Here we have a caramel cake made the truly old-fashioned way. This one is lighter than the one I initially discovered, but I think it’ll still be delectable. Let’s see how it turns out!
16 ounces (4 1/2 cups) cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
21 ounces (3 cups) sugar
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) soft butter
8 ounces (1 cup) milk, room temperature, divided
8 egg whites, room temperature, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
This is something ELSE I’ve been wanting to do for a while (I think I’ve wanted to do everything for a while, honestly). It’s a staple in the southern US. I first noticed it at a sandwich counter here in the neighborhood, then started seeing it everywhere. It’s a simple layer cake but with a […]
READ ONI sure do. I barely knew what to do with myself last night. Though I must say that I got a little frustrated with the endless coverage of the diving, gymnastics and beach volleyball at the expense of real events like the shot put, javelin, hammer throw and weightlifting. NBC’s greatest crime was to almost totally ignore the decathlon in prime time…the pinnacle event of summer Olympic competition. And here comes Ashton Eaton as he completes the 1500 meters to become the greatest athlete in the world…(yawn)…next up an extended interview with the Belgian water polo team…
Where, I ask you, are our priorities?
READ ONI’ve been meaning to comment on this story from the New York Times a couple of weeks back about a sort of young foodies’ summer camp. Are we imparting important knowledge about food and nutrition here? Or just teaching kids to be snobs?
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We elitist foodie types are easy targets for ridicule (and let’s face it, we deserve it). Some of the cleverest I’ve seen lately comes from The Imagineering Company, a faux children’s book called Pat the Foodie.
READ ONThe Pastry clan was all up north this past weekend, partly for business, partly for pleasure. Little Jo spent all last week being spoiled by her grandparents and needed to be retrieved. The rest of us had business — ranging from meetings to shoe shopping — to get done. It was all pretty urban stuff.
Yet these days a visit to a big city like Chicago doesn’t preclude interactions with the natural world. It’s a big change from when I was a kid. Then, sparrows and goldfinches were considered exotic. Today Chicago — the “City in a Garden” — is something of a wildlife mecca. It’s the urban coyote capital of North America, home to hundreds if not thousand of the creatures (estimates vary). It’s got snakes, it’s got bats, it’s got birds of prey.
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On what possible occasion would you prepare a thing like a buckle? When you suddenly find yourself with an awkward, medium quantity of berries, that’s when. Too few for a pie, but more than you can comfortably consume on top of your breakfast cereal. Two or three cups, say. About the quantity you’d have left over after making jam, or if you stopped to raid a bush driving a back country road. Think of a buckle not as an intention, but as a circumstance.
READ ONWhat happens when you garnish a rustic, thrown-together dessert with a hastily prepared sauce? Sudden, unexpected elegance is what. Lemon cider sauce is supremely simple. You can pull it together in about five minutes. Drizzle it around a fat slice of gingerbread cake, over ice cream…whatever strikes your fancy. It’s terrific with poached fruit. Combine the sugar, spices, cornstarch and salt in a small saucepan.
This easy and versatile sauce is great with all sorts of simple fall and winter cakes and fruit desserts. It’s much quicker and easier than a custard, since it’s thickened with cornstarch (corn flour) instead of egg yolks. It goes like this:
3.5 ounces (1/2 cup sugar)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup apple cider
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
grated zest of 1 lemon
A “buckle” is a member of a proud family of impromptu American country sweets that includes slumps, pandowdies and other fun-to-say treats you may have heard of but never tried. Like other desserts of its ilk, it’s not made with anything you wouldn’t be able to find in a typical rural pantry. Which means a home cook could whip one together whenever a few cups of berries happened to walk in the door.
6 ounces (12 tablespoons) soft butter
5.25 ounces (3/4 cup) light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
5 ounces (1 cup) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2-3 cups fresh berries