The Last of the Hurricane Posts

This is the third and final post about how I cooked my way through the hurricane.  While it’s been good for my blogging productivity, let’s hope there are no more natural disaster-induced motivators, hmm?

Anyway, having survived Irene basically unscathed, I found myself with far more time than I expected the day after.  So I baked, but just because I had the time doesn’t mean I had the inclination to pull out all the baking stops and do something stupidly “Thank God, we’re alive!” manic like eclairs (though I did make eclairs during the blogging hiatus, because there is, in fact, a correct time and place for stupidly manic cooking).  I just wanted something comforting, low on the effort scale, and, since I didn’t know if commuter rail was going to be back up in time for me to go to work on Monday morning, capable of keeping an extra day if necessary.  What fit that particular bill excellently was gingerbread.

As we all know, my quest for ever more obnoxiously in-your-face gingery things is a lifelong one, and in that quest, I had tried the Classic Gingerbread Cake recipe in this January’s issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Apart from the bordering-on-foolhardy quantities of both fresh and powdered ginger, the recipe had two other things going for it: the clever use of stout to deepen the flavor, and the promise of eliminating the sunken and damp middle gingerbread is so often prone to. The recipe delivered on both intense gingery flavor and structural soundness, and was particularly well-received by the coworkers, who as we’ve established are surprisingly amenable to having their palates challenged via their weekly baked goods.

The one snag was that I had no stout on hand, and because I live in a state with patently absurd liquor laws and was not going to make a special trip to the beer distributor on the day after a hurricane to buy stout by the full case, I had to substitute what I did have: a nice hard cider.  To make up the required volume and add some more depth, I spiked it with some really spectacular rum we picked up on our now-annual summer jaunt to the Berkshires with His Lordship’s community orchestra. Despite the fact that the CI people said it wasn’t worth making the recipe with anything but stout, I noticed no dumbing down of the cake once baked.  The cider, rum and very dark blackstrap molasses I had in the pantry contributed more than enough low notes to support the double-ginger assault.  Honestly, I think it’s just as good with the substitution, and since we have not much use for stout while I adore hard cider, I’ll be going with this combination from now on.

For ease of distribution, as usual with Monday treats, I converted the recipe to cupcakes, which I spread with a cream cheese and lemon curd frosting. The frosting is seriously optional, and if it were up to His Lordship there would be no question about leaving it off, since he didn’t care for the additional sourness.  For those of you who are similarly less obsessed about citrus than I am, feel free to eat them plain or with a dab of salted butter for just the merest bit of decadence.

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Frosting
(Adapted from Classic Gingerbread Cake, Cook’s Illustrated, January/February 2011)
Makes 30 cupcakes

For the gingerbread:
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 bottle (11.2 ounces) hard cider plus enough dark rum to make 1 ½ cups
1 teaspoon baking soda
⅔ cup blackstrap molasses
⅔ cup honey
1 ½ cups packed light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
⅔ cup canola oil
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger

For the frosting (utterly optional):
4 ounces (half a block) of cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
½ powdered sugar
2 pinches sea salt
Half a (10.5 ounce) jar of lemon curd, or more to taste

Whisk together flour, ginger, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and black pepper in a large bowl and set aside.

Bring the cider and rum to a boil in a small pan over medium heat.  In the meantime, set the oven rack to the middle position, preheat the oven to 350 F and line 2 ½ muffin trays with cupcake liners.

Pour the hot cider and rum into a medium bowl and stir in the baking soda, which will foam up aggressively, then stir in the molasses, honey, and sugars.  Once the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is a bit cooler, whisk in the eggs, oil and grated ginger.

Add the wet mixture into the dry ingredients a third at a time, whisking vigorously between additions until completely smooth before adding the next third.  (For once, you need not be afraid of over-mixing.)  The batter will be quite liquid after the final addition, so use a ladle to divide it evenly among the lined muffin cups.

Tap the filled muffin trays gently against the counter a couple of times to release any air bubbles, and bake 25-30 minutes, until the tops are firm to the touch and a tester comes out mostly clean.  Cool briefly in their tins before lifting out by the liners onto a wire rack and cooling completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, beat the cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and salt together in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light.  Beat in the lemon curd and taste, adding more if you want a more pronounced lemon flavor.  Spread the frosting thinly over the cooled cupcakes.

