Weekly Dish

My best friend, maid of honor, and college roommate is having a baby boy in a month or so. Christy is one of those friends who has been in my life for so long that even though we haven’t lived in the same state, much less the same dorm room, for years, being with her feels as easy and comfortable as putting on my oldest pair of tennis shoes. Here she is at Christmas:

Isn’t she adorable? This is her first baby, and I cannot wait to meet him. To celebrate, friends of hers gave a shower last weekend. If we lived nearer to one another, I would have loved to have the shower at my house, but instead, I volunteered to make the cake. There are a million reasons why this was a foolish thing for me to do: she requested chocolate with cream cheese frosting (I asked), I’ve never made a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting; the time that I have to experiment with baking is exactly zero; and, well, I’m really not that good at cake-baking.

Oh, I love to do it, don’t get me wrong. But patience, precision, and neatness are far from my strongest qualities, in the kitchen or otherwise. This list might have made a more reasonable person hesitate before assembling a recipe that can best be described as experimental, but, inspired by the possibilities of this cake at Smitten Kitchen, the combination of raspberry filling, chocolate, and cream cheese sounded so good that I spent the better part of a Sunday making the cake and praying the rest would come together when the party arrived.

My plan was to bake the cake in three pans, two to freeze and use for the actual event, and one to test with the filling and frosting to make sure the flavors worked. But, that third layer was lying around when we had dinner guests, and I couldn’t help but serve it: it looked so velvety and rich, and we had raspberry jam and whipping cream in the fridge: that would be a close enough approximation, right? The “test” version got rave reviews, but when I split the cake to spread the jam over it, I realized how moist and crumbly it was. This meant great flavor — it is a delicious, darkly chocolate cake, but I was apprehensive about assembly for the party. What if it fell apart when I put it together? Oh well, I had another month to worry about it, so I put the layers in the freezer and assumed I would have another chance to do a real trial run.

Fast forward to last week, the week of the party, and you can see how this story ends: the best laid plans and all of that. But, I am happy to report that the flavor of this cake happily makes up for the imperfectness of its appearance. No one will suspect that it came from a bakery, but that’s a good thing: it looks and tastes completely homemade. As long as you’re prepared to embrace that fact, rather than hide it beneath perfectly smooth frosting, I hope you’ll be as happy as I am to have this recipe in your stash when you need a special, celebratory cake. I decorated it with blue pansies from my mom’s yard: the P is for Pierce, the lemon leaves and pansies around the bottom are to cover up the places where the frosting rubbed off in the car, and the raspberries are to hide the places where I accidentally knocked off an edge when I removed the cake cover. I told you I wasn’t very good at this, but if I can do it, you can too. It’s so yummy, I think you’ll be glad you did.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting
–adapted from Gourmet, March 1999; Smitten Kitchen; and Bon Appetit, June 1999

A word about this recipe: I pulled together this cake from several sources and made a few changes. The cake recipe calls for the batter to be baked in two 10-inch pans. I have 9-inch pans, so I baked three cakes, but I only used two for the one you see in the picture. The cake freezes nicely, so next time I make it, I’ll keep the extra layer in the freezer to use another time. Once defrosted, the cakes are very moist and prone to tearing; be very careful when assembling them (or feel free to re-assemble any layers that fall apart as I did. Just don’t tell anyone). The raspberry filling makes more than enough to fill a four-layer cake, so be generous, and you’ll probably still wind up with leftovers. It’s fabulous on toast, ice cream, or stirred into yogurt. And the frosting makes a lot too, but since I am terribly messy when it comes to that step in the process, it’s always better for me to have more than I need. I  take a small container of frosting with me to fix any blemishes that occur on the journey.

For the cake:
3 ounces good-quality semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup butter, melted (1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line three 9-inch round cake pans with parchment paper; spray with cooking spray or grease with butter. Preheat oven to 300 degrees (F). In a small bowl, stir the chopped chocolate into the hot coffee until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

Sift the dry ingredients together into a large bowl:sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Then, in the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the eggs until thickened and pale yellow, about 3-5 minutes. With the mixer running, slowly pour in the melted butter, buttermilk, vanilla, and coffee-chocolate mixture. Beat until well-combined.

With the mixer on very low speed, add the dry mixture. Turn the mixer up to medium and beat just until you can no longer see any trace of the dry ingredients.

Divide the cake batter evenly between the three cake pans. Bake at 300 degrees until a knife inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean, about an hour (I set my timer for 50 minutes and checked all three cakes every 5 minutes after that — the cake on the bottom rack finished quicker than the two on the top).

Cool the cakes completely in their pans. Run a knife around the edge and invert the layers onto racks (or parchment paper if, like me, you don’t have racks). When the cakes are completely cooled, peel off the parchment, and either, set them aside for assembly (instructions follow), or wrap tightly in plastic and foil to chill or freeze. They can be made ahead of time and chilled in the refrigerator for a couple of days, or the freezer for a couple of months with good results.

For the raspberry filling:
2 10-ounce bags frozen raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 T. cornstarch, sifted
Squeeze of lemon

Puree the raspberries in a blender or food processor; then press through a fine mesh sieve with a wooden spoon to remove seeds. This takes a while, so be prepared (this is a good job to do while the cakes are baking). In a small saucepan, stir the berries and sugar together, and sift in the cornstarch (or else you could end up with lumps). Stir in a squeeze of lemon, and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook and stir until the mixture thickens, about 3 minutes. Set aside to cool completely. The raspberry filling can also be made ahead and chilled or frozen.

