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Posts tagged ‘Baking’

The Remains of the (Birth)day

The very last of Mamaw's pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

The very last of Mamaw’s pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

“My mother likes to use recipes,” said our youngest daughter to her friend in a tone that implied I abuse kittens. Both of these young women are the kind of intuitive cooks that fix what’s in the cupboard. Me, not so much. I’ve never been an improviser — at the piano, on stage or in the kitchen.

My cooking talent, if I have one, is the ability to intuit what a recipe will taste like. The Spicy Mango Sweet Potato Chicken, for instance, I made a few days ago did not need the called-for 3 tablespoons of hot sauce. I didn’t have to make it as written to figure that out (I used 1 teaspoon and it was just right.)

That, of course, is especially true of baking, made more difficult around here by the fact that our 23-year-old gas oven will not hold a constant temperature. Baking, so goes the cliche, is a science while cooking is an art. In our kitchen, you bake on a wing and a prayer.

This beloved child and my husband, Vlad the Plaid, share a January 20th birthday so when she came home this week, I made a cake for each. He wanted our neighbor’s dried figs ground into a fig-orange and almond layer cake filling. This extravaganza included cooked icing  more like divinity than frosting.

The Hamster, who will be 22 on Sunday, got Jean Easter’s Mamaw’s Poundcake, second prize-winner from a 2006 contest in the Winston-Salem Journal. It is a practically perfect poundcake, crispy on the outside and tender but dense inside. Coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts give it a distinct, sweet taste that is a combination of all 4 but somehow different. The Hamster’s buddy said it smelled like popcorn because of the butter flavoring, but if it had been a wine, we’d say it had “notes” of the other three as well.

The only changes I made were the substitution of real butter for margarine and cake flour for all-purpose. The crumb was fine, moist and even.

Mamaw’s poundcake

3 sticks (1-1/2 cups) butter, softened

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons each coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts

3 cups cake flour (maybe you’re lucky enough to have access to King Arthur’s)

1 teaspoon baking powder

Dash of salt

Heat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.  (I usually spend about 10 minutes doing a thorough job of this.)

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. (The air you beat into this mixture is most of the leavening in a poundcake.) Add extracts; beat until mixture is lemon-colored and smooth.

In separate bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add this flour mixture to creamed mixture, one-quarter at a time. Turn off mixer before mixing completely and finish by hand. (The more you mix flour into cake batter, the tougher the cake.)

Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours, turning pan at midway point to prevent a “sorry streak” (undone places). Cake is done when tester inserted into thickest part comes out clean, top is golden and beginning to crack. Cool on wire rack in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely. Makes 20 to 24 very, very rich slices of several thousand calories apiece.

Category:

Baking, Butter, Cake, Desserts, Holiday baking, Recipes

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Off to see the wizard, bacon-herb cupcakes

Well, it’s here — reunion time. Can I hang onto myself, my grownup self, in the midst of all this nostalgic whoop-de-do?

I don’t remember a half century ago through a scrim of fondness. Life at home was such that I remember thinking, I wish I could feel something, anything! (It was much safer not to. We held our collective breaths, waiting for my father’s next explosion.)

This instant I’m a perfect blend of anxiety and anticipation, sort of a snapshot of my entire life. “Why don’t you ever expect things to turn out well?” asked my friend Cathy C., millenia ago in the Charlotte newsroom. Why indeed? Odds are usually at least even that they might.

Like Huckleberry Hound, with whom I share this house, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to just imagine having fun.

But I was taught, carefully taught, that doom is in the unknown, lurking in the corners with the dust bunnies. Color outside the lines, and catastrophe pounces. And now I’m trying to unteach what can only be called an old, tired and gloomy dog. In the mornings, with the days in front of her, she’s more receptive and less likely to succumb to the voices urging her to eat and feel “happier.”  Which means less strife-torn.

In the mornings I feel as though I can handle what’s on my list. By late afternoon, things have generally skidded beyond my control, and I’m playing computer solitaire to numb the anxiety. It’s less fattening than muffins but every bit as much a drug.

But  I’m going to see if I can will myself to look forward to the unknown. The puppy’s at the spa (mid-size suite with privacy walls), I’ve picked out my clothes and picked up my new glasses. Tomorrow I just have to grab the blueberry muffins and bacon cupcakes from the freezer and put them in a cooler for Friday morning’s coffee. The bacon cupcakes are best right out of the oven — maybe next time I make them I won’t be 500 miles away from where we’re eating them. (This is a Southern Living recipe, by the by, guaranteed good and not diet food.)

Bacon-herb cupcakes

1-1/2 cups sour cream

1/2 cup cooked, finely crumbled bacon

1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

1/4 cup finely chopped assorted fresh herbs (I used thyme, chives, oregano, sage and Texas tarragon)

2 green onions, chopped

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 cups self-rising flour

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

Heat oven to 375°. Stir together sour cream, bacon, butter, herbs, onions, pepper. Stir in flour, only until blended. Spoon batter into lightly greased miniature muffin pans, filling

Verbena bonariensis, re-seeds and pops up everywhere.