Unfrosted cupcakes will keep for several days at room temperature in an airtight container.  Once frosted, they really should be refrigerated, though you should bring them back to room temperature before serving since the chill will blunt some of the spicy kick.

Notes:

I could have stretched the batter among three full muffin tins, yielding 36 cupcakes, but they would have been slightly smaller than I wanted.  If you prefer that many, start checking them at 20 minutes for doneness. If you want to make a large sheet cake instead, pour the batter into a 9×13 pan, greased and floured, and bake 35-45 minutes.  Cool completely in the pan before frosting and slicing.

The quantity of frosting here is just enough to thinly cover the full batch of cupcakes.  If you want to be much more generous or to pipe designs with it, double the quantities.

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I’m Still Here

I know it’s been forever, and I will detail some of the reasons why at the end of this post.  Those reasons having come to a satisfactory conclusion about a month ago, I’d basically been dithering about for a few weeks, looking for the right theme and recipe for finally breaking the silence, and then the East Coast experienced an epically ridiculous confluence of events (an earthquake AND a hurricane in the same week?  Seriously, Universe? Seriously?) that presented me with the perfect solution.

I mean, once all the flashlight batteries have been replaced, the patio furniture has been brought inside, and the hatches have been battened as far down as they’re going to go, there’s really only one thing you can do, right?

Make jam.

Now, stay with me here: Jam is shelf-stable, so it doesn’t matter if the power goes out.  It uses up fruit that would just speed up its sitting-around-getting-squishy process without refrigeration. It goes excellently with all the classic natural disaster foods: ice cream that needs to be consumed immediately, peanut butter sandwiches eaten by candlelight, and, of course, French toast the next morning.  Not to mention, it keeps your mind off the impending doom, and gives you the sense that at least one thing is under your control despite the increasingly hysterical news coverage.

See?  It makes total sense.

Since plums were the fruit preparing to give up the ghost in my crisper, that’s the kind of jam I made.  Plums are an excellent jam candidate, since the skins are often too acidic and leathery while the interior flesh can be squishy in texture and unexciting in flavor.  Cook them down with a few spices, though, and they make really stunning amethyst-colored jam the likes of which you can’t find in a store for less than $8 a jar, so you shouldn’t actually need meteorological insanity to nudge you to try this recipe.

I also made a huge pot of black bean soup to pass the time waiting for the basement to flood, and I will write that up next. As for what’s been occupying me for the past six months and kept me off the blogosphere until Irene gave me the kick in the pants….

Well, just after the holidays I taught my first seminar, which was an amazingly rewarding experience but also one of the most intellectually and physically tiring things I’ve ever done.  NaNoWriMo is a walk in the park compared to that, let me tell you.  I don’t think I enjoyed a full night’s sleep until Easter, and I needed about a month to get my energy back afterward.

I didn’t get it, though, because — and this is of more pressing relevance to you all — at the same time, His Lordship and I were in the process of shopping for a house.  It was a confusing, stressful, nerve-wracking time, but we did finally end our long reign of renting at the beginning of the summer, and now have a proper Chez Disdain.  The new manse needs a fair amount of work, so I may well be grumbling about contractors and repair people for some time to come, but the one thing I can’t really complain about is the kitchen, which is fab.  I’ll provide more details and some pictures along with the black bean soup recipe, but for now, here’s just a wee bit of a tease:

Know what that is, my little chickadees?  Need a close-up (kindly overlooking the obvious need to clean, if you would)?

That’s right, a Viking range.  SCORE!

Oh, and in case it wasn’t self-evident from my reappearance, His Lordship, the Monster and I made it through the eye of the hurricane with minimal trauma; just a bit of basement flooding that was dispatched with a few rounds of wet/dry vacuuming and mopping. Now, on to the jam!