For the frosting:
4 8-oz packages cream cheese, softened
10 T. butter (1 stick plus 2 T.), softened
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 t. vanilla

Whip the cream cheese and butter in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla and the sugar. Chill until the mixture is a spreadable consistency (not too hard, but not too soft).

To assemble the cake:
If the cakes are frozen, defrost overnight in the refrigerator. Split two of the cakes to get four thin layers. Lay the sturdiest one on a flat surface (either on the cake plate you’ll be serving it on or on a sturdy transferable plate), and spread with a light layer of cream cheese frosting, just enough to coat (I dollop small spoonfuls and then spread). Ladle a generous amount of the raspberry filling on top, spreading to within 1/4″ from the edge. Top with the next layer, and continue this pattern until the last layer remains. Place it on top and frost the cake all over with the cream cheese frosting. Refrigerate until time to serve.

Towards the end of February, I get a little antsy. Some might call it cabin fever, but that isn’t really accurate; I get out of the house often enough. No, my end-of-winter jitters stem from the kitchen end of things. I look in the fridge, especially at the end of the week, and I try hard to get excited about finding a creative use for the bunch of carrots languishing in the crisper or the bag of sweet potatoes that seems to never end.

But sometimes I just can’t do it.

And, so, sometimes, instead of concentrating my energies on making a healthful dinner out of the seasonal ingredients I’m desperately trying to still adore (but am secretly wishing to bid goodbye for a time), I make dessert instead.

Please don’t tell anyone.

It’s just that dinner can get a bit routine come March. We eat lots and lots of broccoli: simply steamed and tossed with sauteed garlic, dressed up a little more with cashews and soy sauce, tossed in pasta, folded into an omelet with caramelized onions, pureed with chicken broth and cheddar cheese for soup. And while I love all of these meals — truly, I am thankful that farm-fresh broccoli bears only the slightest resemblance to its tough-stemmed bland cousin carried in supermarkets, and I happily toss the tender, earthy-tasting florets and stalks into all manner of meals. These quick dinners get us through the winter without breaking our budget or sending us calling for take-out.

Yet, at the end of the day, especially fickle, neither winter nor Spring days, I find myself staring into the recesses of my tiny pantry hankering to do something more with my culinary energy. Something with a little more fanfare than broccoli, again.

Last week, when this urge struck, I found a bag of Meyer lemons calling out to me, as they so often do to waken me from my winter slumber, and they asked, quite emphatically, to be made into a simple cake.

Because I grew up in the South, heiress to a whole host of vintage recipes calling for ingredients that I don’t normally buy now that I’m a little fussier about things like chemical additives and artificial sweetners, I particularly love the idea of taking an old recipe and revamping it. I heard about this one, for lemon-lime ice box cake, on NPR’s lovely segment, Kitchen Window, some time in the fall, and when I saw those Meyer lemons, I knew this cake was the one for me.

I wasn’t so concerned with the green that make the original recipe lemon-lime, — I like the striations of yellow, personally — so I stuck with lemons for all of the citrus flavor and left out the food coloring. And, while I’m sure run-of-the-mill lemons would work perfectly fine, if the season has left you any Meyers, their tempered tartness and hints of sweet florals make this cake truly irresistible.

So irresistible, in fact, that it might just get me from broccoli to asparagus. Maybe even, come fall, I’ll be wishing for winter days and the lemons they bring. That, my friends, would be a powerful cake.

Happy Easter to one and all!

Lemon Icebox Cake
Just a single layer, topped with a simple whipped cream topping, this cake’s humble appearance belies its big flavor. Which, to my mind, makes it an even better candidate for taking to an event, like an Easter dinner — no one will expect the buttery, lemony explosion as they take the first bite, and you, the humble baker will get all the praise. Not that that’s why you bake for others, of course, but just in case it’s an added bonus you appreciate.

A couple of ingredient notes: I find measurements that suggest how many lemons you need for the amounts of juice and zest to vary so widely that they are unhelpful; I measured the quantities of both as I used them, but especially for the zest, it’s okay to estimate. Fresh lemon juice is absolutely essential; yes, it takes time to zest and squeeze all of those lemons, but the result is well worth the effort.

As for the curd, a high-quality store-bought version would probably be fine; the original recipe calls for stirring it with a little water, so that it’s the right consistency to pour over the cake. I found that the texture of homemade curd, especially just after it’s made, worked perfectly.

Lemon Ice Box Cake

For the cake:

3 cups cake flour
3 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 cup butter, at room temp
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (whole milk works too)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 t. grated lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and continue to beat until the mixture has doubled in volume.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and with a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture and the buttermilk, alternating by thirds, until both have been incorporated. Stir in the juice and zest.

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan, and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until just moist (not wet) in the center. Turn the cake onto a rack to cool.

