Project Cook: Apple Spice Cake with Walnuts and Ginger

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Chelsea

Sometimes dishes emerge from nowhere – no set, traceable inspiration; just an idea baked or simmered into existence. Philosophical. Cartesian cooking. Sometimes they are more geographical, linked to location and experience – blogs are rife with this, aren’t they? “This cake reminds me of my pilgrimage to…” But sometimes they are more narrative: visible evolution, each major ingredient or element its own origin story, entering the room at a moment that changes the direction of the final dish.

No surprise that the narrative method is one I favor. This magnificent stack began life as a carrot cake. That is, I wanted to make a cake, and after seeing (and resisting) a container of crystalized pineapple at the grocery store, carrot cake with crystalized pineapple sounded perfect. And then I thought about adding crystalized ginger too. And then I wondered whether some apple along with the carrot would be good, because fall, and pineapple turned into a third wheel that rolled away from the party. And then, inspired by old episodes I was watching of The Great British Bake Off, I wondered about adding dried apple, and maybe finely chopped, toasted walnuts to the filling instead of just plain cream cheese frosting, and suddenly the carrots – the very namesake of the cake! – started to feel out of place.

Suddenly I was planning an apple walnut cake. I tore through several cookbooks and a recipe site or two looking at various apple cake recipes – most rely on applesauce for both flavor and moisture, which I wasn’t interested in using – and came upon Deb’s roasted apple spice sheet cake, which does have a fair amount of applesauce, but also chunks of pre-cooked apples that, as she puts it, transform into “soft pillows of apple pie-like puddles.” I didn’t read much past that before deciding I, too, must have such puddles in my cake.

But I still wanted the moisture and freshness I knew shreds of raw apple would bring, and so while I dithered over recipes and quantities I remembered the cake’s initial origins and adapted my favorite carrot cake recipe: a triple layer extravagance from The Bon Appetit Cookbook that calls for pre-toasted nuts and a thick, rich, almost too sweet cream cheese frosting. Not much changes in the cake itself, aside from the significant shift from carrot to apple, except that I subbed in brown butter instead of the as-written vegetable oil, and as usual, it was a worthwhile extra effort.

This cake winds up so packed with threads of grated raw apple, toasted and chopped nuts, crystalized ginger, and the soft chunks of roasted apple, that it almost doesn’t feel like enough batter to encase the additions. The layers when you spread them into the pans are thin, but they do puff as they bake, into lovely, spicy, delicate layers you really do have to let cool for at least 15 minutes before taking them out of the pan. What became my middle layer, which emerged from the pan in six or seven moistly crumbling pieces, is proof positive of this. (Worth noting: if that kind of disintegration happens to you, reform the layer to the best of your ability on a sheet of plastic wrap, enclose it tightly, and put it in the freezer for half an hour or so before stacking and frosting. I was amazed by how well the pieces magically re-adhered.) If you’re worried about the fragility, I think you could get away with adding an additional ¼ cup flour to the recipe and still retain adequate moistness, but I haven’t tried this. If you do, let me know how it works out.

There are all sorts of other fun things you could do with the cake itself to change it up. Tart dried cherries would be lovely along with or instead of the golden raisins I’ve called for. Those raisins could easily be re-plumped in rum or brandy, a step I’m sorry I didn’t think of until my layers were already in the oven. The walnuts could be swapped out for pecans. You could play with the variety of apples you use – I almost always tend toward Granny Smiths or another tart green apple for cooking because I like their flavor and sturdiness, but you could mix and match as you please.

What I really want to talk about here, though, is the filling and the frosting. When I frost a cake, with a few notable exceptions, I typically put the same thing between the layers that I do around the outside. Here, though, whether it was thanks to Bake Off (likely) or just lightening strike inspiration, I wanted some texture in the filling, and the finely chopped mixture of dried apples and toasted walnuts woven through the cream cheese frosting was delightful.

As for that cream cheese frosting, it’s serviceable, easily pipe-able, and as rich and delicious as you could ever want. But N. and I noticed that, at least on the first day and despite the tablespoon of lemon juice I added for mitigation purposes, it is very, very sweet. Not surprising, given the number of cups of powdered sugar my recipe called for, but challenging for an insomniac to consider for an afternoon snack. So I have some thoughts, which I’ll admit I’ve tried exactly none of.

You could decrease the quantity of powdered sugar down from 4 to 3 cups (you might end up wanting to add less vanilla as well, if you do this). This will produce a wetter frosting that might be harder to pipe, if that’s what you’re going for, but I think it would probably still spread successfully and stay where you put it.
You could make the frosting a day ahead (would that make a difference? I don’t know…). Or, perhaps more logically, you could plan to make the whole thing a day before you serve it. We thought the whole cake tasted great – maybe even a bit better – after a night in the fridge.
You could add a dried spice or herb to the frosting for an additional, not-so-sweet flavor. I thought first of ginger, which would make sense with the spices in the cake, but then, quite unconventionally, I thought of sage. Good with apples, decidedly savory, and about as stereotypically Fall as you can get, would a teaspoon or so of dried sage, finely crumbled and beaten into the frosting, tamp down that sweetness a bit?
You could go the “naked” or “semi-naked” route, using only a small amount of frosting and spreading it on such that the sides of the cake artfully show through. You’ll have a fair bit of frosting left over if you opt for this route, but cream cheese frosting freezes quite well so I don’t see that as a bad thing. Emergency back-up frosting feels like a good idea.

