Snow Cooking

While trapped in the snow we decided to venture into the warm kitchen.  We saw a recipe by Annie Wayte for a Guinea Fowl Potpie.  We had almost nothing from the recipe with the exception of a guinea fowl.  That is the kind of kitchen we have!  So we improvised.  Our pie is simply guinea, onions, mushrooms, and a bit of bacon.

It turned out quite yummy.

Then we decided to make a cake.  We had a couple of white sweet potatoes that we had lying around from Christmas. They were actually lying UNDER as we moved a paper bag over them, and discovered them after we needed the bag!

We baked them at 400 for about 35 minutes until they were mashable and then set out to make our favorite sweet potato cake, only in the white version.

For Christmas we got several bottles of libations from Art in the Age, including a sweet potato vodka, so we gave out yellow raisins a soak.  We also had half a bag of self-rising flour, so we used that. 

White Sweet Potato Cake

2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup mashed white sweet potatoes
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon Art in the Age Sweet Potato Vodka (optional)
1 cup yellow raisins, dredged boldly

Soak your raisins for about 30 minutes in a tablespoon of liquor, if desired.

 In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, and spice together to blend

In a smaller bowl, mix the sweet potatoes, eggs, oil, and milk. I may look a bit lumpy and curdled, but that is the way it should look.

Add the sweet potato mixture to the dry ingredients and blend well.

Fold in the dredged fruit.

Pour into prepared Lucinda’s Wood Cake Box.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours.

Being snowbound wasn't too bad.

Chinese Five Spice Goji Berry Cake

This has been one of our go-to cakes for several years, but we never posted the recipes before. Probably because, each time we have tweaked it a bit, deciding what we liked best with the flavor combination.  The batter is a very basic sweet cake that resembles a Jewish honey cake. The Chinese 5 spice gives it a kick and the bittersweet goji berries offer an interesting counterpoint to the cake.

Unlike most cakes composed with hearty dried fruit, like orange peel, the goji berries are a bit on the tender side, so we do not advise soaking them for any length of time.  Pour your cup of cool tea over them as you begin the recipe and you will be just fine.

As for the Chinese 5 spice, we use a freshly ground mix which is a bit more coarse than most of the ground spice one would find in the McCormick isle. If you can find a fresh grind fine, but don't sweat it.

We use honey to sweeten the cake.  We use our own farm honey.  Any light honey should work.

For some unknown reason, we began making this cake with self-rising flour and we have kept to it. If you use self-rising flour, remember to use a fresh bag as the leavening can grow stale.

Chinese Five Spice Goji Berry Cake

3 1/2 cups self-rising flour plus 1/2 cup for dredging fruit
1 tablespoon Chinese 5 spice
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 large egg
1 cup honey
1 cup strong tea plus a bit extra
1 cup dried goji berries

 Prepare a Lucinda's Wood Baking Box, by lining with butcher paper.

Preheat oven to 300F.

Brew about 2 cups of strong tea.  Allow the tea to cool.  In a small bowl, pour the cooled tea over the goji berries.

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter, egg, and honey. 

In another bowl, add the 3 1/2 cups of flour and the tablespoon of Chinese 5 spice and whisk to blend.

Saving the tea, pour the liquid off the goji berries and measure out 1 cup of the tea, discarding any extra.

Add the flour/spice mixture and the tea to the creamed butter, alternating between the dry and wet ingredients until fully incorporated.

Take the remaining 1/2 cup of flour and generously dredge the soaked goji berries.  Fold the dredged berries gently into the batter.

Pour the batter into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Baking Box.

Bake for 90 minutes, until firm in the center.

As you can see in the picture, we let this one go a bit too long, hence the crack in the top... but it tasted just fine.

Ube Pound Cake

I ran across a recipe for an ube pound cake online. Now, as with so many things online, especially recipes, a lot of people post them without any attribution, which kind of sucks because when someone posts a recipe, they are happy to share it, they just don't you reposting it on your site without the slightest thank you. 

Over at Asian in America, Betty Ann posted her recipe for an ube pound cake. It was really cool and pretty unique -- the "pound" part not the "ube" part. When she got ready to make this cake, and even though it was a very original idea, she used another pound cake recipe on which to base her cake. She used a recipe from Nancie McDermott's cookbook Southern Cakes and she credited it!

Many years ago, over at Cookbook Of The Day, we did a post about a White Fruitcake. The recipe is credited to Eudora Welty, though Miss Eudora was always quick to point out that she stole the recipe. And speaking of Southern cakes, Miss Eudora's stolen recipe also found its way into McDermott's Southern Cakes. 

I made my ube pound cake in a Lucinda's Wood Cake Box, so I tweaked the recipe a bit.  I would have never made it if my friend, Jurry, hadn't dropped what she was doing to head over to the Filipino market to score my ube. I made the above cake and a spare to send out to Jurry.

