Toast

Hungry Tiger Plum Cake

It is nearly September, and local Italian prune plums have begun to appear. It is time to go (plum) crazy eating them and cooking them up. As I do every year, I am making my daughter's plum cake. Repeatedly.

She, who is also known as the redfox, of the hungry tiger, writes an excellent food blog, and she has been around a lot longer than I have, though it seems like a funny thing to say about one's child. She helped me overcome my computer klutziness sufficiently to set up here, taught me the meaning of html, and exhibited remarkable patience throughout.

She is a very good cook, and this is her recipe, which appeared in the hungry tiger back in 2002. You can find it there, and see how simple it is? Pretty and delicious, and just the thing with a cup of tea. Or with your breakfast coffee.

I have deviated slightly, using a vanilla bean, scraped, instead of the extract. This is because I recently went mad, and bought a pound of gorgeous vanilla beans wholesale. About which, more later. Also, I use demarara sugar in the topping, because I am a sucker for a bit of sparkle. I make this cake frequently in the fall. Everyone likes it. There is only one bowl to wash. It keeps well. And that is all I have to say about that, for now. Bring on the plums!

Excuse the mysterious, swirling darkness of the photo. I took it indoors, due to the rain. I have definitely not mastered the non-daylight photo taking. Had I waited until it stopped raining, the cake would have been entirely gone.

Class Holiday: Chapter One

In which she arrives, eats well, sleeps well, and shops excessively.

The idea for this trip started when I noticed, a few years ago, that Christine Ferber gave an annual class at the French Pastry School in Chicago. It was really expensive, but I thought I'd save my pennies and eventually get to see the goddess of jams and jellies in person and learn a few of her secrets. At the time I first noticed her class, it was open to "food enthusiasts" (hereinafter, as legal writers say, "FEs") and pros alike. I figured I'd stay in a hotel, and sightsee and/or shop in my off hours. When I finally had the time and money, the class had been changed to a pros-only event.

The FPS explained that after the prior class, they'd had the students fill out feedback forms. The FEs had complained that the class moved too quickly, while the pros had felt it was too slow-no doubt held back by the aforementioned FEs. So they decided to limit the class to pros and have another class that was more introductory. They assured me I'd enjoy that class, with "Chef Bob", and they were right.

The fellow you see pictured is not Chef Bob. In fact, he is entirely made of legos, and sits on a bench outside the Chicago legos store. I had a better photo of him, with his arm around an elderly (live) gentleman, who was waiting for his grandson, who was in the shop. He let me take his photo, but made me promise not to "put him on the internet", because, "My wife would kill me." Apparently she felt he might be (virtually?) kidnapped, and reappear on a porn site. So I will keep him safely ensconced on my own computer, having downloaded him from my phone. All the pictures you will see were taken on my phone- I cleverly forgot the camera.

Warning: Due to the nature of the travelogue/diary format, we don't actually get to the class itself until the next post. However, as a member of my class pointed out, Legoman is not entirely un-food-related. I'm not sure if you can tell from the phone-photo, but there is a chicken on his head, and a cracked egg on his shoulder. I'm just saying.

Somehow I have managed, once again, to begin with a digression, time-wise. So now I'm going linear: I flew into Chicago on Monday, and the plane was delayed, convincing me that my day-ahead approach was best. Despite an ETA of 1:30, and a class time of 4pm, I would have been late if the class had started Monday. Tim, my bench partner in class, flew in from Oklahoma on Tuesday morning-and sure enough, it made him a little late. It seems that all planes are now presumed delayed, unless the stars align just so. There was an unexpected bit of good luck on board, however. I was crazy, and ordered coffee. It was excellent. I mentioned my surprise and happiness to the flight attendant , who smiled slyly. "That's because it's from the pot I made for myself," she said.

I stayed at a hotel called the "Club Quarters" on West Adams, which I picked mostly because it was in very easy walking distance from the FPS, thus eliminating worries about finding my way back after class, at night. The hotel is part of a small chain, and supposed to be in some way private; but I booked it through Expedia, so how private is that? Still, you can't just call up to make a reservation; I tried that first. I recommend it highly.

What a deal! For $125 per night, in the middle of the Loop, I got a very large, ultra clean room. It had a huge desk, with reference books above and 2 ergonomic chairs, a bathroom with shower and the usual amenities, a flat tv, (which I never turned on, having a good book, and being too busy), a full kitchenette(!), a super, super comfortable bed, WIFI, and a real coffee maker with really good coffee to make. I suspect the decor is what they think businesspersons would like, very plain, dark blue and green necktie prints. I wasn't expecting Paris with a balcony, so it was more than fine with me- I prefer it to the usual mid-priced hotel idea of prettiness- I just bought a few flowers for cheer, as I was staying 4 nights.

