Wortelcake (Κέικ καρότο)

While I'm away on a short break, I've posted this recipe to remind me of what I have to start doing when I get back home and Greek schools open for the new term. Cupcakes and muffins with added fibre are perfect for healthy school lunches.

A Dutch friend put up a recipe on her facebook page. I had no idea what the recipe was for, since she had no pictures attached to the recipe. All I recognised was the word 'cake'. Here is what I saw on the screen:

Wortelcake
-200 gr geraspte wortel
-geraspte citroenschil
-3 ei
-125 gr witte en bruine suiker
-150 gr gesmolten boter
-225 gr zelfrijzend bakmeel
-2 afgestreken theel. kaneel
- snufje zout
-125 gr gewelde rozijnen (of in reepjes gesneden gedr. vijgen, walnoten)
-----
-oven op 175 gr.
-wortel, citroenrasp, eieren, gesm. boter, suiker mengen
-voeg toe: zelfr. bakmeel, kaneel, zout, meng weer
-voeg toe: rozijnen (noten)
-cakevorm invetten, bestuiven, mengsel erin, 45 min. bakken tot gaar.
-----
-1x vanillesuiker
-50 gr poedersuiker
-50 gr roomboter
-1 pakje Philadelfia creamcheese (125 gr)
door elkaar roeren, op cake smeren en 15 min. in koelkast*

Using this recipe, I made the best carrot cake muffins ever: moist, delicious, perfect. Instead of rozijnen, I used dried blueberries, and instead of creamcheese my own natural-coloured beetroot-strawberry jam icing. Isn't Google translate great?!

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Blueberry muffins (Κεκάκια με φρούτα του δάσου)

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." These famous words of Dr Johnson appeared in the Let's Go Europe edition that I bought just before I left New Zealand to do the big OE. Dr Johnson's statement doesn't seem to include women; he is often regarded as a misogynist, but this has been refuted in more modern times, as illustrated by one of his lesser known quotes: "A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topics for conversation when they are by themselves." In any case, there always seem to have been more women living in London than men since the seventeenth century at least.

Oh what it is and where it is and why it is, no one knows, but to have said: "I walked on Waterloo Bridge," "I rendezvoused at Charring Cross," "Piccadilly Circus is my playground," to say these things, to have lived these things, to have lived in the great city of London, centre of the world..., to write a casual letter home beginning: "Last night in Trafalgar Square..." (Sam Selvon, 1956, The Lonely Londoners)

The best holidays that I've taken with my family have been in London; my children have seen the marbles Elgin stole more times than the ones he left behind at the Acropolis. The people that make up this magnetic city come from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Migration to London is the theme of my favorite book, Small Island by Andrea Levy, which signalled a turning point in my life: after I read it, I was convinced that I could write similar stories to the one I was reading, which is how I started writing this blog. The stories I like to tell are the ones that connect my family to their mother's complicated past. They were not lucky enough to have the opportunity to get to know their New Zealand-linked grandparents. Because my tangible links to my birthplace are quite limited, I hope that these stories will leave behind a legacy for my children, which will explain many of the things that they might not have understood about their upbringing.

If you haven't read Small Island yet and you enjoy reading about migration experiences, then read it soon, and try to see the BBC television adaptation of the novel; I find it difficult to choose between the book and the film, as both are excellent in their own right.

Above right: Braving the cold under the Statue of Eros at Picadilly Circus. Left: A wizard and a witch making their way to Hogwarts from Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station. Below: Despite the cloudy sky above Trafalgar Square, it was warm enough to take off our coats and run around freely.

*** *** ***

As a youngster, I always had a fascination with the UK. My interest in cooking, as opposed to helping my mother in the kitchen, developed from my avid following of a TV cooking show that I used to watch in NZ. It was presented by none other than the UK's very own Delia Smith, whose style came off to my younger self as very 'sensible'.

It may sound surprising that, after being raised on Greek food for most of my life up till then, I would turn to Delia to show me how to cook. The truth is that my mother did not teach me how to cook. Being a very busy woman all her life, when she cooked the family meals, she didn't like to be pestered in the kitchen. She would ask her children to help her in the kitchen when she needed help; it is these moments that flash in my mind when I am cooking for my own family. Cooking was something my own mother regarded more as instinctive rather than taught, unlike Delia, who was doing exactly the opposite. What I liked about Delia's style was the way she explained everything, literally everything that she did in the kitchen, something that my mother, an experienced home cook, didn't do for me. For example, I'd ask my mother for her recipe for, say, a cake; she'd tell me what ingredients I needed, and that's it: 


"Do you just mix everything altogether, Mum?" I'd ask her.  

