Still warm

A few weeks ago, my friend Tracy gave me three dozen eggs and a tart pan. Today I repaid her the best way I know how: with a Breton Buckwheat Cake baked with six of her eggs in my brand new pan.

The cake is a stunner. I made my first one a few days ago in an effort to work my way through some of the buckwheat flour in our freezer from last year's grain CSA, and it certainly did the trick. We worked through our cake FAST. The fact that it was only vaguely sweet and very eggy and moist and made with whole grain flour meant that we justified a little sliver after breakfast and two more in the wake of dinner and lunch. 

The recipe comes from David Lebovitz, via 101cookbooks. I believe it is French. If it's not, it's everything French cakes tend to be—not overly sugary, simple to make, and deeply satisfying without being too rich. There's also no frosting—it feels very much like an every day peasant cake.

The excitement is in the sea salt that you sprinkle into the batter and then on the top just before you bake. It brings out all the nuances of the flavors that go into the cake—the undertones of dark rum, a hint of vanilla, the toothsome, earthy taste of buckwheat. I used light brown sugar in place of granulated, which I think gave it even more depth. 

After we devoured ours I made it again and delivered it to Tracy, still warm in a greasy paper sack. Thank you Tracy, again.

BRETON BUCKWHEAT CAKE WITH FLEUR DE SEL


adapted from David Lebovitz, The Sweet Life in Paris

We got buckwheat last year with our grain CSA, and I milled it all into flour. For reasons I don't fully understand it is much lighter than most buckwheat flours—in color at least—but otherwise, it seems the same. Either way, it's delicious in this cake, which is moist, eggy, and only a little bit sweet. Think of it as a snacking cake.

for the cake:
1 scant cup buckwheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon plus 1/3 teaspoon fleur de sel
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
4 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons dark rum 


for the glaze:
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon milk

Grease a 9- or 10-inch tart pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

In a small bowl, whisk together the buckwheat flour, the all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, and the cinnamon.

Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until smooth. Beat in the egg yolks one by one and then add the whole egg. Add the vanilla and rum in a slow dribble, beating the whole time. Beat on high speed until the mixture is very airy.

Finally, mix in the dry ingredients until the batter just comes together. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top as flat as possible (it is a thick dough so this takes a few swipes).

Make the glaze by whisking together the egg yolk and milk in a small cup. Brush it generously across the top, then take a fork and rake it across the batter to create three parallel lines in one direction and three in another to make a criss-cross pattern. Sprinkle the remaining 1/3 teaspoon of salt over the cake. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the inside of the cake is still moist. 


Note: be careful not to overcook, as the cake seems like the type to dry out.

Sally & I

Hi, friends.

Sorry to have been gone so long, but Sally and I have had a lot of catching up to do. It's very different for both of us with her here, on the outside, but it's also pretty great. My parents left Tuesday, which was both nice and scary, and the three of us are slowly settling into a routine. Mostly this involves nursing and reading and trying to sleep and doing laundry and walking, and while that might not sound like a lot, it keeps us very busy.

We've also managed to start cooking again—nothing very complicated—a salad for lunch, a pot of ham and beans for supper. But mostly, we've been relying on the kitchens of family and friends. Luckily we have good friends, friends who bring things like Torta di Mele, a moist, crackly apple cake that reminds me of my host mother in Spain. Lourdes made the best apple cake—it was moist and custardy and sweet, and I've tried but never been able to recreate it. Until Teresa brought one over, complete with a print out of the recipe. It's nearly gone now, so I don't have a proper picture for you, but believe me this is a cake you want to make. It is simple and elegant and in a very homey way quite pretty, and perfect this time of year.

We'll see you soon, friends, and until then, I hope we all find time to bake.

TORTA DI MELE

In English, this apparently is called "Apple Cake with a Crackly Meringue." Whatever you want to call it, it comes from both Italy and Spain, and this version in particular comes from Lynn Rosetto Kasper's The Italian Country Table. Teresa's baked up beautifully—crackly and wispy on top and moist in the center.

2 cups plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 and 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

a pinch of salt

1 and 1/2 sticks cold butter, cut into small pieces

3/4 cup milk

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

shredded zest of 1 large lemon

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 large (about 1 pound) apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 large egg white

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch spring form pan.

In a large bowl, work together the 2 cups of flour, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, the salt, and the butter with your fingers until crumbly. Take 1 cup of this mixture and press it over the bottom of the pan and about 1/2 inch up the sides to make a crust.

Make a well in the remaining crumb mixture. Add the milk, eggs, vanilla, lemon zest, remaining flour, and baking powder. Blend these liquid ingredients in the well as best you can without mixing in the crumbs. Then stir in the crumbs until well blended but still a little lumpy. Fold in the apples and scrape the batter into the pan over the crust.