Another reason for being glad I came the day before class started was that it gave me a chance for an evening meal, and it was a good one. I had dinner at Brasserie Jo, the "more casual bistro" of Chef John Joho of the super-posh Everest restaurant in Chicago, as well as the "Eiffel Tower" restaurant in the Paris Hotel, Las Vegas. I came to town with a copy of the Slow Food Guide to Chicago. The idea was that I would do some sight-seeing and/or shopping in the morning, find someplace neat to eat my main meal of the day at lunchtime, and then have a little rest before the 5 hour class, repeat X3, with possible light snack supper after class in my room. So this was to be my only major evening meal.

I really enjoyed my dinner at Brasserie Jo. Though I am not shy, and have had many meals out on my own, I have been a little cowed by the idea of a really special meal out, all alone. In part, this is because eating is such a social activity in my mind, but only in part. I think I was mostly nervous that the other diners and the wait staff might think it odd, or feel sorry for me, and that I would sense this, and rush- spoiling the entertainment of it all. Also, I was a little worried that it might be tricky to get a taxi afterward, in the dark.

Not a bit of it...it was great. I got a little bit dressed up, grey silk jacket, strappy sandals, and felt very woman-of-the-world the whole time. My photos of the restaurant are useless, due to dim lighting, many mirrors, and my lack of skill. You can check it out at the website.

It is a nice example of traditional brasserie decor, art deco-y, and less crowded between the tables than is the usual brasserie custom- all to the good. Personally, I am comforted by banquettes, mirrors, wood, brass and displays of magnum bottles of wine on shelves. Perhaps I was taken to such a place as an infant? The very look and feel of this sort of room makes me hungry.

Dinner was delicious, and I enjoyed being fussed over by my very young waiter, who took my salad off my bill because he was disappointed that I hadn't finished it. (The vinagrette was too salty for my taste- the only, and minor, flaw in the meal.)

Chef Joho is a native of Alsace, and the menu reflects this heritage. There was so much to choose from, many delicious things- sweetbreads with crisp macaroni, escargot, flammkuchen of several kinds, duck rilettes; I was wildly torn, until I saw my very favorite thing, skate wing with brown butter and capers. When I ordered it, the baby waiter broke suavity, and cried, "Ack! I love that! That's totally the best thing on the menu!" Which was, you know, endearing. The skate was served over some delicious, very creamy mashed potatoes, and a little fresh spinach, with small curls of very crispy, but pale-colored fried onion, or maybe leek? I absolutely cleaned my plate with the help of some of my very own small baguette, made (well) by a bakery down the street.

Dessert was creme brulee, very considerately prepared in a shallow dish, allowing for plenty of the ultra-thin, crackly top to go with each bite of the smooth custard. I took the rest of the baguette back to the hotel with me, and pretty much just crashed. I mean, you know, I was trying to read this very interesting book (about which more later), and woke to find it's form imprinted on my cheek, the book open to page twenty. Fortunately, I was in bed while reading.

Tuesday morning, I hit the hotel restaurant- a proto pub called the Elephant and Castle- for an insanely huge "English Breakfast", which involved grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, "bangers"(a/k/a fat sausages), cubes of fried potatoes, and eggs. This caused a revision of the lunch plan, as I was stuffed to the gills, and rendered unable to consider another meal of significance until the following day. Okay, really. I love to eat a big breakfast out, and walk away from all the greasy dishes, like a guest at the Mad Hatter's tea party. After a brief trip to the building across the street to stock the fridge with sandwich stuff, and buy flowers, I did me some shopping.

I started at Vosges Haut-Chocolat (520 N. Michigan) to pay my respects at the home of my very favorite chocolate treat- the Barcelona Bar-(Deep milk chocolate, almonds and sea salt). Owner chocolatier Katrina Markoff creates incredible flavor combinations in her truffles, hot chocolates and chocolate bars- kaffir lime, cardomom, wasabi, chipotle- crazy but delicious, and somehow never weird. I stocked up on candy bars, and also tried a fancy box of nine marshmallow toffee chocolate things, a new and very worthy item, which they store in the freezer. Each one is pretty much a dessert unto itself. I got four free truffles for having my own shopping bag to carry off my loot.

Other stops included the Lego Store (900 N. Michigan) and Nordstrom Rack (the discount shop for the department store, it's near Macy's-formerly Marshall Field). At the latter, they were having a sale of large sized shoes! (I'm an eleven- a size not carried at all in many shops; I was over the moon.) It took me way too long to pick out my bargain- the choices were so overwhelming, and the prices so good. I decided to go for the crazy, since they were so affordable, and now I have some silvery Taryn Rose sandals.