For the curd:

1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 T. grated lemon zest
4 large eggs, beaten
2 T. butter, diced

Whisk together the juice, sugar, zest, and eggs in a small saucepan. Stir constantly over medium-low heat, until the mixture thickens and coats a spoon. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter. When the cake has cooled slightly (it’s fine if it’s still warm, just not oven-hot), poke holes all over it with the bottom of a wooden spoon. I like to poke holes of varying depths — for some, go all the way through to the bottom, for others, just a prick in the top, and then, some in between. Pour the curd over the punctured cake, allowing it to seep into the holes. I had about 3/4 cup of curd left over. Let the cake stand while you whip the topping.

For the topping:

8 ounces mascarpone cheese, at room temp
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 t. grated lemon zest
4 T. lemon juice

Whip the cream on high until soft peaks form. Add the powdered sugar, zest, and mascarpone; beat on medium-low until just combined. With the mixer running, slowly pour in the lemon juice. Spread the topping over the whole cake.

If you beat the mixture too long, the mascarpone will curdle, but that’s okay; it will smooth out some when you spread it on. And if it gets really lumpy and ugly, it will still taste good, but if you’re concerned about the appearance, whip some extra cream by itself to spread on top (like I did).

You can serve it warm — straight from the pan — or refrigerate and serve it cold. We liked it equally well both ways. It cuts into neater pieces once it’s been chilled.

–Adapted from April Fulton’s adapted recipe on NPR’s Kitchen Window 

March is a month of many celebrations in our little family. David and I were married on the 10th, and his birthday falls on the 25th. It’s also, in this part of the world, the beginning of my favorite season: spring.

This March felt especially monumental in our lives: David turned 30, and we celebrated 6 years of marriage, the last one where it will be just the two of us living in our house. It’s funny how the expectation surrounding the birth of a child makes everything seem like such a big deal; maybe it’s just the hormones, but I have felt a sense of urgency to mark occasions by celebrating with more fervor than usual (and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am even in my non-pregnant state an occasion kind of girl).

David was not thrilled about the prospect of turning 30, so I put that celebration on the backburner for a while and concentrated on our anniversary. Usually, I cook a romantic dinner and wear my wedding dress for the evening. Silly, I know, and not very possible this year due to this person protruding from the front of my body. And, I didn’t feel much like spending such a beautiful weekend inside cooking either, so we came up with a new plan. David orchestrated an afternoon picnic and afterwards, we decided to head out to see a movie (neither of us could remember the last time we actually watched one in the theater).

My only job was to come up with a dessert we could have when we got back home with our take-out, and it I knew it had to be an occasion-worthy one — one of the traditional gifts for six years of marriage is sugar, after all.

Over the Christmas holidays, we had the chance to meet and visit with our good friend Tee’s brother, Griff, who also loves to cook. Over Sunday lunch, we got on the topic of cookbooks. When I told him I had just been given Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, he immediately recommended her recipe for a dessert called a diplomatico. The suggestion stuck with me, and when I wanted something special to make for David, Hazan’s recipe is where I turned first. I altered it a little, adding a pronounced hazelnut flavor in with the chocolate, but I stuck with her basic formula.

The end result was both lovely and delicious; the chocolate filling is light in texture but heavy on flavor (especially if you use really good chocolate) and the cake turns velvety soft under the influence of its coffee-liqueur bath. You could make a fancy chocolate frosting to go on top, but a simple layer of whipped cream was all it needed, in my opinion. After you have the cake made and cooled, the dessert comes together very quickly; the set-up time it needs makes it the perfect thing to make the day before you need it.
In fact, it was so good that after it served as a celebratory sign of the six years I’ve been married to the love of my life, I convinced David to let me throw a small party in honor of the thirty years he has been alive. He agreed, as long as I promised to make this cake again, a sure sign that this was a dessert worthy of both occasions.

Chocolate Hazelnut Diplomatico

7 t. sugar, divided
4 eggs
6 ounces good, semisweet chocolate (extra, for garnish)
2/3 of a baked pound cake
1/3 cup frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
1 1/4 cups very strong coffee (I used hazelnut flavored coffee)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Toasted hazelnuts, for garnish

First, make the chocolate filling. Separate the eggs, and beat the yolks with 1 t. of the sugar until pale yellow. Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler. Pour the chocolate very slowly into the yolks, whisking constantly until thoroughly incorporated. Beat the whites on high until stiff peaks form. Stir a couple of spoonfuls of the whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten; then, fold the remaining whites in with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon very gently, being careful not to stir the air out of them. Set aside.

Next, line a baking dish or deep bowl with a damp dishcloth or cheesecloth, letting the edges hang over. Mix the coffee, frangelico, and 5 t. of the sugar in another shallow dish. Slice the pound cake thinly, and dip each slice quickly into the coffee mixture. Line the cloth-lined dish with a layer of cake slices, making sure to fill in all gaps (the wet cake smooshes well, so don’t be afraid to press small pieces into any holes). Spread a layer of the chocolate mixture on top of the cake. Repeat with remaining cake and chocolate, finishing with cake. How many layers you get will depend on the size of your container. I used a 4-quart round bowl and had 4 layers of cake (3 layers of filling). Cover the top of the dessert with the cloth and refrigerate for at least a few hours, preferably overnight.

Just before serving, whip the cream with a teaspoon of sugar until soft peaks form. Turn the cake out of the container onto a platter or cake stand. Frost the sides and top with whipped cream; garnish with chopped nuts and shaved chocolate.