One cannot always find a clear attribution to recipes.  I often see MY cornbread recipe printed in many places and I can assure you it is the same cornbread recipe my great-great-on-and-on grandmother made. It's even the same skillet!  So it is mine. People are always writing books on where this or that recipe came from. Go ahead, ask a Southerner the exact origin of the Red Velvet Cake.  Everyone thinks they know...

I think recipes are a lot like songs. You sing them in the kitchen, and sometime you sing louder, and sometime you sing slower, and sometime you have to look up the words, and the vast majority of the time you sing it, even if you didn't write it. But if you do know where a recipe comes from, say thanks.

So join in the chorus:

Click on over to Asian in America for her recipe.

Buy yourself a copy of Southern Cakes, for good recipes and even better stories.

Make friends with Jurry, or another Filipino to help you find unique ingredients

Always bake extra and remember, you are never in the kitchen alone.

Beth's Gluten Free Carrot Cake

I sent my friend, Beth Ellis a Lucinda's Wood Cake Box. Though she claimed not to be the greatest baker (great cook yes!) she said she had a recipe to try. 

Later she sent me a photo (see above) and said it looked OK, she would tell me later if it was any good. If it was she would forward the recipe. Frankly, if I had just pulled that cake out of the oven, I would have cut into it way too soon and tried it! Later, I got and e-mail stating it was wonderful -- hence the name.  So here it is.

Wonderfully Magnificent Gluten Free Carrot Cake
Makes 1 large cake
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 2 hours 45 minutes

Parchment paper and Butter for greasing the pan

3 cups All Purpose Gluten free Flour
1 Teaspoon baking powder
¾ Teaspoon baking soda
¾ Teaspoon fine sea salt
2 Teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ Teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ Teaspoon ground all spice
2 cups light brown sugar
½ cup white granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon Qia cereal or chia seeds
5 large eggs at room temperature
1 ¼ cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 lb. carrots, trimmed and peeled and coarsely grated on the largest holes of a box grater or on the grating blade of a food processor.
½ cup raisins
½ cup chopped walnuts

For the Frosting:
4 oz. cream cheese
4 oz. salted butter
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar
4 oz. chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit inside the baking dish.  Butter the paper well then put back in the cake pan.

Measure then Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and all spice.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the brown sugar and white sugar and the Qia cereal or chia seeds and beat on the lowest speed to break up any lumps. Add the oil slowly while the mixer is running. Add 1 egg and continue to mix on low until smooth and incorporated. Shut off the mixer and scrape down the bowl and paddle.

Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, using a large rubber spatula to fold the mixture together until just incorporated. Fold in the carrots, along with the nuts and raisins, if using.
Pour batter into a 9 by 9 deep-dish cake pan.  Bake for 2 hours 45 minutes.

Directions For the Frosting:

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese and butter and beat on medium until smooth, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Shut off the mixer and scrape down the bowl and paddle. Add the cinnamon and vanilla.  Add the confectioners sugar 1 cup at a time and beat on low to medium speed, scraping down the bowl and paddle as necessary, until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Stir in the walnuts.
Frost the cake!

Well, Beth confided that she never did frost her cake (as she is busily getting lean and mean) but I would go on and frost it as I am simply getting mean!

Thanks, Beth.

Chocolate Pound Cake

As you know, from my post about my Southern sojourn, I returned with Cruze Buttermilk. I had one thing on my mind -- pound cake. The very first thing I remember being cooked for me in the old wood cheese box was chocolate poundcake.

Six years ago, the New York Times published Cheri Cruze's recipe for Buttermilk Poundcake.  My friend, Anne, used her baking box to make one.

One rainy afternoon, I found my mother's old recipe box and rooted around until I came across my old recipe. It was on a piece of crumbling paper, written in my big, loopy juvenile hand. One the back was the recipe for 7 Minute Frosting, the usual frosting my great aunts used on this cake.  It had been violently scratched out and replaced with a 4 Minute Chocolate Frosting.

I started out, convinced that I had everything I needed, until I reached for the sugar jar and found it empty.  I am not a big cookie maker.  All the cookies I make and therefore eat revolve around the chocolate chip/chunk/peanut butter combination.  Since most of those recipes call for a combination of white and brown sugar, I keep a jar of premixed sugar.  That saved the cake.

When I got ready for the ganache (in lieu of 4 Minute Chocolate Frosting) I realized there was no sweet milk. There was a can of evaporated milk leftover from Thanksgiving pie making.  I was a bit skimpy on the ganache.  I really like it to be a thick covering of chocolate and this batch was a little slim.