Hurricane Preparedness Plum Jam
Makes 3 cups

1 1/2 pounds plums, halved and pitted
Zest and juice of 2 clementines or 1 orange
2/3 cup water
1 vanilla bean, split
2 large slices candied ginger
1/2 small cinnamon stick
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
Juice of half a lemon

Place the plums in a heavy medium pan with the clementine zest and juice, water, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon stick and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook until the plums are very soft and starting to break up, about 20 minutes.  Cool to room temperature.

While the plums are cooling, clean and sterilize about half a dozen 4-ounce jam jars with their rings and lids, along with any other equipment you feel you need for the preserving process (e.g. a ladle, a wide-mouthed funnel and long-handled tongs).

Remove the cinnamon stick, vanilla bean and ginger slices from the fruit.  Run the plums through a food mill or push it through a sieve into a large measuring cup.

Return the pureed plums to the pot, along with the sugar and lemon juice. Stir over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves, then increase the heat to medium to bring the jam to a boil.  Continue cooking at a low boil, stirring frequently, until it’s thickened and holds its shape when spooned onto a chilled plate, 20-25 minutes.

Transfer the jam into the prepared jars, then seal using the boiling water method.  Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal properly.

Notes:

I used about half a dozen varieties of plums from the farmers market in this batch: yellow-fleshed ones with mottled skins, giant plain red ones, purple ovoid Italian ones, and little unassuming ones with hearts the color of blood. Mixing your plums will give you a more complex and interesting jam, but any variety should be delicious.

This jam is tart and rich enough for savory applications too.  It made a lovely post-hurricane lunch with Manchego on whole wheat for me, and slow-cooked pork loin for His Lordship. I strongly suspect it’d also be smashing with turkey instead of or mixed into cranberry sauce in a couple of months, if you want to get a jump on your holiday prep.

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Getting My Ducks in a Row

Well, my spices, actually.

It only took four months, but I finally managed to turn the binful of spicy chaos that followed my last binge at Penzey’s into something orderly, useful, and even a little bit elegant.

After much research, deliberation, and boggling at what people have the nerve to charge for spice storage solutions, what I ended up doing was shifting the whole lot out of the myriad zip bags and little jars into wide-mouthed magnetic tins with laser-printed labels. The tins were then put in orderly, alphabetized rows on a dry erase board, mounted vertically on my kitchen wall. After just one rainy afternoon’s worth of work, everything is now right at my fingertips and ready to be used at will. Every time I flip the light switch, which is right beside my fantastic new spice rack, I am filled anew with a smug sense of accomplishment.

It would have gone faster if I’d bought tins with magnets already on them, like the handful I already had, but I seriously balked at paying three bucks a pop. Instead, I bought three dozen non-magnetic ones for seventy cents apiece, plus two rolls of magnetic tape. A little more work and delay, yes, but when you consider that magnetic spice rack kits with 20 tins are currently going for $120 and up, it was totally worth it.

To celebrate the fact that all my spices are now out where they can be easily used, I improvised a dish of cauliflower, potatoes and peas that called for eight of my freshly-filled, readily-accessible tins to come off the rack. I’m not claiming it’s authentically Indian, but it does combine whole and ground spices common to Indian cuisine and stew and went smashingly with the batch of naan my pride-flushed ego also prompted me to bake. I especially love the crunch of the tiny brown mustard seeds and the lemony zing of the whole coriander.

As impressive as I think my new rack is, I will tease you just a bit by saying this is an intermediate step. I have even bigger plans for spice storage, but it’s going to take considerably more work than this did. You’ll just have to wait and see what I mean.

Cauliflower, Potatoes and Peas with Whole Spices
Serves 4-6

1 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets
3 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons brown mustard seeds
3/4 teaspoons coriander seeds
1/8 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon Rogan Josh seasoning
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup frozen peas
Salt to taste

Parboil the potatoes in lightly salted water until just starting to soften. Drain.

In a large pot, heat the mustard seeds, coriander seeds and fenugreek in the oil over medium-high heat just until the mustard seeds start popping. Standing back to avoid the sputtering, stir in the tomatoes and the remaining spices, and cook until the liquid has mostly evaporated. Add the stock, cauliflower and potatoes, cover the pot, and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the peas and continue cooking just until they have warmed through.

Serve over basmati rice, or in shallow bowls with naan.