Beat the egg white until foamy in a small bowl. Beat in the remaining sugar until the mixture forms peaks. Spread this over the batter.

Bake for an hour to 75 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a straw comes out clean. Cool and serve at room temperature. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream make a nice accompaniment, but the cake is so moist that they aren't essential.

The Local Food Report: black walnuts

There are some tastes you never forget. The flavor of wild American black walnuts is one of them.

I first tried black walnuts this fall, when my forager friend, Richard Bailey, gave me a sack of them. I'd been hearing about them for years: from my grandmother, who grew up with them, and from my mother, describing the black walnut cake she used to make with them. They both got a sort of dreamy, far away look when they talked about the nuts---the kind of look people get when they talk about tastes and memories that belong to another time, another place. When I finally bit into a slice of my grandmother's black walnut cake for the first time a few weeks ago, I understood: black walnuts are all wild, all American, all history.

They don't grow on the Cape, not naturally. Their range extends from Western Massachusetts and Vermont out to southern Ontario, down to central Texas, and then east into Georgia and up the coast. But an Austrian couple in Wellfleet planted a tree half a century ago, and each fall, it produces.

The tree itself looks sort of like a locust---compound pinnate leaves and scratchy bark---but it's actually in the hickory family. The nuts are housed in a fleshy husk that's green straight off the tree, then slowly fades to black. They're famously hard to open: Richard Bailey uses a knife and a bench vice, but others have used hammers, rocks, the tires of their cars. Once you get through the husk, you find a hard shell, same as an English Walnut, so you still have to crack that. Finally, you get to the nutmeats, about a cup for every two pounds un-shelled.

It's a lot of work, but when you taste that flavor, you know it was worth it. The recipe my grandmother handed down to me is called Maryland Black Walnut Cake, and it comes from the Shields Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, circa 1990. She used to have an older recipe, the one my great-grandmother made, but that one's gone and this one is close, she says. It calls for all the usuals: flour, butter, sugar, eggs, a little bit of vanilla and baking powder and milk and salt. But then you add the black walnuts---1 and 1/2 cups of pure ground musk, and it changes the whole game. The flavor is something like really good banana bread soaked in port and black currant cordial with a little bit of smoke mixed in. It's good straight out of the oven but it gets better over the course of a few days---more moist, more pungent, somehow more rare.

I can't hand you a slice through the screen, but I can give you the next best thing: everything you need to bake your own cake, grow your own trees. You can buy black walnuts online, over here, and this company sells the trees online. And thanks to my grandmother, here's that cake recipe.

MARYLAND BLACK WALNUT CAKE

My grandmother talks about a recipe Gransie (her grandmother) used to make, but we can't find that anywhere. Instead, she sent me this recipe card from her files, with a note at the bottom that says "Shields Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, 1990."

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter

1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs, separated

3/4 cup milk

1 and 1/2 cup ground black walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube or Bundt cake pan.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg yolks and beat well. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the creamed butter mixture, mixing well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they're stiff but not dry and gently fold them into the batter along with the ground black walnuts until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until a piece of straw comes out clean. Turn the cake onto a rack to cool, then dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.

Pay dirt

Julie from Brunswick, are you out there?

I hope so, because this post is for you. A while ago, when I told you about the grain CSA we joined this year and the New York-grown spelt that came as part of our share, you wanted to hear more. I promised you that I would look into it, and I know it took a while, but this week, I did. I looked right into the face of a spelt flour, olive oil, homegrown rosemary, and dark chocolate cake, and Julie—we hit pay dirt.

This particular cake comes from a book I've mentioned a few times around here, Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain. It isn't a book that I fell instantly in love with, but the more I've used it, the more I've liked it. And after this cake, I like it even more.

The cake comes from a whole chapter dedicated to spelt flour, because according to Boyce, spelt can be substituted for plain-old whole-wheat flour in just about anything. It does especially well in cakes and muffins, she says, because it has a sort of inherent sweet, cinnamony-ness that bakes into a fine, sturdy crumb and is good at complimenting spice. The spice for this cake—rosemary—might seem odd, but somehow, with the chocolate and the olive oil, it's just right.

The key is to use fresh rosemary and top quality dark chocolate. The first time I made this I used Baker's chocolate, semi-sweet, because it was the only thing we had on hand, and I regretted it with every bite. Semi-sweet turned out to be too sweet—it was 54% cacao—and Baker's turned to out to taste, in big chunks, just the slightest bit like chalk. The second time around I went with two bars of dark chocolate chunks from the Chocolate Sparrow and was much, much happier with that choice. We also put down a dying rosemary plant with the first go-round, and the second time, with sprigs from a fresh pot I planted for the deck, that flavor was much better, too. Last but not least I'd say don't use too strong of an olive oil—something subtle and slightly fruity, maybe, but definitely not the fresh, green kind with bite.

