Buttery Pound Cake

 You there!  You need a good pound cake recipe!  

Everyone does.  It's simple, endlessly adaptable, and always good.  You can glaze it or frost it or smear it with clotted cream and jam, stud it with nuts and fruit, brighten it with berries.  It's really the best cake to have in your repertoire.   

"I hate pound cake", said no one ever.  

While the amount of butter that goes in makes your heart go pitter-pat, it has that unbeatable, dense buttery crumb with a caramelized browned top.   

This also freezes really well.  Cut it in half once it's cooled, wrap well in plastic and no one will be the wiser when you pull out the emergency cake.  More than a pound cake recipe, you will one day need emergency cake.  

It's fantastic with tea, it's great to make when you have peckish houseguests with no real idea what they might like, you could prick the tops with a toothpick and drizzle grapefruit syrup on it.  I get a little crazy just thinking about how many ways pound cake could be something novel or to fit an occasion or, say, a lover of rhubarb.  

In England, they call this Madeira cake.  I have no idea if this actually came from Portugal originally, but they put a stake with a union jack on top of this and called it their own.  Speaking of Port, you could reduce some port on the stove with sugar and make a nice alcohol glaze on top with a nod to its maybe-roots.

I've included some ideas for a few variations at the bottom, a la Mark Bittman, as he was always my inspiration for making things my own.  My photographed version:  I toasted a couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds, added a handful of candied ginger and lemon zest and I had an Asian-inspired one.

Recipe: Theme and Variations on a Pound Cake
makes enough cake for a sitting of 8, or 4 over 2 days or 2 over 4 days

240 grams (1 cup) butter, at room temperature
200 grams (scant cup) sugar (I use turbinado "raw" sugar, but caster or white sugar works)
juice of 1 lemon (optional, let's talk about other flavors below!)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
300 grams (2 1/2 cups) flour
1 t salt
1 Tablespoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 170c/ 340f.  Butter and line with parchment a large loaf pan, or two small ones.  

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder.

Cream the butter and sugar with a whisk.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Juice the lemon and add.   Switch to a spoon or a rubber spatula and gently begin to incorporate the flour, 1/3 at a time.  At this point, add whatever you'd like to add.  

Bake in the oven for about an hour, or when a toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool slightly, nibble away until it's gone.  

Some ideas for add-ins:

I'm sure we'll be seeing this cake again in disguise.  In this version I added 2 T sesame seeds, toasted, the finely chopped zest of the lemon, and about  75 g of sliced candied ginger for a zippy spice.  

You could very easily turn this into a lemon-poppyseed cake: double the lemon and zest and add two tablespoons of poppyseeds.

If you feel for berries, frozen or fresh- and this would be just lush dotted with raspberries, scented of rosewater and pistachio- measure out about 100 grams of berries.  Be sure not to beat them in too vigorously unless you want a pink cake.  In which case- give them a thrashing in the blender or by hand before adding them to the batter.  

Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

Calling anything "boozy" just endears itself to me.  Take this cake for instance.  

I first encountered this recipe, unappetizing titled "Apricot Yam Loaf" from the otherwise wonderful and out of print cookbook from Alice Medrich called "Chocolate and Other Low-Fat Deserts".  Forget the faddy diet gimmick, this book has some real winners of less-than cloyingly sticky sweet sweets.  That cookbook, along with the other couple hundred of cookbooks in my collection, are all in storage.  Many a sleepless nights have been spent digging around the reaches of the internet, looking to see if some food blogger somewhere had republished an old favorite of mine.  Lucky day, a few months ago David Lebowitz republished this oldie but goodie, and I went to work on making it my own again.  

While putting vegetables in sweets is nothing I usually seek out (remember the whole Sneaky Chef feud?), I find that sweet potatoes work well in a cake base.  It lends it a sweetness and earthiness that I find incredibly appealing.  While there is no way no how that I would declare this cake as healthy because of its vegetable content, I would suggest that it was perhaps a better alternative than a plain white flour and sugar cake.  It's worlds more interesting anyway.  