"No, of course not!" she'd answer.

That's why I liked Delia. Delia wouldn't have expected me to know what to do with a plain list of ingredients. She would give more precise instructions, something more like this:

"First, put on a clean apron, take a medium-sized bowl out of your cupboard - this one will do (holding it up for her audience to look at) - then crack the eggs, ONE at a time, over the bowl, and drop them in, taking care not to drop any eggshell with it..." Experienced cooks often forget that amateurs need to be told everything. 

I was so enthralled by Delia that I bought Delia Smith's One is Fun! when it first came out after the TV show was screened. Apart from the classic Edmonds Cookbook, every Kiwi's cooking bible for the absolute beginner (few New Zealanders do not own their own copy), this is one of my most well-thumbed books. I'd come home from my classes at university and cook something for myself while my parents were still at work. Then I'd clean up the kitchen, leaving no trace of my passing. The kitchen was still very much my mother's domain, and her cooking dominated. (Left: My edition of Delia's Complete Cookery Course Vol 1-3). Delia's recipes didn't adapt well to my mother's cooking routine. From my parents' point of view, there was a distinct lack of olive oil in the dishes, and it all looked, smelt and tasted so wrong to my parents: currants in the rice, sweets made from bread, moussaka made with lentils instead of mince. They were all unheard-of food combinations in my mother's Cretan kitchen. I didn't have the confidence to share my food in those days; the lack of interest in other people's food on the part of my parents did not help.   A delightful tantalising display of sweets in a Greenwich cake shop: I can name every single one of these cakes, as they are very similar to what was displayed in Wellington cake shops in my youth. Another reason why I was fascinated by Delia was probably the fact that, through her, I found out about what most of my classmates were eating in their homes. Since my mother's cooking could generally be summed up as Greek, I was left with a huge gap in my experience of the food my schoolfriends and colleagues ate, a gap which Delia filled for me. In those days, people still ate according to traditional norms, and Sunday lunch would still consist of things like Yorkshire pudding, jacket potatoes and pot roast. These are the names of dishes that I remember people around me mentioning, none of which we ever had at home, since I had nowhere to try them myself. Delia may be an English cook, but her early recipes are familiar to any old-fashioned (or should I just say old?) Kiwi. Through Delia's cookbooks, I also learnt how to make all my favorite non-Greek sweets, some of which we also ate at home (albeit store-bought ones), because it's very difficult to say no to sweets, whatever their origin: instead of koulourakia, I still prefer gingernuts; as a change from a Greek pita with filo pastry, I like to make buttery pie crusts for a quiche filling; instead of syrup-drenched Greek sweets, I would much rather have a slice of currant loaf (which I dare not make lest I eat it all myself, as no one else in the house likes this kind of cake). One Delia recipe that I began making in Greece since I came to live here (and never made in New Zealand) is orange marmalade, a good way to use up the harvest from our 500 trees. Foreign food presents from friends and readers Despite what is often said about British cuisine (which often reflects people's eating habits rather their ability to cook), some of the greatest comfort foods have their origin in the UK: English breakfast, fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, the Sunday roast, cream tea and trifle are but a few irresistibles the world over. London is also one of the best places on the planet where anyone can sample the food of nearly all the cuisines of the world. And I won't forget what one of my readers once told me: "The worst Chinese take-away in England compares to the best Chinese restaurant I've ever been to in Greece and at a third of the price." We always travel with our kids; they'd never forgive us if they found out that we were having so much fun without them. Here we are at the IMAX 3D-cinema, Science Museum, London. One of the sweets that we couldn't get enough of during our visits to London were muffins. Things are getting better in Greece, with good muffins becoming more and more available, but not in my favorite flavour: blueberry muffins. I haven't seen blueberries available here yet, but even when they do arrive (and they surely will), they are bound to be ridiculously priced, like the imported fresh blackberries (from Mexico) that have made it onto shelves of high-end supermarkets (and I really can't imagine who on earth is buying Mexican blackberries at the price they are being sold). A friend from abroad recently bought me some blueberries as a present when he came to Crete on a visit. I immediately set about making them into some excellent muffins. When I presented them to my children, they bit into them without any hesitation, at least until my son realised that these cupcakes had something in them that looked like chocolate, but it most definitely wasn't chocolate. "Are these sultanas, Mum?" "No, of course not. You know I know you don't like sultanas." "So what are these black things?" "They're chocolate drops." "They don't look like chocolate drops." "They English* chocolate drops. X_____ bought them when he visited us, remember?" "Oh, OK... But next time, Mum, can you make these with Greek chocolate, not English chocolate?" My son's tastebuds are highly culturally attuned. *The blueberries were purchased in London; they were grown in Poland. ©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Chocolate beetroot muffins (Κεκάκια με μπατζάρι)

