stars in the night blazing their light can't hold a candle to your razzle dazzle

There's nothing like lovingly taking photos of a cake on your camera and then sticking the camera's SD card into your pocket and then losing it somewhere in the street to hinder the blog post writing process; luckily for me should anyone find it there is only cake photos on there and nothing incriminating (all my photos of me holding up signs saying "I just robbed this bank!" while pointing to a bank are on another SD card, phew!) but it was one hell of a pain to try and take photos of the cake again when I'd since demolished so much of it directly into my mouth. I managed to take a few hasty photos of what was left of it and found a couple of grainy-like-sugar snaps on my phone, but yeah, consider yourself warned that these photos aren't my best work, and my best work is in fact dissolving in a puddle somewhere between Newtown and Wellington central.

caught by the fuzz(y photography) 

But at least the cake itself was good, and what a name: Bobby Dazzler Cake. Bobby Dazzler Cake. I found the recipe carefully written in the back of a cookbook belonging to one of my great-grandmothers (a smartly bound Aunt Daisy book with my great grandmother's name embossed in gold on the cover, fancy!) I was utterly smitten with the name before I even saw what was in the cake itself. You know when you hear a word or a phrase for the first time and then suddenly you see it everywhere? That happened to me with didymo, although it only occurred to me recently that it was probably because there were suddenly all these "watch out for didymo" campaigns everywhere and previously there hadn't been (once more for the people in the back: didymo! A satisfying word to say, even if you have to Watch Out for it.) But uh, sometimes it feels like more of a coincidence than that, in this case my excellent girlfriend and I were watching the terrible/amazing miniseries Tipping The Velvet and one character exclaimed to the other, "you're a real bobby dazzler." I was thoroughly taken with this phrase and while I initially assumed it was some secret Victorian-era glasses-waggling code, like "she's civic-minded" or "she stands up on the night train" or "she's remarkable" it turns out it simply means something along the lines of "the cat's pyjamas" which makes it no less delightful. Anyway, mere days after seeing this show, I discovered this recipe, in this book I must have read dozens upon dozens of times, and I knew it was a sign that I should bake it with immediacy. 

the bee's knees

The recipe was written in that type of handwriting that was probably considered terribly neat and full of propriety sixty years ago, and is entirely unintelligible nowadays, not to mention all in imperial measurements - a pound of this and a pound of that - and finally, as was the style of the time, it trails off mysteriously halfway through and doesn't give you any detail about how to mix it, what temperature and how long to bake it for, or indeed what sort of tin to put it in. There was so much that you just had to know back then! In the spirit of trying to just know stuff, I made some presumptions and biffed it into a ring cake tin and baked it for an hour at 180 C, or what Aunt Daisy might've cryptically referred to as "a good oven".

And it turned out splendidly! The mixture contains a resolutely old-timey mixture of prunes, grated carrot, grated apple, and sultanas, as if it's trying to be five different cakes at once, but you get a kind of moist fruitiness that's very comforting, the sort of cake you want to have with a large pot of tea while the rain dashes at the windows (a very easy scenario to come by in Wellington these days as we approach the middle of a neverending winter.) Honestly, when (when! Not if!) I make this again I'll increase the apple and carrot quantity to two, and dice the prunes a lot finer - the former sort of dissolved into the cake while the latter were all like "here I am! Prune! In your face!" I'd also use brown sugar instead of white, just to hold all that fruit together with a slightly more darker caramelliness. But honestly, this cake was wonderful, especially when I spread it with a thick cream cheese icing.

bobby dazzler cake

adapted from a handwritten recipe from my great-grandmother

250g soft butter
one and a half cups sugar
three eggs
one cup milk
one cup sultanas
one cup prunes, roughly chopped
one large carrot, grated
one large green apple, grated
three cups plain flour
one teaspoon baking soda

Set your oven to 180C/350F and generously butter and flour a ring/tube cake tin. I say generously because ring tins always make me a bit nervous, since there's so much surface area for cake to stick to. 