Since I’m sure you’re limiting your social gatherings at this point and thus you might not be sure you really want a triple layer cake sitting around, you’ll be happy to know that this cake is a good candidate for freezing. We ate, over the course of I’m-ashamed-to-admit-how-few-days-it-was, about half of it, and then I carefully plastered over the cut portions with some extra frosting so no cake was exposed. Leaving the fully frosted cake in the fridge overnight ensures the frosting crusts a little bit, which makes it easy to wrap securely in plastic wrap and deposit in the freezer until you next need a rich, spicy, sweet reminder of fall.

Apple Spice Cake with Walnuts and Ginger

Adapted from The Bon Appétit Cookbook

Makes 3 9-inch layers, serves 10-12

About 90 minutes, plus cooling and frosting time

For the cake:

1 cup walnuts, divided (see filling and frosting ingredients, below)

4 large, tart apples, like Granny Smiths, peeled, divided

1½ cups unsalted butter (3 sticks)

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour (as noted above, if you’re worried about very fragile layers, you could probably get away with 2¼ cups flour, but I haven’t tried that yet)

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

½ cup golden raisins (optional: soak in warmed rum or brandy for 10-20 minutes to rehydrate, then drain)

¼ cup chopped crystalized ginger

For the filling and frosting:

½ cup dried apples, finely chopped or cut with kitchen scissors

¼ cup finely chopped walnuts, from the 1 cup total listed above

½ cup unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature

16 ounces cream cheese, also at room temperature (I prefer Philadelphia brand)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon lemon juice

4 cups powdered sugar (see numbered thoughts on frosting sweetness, above recipe)

Optional: extra dried apples, crystalized ginger, and cinnamon, for decoration

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 375F and put the walnuts on a baking tray in the oven to toast while it is preheating. When they smell fragrant and have darkened slightly in color, they are ready. Remove and set aside until cool, then chop roughly.
Quarter and core 2 of the peeled apples, arrange on a foil-lined baking sheet and roast in the preheated 375F oven until they are browned underneath and dry to the touch, about 20 minutes. When done, set them aside to cool, then chop them roughly into chunks of your desired size.
Meanwhile, brown the butter and prepare the remaining apples. For the butter, melt all 3 sticks in a medium saucepan and let cook over medium heat until the solids on the bottom take on a toasty brown color. First it will foam up, then subside, then brown. It’s easiest to use a pot that does not have a dark surface, since you can see color changes in the butter more easily. Once those bits have browned, remove the pot from the heat and let cool.
For the remaining two apples, grate on the large holes of a box grater or use the shredding disc of a food processor (be careful to avoid stems and seeds). Gather the shreds into a clean kitchen towel and give them one good squeeze, then set aside. Don’t squeeze them out too much; we want some of that moisture for the cake.
Once all your pre-cooked ingredients have cooled down, lower the oven temperature to 325F and make the batter. In a large bowl (I used the bowl of my stand mixer), beat the sugar and the cooled brown butter together. Be sure to scrape in all of those browned bits from the bottom of the pot – that’s where much of the toasty flavor resides! Add the eggs one at a time, beating well.
Add the dry ingredients, sifting if you want to bother. I never do.
Stir in the golden raisins, ¾ cup of the toasted, roughly chopped walnuts, the crystalized ginger, and the grated apple. Finally, gently fold in the chunks of roasted apple.
Divide the mixture evenly between 3 well-greased 9-inch round baking pans. You can line with parchment paper too, if you want the extra insurance. The layer of batter in each will be thin. If you, like me, only have two 9-inch pans, bake two layers first, then use one of those pans again for the final layer after the first batch has cooled a bit.
Bake in the preheated 325F oven until a toothpick inserted comes out with just a few moist crumbs, 30-35 minutes.
Cool layers in pans for at least 15 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely. I’m serious about that 15-minute thing, by the way. Trying to take them out before that could result in disintegration!