This recipe has a scant 1/2 cup of cocoa, so the cake is not overtly chocolate. Which is why I like a thick gaunach on the top!  But it is quite good. Pound cake, like fruit cake needs to be cooked low and slow. The nice thing about pound cake is that it will keep for quite some time if you store it in an air-tight cake tin. Here is the recipe.  Be sure to check you larder BEFORE you crack all the eggs to make sure you have everything you need.

While I cooked this in my Wood Cake Box, the low oven is recommend even if you use a a Bundt pan or angle food cake pan.  In a pan with a center hole, the cooking time will be about an hour and a half.  In the cake box, it can take fifteen to twenty minutes longer.

Chocolate Pound Cake

3 cups AP flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups sugar
2 sticks butter
5 eggs
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300F.

In a medium bowl, sift the dry ingredients together.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until bright yellow, about 4 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating till incorporated after each addition. Add the vanilla.  Alternate the buttermilk and the dry ingredients in three batches, ending with the flour.

Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes.   You want the cake to puff up and the top to crack just a bit.  A toothpick inserted in the cake should come out clean.

I think it needed another 1/4 inch of ganache!  But it was exactly as I remember it -- sans billowy white meringue icing.

Tea Brack

Recently, I became obsessed with tea brack. I got one of those catalogues for King Arthur Flour in Vermont (affectionately known as King Bisquit by me) and on the back pages was a recipe for tea brack. It seemed like a great fit for my baking box. I think that was the spark. So I looked the cake up on the Internet. Big mistake.

There really is such a thing as too much information. In the olden days, like ten years ago, I would have grabbed a cookbook, found a recipe, and made the cake/bread.  But noooooo.  Now there are a zillion recipes.  Go ahead, Google it and check out the photos.   

Now with something like chocolate cake, there a zillion recipes, but they look like chocolate cake. Tea brack was all over the place. Maybe it was because it started out as a bread, but moved over to a more cake-like incarnation.  Who knows?  Well, it turns out I know quite a bit.

Originally it was a bairín breac.  "Bairín" meaning loaf and "breac" meaning speckled, so bairín breac is a speckled loaf, a raisin bread.

"Barm" pronounced like "barn"  is the yeast filtered out of beer toward the end of production. It was a cheap source for leavening bread. So it is often called "barmbrack."

Because it sounds like "barn," the English often called the bread "barnbrack."

But some think "barm" is actually derived from the old English word "beorma" meaning  yeasty.  There is also a word "aran" meaning bread.  Aran Breac would be another way of saying yeasty bread.

And since it is Irish and there are a lot of freckles in Ireland, it is also called Freckle bread.

Most recipes require the fruit, usually raisins and sultana, to be soaked in a strong tea overnight, so some people call it Irish Tea Bread, or tea brack.  Not to mention it is often served with tea in the afternoon. 

 If you want to be chummy, just call it brack. 

The brack is a tradition in Ireland for Halloween.  Much like a King's Cake in New Orleans with a baby baked in, the Halloween brack has all sorts of items tucked in to predict one's future. These item include:

A pea: sadly no marriage for you that year.
A stick: if married you will be unhappy, if not you will have a contentious year.
A rag: you will have bad luck or be poor, which might be seen as the same thing.
A coin: the opposite of the rag, so money and good fortune.
A ring: you are headed to the alter.
A medallion of the Virgin Mary: you are headed to the alter with Jesus.

 
Fortunatly, it is not Halloween.

Yeast was a popular raising agent in many cakes.  The 19th century saw a rise in the popularity of various baking powders that aided in the leavening of cakes. In 1856, Eben Norton Horsford began studying the chemical compositions for a baking powder.  He was a founder of the Rumford Chemical Works, named for  Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who endowed the professorship that paid for Horsford's early work. In 1869, his rising mixture was manufactured and commercial baking powder was born.

Really, I just wanted a tea cake!!

First I made a yeasted loaf.  It didn't rise much, it wasn't very sweet, and it was dry.  I sliced some of it and looked like someone stepped on my biscotti.  So I sliced it all, let it dry out and made bread pudding -- Irish Barmbrack Tea Bead Pudding.  It was A-OK.

But still, no tea cake.

I looked at recipe after recipe.  After the lackluster yeasty brack, I was skeptical. So I devised my own recipe. In the end, I added milk, too much milk, and the cake was a touch soggy in the middle.

However, one is supposed to toast the brack and slather it with butter.  So my slightly soggy tea brack dried out in the toaster.  Covered with butter, it really didn't matter. It was a tasty little treat.  One I will probably never make again!  Which is a shame since I know most everything one could possibly know about this cake, except how to make a good one!

Here is the recipe:

FIND YOUR OWN DAMN RECIPE!

