It holds a special place in my heart because it was the first from-scratch cake I ever made on my own. It was also, in my fashion, heavily modified from the original yellow cake recipe I started with.
I couldn’t remember what I did with that recipe from five years ago, so this time I went with Ina Garten’s.
The texture is like a pound cake.
Plenty of people who reviewed this recipe raved about its moistness; for me, it was still a bit dry. The only moist part was the top, where the lemon syrup went. I even stabbed the cake many times with a fork, hoping the syrup would seep in.
I skipped the lemon glaze, because, well, I was tired of dealing with lemons on a work night at 10 p.m. Instead, I served it with slightly sweetened whipped cream.
The recipe makes two cakes, and I froze one for later. I think once I bust out the second one, I’ll try the lemon glaze, just to see if it boosts the lemon flavor even more.
Happy fall! Here, we’re thankful for mid-80s and lower humidity.
In honor of the season, I’m starting a feature called Soupy Sunday. It won’t necessarily post on Sunday, but that’s when I’ll make the soup. There’s so much to love about soup: it’s comforting, it’s generally cheap to make, and it makes great leftovers.
The first installment: French onion
Steaming hot.
I followed Tyler Florence’s recipe. Went great with a glass of the leftover red wine. (Note: the recipe calls for 1 cup, or about ‘half a bottle’ of red wine. Where I come from, a regular bottle is about 4-6 servings. And I had about 3/4 bottle of Cabernet sauvignon left over after making the soup.)
Dunno if anyone’s watched Showtime’s “The Big C,” but I was feeling Laura Linney’s character’s love of onions.
Onions, before.... and after.
In the pilot episode, she tells her husband the reason she’s kicked him out is his hatred of onions. She wants to eat them again after 15 years of marriage. I wouldn’t want to live without onions, either — sauteed, grilled, roasted, as the base of a soup — a big bowlful is just wonderful.
And what if I told you it only took 5 basic ingredients? Yep — grapes, sugar, butter, eggs and flour. Muscadine jam is super easy to make, just a little messy. I enjoyed its tangy sweetness several times on toast for breakfast before deciding to use up the rest for a work bake sale.
Muscadine jam
1 pint muscadine or scuppernong grapes
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar
Mason jar w/lid
Wash grapes. Pop pulp from skins into separate saucepans. Chop skins and return to saucepan; cover with about 1/2 cup water. Simmer skins and pulp in separate saucepans, 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until skins are soft and pulp has broken down. Push pulp through sieve or ricer to remove seeds. (This part was a pain. If it’s easier, try removing the seeds while you’re popping pulp out of the skins.)
Combine skins and pulp into one saucepan. Taste and add sugar accordingly. Bring mixture to boil over medium-low heat and simmer 20 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking, until gelling occurs. Pour jam into sterilized jar, top with lid, and place in boiling water bath for 25 minutes. Remove jar and let cool. Refrigerate after opening.
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup muscadine jam
1 tablespoon powdered sugar (optional, for dusting)
Preheat oven to 375. Cream together butter and sugar. Add in egg yolks one at a time, then add vanilla.
In separate bowl, whisk together flour and salt. With mixer on low speed, add flour to butter mixture in three increments, letting flour incorporate after each addition. Scrape down sides of bowl when needed.
Refrigerate dough for 15 minutes. Then, take two teaspoons of dough and roll into ball. This recipe makes about 32 balls. Set dough balls about 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. Dust back of teaspoon in flour and press down on dough balls, flattening while making a sizable indentation.
Spoon jam into pastry bag or zip-top bag with corner snipped. Pipe jam into indentations. Bake cookies 8-10 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet 5 minutes before removing to cooling rack. Dust with powdered sugar.
* * *
Lucky for me, there’s a mess of muscadines growing wild in my backyard. I might have to make these recipes again.
I’m on a mission to perfect the pie crust.
It’s one of those things I feel I must conquer. If I want to consider myself a baker.
Pie dough has always been a major pain in my side.
Cherry pie with a crust that was darn near impossible.