Back in New York, I had a tricked-out gadget-strew kitchen.  Those days are gone now, and my Cuisinart stand mixer and hand-held electric mixers are all tucked away in storage indefinitely.  That doesn't stop me from baking.  I'm low-tech now, refusing help from the machines, and justifying the creations of buttery sugary goodness by the insane beating that I give them beforehand and getting overdeveloped arms because of it.  Don't despair- with a little elbow grease, you will have lump-free fluffy batter as well.  Although you might be a bit crazy to attempt something like meringue without a mixer remember that it was invented long before electric mixers were, and some poor chef at some point would have had to give those egg whites a beating by hand.  I comfort myself with this though halfway through the cake-making process.  

It's also quite a forgiving cake.  The first time I made it, idiot that I am, I forgot to set the time on the oven and left it in 10 minutes longer than I should have.  It was just fine though- the extra moisture from the sweet potatoes and the booze-soaked apricots did a good job to make sure I didn't have to suffer through a hockey puck of cake, and it wasn't even terribly dry.  The second time, I wised up and set the timer and it came out even better!  

You can use leftover roasted sweet potatoes in this dish.  Next time you are roasting them for dinner, throw a couple extras in and behold, you have your base for cake the next day.  Otherwise, you can just microwave them as I did, since I'm lazy.  

The other thing I love about this cake is while it's in the oven, I can sit down and have a nice lunch of the leftover sweet potatoes and drink the apricot-flavored vermouth as a kind of a pre-game.

I've made a few changes, but it is still recognizable as the yam loaf from days of yore.  Oh, and the icing isn't in the original either (hello, low fat cookbook).  Thank M. Lebowitz for that stroke of genius.  Cream cheese frosting tends to make everything spectacularly good.  

The other thing about this cake is that it freezes really well.  We are but two people and an entire cake sitting on the counter leads to unhappy stale cake after a week of sitting out.  No one wants that.  I cut it in half once cooled, wrap half of it tightly in plastic wrap and freezer bags, and then cut the icing in half to compensate.  Sure, you could make the entire batch of icing and frost half the cake with it, but that is so not in the spirit of a low-fat frosted cake.  

Go right ahead.  

I'll be waiting by the phone to hear you say how good it is.  

Recipe: Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

115g (2/3 cup) diced dried apricots

125ml (1/2 cup) dry vermouth (but I suppose sweet would work as well)

225g(2 cups) flour (I used a combination of white and a light whole wheat)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

75g(6 tablespoons) unsalted butter at room temperature

200g (1 cup) Demerara or Muscovado Sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 large eggs, at room temperature

240g (1 cup) cooked sweet potato flesh, well mashed or pureed if you have a food processor  

125g(1 cup) toasted almonds, chopped

Frosting:

• 225g (8oz) cream cheese, room temperature
• 60g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100 g (3/4 cup) powdered sugar

Do-ahead:  Soak the Apricots in the Vermouth for at least a halfhour.  Overnight wouldn't be overdoing it if you have the foresight.  Drain, reserving the liquid.  DO NOT WASTE BOOZE.  

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f.  Grease 2 8" loaf pans, or whatever cake pan you happen to have.  Mine is kind of a terrine pan, but it somehow manages to do.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

In another bowl (or in a mixer) cream the butter with the sugar and lemon zest until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs and combine thoroughly. If using a stand mixer, stop the mixer and scrape down the side to make sure everything is incorporated.  If you are doing this by hand, I salute you and your giant guns.  

Mix in half of the flour mixture, then the drained vermouth and sweet potato puree, then the rest of the dry ingredients. Stir in the nuts and apricots.

Divide the batter into the prepared pans, smooth the tops, and bake about 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely.

Once cool, make the cream cheese frosting by beating the cream cheese with the butter and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, mixing until smooth and lump free. Divide the cream cheese frosting on top of the cakes, spreading it with a knife or spatula.  

