A Cake For The Fair

The last fair of our local season ends today.
I brought my usual jellies and jams and ended up with a couple blue ribbons. I hoped this lemon meringue cake with tart lemon curd filling (made with home grown Meyer lemons), fluffy white cake and airy sweet meringue frosting would be a big winner but alas only 3rd in the layer cake competition.
There's always next year. Sigh.

Happy Birthday James

A birthday dinner for two calls for a special cake -- mini cake for the birthday boy.
I bought these 3" cake pans years ago and had nearly forgotten them until this afternoon when cake for one seemed like the obvious choice. No leftovers makes it easier to get back on the diet.

I went for a simple Vanilla White Cake.


Preheat the oven to 350º
Prepare five 3" mini cake pans with buttered parchment paper on the bottom, sides buttered, the entire pan lightly dusted with flour.
Cream 1 stick of room temperature butter with 1 cup of sugar.
Add 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks one by one (beating well after each addition)
Drizzle in 1/2 tsp of good quality vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups of cake flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/8 tsp salt all sifted together
Add 1/3 of the flour, beat until just mixed, add 1/3 of the milk (1/2 cup total) and repeat until the last of the milk is added and the batter is silky smooth.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes until the cake springs back to your touch and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

I trimmed the mini cakes and used two split in the center to make 3 nice even layers which I brushed with homemade jam and a fluffy sweet American buttercream.

In an electric mixer set to medium speed mix 1 stick of softened butter and 1 1/2 cups of confectioner's sugar until smooth. When danger of dusting your kitchen in powdered sugar has passes, turn the mixer up to high to beat in as much air as possible, drizzle in a touch of vanilla and 1 - 2 TB of whole milk and mix to desired fluffy consistency.

Classic birthday cake in miniature.

Many many happy returns Honey!

Ready For The Fair

The most recent treat James said was "the best thing" I ever baked was this embarrassingly  simple almond cake.
"You should enter that in the fair," he said.
Well tomorrow I will, along with a collection of homemade jams and jellies and a dense, sweet persimmon bread made from our home grown fruit.
But, back to this cake. Adapted from a  recipe by former Chez Panisse baker David Liebowitz, it's one of the easiest recipes I know. It's what I make when I am not in the mood to do a lot but still want dessert for guests. It's super moist and a great make ahead cake. It keeps for days. In short, it's the ultimate casual dinner party finish.
First combine 3/4 cup of almond paste (not marzipan but almond paste) with 1 1/3 cups of sugar in a standing mixer. The sugar helps break the almond paste up in small bits. Add 10 TB of room temperature butter and beat until light and fluffy. Next drizzle in 6 lightly beaten eggs and a tsp of vanilla extract. Then stir in 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/4 tsp salt (lightly whisk dry ingredients together before adding to the batter).
That's it. Simple.
Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9" cake pan and bake for 1 hour at 325º.
Depending on what I've made for dinner sometimes I serve this super moist cake with creamy full fat yogurt (we love St Benoit Creamery yogurt made in near-by Sonoma county) and a  drizzle of honey, other nights it's topped with fresh blueberry or plum compote.
It's always a winner.
Fingers crossed for the fair.

Off To The Fair

 The second fair of summer fair season around here and I missed the jellies and preserves drop off date. . . so I had to make a big splash on the baking and confections day. This morning I delivered a very floral rose geranium angel food cake with rose water glaze.

I had to get up at 3 this morning to make sure this whole wheat lot had time to rise but the crust was still crisp when I arrived at the fair. Not quite seasonal, the small boat of white chocolate peppermint fudge (my old reliable by Christmas dessert/ party treat) topped with broken Hammond's candy canes was this years foray into confections. Last year I did pretty well with macadamia nut brittle so I am hopeful.

I don't think this is the kind of gingerbread the judges are expecting. In the fair handbook gingerbread is classified with quick breads and muffins but mine is really a cake -- James' favorite Christmas cake as a matter of fact. Specially for the fair I topped the moist spicy cake with dark chocolate ginger glaze and candied ginger. That might be risky, but it is delicious.

And then my old stand by, Portuguese (or Hawaiian) sweet bread. A soft light bread perfect for breakfast with jam, french toast or sandwiches. I don't know why I decided to enter sweet bread. I haven't made it in years since I started make more rustic, crisp crust breads like the wheat one I made early this morning. But something felt right and I've already taken home a blue ribbon from the season's first fair for this delicately sweet, moist bread.

