet of frozen blueberries so I made some blueberry friands and some lemon drizzle friands from the batter. 

Here's the recipe for you in Natalie's own words, which was adapted from here. The recipe makes 6 friands but the recipe can easily be sized up or down. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. 

Lemon drizzle friands - makes 6 small cakes
Ingredients 
90g unsalted butter 
1 large lemon
85g pure icing sugar
25g plain flour (I used SR flour)

pinch fine sea salt
60g blanched almond meal
75g egg whites, from 2–3 eggs

Blueberry version

18 blueberries, fresh or frozen

  
Lemon Syrup 
20g pure icing sugar

35g fresh lemon juice

Lemon Glaze
60g icing sugar
10g fresh lemon juice

 
To decorate
1 lemon

icing sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C, conventional/180°C, fan forced. Grab six small moulds – use cupcake tins, friands tins or little dariole moulds. 

Cook the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until medium brown speckles form on the base. Pour into a small bowl to quickly stop cooking, scraping in all the brown goodness too. Brush the interior of the moulds with a light coating of the browned butter (the rest is for the batter). Finely zest one lemon into the remaining butter, then express-chill in the fridge – it should still be liquid (it makes the batter thicker and easier to use when fresh).

 
Sift the icing sugar, flour and salt into a small bowl and place the almond meal on top. In a wide bowl, hand-whisk the egg whites until just foamy. Stir the dries into the whites and hand-whisk gently until just combined then hand-whisk in the brown butter. Into each mould, spoon enough batter to 90 per cent fill each cavity, or approx 45g. If using chilled batter, it is more like a paste, so pipe the batter into the moulds. If making the blueberry friands, place three blueberries on top of each friand.

Place the tray on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake the friands for 15-18 minutes until they are pale brown around the top edges and have pert little bumps. If any batter has puffed over the edge of the tin during baking, push the bulges back in line, while hot, using a small knife.

 
Lemon syrup
Sift the sugar into a bowl, then hand-whisk the lemon juice in to make a thin syrup. Take the friands out of the oven and invert onto a rack lined with baking paper, teasing them out of the tins with a butter knife if they need help. Cool the friands for 1 minute. Give each friand a quick roll in the syrup, then place onto the rack. Leave to cool for 5 minutes. 

Lemon glaze
Place the icing sugar in a bowl, then vigorously hand-whisk 30g of the leftover syrup in to make a very thick glaze that drools thickly from the whisk – use extra juice if you need. Spoon the glaze onto one of the friands – give it a suggestive push in the direction you would like it to go, then let gravity do the rest so it settles into a smooth finish. Adjust the consistency after the first one – add a few drops more juice at a time or a sprinkling of icing sugar. 

If the glaze is good, continue to glaze two or three at a time, zesting the other lemon directly over the friands to rain on the glaze. If you leave the glaze too long, it dries firm and loses sticking power. Once glazed, c’est fini!

If making blueberry friands, you can omit the glaze and just dust the tops with icing sugar. I did both and I have to say the blueberry friands topped with the glaze were just delicious.

These friands taste delicious and are a cinch to make. They'll also keep for a few days stored in an airtight container. 

Many thanks for such a lovely recipe Natalie. See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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nichola gensler marmalade ricotta cake

nichola gensler marmalade ricotta cake

5 Oct 2026

I've had this recipe bookmarked for quite some time but just never got round to making it. With a pot of blood orange marmalade in the cupboard, a few blood oranges in the fridge and a kilo of fresh ricotta in the fridge, the time had come to make this marmalade ricotta cake, adapted from a Nichola Gensler recipe. I found the recipe on Nicola Lamb's substack but it's now been placed under a firewall, so I can't give you a link to the recipe.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 16-cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Note

The cake isn't gluten-free but you could certainly swap the plain flour for gluten free flour.