Beyond that, it's fairly hard to go wrong. Boyce said to bake the cake in a tart pan, but since I like nice, moist centers, I made it into a Bundt round instead. I also added a bit more milk than the recipe calls for—spelt cakes tend to be dry, and again, I like mine moist—and I was happy with that tweak, too.

So Julie, here you are: a whole-grain spelt cake and—maybe if we all cross our fingers at once—an afternoon to cozy up with a slice of it in the sun.

ROSEMARY, DARK CHOCOLATE, & SPELT CAKE

The thing that I love about this recipe—which, as explained in the post above, is adapted from Kim Boyce's Olive Oil Cake in Good to the Grain—is how easy it is. It's the type of thing you can whip up in minutes, without any beating or special steps or fuss. I made it the other night in the midst of dinner preparations, and it took only 10 minutes, from thought to oven.

3/4 cup spelt flour
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 cup olive oil*
1 scant cup whole milk
1 and 1/2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely chopped
10 ounces bittersweet chocolate (about 70% cacao), cut into irregular but roughly 1/2-inch pieces

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a Bundt cake pan. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs to break them up, then stir in the oil, milk, and rosemary, and mix well. Mix these wet ingredients gently into the flour mixture, stirring until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate pieces, and pour the batter into the prepared Bundt cake pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the top turns golden brown and begins to crack and the center is still moist but cooked through.

*Note: To make this cake even more local, I thought about using butter instead of olive oil, but decided against it in the end. Substituting butter in recipes that call for oil tends to make things a bit drier—some people say this is because the butter solidifies at room temperature, whereas the oil remains liquid—and since spelt already has a tendency to dry things out, this didn't seem like a good idea. That said, however, I think it might be a risk worth taking. If you decide to experiment, just be sure to melt the butter so that you can mix it in rather than cream it.

Plan accordingly

This weekend, I learned two things. The first is that if you would like to stay happily married for a long, long time, you should never, ever attempt to shop for a house. Not even if you aren't altogether serious about it, and especially not if you are just sort of testing the waters to see how much you like the place you're already in. If you do, you will very quickly discover that actually, people who like three bedroom homes are not made for people who like four bedroom homes, and that basements are secretly much more important to certain people than anyone could have ever imagined, and that there is a lot more to discuss than you realized when it comes to a yard. You might also find out that one of you is very, very picky about southern light, and windows, and old, antique-y frames and floors. As a matter of fact, the only pleasant thing that you might discover is that when two people decide to become so completely unreasonable, you can patch things up by making a cake.

That, of course, is the second thing I learned this weekend: I now know how to bake Melt-in-Your-Mouth blueberry cake.

I never knew that a skill like that could come in quite so handy, as in, stop-your-husband-from-running-away handy, but let me tell you, it does. It is a very important thing to have in your repertoire. I wish I'd had it up my sleeve while we were a little bit earlier, because I have a feeling it's the sort of cake that could do things like knock thousands of dollars off of asking prices and expand basements and add built in storage under eaves and make your husband smile and grab your hand, but I can't be sure.

At any rate, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Blueberry Cake's real power comes from the ever mighty butter and sugar and flour trio, the one that has been saving friendships and marriages and whole businesses since just about the start of time. You make it by creaming some butter, adding in some sugar and a spoonful of vanilla and an egg yolk, and then beating up the white with a little bit more sugar until it's stiff. Then when that all is ready to go, you add the behind-the-scenes structure, the flour and the baking soda and a little pinch of salt, you mix the dry ingredients into the wet ones, fold the egg whites in, and finally, at the last possible second, add a whopping two cups of slightly thawed Eastham blueberries. You get the oven hot, and prep two little pans, one to keep for Sunday morning breakfast and one to bring over to your two very good friends who are [finally! at long last!] coming home from their honeymoon, and you bake.

It couldn't be more soothing, or more delightful when it's finally time to sit down and eat.


We polished ours off yesterday, over tea and coffee and sautéed onions and Chinese cabbage and two fried eggs. We talked about Alex's hockey game, and my walk, and the cilantro plant in the window, and even about a piece of land he'd seen for sale, and no one got the least bit cross.

The only disagreeable thing, actually, was how quickly it disappeared. We thought about breaking into our friends' pan, but that didn't seem right, especially given that they've been gone for a month, and that it was a very long month, and that we're really hoping that now that the hullabaloo is over they'll settle down and stay. Stealing cake from honeymooners seemed terribly unsportsmanlike. So all I'll say is that if you make this cake with the intent to share, don't divvy it up. Plan accordingly, and make a double batch, or if you need to, which you might, even bake three.