A New Year's Cabinet Clearing Dessert

Invited to celebrate with friends and asked to bring dessert, my mind drifted, as it often does, from weighing the options of new diets and work-out schedules to cake. Chocolately, rich, layer cake. Lately when I have made desserts I've fallen into a modern day rut of bundt pans, snack cakes and cobblers -- quick easy desserts. No frosting, no second clean up, no awed on-lookers. Even at the last county fair I noticed there wasn't a single layer cake. It seems the once classic American cake is falling out of favor with home cooks which makes me love it and yearn for it all the more.
A couple months back I had too many oranges and not enough time to eat them and made a thick sweet orange curd thinking it would come in handy as a cake filling. We were supposed to attend a party where we were bringing dessert (it tends to happen) but in the end we missed the party and the curd stayed in the freezer. My opportunity had come.
Thawing the orange curd I decided instead of the simple yellow cake I'd once planned that a flavorful chocolate cake would use up some pantry staples and complement the rich orange curd. Instead of my own recipe which I deemed a bit too fussy I turned to Ina Garten's shockingly simple double chocolate layer cake. The orange curd filled between the layers while a simple frosting featuring melted semisweet chocolate covered the outside. The dark cake combined with the orange flavor was at once holiday and familiar like those little chocolate oranges carefully unwrapped and divided or found in Christmas stockings in years past.

Apple Cake and Giant Beans

I've been away for a couple weeks and the garden, well watered and tended by James, offered up a huge crop of Romano beans. Huge crop and huge beans. I scurried out to gather up our bounty with dreams of Zuni cafe style long braised beans in my head.

Inside the offerings were -- let's kindly say -- less bountiful. A thorough search rounded up a handful of lonely Gravenstein apples, a couple plums, butter from the freezer and milk just about to turn. I don't know about anyone else but to me that collection says "cake!"

I started by mixing up 2 sticks of melted butter and 4 eggs with 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar and a splash of my favorite flavoring -- bourbon. James loves the hearty flavor of brown sugar and a whisper of Kentucky whiskey seems to bring out the rich caramel notes.
To the liquid ingredients I added in 2 1/2 cups AP flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 3/4 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg all mixed together.
When the batter was just mixed (too much mixing makes for a tough cake) I added in chopped apples and plums along with a couple handfuls of the chopped pecans stored in our freezer. After 55 minutes in a 350 degree oven I had a beautiful golden brown bundt that made clever use of our leftover, seemingly unloved fruit. I let the cake cool for 15 minutes in the pan and then cool completely on a rack. Thanks to the new coconut oil spray I found at Trader Joe's this bundt cake practically slipped out of the pan -- removing the only anxiety ever associated with a bundt cake.
When my beautiful cake cooled I poured on a thin glaze of powdered sugar thinned with bourbon and milk.
A easy seasonal welcome home cake.

A Breakfast Treat or What To Do With Yogurt

That sour milk wasn't the only ingredient past it's prime that greeted me on my return home. The fridge held a whole tub of untouched yogurt and a bowl of apricots that surely had seen better days.
That combo screamed breakfast cake to me and I set out to whip up a morning treat for James.
I've made plenty of yogurt cakes before. They mix up quickly and the yogurt assures a tender crumb. When I have a single serving yogurt I use it as an ingredient and a make do measuring cup.
This time I happened along a recipe on a blog called In Erika's Kitchen and decided to give her version a try.
I started by marinating the cut up apricots in 1/2 cup of sugar (Erika calls for 1/4 cup but honestly I just misread it). Then in a separate bowl I whisked together 2 eggs, 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 cup yogurt and 1/3 cup canola oil. Then I added in 2 cups of flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda. Erika says to add in the liquid released from the marinating apricots but mine were still pretty dry so I pressed on and poured half the batter into a greased 9 x 13 pan and covered it with half the apricots. I repeated with the rest of the batter and fruit and popped the cake into a 350º oven for 40 minutes. I'm not sure how Erika managed to get her apricots to stay on top of the batter. Mine fell to the middle which didn't affect the taste at all.
Easy, quick, delicious, cake . . . for breakfast.

A Good Excuse For Cake

 James' friend Alex U (and his wife) has started making homemade vanilla extracts and sugars. We were the lucky recipients. These beautiful little bottles are a perfect excuse to start baking.
Though it's probably not the best test of new vanilla, I decided on a version of pastry chef and sweet blogger (and cook book author) supreme David Leibovitz's persimmon cake. We have plenty of frozen pulp that I put away from our trees this year. I have cream cheese for the frosting. I have a bag of currants from another recipe I could use up. Beside Lebovitz's recipe is flavored with not just vanilla but bourbon. A wining combo. A combo I think our friends at Vanilla Nouveau also like.
When most cooks say bourbon vanilla they are referring to beans from the island of Madacascar known for a pure clean vanilla taste. VN has produced what all we bakers (especially ones like me with a fondness for Southern style desserts) have been wishing for, a bourbon vanilla infused with actual bourbon. You certainly get a whiff of whisky when you open the bottle and that infusion added a layer of tasty intrigue to my cake -- especially to the uncooked cream cheese frosting where the vanilla really shown through, tempering the tang with a rich mellow undertone of sophisticated flavor.