OK, fine.  The simplest recipe I came across was one on Nigella Lawson's community board.  That means it's not Nigella's recipe, just one posted on her site.  It would also seem that Nigella's site translates recipes from grams to ounces quite literally, which is kinda funny!

Tea Brack

13.24 oz golden raisins 
8.83 oz soft light brown sugar 
11 fl oz tea (strong, hot)
butter (for greasing) 
10.59 oz self-raising flour 
1 egg (beaten)

1. Put golden raisins, sugar and tea into a large bowl, stir well then cover and leave to steep for at least 8 hours.
2. Grease a 1kg/2lb loaf tin and line the bottom with greaseproof paper.
3. Stir the flour and egg into the fruit mixture, mix thoroughly, pour into the loaf tin and level surface.
4. Bake in heated oven at 150°C/300°F/Gas 2 for 1h1/2 to 1h3/4 until well risen and firm to touch.
5. Leave to cool in tin for about 10 mins, then turn onto wire rack.

Here's hoping you don't find rags in your bread.

Cornbread Cake with Lemon, Rosemary Syrup

When I was kid living in the great unwashed North, they served "cornbread" in the school lunch.  It was bright yellow, super sweet and it was served with a thick, nondescript syrup.  I was horrified. It bore not a passing resemblance to the cornbread I ate at home. There is a rather famous anecdote from Southern food writer Ronnie Lundy.  When asked about putting sugar in cornbread she said, “I don’t mind if people put sugar in their cornbread…as long as they call it cake.” 

 I thought of her a while back when a neighbor brought me a beautiful bag of stone ground cornmeal.  It was a bright yellow and rough to the touch.  I was peering out the window and reached up to touch the rosemary plant sitting there and it released a spicy fragrance, so I decided to take Ronnie Lundy up on her statement.  I make cornbread three times a week, but this cornmeal need something extra, something those lunch ladies could only dream of.

With just a bit of sugar, that cornmeal might make a fine cake.  Instead of some sort of frosting, I thought the rosemary; steeped in a sugar syrup and some lemon zest would make a nice counterpoint.  This is not a recipe I dreamed up, exactly.  Ask Ronnie Lundy; it’s a sweet, cornbread with extra milk and syrup on top.  There are a lot of recipes like this on the web, in fact many of them are identical, only the name of the chef is different.  I baked this in my Lucinda’s Wood Cake Box.

Cornbread Cake with Lemon, Rosemary Syrup

11/2 cup stone ground yellow corn meal

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup honey

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup olive oil

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup sugar

1 lemon, zested and juiced

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, bruised

3/4 cup water

1. Preheat the oven to 300F.

2. Line the box with parchment paper and spray with cooking oil, like PAM.

3. Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar several times with a whisk to blend them.

4. In another bowl mix the honey, buttermilk, oil, and eggs until just blended.

5.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

6. Pour into prepared cake box.  Bake for 90 minutes.

7. While the cake is baking, combine the sugar, water and lemon juice and bring to simmer, stirring to insure the sugar is dissolved, about five minutes.  Remove from the heat and add the bruised rosemary, letting it steep until cool, about 30 minutes. When the syrup is cool, strain out the rosemary.  Add the lemon zest to the strained syrup and set aside.

8.  While the cake is still warm and in the box, pour the lemon, rosemary syrup over the cake.  Allow the cake to cool another 30 minutes before serving.

This is an easy cake that requires very little fuss. Make the syrup from thyme, mint or maple and bourbon. Dress it up  with some berries or a whipped cream. it can go from after school snack to elegant dinner with little trouble.

Way Down Yonder In The Pawpaw Patch

It's pawpaw season and we are...

Pickin' up pawpaws, puttin' 'em in your pocket
Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch

University of Arkansas

If you are familiar with the song or with the pawpaw, you know that it won't fit into your "pocket" unless that pocket is an old-fashioned apron to which the song refers. You may not find pawpaw (Asimina triloba) fruit on the grocery shelf because the season lasts a short time and the fruit lasts only a few days. It makes for a temperamental harvest. Full disclosure: I was nowhere near the pawpaw patch.

Living in a small town, and having a reputation for cooking and eating ANYTHING, I am often the recipient of foodstuffs that no one else want to bother with. Yesterday I got three bags of pawpaws in various states of ripeness. One school of thought would have you believe that you need to wait till the pawpaw falls from the tree, but frankly, by that time they are over-ripe. Pick them when they have that "avocado" feel to them - a few brown spots and a gentle give should put them about ripe. Alas, most of bags were filled with the over-ripe variety, but I was able to salvage about 4 cups of pawpaw pulp.

The pawpaw is often called a Custard Apple because of its soft, custard-y flesh, but actually the custard apple is the same genus -- different species as are the cherimoya and the sweetsop. The name is probably derived from its similarity to the word papaya and the belief that the pawpaw was a similar type of fruit though the papaya is a different genus.