I gave myself a good 2 hours turnaround time for class, and headed back to the hotel, a little more footsore than was really wise, under the circumstances. But more on that, later.

The Other Linda's Bread Pudding

I was lucky and very glad to be invited to stay at my cousin's friends' house in London. We spent a couple of days and nights, and all we rambled around together, went to a play and an exhibition, ate an endless and delicious meal at a Chinese restaurant, and had a clear, beautiful spring day in Greenwich. To top it all off, we were cooked for, which is just the nicest, friendliest thing ever-even better than gorgeous Chinese restaurant meals, IMHO.

We drove the few hours from Brighton. Linda's* big wonderful townhouse was complete with bay window, nifty tiled victorian fireplace, and had (as did its neighbors) a very cool carved plaster mask/head over the huge front door. It smelled fantastic, due to the bread pudding which was doing its thing in the oven. When we had it after dinner, it had cooled down, and there was warm custard to pour on top. Not too shabby, eh? So I got her recipe, and here it is for you, so you can be lucky, too.

This is a bread pudding of the sturdy variety, such as I remember my mother having sometimes made, and it was perfect cool, with the warm custard. It is also nice warm, with a little cool cream on top. The contrast seems to work well, either way. It smells very homey cooking- in the manner of gingerbread, or baking apples. Also good are the more etheral sorts of bread pudding-especially the kind made with leftover croissants, but that is a story for another day.

To make bread pudding you need:

8 oz. bread, white or brown, crusts off unless they are totally mushy
10 fl. oz milk
2 oz. butter
3 oz soft brown sugar
1 egg
2 level tsps "mixed spice" (This is comparable to a "pumpkin pie spice" here in the States. You can mix cinnamon, ginger,tiny bit of cloves, if you like)
1 egg, beaten
6 oz "mixed fruit"- (this refers to a mix of raisins and candied peels- chopped fine. I didn't have any candied peels- so I chopped up some mixed dried fruits very small, and added golden raisins and a bit of lemon peel, to make up the difference. It worked well. I quite like candied peels-just didn't have any.)
grated rind 1/2 orange
freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350F. Break bread up as finely as possible. Put in a bowl, and pour milk over. Let it sit about half an hour. Butter a baking dish that holds 2-2 1/2 pints. Melt butter and add to crumbs with sugar, spices and beaten egg. Beat well with a fork, so there are no lumps. Add fruits and peel. Spread in baking dish, and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake one to one and one half hours.

*It has been my experience that 98% of everyone who was ever named "Linda" is within 5 years of my age, in either direction. What was in the air then?

The fireplace is a phone picture, I'm afraid it didn't blow up too well. Some of them do, with the iphone, but my hand was unsteady on this one.

Cannele for Kids

This is not the first time I've tried making cannele (not to be confused with cannoli) . I liked them the other times, too...I've been experimenting for awhile. But the thing is, I have no idea if these are anything like the genuine article, because I've not ever eaten the real thing. Nor do I have the correct little copper molds (ack, I tried, but they cost the earth) or wax.

I was cheered to see that Jacques Pepin also uses silicon molds, though his are teeny ones, and mine are a little larger- more the size of the original copper molds which Paula Wolfert talks about. The following is an amalgam of their two recipes, which works for me, because my little toaster oven is a convection one, with a tray just big enough to hold my mold and keep it from going jiggly. I have included directions for baking in an ordinary oven as well, from P. W.

I know it's nervy to pass out a recipe for something I know zilch about, but the thing is, they are so good, in such a weird way, that I'm not sure how much I care if they are anything like authentic. I think you are going to like them. But I also really wish some foundation or sugar daddy or someone would, you know, give me a scholarship for a trip to Bordeaux to check 'em out. Because I do, actually, want to know. And I would make good use of the opportunity to sip a little wine, also. Or, perhaps, just a scholarship for eight of the the little copper molds? You can see a qualified person making them just so, in proper copper, here.

These are a strange little treat, best IMO, eaten fresh, but cooled down. They are made with a crepe kind of batter that gets sweet, hard and very dark on the outside, and is custardy-soft-sweet in the middle. A sweet that's not too sweet- my favorite kind. And there is definitely some familial relationship between (mine at least), and popovers and/or yorkshire pudding. Which, of course, are both lighter in weight, and not sweet at all, but still.

