Passionfruit, lemon and olive oil cake

Sunshine in cake form

It’s difficult to believe it has been a year since my last post here - thank you to the friends who reminded me that the pear chocolate crumble had sat at the top of the homepage for too long. My only excuse is study. The physician exams I sat this year were undeniably harder than anticipated or could imagine. Everyone told us to expect the most challenging period of medical training we may ever face, but you still had to dive into it with the assumption that you’d be fine - or it would be too daunting to ever start. It already feels like there is very little choice in the matter: you’ve come this far, right? You got into medical school, you got through your university exams, you started working (which got easier and more satisfying), you found an area you loved with a future you could imagine, and this was just the mandatory next step on the road there.

When you’re exhausted it’s hard to have the emotional capacity or time to be creative, so baking went mostly by the wayside. I still cooked enough to feed myself - salmon dill and lemon risoni salads (a riff on this recipe) into too many tupperware containers, zucchini and melty goats cheese frittatas after work, eggplant tomato spaghetti dolloped with ricotta and showered in parmesan for pre-exam comfort. And it was friends who got me through it more than anything else: Lilli with home cooked Ottolenghi on the days I arrived home late and frazzled; Chloe for shared commiserations and study sessions over tubs of Luther’s scoops croissant and honey ice cream; Marnie for long run debriefs followed by butter drenched fruit toast (Wildlife is the winner); Anna and Eleanor with the frequent work escape long blacks; the best study group friends for pizza and wines and sharing the load - to name only a few. Mum and Dad always on the other end of the phone to listen.  

My window for complaints though is rapidly closing. I am typing this from a cafe in Paris (!), eating a slice of cherry studded clafoutis (from Gramme, would highly recommend), golden topped and densely creamy (and now at the top of my list to recreate next summer). I was lucky to get my mandatory 5 week block of annual leave now, after exams, so have joined the mass exodus of Australians and New Zealanders to sunnier climates. You can follow along over here for more of the holiday photographs and recommendations if you like. 

In the meantime, this lemon, passionfruit and olive oil cake is pure sunshine in cake form. It’s zesty and fragrant, light and fluffy but still stays moist for days with both the yogurt and oil. It’s based on a cake we made when I was growing up frequently - the easiest one bowl people-pleasing cake in the repertoire with a side of nostalgia. Read more and get the recipe here.

And in non-medical life notes: currently consuming

• Cloud Cuckoo Land, Antony Doerr: his previous book, All the Light We Cannot See, remains one of my all time favourites so expectations were high. This was clever and expansive, encompassing multiple stories stretching over a 700 year period (the past and the future), all tied together by a single book - it was beautiful.

• Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus: possibly the entire rest of the world discovered this before me (I was buried in study, remember?!) but it was one of the most captivating books I’ve read in a long time. I started and finished it on the plane home from the exam and it was the best reminder of how much I love to read.

• Ted Lasso (Apple TV): because what else do you need during exams but a bit of extra positivity and belief that the world can be a better place. And a few laughs. If you haven’t watched it, watch it. It’s much less cynical than Succession.

And now that study is not so all-consuming, expect more recipes from this direction and please send me your recommendations too - I need more holiday reads!