Next up I am planning a rich vanilla custard, perhaps a creme brulee. A dish where the vanilla flavor will have less competition from other flavors and really have to step out as the star of the dish.
Thanks so much Vanilla Nouveau for your flavored vanilla and for another excuse to bake. Sweet!

Welcome Santa: Christmas Eve 2012

 Classic Americana. Mustard brown sugar glazed ham, scalloped potatoes, lemony green beans and parker house rolls. James favorites for a cozy Christmas for two.

We don't have many traditions, but as long as I've known James I've made this unbeatable gingerbread cake every year. Flavored with hearty guinness stout,  the recipe is a specialty of New York's Gramercy tavern's (former) elite pastry chef Claudia Fleming. Fleming may have moved on to her own restaurant on the North Fork but her recipe lives on.
Christmas for two -- warm hearts and lots of leftovers.

Sometimes A Man Needs Cake

"I know I tell you know to have it around," James said wistfully peering into the kitchen. "But I really wish we had some cake."

I don't need much more encouragement than that and after a quick glance into the fridge I pulled out the last of a tray of Costco organic blueberries and started to mix. For something simple and tried and true I searched Joy Of Baking and came up with this blueberry "buckle" or streusel topped cake.

I creamed 1/2 stick of butter with 1/2 cup of white sugar and then added in 1 egg and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Next I added 1 cup of flour (mixed with 1 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt) alternating with 1/3 cup of milk. I spread that batter into a greased 8"x8" pan. I covered the batter with blueberries and then loosely spread the streusel topping (1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon with 1/4 cup of butter cut in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs) over the berries.

After 45 minutes at 350º James had fresh blueberry cake ready to top with rich vanilla ice cream. A perfect summer dessert.

Happy Birthday James

I love you, Honey!

A Quick Cake For Almost Fall

Every now and then we don't manage to eat all of the fruit from the farmer's market (or I buy too much) and we end up with a bowl of not quite as fresh fruit in the fridge -- sometimes more than the chickens can eat.

Emptying the fruit bowl today I found some bright green organic pears and sweet Gala apples. As luck would have it, unlike our usual SoCal sunny day we we were having the kind of hazy overcast almost fall morning that calls out for sweetly spiced apple cake (with my pears too).

I sautéed the peeled cubed apples and pears in a good quantity of butter (3 TB), cinnamon (2 1/2 tsp), mace (1/4 tsp), ginger (1/4 tsp), sugar (1/2 cup), brown sugar (1/4 cup) and just a hit of Scotch whiskey -- I couldn't seem to find the brandy. I cooked the fruit down until it was soft and sweet but still held it's shape -- about 6 minutes. I left the fruit to cool while I made the batter.

In an electric mixer I blended together 1 cup of vegetable oil, 4 eggs, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1/4 cup of fresh orange juice, 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of brown sugar. I stirred in 2 3/4 cups of all purpose flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour for a bit of rustic flavor, and 1 TB of baking powder.

I layered a third of the batter into a greased and floured bundt pan, followed by half of the apples -- trying to pour in as little juice as possible. Another third of the batter followed with the rest of the apples and pears and I topped the pan with the remaining batter. The assembled cake baked for 1 hour and 15 minutes in a 350º oven.

When the cake was cooked through I let it cool on a rack for 15 minutes before turning it out of the pan onto a cake platter. A little of the sugar from the fruit sauté seeped out and got a little sticky so the cake didn't come out of the pan quite as cleanly as I'd like, but it's still pretty respectable -- especially hiding under a scoop of ice cream.

Now I just need James to take the first slice.

Perfect Make Ahead Dessert

The other day while clearing out my baking cabinet I found an old jar of almond paste set to expire this september. I'd bought it quite some time ago for some Christmas cookies I intended to make and never got to -- or maybe that recipe really wanted marzipan. in any case it was sitting on the shelf and in danger of going to waste.