In the summer, I don't mind making as much chocolate cake as my kids can get enough of, because I always add grated zucchini and mashed banana into the mixture. It's like they are getting their fruit and vegetable 5-a-day intake all in one. The kids have no idea what they are eating - it looks and tastes like chocolate cake. In the winter, I can't do this because, for a start, the zucchini season is over, and secondly, because I don't freeze any zucchini - my deep freeze can't handle any more bric-a-brac, what with one compartment completely filled with kalitsounia, another two compartments jammed with tins of ready-to-cook moussaka, boureki and papoutsakia, and the usual deep-freeze staples. My kids often wonder why I stop making chocolate cake; they think it's a seasonal food product.

Now I needn't worry, since I discovered beetroot and chocolate cake, via two other bloggers, Jo and Nic. Beetroot is available all year round, like other tuber vegetables, carrots, potatoes, and so on. But they are not commonly made into anything more interesting in Crete than a boiled salad. Recently, beetroot mixed with yoghurt (similar to tzatziki dip) has been seen being used here and there around the town, but that's about it.

The purple tinge of the processed beetroot adds another dimension to these muffins, which do not taste of beetroot at all. The purple colour in the batter fades away when the muffins are cooked - no one will now how these chocolate muffins retained their moisture! Just make them when no one is looking - and get rid of all the evidence, like purple stains on your benchtop, knife and fingers.

For a dozen good-sized muffins, you need only a few simple ingredients. I adapted the recipes from the other bloggers' links (above) and came to the following ingredients list:
a glass of oil (we only use olive oil in our house)
a cup of sugar
2 vials of vanilla sugar
5 small beetroot bulbs, boiled and pureed in a blender
half a cup of walnuts processed in the blender (this is optional: you can substitute this with chocolate drops, raisins or other dried or fresh berry fruit like blueberries and cranberries, or even walnut chunks)
100g cooking chocolate, melted (I also added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder in order to ensure that the chocolate flavour would emanate from the muffins and no one would be able to guess the vegetable addition)
2 eggs
300g self-raising flour
Place the oil, sugar, vanilla sugar and pureed beetroot (and walnuts, if using) in a bowl, and mix well. Add the melted chocolate and mix again. Beat in each egg with a wooden spoon. Add the flour and beat into the batter, making sure that the batter remains smooth. I preferred to add the flour in slowly, stopping when the batter resembled porridge. If the mixture feels too dry, add some a few drops of milk to smooth it out. Pour into a prepared muffin tin (or into cupcake casings) and cook for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean when inserted into one of the muffins.

Making beetroot and chocolate muffins is like getting two meals out of one cooking process. Beetroot in Greece is sold with the lovely green frond on the top of the head, and these are actually eaten too, something that surprises a lot of people who are used to seeing beetroot being sold only as a bulb. It is turned into the most delicious horta dish, dressed in olive oil and vinegar. So when you boil your beetroot for the muffins, use the tubers for your muffins and set aside the red stalks and green leaves for a salad.

A word of warning: beetroot juice doesn't create a red, crimson or even pink dye for Easter eggs - they go brown, as I discovered when I tried an experiment a few Easters ago!

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Black forest chocolate and zucchini gateau (Κέικ σοκολάτας με κολοκύθι)

That river of zucchini is still flowing. The fridge has filled up with zucchini, there's zucchini on the kitchen work top, there's zucchini in the garden, we're going to have to start selling the stuff; either that, or give it away by leaving bags full of it at neighbours' doorsteps, with little signs saying: "Cook me", or "Free to a good home".