You've got to make the batter at least 12 hours ahead, which is the only remotely difficult part of this version. Other than that, it's dead easy- which is what makes me suspect I've got it wrong. I know they look homely before you taste them, but they look beautiful to me now. This recipe makes 8 of the non-mini cannele, and fits exactly into the silicon molds, now available in a number of places. I spray mine with a bit of canola oil spray, though supposedly the silicon molds don't need it. If they stick a bit, PW recommends gentle nudging with a toothpick, and I concur. Don't use a knife and mar the shiny surface!

12-24 hours before you bake your cannele, put 2 oz. of unsalted butter and a cup of milk in a 4 cup pyrex measuring cup or glass bowl of similar size. Microwave for just long enough to melt the butter-almost. With a small whisk (the ones that look like they are from Mars, with the little balls on the ends of flexible metal sticks are dandy for this, as they emulsify well.) Whisk in one egg, an egg yolk, 2 tsps vanilla extract, and 1/4 cup of rum, and mix with the whisk until smooth.

In a slightly larger bowl, mix 2/3 cup of granulated sugar with 1/2 cup all purpose flour. Pour in about one third of the liquid, and mix up until thick and smooth. Then when you whisk in the rest, it won't go lumpy. Make sure you don't add the liquid all at once. But if you do- pour it through a sieve, to get the lumps out. Now , if you have used the big pyrex cup, which has a pouring spout, pour your smooth mixture back into it. This will be nice for filling the mold the next day. Cover, and refrigerate.

12-24 hours later, spray your mold with some flavorless cooking oil, and set it on a baking sheet. People often tell you not to do this, but it will neither damage your molds, nor change the taste or appearance of your silicon baked cannele. And they are the devil to get out whole, if you do not. Or, you could do the wax thing...but I haven't. If I ever get some copper molds, I will try it. Take the batter out of the fridge, and give it a little whisk-up to make sure it is of even thickness. Fill each of the eight sections of the mold almost to the top. If you have got a convection toaster oven, you can put it in cold, turn it to 400F, and cook for an hour and a half. If not, preheat your oven to 300F, put them in for a half hour, and turn it up to 400F to cook for an hour an a half more. These times are approximate, and depend on your oven. You must watch them and see how they look.

The tops (ultimately the bottoms) of your cannele will rise, and then sink down a bit. They should be very, very dark. Look at the photos at the linked site above, and the ones noted below, to get the idea. When you think they are done, take them out. Let them sit 5 minutes, on the tray and then try getting them out with as little handling as possible. Let them cool completely, on a rack, but not sit too long. (Leftover cannele are lovely, too, but don't hold a candle to the same day product.) When they are nearly ready, make a pot of tea or coffee for yourself, and/or other worthies. Consume. I reckon you'll be glad you made them.

For more adventures in cannele at home, check out chocolate and zucchini and The Traveler's Lunchbox.

Something Wicked: Pistachio Chocolate Thumbprints

My friend I., in aid of my recent babka obsession, recommended a wonderful cookbook, with the longish title of Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins and More, by Carole Walter. This is a woman who clearly knows what she is talking about and writes a mean recipe to boot.

She even explains how to make real strudel dough so clearly that I almost feel as if I could do it. I intend to follow several trails , including the babka road, in this excellent book. The first thing I had to try, though, was totally off-topic. And these chocolate pistachio thumbprint cookies are awfully good.

They are a little bit of a pain in the neck, in terms of multiple steps, dirty pans, and fiddle. Her instructions, however are so detailed that you pretty much cannot fail. No paraphrasing I can do will be nearly as good as the original- if you are a cookie monster who loves coffee cake, you should just get the book. Really. Plus, there's just so much detail a person can transcribe before they just don't want to anymore. Especially those of us who were never such great typists to begin with.

However, as I think it is unfair to show a picture and give no recipe, this is what I am going to do. I am going to provide the cookie recipe, and suggest that you use whatever chocolate glaze, or ganache suits you to fill the thumbprints. I think any nice one will work, though I am partial to Ms. Walter's, and have a bit left for a coffee cake to follow. I followed her instructions very closely, and the cookies are special. She's in a class with Dorie Greenspan and Maida Heatter for the writing of recipes for baking, folks.

You will need:
1 3/4 cups AP flour, spooned in and leveled
1/4 strained dutch process cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, slightly firm
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 1/2 tsps real vanilla
1 cup pistachio nuts, toasted, and then medium chopped
3 tbsps sparkling sugar (I used sanding sugar in green- I have a personal weakness for colored sanding sugar)
sufficient chocolate glaze to fill 32 thumbprints

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour cocoa powder, and salt. Set aside. Put the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle beater. Mix until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar in a steady stream, and stop when just incorporated. Blend in egg yolks and vanilla.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and blend in the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. (It's a bit of work, but don't overmix, or it will get oily, she says).