Notes:

You can vary the whole spices and the vegetables depending on what you have. For example, if I’d had whole cumin seeds, I would have used a teaspoon of them and lowered the ground cumin by the same amount. Similarly, if I’d been out of potatoes, I would have used a can of chickpeas instead.

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As Promised

Since I somehow seem to have stumbled into a tradition of posting a lentil recipe early in every new year, here is another of my favorites.

Although it’s called lentil hummus, all it really has in common with the chickpea-based original is that it’s a chunky puree of spiced and herbed legumes. Where conventional hummus can often be bland and pasty, this is deeply dark, meaty, and savory, more like a pate. While it’s perfectly good as a dip with pita wedges or chips, I like to use it as a spread on crackers and in sandwiches, and it also works very nicely as a filling for stuffed pastas like ravioli.

The recipe originally came from Todd English’s The Olives Table, but as this is one of the books I left in storage when we were on the other coast last year, I had to recreate it as best I could from memory. When I unpacked the book and looked at the original again, I noticed that I had changed the procedure quite a bit, although I had remembered most of the ingredients wth acceptable accuracy. On reflection, I think my procedure is a little bit more forgiving of wandering away from the stove, and the results are just as good.

The idea of seasoning lentils with this mixture of theoretically clashing spices and herbs may seem weird, but I assure you that they actually all play exceptionally well together. The cinnamon, rosemary, hot pepper and allspice all wrap around each other and lift up the low notes of the lentils, giving the whole the kind of intensity you’d never expect from such a humble base of plain brown legumes and vegetables.

The fact that lentils can metamorphose into something this scrumptiously good for you is one of the reasons I’m their biggest fan, and why, if I ever rebrand this blog, it would probably have to be called something like “Cookies and Lentils”. Incidentally, this is officially my hundredth post, so it’s a particularly auspicious lentil recipe!

Lentil Hummus
(Approximated from Lentil Hummus in Todd English’s The Olives Table)
Makes 2 cups

1 cup lentils, preferably brown
3 cups water
Half of a cinnamon stick
1 whole sprig fresh rosemary or 5-6 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 cup minced carrots
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary or 4 tablespoons minced fresh parsley or cilantro
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for garnishing
Salt and pepper

Combine lentils, cinnamon, rosemary or thyme, bay and garlic in a medium saucepan and cover with the water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer the until water has nearly evaporated and lentils are very soft, approximately 30 minutes. Remove the cinnamon, rosemary sprig and bay leaf. (If you used thyme instead, it will have fallen apart and can stay with the lentils.)

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan and add the onions and a generous pinch of salt. Cook until the onions have softened, then the add carrots, hot pepper and allspice and continue cooking until the vegetables have just begun to brown. Add the wine, cover the pan and lower the heat. When the vegetables are soft, remove the cover and cook until the remaining wine has evaporated.

In a food processor or in a bowl with an immersion blender, combine the lentils and the vegetables and process until mostly smooth. Add the fresh herbs, olive oil, and additional salt and pepper and pulse again to combine. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Serve warm or at room temperature, garnished with additional olive oil. Leftovers will keep for about a week in the refrigerator, or can be frozen for later use as a pasta filling.

Notes:

This is one of those times when brown lentils are preferable to my usual-favorite green or Puy, because you actually want them to break down. I haven’t tried it yet, but red lentils should also work beautifully in this for the same reason. In that case, I’d shift the spices in a more Indian or perhaps Ethiopian direction.

The herbs and spices can be swapped around fairly liberally. For example, if you don’t have fresh rosemary, you can substitute half a teaspoon of dried rosemary in the lentil-boiling step. Similarly, if you don’t have cinnamon sticks, you can use 4 or 5 whole allspice berries in the lentil-boiling step, and add 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon to the vegetables later in place of the ground allspice. I have also thrown in lemongrass stalks or strips of lemon peel for a citrusy note in past iterations. As long as you maintain the basic idea of contrasting a sweet spice against an assertive herb, you’ll be fine.

Half a batch of this hummus can be used to turn approximately half a package of wonton wrappers into four dozen ravioli. Of course, if you have access to or can make your own fresh pasta, so much the better.

