Posted by Lucy Baker, May 9, 2008 at 1:30 PM
I saved the best for last. Today's Cook the Book recipe, the final one to be excerpted from Cowgirl Cuisine, is for a deep, dark, incredibly dense Chocolate Whiskey Cake. This is one of my go-to, never-fail dessert recipes: I've made it for a bourbon-loving friend as a going-away present and for my boyfriend on his birthday. Why not make it for my mom on Mother's Day? Served with a mug of spiked coffee, it would be the perfect ending to a special, home-cooked meal.
Spiced with black pepper and cloves, this cake has subtle gingerbread flavors. The whiskey becomes more pronounced if it sits overnight, so it’s a great make-ahead dessert.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 8, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Last month my mother and I were talking about what babies eat and when during their first year, and she asked me if I was planning to make my own baby food. "Of course I am planning to," I said, “but I understand that things get a little crazy when you're dealing with a baby." My dreams of beautiful little jars of farmer's market vegetables lovingly pureed by mama will, I'm sure, soon be abandoned when mama is not getting the generous amount of sleep to which she is accustomed.
The difficulties of the third trimester, pain of labor, and complications of breastfeeding are all described in excruciating detail in pregnancy books, but the infant’s overwhelming needs are just vaguely, ominously mentioned. I believe it’s true because everyone says so, but I still don’t quite understand how a tiny baby can take up so much time that you have trouble sneaking in a shower. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Today's Cook the Book recipe, adapted from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, is for Brooklyn Brownout Cake, basically a chocolate-lover's one-stop shop for chocomadness. Even though the cake as a whole might seem to take more than a bit of work, each of the components—devil's food cake, chocolate brownies, and ganache—are all simple affairs in and of themselves. A bonus is that you can make the brownies ahead of time and just reserve a few for the cake later.
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As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them. Enter to win here »
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Posted by Ed Levine, March 16, 2008 at 11:15 AM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on pound cake. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, March 6, 2008 at 1:15 PM
By the time you read this, I'll be in Paris, where I hope I will have not have discovered that I left half of what I needed in New York. If so, it won't be the first time. For as much as I travel, I'm not a good packer—I'm always stuffing one last thing into a bag—and I'm not terribly organized. I pack at the last minute, which is how I end up taking more of what I don't need and sometimes forgetting that one vital something.
Knowing this about me, my husband wondered why, when nothing was packed and I was still writing to meet a deadline, I decided to make a banana cake. You'd have thought after all these years he'd be able to guess, since the reason is both simple and obvious: I had two over-ripe bananas languishing on the counter! And besides, nothing makes me calmer or happier than baking and a calm, happy me might actually pack better.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, February 28, 2008 at 12:30 PM
I don't know where you are, but I'm in Connecticut looking out at a bunch of snow. Sure, I've seen a robin or two, but it's not feeling rhubarbish around these parts yet, which is why these baby cakes, which Johanne Killeen, she of Al Forno in Providence, Rhode Island, made when she came to bake with Julia Child, look so good to me.
I know they look like moist little chocolate cakes, but they're really moist little hot and spicy cakes, sweet little things pumped up with ginger and black pepper and fortified with cocoa and espresso powder.
Johanne, a fabulous baker and a mistress of all that is small, likes to make this recipe in pans that are 4 inches across and 1 inch deep. If you don't have mini pans, you can try making the cake in muffin pans or use one 10 inch pan, in which case it will have to bake for 50 to 60 minutes.
The cakes are great with whipped cream and candied lemon zest and just as good with ice cream—particularly coffee ice cream. A couple of bites could give us northerners the patience we'll need to wait for spring.
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Posted by Amanda Clarke, February 14, 2008 at 2:30 PM
For years, a good friend of mine with roots in the South has complained of her inability to find a respectable red velvet cake in the Northeast, even when she makes them at home. And, for nearly as long, I have vowed to one day lead her to the object of her desire.
This past weekend, since she would already be in my midst for a long-planned John Cusack movie marathon, I decided there was no time like the present to try to make good on my promise. I traipsed around the neighborhood pulling together a few of my favorite classic red velvet slices and then headed a few neighborhoods over to score a few off-beat, cinnamon-scented cupcakes—red velvet with a twist. Then I set about deciding which recipe to use to make my version. I had never made a red velvet cake before, and though I could probably have winged it, adding a little cocoa powder and a lot of food coloring to any standard white or yellow cake recipe, I wanted to be sure to find a legitimate recipe for this occasion.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, February 6, 2008 at 3:15 PM
This rich, moist flourless chocolate cake is sure to please any valentine. Unless he or she hates chocolate. And if that's the case, why don't you go get yourself a new valentine?