–Adapted from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Towards the end of last semester, I made a careless scheduling mistake in one of my classes — I miscalculated the number of minutes each student could have for his or her presentation, and it took me a good day to figure out why we kept running out of time. When I explained my error to my students, I told them I didn’t know how I could have come up with those numbers. One of my especially clever students raised her hand and said, “Do you think it has anything to do with your brain shrinking? I read in an article that pregnancy can cause your brain to decrease in size.” Now, of course, I know that science indicates that actual brain size has nothing to do with intelligence or with the brain’s ability to function properly. At the same time, I have to say that pregnancy has, at times, made me feel like part of my brain has gone inactive or shorted out on me. I am usually a very organized, task-oriented person, and all of a sudden, I have turned into a chaotically scatter-brained crazy woman. And the baby isn’t even here yet!

It isn’t just that I haven’t been posting. The holidays were nuts for us — we spent a lot of time away from home and our computers, and then getting back into the rhythm of a school schedule always makes life extra busy at the beginning of a semester — perhaps, it makes sense that I would take a blogging break until I’m in a more regular routine and things have settled down a little. No, the really troubling part of this whole brain chaos is that — I don’t know if I can make myself say this – I don’t really feel like cooking.

I am, of course. Cooking. Just not anything very interesting. I find myself poring over my new, glossy, pretty cookbooks and feeling completely at a loss for how to decide what to make. Part of it is that I am overwhelmed by what is actually happening in the formation of this new little person in my body. I feel so much pressure to make sure I am getting the right nutrients to help him or her grow that I find myself relying on familiar recipes (all of which you already know about).

Another part is that in some ways, I feel like all I do is think about food. I wake up starving, and if I don’t eat every two hours or so, especially in the mornings, I have dizzy spells. David’s favorite joke these days is, “Have you eaten all three of your breakfasts yet?” By the time dinner rolls around, I’m still hungry, but I can’t bear to really think about what to make. So, we have roast chicken and vegetables. Again.

I’ve only found one remedy for this culinary dry spell: baking.

Now, I know that sounds contrary to maternal instinct and, well, just plain good common sense. In order to gain a healthy amount of weight and get the nutrients the growing baby needs, one should avoid refined sugar and high-calorie sweets. So goes the conventional pregnancy-book wisdom.

But, the making of sweet, pretty things makes me so happy. It isn’t really the eating of them — although I won’t lie and say I don’t love that part too. It’s the sheer joy of putting them together.

Perhaps I’m still in holiday mode — my sister-in-law, Hannah, and I had such a lovely time whipping up fun treats in the kitchen, and then, before I knew it, her weeks here had passed and we were all on the road for Christmas celebrating, and then, to move Jon and her to Texas.

Or, maybe, it’s the weather. It has been wet and cold here for weeks on end, and if I don’t see more than one day of sunshine in a row soon, I’m likely to hide under my covers indefinitely. Folks in the Pacific Northwest, my sincere condolences. I don’t know how you do it.

Whatever the reason, after a long, long hiatus, I have not a menu or a quick dinner recipe to offer you, but what has been a bright spot in several a dark, rainy January day for me: a lemon cupcake.

I first made these for our friend Billy’s birthday right before we left for Christmas holidays, and I used the last of the Meyer lemon crop in these parts to make another batch not too long ago. The cake part of this recipe comes from the ever-reliable Rachel at Coconut and Lime: I adapted her Lime & Buttermilk cupcake recipe to suit my hankering for a lemon-only affair. To make the lemon flavor even more pronounced, and because I had some left over from a round of holiday gift-making, I filled the centers with lemon curd. Frosting, in my opinion, should match its partner: heavy buttercream works well with a hefty chocolate cupcake, but for these lighter, lemony ones, I opted for a dollop of plain whipped cream and a garnish of sugared rind.

If you need a pick-me-up in the midst of a hectic schedule, a rainy day, or simply the doldrums of winter, one of these cupcakes might just inject some sunshine into your soul. And if you’re six months pregnant and without the inspiration for a single meal, they might just make you feel like a cook again. Or, maybe that’s just me.

Lemon Sunshine Cupcakes

There are a variety of ways to make filled cupcakes, but most of them require some sort of assembly after the cupcakes are already baked. I wanted to see what happened if the curd baked right along with the cupcake batter. You won’t get a neat pocket of filling right in the middle of your cupcake that way; instead, the curd sort of soaks the whole cake, so that each bite is bursting with lemon flavor. Be forewarned: eating these cupcakes does make for sticky fingers.

For this recipe, I like long, thin strips of lemon zest, which you can get with a claw zester or with a really sharp vegetable peeler.

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
Juice of 1 large lemon
Zest of 3 large lemons
About 1 cup of Lemon Curd
Half pint of heavy whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with baking cups, aluminum or paper, and spray with baking spray. Stir together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. With a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and continue beating, until the mixture is well-combined.

Toss half of the zest with a teaspoon of sugar and set aside; stir the rest in with the butter, sugar, and eggs.

Stir the buttermilk and lemon juice together in a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout. With the mixer on low, add the liquid and flour mixtures alternately, until the batter is thick and creamy.

