Category Archives: cake

Carrot cake with pistachio crumb topping

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Carrot cake with pistachio crumble topping

In our house, when we put the boys to bed, David reads stories to Isaac, and I sit next to Malcolm reading my novel while he reads his. (Pretty clever, huh? Reading time for me!) Then we go downstairs and yell at them periodically to Be quiet! Get back in bed! Get to sleep! (They share a room, and it’s nice to hear them chatting for a long time after lights out – what on earth do they talk about? But really, they need their sleep!) I just started reading The Brothers Karamazov. I like it so far, but it reminds me of reading War and Peace, which was so confusing at first because everybody has about three different names that they’re called by, and they all sound sort of similar, and I have trouble keeping them all apart. Which reminded me, in turn, of my brilliant idea that somebody should make a hip hop version of War and Peace. I think it would be wonderful! Epic! Here’s why. Rappers have a lot of different names, and I sometimes have trouble keeping them straight. And…so many of the concerns explored in War and Peace are also of primary importance in hip hop songs. Religion, violence, love, lust, greed, over-indulgence in alcohol. Can’t you just see it? Or maybe hear it, it should probably be an opera, right?

Ahem. Sorry for the creeping tangential nature of this post. Anyway – I can sometimes hear snippets of the stories David reads to Isaac, and yesterday one of them mentioned carrot cake. Carrot cake!?! Said Isaac. What on earth is that? You know, said David, it’s like pumpkin bread – it’s sweet and sweet-spicy. You could see the little wheels turning in Isaac’s head as he processed this information. And, of course, you could hear the little wheels creaking rustily in my much older head as I planned to make a carrot cake. Why not, thought I, why not purée the carrots, instead of grating them? Just for a change. And then my mind wandered back to an Indian dessert I had recently read about (I like to read the dessert sections of my Indian cookbooks while I eat my breakfast, don’t you?) It was a sort of carrot pudding, with pistachios and cardamom. Sounded good! But I didn’t want to just stir the pistachios in. I thought I’d make them into a crumbly topping with lots of butter and sugar, to make this even less of a healthy cake. It turned out very good! The cake is velvety, and the pistachios are a perfect crunchy little accent. Isaac came running into the kitchen, with a beaming smile, saying “you made carrot cake!” and boys both give it their seal of approval (crumbs all over the living room).

Here’s the B 52s with Cake

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Cadbury creme egg tarts

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Cadbury creme egg tarts

Here at The Ordinary, we are done baking with cadbury mini eggs (until the next time!). We’ve used the milk and royal dark mini-eggs in cookies. But we hadn’t used the mini creme eggs. That was a bridge we’d have to cross. Some might say a bridge too far. As you are no doubt aware, I am a scholar of savory pastries, and It has come to my attention that throughout the world you find some variation or a pastry with a crust, a soft yet firm inner layer, and a hard-boiled egg hidden inside. This would be the starting point for our mini creme egg experiments. The jumping-off point from that bridge too far. So I made little tarts, with a paté sucrée crust (kind of shortbread-y) a blackcurrant-almond filling, and one mini-egg hidden in each one. I was very curious to see how the creme eggs would fare in a hot oven. They sort of melted, but they’re still recognizable as creme eggs, I think. I like them! My boys love them! David thinks they’d be better without the cadbury creme egg, because what the heck is that cremey stuff made out of, anyway?!? My one regret is that I mixed the blackcurrant jam with the almond paste, rather than including it as a layer. But only because it turned the inside a bit grey, not because it doesn’t taste good. I think if you used raspberry jam, the whole thing would be pink and pretty. I don’t know for sure – I might have to try it!

Here’s The Smiths with Sweet and Tender Hooligan. Because these are tender, and decidedly sweet. And we’ll never never never do it again…
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Dulce de leche blondies

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Blondies

We, here at The Ordinary, ate too many brownies some time in midwinter. As we lay with a glazed look in our eyes and crumbs on our bellies, we said, “I’m never eating brownies again.” Oh, I know, we’ve all said it, after a rough bout of brownie eating. But this time we meant it. Cakes and cookies and tarts? Sure. But no brownies. Fortunately, we didn’t say anything about blondies! So here we go! I had a half a can of sweetened condensed milk leftover from my almond quince cake. What a strange and magical substance sweetened condensed milk is. Who thought of it? How was it invented? Or was it discovered, like a rare and elusive natural phenomenon? For some reason it always makes me think of those 50s food ads from magazines, with the oddly fascinating coloration. The truth is, it’s a really nice taste. There’s something so comforting about the sweet, thick milkiness.