Be sure to make it at least one day before serving. And serve it with a dollop of whipped cream and a hot cup of your favorite coffee drink.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, January 25, 2008 at 2:30 PM
My sweet tooth seeks out vanilla, caramel, and fruit before chocolate, but somewhere along the line I either ate or dreamed of the perfect chocolate layer cake, and lo, it was good: enticingly tall and dark, with a firm but yielding crumb and a pure chocolate-butter taste, so moist you could eat it without icing (but why would you?).
I sampled many slices in pursuit of this ideal. Plenty of cakes had the looks, but none of them had the heart and soul: usually they were dry, and if they weren’t dry, they had a chemical aftertaste, or a squishy texture, or some kind of booze-flavored filling. When the outside world failed me, I got out my baking pans. Cook’s Illustrated and Rose Levy Beranbaum offered recipes for perfect cake, but their buttercreams were too buttery for me. I am not one to shy away from butter, but this tasted like delicious cake spread with pure, softened, faintly chocolate flavored butter, and that was kind of gross.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, January 24, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Here's an intensely chocolaty cake from Lora Brody, who made this when she came to Cambridge to tape an episode of Baking with Julia. The official name of the cake is Boca Negra, or black mouth, and the name aptly describes what your mouth will look like after one bite. I can't think of another cake that's this chocolaty (okay, maybe the Grandmother's Cake from La Maison du Chocolate) or this easy to make. And I love the boozy white-chocolate cream that Lora makes to go on top of it. (Attention: You should make the cream a day ahead.)
Lora suggested that the cake be served warm or at room temperature, when it's moist and dense, but if you like fudge, then you'll want to pop the cake into the fridge and have it cold. Either way, I know you'll be happy.
A word about whipping up the cake: You can make this cake by hand—a cinch—or in a food processor—even cinchier. It's easy no matter which method you use; actually, it's so easy that if you've never baked before, you can start here and be a star.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, January 10, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I don't know why, but whenever I'm in Paris, I end up buying way too much yogurt. Maybe it's the endless shelves of yogurt in every supermarket that makes me forget that I don't need quarts of it—or that I'd just bought a quart the day before. Maybe it's the fact that there are so many different kinds of yogurts to choose from—there's non-fat and full-fat, brasse and Greek and Bulgarian and let's not even mention the myriad flavor options. So, I've got a fridge full of the stuff—as always. And now I've got a yogurt cake—as always.
The cake, made with unflavored yogurt and olive oil, is good enough that it would be worth it to go out and buy yogurt for the express purpose of making it. (Of course, I've never had to.) It's a plain cake, rather like a pound cake, but with a somewhat coarser crumb, and it's made without fuss or fancy equipment.
This week's recipe is an olive-oil and lime variation on the cake I usually make with flavorless vegetable oil and lemon. It's great both ways, but I think the evo (extra-virgin olive oil) rendition has a richer flavor.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, December 27, 2007 at 1:00 PM
I’m in Paris now where the sweet you see in every pastry shop and bakery this time of year is pain d’épices. Sometimes translated as spice bread or likened to gingerbread, I think pain d’épices comes closer to honey cake than to any other sweet in the pantheon. The problem with pinning down this cake, a specialty of Dijon and Alsace and probably a bunch of other areas as well, is that it comes in a million varieties: it can be a loaf or a huge sheet cake; it can be as dark as mahogany or as light as a peanut-butter blondie; it can have nuts, or not; be full of dried fruits, or not; and be either firm or soft. And, of course, as is true with most traditional recipes, everyone who makes pain d’épices thinks his recipe is either the most authentic or the best or both.
This is a recipe from Pierre Hermé, the famous Paris pastry chef, who comes from a family of pastry chefs, each of whom made pain d’épices. In fact, if I remember correctly, Pierre said that this recipe is based on one his father, a pastry chef in the Alsatian town of Colmar, made.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, December 20, 2007 at 12:30 PM
I don’t know how it got to be just five days before Christmas (and therefore almost the end of 2007—yikes!), but here we are. The stockings are already hung by the chimney with care and the carolers will be at the door any second. And by now you just might be cookied-out, having baked for the cookie exchange, the office party, the kid’s school, a bunch of charitable groups or a house party—or maybe all of the above. So, this week I’ll skip the cookies and give the recipe for what I think is a fabulous gingerbread cake.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, November 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM
My friend Sally, she of the garden elves, showed up for a pancake breakfast this weekend bearing gifts: rosemary and bay plants transplanted from my garden into house-size pots and a recipe for her friend Ann Brettingen’s Swedish Apple Cake. According to Sally, the cake was so good she kept poking around in the pan to pick up all the crumbs. It was also so good that she made Ann stop everything and write the recipe down on the back of a napkin, the napkin she came bearing along with the plants.