Fill each muffin cup a little less than half-full and make a well in the center. Fill the well with a spoonful of lemon curd. Top with the remaining batter, to cover the curd. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until the tops are just beginning to brown.

When the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost with whipped cream and top with the sugared zest. Keep in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

PS: If you are reading this post, I’d just like to say THANK YOU for returning. After so many glimpses of my very fat cat in a Santa hat on your computer screen, I’d completely understand if you never came back. I truly appreciate all of your comments and emails and the simple fact that you’ve checked in again to see if I’ve managed to post again. I am also terribly behind in responding to those kind comments and emails, so if you’ve written and not heard back from me, please accept my sincere apology for my silence. If pregnancy has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t know what the future holds, so I won’t make any promises I’m not certain I can keep, but I will say that I hope to be a more regular presence, even if it’s just to tell you about another fun sweet that’s emerged from my oven. Just promise you won’t call the pregnancy nutrition police, okay?

PPS: After catching up on my blog reading, I was delighted to discover that Garrett at Vanilla Garlic and Cheryl and the Cupcake Bakeshop are collecting cupcake recipes! Head over to their sites to check out more ways to spend a rainy day baking on January 29th.

For this month’s Paper Chef competition, the required ingredients include:

1. Vermouth
2. Cranberries
3. Sparkling drink
4. Something wild

with a celebration theme. Cranberries and a sparkling drink are easy enough, especially this time of year, and although I’ve never actually had vermouth, I understand that the sweet red version is akin to sherry or port, both of which know their way around my kitchen quite well.

The something wild part, however, I was not so sure about.

Wild berries? Not this time of year. Wild animals? My pregnancy-induced aversion to meat says no. Wild…and crazy?

Hmmm. Well, I am not wild and crazy. In fact, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am quite the opposite: pajamas and a movie suit me much better than any night out on the town (especially these days). But, I do know some wild and crazy people. In fact, one of the people who has been in my life the longest who fits that description is also one of the women who taught me a good deal about the pleasures of food and cooking: my Aunt Emily.

Aunt Em is the youngest of five children, the oldest of whom is my father. Many stories circulate about which of them — the oldest and only boy or the youngest girl — got into more trouble as a kid. Apparently, by the time Aunt Em came around, my grandparents were so tired, she did exactly as she pleased. Or so the stories go.

By the time I knew her, she was the cool aunt who invited me up to her farmhouse in the summer, let me eat absolutely whatever I pleased, did flips off of the diving board when we went to the pool, and could waterski as well as any of the teenagers at the lake. Especially compared to my sweet, mild-mannered mother, Aunt Em was the picture of let-your-hair-down wild and crazy fun.

And, man, could she cook.

And so, although I know an actual person cannot be an ingredient, the spirit of Aunt Em is certainly what inspired this creation. One of my favorite desserts that she makes is something she calls Savannah Cake, made by mixing sherry custard and torn-up angel food cake and refrigerating it in a mold. The finished cake is iced with whipped cream and served with raspberry sauce. It is beautiful — the bright red of the berries and the white of the cake — but it is also delicious.

So, for my Aunt Em-inspired Paper Chef entry, I recreated her Savannah Cake, with a few alterations. For starters, I made a champagne cake, a bit denser than angel food, but airy enough to hold the custard well. The champagne flavor of the cake also provided a nice counterpoint to the vermouth in the custard, my second adjustment. And finally, I made a cranberry sauce with lime, instead of the raspberry sauce, usually made with lemon. Truly, a celebratory dessert, it would make a delightfully different birthday cake, or a fitting end to a fancy, celebratory dinner.

I love the custardy texture of this cake, and the flavors of the vermouth and champagne do play nicely together in your mouth. But, for me, the cranberry sauce makes it — the lovely, tart berry puree coats each sweet creamy bite with the perfect tang of contrast. Next time I make it, I won’t sweeten the cream for the icing — it doesn’t need it, and I think the cream could stand alone.

This cake also requires a celebratory spirit in the kitchen — it’s quite a process to make all of the individual parts before assembly, and then you have to wait until the next day to try it! But, when you do, the anticipation will make the celebration that much sweeter. Or, shall we say, wilder?

Wild Aunt Em’s Savannah Cake with Cranberry Sauce

For the cake:
2 3/4 cup cake flour
2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
10 1/2 T. butter
1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
3/4 cup champagne
6 egg whites (set aside the yolks for the custard)

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.

Cream the butter and 1 cup of the sugar. Add the champagne and flour mixture alternately to the creamed butter and sugar, mixing well after each addition (or just leave the motor running on your mixer like I do). Pour this batter (it will be very thick) into a large bowl and set aside.

Wash the mixer, and beat the egg whites with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar until soft peaks form. Stir a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites into the batter to lighten; then, fold the whites and batter together. Pour into a greased cake pan and bake for about 40 minutes, or until the edges are light brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Put the cake on a rack to cool.