The pawpaw has many a banana nom de plume including the Poor Man's banana, the Hoosier banana, the Indiana banana and the West Virginia banana. Mashed up it does have that over-ripe banana consistency, though the taste of the pawpaw is a bit more melon-y. The pawpaw is the state fruit of Ohio and the largest edible fruit native to North America.


With this plethora of pawpaw goodness, I made a cake and some preserves. The cake was my usual kind of moist, fruit cake made in one of my cake boxes. The recipe can be made in loaf pans or any pan that is about 8 inches across and lined with parchment or brown paper.

Pawpaw Cake with Candied Lemon and Sultanas

1 cup sugar
1 stick (1/2cup) butter, softened
3 eggs
1 cup mashed pawpaw pulp
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons quatre épices
1 cup sultanas
1/4 candied lemon peel, dredged in additional flour


1. Cream butter and sugar.

2. Add eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.

3. Mix the pawpaw pulp and the milk, in a small bowl.

4. In another bowl sift the flour, salt, baking soda, and quatre épices.

5. Alternate the pulp mixture and the flour mixture into the batter until fully incorporated.

6. Fold in the lemon peel and sultanas

7. Pour the batter into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box.

8. Bake at 300 for 90 minutes.

My other recipe was for pawpaw jam. This jam has an "order-by-mail" ingredient in the recipe. I live in a remote area and often get ingredients through the mail. This recipe calls for a soft diced ginger available at King Arthur's Flour. I love ginger. It is fairly easy to find candied ginger, but this product from King Arthur is sublime. Seriously, it is one of those things that one might be tempted to eat right out of the carton with a spoon. It is beyond versatile. A teaspoon in a cake, cookies, marinade, salad dressing... the list is as long as your imagination. If you love ginger and cook with it often, this is a must have!

Pawpaw Jam with Ginger

3 cups pawpaw pulp
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup soft diced ginger

Mix all the ingredients into a confiture pan or other non-reactive pan. Bring to a rolling boil. When a candy thermometer reaches 220 F., remove from heat and pour into sterilized jars. Process for 10 minutes.

Still want more pawpaws? Check out Cookbook Of The Day.

Butternut Blueberry Cake

We have always had a love of baking our vegetables. Every last one of you has, no doubt, been forced to endure the dreaded zucchini bread. But why should zucchini have all the fun. Squash of any kind can be turned into lovely cakes, as well as parsnips, beets, sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes (which are neither artichokes nor from Jerusalem!) and the list goes on.

Recently we had a beautiful butternut squash that seems destined to be a cake. We added some frozen blueberries, as you will see in our note, and had a delicious cake. Since our squash proved abundant, we made a cake in Lucinda's Wood Cake Box and a few smaller versions.

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention the squash was cooked and mashed????


After Thanksgiving when you find a small bowl of leftover butternut squash, give this recipe a try.

Butternut Blueberry Cake

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed butternut squash
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup frozen blueberries, dredged boldly (NOTE: Freezing the blueberries helps them stay a bit intact during the long baking.)


In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, cinnamon, soda and salt together to blend

In a smaller bowl, mix the butternut squash, eggs, oil, and milk. I may look a bit lumpy and curdled, but that is the way it should look

Add the dry ingredients to the butternut squash mixture to the and blend well

Fold in the frozen, dredged blueberries.

Pour into prepared Lucinda’s Wood Cake Box.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours.

Liquorice Gingerbread

Over at Cookbook Of The Day, we featured Cosmic Cuisine and the recipe for Liquorice Gingerbread.

Since I first read the recipe, I was fascinated with what it would be like. I love liquorice, but I am not that fond of gingerbread. Well I was pleased all around. I tweaked the recipe a bit, as I find all that "scant" and "generous " cup directions to be silly. I added a bit more liquorice. I also made a bit of a liquorice glaze for my cake. And finally, I cooked in a Lucinda's Wood Cake Box.

The directions tell you to add all the dry ingredients, then the eggs, then the milk. I did it that way, but it was quite sloppy. In the end, however, the cake was light and delicate with just a hint of liquorice. All in all it was a great cake.

Liquorice Gingerbread

4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons molasses
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground liquorice root
pinch salt
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda


Grease an 8 inch square cake pan with butter. In a bowl, cream the butter, sugar and molasses. Sift the flour, baking powder, spices and salt into the bowl and beat well. Add the eggs. Warm the milk, dissolve the bicarbonate in it and add that to the mixture. Beat until it starts to bubble slightly. Pour into the cake pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 325 F for about 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Leave the gingerbread undisturbed for the first 40 minutes in the oven. Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool in the pan. When cool, turn the gingerbread out and store it in a container and do not eat for 24 hours. Makes one 8 inch square cake.