Thank goodness I found Clotilde's chocolate and zucchini cake! I have kept the basic recipe, but made a few changes to it: I used only white flour, not a mixture of brown and white; only cocoa was used, not a mixture of cocoa and chocolate chips; the topping is completely different since I turned the cake into a gateau. It's a shame that no one in my family celebrates their birthday in the summer, because now I know how to make the most moist, vegetable-based chocolate cake ever - and get rid of some of that excess zucchini crop.


You need:
2 cups all-purpose flour (English teacups)
1/2 cup cocoa powder (4-6 tablespoons, according to taste; the more cocoa, the less zucchini is visible)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup margarine (I'm thinking of substituting olive oil in this as I now do for banana cake)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla powder
1 tsp instant coffee granules
3 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups of zucchini, unpeeled, grated
Beat the margarine with the sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and mix in well. Now add the salt, vanilla and coffee granules. Mix in the zucchini, making sure it is spread evenly in the mixture. Add the sifted cocoa, flour, baking powder and soda, and mix in till the mixture looks like a thick paste. Pour into a greased tin and cook for 40 minutes in a moderate oven. To check if the cake is done, stick a knife into it to see if it comes out clean.

I decided to divide the mixture into two tins: a small loaf tin and a small round tin. The loaf became part of my children's lunchbox, while the round cake, when it had cooled down, was decorated with whipped cream (a leftover from a pasta dish) and cherries, which were 3 euro a kilo today at the supermarket (last week, they were 6 euro a kilo).

Leave it in the refrigerator for an hour before serving, because it is so moist that it may lose its shape when it is cut. For a richer version, slice the cake in the middle into two rounds (or better still, cook two small round cakes), spread whipped cream on one layer, sprinkle a few slices of pitted cherries onto the cream, place the second layer of cake on top, and finally, ice it with more whipped cream and a few whole cherries to make the perfect torte.

This is the kind of cake that I will definitely make again, as well as have a go at turning it into muffins - it is moister than my boiled chocolate cake (which is a very moist cake), and the zucchini simply makes it much healthier. The bold combination of the grass green courgette in a sea of brown chocolate dotted by the crimson cherries is eye-catching. If I could only convince my family that zucchini can be eaten raw, I'd have sprinkled a few courgette skin shavings in between the cherries to highlight the contrastive colours. This is a naturally beautiful cake.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by maninas.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Chocolate muffins (Κεκάκια σοκολάτας)

I almost forgot my son's birthday tomorrow (what kind of a mother am I?) whichmeans he's going to need to take some sweets with him to school. As we are a small family with few close relatives and next-of-kin living close by to us, we usually hold small celebrations. But there is a nice Greek custom of sharing out cakes and sweets on your nameday or birthday (or both) at your workplace, and this extends to schoolchildren, among their classmates. This custom suits us to a tee: Aristotle will be surrounded by his friends, there'll be no mess to clean up afterwards, and he'll hear a chorus of well-wishers singing the Greek 'Happy Birthday' song to him:

"Αριστοτέλη, να ζήσεις και χρόνια πολλά, (To Aristotle, a good life and many years,)
μεγάλος να γίνεις με άσπρα μαλλιά, (may you grow old with white hair,)
παντού να σκορπίσεις τις νιότης το φώς, (wherever you go, spread the light of youth)
και όλοι να λένε "Να ένας σοφός"! (and everyone will say 'Now there's a wise man'!)

The custom is to buy some ready-made individually wrapped cream cakes or chocolates, or to send off a big cream cake with candles on it. These cakes are always bought from a local confectioner's or patisserie. The packaging is always luxurious, and of course, unnecessary. It is true that you need the time and inclination to make something home-made. I decided to make some luxurious-looking, scrumptious muffins, which took only 10 minutes to make, and another 20-25 minutes to cook. They look spectacular, and they remind me of my husband's introduction to this very non-Greek dessert.

It was cold, damp and drizzly Friday in London as we were walking around near the Bank of England. At one point, it started pissing with rain, so we decided that we would have to take shelter somehow. We ended up eating a rather early lunch close to St Pauls' in the City at a cafe which served lots of ploughman's lunches for burly construction site workers, as well as more refined meals like chili con carne and curried chicken. We each had one of those, while the children ate a tomato-sacue peene pasta dish. Quite a few businessmen were also haveing lunch or coffee there, while they were constantly on their cellphones. The food was very hearty, and I liked its light taste. It filled you up and it wasn't too oily. The dining room area was the most intriguing part of the visit. It reminded me of Charles Dickens' Christmas story; with its red brick-built walls, it looked like an underground sewer that had been drained and turned into a dining room. The roof was covered in brick arches, and in one corner, there was a disused fireplace. All that was missing was a poor Victorian family huddling around it. I could imagine a family of wretches living there in the 1850s; either that, or it could have been the kitchen area where the cook would prepare meals downstairs, then put it in the hatch (there was one above the fireplace) and ring the bell for the servants to pick up upstairs and serve it to the lady and the lord who lived there. There were no windows, so whoever lived or worked there could never see the sun, or get any fresh air. Spooky if you have never seen this sort of place before. The waitress, interestingly enough, was Portuguese.