For the custard:
1 envelope unflavored gelatin, softened in 1/2 cup cold water
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup sweet vermouth (or sherry)
1/4 cup water

Beat the egg yolks until light yellow. Add the sugar and continue to beat. Stir in the vermouth and water; add the gelatin. Cook this mixture in the top of a double-boiler over simmering water (the highest temperature you can manage without the water boiling), and stir, until slightly thickened, somewhere around 15-20 minutes. The custard will coat the back of a spoon, but it won’t get terribly thick until it’s chilled. Set aside to cool.
To assemble the cake:
1 pint of whipping cream
1 cup sugar

Whip the cream and sugar together, and divide in half. Stir half of the whipped cream into the cooled custard; cover and refrigerate the rest. Mix the cream and custard well. Tear the cake into pieces and fold the cake into the custard-cream mixture. Pour this into a greased bundt pan and refrigerate overnight. The next day, ice with the remaining whipped cream and pour the cranberry sauce on top so it runs down the sides. Serve slices with more sauce.

Cranberry Sauce

12 ounces of cranberries
1 cup water
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 cup sugar

Cook the ingredients over medium until the water boils. Then, cook for another 10 minutes, just until the cranberries burst. Force this mixture through a strainer.

Can I just say how much I love having access to the opinions and expertise of real people about food?

When my good friend Garland mentioned that she wanted to have a birthday cake for her one-year-old daughter, Wilhelmina, she wondered what such a cake would look like. Because of a history of family allergies, their doctor recommended waiting to give her dairy, wheat, nuts, egg whites, honey, or other potential allergens until at least her second year.

I volunteered to do some research about allergen-free baking, knowing just the cook to turn to. I found a recipe on Karina’s site that looked like it might work, especially since Wilhelmina loves bananas, but I needed to make some substitutions. Karina was on hand with helpful suggestions and answered all of my questions, and I’m happy to report that the cupcakes were a hit! Here’s the birthday girl holding hers:

The cakes were tender and sweet and perfectly banana-flavored, but the icing was a bit trickier. I made the Maple-Orange icing first because I thought it would taste good (and it did!), but it wasn’t thick enough to decorate with. In fact, it was the wrong consistency altogether, and it separated not too long into the party. I also concocted a faux buttercream with shortening instead of butter, and while it didn’t taste as good as the maple icing, it allowed me to make some pink bunnies, inspired by Wilhelmina’s favorite companion: her pink bunny blanket. Were I to make these again and not need the bunny decoration, I’d make a simple powdered sugar glaze with orange juice and maple syrup. Or, if I baked the batter as a cake instead, I’ll bet it a slice drizzled with just maple syrup and topped with sliced banana would hit the spot too.

Banana-Corn Cupcakes

1 1/4 cups wheat-free, gluten-free baking mix (the mix I used was part garbanzo bean flour, part rice flour, part baking powder, and part xanthan gum)
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 t. Kosher salt
3 egg yolks
2/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
1 3/4 cup brown sugar
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup rice milk (orange juice would work here too, I think)
2 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with greased paper or aluminum baking cups.

Mix the baking mix, cornmeal, and salt together in a small bowl. In an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with the oil and sugar until well-combined. Add the banana until well-incorporated. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the liquid until all is well-distributed. Stir in the vanilla. Divide the batter among the muffins cups (I had enough left to make a cake in a small loaf pan), and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

–Thanks to Karina, the Gluten Free Goddess, for the inspiring recipe and suggestions for modifying it!

Maple-Orange Icing

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 T. vegetable shortening, or butter
a pinch of salt
1 T. orange juice
1/4 cup maple syrup
On high speed, beat the powdered sugar, shortening, salt, and juice on high. With the mixer running, pour in the maple syrup, until the icing is a spreadable consistency. This icing probably keeps better at room temperature; I refrigerated mine, and it separated. The shortening could have been the culprit there too…

–Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

For the bunnies:

Ice the cupcakes with a thin layer of the maple-orange or other sweet, flavorful icing. You’ll also need a recipe of pink buttercream-like frosting; any thick, pipe-able frosting will do. I put mine in a small zip-top plastic bag, sealed it tightly, and cut a tiny hole in one corner of the bottom of the bag, but if you have the right equipment, you won’t have to improvise. Then, pipe a small swirly circle for the rabbit’s head on each cupcake. For the ears, slice a banana into rounds, and then slice each round into fourths. One fourth makes a good-sized ear. For the eyes, I used dried cranberries cut into tiny specks, grated carrot for the nose, and coconut slivers for the whiskers.

Happy first birthday, Wilhelmina!

Weekly Dish was born! I can honestly say that when I sat down at my computer this time last year and hit “publish” for the first time, I had no idea what I was in for. Over 200 posts later, as I click back through my archives, I realize that I’m looking at a year in my culinary life, a record of what I made and what I consumed. Which was partly the point of this whole endeavor, of course: documentation.

But it was also about honing my craft, both as a cook and a writer. The site has pushed me to be more conscious about what and how I cook, and having an audience has stretched my willingness to try new things, my technical abilities in the kitchen, and my knowledge of how this whole business of combining ingredients to create something new works in the first place. Weekly Dish has made me a better cook, plain and simple.

And a better writer: composing spontaneously (and quickly) several times a week has provided a welcome space for growth of my writing self. Thankfully for all of us, practice has also sharpened my photography skills. Slowly, over the course of the last year, horrendous, poorly lit exposures of uninteresting plates have given way to more thoughtfully composed presentations, which if still not where I’d like them to be, at least don’t make viewers shudder and turn away in horror (as some of my earliest pictures do for me now when I look at them!)