Nichola Gensler marmalade ricotta cake - makes 1 x 16-cm cake
Cake
185 ricotta 
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar
Zest 1 lemon (1 tbs)
Zest 1 orange (1 tbs)
1 egg and 1 yolk
110g natural almonds 
30g plain flour
Generous ¼ tsp baking powder
pinch fine sea salt 
¼ tsp ground ginger 
125g marmalade 

Glaze ingredients
The strained marmalade liquid
20mls lemon juice
45mls orange juice
20g caster sugar

Cake
Grease and line the base and sides of a 16-cm cake tin with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 170°C, fan assist or 180°C, conventional.

Tip the marmalade into a saucepan and gently heat until runny. Sieve the marmalade into a second saucepan, saving the liquid for the glaze later, pressing through the liquid. Coarsely chop the shred and set it to one side.

Drain the ricotta, ensuring there is no liquid, then mash up the ricotta a bit so there won't be any lumps in the cake. Cream the butter, ricotta, sugar and citrus zests together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg, followed by the yolk and allow each one to work in before adding the next.

Coarsely chop the almonds either by pulsing in a food processor or by hand - you want a mixture of meal with some larger pieces. Place the chopped almonds into a small bowl with the flour, baking powder, salt and ground ginger and mix to combine. Fold in the chopped marmalade shred to the mix. Gently fold it all together and put it into the lined cake tin.

Bake for around 35-40 minutes, turning halfway through. I would usually check the centre of the cake with a thermometer. If it reads 75°C, it’s good to come out. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can check it for wobble. It should be mostly firm with a little wobble in the centre.

Once the cake has cooled down slightly, you can glaze the top. Keep the cake in the tin to glaze it, as the glaze will set nicely on top, forming a nice layer of smooth zingy marmalade. Pierce the cake 10 or 12 times with a skewer to allow the glaze to absorb. 

Glaze
Gently heat together the glaze ingredients in the saucepan. Allow the sugar to melt before bringing it to a boil, and then pour it over the top of the cake. This should set as it cools so you can put it on quite thickly to make a nice zingy marmalade top. Allow to cool fully before refrigerating. Leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours before serving, but let it come to room temp before eating.

This is a curious cake as its more cheesecake in texture than cake like. It's packed full of citrus and has some texture from the almonds and altogether, it's quite delightful, and it becomes more squidgy and citrusy as it matures.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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salted caramel chocolate chunk cookies

salted caramel chocolate chunk cookies

28 Sept 2026

As you're aware, I'm not much of a chocolate fan but I do love caramel. When I saw a recipe for nutty chocolate fudge cookies, I thought they'd be even more delicious if I used salted caramel instead of the fudge.

The recipe is quick and easy to put together but the batter is very soft. It needs a good rest in the fridge before it can be scooped out, so remember to factor that in when making these cookies. Once scooped you can bake the cookies straight away but I prefer to refrigerate the balls of cookie dough overnight then bake them the following day.

Here's the recipe for you, adapted from this Gill Meller recipe, which makes 12 cookies. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. You'll need to make the caramel before making the cookies as it needs time to set. You'll only use a small quantity of the caramel which means you can eat the rest!

Salted caramel chocolate chunk cookies - makes 12 cookies

Salted caramel
1 x 375 g tin condensed milk 
45g golden syrup
30g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp sea salt flakes

Cookie ingredients

100g unsalted butter

100g light soft brown sugar

50g caster sugar

1 egg

dash of vanilla extract or ½ tsp vanilla bean paste

150g plain flour + ½ tsp baking powder

pinch salt

50g walnuts, coarsely chopped

75g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken up

75g of your favourite fudge or salted caramel (recipe below)

1 or 2 good pinches of smoked salt flakes

Salted caramel
Line the base and sides of an 8 x 4 inch loaf pan with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional.

Place the condensed milk in a saucepan and stir over a low heat for 7 minutes or until slightly thickened and lightly coloured. You can also microwave the condensed milk in a large bowl on high for 7 minutes, stirring every minute. Add the remaining ingredients to the condensed milk and stir thoroughly until well combined. 