To make the frosting and filling, finely chop the remaining ¼ cup of walnuts and combine with the finely chopped dried apples in a small bowl.
In a large bowl, beat together the room temperature butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and lemon juice until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters to ensure full integration.
Add the powdered sugar ½ cup at a time, to prevent cough-inducing clouds, and beat well after each addition, until the frosting reaches your desired thickness.
Scoop out about 1 cup of the frosting and add it to the small bowl with the walnuts and dried apples; use a flexible spatula to mix in. This is your filling.
To fill and frost the cake, position one fully cooled cake layer on a plate or cake stand. (If you are messy like me, you might want to arrange strips of wax paper to cover the exposed parts of the cake stand or plate while you frost.) Using a flexible rubber or an off-set icing spatula, spread about ½ of the filling evenly over this first layer of cake, going all the way to the edges. Add the next layer of cake and repeat, then top with the final layer of cake.
Use the remaining cream cheese frosting to frost the cake as desired. If you want to do a crumb coat, use a small amount of frosting to coat the entire cake, not worrying about full coverage. When done, pop it in the fridge for a few minutes to let any crumbs that have come unstuck from the cake set into the frosting as it chills. Then remove from the fridge and continue. I usually scoop about two thirds of the frosting right onto the top layer of cake, then use an off-set spatula to gently push it toward the edges of the cake and down the sides, filling in any uneven gaps and creating as smooth a surface as I can. You may end up with extra frosting, which is convenient if you are thinking of freezing part of the cake, as explained above.
This looks lovely with just the frosting, but if you want to decorate a little, consider artfully arranging a few dried apple rings and chunks of crystalized ginger in the center of the cake, then dusting the top edge with cinnamon before slicing and serving.

Elsie’s Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Chelsea

Blogs have birthdays. Who would have imagined, a mere decade ago, that the little space we write in daily, or weekly, or monthly, or whenever we can, would become so important in our lives that we would want to celebrate its anniversary?

As I look back, it turns out that I started writing in my own little space almost five years ago. But I haven’t celebrated its bloggy birthday, nor will I when I do roll over the half-decade mark, because my schedule of blogging was, at least near the beginning, so sporadic. It doesn’t seem like I’ve really been writing here for five years when for three of those five, you were lucky to get a post a month. The nice thing about WordPress, though (which I’ve been using quite happily for all of those almost-five-years), is that it tells you how many posts you’ve actually made. And this, friends, against all belief, is number 200. Two hundred! That, to me, calls for a bit of celebration. Let’s have cake!

This cake needs to be about the edging warmth of late spring, and freshness. It needs to be something I could never have imagined making 200, or 150, or even 100 posts ago. It needs to be original and tart-sweet and humble but delicious. It’s not a show-off cake, but it stands up for itself. It’s simple and tasty and equally good as afternoon snack, as dessert, and as a bit of a naughty breakfast. It also, as it turns out, needs to be dairy-free. Let me explain.

A few months ago, my aunt asked me to make something sweet. But her granddaughter, Miss Elsie, can’t have dairy products. No milk, no cheese, no butter. No whipped cream. No gelato! I’ve met Elsie once. We went on a glorious, sunshiney, beachy, too-much-food-and-certainly-too-much-wine family reunion trip. The twelve of us – sisters, cousins, uncles, husbands, nieces – shouted and guffawed and flip-flopped our way up and down the three stories of a pool-bearing beach house in North Carolina for the better part of a week, and in the middle of this trip, Elsie tasted her first ice cream. It was dark chocolate, made entirely with coconut milk, and her first taste, once the chill evaporated, was the purest expression of joy I’ve ever seen. The kid was hooked. The shirt she was wearing – white and pink with docile little flowers – was never the same.

Would I come up with something sweet, my aunt asked, that she could make for Elsie? You got it. This is an easy little cake, with just a bit of cornmeal for texture. Butter and milk are replaced by applesauce for moisture and olive oil for deep, rich flavor.

But it couldn’t be just a cake. If it was already going to be about family, I decided, I needed to go whole hog. Our reunion trip was, in part, a joyous memorial for my grandparents, who used to vacation in North Carolina many, many years ago. Transported by this connection, I was pulled back into their old backyard, and I could see Nana’s rhubarb bush at the back corner of the house.

I don’t know whether Elsie likes rhubarb, but from that moment on, rhubarb was it. I chopped and simmered down a heap of the strange, red stalks, with some quartered strawberries for a different kind of sweetness, and a shower of sugar until it collapsed into a thick, stringy jam. Think rhubarb floss, but in the most delicious possible way.

Once cooled slightly, a respectable layer of the strawberry rhubarb compote gets smoothed over the top of the bright golden cake, and then baked.

In the oven, the cake puffs and firms, but the rhubarb layer keeps it moist. The fruit itself, exposed fully to the heat, gets sticky and slightly caramelized, and the edges turn almost molasses-dark. This is a great, easy cake for a simple dinner party, in part because it is gorgeous – the dark pink top layer looks glossy and impressive – but just as importantly because this cake actually tastes better on the second day. The compote cools and mellows, and the hit of vanilla in the cake is so right against the rhubarb.

I know rhubarb season is ending, but if you find some in your grocery store and can’t decide what to do with it, make this cake. It’s easy and pretty and delicious, and it looks as at home, I think, on a simple plate as it does on a cake platter. And if you miss the rhubarb, try straight simmered strawberries, or slices of plum, or maybe even peach jam, and take this cake directly from spring to summer.