Beat the butter, sugar, and eggs together till soft, light and fluffy. Meanwhile, heat the milk till just below a simmer - hot and starting to wobble but not bubbling - and carefully stir it into the butter. I added a little at first, and whisked that in, then a little more and a little more and then finally tipped the lot in - this makes it easier to mix it all together. 

Stir in everything else, and spatula it into the cake tin. Bake for around an hour, or until firm and brown on top. Allow to sit for about ten minutes before running a knife carefully around the cake and its inner ring, and tipping it onto a plate. Ice with a mixture of around 250g room temperature cream cheese mixed with around half a cup of icing sugar. 

Keeping it familial, and while you're here I may as well tell you, the grey rose-patterned plate that I photographed the cake on used to belong to a family friend's great-aunt (if I remember correctly) and it was given to me as a birthday present years ago. The blue gold-edged plate belonged to my late grandmother on my dad's side. I love new things and new cookbooks but there's something quietly lovely about looking at a cookbook and seeing someone's handwriting on it, someone who only knew you when you were a baby, and thinking about them at your own age; or how a plate that would've had a thousand different cakes on it throughout the years is still getting to have cake on it; or just, I don't know, knowing that these bits and pieces aren't stuck in a cupboard somewhere but are still getting used and loved. It's nice!

oh wow also this knife belonged to the great-grandparents too now I think on it; also this photo is an instagram which is why it's all clean and bright like an eidelweiss

I daresay you could do further things to spruce this up; soak the prunes and sultanas in dark rum before you mix them in, skewer the cooked cake and pour over dark rum; order take-out and forget the cake completely and drink a lot of dark rum; add sultanas or dried apricots or dark chocolate - whatever, really. And then you can look fondly at your cake and say, a la Tipping the Velvet, "you're a real bobby dazzler". 

Almost as exciting as thinking about cake, is the fact that I wrote about important television show Pretty Little Liars for The Spinoff; I am really so proud of this piece that I wrote since this show means so much to me and it took me so long to write and research but was also so fun, not since I wrote an essay about Idina Menzel for a media studies paper in university have I had such joy approaching a deadline. So even if you're all, "this show is about teenage girls and therefore I'm quite sure without really knowing why that it is TERRIBLE and MEANINGLESS" perhaps I can change your mind or at least outrage you by comparing it to The Wire?  

______________________________________________________________

title from: Old Devil Moon, a song as comfortingly old-timey yet sassy as this very cake that I'm writing about. Judy Garland could break my heart singing the happiest song and as I admire that quality greatly, that's the version I'm directing you to. 

______________________________________________________________

music lately: 

Idina Menzel covering Radiohead's Creep, live in Manila. Oh wow. I haven't listened to the original of this song (it's one of those ones that you utterly thrash and then it starts to lose all meaning) and I wasn't sure how this would work but Idina is gold here, like, old-timey late early 2000s Idina all sweary and dark and twisty and her voice sounds amazing. I love her.

Laura Lee, Little Too Late. My rad pal has just released a new single, it's gorgeous and dreamy and fun and I love it and am so proud of her! It's a good time to be a Laura. 

______________________________________________________________

next time: whatever it is I'm gonna take better care of my SD card, that's for sure! 

i should tell you: spook the horses

Well hello there, and welcome to volume seventeen of I Should Tell You, where I ask cool musicians about food to see what they have to say, or indeed, to see if they'll even answer at all. I haven't done one of these in a damn while, but yay, it's back! 

This time around I'm talking with Callum, Zach and Donnie from Wellington band Spook The Horses, whose sound I would describe as "pleasingly grumbly" but is perhaps more helpfully to be described as the sound of "post-hardcore, atmospheric, doom". Wonderful! If you want to listen to them you could head to their bandcamp site, or you can hear their entire recent album Rainmaker on YouTube. If gruff, dark, moody music that kind of envelopes you and washes over you at the same time when you listen to it really loud tickles your fancy then your fancy will most definitely be tickled by these guys. Look out for them around Wellington as they're always doing gigs here and there, otherwise just immerse yourself in that blissful doom noise.    

