Larger Cakes

A large, layered, decorated cake is almost a prerequisite as the centrepiece of a birthday afternoon tea, an anniversary or a farewell to a friend or colleague – and plainer cakes are perfect for everyday. Many older cookery books describe them as ‘good cutting cakes’ because they keep well in the tins and cut into neat, non-crumbly slices for ease of serving and eating with your fingers. Whether plain or fancy, it’s always good to be able to say: ‘I knew you were coming, so I baked a cake.’

Lebanese Banana Cake

From ‘The Yoghurt Book: Food of the Gods’ (1983) by Arto der Haroutunian. This is an unusual cake since the bananas are sliced rather than mashed, the cake is flavoured with rose water, and it includes ground almonds which ensure a light texture. It looks pale and pretty and it smells and tastes very good, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty in eating it while it is fresh, but it ...
Fijian Chocolate Cake

This is a tender, dark and flavoursome cake which is extremely fast and easy to make. It includes a tin of coconut cream – hence the Fijian name – and the method of making involves adding the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mixing vigorously for a couple of minutes. It cuts into neat slices – even after the addition of a creamy butter icing flavoured with some of ...
Lemon Yoghurt Cake

There are many versions of Greek, Turkish and Armenian cakes made with yoghurt, and often with oil, since butter is used less in those cuisines. This one seems to have evolved in the 1980s when easy-mix cakes (no creaming of butter and sugar) were becoming popular here, since it appears in many New Zealand recipe books. It has become something of a classic and so when Shirley Dunphy contributed it ...
Biba's Aeblekage

Tokoroa was a thriving timber industry town in the 1950s and the workers it attracted from Europe and Scandinavia brought their cooking traditions with them. Shirley Dunphy contributed her Danish friend Biba’s recipe for this quickly-made and delicious apple cake to 1963 Tokoroa community recipe book, ‘Cooking for Fun’. It can be eaten either as a pudding or with coffee or tea; you melt the butter for the shortcake (no ...
Armenian Nutmeg Cake

This delightful plain cake is very fast to mix, involves no creaming of butter and sugar, and with surprisingly little effort you end up with a crunchy base and a tender and nutty top layer. You can make it in a ring tin, as I did this time, or use a round or square tin. The nutmeg flavour is unusual and very enjoyable. The reason for the name of the ...
Paris-Brest

Just like an enormous, circular cream puff, Paris-Brest is surprisingly fast and easy to make and is guaranteed to delight any recipient – as long as they like whipped cream. In 1891 a Parisian patissier whose shop was near the route of the Paris-Brest bicycle race was the first to make it, and its wheel shape is the perfect tribute to the bold bicyclists. The crunchy almond praline in the ...
Fasting Cake (Nistisimo Kek)

I found this simply-made cake in Favourite Greek Recipes – a delightful book put together by the Greek Orthodox Community of Wellington. The compilers have included a list of dishes for Lent made without eggs, meat or dairy products, but the olive oil, walnuts, brandy, spices and orange in this recipe ensure a delicious result which you could happily enjoy in any season. It is a plain cake, rather than ...
Special Chocolate Cake

I began making this cake when I was about seven, using my mother’s Kenwood Chef food mixer, and it was so successful that I speedily came to consider myself a chocolate-cake expert. It seems very small and simple compared with today’s chocolate cakes, made with many eggs and much chocolate, but it is a good, economical and reliable recipe. My most persistent memory of making the cake is the delightful ...
Dolly Varden Cake

A key character in Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby Rudge, which began appearing in instalments in 1841, Dolly Varden was a pretty, coquettish young woman, ‘the very pink and pattern of good looks’, whose dark eyes and rosy cheeks could outshine even ‘a jolly round of beef, a ham of the first magnitude, and sundry towers of buttered Yorkshire cake, piled slice upon slice in most alluring order’. Dickens’ American readers ...
Sister Blake’s Cake

This is another of the 16 recipes that Shirley Dunphy contributed to the 1963 Tokoroa fundraising recipe book, Cooking for Fun. (The Chocolate Caramel Fingers in Ladies, a Plate were also hers.) Sister Blake was the nursing sister who set up a maternity service for Tokoroa in the 1950s with the help of Sister Bell and Shirley, a young nurse at the time. Tokoroa was then a busy timber town, ...
Chocaroon Cake

One of my favourite community cookbooks, simply called Our Recipe Book, was published in December 1967 by the Karitane Public Hall Building Committee. It has an interesting selection of recipes and as soon as I saw this one with its promising name and its baked-in filling and topping I knew I had to try it. At the end of the recipe Mrs L. Stewart, who contributed it to the book, ...