Liquorice Glaze

1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon liquorice powder
1/4 cup milk

Blend together until smooth. Pour over warm cake.

P.S. I did not wait the requisite 24 hours and all was well.

An Irish Favorite

This is my favorite cake, and given it is made with Guinness, we are declaring it an Irish cake. I make it in my famous Lucinda's Wood Cake Boxes, but you can make it in a baking tin, but you still have to line it.

Guinness Peel Cake

1 bottle (12 oz.) Guinness stout
1 cup raisins
1 cup sultanas
1 cup mixed fruit peel

1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups flour + dredging flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon quatre-épices or allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt

Soak fruit and peel in the stout at least 8 hours.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line the cake box with parchment paper, and lightly oil the paper.

Drain the mixture through a colander or strainer with a wide mesh, reserving the stout.

In the bowl of a mixer, cream the butter and sugar.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Mix dry ingredients together and add to the butter and eggs in small batches until the batter is smooth.

Add the reserved stout.

Dredge the drained fruit and peel, boldly. Coat fruit completely with flour but don’t add extra, loose flour.

Fold the dredged fruit gently into the batter.

Pour into lined cake box and bake for 1 hour 45 minutes, until firm in the center.

Enjoy!

Éirinn go brách!

Deep Fried Kudzu & Everyday Cornbread

One of my favorite blogs is Ginger's Deep Fried Kudzu. 

Ginger is a 7th-generation Alabamian and I am convinced she knows more about Alabama than anyone.

Aside from knowing about art and history and architecture and culture she also knows quite a bit about food.   So it was only natural that Ginger took one of Lucinda's Wood Cake Boxes into her kitchen to give it a try.  After all, my wood cake boxes started out in an Alabama kitchen.

She adapted a Bon Appetit recipe and the rest, as they say, is history.

Wish I was there...


Also, from Alabama, my BFF Beverly has started a blog: Everyday Cornbread.   So far she has only one post, but every blogger starts somewhere.  The blog is about living on the lower forty, or in her case the lower 20.  As you may remember, Beverly inspired our series Cocktails At The Burnpit.  In honor of her new blog, we are gathering up the chicken feed sacks, grabbing a full-bodied burgundy and heading to the burnpit.

Fruitcake Week

Fruit production in France

Why does fruitcake suck?

It's the fruit, stupid.

For years in America, women have gone to grocery store at Christmas time and purchased a tub of "fruitcake mix" for their cakes. What is in there? Well it seems that the producers of most of this "fruit" are also the producers of fruit juice. That means that after they get the juice, or section out the fruit, they have all that peel left. So you end up with dry bits of peel, with lots of food coloring and some corn syrup and voilà -- fruitcake fruit.

In Europe, especially in France, turning fruit into glacé fruit is an art form. During the reign of Catherine de Medici in the 14th century, glacé fruit was a welcome delicacy.


Over the course of 6 to 10 days, fruit is repeatedly cooked in an ever-increasingly dense sugar solution and finally dried. If you happen to be in France, especially in Provence, you will find stalls with vendors selling beautifully preserved whole fruits.


Since you are not in Provence, you need to find another supplier. My favorite:



La Cuisine has a lovely array of candied and dried fruit. It is one of the only places I go to get my "fruitcake mix."

Some people swear by Nuts Online. I have never tried them, but they seem to get rave reviews.

I love the soft diced ginger at King Arthur Flour. Their fruit cake blend is not my favorite because I am not fond of dates, which they included. If you don't mind the dates, it is a more rustic dried fruit blend, forgoing the citrus.

If you are close to a Trader Joe's, their dried fruits are great.

Of course, I always bake my fruitcake's in Lucinda's Wood Cake Boxes. But then, I make them! Fruitcakes need to cook low an slow, so the wood make for great cooking. And for shipping to loved ones...


It doesn't matter what you cook the fruitcake in if the fruit is of a poor quality. So please, shop around. If you have a favorite fruit source, do let us know.

For some fine fruitcake recipes, check out Cookbook Of The Day.

Blueberry Gingerbread

Kathy Edwards came up with this recipe to make in her Lucinda's Wood Cake Box. As always, Anne is is the kitchen baking. Harry Lowe headed over for a taste and to try out his new iPhone. He was a little too close, but he'll get better!

Blueberry Gingerbread

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 cups AP flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1cup buttermilk (or 1 cup fresh milk mixed with 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice; allow to thicken before using)
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen), tossed lightly in 2 Tbsp. flour

Whip sugar and egg together until fluffy, and light in color. Slowly incorporate vegetable oil and molasses. Combine dry ingredients and add to egg mixture alternately with buttermilk. Combine until smooth. Fold in blueberries that have been tossed lightly in Tbs. flour. Pour into greased and papered cake pan (follow cake box guidance for prepping box).