Set out a sheet of waxed paper, and with your hands, roll out a walnut sized ball of dough, and set it on the waxed paper. Continue until the dough is all made into cookies.

In a small shallow bowl, beat the egg white with 2 tsps water, just until combined. In another bowl, mix the sparkling sugar and cooled, chopped nuts. Now take half of that mixture, and put it in a small shallow bowl. Dip each cookie in the egg white, and rollin the nut mixture to cover. Then set each on one of the cookie sheets. When the nut mixture gets low, add more. (This helps it stay drier, instead of being all sticky from the eggwhite.)

Once all the cookies are on the baking sheets, use the end of a wooden spoon (about 1/2"in diameter), to poke a deep hole in the center of each cookie. Put the cookie sheets in the oven, and bake for 12 minutes. Take them out, and re-poke all the holes with the spoon-end. Turn them round and exchange the top sheet for the bottom one. Bake another 3-5 minutes, until firm to the touch, then remove. Let the cookies sit on the sheets for 5 minutes or so, then move to a cooling rack. When they are tepid, fill with your glaze or ganache.

These will keep in an airtight container for a week, with waxed paper or foil between, if they last that long. I wonder if I could actually make a strudel, from other than frozen, store bought filo? I think the coffee cakes come first.

Seeking Hermits

If there were to be a national cookie election in the United States,most people would probably vote for the tollhouse, a/k/a chocolate chip cookie. The tollhouse cookie originated here, everyone loves it, and it was invented not all that long ago, by a known person. Another contender, though, is a much older cookie, "thought to be the first American bar cookie- possibly the ancestor of the brownie and blondie."* That cookie is the endearingly homey hermit-still popular today, especially in New England, in a number of interesting variations.

Those you see here were made from Judith Jones' Tenth Muse recipe, and are like a kind of half-biscotti- baked in loaves, and sliced, but not given a second biscotti-esque baking. A generally held view is that a hermit should be not too dry, but rather must be chewy in the middle, which would be consistent with this approach. J.J. did say that she rather likes them stale, with coffee. I would have to agree that aging improves them- the intense spiciness grows mellow and rich. As they are also yummy fresh and chewy, this gives them two lives, if they last long enough. Very comforting fall food, like gingerbread, but with crunch and chew. These are super with cider, or hot tea.

Though many of the old hermit recipes are done as bars, some are drop cookies. What they all seem to have in common are lots of christmas-y, minemeat-ish spices, butter, brown sugar, walnuts, raisins and molasses. Although a Nick Maligieri recipe on the Food Network website is molasses-free, and has coffee in it.

If you click on the book photo here, you will see two variants from my 1936's Fanny Farmer Cookbook, one of which frugally incorporates stale cake crumbs. I usually use the one on the left. Any general American or New England cookbook will have a hermit recipe or two. If you want to try the JJ method, make mounds of the dough about 10" X 3" on parchment lined cookie sheets, and then cut each mound into 9 cookies, while still warm after baking. Any hermit recipe is improved by toasting your walnuts before adding to the mixture.

I would be very interested to learn of your hermit recipes, as well as any hermit lore you may know. Richard Perry, in The Good Home Cookbook. says that, "It is thought that seamen took these sweet-spiced cookies with them on long voyages, because the raisins kept them soft." No one seems to know where the name "hermit" came from. The two most frequent speculations are: 1) They are brown, and hence look like monk's robes (yeah, so what cookie isn't brown?), and 2) Moravians were called "herrnhutter" in German or Dutch, and were known for spicy cookies. Supposedly "hermit" sounds like "herrnhutter." To me- not so much. Also, Moravian cookies are generally crispy, rather than chewy. Both of these theories strike yrs. truly as a tad weak? On the other hand, I have no alternate explanation to offer. Perhaps you do?
_________________________________

*Or so says The New England Cookbook, 350 Recipes From Land and Sea, Hearth and Home, quoting Eleanor Early, "New England historian." Ms. Early books, which I have not read, seem from their titles to be history of an anecdotal sort. They might be fun to check out.

And, for more historic hermit recipes (Some call for rolling out the cookies, "but not too thick, because of the raisins." You won't catch me rolling them-they need to be lumpy, IMO.), check out this collection.

Cinnamon Squares and Prattle

Making gingerbread, and reading about a beautiful bundt cake and lovely applesauce spice cake produced by The Wednesday Chef and the hungry tiger (a/k/a my own fine child), respectively, got me thinking about the kind of sweet baking that seems to be best done at home. Pastry chefs generally make the best croissants, tarts, and fancy pastries ( with the exception of certain strudel making grandmothers) and bakers make the best crusty breads. It is always fun to try these things at home, but it is also nice to make pies and plain cakes. It is a rare bakery or restaurant that offers as good an American style fruit pie or plain snack cake that is as nice as the one your friend makes, and gives you with a cup of coffee.