Pour the caramel into the tin and using a knife spread it evenly over the base then sprinkle with sea salt flakes.  Return the slice to the oven and bake for another 20-30 minutes or until the caramel is golden brown and set. Loosen the caramel from the tin and cool completely before refrigerating. When cold, cut into small cubes.

Cookies

Heat the oven to 200°C, conventional and line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat. Put both types of sugar into a mixing bowl, pour on the butter and beat well. Add the egg and the vanilla extract or paste and beat again until well combined. Sift the flour and the baking powder together into a bowl, then fold it in. Allow the mixture to cool for 15–20 minutes before stirring in most of the walnuts; most of the chocolate and half the fudge pieces/salted caramel. 

Refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour before scooping tablespoons of the mixture into approx 47g balls. You can refrigerate the cookies at this stage or freeze them for later. 

When ready to bake, place 6 cookies onto each of the prepared trays, then distribute the remaining walnut pieces, the chocolate and fudge/salted caramel equally over the surfaces of the cookies. Sprinkle the cookies with the smoked salt and bake for 8-10 minutes. If chilled overnight, bake for 12-14 minutes or until the cookies are lovely and golden. If baked from frozen you'll need to add a few more minutes to the bake time.

You can ‘scoot’ the cookies with a larger cookie cutter when they come out of the oven to neaten the cookies. Cool the cookies to 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Once cool, store  the cookies in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

These cookies are so delicious when still warm from the oven and keep well. If you'd like to get that just baked feeling, zap the cookie in the microwave for 15-20 seconds to melt the chocolate chunks and soften the caramel before eating. Delish!

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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vanilla meringue cake with raspberries

vanilla meringue cake with raspberries

21 Sept 2026

I had a date with my favourite twin girls and I couldn't decide what to bake. They love chocolate, cream, custard and berries so I decided to make a meringue cake which I filled with cream and lemon curd. It wasn't the best choice of cake on a 33°C day. By the time I arrived at their place, the top layer had slid off the bottom layer on a slick of curd and cream. No doubt it still tasted delicious, but it didn't look so good. 

I decided to remake the cake, this time filling the meringue cake with cream and berries. Thankfully there was no car ride involved.

If you'd like to make your own version of this cake, here's the recipe for you which was adapted from a Belinda Jeffery recipe. I changed the proportions a little, increasing both the quantity of cake batter and the meringue layer. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Vanilla meringue cake with raspberries
Cake 
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
100g caster sugar
pinch sea salt flakes
3 egg yolks (from 60g eggs)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (60ml) milk
25g almond meal 

75g SR flour
1-2 x 150g punnets raspberries
 
Meringue
3 eggwhites (from 60g eggs)
150g caster sugar
2 tbs flaked almonds
1 tablespoon caster sugar, extra

Cream filling
125ml thickened cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Butter two 17cm springform cake tins and line the bases with buttered baking paper. Dust the tins with flour, tapping out the excess, and set them aside.

Put the butter, sugar and salt flakes into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat them on medium speed for about 4 minutes, until they’re light and fluffy. Now add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each one is added. Reduce the speed to low and add the vanilla and milk – the mixture may look quite curdled at this stage, but don’t worry, it will be fine once the flour is added. Combine the almond meal and flour in a small bowl and mix to remove any lumps. Mix in the flour mixture just until it’s combined.

Divide the batter equally between the two tins, then spread it out evenly into a shallow layer using an off-set spatula. Set the tins aside while you make the meringue.

Meringue layer

Thoroughly wash and dry the mixer bowl and beaters. Add the eggwhites to the bowl and beat them on medium speed until they’re just softly fluffy. Now add the sugar, a little at a time, beating well between each addition, until the meringue is thick and glossy – all up, this takes about 8–10 minutes.

Divide the meringue evenly between the cake tins and use a palette knife to spread it over the cake batter as smoothly as you can. Scatter the flaked almonds over each meringue layer, then sprinkle the extra sugar over the almonds.

Place the tins on the centre rack of the preheated oven and bake the cakes for 25–30 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. The meringue may puff up a bit, but it will sink again once it cools.