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Don’t Underestimate Your Audience

Not your garden-variety carrot cake

I must confess that this entry in the weekly baking series had me a little nervous, and I even considered lying by omission with respect to one of the key ingredients when I brought it into work on Monday. I mean, I’m a massive fan of the lowly parsnip and consider it utterly inoffensive, but I know people can have weird knee-jerk reactions when it comes to vegetables, especially in baked goods. I’ve known people to freak out over plain old zucchini bread.

But I obviously worried over absolutely nothing, because I can’t even adequately describe what a huge hit this was with the coworkers. The “parsnip” prominently displayed on the accompanying Post-It note doesn’t seem to have deterred anyone, and people were gushing and demanding the recipe for days after. And who could blame them, when these muffins are so fantastically spicy, chewy, sweet and moist that the cream cheese frosting I offered on the side really was viewed as superfluous?

So what possessed me to mix parsnips into a carrot cake recipe in the first place? It was a lucky impulse born of nostalgia and facilitated by the fact that, just as I do with cranberries, I hoard parsnips this time of year. They start showing up in supermarkets right before the holidays before disappearing rapidly again in January. Don’t ask me why, since I think they’re lovely even after Christmas has passed, but produce buyers can be short-sighted that way.

I had been intending to make carrot cake for the past month or so, since our anniversary. My prior love of carrot cake for its own sake was amplified when it unexpectedly became our wedding cake thanks to the very obliging host of the B&B His Lordship and I had eloped to. We hadn’t planned on having one and had in fact gone all-out at dinner, but were surprised and touched when we got back to our room and found the prettily decorated top tier of her friends’ anniversary cake, which the host had brought home for us from their party. It made a great breakfast the next morning, and ever since I’ve had a special craving for carrot cake this time of year.

While I was pulling the carrots out of the vegetable bin, I saw the parsnips and thought what the heck. Parsnips are practically the same as carrots anyway, and although they’re pretty rare, I had heard of parsnip cakes before. Just to play it safe, I went with a 50-50 ratio and added the resulting shred to my favorite carrot cake recipe, which is already fabulously easy and delectable.

Do you notice the parsnips? Well, not unless you really concentrate. They’re so pale that they disappear into their speckled surroundings once baked, and all you see are the sturdier carrots. If you focus, you can taste their distinctively spicy sweetness behind the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, but the non-cognoscenti could just as easily assume that was a pinch of cardamom or ginger instead. If you’re really skittish about the parsnip thing, or want to try this in May when there’s nary a parsnip to be found, you can make it with all carrots instead, and I promise you’ll love them just as much.

If you do fancy an adventure or want to sneak some additional variety into your kids’ or your coworkers’ diets, though, try this out! It’s fun, and who says you shouldn’t play with your food?

Carrot-Parsnip Spice Muffins
(Adapted from Carrot Cake in America’s Test Kitchen’s The New Best Recipe)
Makes 2-3 dozen muffins

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup “white” whole wheat flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 cups grated carrots (about 3 medium)
1 1/2 cups grated parsnips (about 3 medium)
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups canola or grapeseed oil

For the frosting (seriously optional):

8 ounces softened cream cheese
5 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sour cream
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup confectioner’s sugar

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 350F. Line 2-3 muffin tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices.

Combine the sugars and eggs in a food processor fitted with the metal blade and process until the brown sugar has completely broken up and distributed throughout, about 30 seconds. With the machine running, add the oil through the feed tube in a steady stream, and continue processing until the mixture is light in color and resembles mayonnaise.

Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and fold until the flour is mostly incorporated, then fold in the carrots and parsnips.

Fill the tins with the batter half to two-thirds full, depending on how many muffins you would like to end up with and how ample their tops. Bake until a skewer inserted into a muffin comes out clean, 25-28 minutes. Cool the muffins completely in their tins.

In a food processor, combine the cream cheese, butter, sour cream, honey and vanilla. Process until well combined, then add the powdered sugar and continue processing until smooth. If the frosting is not sweet enough, add a bit more honey and pulse again.