MELT-IN-YOUR-MOUTH BLUEBERRY CAKE

Adapted from Cooking Down East by Marjorie Standish

This recipe comes from my mother's repertoire. The annotation next to the header in her copy of the book reads, "YES! Made for the blizzard of March '93." I don't remember the storm, seeing as I was only eight at the time, but she says we ate it at night, with the shades up and the lights on in the yard, watching the snow fly wildly around outside. I think it would be equally lovely tonight, watching the trees bend in the wind and the rain.

2 eggs, separated
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup whole milk, buttermilk, or even eggnog in a pinch
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and butter an 8" by 8" baking pan. Beat the egg whites until they're stiff. Once they have the right consistency, beat in 1/4 cup of the sugar to keep them stiff, and set them aside.

Cream the butter; add the salt and the vanilla. Beat in the remaining sugar, add the egg yolks, and beat until everything is light and creamy. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, and add them to the butter mixture alternately with the milk. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites, and then fold in the blueberries. (Doing this last prevents the blueberries from mixing too much with the batter and giving the cake that eerie green color you sometimes notice in overmixed muffins and cakes.)

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes, or a little less if you like your cake slightly gooey and underdone. Serve at room temperature, with a cup of tea.

The Local Food Report: on inheriting a dream

What if, instead of having a dream, a dream had you? What if it grabbed you one day, picked you up on the street, took you by the horns, and told you what you were going to do every day for the rest of your life? Would you hop on board, or would you run?

I recognize that I sound like I'm writing song lyrics for Selena (Dreaming of You, anyone?), but that's the sort of story I want to tell you today. I met this woman, Myrna Cook, at the Falmouth Farmer's Market a month or so ago, a few weeks before we left. I didn't have time to tell you about her then, but she's the kind of woman you can't forget. She's quiet and sweet and a little bit private, too, and eight years ago, she and her husband bought a house. Or, they thought they bought just a house. Turns out, it came with a dream.

It was an abandoned house—somewhere in Barnstable—and just a little bit ramshackle after two years of empty rooms and an overgrown lawn. People told them they were crazy to buy it, that it needed more love than two people could possibly give, but they went in anyway. There were fruit trees here and there and it was in a nice, quiet neighborhood, and at any rate, it would be a fun project to have a fixer-upper, to do some renovations as time went on. They learned that a Ukranian woman and her husband had owned it before them, and that she had passed away young and unexpectedly before he sold. Then one day, when they were ripping through the attic in the midst of a project, they found a plan.

It was an orchard plan—a plan to have a business selling and putting up fruit. They realized that there were 48 trees and not just a few, and that the storage shed out back was for keeping pears and apples to overwinter in. They uncovered other traces—a stainless steel work table, more and more varieties of apples, peaches, plums, and pears. Myrna decided that if the woman who'd planted the trees hadn't had time to live out her dream, then she would have to live it out for her.

She started by collecting fruit samples from every tree. She sent them to the UMass Extension program, and they sent her back a 30-page color report on what kind of trees she had inherited, and how to keep them alive. She bought books on horticulture and fruit growing and combed the internet for workshop dates. She even enlisted the help of Spooner Ornamental Care, a plant health care provider in Hatchville, and hired a landscaper to help with pruning and year round maintenance. Of the 48 original trees, 30 survived, and this year, for the first time, Myrna had fruit healthy enough to sell.

When I asked Myrna if the dream had somehow, along the way, become her own, she hesitated. It wasn't really her dream, she said, but she had learned to love it over time. It was a labor of love in the most immediate sense—in the sense that fruit farming means sore knees and heavy lifting and probably a flare up of carpal tunnel syndrome here and there. Fruit wants to be picked when it wants to be picked—and to inherit this sort of dream, there isn't any way around the nitty-gritty of that.

This time of year, Myrna's wrapping things up—selling the last of her hardy apples and pears, and getting the orchard ready for a cold, hard winter—making sure not too many branches and buds tumble to the ground. She's ready for a break, ready for pie-baking and apple butter and the hubbub of the holidays, ready, for a few months at least, to lay the dream down. But underneath that readiness, she's incredibly proud. She's proud that she's been able to rehab the trees, proud and amazed to have fruit shiny and sweet enough that people actually want to buy it. She can hardly believe that this dream has taken off so well in her hands.

The phrase that's stuck with me the most, though, is something she told me after we first talked, something she murmured over the wires of the phone. I asked her why she did it—why she was so open to living this woman's dream out, this woman who she'd never even met. She thought for a second.

It was like picking a message up off the street, she said. Suddenly, my whole direction changed.

One day, I hope to be as open to life as that. In the meantime, I think I'll settle to being open to cake—to cake even the second time it's baked, even after the first try went so terribly wrong.

Like Myrna's fruit, some things just need a chance—the chance to be given a second time around.