Here’s to 200 more. I hope you come along for the ride.

Elsie’s Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake

Makes one 9” cake

Strawberry rhubarb compote

5 cups rhubarb chunks from 1-2 lbs rhubarb

1 pint strawberries, washed, hulled, and quartered

½ cup sugar

Tumble the fruit into a medium pot, shower on the sugar, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the fruit collapses into a stringy, jammy puddle. This should take 20-30 minutes, depending on the size and depth of your pot.
Set the compote aside to cool while you mix up the cake batter.

Cornmeal Cake

1 ½ cups flour

½ cup cornmeal

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 eggs

½ cup sugar

½ cup smooth applesauce

½ cup olive oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease the bottom and sides of a springform pan with olive oil or nonstick spray.
Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl (I used the bowl of my stand mixer), beat the eggs and sugar until the eggs become pale yellow and increase in volume; about 2 minutes. This extra volume – air you’ve beaten into the eggs – contributes to the structure of the cake.
Add the olive oil, applesauce, and vanilla, and mix to combine.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture in thirds, beating just to combine after each addition. This helps hydrate the batter more evenly, and it gives you a fighting chance of emerging from this baking session without getting flour all over yourself, your countertop, your floor… Not that this sort of thing ever happens to me…
Scrape-pour the thick, gloppy batter into your prepared springform pan and use a spatula to smooth it into an even layer.
Strew about 1 ½ cups of your now-cooled compote over the top of the cake, creating a thin but complete layer across the batter. You will have plenty of leftover compote, which is a wonderful thing because it is delicious on top of toast, or bagels, or ice cream, or straight off of a spoon.
Carefully place your now-loaded springform pan in the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out with just a few gummy crumbs clinging to it. Transfer to a wire rack and pop the spring to let the cake release from the sides of the pan.
Cool completely, then refrigerate – this cake is best the day after baking. Bring it to room temperature before serving.

*Word of warning: it is easy to overbake this cake, because the semi-liquid layer of rhubarb means the top of the cake will not brown. Thus, it will seem like it’s still underdone. Remember, though, this cake is better after it has spent the night in the fridge. As it sits on your counter, cooling off for its sleepover, it will continue cooking for a while. So even if your toothpick seems to be telling you that all is awry, chances are things are going to be okay. Try a cautious prod closer to the edges if you need some reassurance.

Blackberry Bourbon Bread (#Twelve Loaves April)

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Chelsea

I’m a sucker for alliteration. Call it having been an English major for so many years. So when I read on April’s Twelve Loaves challenge that the objective was berry bread, I may have freaked out a little. And when the idea of blackberries and bourbon zinged into my brain – dark, sultry, tartly perfumed – I may have freaked out a little more.

Blackberries, bourbon, yogurt, and crumbly pebbly streusel all done up in a quickbread that we’ll pretend isn’t really an excuse for cake. How could you want anything more? Well, maybe a warming breath of cinnamon. Granted. And maybe some browned butter.

Just as this is barely a bread, it’s also barely a dough. It only fits into my dough challenge by virtue of its attachment to the idea of bread, which, as I’ve noted, isn’t a very strong attachment at all. Aren’t “quickbreads” really just desserts that we like to eat at non-dessert hours of the day? But it is delicious, and warm, and comforting, and I think we could all do with a bit of that after this week.

Yogurt, browned butter, blackberries, bourbon, streusel, and cinnamon all in the same bread sounds a bit overwhelming, but really, all of the components played very well together. Blackberries and yogurt scream breakfast, and mixed in a thick batter with plenty of melted butter they produce a moist, slightly dense loaf splotched with purple pockets of jammy tartness. But the addition of bourbon makes this a naughty thing to consider having a slice of too early in the morning (unless you are still up from the night before, I suppose). When I tasted the batter, I was concerned about how assertively the alcohol came through, but after baking what lingers is a lovely floral aroma – all the peaty, throat-searing headiness fades (and honestly, it left me wondering whether another tablespoon or two of bourbon might be welcome in the recipe). Really, this is a loaf perfect for that most wonderful of British institutions we are sadly lacking in the U.S: afternoon tea. And if you slathered a thick slice with clotted cream, I don’t think anyone would complain.

Blackberry Bourbon Bread

Makes 1 large 9×5 loaf

For the bread:

1 ½ sticks butter (12 TB, or ¾ of a cup)

2 eggs

1 ½ cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup bourbon (I like Knob Creek)

½ cup Greek yogurt, though likely any plain, unsweetened yogurt would do

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

12 oz. blackberries, rinsed and air-dried (I realize this is an odd quantity, but that’s how much was in the container I found. The advantage here is that it means you can start with two pints [16 oz.], and the inevitable handful you end up eating by sneaking “just one more” at a time will leave you with just the right amount!)