Ice the cooled muffins with the frosting, or serve the frosting alongside as a spread. Unfrosted muffins will keep at room temperature for a day, but frosted ones and any leftover frosting should be covered and refrigerated.

Notes:

If it seems as though I’m using a lot of this “white” whole wheat flour, which is made by King Arthur and a few other vendors, it’s because I really love the stuff. Not only is it a snap to swap out some of the white flour in a recipe and add some extra nutrition value without any textural harm at all, but the extra wheatiness really plays well in recipes with a lot of spice, like this one. If you don’t want to go that route, simply use 2 1/2 total cups of all-purpose flour instead.

I didn’t want any embellishments this time, but if you’re a fan of walnuts and/or raisins in your carrot cake (I like the former but can seriously leave the latter), you could stir in 1 to 1 1/2 cups of either or both along with the carrots and parsnips.  In that case, you will probably also have to add at least 5 more minutes to the baking time.

In the future, I may try making this entirely with parsnips. If it’s a success, I’ll definitely report back.

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Yes. Yes She Did.

She most certainly did make the trek on a wretchedly rainy Saturday to the dangerously-nearer-than-before Penzey’s boutique, wherein she proceeded to plunk down more than $80 on spices.

What? I just moved! I needed to restock! Not to mention, the holiday season is coming up! Don’t judge.

By the way, was I exaggerating when I said I clean out their chile section whenever I go there?

No I was not.

Yes, I do like it hot.  QED.

So anyway, you might be wondering what I did with this embarrassment of spices when I got home.  Well, the first thing I did was make a curried egg salad sandwich for lunch.  The second thing I did was to make these fantastic cupcakes for afternoon tea, because spotting the poppy seeds on the Penzey’s shelves reminded me that I’d been craving them for weeks.  The cupcakes also gave me an opportunity to crack open the little jar of dried orange peel and intoxicating Mexican vanilla extract, both of which are absolute necessities for my holiday baking.

While these were cooling, we took the Monster out for her walk, and of course the heavens chose that precise moment to crank up the rainfall to 11. Normally that would put me in a vile temper, but I came home to ferociously strong and milky tea, snappy little cakes, a pantry full of future deliciousness, and an excuse to trot out the totally awesome poppy pin I got at the Museum of Opium in Thailand. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Except perhaps the project this shopping spree spun off, namely finding a storage solution for my spicy bounty. On our way out of the store, His Lordship declared the current arrangement — a big covered bin into which all the zip bags and little jars are unceremoniously tossed — unacceptable. If anyone has any suggestions that do not involve me wasting hours transferring spices into little jars I don’t even have the shelf space for, I’m all ears.

Poppy Seed Cupcakes
(Adapted from Brown Sugar Lightning Cake in Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 10 jumbo cupcakes, or 12-16 normal ones

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried orange peel, rehydrated in 2 teaspoons boiling water
Zest of one lemon
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350, and line the appropriate number of jumbo or regular muffin tins with foil or paper liners.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and zests until pale and light. Whisk in the liquid mixture, then fold in the dry ingredients until just incorporated.

Scoop the batter into the muffin cups, filling no more than halfway. Bake 20-25 minutes for regular cupcakes or 25-30 for jumbo cupcakes, until golden and springy and the proverbial skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle of a cupcake. Cool the cupcakes in their tins on a wire rack.

Notes:

If the cake recipe has a vaguely familiar ring, it’s because the endoskeleton is the same basic one that supports the olive oil cake I wrote up last month. Like Alton, I adore a multitasker, and this recipe is as adaptable, quick and foolproof as any you’ll ever find.

I favor cupcakes not because I have a weakness for cute food, but because they cook faster than full-sized cakes, and leftover individual cakes are easier to share with coworkers or friends than a partially-eaten cake. If you have neither concern, bake the batter in a buttered and floured 9-inch round pan for 35-40 minutes.

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More Holiday Cookies

This is the gingerbread recipe I’ve been making since I can’t even remember when, probably college or just after.  Its origin is in a long-gone December issue of Vegetarian Times, but I’ve made so many changes along the way that at this point I think it’s fair to call it mine.

