Tag Archives: cake

lemon trees and cake

agriculture, food and cooking, ,

lemon cake 7-27-14My father scorned Meyer lemons. Growing his own lemons made him, and all of our family, partial to the intensity of a Normal Lemon. If anyone wants to give me lemons, Meyer or otherwise, I will never turn them down, but I also prefer what I grew up with.

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When I cook with lemons I usually think of my father and our trees. If as I child I ever found my father lying on the living room floor it was not because he’d been wrestling with my brother, but more like he’d been wrestling with those trees. During pruning season he’d invariably put his back out doing that necessary work on our ten acres (We had twenty more acres in oranges.) That would be more than a thousand lemon trees.

I learned to drive a tractor before I was old enough to drive a car, because Daddy needed me to pull a trailer between the rows when my sisters and I were picking the second, smaller crop of lemons that wasn’t worth hiring a whole picking crew for.

In those pictures that I retain in my mind, my brother wasn’t old enough to buckle down and help yet. He was sitting under a lemon tree crying, and the dust mixed with his tears to make a miserable face.  I must say that he’s more than made up for it in the years since, and is one of the most buckled down and hardworking people on the planet.P1100844eggs

The latest thing I cooked with lemons is this meltingly appealing cake, which Mr. Glad requested for his birthday last month. That he wanted cake was very strange, because it’s been Blackberry Pie as long as anyone can remember, and a good month to be born if you want that. But I was happy to oblige with the cake, and I devoted most of one Saturday to making it, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the process.

In the past I’d only baked this glazed cake for tea parties that I used to have in a bygone era. Now that it’s been revived in my repertoire I’ll want to make it more often. It uses a lot of lemons in the form of juice, and in this recent case, even more fruits to get enough lemon zest to impart the deep lemony flavor. It can be made up to three days ahead and freezes well.

Lemon-Sour Cream Cake

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large or extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon minced lemon zest
2 teaspoons lemon extract
1 cup sour cream

The Glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup strained fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely minced lemon zest

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch lightweight Bundt pan. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder together into a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, or in a food processor fitted with the metal blade, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in the eggs, minced zest and lemon extract and mix for 2 more minutes.

Reduce the speed to low or pulse with the food processor. Add half of the flour mixture and mix until well combined. Add half of the sour cream, mixing constantly, then add the rest of the flour and sour cream, ending with the sour cream.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and remove the pan. Make the glaze while the cake is still warm.

To make the glaze, using a fine-meshed strainer, sift the powdered sugar into a small, non-aluminum bowl. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and whisk to break up lumps.

Transfer the cake to a rack placed over a rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper. Using a long skewer, poke holes in the cake at 1-inch intervals, almost going through to the bottom. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake, giving it time to absorb as you pour. Let the cake cool to room temperature. Cut into wedges and serve.

Every time I make this cake, about 1/4 cup of the glaze ends up on the baking sheet under the cake, and would be wasted and washed down the drain in all its precious lemonzestiness if I didn’t find a way to use it. This time I whipped some heavy cream and slowly drizzled the syrup into it at the end when it was getting nice and thick. I froze the mixture in custard cups, and ate one of them the next day. It was quite delicious!

Chocolate Carrot Cake

food and cooking, ,


In my vast recipe files I found a recipe for Chocolate Carrot Cake, without a date or URL such as I try to include these days. We were having guests for dinner, and though it was a fasting day I wanted to serve dessert. This cake looked easy enough, so I adjusted some things and was really pleased with the outcome.

 

 

Chocolate Carrot Cake
6 servings

1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots (about 3 medium large)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl combine the carrots, sugar, and oil. Pour the boiling water over this mixture.

In a separate bowl, combine the remainder of the ingredients. Add to the carrot mixture and mix well. Pour into a greased 8″ square pan. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes.

I tested the cake before our friends arrived, to make sure it was agreeable, and it was so agreeable I tested two more slivers off the edge of the first little square hole I had created. It’s nearly as moist as a brownie, and the amount of chocolate seems to compensate for the lack of butter. We aren’t big cake-eaters in our family, but Mr. Glad and our guests liked it very much. I will have to call it my best vegan cake so far.

Nativity Cake

Christmas, family, food and cooking,

When our first two children were very little, I wanted to establish some God-honoring traditions for Christmastime. I didn’t think that the traditions of our parents were focused enough on the Nativity of Christ.

As an example, no one in our Protestant circles, even we who believed in the reality of the Christmas story, went to church on Christmas Day, and we missed a big opportunity to teach our children, and to know God, by praxis. It’s too bad, however it happened, that the tradition of not worshiping and communing on Christmas got started.

In any case, lacking a Christmas Day church tradition, we were on our own. I wanted the children to have more than a Christmas tree and presents, and one thing I contrived was a birthday cake for Jesus. It should be some special kind of cake that we would never eat any other time of year.

I found a recipe in Sunset Magazine for Dried Fruit Loaves, and as I scanned the ingredients list I reasoned, from my young-marrieds-on-a-shoestring perspective, that only Christmas extravagance would make me willing to invest in that amount of dried fruit and nuts.

So I’ve been adapting it and baking it without fail for about 38 years. Most years I made four times the original recipe and gave away various sizes of loaves. There is very little to it besides the fruit and nuts, and everyone still loves to slice a thin piece or two for a wholesome snack, all through the Twelve Days of Christmas or however long the bread lasts.