Bake at 300 for 30-40 minutes, or until top springs back when touched lightly.
Cool completely before removing from pan.

When the gingerbread is baked, Kathy cuts it in squares, smears the top with some lemon curd, sprinkles that with some coarse sugar, and then lights her torch and brulees the top - it is magnificent according to her sister, Nanci.

Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

Sometimes one goes to the market and is enamored of a new ingredient. That is what happened when I saw these chile spiced mangos. I immediately bought them, ignoring the fact that I am not a big mango person. After about a couple of months the bag of chile spiced mango was still staring at me. I had not a clue what to do with it. I had originally thought that I would add them to a cake.

I began thinking about this cake. It needed to be substantial to stand up to the chile spiced mango, so I thought of an olive oil cake. Then I thought that a bit of corn meal would be a great counterpoint to the spice. So I went to work.

The cake has a big crumb and the dried mango slices were embedded nicely in the cake. It needs a bold olive oil and as often happens with my desserts, it is not overtly sweet. It turned out nicely. Here's the recipe:

Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cup corn meal
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 scant cups chile spiced mangos, chopped into small squares ( if you can't find them pre-spiced, drege you chopped dried mangoes in a tablespoon of chile powder)


Pre-heat oven to 300 F

In a large mixer bowl, blend the sugar, milk and oil

Add the eggs, one at a time until fully blended

In a large bowl whisk the flour, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda and salt to mix.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and just mix until all the dry ingredients are blended into the batter

Dredge the mango pieces and fold into the batter

Pour into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box and bake for 90 minutes

I mixed a teaspoon of chile powder and 1/4 cup of 10X and sprinkled the top to dress it up a bit. As I was trying to take a photo, my picture was interrupted by Teddy who was on the prowl for some leftover cake. Teddy loves anything made with cornmeal and this cake was no different.



A profound love of cornmeal happens when you are raised by chickens and Southerners!

Ginger Pear Upside-Down Cake

There was a whole-lotta-bakin-goin-on yesterday! I baked my favorite Sweet Potato Cake with Golden Berries. My friend and fellow cook, Anne made Ginger Pear Upside-Down Cake. Anne got the recipe from Saveur who got the recipe from Seattlest who adapted the recipe from Leslie Mackie’s Macrina Bakery & Café Cookbook.



In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven't a clue where Leslie Mackie got the idea! Anyway, if you don't want to click through all the links, here's the recipe from Anne--Saveur--Seattlest--Macrina Bakery--Leslie Mackie.

Ginger Pear Upside-Down Cake
Adapted from Leslie Mackie’s Macrina Backery & Café Cookbook

For the topping:
3 Tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup light brown sugar
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
4-5 medium to large ripe pears, peeled, cored, and quartered lengthwise

For the batter:
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup light brown sugar
2 Tbs peeled, grated ginger
3 large eggs
2/3 cup molasses
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Oil a 9-inch springform pan, and line the bottom with a 10-inch circle of parchment paper.

To make the topping, combine 3 Tbs butter, ½ cup brown sugar, and cinnamon in a medium saucepan. Melt the butter over medium heat for about 1 minute; then pour the mixture into the prepared springform pan, completely coating the parchment paper. Place the quartered pears on top of the butter-sugar mixture, lining the pieces up tightly in a decorative circle so that none of the bottom shows through.

To make the batter, cut 2 sticks of butter into 1-inch pieces, and put them in a large mixing bowl. Add ¾ cup brown sugar, and cream the mixture on medium speed for 3-5 minutes, until it is smooth and a pale tan color. Add the grated ginger, and beat 1 minute more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating on low speed and making sure that each egg is fully incorporated before adding another. When all the eggs have been added, slowly pour in the molasses and beat to fully mix. The mixture will look as though it is “breaking” or curdling, but don’t worry—it will come together when the dry ingredients are added.

In a separate medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to fully combine.

Alternately add small amounts of flour and buttermilk to the batter, stirring and folding with a rubber spatula until the dry ingredients are just absorbed. Do not overmix the batter. Pour and scrape the batter into the pear-lined pan, smoothing the top with a rubber surface. The pan will be nearly full.

Carefully transfer the pan to the center rack of the oven, and bake for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake’s center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Cover the pan with an upside-down serving plate; then carefully invert them together. Release the sides of the pan, and lift it away. Gently lift the pan’s base off the cake, and peel away the parchment paper. Allow the cake to cool for a half hour or so, and serve warm, with whipped cream.

Anne, of course, adapted the recipe to use in Lucinda's Wood Cake Boxes, which is easy to do, she just lowered the heat a pinch.