Although there are a lot of spices, the quantities are such that these are just nicely spicy instead of obnoxious.  The addition of the orange zest and ground almonds further mellows things out and sets them a step above your average gingerbread people.

The dough is supple and easy to roll and decorate, if you’re so inclined, but it makes perfectly good plain slice-and-bake cookies as well.  It also freezes beautifully and makes a ton, so if you’d like to stockpile for later use, it’s a great choice.

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Soup for a Blustery Day

Despite my love of fall produce, especially cranberries, for some reason I’m not quite ready for autumn just yet.  Ready or not, the temperatures are dropping, the rain and wind have definitely arrived, and so have the seasonal offerings at the market.

Since I can’t hold it back, this rich, just barely gingery bisque of kabocha squash is a great start toward embracing the inevitable.  I roasted the diced squash first for extra depth, and separately toasted the seeds with butter and five-spice powder for a crunchy garnish.  Apple cider mixed with the vegetable stock and diced apples in the garnish added a hint of sweetness and brought out even more of the squash flavor.

Although it was the backbone of a very casual rainy-day dinner tonight, the smooth simplicity and seasonally-appropriate colors of this soup would make it a great first course for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Roasted Kabocha Squash Soup with Apple and Five-Spice Seeds
Serves 4

1 small (2-lb) kabocha squash
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon each unsalted butter and olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup apple cider
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
Salt and pepper
1 eating apple (preferably Honeycrisp or Fuji)
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Line two baking sheets with foil.

Peel and empty out the squash, reserving the seeds.  Chop the peeled squash into 1-inch dice and toss with canola oil, then spread onto sheet in single layer.  Bake until tender and beginning to brown at the edges, 30-35 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 375 F.

Remove the seeds from the squash pulp, clean well in a bowl of water, and pat dry between paper towels.  Stir the salt and five-spice powder into the melted butter, add to the cleaned seeds, and toss to combine.  Spread onto the second sheet and roast until golden and crisp.  Set aside to cool.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy stock pot over medium heat.  Saute the onion and celery until translucent, then add roasted squash and ginger cook a few minutes more.  Add stock, cider, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat, simmering for 30 minutes.

Using an immersion or regular blender, puree the soup until smooth. Taste and correct with additional salt and pepper as needed.

Peel and dice the apple, tossing with the lemon juice, then mix with the roasted seeds. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the seed and apple garnish.

Notes:

Any orange squash, from butternut to pumpkin, could be substituted here, although pumpkin seeds are tougher and more fibrous than kabocha.  In that case, I would use toasted pecans in the garnish instead, as I did when I first made this soup with sweet potatoes, which was also great.

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The End of An Era

It’s my last week at work, which means this was the last round of Sunday baking for the office.

I’ll miss doing it, and I hope that they’ll miss it (and me!) at least a little bit.  It was nice to have an excuse to bake, and rewarding to be able to give my coworkers something to look forward to on Monday mornings.  I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to bake for my classmates, but time works so differently when you’re a student that it won’t be the same.

That’s why there was a certain wistful quality to this Sunday evening, even if I didn’t go so far as to cry into my cookie dough.  That’s also why it seemed appropriate to be making a comforting prior favorite, the five-spice molasses cookies with bourbon I dug out of the archives while putting up the sesame cookies.

I’ll post the recipe, because I made a couple of alterations to accommodate what I still have in the pantry as well as to work through my notes from the last go.  It was already good, but nothing is ever perfect, and I think these small changes made it that much better. Since I had no more crystallized ginger, I increased the quantity of powdered ginger accordingly, and decreased the bourbon by a teaspoon.  I think both were the right call, since this combination allowed the five-spice to really come through.  I also found a box of bright-white pearl sugar way on a back shelf, and thought it would look even better than coarse raw sugar.  It did give the finished cookies a fabulous dotted-swiss mod appeal, but it also added a great crunch that would make me seek it out for future experimentation with texture.

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Midnight Snack of the Gods

Quetzalcoatl would be pleased. Or at least appeased.

