Feeling slightly disillusioned after last night's election result. A post on my Facebook feed sums it up well, "Can I get a sticker saying, "yes I voted and I might as well not have"?"

It rained on and off all day and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen. Raspberry Jam Slice, Nigella's Italian Apple Pie and Nigel Slater's Mildly Spiced Beef. For the Apple Pie (which is really a cake) I used red and green apples, and melodramatically considered myself to be roasting the hopes of Labour and the Greens. Maudlin.

Italian Apple Pie

slightly adapted from Nigellissima

You will need:

• 100g soft butter
• 250g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt
• 150g sugar
• 2 eggs
• juice of half a lemon + zest
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3 apples
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in the group before milk in the bowl of a food processor and blitz until mixture forms a smooth batter.
2. With food processor running, pour milk slowly down funnel.
3. Cut one apple in half, remove core, and roughly chop. Add chopped apple into batter and pulse to mix.
4. Pour batter into lined springform tin.
5. Cut remaining applies into thin wedges, and place on top of batter in a fan pattern.
6. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle on top.
7. Bake for 45 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

This is very very easy, and visually stunning. The batter is dense and moist, and the apples provide texture. I used Jazz apples and Granny Smiths. The Jazz worked the best, the Granny Smiths got a bit mushy, though that might have been because they were old. I have a bad habit of buying fruit and then not doing anything with it.

I spent last weekend in Wellington for a conference. I ate at Little Penang on Dixon Street for lunch on Saturday. We had to queue out the door but the food was worth it, very filling and reasonably priced (about $12 for a plate I couldn't finish). Shelby got Mee Goreng, which I tried and preferred to my dish (Mee Siam with chicken). However, mine had a lot of variety in terms of flavours and textures - vermicelli, prawns, roasted peanuts, spicy chutney, coconut milk, potatoes...). A different ordering system would speed up the queues out the door (upon getting to the counter and ordering something off the chalkboard menu you then have to run through a number of options the menu doesn't make you aware of - like I had to choose what kind of chicken I wanted out of about 6 different types, leading to indecision and slow ordering after I had had about 25 minutes to decide what I wanted in the queue). The items in the warmer at the counter weren't labelled/priced, so that also slowed things down as we had to ask the guy behind the counter what things were. However it wasn't hard to find a free table once we had actually ordered.

For dinner we went to the Tasting Room on Courtenay Place. I had chicken breast with mustard mashed potato, brussel sprouts and water chestnuts and Shelby had fish and chips. The mustard mashed potato has inspired me to try mixing wholegrain mustard into my own mashed potato at home. The food was really good, particularly the chips which came with Shelby's meal, which were cooked twice. We then went to Strawberry Fare for dessert. The place itself was a bit shabby, and the service was a bit slack (our meals arrived without us having been given any cutlery), but the desserts were visually impressive and tasty. I had a berry drenched warmed chocolate cake, which the menu described as having a souffle like texture. It was like Nigella's chocohotopots. Shelby had a cranberry white chocolate cheesecake.

The desserts came with slices of feijoa, biscotti and vanilla icecream.

In both my family's homes there was a feijoa tree, the first one good for hiding in due to its nest like branches, the second good for feeding friends with while playing in the treehouse. My primary school also had a feijoa tree, a source of rumour and urban legend. There is a feijoa tree behind our building which drops childhood memories on the concrete which it overhangs. The hard, bruised fruit would waste away if we didn't collect it (and some of the fruit which nature has treated more kindly by dropping onto the grass rather than the concrete). So far none have been ripe enough to eat raw, but the tart sourness of the unripe feijoas makes a good, tangy pudding.

White Chocolate Feijoa Cake Pudding

recipe originally from here

You will need:

• 10 feijoas
• 1 cup water
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 tsp minced ginger
• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100 g softened butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• enough white chocolate buttons to cover surface

Directions:

1. peel feijoas by slicing off skins with a knife
2. cut feijoas into 3 or 4 pieces per feijoa, depending on size. You want the pieces about 2cm thick.
3. place cut feijoas in pot with water, tablespoons of sugar and ginger.
4. bring to boil and then simmer for 5 minutes or until softened.
5. remove feijoas from pot with a slotted spoon and place in pie dish/cake tin in a single layer.
6. reduce liquid until you have about 4 tablespoons worth, then pour over feijoas.
7. in a bowl cream butter and sugar.
8. sift flour with baking powder into another bowl.
9. beat egg into butter and sugar.
10. fold dry ingredients into creamed butter and sugar, alternating with milk.
11. spread batter over top of feijoas with a spatula.
12. dot surface of batter with white chocolate buttons.
13. bake at 180 degrees until top is golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean (approximately 25 minutes)

On Saturday night some friends and I went to the Pakuranga Night Market for dinner. I had fried pork buns and mini donuts on a stick:

The donut flavours from top to bottom were coffee crumb, hazelnut, white chocolate rainbow sprinkle and cookies and cream. I was disappointed that they didn't have green tea flavour. I also had a drink which was made of 100% strawberries and blueberries. It tasted like strawberry syrup, but in a good way. There was a lot more sweet stuff than any other time I have been to the Night Market so I also shared a lemon tart with Shelby.