What I didn’t know to expect from Weekly Dish were all of the pleasant surprises that have come in the form of emails, comments, and other people’s blogs. Quite simply, you readers out there, have been the nicest surprise of all. Oh, sure, I expected that my grandmother would be delighted to read my posts and say that they were wonderful. But to have people who previously did not know me, come into my kitchen via this little corner of the web, pull up a virtual kitchen stool, and watch, listen, comment on, and participate in my culinary experiments alongside me has brought more joy than I fathomed possible. What began as a way to share recipes and ideas with a friend has turned into a (literal) web of friendships, cris-crossing the globe.

As I have shared with you before, making food is for me primarily an expression of love. So, to know that others out there are partaking in our meals — even just with their eyes — makes a world of difference. As I cook for my little family, and sometimes friends and neighbors, I also cook for you readers, hoping that along the way, you receive these meals and turn them into expressions of your own, sharing them with those you love.

So today, I want to say a great big THANK YOU to all of you who have joined me over the past 12 months to partake in what has turned out to be a terrifically fulfilling adventure. I hope you will continue to stop in and occasionally let me hear from you — your comments, stories, recipes, ideas are always welcome here.

To celebrate: cupcakes!

Birthday Cupcakes (Chocolate with Mocha Buttercream Frosting)

3 1/2 ounces (200 grams) 60% or 70% cocoa high-quality chocolate, chopped
2 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 T. strong coffee

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Fill the cups of a muffin tin with paper or tin baking cups; spray with cooking spray.

In the top of a double-boiler over boiling water (or your mixing bowl placed over a pot of boiling water if you don’t have a double-boiler), melt the chocolate, stirring until smooth. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugars in an electric mixer, until thoroughly combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well as you go.

In a separate bowl, stir the flour, soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder together (sift them if you’re so inclined).

Also stir together the buttermilk and coffee (I do this in a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout).

With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk mixture alternately to the butter and sugar, until all ingredients are well-incorporated. Last, stir in the chocolate.

Pour the batter into the paper or tin cups in the muffin tin, filling the cups about 3/4 full. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. When cool, top with frosting. Makes 24 cupcakes.

Mocha Buttercream Frosting

5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
1 egg white
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 T. strong coffee
2 T. instant coffee granules (espresso powder also works)
2 sticks butter, softened
4 cups confectioner’s sugar

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double-boiler and set aside to cool. In a glass bowl or measuring cup, stir together the cream, coffee, and instant coffee until the coffee granules dissolve. In an electric mixer, whip the butter until creamy. Add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, until completely combined with the butter. With the mixer on medium, add the chocolate. Next, beat in the coffee mixture, whipping on high speed until the icing forms soft peaks. This frosting works best if you use it immediately, but if you have to refrigerate it, you’ll need to leave it out for a while to soften so it will be spreadable. This recipe makes plenty to frost 24 cupcakes and still have some leftover.

–Adapted from Sara Foster’s Fresh Everyday and the Foster’s Market Cookbook 

For my sister’s 19th birthday, she came for a visit this past weekend. Elizabeth is fun to cook for because a.) she lives in a dorm and shares a tiny kitchen with 120 other college-aged girls b.) she and I have very similar taste in food c.) she gets excited about everything (which also makes her really fun to buy gifts for).

This cake looks complicated, but as long as you allow yourself enough time, it really isn’t hard to make. The base is a buttermilk cake that is dense enough to hold itself together 4 layers high, but moist and loose-crumbed enough to happily soak up all the strawberry juices (especially if you have time to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before serving).

If you like super-sweet desserts, this cake may not be for you. Louisiana strawberries have been sweet this season, so I didn’t sugar the berries. The original recipe also suggests adding sugar to the whipped cream, but I prefer my strawberries English-style with unsweetened cream, so I omitted that step. In my opinion, the cake is sweet enough to provide a counterpoint to the tangy-sweet berries and the smooth, rich cream. Too much sweetener would blur the lines between the separate components too much for me, I think. Elizabeth and my mom agreed, but if you’re making the cake for a person with a real sweet tooth, this recipe would be an easy one to up the caloric ante.

Buttermilk Cake with Strawberries and Cream

Recipe from the Foster’s Market Cookbook by Sara Foster

4 1/2 cups flour
1 T. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3 sticks butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 t. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk
3 cups whipping cream
3 pints strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced lengthwise

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans. Mix the dry ingredients–flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a large bowl. (Sift if you are a sifting kind of baker. I never sift anything.) Set the dry ingredients aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs with the mixer running, and beat for a few minutes. The batter should be light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla.

Measure the buttermilk into a pourable measuring cup. Turn the mixer speed to low and alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl if batter gets stuck there. The ingredients should be just combined.

Pour the batter into greased cake pans. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the tip of a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. The tops of the cakes should be golden brown. Cool the cakes in their pans for about 10 minutes (the cake should be cool enough to handle without burning your fingers). Turn the cakes onto cooling racks or dish towels and allow them to cool completely. (Don’t omit this cooling step–slicing warm cake into layers is not pretty or fun!)

When the cake is nearly cool, whip your cream until soft peaks form, and slice your strawberries. Have them both at hand while you assemble the cake.