I seem to have made some indelible connection between dulce de leche and sweetened condensed milk. I didn’t use it when I made dulce de leche, but I bought a can then, just in case! Once again, I didn’t actually use dulce de leche in this recipe, but I melted brown sugar, butter and sweetened condensed milk to start it out, and that’s what I thought of.

The result is complete deliciousness. I’ve never made a brownie or a blondie with a more crackly top. And the inside is delightfully chewy and fudgy.

Here’s Blondie with Atomic. Wouldn’t you like to be Deborah Harry, living in NYC when this came out?
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Almond cake with quince glaze

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Almond cake with quince glaze

I love quince! So I was very happy to be given a jar of quince jelly recently (Thanks, Ellie!) It’s delicious on toast, of course, but it’s so pretty, and has such a lovely, distinctive, mysterious flavor, that I knew I had to make something else with it as well. Obviously I needed to make a cake. Somewhere in the back of my muddled mind, I remembered reading about a Uruguayan confection that combined quince and dulce de leche. So I wanted the cake to have a hint of dulce de leche about it. It doesn’t actually contain any, but it’s made with sweetened condensed milk and brown sugar, so it has that rich, caramel-y flavor to it. It’s a dense cake, and the almonds add a nice texture to it. The flavor of the cake itself is fairly simple, so that the quince-y quinciness shines through in all of its delightful flavor.

Here are two versions of Mr Jelly Lord, by Jelly Roll Morton. Don’t you love that song title? And the song?
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Banana bread with chocolate covered cranberries

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Banana bread

You could put dark chocolate on just about anything and I’d probably bake with it! As long as it’s vegetarian, of course! I’ve used chocolate covered cherries and chocolate covered ginger. My lastest foray into the chocolate covered world is dried cranberries. Very nice! Tart & sweet, just like you’d want them to be. I decided to bake them into banana bread, because we had some very ripe bananas, and, let’s face it, bananas and cranberries are a perfect combination, aren’t they?

Here’s Calypso Rose with Banana
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Coconut cake with blackberry mousse

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Coconut cake with blackberry mousse

I work in a restaurant that has a candy dispenser. If I have two quarters left over at the end of the day, I’ll sometimes bring home small cups of candy to my boys. Twenty-five cents worth a piece. I always bring M&Ms to my little one, and skittles to my older son. It seems funny that their love for fruity or chocolate-y candy has become a defining characteristic for them. One small way to be their own boy. And an easy way to divide the spoils come Halloween or Easter! I made a cake for my brother and father the other day (they both have February birthdays). I know they like chocolate (who doesn’t?) but I always think of them as falling towards the fruity end of the sweet spectrum. So…flush from my success with the chocolate drambuie mousse, I decided to make them a coconut cake with blackberry mousse in between the layers. This being February, when raspberries and blackberries seem to cost about $10 a piece, I used blackberry jam instead of fresh fruit. (Honestly, if you have fresh raspberries, don’t you just eat them? Exactly as they are?) The mousse is actually a white chocolate blackberry mousse, because I didn’t want to use gelatin, and I thought the chocolate would help to make the mousse more substantial, once it un-melted. It isn’t a difficult cake to make, but the assembly process does have a few messy-fun steps.

Here’s Doc Watson’s Blackberry Rag.
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Cinnamon buns with chocolate covered ginger

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Cinnamon buns with chocolate covered ginger

For valentine’s day dinner, we had cauliflower steaks roasted with thyme, layered with portobello steaks roasted with rosemary and balsamic, layered, as well, with chard, smoked gouda and mozzarella, and topped with porcini-sage gravy. It was a delicious and special meal, and there was none left to take a picture of. We ate it all! One of the things that made it so special, besides its ridiculous tastiness, was that it was my husband’s innovation. He thought of it!! I feel a little crazy, because I spend a lot of time thinking about new ways to cook food, and it just kills me that he sometimes does, too! We’re in it together!