I did a quick internet search and found a lovely almond cake recipe from David Lebovitz's blog. Now Lebovitz's pedigree as a former Chaz Panisse pastry chef would be be enough to get me to pay attention to his blog. But that fact that the recipes are simple and inventive and delicious keeps me coming back. This almond cake mixes up in minutes, and keeps fresh for days if well wrapped. Easy to make ahead for dinners and summer parties. On top -- per the blogger's suggestion I made a quick blueberry compote with fresh blueberries and only a touch of sugar.

Dinner With Shelly

I just didn't want to do anything too elaborate -- after all it was just a holiday weekend dinner with a close friend . . . and I had plans during the day. First off a springtime version of our house favorite appetizer: rosemary crackers, fresh ricotta, prosciutto, and cherries (we usually do fresh figs but have to wait a bit for those to be in season) sprinkled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, black pepper, coarse salt and fresh chopped mint. Good but not great -- I think I will try it with the dark red deeper flavored cherries next time, or maybe roasted apricots.
A home variation of a Chez Panisse favorite. Marinated rounds of goat cheese (I left them to soak in olive oil sprinkled with fresh thyme and rosemary), rolled in fresh bread toasted crumbs and baked for 6 minutes at 400º until the cheese was just warm and soft. I placed the warm cheese on a bed fo lettuce fresh from our garden dressed with red wine vinegar, sherry vinegar (1 TB each) and walnut oil (1/4 cup).
Whole grilled shrimp. I rolled the shell on shrimp in butter melted with chopped shallot, basil and parsley and tossed them whole on the hot grill until they were just a bit browned and cooked through.
This one is staying on the make-ahead salad list. Blanched asparagus covered by a cucumber salad with wilted green onions (you soak them in the water from cooking the asparagus for 30 minutes) chervil, mint, tarragon, and chives dressed in a light red wine vinegar vinaigrette flavored with dijon mustard. Easy, beautiful, and summer fresh tasting.
For dessert an old standard. I call it California upside down cake. Really it's fridge fruit cake -- whatever is left in the fruit bowl at the end of the week -- today it was white peaches, nectarines, and apricots. I was wishing I had a handful of slivered almonds to sprinkle in with the fruit. First I melt a stick of butter in an oven proof pan and add in 3/4 cup of brown sugar and leave over medium low heat until it just starts to bubble. Then I arrange the sliced fruit on top and cover with a light cake batter, an adaptation of another Chez Panisse recipe.

For the batter. Cream 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar with 4 TBs of butter. Add in two egg yolks 1 at a time. Mix together 1 3/4 cup (less 1 TB) cake flour (or 1 1/2 cup regular flour), 1 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp of either nutmeg of cinnamon, to your taste, and a pinch of salt in a separate bowl. Alternate mixing in the flour mixture in 3 additions with 1/2 cup of milk mixed with 1 tsp vanilla extract. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites to firm peaks. Gently fold the egg whites into the already mixed batter and spread the lightened batter over the fruit and sugar in the baking pan. Bake about 1 hour and 10 minutes (check after an hour) at 350º.

It's really good for breakfast too.

Never Say Never

So much for sweeping statements.

Just a little while ago I mentioned how I never make carrot cake, "I don't like it so I don't know if James likes it or not". Written right here on this blog.

Call it my Rumsfeld moment, but we are in the information age and here already a few within a few weeks I have been proven a liar.

Well, we were going to some friends' house for dinner and I thought I'd bring dessert. I was feeling pretty lazy. I've been busy filling the freezer for James while I am out of town so, oddly enough, cooking for "day of" has taken somewhat of a backseat. And, I needed to clear out the space being taken up by that tub of delicious cream cheese frosting. Anyway, I just didn't feel up to my usual 3 layer red velvet cake -- too many pans to wash I figured. And so I pondered other cakes that take well to cream cheese frosting and landed on the dreaded carrot cake. Not the least of reasons was the 10lb bag of Bunny Love James had deposited in the fridge from his last "I'm going to start juicing again" run to Costco.

Simple, quick, and, I have to admit, not too bad. I used a simple serve in the cake pan recipe from the kitchen stalwart The King Arthur Flour Baking Book.

First I beat together 4 eggs and 1 1/2 cups of canola oil until they were light and -- as the recipe called for but I didn't really see, full of bubbles. Then I added 2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup at time -- beating well after each addition, and 2 tsp of vanilla. In a separate bowl I mixed 2 cups of all purpose flour, 1 TB of cinnamon, 2 tsps of baking soda and 1 tsp of salt. I gently mixed the dry ingredients into the wet, folded in 3 sups of finely grated carrots and 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, and popped the pan in to a 350º oven for about 50 minutes.

Easy one pan snack cake -- but barely a dent in the carrot supply.