I’ve tried using all shortening, all butter, butter-flavored shortening, and various combinations of the two. (Haven’t tried lard yet. The huge tub o’ lard at Food Lion scares me.)
I’ve tried chilling the fat, and I’ve tried using room-temperature fat.
I’ve tried cutting in the fat with the food processor, with a fork and with my fingertips.
I’ve tried using an egg in the dough.
I’ve tried immediately rolling out the dough, refrigerating the dough and freezing the dough.
Right around the rolling-out-and-transferring-to-pie-plate stage, it starts to break down. It rips. It sticks. It won’t hold together.
Well, a couple weeks ago I bought John T. Edge’s “Apple Pie” at Books-a-Million’s $1 sale. $1 well spent! One of its recipes contains two methods that gave me a huge dose of pie crust self confidence:
1. Using a spray bottle to spritz in ice water.
2. Banging — not rolling — out the dough.
Apple pie using Karen Barker's crust recipe.
These tips were right-on, because it’s the best crust I’ve ever made. Could I improve? Sure. Next time, perhaps, the lard.
Here’s the recipe, in case you’re interested:
Karen Barker’s Pin-Rattling Piecrust
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 tablespoon sugar
4 ounces butter, chilled and cut into pieces
4 ounces vegetable shortening, chilled and cut into pieces
1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water, chilled in a squeeze bottle or spray bottle
Pulse flour, salt and sugar in a food processor until blended. Add butter and shortening and pulse 12 to 14 times or until the mixture looks like clumpy sand. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and gradually spray in enough cold water to form a cohesive and evenly moistened dough that is still not sticky. Work quickly, tossing and stirring with a fork until dough begins to come together. Divide dough in two. Shape each half into a flattened round. Wrap in plastic and chill in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. To prepare dough for the pie plate, lay down a sheet of wax paper. With a rolling pin, bang out the rounds into crusts, making initial impact at the centermost point before stroking it quickly outward. Life the pin each time before whacking it again. Ten or twelve spankings should do it.
One more thing I really liked about Edge’s book. This little story about Karen Barker, the owner of Magnolia Grill in Durham:
A gentleman lawyer and avid eater who lives near the Barkers … says, “You know, she’s not really a pastry chef. She’s more of a baker.” When I profess to be unaware of the distinction, he tells me that a pastry chef is more of a high-wire act. A pastry chef takes chances. What Karen does is not dramatic or inventive enough to be called pastry work.
… I call Karen and tattle on him. … But Karen just sighs. “If a pastry chef wants to build a spun-sugar cage around a slice of apple pie, that’s fine by me,” she says. “Besides, baker sounds forthright and honest. I like that.”
I saw this concept on the Food Network last weekend and became obsessed with trying it, mainly because I had a similar cut of meat in the freezer.
Served with green bean, tomato and prosciutto salad.
For the stuffing, I just used what was on hand. I wanted the stuffing to include sausage but realized not everyone possesses my love of pork-on-pork.
Butternut-cornbread stuffing
1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
Olive oil
Salt, pepper
1 recipe for 6 servings cornbread
4-5 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
White wine
Apple juice
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
Handful of fresh Italian parsley and oregano, chopped
Preheat oven to 400. Toss squash in roasting pan with drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 1 hour, flipping with spatula halfway through.
While squash is roasting, prepare and bake cornbread (I used the recipe on the back of the cornmeal bag, or you can use storebought).
Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add in onions, garlic and roasted squash. Saute 3-5 minutes. Crumble in cornbread. Add 1/4 cup wine to pan and use wooden spatula to scrape up any browned bits off bottom. Saute another minute to let alcohol cook off. Slowly add apple juice to pan and stir into cornbread mixture. Continue adding apple juice until mixture is slightly mushy. Remove pan from heat and stir in walnuts and herbs. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
Preheat oven to 350. Slice off any top layers of fat from the pork. Use sharp knife to butterfly pork open lengthwise. You might have to make several incisions so the meat lies mostly flat. Drizzle with a little olive oil and cover with plastic wrap. Use a mallet or heavy pan to pound out loin to even thickness (about 1/4 inch).