Being a bold traveller, I asked her about how she ended up in London, and what her future plans were. She opened her heart out to us; I suppose she didn't often see families coming in to this diner and she could relate to us as fellow Mediterraneans. She had left Portugal with her husband because of the high unemployment they both faced there. They were both working in various jobs, trying to save as much money as they could in order to go back home for good one day. She had gotten very depressed lately, because of the high cost of living in an overcrowded city with a bad housing situation - she and her husband lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, which cost them most of her own pay from working at the diner. She couldn't even think of having children becuase of the expenses and the lost income. She also complained about the food; Portuguese specialties were not easy to obtain of course, and when they were available, they were quite costly. She told me she didn't know how long she would be able to endure London life, and being away from her family. I felt sorry for her.

The waitress reminded me of my parents who left their villages in Crete because they were poor and knew that they had no prospects of self-improvement in their own homeland. I wondered what my life would be like now if they hadn't done that. I wondered if I might have been this young lady, leaving my poor origins behind in search of better prospects. My own success in this globalised world is due in part to their sacrifices. I ended up leaving my own homeland and making my new home in another part of the world, but for completely different reasons from my own parents - I felt like a change, it wasn't a situation forced on me for economic reasons.

'Anyone for sweets?' I knew that only the children would say yes, only to be cut down by a no from their father, but the muffins did look tempting in the shop. 'It's a traditional kind of English sweet'. (All a lie, of course; the original muffin was the English 'crumpet'. It was America that gave us these moist little cakey beauties.) I shouldn't use the word 'English' when I mention food to him. He's never tempted by anything British. It's all Greek to him, or should I say, for him. 'Shall we buy some for later?' 'Oh, we'll find another place to eat by then.' With a full stomach, he didn't feel like anything just then. He was right - we would find something else later, but waht annoyed me was his disinterested attitude toards foreign food. Travelling for me is a taste sensation; even if I have never heard of something before, I would be willing to eat it if only to try it out. I would feel a failure if I didn't try a local delicacy while I was travelling in a foreign place. Food is undoubetdly part of the sholw cultural experience when you are a tourist. I'm not talking about package tourists who come to Greece for the three three-letter S-words (sea, sun, and I think the last one is sex). They are not coming to Greece for the cultural experience; they are coming to get what they can't enjoy in their own country.

I was rather annoyed with my husband at that point. I had tired of his thinking that I am an unsatiable piglet who'll eat anything put before her, in any quantity, becasue she keeps no law and order in her daily diet. Aren't I the one who introduced him to chili con carne, chicken curry and guacomole? Wasn't I the one who preserved the fruits of his gardening labours and turned them into traditional Greek concoctions such as boureki, moussaka and yemista? I now know I should not have heeded his advice. He made exactly the same comment when we passed a window full of traditional English sweets while we were in Greenwich (where we vistied the the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory - very informative places set in the most beautiful - for me - suburb of London); whereas I was able to name every single item in the shop window, he was stared at it with that "It's all Greek to me" look (pardon the pun), and wondered if his wife had simply turned gluttonous. It had been a long long time since I had seen jam pie, custard squares, currant buns, chocolate muffins, blueberry muffins, gingerbread men, Danish pastries, fudge bars, carrot cake, strawberry tarts and fresh croissants all in one place. As I looked at each one from the street, I could taste it in my mind, just like Peter Pan and Captain Hook's lost boys, who never saw the food they ate, and had to use their imagination to believe that they were actually eating food.