2 Hour (And Counting) Apple Cake

A pile of apples on the counter, flour in the cupboard and a quick internet search led me to Smitten Kitchen's apple cake. The recipe couldn't be simpler. Chopped apples mixed with cinnamon and sugar are layered into a tube pan alternating with a basic coffeecake style batter of flour, salt, sugar. oil, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, and a bit of orange juice. I added raisins into the apples (James loves raisins) and added the "optional" chopped walnuts into the thick batter.

Only one thing -- I'm not sure what was different about my cake and the Smitten Kitchen cake but instead of the recipe's hour and a half baking time . . . our dinner treat took about two and half hours until a tester came out clean. Long time to wait for a fairly simple cake? Yes. Too long? No. James said it was one of my best cakes ever. Thanks SK!

What Claudia Had For Lunch

I am lucky enough to have friends who know the things I don't know.

Yesterday when I needed help with a couple -- let's say, functions -- I couldn't figure out, I looked to Claudia. Although I would have happily paid for her expertise, Claudia chose to be paid in food . . . so, this is what Claudia had for lunch.

First off Peposo -- a peppery Italian stew that supposedly dates back to the early 1400's (at least) and became known through the construction of the cathedral dome in Florence. As the story goes the tile makers from near-by Impruneta (just South of Florence) would bake this long cooking stew in their kilns and Brunelleschi, the architect, while looking for roof tiles came to love it. Think of it as Italian Boeuf Bourguignon (kind of a theme this month) but much, much easier.

Cut beef suitable for long cooking (I used beef shanks and chuck -- I like some bone and some boneless) into large pieces (I think mine were about 2" x 3" or 3" x 3" -- I left the beef shanks whole) and make a layer in a pot. On top of the beef put about a TB of peppercorns, a tiny sprinkle of salt, a handful (6 or so) of peeled garlic cloves and a spring of rosemary (not traditional but still delicious). Continue making layers with all the beef. Then pour a bottle of fruity red wine (Chianti is traditional) to cover the beef (make sure the beef is covered -- add water or stock if necessary). Bring to a boil, cover tightly (I use a bit of aluminum foil under the pot lid to get a good seal) and place in a 300º over for 4-5 hours. It's also great cooked overnight in a 200º oven. A perfect make ahead meal.

As a condiment for the tender beef I simmered chopped pears in a bit of white wine. I'm not sure if it's traditional but the sweet fruit is a ready foil to the peppery beef.

On the side, a creamy vegetable gratin -- cauliflower and broccoli rabe baked in a light cheese sauce, a radicchio frisée and fresh artichoke salad, and the easiest homemade bread in the world, Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. If you think you can't make bread, try this recipe, it will change your baking life forever!

There is no Sunday lunch without dessert.

And so, gazing down at the pile of plums and pluots from the farmer's market, I opted for one of the all time easiest -- upside down cake. Pretty much following a recipe from Chez Panisse I melted butter (4TB) in a range/oven proof cake pan (I could have used a skillet). I sprinkled that with 3/4 brown sugar and let it melt in the pan and laid the thickly sliced fruit on top and took the pan off the heat. For the batter I creamed 1 stick of butter with 1 cup of sugar, added 2 egg yolks and a tsp of vanilla and mixed until smooth. Next I alternated adding 1 1/2 cup flour (mixed with 2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt) and 1/2 cup milk -- adding the flour last -- and mixed until just smooth. In a separate bowl I beat the 2 egg whites to soft peaks and folded them into the first mixture and spread the batter over the sliced fruit. Baked for 55 minutes at 350º (let cool 15 minutes or so before un-molding onto a serving dish) it's a warm, sweet perfect autumn dessert.

Thank you Claudia!

Weekend Update

Two days, two sets of guests, and a perfect summer cake.

Saturday night we had some friends for dinner (What Deb and Leslie Had For Dinner?) --- Bucatini with Sorrel Pesto, Olive Oil Fried Egg (Thanks Girls!) and Roasted Tomatoes, Pan Roasted Wild Salmon and Broccoli Rabe and Rosemary Anchovy Sauce, Frisée Radicchio and Raw Artichoke Salad, Brown Butter Raspberry tart for dessert.

Sunday was more of a family event. House specialty Sliders and Crispy Onion Rings, Sour Slaw (Not pictured), Watermelon Salad (champagne vinegar, mint, ricotta salata, olive oil, chili, S&P), Corn on the Cob, BBQ'ed Drumsticks, Root Beer Floats, Nectarine Raspberry Pie (not pictured) and what may be my new go to summer cake -- layers of yellow sponge filled with lemon curd and "frosted" with a soft meringue -- Lemon Meringue Cake.