For the streusel:

½ cup flour

½ cup powdered sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

4 TB (½ a stick) cold butter

First, you’ll need to brown the butter for the bread. In a small saucepan, preferably not black (it’s harder to see the browning against a dark background), melt the butter over medium heat. Continue cooking, occasionally swirling gently, as it foams up. That’s the water separating and steaming away. After a few minutes, the solids will start to collect on the bottom of the pot, and begin to darken to gold and then coppery brown. When that happens, turn off the heat. It’s amazing how quickly those cooking solids go from perfectly brown to burned. Set the pot aside to cool while you work with the other ingredients (I stuck mine in the freezer on top of a pot holder to chill down quickly).
While your butter cools, preheat the oven to 350F and prepare a 9×5” loaf pan by rubbing the bottom and sides with butter or spraying with a non-stick spray.
In a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer), beat the eggs until slightly foamy. With the mixer running (you could do this by hand with a whisk, I suppose, but an electric mixer of any kind will make it much easier), add the sugar ½ a cup at a time, integrating it completely before the next addition. When all of the sugar is added, continue mixing for another 2 minutes, or until the mixture has become quite pale in color and increased in volume.
Add the vanilla, bourbon, yogurt, and cooled butter, and mix until well combined. The yogurt may break up a bit and make things look curdled, but don’t worry. Once you add the dry ingredients everything will be fine.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add 1/3 of the dry mix to the wet ingredients, mixing on low speed just until the flour is integrated. Add another 1/3 of the dry mix and combine again.
When you have just 1/3 of the dry mixture left, toss the blackberries in it gently. This will help keep them evenly distributed in the batter as it bakes, rather than all sinking to the bottom. Add this final portion of flour, with the berries, to the batter and fold it in gently with a spatula. This is harder to do evenly, but will keep the berries intact better than using a mixer blade. The resulting batter will be quite thick.
Scrape-pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Mine got tremendously full, and to prevent any chance of overflow during baking, I relocated some of the batter to a 6-inch cake pan instead. If you are concerned about overflow, I suggest filling the loaf pan only about 2/3 full, and make muffins or tiny cakes out of the rest of the batter.
For the streusel, which I insist you use because it adds such a nice textural contrast, combine the flour, sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a fork to whisk them together works nicely.
Rub in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until it is very well integrated. Ordinarily I use a pastry blender for this sort of thing, but here I think your fingers really do work best, since you can squash and smoosh the butter more efficiently. You want tiny pebbles – the biggest should be smaller than peas and the smallest like grains of couscous.
Sprinkle the streusel over the surface of your bread in an even, thick layer. You will probably have a bit extra, but I think that’s hardly a bad thing.
Deposit your loaf in the oven and bake for 80 minutes, or until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the middle comes out with only a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Since ovens are all different, I recommend you first test for doneness at 60 minutes, just to be safe.
Remove and cool in the pan on a wire rack until you can’t stand it any longer. Then slice and enjoy with tea, with cream, with a dollop of yogurt, or just all on its own.

Milestones. And Cake. And Salad.

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Chelsea

This September has been a big one for me. New home (okay, so we technically moved in July), new job (okay, so school started in August), and new decade! I’ve finally hit my 30s, and I like what I see so far (though admittedly I’ve only been stationed in this new world for two weeks).

Given my fanciful proclivities for putting food in my mouth, then, N. knows that my birthday must involve a restaurant in some form. Since we are only just beginning to explore our new culinary surroundings, this was a perfect opportunity to embark on our adventures. I started with Culver City which, delightfully, has a whole webpage devoted to its downtown restaurants, including (in most cases) links to each restaurant’s website. This was almost too much. I spent the better part of an evening cruising through online menus, imagining what kind of mood I might be in on the big day and what I might want to order and what, if the restaurant I ultimately chose should happen to be out of my top choice, I would order instead.

Based on menus and Yelp reviews, I decided on Fords Filling Station (FFS), whose upscale comfort food and wide range of offerings sounded promising. I tend to like mid-range restaurants: not too fancy, where a prix fixe menu or outstandingly high prices make me feel like a grubby graduate student out of place (I know, I’m not anymore. But it’s a hard habit to break in this new world of adulthood and employment), but not too casual either, where the food is sub-par or inconsistent and the wait staff makes no pretense of caring about our presence. A gastropub – a self-proclaimed innovative collection of food, decor, and atmosphere – seemed like the right fit.

FFS is a fun spot. It’s centrally located downtown, and the dining room is a big open space with a bar to one side, traditional tables, and long narrow two-tops where the couple sits on a bench next to one another looking out at the other diners, rather than across from each other. N. and I were seated at one of these bench seats, and it was fun to sit side by side for a change in a restaurant setting. Brick walls, big barrels, and warm colors make it inviting and, I thought, pretty unpretentious.