Spangled fritillary on verbena. It’s irresistible to butterflies.

cups completely full.

Bake for 26 to 28 minutes or until golden brown. Remove cupcakes from pans to wire rack and cool. Spread or pipe tops of cupcakes with cream cheese. Garnish with additional minced herbs and crumbled bacon if desired. Makes 32 mini-muffins.

Category:

Baking, Breakfast-brunch, Food addiction, Handling anxiety without food

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Upside-down cake starts the weekend off right

Some of our sunflowers have as many as 20 flowers on a stalk.

The days dwindle down but not the garden. More and more and more tomatoes and peppers find their way into huge piles — like highway department de-icer in the winter — on the dining room table.

I made a thick, sweet pasta sauce today (7 pounds tomatoes in 4 servings sauce) that tastes of tomatoes, a few fresh herbs and the echo of garlic only. I made 2 quarts of applesauce last night, and that’s using only a fraction of the  hard little apples out there on the tree, hard little apples that have a big taste when simmered with cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and a pinch of salt. I also made a Deborah Madison summer squash soup with curry spices today, and it, too, has a big, sweet flavor, exotic and round without tasting anything like commercial curry powder.

But Friday was baking with summer fruit day. I made a peach-raisin-almond crisp and froze it for when the youngest is here in a week or so, and I also made a nectarine-plum upside-down cake from a King Arthur flour recipe. My husband Livermush would like one every week, please, from now on. He loves cake and this has a sweet, moist cake holding up a layer of soft, carmelized fruit in stained-glass colors.

King Arthur Flour fruit upside-down cake

Topping

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

As much sliced stone fruit as it takes to cover an 8-inch-square baking pan (24 to 28 ounces)

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Cake

1-1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I use, you guessed it, KAF)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg.

Topping: Melt butter and mix with brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. Spoon mixture into ungreased 8-inch-square baking pan. Heat over to 375.°

Cake: Slice nectarines 1/4-inch thick. Lay slices in prepared pan and sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar, then beat in milk, egg and vanilla. Mix together flour, baking powder and salt, then stir into egg mixture. Gently pour batter over fruit in pan.

Bake cake for 45 minutes or until cake begins to pull away from side of pan and springs back from touch. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes in pan on rack. Invert pan onto serving platter and let it sit 1 minute more before removing pan. If any fruit sticks to pan, carefully scrape it off and replace it on cake. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream. Making 6 to 8 servings.

A simple buttery cake is the base for caramelized summer fruit slices.

Category:

Cake, Desserts, Fruit, vegetables

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Bread of life

The recipe came originally from the King Arthur Flour catalog. So, eventually, did the Saf-Instant yeast that  works like magic. I love King Arthur, even though the Bread Baker of the house tends to grab the new mailings and drool over them as if they featured naked women instead of luscious baked goods.

This remarkable bread is dense without being heavy.

When someone requested his recipe for this dense, easy, nutritious and, most of all, delicious oat-wheat bread, he suggested I call it “Any Fool Can Make It” bread. Indeed, there’s no such thing as a failure here — it’s an intensely forgiving procedure for making the kind of bread that college students dream of eating warm from the oven with a bowl of home-made soup when they come home from a week of finals fueled by snacking and take-out only.

No-Knead Oat Bread

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (King Arthur being my flour of choice)

1 cup traditional whole-wheat or white whole-wheat flour (ditto)

1-1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking)

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted soft butter

2 teaspoons salt (you do need it all!)

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

2-1/4 cups cool water

Put all ingredients in large bowl. Stir, then use your hands or a stand mixer with dough hook to mix up a sticky dough. Continue to work the dough enough to incorporate all the flour or beat for several minutes in a stand mixer. (Last night the Bread Baker explained to me how and why you can overbeat the dough in your KitchenAid. Don’t.)

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature overnight or for at least 8 hours. It will become bubbly and rise quite a bit so make sure your bowl is large enough at the start.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. To make single loaf, use a 14- to 15-inch-long lidded stoneware baker; a 9- to 12-inch oval deep casserole dish with cover; or a 9- to 10-inch round lidded baking crock. (I use my mother’s cast-iron Dutch oven.)

Shape dough to fit and place in lightly greased pan of your choice, smooth side up. Cover and let rise at room temperature for about 1 hour, until dough becomes puffy and fills pan about three-quarters full.

Garnish by sprinkling a handful of oats on top, if desired. If baking a round loaf, slash a hash mark pattern (#) on top.

Place pan in cold oven. Set oven temperature to 450 degrees. Bake bread for 45 to 50 minutes, then remove lid and continue to bake for another 5 to 15 minutes, until bread is deep brown and/or an instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers about 205 degrees.

Remove bread from oven, turn out onto rack and directions say to cool before slicing, but that is just “kwazy,” as our granddaughter Ashley used to say about everything. Slice and eat immediately, the more butter, the better.

Category:

Bread baking, good food, healthy cooking, Holiday baking

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