When we left the cafe, it was still raining. London is a fantastic city for all kinds of weather: if it's sunny, the parks are a delight for all ages. When it's wet, you can take shelter in the nearest museum. We took the tube to Russell Square and visited the British Museum, a building that looks like the Greek Parthenon, and houses - well, the Greek Parthenon. After admiring the various works on display, all of which were not British (which begs the question that the museum should be renamed), and which unfortunately were not as many as the museum holds due to continued staff shortages, I decided it was time for a coffee break. We had been walking around for three hours (with children) by then. I bought a couple of hot chocolates for the children some coffee for me and my husband. Then I saw them - enormous, velvety, chocolate muffins. In fact, they sold the whole gamma of muffins - classic blueberry, plain and chocolate muffins. I bought one of each. As usual, I contented myself with pecking a bit off everyone else's food. It was my husband's first chocolate muffin ever. He fell in love with them, and who wouldn't? These muffins were huge, sticky and firm on the outside, and moist on the inside. The chocolate that was used in them virtually melted in your mouth.











When we left the British museum (which wasn't quite as British as it makes out to be), on our way to the hotel, we passed the grocery shop which sold milk, bread, fresh fruit, some packaged vegetables and a range of newspapers and magazines, along with a wide variety of sweets to satisfy the British sweet tooth. I always bought myself a tub of (imported Dutch) raspberries from there, which my other half would scoff at (he couldn't understand why I would want to eat berry fruit in the cold weather); as he waited for me to buy the raspberries, he spotted some packaged muffins. Sweets and desserts are also his downfall, so he bought a couple of each type that they sold in the shop. When we got to the hotel, and had had our showers and settled down in our pyjamas, he tried the chocolate muffin. It was a little stale; the chocolate used to make it can't have been good quality and it was not moist and chewy. In fact, it resembled a bread-like cake. What a diappointment. Well, what did he expect from a corner store?

Here is the best and simplest recipe (from www.cacaoweb.net) I have ever tried for muffins. They come out puffy, firm and moist on the inside. I omitted the chocolate chips (I had none in the house). This recipe makes 12 medium-sized muffins. I have made these muffins before, and I prefer to keep them on the small side so that my children learn to limit themselves to the right kind of serving. One large muffin is equivalent to 2 small muffins, but when you tell a child to eat one, it won't differentiate between size differences!

For the sake of convenience, the recipe is repeated here:
2 eggs
1 cup (200 g) sugar
1 cup (130 g) all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2/3 cup (160 ml) milk
2/3 cup (160 g) butter
4 oz (120 g) semisweet chocolate chips (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 deg F (Gas mark 4 or 180 deg C). Grease 6 large (or 12 small) muffin tins or cups (paper muffin bake cups are recommended). Beat the eggs with sugar, mix with flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, vanilla and milk. Fold in the melted butter. Add chocolate chips (the recipe states that these might end up in the bottom of the muffin - that's why I won't bother using them inthe future). Pour the mixture into the prepared muffin cups; the higher you fill them, the puffier they will come out, the more cooking time they need. Bake at 350 degrees until a until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, approximately 20-30 minutes, depending on the size.

These muffins must have been delicious - I am afraid I didn't get a chance to try one out, because the pieces were measured out one per child - because when I went to the school to pick him up, some children in Aristotle's class told me they really liked them. Aristotle also told me that I had never made a better cake. Oh dear, maybe I'm just being too cruel to be kind when I overdo it with the banana cake and carrot cake muffins. They're all freezable, defrosting nicely in a child's lunchbox, in time for the morning break at school.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE CHOCOLATE:
Afghans
Brownies
Simple cake
Choclate balls
Chocolate pancakes
Chocolate cake

Banana cake muffins (Κέικ μπανάνας)

Banana cake is my favorite NZ tea-and-coffee accompaniment. Sadly, we never made it at home; my mother used to bake all the staple Greek sweets that my own family now enjoys in my own home, but she never made true NZ banana cake. She once made a Greek cake, to which she added bananas, but it still tasted like Greek cake, rather than the moist banana bread the Edmonds cookbook recipe turns into. We used to buy some as an occassional treat when we were in town. I remember a day when I was wearing my school uniform (a teal colour; most people would not know what the word 'teal' meant, let alone be able to visualise it as a colour), doing some shopping with my mother in James Smiths, or maybe Farmers, or was it Woolworths? It can't have been anywhere else, because they were my mother's favorite stores; you could find anything you wanted in them. If you wanted to buy someone a wedding gift, you went to James Smiths', if you wanted good quality moderately priced household goods, you went to Farmers, and if you wanted to buy lollies, you went to Woolworths. To get there, we had to pass the Dixon St deli where we used to buy salami and olives once the Italian grocery near our house closed down due to a sharp decline in trade when Wellingtonians began to take delight in visiting the new supermarkets and shopping malls that were sprouting up in the suburbs. We never did indulge in such activities as a trip to New World in Newtown, or Pak'n'Save in Kilbirnie. We lived just above Kent Terrace; we didn't need to go to Newtown or Kilbirnie. We had it all on Courtenay Place and Manners St.