MELTING BUTTERMILK-PEAR CAKE

This cake is adapted from a recipe I found in September in Bon Appétit. I didn't mean for it to be an adaptation, really, but the first time I baked the cake I didn't read the directions all the way through before I made it. Also, I didn't have any parchment paper.

This, unsurprisingly, lead to the discoveries that a) there was a reason the ingredients for the pear compote came first, namely, that the compote was supposed to be ready when the cake was only half baked, and that b) because I had not lined the pan with parchment paper, even if the pear compote had been ready, the cake still never would have ended up intact upside-down on top of it as it was supposed to.

Luckily, as you know, Fisher ate the first cake, but the second time around, I decided to go without parchment paper again and keep the pears on top. The end result was not exactly what I'd imagined on the beach the day I was paging through the magazine—but somehow, for today, it seemed right.

Pear Compote:
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 pound firm but ripe Bosc pears, peeled, halved, cored, and sliced thin

Combine the sugar, water, lemon juice, and thyme in a small, heavy bottomed saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Turn the heat down to medium, add the pears, and simmer until the fruit is tender but still intact, roughly 10 minutes. Transfer the pears from the saucepan to a cookie sheet using a slotted spoon. Continue cooking the remaining liquid for about five minutes, until it thickens into a syrup.

Buttermilk Cake:
1 heaping cup all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium size mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter and beat in the egg and then the egg yolk. Add the vanilla to the buttermilk, and then add the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients alternately to the egg mixture until everything is just mixed.

Spoon the batter into a buttered and floured 8-inch round cake pan with at least 2-inch high sides. Bake the cake for about 35 minutes, or until the top is just set. Leaving the oven on, take the cake out. Arrange the pear slices over the top of the cake in a circular pattern (or really, whatever pattern you like), and pour the syrup evenly over the top of the whole cake. Return the cake to the oven and bake it for another 10 minutes or so, or until the edges are just golden brown. Let it cool for several hours before serving it, maybe with some buttermilk ice cream, at room temperature.

butter:
Kate's, from Maine
buttermilk:
Garelick Farms, purchased before we got our milk, which has finally—hooray!—returned
eggs, pears:
the December 6th Provincetown farmers' market
thyme:
our garden

P.S. The UMass Amherst website has a ton of information on growing fruit, in case you're interested. There's so much there, in fact, that if you're just trying to get a feel for whether or not you're up for planting an orchard, it's hard to even know where to start. This page, put together by Fedco Seeds in Maine, has a little bit more broad information. (Scroll down to where it says "Choosing a Site For Fruit Trees and Berries.")

Fully on board

You know what? It is a good feeling when you have been looking for a wedding caterer for a long, long time, to find one that you like.

It is a good feeling to find a caterer who doesn't flinch when you tell her you might not be able to finalize the menu until a few weeks before the event, as there's a farmer to work with and a potato blight in Maine in full swing. It is an even better feeling when not only does she not flinch, but she gets fully on board.

It will make you nearly ecstatic when she tells you that it's fine to put beets in every course because they are In Season and of course she'd like to peel nine dozen tiny local eggs because actually they give a better mouth feel and wouldn't your family like to help her pull the mozzarella one day?

Finding a caterer like this is a feeling very similar, come to think of it, as the one you get when you meet the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. Between Alex and Katy, I'm not sure things could get much better around here. Or at least, I didn't think so until Katy introduced The Cupcakes. Here, would you like to meet them too?

They are the product of a Ms. Alexandra Mudry, a student at the Culinary Institute of America. (Katy went there too, but I like to say she's from the CIA. It makes her seem a lot less Betty Crocker and a lot more James Bond, don't you think?) Anways, Alexandra came up with the cupcakes when the American Cancer Society decided to host a contest to remake the birthday cake. They were looking for a healthier, more old-fashioned version—one with real ingredients and no preservations and maybe a few less sprinkles and definitely no box mix. (Or maybe they were just looking for something to back up their newly assumed position as the Official Sponsor of Birthdays, but we'll pretend not to notice that.) Because really, I could overlook just about anything for The Cupcakes.

The Cupcakes are red velvet cupcakes, the old fashioned kind dyed with beets. They have half whole wheat flour and dark chocolate and even applesauce in the mix, and they are an absolutely stunning color. Sort of like mahogany, only with a bit more red. I've made them with cream cheese frosting, but they're also good with French icing or even a good vanilla buttercream.

As for how they are to make, there's a bit of cooking time involved in roasting the beets and a few odd ingredients to track down, but otherwise, they're a sinch. Plus, once you buy that tiny jar of instant coffee it will last you many, many birthdays. You only have to do the tough shopping once.