Enjoy, it's just lovely with tea.  

Since the recipe makes two loaves, you can freeze a cake.  Wrap it well in plastic once it's cooled.

Rhubarb Ginger Crumble

It's springtime!  Time for ludicrously priced precious early gems to start appearing at the farmer's markets.  The best of which might be the lovely pale pink stalks of rhubarb.  

I'm fairly unaccustomed to paying for this stuff.  Growing up, it's one of the few vegetables that "take" to Maine soil and climate.  Like zucchinis, by mid-summer, you are paying people to haul this away from you.  We would walk down to the end of the road where a nice couple with a large patch of it would indulge us and send us back up the hill with an armful of ruby-pink stalks, me impatiently nibbling on the end much like I would later do with the baguettes in Paris.  Getting home, we would be allowed to have a small bowl with sugar in it, dip the chewed end to coat, and then chew as much of the ultra-tart rhubarb as bearable before returning to mash the chewed end into sugar once again.  Why yes,  I did buy my dentist a boat, why do you ask?

Most of the rhizomes would get chopped up and frozen as there was usually just too much to handle all at once.  The obvious choice for it was to be paired with strawberries into tarts and pies.  This is still just classic and a favorite.

I started experimenting with this tart vegetable that we treat as a fruit in recent years.  It works well in savory dishes- stir-fried with pork belly, made into a chutney and spooned onto roasted duck breast.  The tartness complements fatty and rich dishes like no other, the flash of pink gives dishes a cheerful boost.

I found a new favorite courtesy of Ginger Pig.  This is a fantastic (and fantastically expensive) high-end butcher over in Borough Market.  They raise all the animals free-range on their farm in Yorkshire and are famous for almost everything they produce (I find their homemade pies irresistible).  They have a nice (although much more meat-heavy than what I usually go for) series of cookbooks that focuses on charming farmhouse-rustic-chic cooking where I found a recipe for a rhubarb ginger crisp.  This was a dashingly good combination.  The rhubarb cooked down to be submerged in a deeply caramelized syrup of spice and sweet-tart that I couldn't get enough of, especially when you have a half-melted scoop of vanilla ice cream to lovingly mop away at with the topping.  We licked the dishes clean- a perfectly wicked preview of good things to come from the garden.

Added bonus: this would work nicely with lots of fruit combinations, so feel free to add some frozen berries that you might have lying around.  It also freezes quite well, so it wouldn't be inhuman of you to make a double batch and save some for a lazier day.

I share it with you here.  

Recipe:  Rhubarb Ginger Crumble
from the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook
Serves 4-6.  Takes about 15 minutes active time, 1 hour total.

125g (41/2oz) chilled butter, cut into dice
125g (41/2oz) plain flour
50g (2oz) ground almonds, or almond flour
50g (2oz) rolled oats
700g (1lb 9oz) rhubarb, cleaned and chopped into inch-long pieces with the tough strings peeled off
20g (3/4oz) fresh ginger root: peeled and grated with a microplane or diced finely
50g (2oz) unrefined caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f

Combine the butter and flour together in a bowl with a pastry cutter or your fingers until coarse crumbs form.  Add the almonds, sugar and oats and mix to combine.

Place the chopped rhubarb into an oven proof dish.  I am a bit poor in the baking dish department and used two, and then froze the smaller one for later.  You could use a pie or tart dish, whatever!  As long as all the rhubarb fits and you have a bit of clearance for the topping.

Add the ginger and the sugar to the rhubarb and mix the whole mess together.  Spoon the crumble mixture over the top.

Place the dish(es) on a baking sheet (this is pretty important if you don't want a smoky sugary syrup mess on the bottom of your oven).  Bake for 40 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly.

Let cool for a minute, if you can wait.  Molten sugar is not pleasant to be slinging around your kitchen!  Serve with ice cream (strawberry comes to mind, but vanilla was just grand) and a sprig of mint.