I must have asked her then if we could buy some of the banana cake I was looking at in the window of a cake shop; I don't think it would have been on her shopping list. She bought two huge slices of it - each slice could have been cut into three decent portions. The aroma permeated our shopping bags. It smelt and felt like the cake my schoolmates bought in their lunchboxes. I was so happy when the shop assistant gave her the brown paper bag containing the cake. I couldn't wait to go home and have it with---

Before I had thought about how it would look in our banana-cake-less house, and how we were going to enjoy it as part of our tea, my mother suggested we could eat it by the Cuba St bucket fountain a few metres away from the deli. I hadn't expected this; without thinking, I just said 'OK'. She was treating me to some banana cake, so I felt I must reciprocate by taking her up on her offer. Mother and daughter sat silently, back to back (the outdoor seating was to blame) in the pedestrian zone, our shopping bags beside us, devouring the XL slices of banana cake by ourselves. I had a sudden panic attack, the feeling that I was in the wrong place. Two plump olive-skinned sheilas among a majority of paler faces, eating inappropriately oversized portions of a light dainty sweet,disregarding the ettiquette involved with eating banana cake. As I was sitting there with my mother gorging on my piece, the thought came to me that she never made this cake at home because she didn't know what to do with it. I wanted to tell her that we should have been sitting indoors, not outdoors, having a hot drink, stirring sugar cubes in a cup of tea sitting primly on a saucer, not scoffing it down in the middle of the street. I wanted to tell her that she didn't have to feel a stranger in NZ any longer, that she was a part of the melting pot culture that composed the genetic make-up of the average Kiwi, that there were plenty of other foreigners like her who were happy to be called a Kiwi, and they let their children be Kiwis just like the pale-faced lot. She had been in New Zealand for nearly 20 years at that point. By virtue of her years in the country, she had more claim to being a New Zealander than I did. I was tired of being a stranger in my own country, doing everything differently at home from what I did at shcool. We could make banana cake at home too, and eat it like the other girls did at school.

But we never did. So we sat there silently, not really knowing what to do with it now that we had it, so we did whatever came naturally to us. We were sitting there by chance, partaking in an experience that we did not want to be a part of. I wasn't being a fair dinkum Kiwi; instead I felt like a fraud, masquerading as a local in a Wellington Girls' uniform, hiding my true self. At the same time, I had a sense that I wasn't the good Greek girl I was supposed to be, either, because I was eating a huge piece of cake that I should have shared with the people who were passing by, especially the ones that smiled to us, mainly the Maori. They seemed to understand us better than the pale-faced lot. They looked more like us too with their dark features. Maybe just the lips; theirs were fuller than ours, but the shades of skin, hair and eyes were the same.

When I moved to Greece, the first cookbook that I bought on my first return visit to NZ was the Edmonds cookbook. I bought myself a loaf tin, and made banana cake regularly. I kept it in an old biscuit box with a Victorian scene on the lid. I ate it in small slices. I lived on my own, so I had no one to share it with. I had to eat it by myself. I ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, three slices a day. I may as well have eaten a slice as big as the Dixon St deli's and got it over and done with all at once. When I got married, I made it for my husband. He didn't like it. "Why don't you try making a Greek cake, Maria?" I knew what he'd say next: "Now that you don't live in Greece, you can't expect to cook like a New Zealander, like you did back home." Alas, how could he know that my late mother only cooked Greek food? Now that I was in Greece, I couldn't cook Greek food, because all I wanted to eat was Kiwi food. I had severed my past in so many ways, but I could not sever my taste buds completely from Kiwi kai. I never felt I belonged anywhere.

