"Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my Honey..."

This cake was made for dessert, but really I would say this is more suited for an afternoon treat, with tea.

Lemon-Ginger Bundt Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
3 cups all purpose flour (we used the fancy hand milled flour, from Callington Mill, in Oatlands, bought from the Sunday Farmers Market on Elizabeth St.)
http://callingtonmill.org/
2 tbl finely grated lemon zest and 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup minced crystallized ginger
1 teaspoon baking SODA
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
6 eggs (medium or large)
1 cup sour cream
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees, (we used fan-forced 180c) Butter and flour your pan (standard sized)
In a bowl whisk together flour, lemon zest, ginger, baking soda and salt- set aside.

Using your electric mixer, beat butter and granulated sugar on med-high until light and fluffy, Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; mix in lemon juice.

With mixer on low, alternately add flour in three parts and sour cream in two, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until incorporated (do not overmix). Spoon batter into prepared pan, and smooth top with a rubber spatula. Firmly tap pan on a work surface to level batter.

Bake until your inserted toothpick comes out clean.
This was about 50 minutes for us.
As the top was browning too fast, the last ten minutes the cake was covered in tented foil.
Let cake cool in pan 30 minutes (we pulled rack out of over and cooled there), then turn out cake onto a rack to cool completely.
Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.

Zok and I thought the cake tasted better when fully cooled- as in with tea the next day as opposed to our first tasting late night.
Also Zok appreciated the amount of time he needed with his KitchenAid mixer to make this cake.

Marble Bundt Cake

Zok has been intrigued with 'Bundt' cake ever since he saw one in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'.
This year when we were in our nearest IKEA store, (only about 600 kilometers away) we found a spring form bundt cake pan- of course being of Swedish design, it is a nice color, and does normal round cake as well, and has the bonus of hearts imprinted on the bottom.

This cake is both rich and light at the same time. Because the chocolate is really rich, the cake is moist and tasty, without needing any icing.
The original recipe calls for a glaze made from white chocolate and violet liqueur, which could be nice, but the chances of finding violet liqueur here are very, very slight.

Zok modified a recipe and came up with this:

75 grams of dark chocolate (70%)
50 grams of white chocolate
115 g softened butter (room temp)
2 eggs
4 oz of whole milk
150 g caster sugar
200 g of self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 170 c (fan forced)
Grease your ring mold
Grate each chocolate into separate bowls (tin preferred)
Dark Chocolate finely grated
White Chocolate ribbon grated
Cream butter and sugar until white and fluffy then add eggs one at a time until well mixed
Add baking powder to flour then
sift flour into egg/butter/sugar mixture and mix well
Add 100 mls of whole milk to mixture mix well

Set the dark chocolate bowl onto a larger bowl of hot water (water bath)

Take out about one half of the batter from your mixing bowl-
Add melted dark chocolate to the mixture on the mixing stand and mix well
Add the grated (unmelted) white chocolate to the other half of the cake batter and mix well (this mixing is done by hand)

Now you have the two completed halves of your marble cake.

Zok takes dollops of each and adds them alternately to the greased cake pan.
Smooth the top and bake for about 20-30 minutes (I would say 20 and Zok would say 30 and we usually fight it out so that the cake is out by about 25 minutes)

(yes that is correct- I ate my piece so fast I almost forgot to get a photo)

Mascarpone Pie

Zok really views recipes as guidelines. He almost always remembers the dish from memory after the second time he makes the dish.
This pie came originally from a 'Strawberry and mascarpone tart' recipe.
The pie has gone through some different incarnations. We used whiskey the first time because we didn't have Drambuie, and although the whiskey worked, the Drambuie does enhance the flavors of the mascarpone and strawberries better than the whiskey did. However, if you found this dish too sweet, whiskey is an option.
Also the original recipe calls for a flour pie crust, Zok swears the first two had that crust, but I've no memory of those- and I actually can't imagine this pie without the most recent crust made of grated graham crackers. Of course graham crackers are hard to find in Australia so we made the crust once from what they call 'digestive' biscuits here. That crust is better than the flour crust but not nearly as good as the crust made from graham crackers.

FILLING:
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbl. soft brown sugar
50 ml (1 3/4 fl. oz) Drambuie
300 ml (10 1/2 fl oz) whipping cream
250 g (9 oz) mascarpone cheese
2 tsp finely grated orange zest

Mix together the strawberries, vanilla, Drambuie and 1 tbl of the sugar in a bowl, refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Mix the mascarpone, cream, orange zest and remaining sugar, this can also be refrigerated but as the cream/cheese are already chilled this isn't as important.

Crust:
Zok has perfected the crust, mostly by now owning a spring form cake pan and using the baking beads.
Here is the recipe for the last (best) crust.

175 - 200 grams of Graham Cracker (one and one half packets of USA crackers)
20 cm. spring form was used.
110 grams of unsalted melted butter

Take the crackers and finely grate them.
Melt butter.
In a bowl combine grated crackers and butter-
Spoon out mixture into spring form, first the bottom about .5 cm max. and then the sides about the same-or basically using up the mixture
*blind bake crust:
Take baking paper and line on top of cracker mixture and secure the paper down with baking beads (or you can use rice)
Bake ten minutes at 120 celcius
Take out and cool to room temperature.
Spoon in cold cheese mixture
Top with strawberries
(Save the excess liquid to drizzle on top of each piece of pie as desired)