'Tis the Season - Cranberry Spice Cake

It's funny how food-moody I get. I was flipping through all the recipes that I have torn out of magazines, and I kept and looking at the summer-y recipes, like tomato salads and berry pies, etc, which just don't sound good to me. I am craving hearty, spicy, holiday-y tastes. I have been consuming a scary amount of mulled drinks and rich food and this past weekend was no different. I was going to a small holiday fete at a friends and decided to bring along a little something more than just my usual bottle of wine. I found a recipe that I tore out a year ago for a Cranberry Spice Cake which sounded like it had all the perfect components for a holiday treat (cranberries, citrus, spices and sugar).

I will preface this post by saying that there is no photo of the actual "finished" cake because by the time the glaze set it was dark out, I was late and I am happy to report that it was gobbled up before I had a chance to photograph it. Instead you get a photo of a pseudo-complete cake.

 To make the cake:

Combine 1 1/2 cups AP flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, generous pinch of salt, heavy dash of nutmeg, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda in a bowl. Next, pulse cranberries until they are roughly chopped, set aside.
Stir 2/3 cup dark brown sugar, 2/3 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup canola oil together. Add in 2 eggs, one at a time, mixing completely. Then whisk in 1/2 cup sour cream, the zest of one or two oranges, the zest of one lemon and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Now, in 3 additions alternate stirring in your dry ingredients and 1/3 cup apple cider. To finish, fold in the cranberries and pour into a parchment lined cake pan (I used an 8-inch round). Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Remove the cake from the oven and while it is cooling mix 1 cup powdered sugar, the zest of one lemon, the juice of 1/2 a lemon (maybe a little more) and a pinch of salt. Once the cake is cooled drizzle the glaze over the top. Let the glaze set and dig in. This cake was terrifically moist and tasty and not too sweet, thanks to the citrus (which I like). Bon Appétit served theirs with a citrus cranberry compote that sounds delicious but I didn't make. I wanted to save my  cranberries to try make a shrub! I will have to save that for a later post.

Here is an article from Ms. Irene Virbila about shrubs, just to pique your interest.

For the original recipe, without my tweaks - click here.

Strawberry & Cream Cake

Contrary to popular belief, I often shy away from dishes that use an immense amount of butter, sugar, or eggs, but this last weekend our friend was in town staying with us, so I justified using an enormous number of egg yolks (see below) by saying to myself that I would really only indulge in a fraction of them as our guest would be eating most of the cake . . . . He had one slice, and then had to hurry back to LA. Needless to say, I have since consumed a disgusting amount of cake, and not regretted any of it.

I love strawberries, but I am a bit of a strawberry snob, and love the farmer's market strawberries that make it up here for about two weeks, which come from Camarillo and are small and intensely strawberry-tasting . . . mmm. Since strawberry season is here, I am eating them in all different forms, as often as possible (plain by the box, with a sauce of sour cream and brown sugar, shortcakes and now this cake). I found this recipe from an old Gourmet magazine, but I wasn't in the mood for the spicy cardamom taste so I tweaked it a bit and made mine a little more lemony instead. I would say it was good and goes down easy, but, in all honesty, I could have skipped the cake and been perfectly content eating a bowl of the cream filling with strawberries.

Rhubarb - I just can't get enough

I find myself looking forward to the change of seasons with a new verve, as I look forward to the produce that comes with the time of year. Living in California, it is easy to lose this sense, as one can get virtually any type of produce all year round. While it might be trendy, I've taken to eating what is actually in season and can be found locally (how novel). These weeks of spring have brought some of my favorite seasonal treats - rhubarb (which is really east coast - reminding me of a particular 4th of July in Massachusetts, eating way too many rhubarb crisps during a picnic at Tanglewood, mmm) and English peas. The amount of rhubarb I have been wanting to eat has driven me to search for new rhubarb recipes (I virtually always go the strawberry-rhubarb-pie-or-something-like-it route) and yesterday I found a recipe for rhubarb streusel cakes and decided that sounded quite craveable.

I adjusted some things, for the original version click the link above. To make the streusel, combine a scant 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 2/3 cup packed brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Cut in (or use a mixer, if you don't want to break a sweat) 5 tablespoons chilled salted butter. You can stop when the mixture is crumbly OR you can add 1/4 cup oats (I love oats in my crumbly toppings). Set the topping aside in a cool place.

This is when I turned on the oven to 375. To make the batter combine 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon each of baking powder and salt. In a large bowl cream 1 stick butter with 3/4 cup sugar. Beat in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Then, starting and ending with the dry ingredients, alternately add in the flour mixture and 1/2 cup whole milk (which I didn't have so I used cream mixed with low fat milk  . . woops).

Everything is set except for the rhubarb. Uniformly dice 1/2-pound rhubarb (I ended up finding it light on rhubarb, so I recommend using about a cup and a half or two cups worth diced rhubarb if you can fit it in your tins). Toss the diced rhubarb with 3 tablespoons powdered sugar - more if you use more rhubarb. 

I spooned the batter into a six-muffin tin, sprinkling a little layer of rhubarb in the middle of the cakes and then adding the rest of the fruit on top, finishing each cake off with a generous helping of streusel. Bake the cakes for about 25-30 minutes (until a toothpick comes out clean and the streusel is browned).

Lemon Pudding Cake

After a marathon weekend of eating and drinking I received a request for a light dessert. I immediately thought of the delicious sounding lemon recipe that I had torn out of a magazine. Of course I couldn't remember the name of the dish nor could I locate the recipe (although I'm sure it was in my way for the last three weeks, but now that I want it . . .). Anyway, I made the best of my absent-mindedness and found a simple recipe (six ingredients!) for a Lemon Pudding Cake.
To start combine 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt and a heaping 1/2 cup of sugar in a large bowl.
In a separate small bowl combine 3 egg yolks, 1 1/3 cup whole milk, and the juice and zest of two lemons.

Add the wet mixture into the dry and stir to combine.
For the following step, the "official recipe" instructs you to beat the three egg whites with your electric mixer. . . some of us don't have one of those. In that case, bear down and hope that your upper body strength is better than mine and get to beating those eggs by hand.

Frothy . . .

Once the egg whites form soft peaks gradually add in 1/4 cup sugar.

Soft peaks. . .

Beat until the whites form

STIFF PEAKS!

Add in 1/4 of egg whites to your other mixture and stir to combine. Then gently fold in the remaining egg whites. Pour into a buttered baking dish (I, for example, used a pie pan) and pop into a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.

Eat up!

For the original recipe from Gourmet magazine click here.