There are nights — long, dark, melancholic nights — when the only thing between you and abject despair is chocolate, and a candy bar just isn’t going to cut it. Maybe the weltschmerz is growing unbearable, or maybe you have people coming for dinner in twenty minutes because you opened your mouth without thinking and you now need a dead-easy killer dessert that won’t send you spinning into hysteria. Or maybe you’re coming out of the movie theater on a Friday at 11, already forgetting the marshmallowy blockbuster you just saw but haunted by regret over not having ordered a slice of triple-decker chocolate cake to go at dinner even though you knew you’d want dessert later and everything would be closed by then.

Well, with a little help from the ever-fab Alton Brown, I’ve totally got you covered.

I’ve been making his practically instantaneous, utterly fantastic chocolate lava muffins ever since he first aired the recipe on Good Eats, and last night, they saved me from said post-cinema regret spiral. We were going to miss the movie if we didn’t hustle, and I was so full from the grain-heavy veggie burger that I convinced myself it wasn’t worth the delay. Sure enough, as soon as we were walking back to the car after the movie, I started lamenting the absence of cake. Forty-five minutes later, I was happily devouring an individual bittersweet chocolate cake spiced a la mexicana with cinnamon, chiles, coffee and vanilla, as sultry as a summer night at Teotihuacan. Embellished with vanilla bean ice cream and a glistening blood-red sauce of fresh red raspberries, it would have sent that silly fudge cake slinking away in shame.

The “muffin” of the original recipe is a misnomer, since these are actually molten-centered fallen souffle cakes of the sort that have been on every mid- to upper-range restaurant’s dessert menu since the dot com days.  The only connection these have to muffins is the fact that they’re made in muffin tins, or in my version, half of a muffin tin.  Alton’s north-of-the-border unspiced original made twice as many cakes, but unless you really are doing this for a dinner party, it’s just way too much. These are so rich and dense that even I can’t eat more than one at a sitting, so any more would complete overkill.

There’s no conceivable chance you won’t try these, since they’re laughably easy on top of being knock-your-socks-off impressive, but in case you need an extra incentive, the leftovers make a most excellent Sunday brunch with infernally strong coffee. I’m pretty sure no hangover could survive that.

Mexican Chocolate Cakes
(Adapted from Alton Brown’s Chocolate Lava Muffins)
Makes 6 individual cakes

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon espresso powder
1/8 teaspoon Maldon salt or other coarse sea salt
1/8 teaspoon powdered ancho chile
2 large eggs

Additional butter for greasing the muffin tin
2 tablespoons cocoa for coating the muffin tin

1 pint raspberries
Agave nectar, honey or sugar as needed
Vanilla ice cream

Combine the chocolate and butter in a glass measuring cup and microwave on half-power, stirring frequently, until melted and smooth. Stir in the vanilla, and cool briefly.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, espresso powder, salt and chile, crushing the salt between your fingers for more even distribution in the batter.

Scrape the chocolate mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Add the flour and mix well. Mix in the eggs one at a time, incorporating the first completely before adding the second. Increase the speed to the highest setting and beat until creamy and lighter in color, 4-5 minutes. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and chill for 15-20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Butter generously the cups and top of a 6-cup muffin tin, or half of a regular 12-cup tin. Coat the cups with the cocoa, shaking out the excess.

Using an ice cream scoop, evenly divide the batter between the six coated cups. Bake 10 minutes, or until the cakes look set on the outside but still moist and a tiny bit wobbly under the surface. Be very careful not to bake them to the point of complete firmness, or they’ll be unpleasantly dry.

While the cakes are baking, puree the berries with an immersion blender. Strain the puree through a mesh strainer to remove the seeds, and sweeten as necessary with the agave, honey or sugar.

Serve the still-warm cakes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and the raspberry sauce.

Notes:

If you’re not a fan of cinnamon and chiles with chocolate (you poor, sad creature), leave them out, but keep the vanilla and salt.

Since there is so little flour in the recipe, I might try replacing it with the equivalent amount of very finely ground almonds, which are a traditional companion to chocolate in the Mexican tradition.

These can be made up to a day ahead if you don’t care about preserving a molten center — and, frankly, I don’t. The gimmicky molten center thing is so 90s, and not really essential to the success of this recipe.  The real appeal is the speed, ease, velvety texture and deep chocolate flavor.

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