Thanks Callum, Zach and Donnie! The interview begins...now. 

1. Where's somewhere you've eaten that you kinda like to brag about or drop into conversation?

Callum: I've been done the whole degustation and wine-pairing thing at Hippopotamus before which is always good for some bragging but my go-to place in Wellington is Olive. Olive up and down rules. Consistently good coffee, good brunch vibes and the most chill and peaceful outdoor courtyard ever. It's less of a name-drop and more of a love letter,

Zach: A place that Is always interesting and relaxing to eat at is Duke Carvells. Although I'm not sure if i've earned the bragging rights, as the only time I can afford to go there is when my parents are paying. I enjoy eating somewhere that makes as many of the components of the meal as possible on site. I know they do their own breads, and smoked/preserved meats and sausages. They're all delicious, and are presented in interesting ways.

Donnie: It’s not exactly something to brag about, but I’m a huge, huge fan of pho bò, which is this Vietnamese beef noodle dish, and the best pho I’ve ever had, anywhere, is in this little unassuming fish and chip shop on Bond Street here called the Fisherman’s Plate. It’s one of those places that has burgers, chips, spring rolls all up next to the Vietnamese cuisine, so you’d never guess, but it has some of the best Vietnamese food in the whole city.

2. What do you fix for yourself, or where do you go to eat, when it's just you on your own?

Callum: Nachos! Alex and I used to live together and made developed the Spook the Horses classic, Nachos de los Muertos, which is probably terrible Spanish and probably also very culturally insensitive (Sorry.) It's a chili delivery mechanism above all else. We all love spicy food so the more different kinds of chili the better. Chipotles and green jalapenos are mandatory. Black beans are mandatory. Watties beans are strictly forbidden. What's not to love about a cauldron of vicious as hell chili?

Zach: My go to solo home cooked meal is probably Putanesca, a pasta dish with a salty and warming tomato sauce. I usually make it because its really quick, and all of the ingredients last for ages - so I always have them lying around. Olives, capers, anchovies, canned tomatoes, etc. Also a lot of people get weirded out about anchovies, so my leftovers never get stolen!

Donnie: I will never, ever pass up the opportunity to make some dope as fuck grilled cheese sandwiches. Love those things. You can chuck anything in them, too. Olives, artichokes, tomatoes, ham, pineapple, corn, mushrooms etc. Two pieces of thick grain bread chucked in a frying pan, buttered sides out, with a ton of cheese in them, and whatever else you’ve got lying around. I think I have to go make one right now.

3. What's one of your favourite food-related memories from your childhood?"

Callum: My dad is an excellent cook and a total outdoorsman, so he grows as many of his own veges and herbs as he can. My fondest memories are of how proud he would be to serve something he grew himself, or seeing him duck out of the kitchen to the herb garden to season a dish on the fly. I have some weird memories too, like my mum telling me the chicken I was eating was actually "chicken flavoured dough" to silence my objections about eating animals. Maybe my occasional flirtations with vegetarianism would have stuck if not for that bizarre lie.

Zach: The most vivid memories of food from my childhood would have to be of Christmas and new year’s time with my family. There were a lot of dishes that were traditional to have for our family, but my favourite one is probably the trifle my parents made. I'm not talking supermarket sponge cake and Watties canned peaches. It was all beautifully homemade sponge, custard, syllabub and fresh berries. Also lots and lots of booze. It's one of those rare times you can get drunk off eating solid food. The other memories that stuck would just be learning about having a healthy diet from my mother. She taught me that you can cook healthily and still have awesome tasting food.

