back with cake.

Dear me,

I'm sorry I made you wait so long for the next post. In the meantime I've been discovering farmer's markets, eating kale, quinoa and beets. Three foods I'd never thought I'd eat in my life, let alone like.

But the sweets always figure in my life somehow. I was determined to make myself a birthday cake this year, an ambition I've always had but rarely follow through on. I usually bake cakes for friends on their birthdays, but when it comes to my own I just want to sit back and do nothing. Or cross my arms over my chest and pout, wondering why none of my friends take it upon themselves to bake me a cake. But I know, I know that I would prefer to eat my own cake. I think I'm habituated (is that a word) to my own baking just as I am to my own scent. I don't know the scent is there, though I'm sure it is, and therefore it sits just fine on me. In fact I'd say it suits me well. And so does my baking. I know what's going into my dessert, (i.e. I know how much butter, how little salt, etc) and somehow that makes me sure that I'll like it.

So for the big 3-0 I thought I'd bake a classic genoise from this cookbook. I added orange rind and lots of vanilla bean paste to make for an extra tasty sponge-like cake. I pictured it layered with a rich chocolate (homemade) buttercream frosting. But I wouldn't settle for anything less than perfect and when the two cakes came out of the oven but would not release from the non-stick pans that I had buttered, I knew I was in trouble. I managed to get one out OK, but the other one clung to the pan in odd patches leaving huge chunks in the cake when I finally got it out onto the rack. On top of that, I noticed the occasional speck of flour that hadn't mixed in to the batter properly. With two days before my birthday I sighed, called it a night and decided to make a new cake the following day.

Attempt number two was to produce a two layer chocolate chiffon cake from this book. The cake was one I had made 5 months earlier for a friend--with terrific results. While it looked picture perfect when removed from the oven, the taste wasn't well, chocolatey. I don't know what went wrong--could it have been the Sunny Select canola oil from Lucky's that I'd used? Or the year(s?) old Hershey's cocoa that had been sitting in my cupboard? I started beating myself up for not having refrigerated the cocoa, and immediately suspecting that as the reason behind why my cake tasted wrong. The 6 eggs that I used--no, make that 12 since I messed up the first crack around by spilling egg yolk into the whites--to make the orange buttercream frosting were well worth my time. The italian meringue-style buttercream was a hit. But the cake, cute and all as it looked, was kind of a bust.

But what of that genoise I'd snubbed the day before? I froze it, only to dig into it a couple of weeks later and promptly eat 1/3 of one layer straight out of the freezer. I kid not. And, it was delicious. Flour clumps and all. The remaining cake and 2/3 were put to use this weekend with a little help from semisweet chocolate chips and my roommate's confetti frosting a la Betty Crocker. I'm not sure how I feel about BC, but the cake, layered with apricot jam (a little grand marnier as well) turned out to be delicious. I shouldn't have doubted in the first place. But that was back when I was 29, not nearly as wise as I am now at 30.

The canola oil chocolate cake, disguised in delicious orange buttercream.



The not-so-dolled up genoise. Looks can deceive... this was a much tastier cake.

what's new.

Some of you may well be wondering "Just what is going on in Jessica's food life? Her absence is driving me mad, knowing that she's cooking up something delicious and refusing to share it (visually) with the rest of us. She's so selfish." Ha ha, I'm sure that evil thought has never crossed your innocent minds. Instead you may have chalked up my blog-absence to laziness. Now that's more like it!

To brief you all on what I've been up to, I have a quick pictoral collection of a few goodies I made over the past month or two. Or three. Listen! I came back from Europe bummed out in general to be back, so please! I'm finally coming out of the mourning period.

Vanilla applesauce cupcakes with strawberry frosting:

1 vanilla cake mix (from a box!)

I followed the recipe for the lowfat version of these cupcakes, which involved "no sugar added" applesauce in place of butter. The result: I couldn't tell the difference than if I had used butter. As long as you're using a chemical mix, might as well through in some fruit and kick up the vitamin quotient, right? The frosting was a concoction purely my own. Take a stick (or two) of (very) softened butter, add a tablespoon or two of vanilla extract, and 2-3 cups of powdered sugar. Stir together til ingredients form a smooth frosting-like substance. For the true strawberry flavor I poured half a cup of frozen strawberries into a blender, pulsing until they formed a puree. Then I add about a third of this mix to the frosting, stirring completely until well-mixed. This made for true strawberryliciousness. Believe me, you'll impress everybody with the intense flavor in this homemade frosting. And then for the big reveal before your crowd: there are two fruit involved in the making of this cupcake!

Oh, and well, I lied about the pictoral collection I was going to show you. I'll have to save the next few for upcoming blog posts. It'll give me a reason to keep on.