It may be that it is the person who comes with the cake that makes the difference to the subjective cake experience, and the friend is certainly a factor, but I think it is more than that. Yes, it's true, I have a theory on this topic, and I'm about to go on at length again. I'm so sorry, but I can't actually help it. There's a recipe at the end, though.

This is what I think, if you can bear it. I think that the proliferation of fast food sweet snacks, of the Little Debbie/ Hostess/Mom's Own Hydrogenated Muffins ilk, made with all sorts of xanathan gums and what have you, which look like cupcakes, cookies, plain cakes, and other things once commonly made at home, have caused upscale bakeries and restaurants to shy away from producing anything which might be mistaken for, say, a twinkie. Every once in a while there will be a fad for something-like the present yuppie cupcake business- trading on some sort of mix of nostalgia and camp, but for the most part, there's that unfortunate association with junkiness.*

And too, a lot of the homestyle treats are best made with minimal handling- piecrust especially. This leads to the appearance of imperfection, which pros and their customers may instinctively avoid when there's a cash register in the picture. Finally, many people have forgotten what a plain cake tastes like when it is not made from a box, and think it's bound to be boring, and not worth actually buying. So no one sells them, what with people thinking they will be just like the Duncan Heinz specials with canned frosting that folks make one another for their birthdays and bring to work these days.

So anyhow, I think that's why you can't buy them, and why it is so nice when someone serves you a delicious simple sweet they made themselves, from ingredients you would recognize if you saw them separately. We all have it in our power to make our important people very happy in this way which they cannot, as a general rule, buy. (Not that I would ever wish to discourage anyone from offering me fancy pastries at anytime. It's just another thing entirely..and bring them on, by all means. Got any french-type macaroons?)

So here's another recipe for a plainish sweet treat from Dorie Greenspan's recent book. It needs no special equipment, and reminds me that for most of the years I've spent hanging around one stove or another, I had no stand mixer, or food processor. A person can make some pretty good cakes with a few bowls and a wooden spoon (or as here, a whisk). This is one.

Adapted slightly, with a different method for the frosting, and because I didn't have instant espresso powder in the house:

1 1/4 cups, plus 2 tbsps sugar
1 Tbsp, plus 2 1/2 tsps sugar
1 1/2 tsps powdered cocoa
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsps baking powder
pinch salt
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 tsp real vanilla
10 Tbsps unsalted butter (best with plugra or other very nice butter) melted and cooled
3 oz nice bittersweet chocolate, finelt chopped. or chip

for frosting:
6 oz. more of the chocolate-again, best with very nice chocolate
2 1/2 tbsps butter, cut in 4 pieces

Butter and flour a 9" square pan, line the bottom with waxed paper, and preheat your oven to 350F.

Assemble a small, medium, and large bowl, and a sturdy whisk. In the small bowl, mix 2 Tbsps sugar, 2 1/2 tsps cinnamon, and the cocoa.

In the large bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking powder with the rest of the cinnamon and sugar. Whisk well.

In a medium bowl, mix the eggs milk and vanilla. Whisk up well. Pour the liquid ingredients in the medium bowl over the dry ingredients in the large bowl. Mix until homogenous, and pretty smooth, but don't go on whipping it up too much. Now, fold in the melted butter gently, a bit at a time. the whisk works well for this. Again, as soon as the batter is smooth and uniform, stop.

Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan, sprinkle with the chocolate and sugar, cinamon mix, and gently pour the rest of the batter over the top. Spread it evenly with a table knife, being careful not to disturb the center. Bake about 40 minutes, until the cake is puffed, and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let the cake cool 15 minutes, and remove from pan, peel off waxed paper, and reinvert onto a rack to complete cooling. When completely cool, frost the top only with the frosting described below. When the frosting has set, trim away the browned sides carefully. (These are an excellent cook's snack). Cut into 9 equal squares, like the blocks on a nine-patch quilt. These keep well in a closed container at room temperature for the very few days they may last uneaten.

Frosting: Put the butter and chocolate in a pyrex cup and microwave for 40 seconds. Remove and mix with a spoon until it is all unlumpy and frosting-like. If it seems too liquid, let it sit until spreadable.

*Endless apologies for having a footnote. I attribute this dubious behavior to reading the blog work of one anapestic, whose digressiveness (charming) is pretty much boundless, allowing me to mentally brush off my own as minor league. Just wanted to mention the other side of this issue, which is that to some people, making a cake from scratch at home seems an affected, snobby thing done only by people who think they are Martha Stewart and/or have too much time on their hands, and no real responsibilities. The reason I know this is that I have actually had it said to me by more than one person who has been offered cookies and the like. So if you want to protect yourself from such remarks, it's a good idea not to mention much about where your cake came from, if you don't know the recipient real well. Or only bake for people you are sure you like!

