Cake and Happenstance

It’s not just His Lordship who doesn’t get cake for his birthday. Since His Lordship isn’t much for baking, unless we go out to dinner somewhere with a creditable pastry chef, I don’t get one on my birthday either. The fact of the matter is that Chez Disdain is a birthday cake-free zone.

That isn’t to say that you should pity me, because while His Lordship doesn’t bake cake, he does, in fact bake on occasion. And what he bakes on those occasions is this:

That is a chocolate souffle, and it’s part of a long-standing tradition which began with his deciding to surprise me back when we were in grad school. Being no fool, I’ve insisted on repeat performances every year since. At this point I can’t imagine celebrating my birthday any other way.

But. As much as I adore the souffles and would never give them up, every few years, I kind of miss cake. Since this year’s birthday not only fell on a weekday but the one on which His Lordship would be out all evening at an orchestra rehearsal, I decided to use the time alone to make my own damn cake. Specifically, almond cupcakes topped with a frosting of the quick Meyer lemon jam folded into creme fraiche.

The cupcakes were a quick and painless mix job, came out beautifully tender and cloud-light, and provided a nice neutral base for the brightly lemony cream. They would have had more almond flavor if I’d had almond extract and time to toast almonds instead of using pre-ground almond flour, but they were still quite birthday-worthy, and made me more than content enough to wait all the way to this weekend to get my souffle.

Almond Cupcakes with Meyer Lemon Creme Fraiche
(Adapted from Almond Cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum’s The Cake Bible and Lemon Jam from Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 12 cupcakes

For cake:
1 large egg
1/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon Amaretto liqueur
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
13 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sifted cake flour
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon ground almonds
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

For lemon cream:
1 recipe Quick Meyer Lemon Jam
8 ounces cold creme fraiche

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a liquid measuring cup, combine the egg, 2 tablespoons sour cream, the Amaretto, and the vanilla.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the flour, almonds, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low speed briefly to blend. Add the butter and remaining sour cream and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 90 seconds, then scrape down the sides. Add the egg mixture in three additions, blending for 20 seconds between additions and scraping down as needed.

Using an ice cream scoop, divide the batter evenly between the twelve lined cups. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until the tops are firm and golden and a tester comes out clean.

While the cupcakes are baking, fold the jam into the creme fraiche until completely combined. Cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.

When the cupcakes have cooled sufficiently, top with the creme fraiche and, if desired, a twist of candied Meyer lemon.

Notes:

The lemon creme fraiche will still be pretty fluid when freshly made, and will firm up to a softly spreadable frosting if refrigerated for a few hours. You could serve the barely-cooled cupcake atop a pool of the sauce-like cream, or cool them completely and top them with the chilled cream. Your call.

You can double the quantities for the cake and bake for 35-40 minutes in a buttered and floured 9-inch cake pan for a full-sized cake instead.

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A Few of My Favorite Things

I am, as you might have guessed, not much of a moderate person. What I love, I love with consuming passion, and what I hate, I loathe.

In the latter category is New Year’s Eve, concerning which I’ve made my views amply clear.  And no, I haven’t changed my mind.  There’s not enough sparkly alcoholic beverage in the universe to quiet my inner grinch on this or any other December 31st.

Conversely, among the objects of an affection so unrestrained that any other day of the year they’ll put me in a near-narcotic state of bliss are rosemary, and Meyer lemons.  Rosemary I adore so shamelessly that I’ll fondle any rosemary shrub that crosses my path, running my fingers along the aromatic spikes to perfume my hands.  When they started marketing those tree-shaped topiaries, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  If they made them big enough to use as actual Christmas trees, I would fork over however much money it would take to bring one home, and damn His Lordship’s anti-decorating bah humbuggery. As for Meyers, I still weep over the dwarf tree I had to leave behind with my father-in-law when we moved east, and my heart rejoiced at being briefly reunited with it on Christmas Day and receiving the two little fruits of this season.

Loving, as I do, not wisely but too well, I bought an unadvisable quantity of both this past weekend at one of my very favorite places on earth: the San Francisco Ferry Terminal farmer’s market.  I did manage to restrict myself to two very large bunches of fresh, organic rosemary, but you do not even want to know how much I blew on exotic citrus.  Let’s just say that if it were Schedule II drugs, I’d be in very big trouble with the feds.

So now I’m sitting on a stockpile of lemons and herbs and I’d better start doing something to use or preserve them before all that money and giddiness shrivel up and rot.  I’ve previously paired these two mood-lifting ingredients in an improbable but delectable cookie form, but frankly, I’m cookied out at this point, and I suspect you might be too.

Inspired by another market offering I found intriguing, I’ve decided to experiment with flavored salt instead.  The original product I tried was a lavender salt, and although I quite like lavender, it is nothing like my idolatry of its tiny-blue-flowered cousin.  I googled a few recipes for flavored salt, just to make sure I wasn’t going to risk botulism or anything, and then forged ahead with reckless abandon.  I am already enchanted with the sunny yellow and green glimmer of it in its jars.  I hope that, after a bit of a courtship period, the mature salt will capture and hold fast everything I love about the resinous, powerful punch of rosemary and the otherworldly fragrance of the lemons, and will remind me of home every time I sprinkle it on salad greens or simply-prepared vegetables or oil-drenched bread.

While I was feeling industrious, I also made Meyer-scented sugar, rosemary-scented sugar, and two little jars of preserved lemons.  If any or all of my other endeavors pan out, I’ll be sure to gloat report about it.

Meyer Lemon-Rosemary Salt
Makes slightly over 2 cups

2 cups kosher or coarse sea salt
6-8 large sprigs of rosemary, washed and dried
3 large Meyer lemons, preferably organic, washed and dried

Place the salt in the bowl of a food processor.  Pull the leaves off the rosemary and zest the lemons, and add both to the salt.  Pulse until the rosemary and zest have been minced finely but not pulverized.

Transfer to clean jars with tight-fitting lids.  Give jars away if you’re of a generous spirit, or hoard like a greedy dragon if you’re not.

Notes:

You could use regular lemons if you can’t find Meyers, but if you’d like to try the cheat I’ve used to try to evoke some of their magic, supplement the regular lemons with the zest of one or two mandarin oranges.

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