Donnie: My mum is a fucking INCREDIBLE cook. Like, she can walk into any kitchen and just work with what’s there and make a delicious feast for eight people. One dish I was always fiending for was her kedgeree, which is a kind of curried rice dish made with smoked fish. This time when we were camping with a bunch of family friends, she made so much of the stuff for everyone that it filled one of those enormous 50 litre washing tubs. I had like six bowls and still wanted more. I’m pretty sure they had to keep me away by swatting at me with a spatula.

Read previous i should tell you interviews here.

and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere

rum'n'raisin your hands in the the air like you just don't care

I've been really sick this whole past week, and every time I even tried to blog it was like, what if I just lie here and groan throatily instead? Yes, that's a better use of my time. I'm still a little tickly of the throat and having to blow my nose a ton, but things are definitely improved. I pushed myself a couple of times last week - to go to work (alas, no sexy 2005 Lindsay Lohan voice for me but more of an enthusiastic honking goose noise every time I opened my mouth) and to go to the launch party of the Visa Wellington on a Plate festival. I really could've stayed in bed that night of course, but the promise of free wine is a rousing one and reading the new event programme is always exciting and damned if I'm going to let feeling like death stop me from doing some hard mingling and trying to feel like I'm vaguely relevant in the food-related scene, whatever that even is. Upon arriving at the launch my sheer black fringed robe immediately got tangled in a low-hanging plant in the foyer, causing an old man to say in a concerned voice, "This is the Wellington on a Plate launch", as though I'd wandered here by mistake while looking for like, The Quarterly Symposium of Sewer Dwellers, but fortunately my name was in fact on the door and I managed to extricate myself and have a wonderful time. Love a good launch party! And now I have till August to meander through the programme and hedge my bets as to which set menu in which fancy restaurant looks the funnest. 

What with my throat feeling like an actual garbage can and all, I thought the ice cream I made a while ago would be a soothing thing to eat, but unfortunately my stupid nose, with all the functionality of a flickering lightbulb, meant that I couldn't really taste anything. This was distressing. Since this ice cream is honestly the most delicious thing ever. Luckily, I made some well before I got sick, ate the lot in one sitting, then made some more and ate half of that before I got sick, so I have a good frame of reference from which to describe it to you. And I will describe it to you like this: omg it's amazing. 

I don't even like raisins at all, those gritty little scrunched up no-fun ex-grapes, but my swell girlfriend was saying how she loved rum'n'raisin ice cream when she lived in England and never saw it anywhere here in New Zealand. I like a challenge, even if I don't like a raisin, and I adore making ice cream, and actually had never even tried this particular flavour before, so how was I to know if the look on my face I made when I thought about it even matched how it tastes in real life?

I cheated massively and substituted the more tolerable sultanas while audaciously keeping the name, but if you're not averse to the real alliterative thing then by all means substitute raisins for my substituted sultanas. Really though, it's the rum and the coconut sugar which make this recipe particularly magical - I used Cruzan Blackstrap rum which is full of dark, sticky caramel flavour, and anything along those lines would be perfect. I feel like I've gone on heaps about coconut sugar lately, but it's so fudgily butterscotchily good and really gives the custard an intensely, gorgeously mellow flavour (yes, both intense and mellow). Making the custard is a pain - so much transferring between bowls and pans and so much stirring! - but it's forever since I've done this proper method of making ice cream and the soft, dissolvingly creamy texture you get once it's frozen is worth the effort, I think.

And yes, the sultanas themselves are wonderful - all swollen from the rum, and strangely chewy and confection-like once frozen, little bursts of alcoholic warmth amongst all the caramel iciness. 

look at this good ice cream I made

rum'n'raisin ice cream 

makes around a litre/1200ml, depending on how much custard and mixture you eat. 

a recipe by myself. I didn't consult any other recipes so this is literally ice cream that has rum and also raisins in it (I mean, sultanas, but same diff) and I have no idea how similar it is to the established flavour itself, but since I never see it around and have never tried anything but mine I can only conclude that my version is totally superior to everything. 