"Visiting Cake" and a Pantry Visit

I'm sure I have mentioned that I am a huge fan of the supremely reliable and creative Dorie Greenspan, who has a new(ish) book out. It is also not a secret that I have a bit of a problem involving my collection of cookbooks, which is maybe too large to be in a private home-particularly the private home of an Apartment Dweller of Moderate Means. (The reason it is not a secret, is that it is Too Big to Hide.* It is not that I am not suitably embarrassed-I'd hide it if I could. Many a casual visitor- for example, the plumber- has been moved to ask me why I have so many cookbooks.) I'll bet you can guess what I just did.

Yup. After a perfunctory internal debate, I bought Ms. Greenspan's Baking, From My Home To Yours. This looks to be a pretty thorough survey of her approach to home baking, which is my kind of baking, for sure. Although there is a wide range of recipes, for all kinds of great looking stuff, I was drawn first to her selection of simple cakes and small baked goods, which can be turned out easily. I love sweets which are not too sweet, go well with tea and coffee, and have some nuance, flavor-wise. It looks like this book is just full of that sort of thing. Plus, it has a number of my personal favorites, including World Peace Cookies (a/k/a Korovas-best chocolate cookie ever) and her lovely sables.

I thought I'd try this simple cake first. It appeals because of its ease (Ms. Greenspan's Swedish friend said her mother claimed you could start making it when you saw your friends coming down the road, and it would be ready by the time they settled in for coffee), its ingredients, and the fact that I am a sucker for any thing made in a well-seasoned 9" cast iron pan. ( I just like to show mine off, and it's fun to use.)

This is what you need for my only infinitesimally adapted version:

granulated sugar, 1 cup
grated zest of one lemon
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almong extract
1 cup all purpose flour
8 tbsps melted butter-1/4 lb.
1/4 cup sliced almonds
demarar sugar or sanding sugar

Preheat your oven to 350F and butter a 9" seasoned cast iron skillet, or similarly sized cake pan. In a bowl, mix the lemon zest and sugar with your fingers, distributing well. Mix the eggs in one at a time, preferably with a whisk, until well blended. Add salt and the extracts and the flour, and switch to a rubber spatula or spoon to mix. Fold in the melted butter.

Scrape the batter into your skillet, smooth and sprinkle with the almonds, then some of the demarara or sanding sugar. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until it is golden and looking a bit crispy on the edge. Cool 5 minutes, then loosen the edges and bottom with a knife, or a thin spatula. Serve from the pan. It is moist in the middle-a bit marzipan-ish.

The non-cake pictues that you see are of the pantry of my Not So Tidy Kitchen* , because I told Karen I would. For reasons unclear to me, the walls look white. Actually, they are elephant gray. Maybe you will show your pantry too, for her collection?

*What is it that occasionally compels me to capitalize words in this apparently random fashion, ala Winnie the Pooh's Very Big Surprise? I suspect it has something to do with being embarrassed.

Finding Cookies: Alfajores

I just didn't pay enough attention to indexing when I set this place up. I keep telling myself that I'm going to reorganize, but there always seems to be something better to do. In the meantime, you should know that if it's cookies you are looking for, check the category "Tea and" on the left over there. There are some other things there that go well with a cup of tea, too. I do wish I'd been a bit less weird, and more practical, naming those categories.

The teatime treats you see before you are alfajores, Argentinian cookies recommended by Fruityoaty. Really they are more sweet little mini-cakes than cookies. I'm pretty sure the mondosize isn't solely due to my clunky touch, since I wound up with as many cookies as the recipe predicted. I don't make filled cookies very often, as they are fussy, and you wind up with half the number of cookies you think you deserve- each cookie being composed of two, plus extra stuff.

So, though these are nice, I won't be making them again soon. My favorite thing about them is the dulce de leche in the middle, which I made using the David Lebovitz recipe . This is a very good, effective procedure, which has a bonus feature-unlike the traditional method, it does not involve the possibility of exploding cans, head injuries, and/or condensed milk on the wall and in your hair. It is so nice to lick some off a spoon, risk free.

There are a surprising number of recipes for this cookie on the net. The one thing they all have in common-aside from the coconut edge, is the use of cornstarch in large quantities. I used the recipe from the Sunset magazine site. If you are looking for a little bit of a project, you could do worse. I do hold sandwich cookies to a very high standard, and these just don't knock my socks off.