And on the presentation side of things, for the wedding we're planning to go to the flea market and stock up on all sizes of cakes stands so that we can stack the cupcakes in small, double-decker circles the way they are below. Not only will it be pretty, but pulling out a piping bag and making a few nice, billowy swirls of frosting on each cupcake will be a whole lot easier than spreading frosting on a crumbling, towering cake.


In fact these cupcakes are so good, so easy, and so pretty, I think they might just be the ones for the big day. What do you say?

RED VELVET CUPCAKES

adapted from the American Cancer Society's recipe by Ms. Alexandra Mudry

This recipe makes 24 cupcakes. For the wedding, of course, we'll be making a lot more, but for your next birthday party, this size batch should be just right. Also, you might notice that this recipe uses a lot more ingredients than I usually go for, but I think you'll find, as I did, that cupcakes this good are well worth a trip to the store.

8 medium-sized beets
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon instant coffee
1/2 cup unsweetend cocoa powder
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Peel the beets and trim off their tops and tails. Line a cookie sheet with tinfoil and place the beets on top. Drizzle them with olive oil and bake for about two hours, or until a fork goes into them easily. If you're going to make the cake batter immediately, you can go ahead and leave the oven on as the cake bakes at 375, too.

Puree the beets in a food processor with several tablespoons of water. (One or two should do the trick). Once they're smooth, they're done.

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake wrappers. In a small, heavy-bottomed pot, melt the chocolate. While it heats up, combine the oil, eggs, egg whites, and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat together until they turn smooth and lighten in color. Add the instant coffee to the melted chocolate and stir until the two are well-mixed. Slowly, beat the chocolate mixture into the eggs, oil, and sugar.

In another mixing bowl, combine the cocoa powder, applesauce, and beet puree. Stir well, and beat this mixture into the egg and chocolate mixture. In yet another bowl (I know, not only are there a lot of ingredients but there will also be a lot of dishes but I swear it will be worth it people, so soldier on!) whisk together the remaining dry ingredients. Fold these gently into the wet ingredients until just combined. (Be careful not to overmix or the cupcakes will get tough and dense.) Pour the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes, or until a piece of straw (my mother used to take hers from a new broom) comes out clean.

Let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes, and then take them out from the pan to cool on a rack. Ice with cream cheese frosting, below.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

24 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

Beat the cream cheese with the vanilla extract until they are light and smooth. Add the confectioners' sugar, bit by bit, until the whole mixture is creamy and smooth. Be careful not to overmix, or the frosting will be hard to spread. Spoon into a piping bag and ice the cupcakes in whatever decorative, lovely way you see fit.

P.S. If you're wondering why there's no Local Food Report today, it's because the station is doing a pledge drive this week. I went up to Woods Hole to help out yesterday, but they could use yours, too. You can head on over here if you're up for becoming a Cape & Islands NPR member.

Itching to get back

I have a confession to make. Before I cooked for you this weekend, I hadn’t made a single thing, not one thing, for a week. Actually, I rounded down. Secretly, it was more like eleven days.

It was my official Spring Cooking Strike.

I don't know what came over me, but I felt awfully rebellious. The sun came out, the greenhouse warmed up, and I started itching to be outside. I went over to Cahoon Hollow to check out the waves, dreamt big dreams of orderly brick garden paths and neat picket fences and a brand-new raspberry patch, and frittered away a few lovely afternoons planting tomato seedlings and zucchini seeds and summer squash.

We made our way along with a big puddle of lamb shanks and sauce the fishmonger slaved over last Sunday (thank goodness someone was cooking), and some leftover sourdough bread and frozen carrot soup, and a few dinners at friends' houses. But by Friday, the jig was up. And to tell you the truth, I was itching to get back. I had a recipe for blackberry jam cake to try.

I found it in Carole Walter's book, Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins, & More, as part of my eternal search for the Wedding Cake. It was swirled with nutmeg and cinnamon, just a pinch of cloves, and almost an entire cup of thick, sweet jam. It sounded absolutely perfect for a jumping in endeavor.

It was. It helped with the pantry cleaning that's been going on around here recently—using up some jam, and a good deal of butter and flour and sugar and all that. Plus, it eeked the last drops from a jar of lemon extract, which went into an absolutely scrumptious glaze. It seemed somehow very spring: spicy, sweet, just barely hinting of sprouting grass and bare feet.

Plus, it's just mild enough to pass for a meal at breakfast or a snack come lunch or an after dinner dessert—an awfully important trait these days, when meals have been far and few between.

Happily, I think we may be past that. Or at least we will be, once I finish off this last slice of cake.