We don’t usually sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus anymore. All those children grew up and are teaching their own children about Christ’s Incarnation, and I’m not often with them to light a candle on the cake. But some of us now have the joyous tradition of going to church on Christmas Day.

I was just remarking to my husband that I could even stop including the bread in my baking projects…but it’s not difficult to make, so I don’t know why I even consider that. I guess because it’s more fun to try new things.

When I searched online for this recipe, I found something a bit different from Sunset under the name Western Dried Fruits Cake. It contains raisins, which I think too common for the occasion, and judging from the only picture I saw, and the recipe ingredients, mine is much better all around.

One of my friends makes this and calls it California Fruitcake. When I search with that term I come up with something much more like our favorite, also with credit given to Sunset: California Fruitcake.

The last two years I have decreased the amount of my recipe, for some reason to one-third of the quadruple-batch, but for your convenience I will post here something close to the original version. And how about a Christmasy name as well:

CALIFORNIA NATIVITY CAKE

2 cups flour (I’ve used part whole-wheat)
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups lightly packed dried fruit. I like to use half dried apples, and the remainder dried apricots and dates, sometimes with some pears or figs in the mix. Cut the larger pieces of fruit into 1″ pieces.
3 cups whole nuts. Usually our cake is heavy on the almonds, lately with some pecans as well.
5 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup water

Prepare six mini loaf pans or fewer larger pans by greasing and lining at least the bottoms with parchment paper. Stir the dry ingredients together and mix about 1/2 cup of this mixture with the fruit and nuts. While mixing I often stuff an almond into each date. Stir the eggs, vanilla, and water together and blend with the flour mixture, then add the fruit and nuts.

Spoon into the prepared pans, and if you want to minimize the rockiness of the terrain of the finished loaves’ tops, use your spoon to push pointy edges of apple down into the sticky dough. Bake at 325 degrees for 50 to 75 minutes depending on the size of pan, or until well browned. I usually have to put some foil over the top of large loaves after an hour.

Let cool on a rack for about 10 minutes before turning out on to racks. Pull off the paper and let cool thoroughly. Wrap loaves airtight and refrigerate or freeze for at least a few days before serving. Aged loaves can be cut in thin slices.

The wind blows warm.

food and cooking, my garden, nature, , ,

The wind has been blowing balmy air into and around the house these days, but I’ve enjoyed some cool walks in the early mornings. Somehow this year the autumn atmosphere is calling me outdoors and I’m actually hearing, feeling the pull. I want to soak up whatever it is in the air while I can, before I get all wimpy and chilly all the time and just want to sit by the fire.

On the subject of fires, this warm wind has fanned the flames of a wildfire in one of our favorite nearby parks — eek! Mr. Glad and I saw the smoke from our front yard where we were working on the lawn and flower bed. Thank God, it was put out fairly quickly and burned less than 200 acres, of vegetation only.

In preparation for the controlled indoor fires I’m anticipating, my husband and I had just finished moving a half cord of firewood from our driveway, to stack in the side yard. My own method of carrying wood involves loading several pieces on my left arm, which was bare on this warm day, and right off was getting a bit roughed up.

I dug around in the rag drawer and contrived an arm protector from a section of worn-out sock. I’m showing you two pictures so you will be sure to see how clever I am.

Two logs loaded on….


Mr. Glad showed me a concave piece of bark that fell off a knobby oak log, and we admired the design of its inner side, one bit of art work that must be representative of gazillions of other lovely bark designs that no one ever sees. Then I made it our computer desktop background.

I’ve had to interrupt my outdoor reveries to cook up some of the bounteous harvest. Old friends hosted a women’s potluck and that offered me the chance to try out a new cake on the other ladies.

When I defrosted the freezer last week I had found various flours that I want to use up, and Mr. C. dropped off a bag of Golden Delicious apples, so I tried this buckwheat apple cake. Everyone loved it, and took home what was left over, except for the slice I saved for Mr. Glad.

The recipe calls for so many apples (six), that they completely solve the problem of buckwheat being a dry sort of flour. It was not overly sweet, and would be a good sort of cake for people who like to eat cake often. I used limoncello instead of the maraschino liqueur. I don’t understand how the cake on the original blog came out so pale. It’s as though the cook used refined buckwheat flour, which I’ve never heard of.

For the potluck lunch I also made a big bowl of tabouli, my method long ago adapted from a Sunset Magazine recipe called Bulgur Salad. Next summer I’ll share it. I was able to use parsley, mint, and tomatoes from our garden. I forgot to take a picture until after I’d stirred in some tuna to make half of the batch into a main dish salad for Mr. Glad.

Back out in the garden again, I’ve been deeply digging to break up the clay for planting some ranunculus bulbs and pansies where a shrub used to be. Some of its big roots were still hanging around and for the first time in my life I used a chopping maul to get them out of there. That was satisfying work.

One of the jobs on my autumn to-do list was to take out the Cécile Brunner rose in the far corner of the yard. This picture shows it four years ago, before it became a burden that is more trouble than it is worth.

I never thought I would say that about such a lovely rose bush, but this one is so vigorous, and vigorously invading three neighbors’ yards, that it requires hours of pruning three times a year, from which I come away scratched and bleeding, and wishing I could have done something else with the time. The bush is in a place where we don’t even properly appreciate its enthusiastic blooming.

I forgot that it likes to bloom in October, until my glance landed in its corner yesterday. It won’t do to whack it down in its glory, so I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before I tackle the job. I will sadly remove one more rosebush from my life, trying to live with the reality of my limitations. In the meantime, I cut some stems to make one last bouquet.