Our server, who was the perfect balance of informative and attentive, sold me on one of the night’s cocktail specials: citrus vodka, house made lemonade, and a little float of chambord. It was nice – punchy and bright and sweet-tart, but oddly similar to a Rennie’s Lemonade from our erstwhile happy hour hangout in Eugene, and therefore it felt drastically overpriced at $12.

We opted to share entrees so we could order a few things, and got a Cuban flatbread with smoked pork pieces, cilantro, mozzarella, and some kicky little red chilis; grilled asparagus blanketed in shaved parmesan,; and a flattened half chicken with amazing garlic mashed potatoes and succotash.

N. was most attracted to the chicken (as is often the case when we dine out), and here he was clearly right to be. Flattened, the bones were gone, the meat was compressed, flavorful, and intensely juicy, and the skin was crunchy and buttery and tender and perfectly unctuous. Because he is fonder of white meat, it was also a perfect dish for us to share, because N. left me the thigh, with its dark, meatiness pleasantly encased in a crisp layer of fatty crunch. Beside the chicken, the mashed potatoes swam in a sauce of garlic confit, which was rich and intense: the best gravy I’ve had in a long time.

The flatbread, which would have been just delightful on its own, paled a bit in comparison to this chicken. The crust was cracker-like in texture, and the pork pieces paired nicely with the pepper and cilantro, but together the dish was a little bit dry. It needed – perhaps – some herb oil drizzled over the top, or maybe 45 seconds less in the oven. Tasty, but not the star of the show by any means.

The asparagus was excellent: nicely flavorful and light, well cooked and, aside from the piece I dropped on myself (grace embodied, truly), a nice vegetal accompaniment to our meal.

Since I didn’t get any dessert that night (I was full but not overstuffed, and didn’t want to tempt myself by even glancing at a dessert menu), I was still longing for birthday cake a few days later. Fortunately for me A., who blogs from the other side of the world at Over and Under, had told me about Porto’s – a Cuban bakery in Burbank that turns out to be right on my route to and from work. I had to drive up to the school for a Friday meeting, and as I headed toward the freeway to come home, I decided to stop in and treat myself.

Inspired by the flatbread we’d shared at FFS, and because I thought it would be a good benchmark for a Cuban bakery, I got the Cubano. Then, because it was still my birthweek (I’m big on extending the celebration as long as seems rationally possible), I picked out two tiny cakes to share with N.: flourless chocolate, and tres leches.

The sandwich was good. Ham and pork packed tightly onto a fresh bakery roll with cheese, sharp mustard, and a pickle. A simple sandwich, but a delicious one.

My dessert selections, though, were fantastic. The tres leches was rich and light at once, not overly sweet but dripping with cream, like a well soaked angelfood cake topped with toasted marshmallow cream. The flourless chocolate selection was less cake than a giant chocolate truffle: impossibly rich solidified ganache inside a thin shell of cake-like crumb. N. was only able to eat two or three bites before declaring it too rich for his tummy. I had no such trouble, but did talk myself into enjoying only half at that sitting, and saving the other half for another night when chocolate felt mandatory.

Indulgent? Certainly. But (at least in the case of the desserts) at $2-3 each, a reasonable indulgence. Still, when one is a responsible adult (as I suppose some might now imagine me), one must temper such indulgences. In this case, that means salad.

80. Trim and coarsely chop chard (rainbow makes for a gorgeous salad) and combine with white beans and chopped scallions. Dressing is minced ginger, a suspicion of garlic, olive oil and cider vinegar.

I collected:

½ huge bunch red chard, thick stems removed

1 15 oz. can white kidney beans

5 green onions, finely sliced

1/2 inch knob of ginger

2 garlic cloves

1/4 tsp coarse salt

1/4 cup each cider vinegar and olive oil

1 TB honey

I tossed together the chard, beans, and green onions and set them aside in a big salad bowl. To make sure the ginger and garlic were fine enough, I minced them by hand, then sprinkled them with coarse salt and dragged the flat of my knife across them until they turned into a thick, aromatic paste. I scraped the paste into a glass measuring cup and whisked it up with cider vinegar and olive oil. A taste of this was a cheek puckering revelation, so I added a healthy squeeze of honey to make it less astringent.

Aside from spinach, raw bitter greens are not always N.’s cup of tea. Because I feared this might be the case with this combination, I decided to treat this more like a slaw than a salad. I combined the main ingredients early and doused them in dressing a good fifteen minutes before dinnertime. This would, I hoped, give the acidic dressing time to wilt the chard a bit, much like the vinegar in coleslaw dressing does for the cabbage.

It worked well. By the time we ate (grilled chicken breasts sauced with equal parts whole grain mustard and apricot jam), the chard had lost just a bit of its aggressive bite but its freshness was not compromised. The beans, sometimes bland customers, had soaked up a bit of flavor from the tangy bright dressing, and so while they were a steady, creamy counterpoint to the earthy-fresh chard, they weren’t at all boring. We were both surprised by how well we liked this simple little salad.

