The Nanna

I know plenty of artists who like to bake. I know plenty of artists who are practicing a shadow art. I know that I was baking since 9 and I was drawing since kindy. I know that baking and owning baking businesses has paid my bills and kept me sufficiently neatly distracted from myself for years. It is the activity I participate in when I am a little emotionally disturbed. You will see I bake a heck of a lot… but, whatever it takes to get through huh!?

The business was super fast, big stressful and deeply unsatisfying. Capitalism made me think I was winning in life. I still have a back injury as a result, and I find it near impossible to bake anything from those days. This cake however is a new improved sustainable version of one of the cakes I used to make.

This time round it involves organic, local and sustainable ingredients, slightly more nutritious and mainly from the local Blue Mountains Co-op in Katoomba. I am not a fan of rapadura sugar. Whilst it is marginally nutritionally better for you and marginally better in terms of digestion, it comes from overseas (green miles). Often from lands that have been cleared to support the western “wellness” industry. From lands that were ancient rainforests or lands that the local indigenous populations sustainably farmed for their own communities. So I think in all honesty, I feel like Australian cane sugar is preferable to the rape and pillage of other nations cultures…. dont you think? If you need to not have the cocaine experience of cane sugar, that dreaded word “processed”, or you are in desperate need of the “nutrients” in the unrefined sugars, then maybe, skip cake? Take a delicious pleasure in some of the local blueberries that are hitting the market right now, the ones the co-op is selling, in the biodegradable cardboard punnets. Because, dont even get me started on those bloody plastic punnets full of cheap ass chemical laden berries in the mega markets.

Oh and do I have to bang on about organic etc with every damn recipe here? Can you just make sure you know that I use free range eggs, organic local produce, local flours, local fresh fruit and veg and yada yada. Buy it all from the Co-op. Dont bloody get it from the mega giants in their tiny little overpriced plastic bags. Its cheaper, fresher and better at the co-op. Also you get to do community, and say hello to awesome peeps at the co-op. Good for mental health. We all need that.

The Nanna

Brown Butter, Rhubarb, Custard Cake Recipe

Rhubarb:

Buy a bunch of thin stemmed locally grown rhubarb from the co-op. trim, wash, chop into small pieces and simmer with a splash of water and about 3tbs brown sugar until tender. let cool.

Custard:

• 1 cup of milk

• 1/2 a vanilla pod

  Heat in a saucepan

• 1 egg

• 50g sugar

• 25g cornstarch

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

  Whisk in a bowl

  Pour the hot milk over this and whisk at the same time

  Return the whole lot to the saucepan

  Whisk over heat continuously until the custard thickens and is glossy

  let cool

• 35g butter

  Whisk in butter until fully absorbed

  Let cool

Cake Batter:

• 125g butter

  Melt in a saucepan and keep it on the heat until a little browned. remove from saucepan and let cool

• 1tsp vanilla

• 240g brown sugar

  Whisk into cooled butter till light and fluffy

• 3 eggs

  Add one at a time

• 225g organic plain unbleached cake flour (co-op)

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp bicarb

• 1/2 cup milk

  fold through dry ingredients alternatively with wet

To Bake:

Line a 20cm springform tin with baking paper

Pour in 2/3 cake batter

spread rhubarb over

spread custard over

spread remaining cake batter over

bake in 180c oven till cooked (it will rise, shrink a little from sides and a skewer inserted into centre will come out with a few crumbs on rather than raw batter smeared up it)

when cool mix a little icing sugar with rose water and drizzle over the cake

forage your garden or steal from the neighbours that don’t use roundup for flowers and scatter effortlessly yet artistically over the cake as if you are a stylist trapped in an earth mothers body.

photograph the cake and try and flog it to someone on FB so you can recoup the costs, because you are on the bloody dole because, covid.