I was adamant that someone would eat my favorite cake with me. It had to be someone who had no past experience of what constituted Greek food or Kiwi food, someone who couldn't compare one cooking style to another. Finally my banana cake companions came along: my children. And to make sure that they feel at ease about eating banana cake, I muffinise all my cakes now, simply because muffins make decent-sized servings that do not lead to obesity, as well as leaving no crumbs. They also make for easier lunch box packing. Here's the genuine dinkum Kiwi cake recipe of choice from the bible of Kiwi cooking, the New Zealand Edmonds cookbook, altered for my Greek kitchen and supplemented by an extra addition of healthy goodness with locally collected walnuts. The mixture makes 18 medium-sized muffins, something between the giant sized ones you buy from 'health' shops (just think how healthy it is to over-eat), and the mini-sized ones that may be served as hors d'oeuvres (kids would need at least two of those for their morning break).











You need:
a muffin tin lined with paper-cases (or a greased or lined loaf tin)
2 bananas
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3/4 cup sugar
125g margarine
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
200g self-raising flour
2/3 cup finely ground walnuts

In a bowl, blend (or whisk) together the bananas, eggs, vanilla, sugar and margarine. In a cup, mix together the soda with the milk. When it is frothy, pour it into the banana mixture. Mix in the flour to make a batter which isn't runny. Mix in the walnuts and spoon the mixture into the paper cases. If you fill them to the top, they will rise into mini-cakes when cooked; otherwise, fill them 2/3 of the way up, so that they remain as big as the paper case. Cook in a medium-hot oven till the cakes are done (test them with a toothpick). Let them cool before you serve them. To keep them for a week, store them in an air-tight tin. They can also be frozen; they defrost well in a child's schoolbag, so that by break-time, they are ready to eat.

Coincdentally, there is no mention of banana cake in the fifth edition of Edmonds cookbook which came out in 1914, not forgetting that the first edition of the Edmonds cookbook came out in 1907. How on earth d'ja know that, you might be wondering. It is in my possession, among other bits of New Zealand trivia that I could not bear to part with as I've already discussed in my afghan recipe). My edition with the banana cake recipe was published in 1983, but I've seen similar recipes on the internet for banana bread, all using the same ingredients, more or less. When were bananas readily available in New Zealand? The British must have known them since they discovered the Carribean, but when did they become readily avaialble in New Zealand? There's a tricky one for all of us to think about. MissJilly also mentions a nice simple banana cake recipe which could be used alternatively.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE CAKES:
Apple pie
Chocolate cake
Simple cake
Carrot cake muffins
Chocolate muffins
Vasilopita
Walnut cake
Apple cake
Halva
Tsoureki

Carrot cake muffins (Κέικ καρότου)

Muffins are perfect for school box lunches. They take up less space in a condensed area, come in their own packaging and leave no crumbs. I found a recipe for carrot cake on the web and turned it into muffins. I omitted the cinnamon, mainly because it's not a favorite of my family's. I also put the walnuts (we don't use pecans in Crete) in a blender and turned them into crumbs. They don't get stuck in your teeth this way!

For the sake of convenience, here is the carrot cake recipe from joyofbaking:
1 cup (110 grams) pecans or walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
3/4 pound (340 grams) raw carrots (about 2 1/2 cups finely grated)
2 cups (280 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated white sugar
1 cup (240 ml) safflower or canola oil (but of course you can make this cake with olive oil)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C). Chop the nuts coarsely. Peel and finely grate the carrots. Set aside. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and ground cinnamon. Set aside. In a mixer, beat the eggs until frothy (about 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar and beat until the batter is thick and light colored (about 3 - 4 minutes). Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated. With a large rubber spatula fold in the grated carrots and chopped nuts. Divide batter between two prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

I made the recipe into muffins, which turned out excellent; they had a crispy exterior, while they remained soft and moist on the inside, but I didn't frost them (we don't need the extra calories). My only complaint is that they didn't have a spicy or tangy taste; without the cinnamon, they were rather bland, so the next time I make them, I will add orange or lemon zest to the batter. I highly recommend this recipe. It epitomises health, in that it contains many natural ingredients that we don't usually eat in our daily diet because they need preparation: carrots need paring and grating, the walnuts came from a friend's trees, and I added olive oil (produced from local olive groves). You can improvise on this recipe by adding raisins and crushed pineapple to make the cakes moister and more chewy. You can also freeze the muffins in the same way as banana cake muffins and allow them to defrost in a child's lunchbox; by break-tiume, they'll be ready for eating.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE CAKES:
Banana cake
Brownies
Chocolate cake
Simple cake
Chocolate muffins
Vasilopita
Walnut cake
Halva
Apple cake
Tsoureki