Speaking of lemon, we had a shared morning tea at work today to welcome some new employees. This was my contribution:

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

recipe by Alison & Simon Holst from here

You will need:

• 1 and a half cups caster sugar
• zest of two lemons
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup yoghurt
• juice of two lemons
• 1 and a half cups self raising flour
• tablespoon of soft butter
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tsp passionfruit essence (or more)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. Use the small side of your grater to grate lemon zest into a large bowl.
3. Put oil, eggs and sugar into bowl with lemon zest and whisk with a fork.
4. Cut your zested lemons in half and then squeeze their juice into the bowl, picking out any pips with your fingers.
5. Add salt and yoghurt and mix again.
6. Add flour and stir until somewhat smooth (you may never get it completely smooth depending on what kind of yoghurt you are using, and this is perfectly fine!)
7. Pour mixture into two sandwich cake tins and bake for 20 minutes. The tops should be golden brown and a cake tester should come out clean.
8. Once the cakes have cooled, beat the butter, icing sugar and essence with a hand hold beater.
9. Spread icing over whatever cake you have designated for the bottom and then carefully press the other cake down on top.

This cake is very moist. I have made it so many times with different icing flavours in the middle - I have tried vanilla icing, chocolate icing and lemon icing. Today's passionfruit icing may be the best yet. I have also tried it with a variety of yoghurt flavours as I just use whatever I have in the fridge at the time. Today I used apricot yoghurt, and I think the tang of the slightly sour apricot suits the lemon flavour quite well. I have also tried strawberry, which is nice too and depending on the yoghurt brand can give the cake a pink tinge and lemon for an even stronger lemon hit.

I'm still on holiday from work (starting back next Monday) but my boyfriend is already back. I wanted to take some time this week to stock the freezer with some meals for when we are both back to the the daily routine of adulthood. To that end I intended to make a pie today and portion it before freezing to make 3 nights of meals. I made the pie filling (recipe to come later) but that is as far as I got because due to my other exertions today, I ran out of butter so couldn't make the dough. It was also so hot today, and so hot in the kitchen, that I couldn't face more time in front of the oven. That will be a task for tomorrow.

The reason I ran out of butter? Nigella Lawson's Devil's Food Cake from Kitchen. I think Kitchen is my favourite book of hers. It was sort of gifted to me by a friend at the end of second year law as a thank you (and I say sort of, because she actually gave me How to be a Domestic Goddess, which I already had but she suspected I might and gave me an exchange card with which I gratefully got Kitchen) and is probably the cookbook I use the most.

Devil's Food Cake

adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe in Kitchen

For the cake you will need:

• 50g cocoa powder
• 100g dark cane sugar (Nigella says dark muscovado sugar - this was the closest I could get)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 125g soft butter
• 225g high grade flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 size 8 eggs

For the icing you will need:

• 1/2 cup water
• 30g dark cane sugar
• 125g butter
• 300g dark chocolate buttons
• 100g icing sugar (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. Mix the cocoa powder and 100g dark cane sugar in a bowl. Pour in boiling water, mix and set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl (everything will eventually end up in this bowl).
4. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder.
5. Add the vanilla essence to the creamed butter and sugar and mix lightly.
6. Crack one egg into the bowl with the butter and mix, before adding some flour and mixing then cracking the second egg into the bowl.
7. Mix in the remaining flour.
8. Fold the cocoa/sugar/water mixture into the butter and flour.
9. Distribute the mixture evenly between two sandwich cake tins. The type I have can't be lined with baking paper so I greased them with cooking oil first, but if you are using ordinary tins then do line with baking paper.
10. Nigella's recipe says to bake for 30 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clear. I checked at 20 minutes and the cakes were already getting toward well done so any longer would have been a disaster for me.
11. While the cakes are baking, put the water, cane sugar and butter in a small pot on low heat, stirring occasionally.
12. When butter is melted, take the pot off the heat, add the chocolate buttons and stir until all the chocolate is melted and the icing is smooth.
13. When the cakes have cooled enough for icing, mix the icing sugar into the cooled icing. Spread icing over the top of one cake (not quite to the edge as the compression from the top cake will spread the icing out), place the other cake on top and spread icing over the top of that cake too.

I added in the icing sugar because, although Nigella said the icing was meant to be runny and never quite set, it was really too thin for my liking and I couldn't see how I could use it to ice the cakes (particularly as a filling) without it all flowing away. I also wanted it to set because my boyfriend wouldn't be able to take any to work with him if the icing was sticking to everything. This might be because I used less butter than she suggested due to running out. However, I really liked the result after adding the icing sugar. The icing was still runny so that it flowed down the sides of the cake giving me a nice effect, but once I refrigerated it, it set and became fudgey.

The cake itself was rich but not overpoweringly so. It didn't rise as much as I expected it to, making it quite dense.