TONI STREET & MUM WENDY

Broadcaster Toni Street says she was the kid that hated sultanas and raisins or anything with fruit in it. “I’d pick them out of the hot-cross buns – that’s how bad I was,” she admits.

Then one day as a teenager, she was desperately hungry and spied the sultana cake her mother always made to keep in the tins.

“We lived on a dairy farm, so Mum always had baking if people came around. So this day, I tried it and fell in love with it immediately! I had to ask myself how I had been living without sultanas in my life and from then on, I was addicted to the sultana cake.”

Toni’s mum Wendy still lives on that Taranaki dairy farm and when she comes to Auckland to visit, it’s a prerequisite that she brings the cake with her.

“I’ve got a scrunched-up piece of paper with the smudged recipe on it in Mum’s handwriting and it lives on my menu stand in my kitchen because I make it so much,” Toni explains.

“I’m not a good baker – my younger sister got that gene – but the key with this recipe is that you just throw it all in the food processor, then into the oven and

voilà, you have a cake!” Toni, 35, makes this treat for friends when they have babies and she hasn’t found anyone who doesn’t love it.

When Toni was young, Mother’s Day meant breakfast in bed for Wendy. “It started with a cold cup of tea and some Marmite toast, but as we got progressively better, it was the full-on bacon and eggs,” Toni recalls. “We would often just stay at the farm and have the homemade breakfast. We never went out to cafés because they were a bit of a drive from the farm. And one of my fortes in life is setting a good table, so I always made sure the table was pretty.”