Now comes the tricky part: you need the longest serrated knife you can find. Slice each layer in half, carefully. I am not particularly good at this; mine always come out just a little uneven (as you can see in the picture), but the important thing is to take your time and try to watch your knife: make sure that the blade is always in the center of the layer. I start at the corner and then work my way around the cake. If you mess up, don’t worry, just make sure you have one pretty, even layer for the top.

Place the ugliest layer bottom-side down on a cake plate (so that the exposed part is the center). Spread an even layer of whipped cream over the cake. Lay the sliced strawberries evenly around the outside edge (they will be the ones that stick out, so you want them to be even and pretty); then fill in the center with sliced berries. Top with the next layer, and repeat this process. If you plan to refrigerate the cake, wrap it in foil when you’ve placed the last layer. Before serving, top the last layer with a handful of sliced berries and a dollop of cream.

Another fun thing about my sister is that she loves dessert so much that she often eats it for breakfast. In honor of her, that’s what I had this morning–leftover birthday cake!

Here I am making the cake for my sister; I wanted to show off my new apron that my sweet Aunt Prissy got for me. Isn’t it so cute? I almost feel like I should be wearing pearls and heels with it. I wore it a few weeks ago when I cooked for my girlfriends on our beach trip–they all agreed that it would make a really cute dress too. Thanks, Aunt Pris!

MY FIRST BLOGGING EVENT: IMBB #19

Thursday, September 29, 2005

What is a blogging event and what does IMBB stand for? Well, dear readers, I’ll tell you. See, out there in the big world of the wide web, there’s this whole community of people who write blogs about food and cooking. They hold events every so often where everyone writes about the same thing during the same time period. IMBB stands for Is My Blog Burning? You can read about the event’s origins here. I have only read about these events until now, and for some reason, I decided it was a good time to join in (you know, because school really isn’t keeping me busy enough).

For this IMBB, the 19th in the series, Sam of Becks & Posh instructed all of the participants to make a vegan meal and serve it to some unsuspecting guest. (See my unsuspecting guests above–my fellow PhD student Casey and her sister Christy). I was all excited about sharing my very first blogging event with my new friends. Casey’s birthday was a few weeks ago, so I did some research and figured out how to make her a vegan birthday cake. Before I tell you about the meal I prepared, though, I might as well go ahead and confess. I tried really hard to stick to this whole vegan thing, but on inspecting my recipes later, I discovered that I was foiled. Vegans avoid animal products of any kind, and, well, apparently that’s more difficult than I thought.

I had planned to make Eggplant Parmesan for Casey and Christy before I found out about IMBB. So, I thought, I’ll just omit the cheese; what’s so hard about that? And, I had made marinara sauce earlier in the week that was vegan–perfect for the eggplant–and some fresh pesto without the parmesan cheese to flavor the coating. I even found a way to get the coating to stick to the eggplant without using eggs. What I did not think about was whether my bread crumbs had dairy products in them, and, as it turns out, they did. And the pasta I served the eggplant and marinara on was made with egg whites.

BUT, just in case you are wondering why I posted this in the first place since I seem to have failed the challenge so miserably, I am happy to report that the cake I made was vegan, and Casey, Christy, and my husband, David, all gave it good reviews. So here’s the recipe for it, along with my recipe for the eggplant, even though it’s not quite vegan. Thanks for reading my very first event post!! Come again soon.

Chocolate Mocha Cake with a Kick

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. cayenne pepper

1/4 t. salt

3/4 cup strong coffee

1/2 cup margarine (100% vegetable oil)

1 T. balsamic vinegar

1 T. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the dry ingredients together in the bowl of a mixer. Add the coffee with the mixer running on low, then add the vinegar and vanilla. Add the margarine last, turning the mixer up to high speed and beating until smooth. Pour into a greased 9×9 cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

For the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup cocoa

1/4 cup strong coffee

Whisk together until smooth and shiny. Pour over warm cake, spreading to coat the top and sides. Sprinkle with cinnamon to serve.

Eggplant Not Parmesan

1 small to medium eggplant

Kosher salt

1/2 cup flour

1 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon pesto (for vegan, I made it without the cheese, and substituted 1 t. Kosher salt)

1 cup bread crumbs

Canola oil

Slice the eggplant into thin slices, and lay in one layer inside a colander. Sprinkle with Kosher salt. If your slices won’t all fit in the colander (as mine didn’t), cover the first layer with paper towels and lay another layer on top. Allow to drain for about an hour.

Dry the slices and wipe off any excess salt; then dip in flour to coat on both sides. Lay on a baking sheet. Mix olive oil and pesto together in a shallow baking dish; pour the bread crumbs into another. Dip each slice in oil, then in breadcrumbs. If you have time to let the slices refrigerate for a half-hour or so, the coating will do a better job of sticking when you fry them.

Heat a half-inch of canola oil in a large skillet. Fry the slices until brown and crispy on both sides, about 6 minutes per side. Decrease the heat if they bread crumbs brown too quickly. Drain on paper towels.

Serve with angel hair pasta and marinara sauce. Make sure your pasta is egg-free if you want it to be vegan. If you don’t care about making this meal vegan, you can add some fresh mozzarella slices to the top of the eggplant, and melt under the broiler before serving (this is usually how I make it).

Tagged with: IMBB19 + Vegan