My only regret is not being there to taste it!

Red Velvet Fruitcake

I am always on the lookout for various blends of dried fruits. I am one of those people who feel fruitcake has gotten a bad wrap over time, largely because people see it as a utilitarian kind of cake and as a chore. No one thinks, "Hey, I think I'll make a nice fruit cake for my family." Instead it has become something one gives away and frankly most people don't want them.


I get a lot of books and magazines from England. My friend, Sandra, and I joke about the way English cakes seem to all be the same recipe, a recipe for a fruitcake! In England, however, one can find lovely bags of mixed, dried fruit throughout the year. The fruit is supple and tender and actually looks like it might have come from fresh fruit in the recent past.

Here's a recipe that might change your mind about fruitcake. I was in Trader Joe's recently, and they had a wonderful blend of dried fruit called "Super Cranberry & Pomegranate Blend." In addition to the titled fruit, the package contained raspberries, cherries and black currents. This recipe works best with some sort of "red" fruit blend. If you don't have a Trader Joe's, try your own blend of cranberries, red raisins, currants, or cherries. The pomegranate seeds were just that, seeds -- so occasionally there was a hard center from the arils.

The package of red fruit made me want to add it to a red cake, and what better red cake than a velvet. I modified my recipe to make a fruit cake.

Red Velvet Fruitcake

2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup cocoa
1 ounce red food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon soda
1 tablespoons vinegar
1 cup dried, dredged, fruit (preferably a blend of dried red fruits such as raspberries, cherries, cranberries)



Cream butter and beat in sugar gradually

Add eggs and beat well

Add the cocoa followed by the food coloring, being careful as the food coloring stains

Add salt to flour and the vanilla to the buttermilk, then alternate flour/salt mixture and vanilla with buttermilk to the batter, beating well after each addition.

Place the vinegar in a cup and sprinkle soda over vinegar (there will be a reaction and the mixture will foment)

Fold in the vinegar mixture to the batter, then fold in the dredged fruit.

Pour into a prepared Lucinda’s Wood Cake Box and bake at 300 for 90 minutes.

This is a fruitcake you won't want to give to anyone, unless you bake two!

Cruze Farm Buttermilk Poundcake

My friend Anne saw this recipe in the New York Times Magazine and decided to give it a try in a Lucinda's Wood Cake Box.

Here's the recipe and the results!

Cruze Farm Buttermilk Poundcake

3⁄4 cup butter, plus more for greasing the pan
3 1⁄2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring the pan
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
2 ‌1⁄2 cups granulated sugar
3⁄4 cup solid shortening
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup cultured buttermilk
Juice of 1 lemon, strained.

For the glaze:

2⁄3 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest.

1. Bring all the ingredients to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt pan (or your Lucinda's Wooden Cake Box), tapping out excess flour.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking soda. In another medium bowl, whisk the sugar to break up clumps.

3. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and shortening, stopping to scrape down the sides. Slowly drizzle in the sugar; cream the mixture well. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding the next when the last has been incorporated. Mix in the vanilla. On low speed, mix in a third of the flour mixture until just combined. Add a third of the buttermilk, mixing until just combined. Repeat with the remaining flour and buttermilk. Add the lemon juice and mix to combine.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a cake tester inserted comes out clean, about 75 minutes. The top of the cake will be lightly browned, and the sides will shrink slightly from the pan. Cool for 20 minutes before inverting onto a cake platter.

5. Before serving, stir together the glaze ingredients and spoon over the top and sides of the cake. It’s even better the next day.

Adapted from Cheri Cruze. Serves 10 to 12.

Sweet Potato Cake with Golden Mixed Berries

This is one of my favorite cakes. It is easy to make, and a great idea for a planned-over sweet potatoes. I love looking for new and interesting mixed, dried fruits. Instead of plain raisins, I used a golden berry mix which included; raisins, cranberries, and blueberries.

Planned Over Sweet Potatoes

When you need to have the oven on for at least an hour, add a couple of sweet potatoes.
Scrub them, oil the skins and set in a shallow baking pan while you are cooking "whatever" for about 1 hour. After they have cooled, peel them and place the flesh in a plastic bag and tuck it in the refrigerator.

Sweet Potato Cake

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon quatre-epice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed sweet potatoes
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup raisins, dredged boldly


In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, spice, soda and salt together to blend

In a smaller bowl, mix the sweet potatoes, eggs, oil, and milk. I may look a bit lumpy and curdled, but that is the way it should look

Add the sweet potato mixture to the dry ingredients and blend well

Fold in the dredged fruit


Pour into prepared Lucinda’s Wood Cake Box.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours.

This cake is a great cake to ship. It gets better after several days of "maturing" and travels well.


Send one (or two) out to someone you love!