BLACKBERRY JAM SPICE CAKE

I think you could swap a cup or so of the all-purpose flour called for in this recipe for whole-wheat with excellent results, but I didn’t try it on the first go-round. Also, the original recipe called for seedless blackberry preserve, which is fine if that’s what you have, but I think chunky whole berries and seeds add far more character to the finished cake.

for the cake:

2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
3 large eggs
3/4 cup blackberry jam, preferably homemade
1 teaspoon vanilla

for the glaze:

1 tablespoon butter
2-3 tablespoons milk or cream
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch bundt pan; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, spices, and salt. Combine buttermilk and baking soda, and let side for about 5 minutes.

In a medium-size mixing bowl, cream butter with both types of sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then add blackberry jam and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately, mixing until just combined after each addition.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, using a spatula to clean the bowl and then smooth flat the surface of the batter in the pan. (It’s important to take the time to do this, otherwise when you flip your cake and place it on the stand, the bottom will be rounded and it will teeter around instead of sitting flat. Trust me; I found this out the hard way.)

Bake for about an hour, or until the cake starts to pull away from the edges of the pan and the top turns golden brown and begins to crack apart. Let it cool in the pan; in the meantime, melt the butter in a small, heavy-bottomed pot and mix in the other ingredients until smooth. If the icing doesn’t seem runny enough, add a bit more cream. Flip the cake onto a plate or cake stand, and drizzle the icing over it into a thin, ribbon-like pattern. Once the icing has hardened, enjoy with a cup of tea.

The best part

When you write about food for a living and the man you're marrying owns a restaurant, there is quite a bit of pressure to serve everyone at your wedding a Very Good Meal. This feeling is mostly imagined, but a little bit real, and it can make planning the menu a task that takes many, many months.

We certainly haven't gotten very far, though we have managed to amass an absolutely enormous amount of recipe clippings.


It doesn't help that I am very stubborn, and that even though I have relinquished the idea that we will cook our entire rehearsal dinner together (doesn't anyone but me think that would be fun?), I will not give up the right to make my own cake. This adds a lot of To-Dos to the list, like check out wedding cake books from the library, and try every recipe in them, and purchase a cake piping kit, and look for cake stands at the flea market each Sunday, and throw lots of dinner parties so that you're not eating every triple decker by yourself.

Luckily, I don't really mind the list. In fact, it's kind of the best part.

Technically, I'm not going to make the cake alone, either; my bridesmaids are going to help. And there are going to be a few cakes, not just one, in different sizes and flavors. And my best friend's mother owns a bakery, so we'll have the equipment going for us, and plenty of space, and hopefully a few bottles of champagne.

Doing it that way will make things a whole lot easier when it comes to baking the real cakes, but it means lots more work testing recipes now. The other day, I tried an applesauce cake, and though the fishmonger wasn't sure it was wedding material, it was certainly good. At least, it was gone within twenty-four hours, for whatever that's worth—so quickly, I didn't even get to snap its portrait.


I might be kind of biased, if you recall, because I have a pretty serious thing for just about any applesauce cake. But we are getting married in the fall, in the height of applesauce season, and so having at least one apple-themed cake kind of goes without saying, I think.

I found the recipe for this one online after lots and lots of searching, but originally it came from the May 1980 issue of something called "Mailbox News" by a Mrs. Henry Blasi of Michigan. I have no idea what sort of a publication that is, but I'm very thankful for the cake. I made just a single batch, which filled two cake pans. This left room for a layer of icing in between the cakes, and then a good spread on top, but I didn't put any on the sides. That seemed like a bit much. In fact, if you wanted, you could even make this in a loaf tin and eat it for breakfast or snacks—it's kind of like banana bread that way. Either way, I think you'll be glad you gave it a go. Who knows, it just might sneak onto one of those cake platters for the Big Day. We'll have to wait and see.

APPLESAUCE WEDDING CAKE

adapted from Mailbox News, by Mrs. Henry Blasi, May 1980

This cake can be easily frozen once cooled. Just wrap each cake in plastic wrap, then tinfoil, then stick it in the freezer. This makes frosting easier later—not to mention baking ahead of time.

1 and 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon all-spice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 and 1/2 cups applesauce

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium-size mixing bowl, cream sugar and butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well. In another medium-size bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Add applesauce and dry ingredients alternatively to creamed butter, mixing well after each addition. Spoon batter into 2 greased cake pans, and bake until a cake tester comes out clean (about 30 minutes).

I topped the cake with this icing, but a lemony glaze would work well, too, I think.

Do you in

All week, I've been baking. Not polite baking. No, there's been none of that. Not applesauce cakes and morning glory muffins and granola and bread. No, I've been measuring oil, sifting confectioners' sugar, creaming butter. I have really, really been committing some serious sins.

It's been so bad around here, that the other morning the fishmonger claimed he could no longer button his pants. I think he was joking, but in sort of a serious way that was kind of scary and told me I really, really have to stop. Luckily, I have an office to go to, and plenty of people to share with. I mean really, how hard can it be to get rid of a cake?