Angel Food Cake

Last weekend I couldn't stop thinking about lemons. I decided to just go all out and use a bag of lemons for dessert. I opted for a fat-free angel food cake with lemon rind. Fourteen whipped egg whites later, I didn't have the heart to throw out the isolated egg yolks. Thus, the lemon curd. I guess the dessert balances itself out--I removed the fat from the cake, only to pair it with some of the delicious egg and butter-rich lemon curd. I have no regrets, however. Here's to delicious springtime baking!

Lemon Angel Food Cake

adapted from Lori Longbotham's Luscious Lemon Desserts, Chronicle Books, 2001.

1 c sifted cake flour

3/4 c confectioner's sugar

14 large egg whites (at room temp)

1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

pinch salt

3/4 c granulated sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp lemon zest (from 2 lemons)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 10" tube pan (or leave ungreased). Sift flour and confectioner's sugar together in medium bowl. In a separate large metal bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer at medium speed until foamy. Increase speed to medium-high, add cream of tartar and salt, and beat just until the egg whites form soft peaks. Add the granulated sugar, about 1 tbsp at a time, beating well after each addition, and beat just until the whites form stiff peaks. Add vanilla and lemon zest and beat until just combined.

Sift one quarter of flour mixture over the egg whites and fold in with a spatula. Continue gently folding, one quarter at a time, until all the flour mixture has been added. (Work slowly, carefully to mix in all flour--but don't overmix.) Spoon batter into the pan and use a knife to cut through the batter, removing air pockets. Smooth top with a spatula. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until golden and cake pulls away from sides of pan. Allow to cool on wire rack until room temperature, then flip onto serving platter.

Make a lemon glaze and or curd to serve with cake.

Lemon glaze:

1 c confectioner's sugar

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsp grated lemon zest

Whisk ingredients together in small bowl and pour glaze over cake.

Lemon curd:

1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter

12 egg yolks

1 1/2 c granulated sugar

1 c fresh lemon juice
1/4 c lemon zest

pinch salt

Melt butter in microwave or saucepan over medium heat. Remove from pan when melted and add sugar, lemon juice, zest and salt. Whisk until well-mixed. Add in yolks and mix until smooth. Cook the mixture, whisking constantly, until it thickens over medium-low heat (this can take up to 10 or 15 minutes). Don't let it come to a boil. Once thickened, remove from heat and let cool until it's at room temperature. Refrigerate up to one month.

Date Cake

Chopped dates are so cute. But so painful for the chopping hand.

Got your attention, didn't I?! However, the date in question is none other than the dried fruit, so sweet one might mistake it for candy. I was inspired not by lutefisk tonight (thanks to Tiffany for the suggestion), but by the sultry sugar and spice of the Middle Eastern Passover traditions (though Passover is still a few weeks away. Not at Safeway, where a large front of store display offers goodies from Streit's and Manishewitz "on sale."). Now that I've made a recipe that calls for "finely chopped dates" I have to ask the recipe's creator--are you NUTS? Chopping those dates--and I took great pains just to get them coarsely chopped (forget "finely")--is probably going to account for my early onset arthritis.

Tonight's recipe hails from the April 2008 edition of Gourmet. I made a mistake in the production of this cake, adding the egg yolks to the nut mixture instead of the egg whites, as specified in the recipe. I don't know how this happened, yet miraculously the cake turned out fine. Mine was a bit on the moist side, due in part to my use of too much date-soaked water. Oh well--what's done is done. Now it's time to eat cake!

Walnut-Date Torte, mostly word-for-word but slightly adapted from Gourmet
1/4 c boiling hot water
1 1/2 c pitted dates, finely chopped
1 1/2 c walnuts, toasted and cooled
3/4 c sugar
2/3 c matzoh meal (or Passover cake flour)
zest of 1 orange
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs, separated, at room temp 30 minutes

**Note! I see one thing that I did wrong. I completely ignored the direction for 1/4 c hot water. Instead, I added enough--more than 1/4 cup--to cover the dates. Proof that I really should read every word in a recipe.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the middle. Spray or grease a 9" round cake pan. Pour hot water over dates and let stand 15 minutes to soften. In a food processor, grind up toasted walnuts and add 1/4 cup sugar until the mixture turns powdery. Add zest, cardamom and salt and pulse until blended. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Then add the remaining sugar and continue beating until they form glossy stiff peaks. Add the egg yolks to dates and whisk until mixed. Fold the egg-date mixture into the egg whites. Finally, add the nut mixture to the egg batter and fold in until well mixed. Pour into cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and cake springs from pan sides.

A reddish-brown tint from the date pieces peeks out at the eater.

The Gourmet recipe says to make a confectioner's sugar-potato starch mix to top the cake, but I just used the sugar. It is a very sweet cake, so no sugar topping is needed; it's really only there for presentation. Do you like it?