Success, then, and balance: excitement and indulgence followed and tempered by stability. If this is what the 30s are like, I’m ready. Bring it on. I’ll just be 30 forever.

The Buttercream Project: Wedding day, part two

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Chelsea

Saturday morning – Wedding day! – was beautiful and bright and promising. Our now-from-Seattle friends had arrived the night before, we’d all slept, the cakes had chilled, and now after a brief wedding day breakfast with the bride and groom’s families and out of town guests, I’d be on to decorating. When I settled in to the buttercream production this time, I had an epiphany. At Mom’s house, I had used an electric hand mixer instead of a stand mixer, and the buttercream had been fluffy and smooth and glorious. What if, instead of using the paddle attachment on my stand mixer, I used the whisk?

This was, finally, the right thing to do. I wish fervently I had thought of it the first day. The frosting came together faster, and whipped up a bit smoother. It was, I perhaps imagined, brighter ivory than the previous batches, and there were no chunks of butter to cause me piping distress. If only, if only, the day before… but that is immaterial (and perhaps inaccurate too, since there were other factors, other differences, like the temperature of the butter, the temperature of the cheese, the amount of time spent whipping, the quantity of lime juice, etc) .

I piped. I piped and I piped. And things started to look better. A lot better. Most of the worst imperfections were hidden under the ivory and then delicate blue swirls and scrolls I snaked onto the cakes. They actually started to look nice. This might not be a disaster after all. When I added a ring of round, pearl-like blobs to the bottom border of each, I started to feel happy with my project.

With the cakes done, all that remained were 92 miniature cupcakes. All. Right. I had half a bowl of perfectly blue frosting. Against my own better judgment (hey, it had worked out okay the day before with the gelatin in the filling), instead of starting over with a brand new batch, I decided to add more butter and more powdered sugar to the bowl, and try to tint it to match what I had already done as I went. It worked. I wanted a slightly thicker consistency of frosting for the flowers I planned to pipe so this mixture had to be more butter than mascarpone. That worked out well, really, because I was out of mascarpone again anyway.

With time ticking, I filled up another piping bag with one of the new rose petal tips H. had bought me and went to work, remembering what I’d learned months ago about which way to swivel the cupcake as I frosted. It took me a handful to get into a groove, remembering when to apply pressure and when to release, but once I got going I was making beautiful little horseshoe movements that resulted in sugary flower petals! To perfect the color (not baby blue, but not dark blue either), I’d mixed a tiny bit of black gel dye in with the blue. This resulted in a lovely periwinkle with just a hint of gray, matching almost exactly the blue on the couple’s save-the-date cards. The exact blue of the wedding. Boom.

N. would probably like me to add here that as I finished each handful of minis, he deliberately drizzled on a small quantity of silver-gray sprinkles. My dear friend M., who arrived in mid-afternoon to coo over the product and do my hair for the event, would probably also like me to add that she took over sprinkling duties for the last dozen or so. In fact, it was M. and S. who saw me through the last sheet tray of minis as, hand aching from the constant pressure and odd angle, I suddenly realized I was going to finish.

The winery where the wedding took place was a half hour drive from town on winding and sometimes roughly surfaced roads. Though we positioned the cakes and cupcakes carefully in the back of our Subaru, I still got a little white-knuckled every time N. drove around the bend. What if, after all that work, we got going a little too fast and one of the cakes slid into the side of the car? What if, despite the air conditioning running at full blast, it was too hot in the car and the frosting started to slump off? What if we did get there safely, but I dropped a cake on the way from the parking lot into the building? I had packed flats as well as a bag of white frosting and a bag of blue in case of an emergency, but I’m not sure I was emotionally prepared to fix any problems that might happen on the way. Not in a busy winery with the bride and groom’s families darting around setting things up.

Fortunately I didn’t have to. Three or four of the minis fell over during our ride, but because I’d stuck them in the freezer for a few minutes while I got dressed, their frosting remained hard enough that it didn’t crumple much.

Setup was easy and disaster free. Some of the wedding party helped carry the precious cargo in from the car, and when every last cupcake was situated on the table, I have to say it looked pretty fantastic. I made a wedding cake. And people liked it.

Final thoughts on this massive saga: I will not be going into the wedding cake business. I would happily make another cake or three for friends who requested it, but I think I’d want to go to at least one cake decorating class first. I will also not use American buttercream again, except for petal work like I did on the minis. It’s just too sweet. I loved the taste of the cakes I made, and the filling was a wonderful, bright tartness (the color contrast was great too), but the buttercream was just achingly sweet, even with the addition of lime juice to the mix. For my sophomore performance, if I ever have such an opportunity, I would try an Italian or Swiss buttercream instead, relying on cooked egg whites for structure rather than powdered sugar. As a thank you, J. and H. let me keep all the baking and decorating equipment they bought for the project (thanks again, you two!), so I’m set for all kinds of future practice.