Remove plastic wrap and brush pork with thin layer of mustard. Spread even layer of stuffing over pork. Beginning with closest end, roll up and away from you. Secure by tying 3-4 pieces of kitchen twine around roll. Place pork in roasting pan and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast until cooked through, about 1 hour, depending on the size of your pork loin. Remove from oven and let rest 10 minutes. Cut off string and slice (an electric knife keeps your roll perfectly in tact).
A roll *almost* as good as sushi.
This is definitely a Sunday dinner — lots of prep time, what with peeling and cubing the squash, making the cornbread and butterflying the meat. Luckily you get lots of cooking time in between to do other things. The end result looks quite impressive — but the stuffing would be just as yummy baked on its own as a side dish.
I hadn’t baked anything in a while, so last weekend I went all out with this Chocolate and Hazelnut Meringue Cake, found on MyTartelette. I just love her blog, and yes, her photos look infinitely better than mine.
It wasn't very pretty. Meringue in humid weather? Maybe not a good idea.
Perhaps baking a cake — with a meringue, at that — weren’t the best ideas with the recent egg recalls. It was *really* hard for me not to do taste control on the cake batter or the meringue before they went into the oven. Luckily, both turned out just fine.
Nice rise for no leavening agents.
Two things about the flourless cake:
1. Folding six whipped egg whites into the batter is a great arm workout.
2. Wow, it is extremely moist and fudgy.
It was also extremely rich, which I remedied with sliced strawberries.
Light meringue, dense cake
Smaller slice + more strawberries = less guilt about eating cake!
I went to see family and found some interesting places to eat during a trip to Indiana.
Canvas bag. Thanks for the memories!What was left *after* I ate.
1. Norm’s Market
Did I die and go to Heaven? We have nothing like this where I live.
It sells locally raised beef and chicken, locally grown produce, locally bottled Dad’s soda and Amish products (such as hubby’s obsession, Troyer beef jerky).
They also have a deli where lunch is a full sandwich with choice of fresh-sliced meat (including Braunschweiger!) and fresh-sliced cheese, along with a heaping portion of house-made side and drink for $5.50. If you order the daily sandwich special, it’s only $4.50. I opted for the pastrami and swiss on rye with pasta salad. It was enough to feed 2 people.
Oh, and did I mention Norm’s is adjoined to Jasper City Bakery, where we got creme-filled long johns for 55 cents each?
We also purchased a 2-pound flank steak, which was grilled to perfection for fajitas. It was some of the best beef I’ve ever tasted.
Fajita night!
2. Fish Hut Pizza
I had to do a double take when I saw this place.
Why yes, that is a sign with a fish eating a pizza.Fish Hut symmetry
After stifling thoughts of deep-fried cod chunks atop a pie, I developed an obsession with trying Fish Hut’s pizza. We ordered a large pepperoni and a large sausage. The pepperoni tasted like something from the grocery store’s frozen section. But I was addicted to the sausage.
It almost had a Chicago-style thing going on, with a layer of crumbled sausage between the cheese and sauce (I know, I know — true Chicago has cheese on the bottom, sauce on top. But sausage is still in the middle!). I’d order Fish Hut again.
It’s a term I made up for this stuff, which was churned like a sorbet but froze like a granita.
With a little vodka, tequila or rum, it’d make a great frozen drink.
Blended with a little cream, it’d be a Sonic CreamSlush knockoff.
My only complaint would be the strong basil flavor. I love basil; it’s my favorite herb. But I went a bit overboard with the simple syrup, and my sorbita tasted borderline medicinal/perfumey.
Watermelon-basil sorbita
(Makes 1.5 quarts)
6 cups cubed watermelon
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
10-15 basil leaves (I used closer to 25. Don’t do it!)
1/2 lemon
Puree watermelon in food processor. Set aside.
Bring water and sugar to a boil in medium saucepan, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and drop in basil leaves. Let sit 5 minutes, then strain. Discard basil.
Pour basil syrup into watermelon puree, then squeeze in lemon juice. Mix well.
Churn in ice cream maker, then freeze. Or pour mixture into shallow dish and freeze, scraping occasionally with a fork.
Nicole M. Markle 