3 large egg yolks

half a cup coconut sugar, or brown sugar

one cup full cream milk

500 - 600ml cream (sometimes it's only sold in 600ml bottles and if that's all you can find all that happens is you'll get a bit more ice cream, wheeeee) 

half a cup of sultanas, golden if you can find them

dark rum, I used Cruzan Blackstrap

Firstly, place the sultanas in a small bowl and pour in just enough rum to pretty much submerge them. Leave them overnight ideally to absorb as much alcohol as possible, but if you've only got an hour then I'm sure it'll still be okay. 

Slowly heat the milk in a saucepan, till it's almost, almost, at a simmer - you want it to be hot but barely starting to wobble and move around with the heat, if that makes sense? While it's heating up, mix the egg yolks together with the sugar - it might turn into quite a thick paste, don't worry - and then once the milk is hot, remove it from the heat and briskly whisk a few spoonfuls of it into the egg yolks, slowly adding the rest of the hot milk while continuing to whisk. Now spatula all that back into the saucepan and stir this mixture over a low heat - either using a whisk or a spatula - until it thickens up a little, like the texture of a good milkshake. This will take a few minutes of stirring but keeping the heat low prevents the egg yolks from cooking instantly. Once you feel like it's sufficiently thick - less a milky texture and more a creamy, saucy texture - remove from the heat immediately. 

Now all the hard stuff is done, and to turn this into ice cream, all you have to do is: stir the sultanas and remaining rum into the cooled custard, whip the cream until it's thick and aerated but not fluffy and stiff, fold everything together, spatula into a freezer-safe container and freeze, without stirring, until it's solid. That's it.  

 that's it

Also, the person who suggested that I try making this in the first place really loved it, which is excellent. There are so many things I'm not good at, but it's nice to remind myself how amazingly great I am at making ice cream. I mean, I really did eat the entire first batch in one sitting, as if in some kind of delicious fugue state. And so I conclude that raisins are in fact pretty okay, but only if they're actually sultanas. And filled with rum.

Also: ya girl has blue hair now! Although as I type I've randomly smudged some purple and pink into it to see what happens. What will probably happen is I'll forget I've done this and take a nap after I've finished writing this and I'll end up dying my face and pillow but somehow not my hair. But I want to nap so hard right now I'm not sure I even care? Either way, fun times should ensue.

Some other exciting things I've done lately include, appearing on Radio New Zealand to talk about preserved lemons with Jesse Mulligan - I love being on Radio NZ, they are good people - and also I wrote about a local coffee shop for US site Sprudge. Ya girl is doing stuff! Also ya girl is so ready to be completely unsick again. There's only so many times that I can Leslie Knope myself into action, being all "okay I can't actually stand upright okay time to go interact with the public and do the responsibilities" (by "only so many times" I mean "I will do this endlessly and as many times as I have to", but yeah.) On the upside, being sick and having my tastebuds wavering in and out of service means I still have quite a lot of untouched rum'n'raisin ice cream left in the freezer...

_______________________________________________________________

title from: Carly Rae Jepsen, Both Sides Now. The more I see "sacrilege! gasp!" comments about her cover of the Joni Mitchell song on youtube the more amazing and legit it sounds, tbh.

 _______________________________________________________________  

music lately:

She Cries Your Name, Beth Orton. The opening strings on this are so dreamy and haunting! And then it stays that way! 

Shakey Dog, Ghostface Killah. Speaking of dreamy and haunting, I just looove the sample that serves in place of a chorus here, every time it changes up a chord into that "uhhhhhhh" bit (I'm so great at describing music lol) it's so amazing. Also Ghostface Killah is massively engaging and I love how he always sounds a bit stressed.

_______________________________________________________________

next time: even if I have this cold forever and ever I'm gonna make myself blog sooner, okay? Being asleep all day is no excuse for not writing!