Back in the days of my chocolate covered ginger craze, he suggested this combination – cinnamon buns with chocolate covered ginger baked right in. It seemed almost too good to make! Almost but not quite! It’s a really really good combination. A comforting cheerer upper, for sure.

Here’s Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young.
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Almond cake with cherries, white chocolate and chambord

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Almond cake with cherries and white chocolate

I have a cupboard in which I keep all the cakes or cookies that I bake. I had a dream last night that the cupboard was overflowing. I opened the door, and mounds of cookies and pieces of cake came spilling out. In my dream I had a genius idea of what to bake with all of the excess baked goods! And then my elderly dog did this thing she does, where she click clacks frantically around on our wooden floors, and it sounds like she’s desperate to go outside, so you heave yourself out of bed and down the stairs, only to find her back on her bed, staring at you with a “What are you doing up at this hour” expression on her face. So we’ll never know what I would have done with the dream cakes in the dream cupboard. Perhaps the dream was a sign that I should slow down on the baking. Honestly, though, it’s February. If you don’t have the promise of some small sweet thing to have with your coffee, why the hell would you get out of bed at all?

I made this cake for my father’s birthday. He doesn’t really like chocolate, but I snuck a small amount of white chocolate in. He does like almonds and cherries, though. (At least I hope he does!) So this is the cake I made. It’s a dense cake with ground almonds, made slightly lighter by the inclusion of 3 extra whipped egg whites. (I used the yolks in the ice cream!) In the middle of the layers, we find some cherry preserves thinned with chambord. (I love chambord, but any fruity liqueur would do. Or amaretto. Or anything you like!) And then I topped it with a thin white chocolate/chambord ganache.

Here’s Bob Marley doing Sugar Sugar. Today is his birthday!! I wonder what kind of cake he would have liked.

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Cardamom coconut brownies with white chocolate.

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cardamom coconut blondies

A few weeks ago I was reading about Indian sweetmeats, as one does, and I thought, “These would make great cakes!” Not that they weren’t perfect in their original forms, I’m sure, just that some of the flavor combinations, and some of the interesting techniques seemed so inspiring to me, so full of possibilities. One in particular, a kind of fudge, with cardamom and coconut, became stuck in my craw as a perfect combination. Time passed, and the combination of cardamom and coconut haunted me…but I really felt that I wanted to make something with a different texture – not light and crumbly like a cake, but dense and tender, like the fudge that had inspired me. And then the whole thing with the brownies happened (I made 2 trays in 2 days…) And then it hit me!! These should be brownies!! But really blondies, because they wouldn’t have any cocoa in them! And they should have white chocolate chips, because brownies are required to have chocolate chips, but I liked the idea of all the wintery white colors in these. Before the last brownie was eaten, I got to work. And, let me tell you, these are the most ridiculously tasty, tender inside, crispy outside blondies I have ever eaten!!

Here’s Jole Blon by Harry Choates
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Bakewell tart with cherries, cassis and bittersweet chocolate

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bakewell tart

My love of black currants is the legendary stuff of legend. Unfortunately, they’re not readily available in America, and my tiny black currant bush doesn’t produce very much in the summer, let alone in January. What bad luck! But black currant jam and creme de cassis are readily available in America. What good luck! For a while now, I’ve been wanting to make a bakewell tart…a tart with a pate sucree crust, a layer of jam, and a layer of almond-cake-like frangipane. I have such fond memories of eating them as a child, when we lived in England, out of a little box, with fondant and a cherry. Mine would be a little different, though. Of course I wanted to use black currant jam. And then I decided to add dried tart cherries and chocolate chips, for a balance of deliciousness. I soaked the cherries in cassis, then mixed them with the jam and the chocolate, and, I must say, the combination is killer! Especially together with the crispy cookie-like crust and the soft fragrant almond topping. A wonderful combination of crunchy, chewy, sweet and tart.

Bakewell tart

Here’s Ska Jam by Tommy McCook and the Supersonics

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