Stinky Goodness

Recently, reader Fruityoaty commented here about two kinds of special cookies utterly unknown to me. They were included among his/her(?) top 3 favorites, the third being rugelach. Fruityoaty is clearly a discriminating, (self-described) "cookie monster". Of course, I could not rest until I tried both kinds.

Investigating the first of the two, "drommar", I discovered that the recipe included an ingredient famous for its prebaking stinkiness....ammonium carbonate a/k/a "bakers' ammonia", a/k/a "hartshorn." (If you have been here before, you will see the digression coming a mile away, like unto a train wreck which cannot be stopped. But I will get to the cookies, and how to make them, sooner or later, I promise.)

Bakers' ammonia smells pretty awful in its container, and you can smell it while it's "baking off" in the oven, too. In the container, it is a lot like a whiff of a ghastly gas station toilet, but it is not a strong whiff, and mixing it into the drommar dough at the same time as the almond extract has an ameliorating effect. The baking smell is more akin to wet socks. When the cookies are done, the stinkies have vanished, and only the sweet baking smells remain. It makes for a lighter, crisper product than baking powder, but you can really only safely use it in thin things, like cookies. Try it in a cake, and you can't bake it long enough to burn off the smell. And of course, nobody wants a cake that smells like, well, feet. This oderiforous powder is particularly handy for cookies for which you need or wish to chill the dough, because only heat, and not liquid, activates the leavening.

Coincidentally, I have been thinking about smells quite a lot lately. The redfox and S. gave me a wonderful Christmas gift of a gift certificate to a super-fancy perfume shop, along with 7 samples of very elegant and unique perfumes. It was hugely entertaining trying to decide among them, reading about the seemingly odd ingredients, and seeing how the scents, on my skin, changed from the bottle and then over time. I enjoyed it so much that I wound up ordering more samples, before I made up my mind.

Eventually, I picked something called "Mure et Musc", which is primarily a combination of musk (which I thought I didn't like) and blackberry (I thought I didn't like fruity perfume either.) It doesn't smell like either of these things to me, but rather like its own, unique self (and wonderful). I can't imagine that I will ever tire of it; it is pretty much magical. A close second in my deliberations was composed, mostly, of fig. Who knew?

Anyway, turns out there are many perfume devotees out there, and entire blogs (replete with comments), and , of course, books, devoted to the discussion and reviewing of perfumes. There are perfume sophisticates who describe the smells much in the way a wine expert discusses a tasting, noting elements that clodhoppers such as myself cannot detect, let alone evoke in metaphor. If you are interested, and check out one such blog, it will link you to many others.

Aside from the emotional resonance and memory triggering powers of scents, anyone interested in food and flavor is kind of automatically interested in the sense of smell, which plays such a large part, we are told, in taste. As children we were probably all treated to the popular science class demonstration where we were instructed to hold our noses, and had trouble telling apples from raw potatoes. I figured the reason this all seemed more mysterious than illuminating to me at the time, was my failure to grasp the lesson.

But it turns out that there is still some pretty lively debate going on about how the sense of smell functions. I've been reading a book called The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr, the perfume critic (!) at the New York Times (I wonder if they've always had one?). It is a fascinating (so far) story about a biophysicist-and perfume aficiando- called Luca Turin, who has been making waves (ha, sorry), with a vibration theory of how the sense of smell-and the nose-work, which theory is counter to the accepted wisdom in the mainstream scentific community. This book is written for the layperson (I couldn't follow it otherwise, I'm sure), and I will undoubtedly be unable to evaluate whatever position is ultimately taken...but it is good fun. Perhaps I am the only person who had not yet heard about this, but if not, you might like to check it out.

Still, I will drag myself from meanderings about other things that smell bad, and result in good eats (asefoetida?), or smell dire and taste good (brie, and some frightful smelling fruits, the names of which I forget-probably due to the olfactory trauma), and back to the making of the drommar which you see before you. The Swedish recipe can be found at Epicurious, along with the author's account of her childhood trips to the drugstore to buy the stinky stuff. I got mine from the Baker's Catalog , King Arthur Flour's ever useful online shop.

These cookies don't look like much, but they are absolutely great. Really. Lovely texture- crunchy, chewy, melting, all of these, and a subtle, satisfying taste. At least, that is the verdict on the just cooled batch. I will add a comment tomorrow as to how these age in the tin. Unless somebody eats them up first. Stay tuned for (soon), Fruityoaty's other favorite, "alfajores", from Argentina.

As promised update on cookies in the tin: Not much chew, lovely and crispy, taste even better the 2nd day. These really are gorgeous cookies- many thanks to fruityoaty for the tip.