By Katherine Dienes-Williams
Katherine writes:
This Cathedral organist's breakfast of choice is porridge oats soaked overnight in milk and served with blueberries, raspberries and flaxseed - it's a pre-chorister rehearsal weekday staple. Sunday lunch is always roast chicken or lamb - occasionally beef, always with a side of kumara - although only the orange fleshed variety here, and gravy made with gravy granules, pan juices, a splash of red wine, hot water and a teaspoon of vegemite! Pudding is usually chocolate self-saucing pudding or lemon delicious pudding. Sunday night supper is normally a post-Evensong cheeky cheese and onion toastie.
The recipe I am most well known for is the birthday chocolate cake, which I used to make every time a girl chorister had a birthday - but this became almost a weekly event, owing to numbers in the choir, so it is now a ‘special occasions’ only. It is always the same recipe - and everyone loves it. I have adapted it from Jo Seagar’s ‘All things nice’ cookbook - a very used page 39.
INGREDIENTS:
- 120 g butter
- ½ cup caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 2 cups flour (UK/NZ 250ml)
- 2 tbsp cocoa
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup milk
- 1 tsp baking powder
METHOD:
- Heat oven to 160°C fan (or 180° C conventional)
- Beat butter and sugar together, then add egg and the golden syrup.
- Sift in flour and cocoa and stir well.
- Dissolve baking soda in milk, add to the mixture and stir well
- Sprinkle baking powder over the mixture and stir.
- Bake in a greased tin for 40-45 minutes (Fan oven).
- Once cool, ice with chocolate icing - again, I adapted her recipe to have less icing sugar
ICING:
1 ½ cups (maximum) icing sugar, 3tbsp cocoa and 25g butter melted in the boiling water. Add buttery water until it is the right consistency.
(Go very easy on this, as one drop too much water can tip the consistency into being too runny.)
Katherine Dienes-Williams
Katherine Dienes-Williams was born and educated in Wellington, New Zealand, where she began her cathedral career as Organ Scholar and later Assistant Organist at Wellington Cathedral.
She moved to England in 1991 as Organ Scholar at Winchester Cathedral and has since held senior posts at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral, St Mary’s Warwick and Guildford Cathedral, where she was Organist and Master of the Choristers from 2008. In 2026 she was appointed Director of Music at Winchester Cathedral.
Katherine was the first female President of the Cathedral Organists’ Association and is Chair of the Royal College of Organists and a Patron of the Society of Women Organists. As an organist, conductor and choral director, she has performed and taught internationally, appearing with orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Hallé and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Away from music, her interests include languages, travel, reading and fitness.
More organists in the Kitchen