Not very, as it turns out. I brought half of the one above in for lunch the other day, and every slice was gone in a snap. There's not really a set of office etiquette around here for this sort of thing (we're quite an informal bunch) but I think the gesture went over fairly happily. I won't test anyone's patience (or their pant buttons), and I think it might be time to hold off of baking for at least a week, but it's good to know you have somewhere to turn when things get bad.

Really, though, if you can manage to limit yourself to just one deliriously sinful baked good, the week doesn't have to be like this. Even if you just make this cake, and even as rich as it is, you probably won't even get a bellyache, because I cut the recipe in half.

I wanted you to be safe. If you have six people at the table, you might even be able to finish it over a single round of after dinner coffee, or maybe even a bottle of wine. Really, it's pretty foolproof, as long as you don't do anything outrageous like double the recipe, or frost the sides, or something rash like that. That sort of behavior will definitely do you in.


SUPER MOIST CARROT CAKE

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup walnut oil or mild olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup stewed rhubarb or 1/2 cup canned pineapple, un-drained
1 cup grated carrots

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium-size mixing bowl. Add in oil, mixing until well blended, then add vanilla, rhubarb (or pineapple), and carrots and mix until everything is just combined. Spoon batter into a greased 6- to 8-inch tube pan and bake for roughly 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

FRENCH ICING

adapted from the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer

6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 egg

Cream butter until soft. Add in confectioners’ sugar 1/4 cup at a time, beating until combined before each addition. When butter and sugar are well blended and creamy, add in egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Spread evenly over cake top.

P.S. The carrots were fresh (or as fresh winter carrots can be), leftover from my winter farmers' market visit to Rhode Island. The rhubarb emerged in the dreaded freezer purge...

Just delightful

Oh! Some weekends are just delightful. Particularly those that consist of ice skating, warm tubs, spiked cocoa, and cakes. Cakes especially.


The trouble is with Mondays. The Mondays that follow tend to be a bit of an upset. When such a rough start is required, the only thing to do is to bring a bit of the weekend along with you to work. Namely, the cake.

This cake is perfect work fare for a variety of reasons. It's small, and compact, and not the least bit messy, and so can be packed into your lunchbox without fear. It's also just the right size for mid-morning coffee break nibbling, or afternoon snacking. (It's okay if you have to unzip your pants after lunch. Just be sure to tuck in extra close to your desk so no neighbors can see.)


It's also hands down one of the tastiest tea cakes I've ever sampled. I found it in Bon Appétit, smoshed between herb-roasted lamb chops and garlic-smashed potatoes in a collection of family style recipes designed for getting little hands into the kitchen. The picture, I must admit, was what drew me in, but once I arrived, it was love at first site. For starters, the cakes called for lemon curd, one of my very favorite indulgences. In fact, I'd picked up a jar of it over Christmas in the big city and was mocked terribly for the purchase. And then suddenly there it was! A chance to prove its worth.


The recipe was also very simple. No exotic ingredients, no fancy pans. (The perfect heart shape is achieved using a cookie cutter, not a cake pan.) The trickiest thing required was parchment paper, and even for that you can, in a pinch, make do with buttered wax paper. The fact that I managed to clean out a jar of beach plum jelly and one of concord grape was just a bonus in an overall delightful experience. When you have literally tens of jars of different sorts of jams clogging the side door of your refrigerator, every little bit really does help.

Without further ado, I think I'll turn over the recipe to you, so that you can get started just as soon as you can. Use it wisely, and try not to bring too many to work. In the process of writing this, I've already eaten two. I think I'll chalk that up to brainfood.


BEACH PLUM-LEMON HEART CAKES

adapted from Bon Appétit, February 2009

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 stick butter, melted, warm
1 cup whole milk
beach plum jelly (or whatever you've got; raspberry, grape, and cranberry work well too!)
lemon curd
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a rimmed 18 by 12 by 1-inch baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a mixing bowl, beat together eggs, sugar, and vanilla until very plae and thick. (About 5 minutes, according to the folks over at the magazine.) Then beat in the butter and milk, and fold in the dry ingredients. Spread the whole bowl of batter evenly onto the baking sheet. Bake for 20-odd minutes, until the top is golden and the middle cooked through. (Try not to burn the bottom like I did.) Slide the parchment paper off the pan and cool cakes completely on a wire rack.


Using heart shaped cookie cutters (or some other shape—use your imagination if you wish), cut out as many hearts as possible from the cake. Set aside leftover cake for a trifle, or maybe cake-infused ice cream, or simply for snacking. Cut the cakes in half and spread lemon curd on one side, and beach plum jelly on the other. Layer together. Repeat with all remaining cut-outs, then sprinkle powdered sugar over top.