As soon as I saw the recipe, I smiled—it looked very familiar. In fact, it is almost exactly the same recipe that my friend Ingela Helgesson gave me. Ingela’s recipe, which is in Baking, From My Home to Yours, is called a Swedish Visiting Cake and it’s turned out to be one of the most popular recipes in the book, and with good reason: It’s easy (it comes together in under 10 minutes), foolproof and, most important, great-tasting.
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Posted by Ed Levine, November 9, 2007 at 1:15 PM
And so we've come to the end of the line with this week's featured Cook the Book, Gina DePalma's
Dolce Italiano: Desserts From the Babbo Kitchen
. DePalma decided to call this Venetian Apple Cake because "it contains spices, which came through Venice during the height of its power as a trading port, and polenta, which is popular throughlut the Veneto region."
For a cake, it's relatively quick to make and would be perfect to turn out for unexpected guests or for an after-school snack for kids.
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Posted by Ed Levine, November 8, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Gina DePalma, author of Dolce Italiano: Desserts From the Babbo Kitchen, recommended that we feature her Chocolate and Date Pudding Cake recipe, saying it has a "soft, gooey, spoon food, and the flavor of the dates really shines through the chocolate." They're "pudding cakes" she says, because of that very gooey must-use-a-spoon quality.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, November 8, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Although I can’t quite believe it, it’s almost Thanksgiving, America’s favorite and most food-centric holiday.
I’m like everyone else, I love Thanksgiving—but it’s not a holiday without its hassles. For me, the biggest problem, and the one I can never beat, has to do with real estate, specifically: how to get everything into my one average-size oven when the turkey is hogging most of the space for most of the day.
Since every square inch of space I can liberate is precious (and also, as I see it, a triumph of ingenuity), I try to get as much of the baking as possible done as far ahead as possible—something that’s easy to do since so many sweets freeze so nicely.
I get biscuits, muffins, and scones in the freezer early, ditto coffee cakes for Friday’s brunch, and I always have this All-in-One Holiday Cake ready to go.
This bundt cake includes all the ingredients we think of at holiday time—pumpkin, cranberries, apples and nuts—and cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, the fall spices, too. The only thing more you might want is maple syrup and you can get it – you can mix a little into some whipped cream and use it as a topping, or you can make a maple sugar icing to drizzle over the cake (see Playing Around).
If you bake the cake ahead—and I think you should—make sure to:
- Cool the cake completely
- Wrap it airtight (I either double wrap it in plastic film then give it a last wrap in aluminum foil, or double bag it, making sure to get all the air of the plastic bags before sealing them;
- Freeze it and then, the day before you want to serve it.
- Defrost it, still in its wrapper
Next week, another Thanksgiving treat.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, October 25, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Bonjour from Paris, where the Salon du Chocolat just finished its run. This year’s salon, the French edition of what Americans know as the Chocolate Show (which will open in New York City on November 9), was held at the Porte de Versailles, a mega-big convention center on the edge of the city limits. It was huge and it made me think of that old advertising line, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” since I can remember going to an early Salon du Chocolat (it may even have been the first, 13 years ago) and "doing" the show, which was held in a tent near the Eiffel Tower, in about an hour.
In honor of the Salon/Show and to celebrate one of the greatest chocolatiers in Paris, Robert Linxe, who founded La Maison du Chocolat 30 years ago, here’s a recipe for a very simple cake that Mr. Linxe told me his grandmother used to make. Mixed in a saucepan and baked in a water bath, it’s a far cry from the polished sweets that fill his shops here and abroad. Actually, it’s more like fudge than cake and most like something you’d want to have with a big glass of milk.
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Posted by Jenn Smith, September 28, 2007 at 10:45 AM
Recipe adapted from Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes from Citizen Cake
Read our review »
Ingredients
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon ground chipotle chile
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon minced crystallized ginger
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons unsulfured blackstrap molasses
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup buttermilk
Procedure
1. Position a rack in the center on the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 4 1/2 by 8 1/2 by 2 3/4-inch loaf pan (or similarly sized 1 pound loaf pan).
2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the chipotle chile, remove pan from heat, and set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, crystallized ginger, ground ginger, salt and cinnamon. In a large bowl, whisk together the canola oil and egg until blended. Add the granulated and brown sugars, molasses, and honey to the oil mixture and stir until just combined. Then stir in the buttermilk and the butter-chile mixture. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk just to combine. Pour into the prepared pan.
4. Bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack.
5. Slice and serve warm with pear slices and softly whipped cream.
Posted by Robyn Lee, September 17, 2007 at 2:30 PM
And the first dessert out of the gate this week is Medrich's Walnut Sponge Cake. And though the title specifically mentions walnuts, you can substitute whatever nut you desire—maybe some toasted, skinned hazelnuts or almonds. Topping it with berries and cream is optional, but why deny yourself the pleasure?
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