I have to say, though, despite all my moaning and complaining and anxiety, I was really happy with how the cakes looked, and delighted with the reactions I received. The bride and groom took home the leftovers and ate them the next day, and the one after that. They were still good. N. and I ate the trimmings and cupcake guts smothered in leftover filling, and they were delicious. It was, regardless of the exhaustion and concern during the journey, a monumental success. I can only thank J. and H. for letting me be such a big part of their day, and wish them all the joy in the world – joy like clouds of powdered sugar, perhaps – for the rest of their lives together. N. and I love you both.

The Buttercream Project part 5

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Chelsea

It’s funny, the things we feel we have to do to catch up with life. Thursday was a big day: I successfully defended my dissertation, the last step on the way toward becoming a PhD in English literature. So I guess I’m a doctor now, of a sort. And now that the defense is over, and summer is (supposedly) on its way, I’m trying to find footing in the landslide of other responsibilities I’ve let slide: getting back in touch with friends, grading student work, cleaning up an office I’ll have to vacate in a month or so, and remembering (much to my dismay) an unwritten conference paper I have to present at the end of July. And yet, rather than doing any of those things, the most important obligation I feel I must fulfill is this one: sharing how my most recent efforts on the cupcake front – now almost a month old – came out.

The answer is spectacular. I think, barring any further requests or complaints from the bride and groom, I have hit on THE mixture we’ll be using for the wedding. And of course, as always, I’ve learned some things too.

Last time I made a floaty, creamy filling that coated the tongue and whispered with sweetness. This time, I wanted something tart – almost aggressive – to to cut through the sometimes overwhelming clouds of frosting. I combined 1 bag each frozen raspberries and frozen peach chunks, 1-2 cups champagne, and about ¼ cup of sugar in a small pot, and simmered them together for 20-30 minutes. I was hoping for a thickened, jam-like compote, but I think there was too much champagne for that, and the mixture stayed fairly loose. The flavor was great, though – with such a small quantity of sugar, the tartness of the fruit and champagne made the mixture bright and assertive.

When the cupcakes were baked, and both they and this ruby mixture were completely cool, I cut the middles out of the full sized cupcakes and deposited a teaspoon or two of filling into each. To my relief, despite being thin, the juice of the filling did not bleed through and stain the exterior of the cakes. Bright red splotches on otherwise pristine ivory-white wedding cupcakes would be disastrous.

When I mixed up the frosting this time, my butter and mascarpone cheese were not as terrifically soft as they were in my last attempt. Therefore, they creamed together without the fearful separation I wrote about previously. The edges and ripples of the swirls were still not as rigid and fluted as they are on bakery cakes, but they were still okay. And when I went to frost the mini cupcakes, I finally figured out what was going on.

I ran low on frosting as I approached the minis, and because I was now out of mascarpone cheese I plopped a half-softened half-stick of butter into my mixer and let it rip. Immediately, even though I hadn’t upped the ratio of sugar in the mix, this frosting was different. The flowers, which I’ll say more about in a minute, actually had fluted edges, and the frosting required more pressure to liberate from my piping bag. Mascarpone cheese, even when it’s cold, is already softer than butter. It is never going to result in the same consistency as pure buttercream because it is such a soft cheese. So while it is fine for simple swirls or covering a cake, it is not great for detail work that requires sharp edges or fine points.

As you can see, these are the best flowers I’ve made so far, thanks mostly to the higher ratio of butter to mascarpone in the frosting. I still wondered why mine did not seem to ripple out of the petal tip I was using the same way they do in the instructional video I’m using, until I remembered – what an epiphany – that I’m left handed. If you turn a cupcake to the left while you hold the piping bag in your right hand, you probably need to turn the cupcake to the right if you’re going to hold the piping bag in your left hand. I realized this minutes too late to apply it this time around, but now I know. That way the icing will emerge from the piping bag in the same pattern as it would for a right handed person.

Survey said these were the best version I’d attempted yet by leaps and bounds. The filling was perfect because it provided the right counterpoint to the achingly sweet frosting and the delicately sugary cake. The flowers looked like flowers, and the blue sugar I found for the full size cupcakes is a deep enough blue to look sophisticated and adult (previous, lighter versions would bit better on sweets for a baby shower than on wedding cupcakes).

Next month, the challenge is piping. I’ve purchased some beautiful ivory and gray cupcake wrappers that we’ll be using for the wedding, and I’d like to be able to imitate – if not copy – the leafy designs on them as the piped décor on one of the full sized cakes. This will give me at least one more trial run with buttercream before the big day, and allow me to prove my theory about the mini cupcake flowers. It will also, assuming Oregon’s weather gets its act together and remembers it’s Memorial Day weekend, give me a chance to see how the frosting behaves in warmer temperatures.

Fingers metaphorically crossed (it’s too hard to type otherwise)!