Remove the cakes to two wire racks and leave them to cool in the tins for 8 minutes. After this time, release and remove the sides of the tins. Gently lay a sheet of baking paper over the top of one cake, carefully invert it onto a flat plate, remove the base and paper, then invert the cake again onto the cooling rack so it’s meringue-side up. Repeat this with the second cake. (The reason for the baking paper is to help stop the almonds dropping off as you invert the cake – you won’t completely avoid it, but the paper certainly helps.) If the tops look a little flattened from turning them over, gently ruffle them up with a fork. Leave the cakes to cool completely.

Close to serving time, make the cream filling. To do this, whip the cream and vanilla together until they’re thick and fluffy.

Assembly
Sit one cake layer, meringue-side up, on a serving plate or cake stand. Spread  the vanilla cream over the cake then  press the raspberries into the cream. Carefully sit the remaining cake on top, also meringue-side up. If the weather is cool, the cake will hold quite well like this for a couple of hours. Although the cake is best eaten the day it’s made, the filled cake can be stored covered in the fridge and served the next door. 

I shared the cake with my neighbours and it was well received. I'd like to make another version of the curd and cream filled cake, though next time I'll fill the cake once I've arrived at my destination.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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Gill Meller’s Upside-Down Blood Orange Cake

Gill Meller’s Upside-Down Blood Orange Cake

14 Sept 2026

When plum season rolls around I make plum cake and similarly when it's blood orange season I like to make a blood orange cake. I've had a look through my recipe index and I have at least 20 blood orange flavoured recipes, many of them cakes and all of them a little different. 

Some of the cakes are made with olive oil and many are butter based cakes made with almond meal and polenta or semolina instead of flour. I found this recipe from Gill Meller on the Stonegate Estate website. This is an almond meal and polenta based cake, so it's naturally gluten free. As I have a huge bag of raw almonds in the pantry I ground them to make some natural almond meal, which added some extra texture to the cake.

Here's the recipe for you which was adapted from this Gill Meller recipe. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced, you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

I baked the cake in a springform tin and secured the base with some foil to prevent leakage, but ideally use a regular tin. I baked the cake in a17-cm cake tin but I think it would work even better if it were baked in a 20-cm cake tin. You'd need at extra orange or 2 to cover the base and a reduced bake time of around 45 minutes. 

Upside-down blood orange and almond cake

For the topping
3 small blood oranges
2 tbs caster sugar

Cake ingredients
100g unsalted butter, softened
112g caster sugar
2-3 tbs finely grated blood orange zest
2 eggs
3 cardamom pods, bashed and seeds crushed
112g ground whole almonds
60g fine polenta
½ tsp baking powder
A good pinch of sea salt

To finish
2 tbs warmed apricot jam
1-2 tsp boiling water
squeeze of lemon juice

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C, conventional. Grease, flour and line the base of a 17-cm springform tin with baking paper.

Finely grate the orange zest and set aside. You should have 2-3 tbs of orange zest. Peel the zested blood oranges and slice them into ½ cm rounds, removing any pips as you go. Sprinkle the caster sugar over the base of the tin, then arrange the blood orange slices in a single, slightly overlapping layer.

Beat the butter with the caster sugar, crushed cardamom seeds, the blood orange zest until very pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix for another minute or two so it’s nice and light.

Combine the ground almonds with the polenta, baking powder and sea salt, then fold this mixture gently into the creamed butter and eggs.Spoon the batter carefully over the arranged orange slices, spreading it evenly without disturbing the fruit.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour in the preheated 170°C, conventional oven or until the cake has risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before turning it out so the blood orange topping is on display. 

I think the cake needs an overnight rest to mature before serving. If you'd like to glaze the cake, its best to do this just before serving as the glaze reabsorbs over time. To make the glaze, combine all the ingredients together then brush the fruit with the thinned apricot jam. 

The cake keeps beautifully for several days in an airtight tin and becomes more flavoursome over time. I put this to the test as I baked the cake just before heading out for a weekend away. When I returned the cake was even more delicious than when freshly baked.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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