parsnips aplenty

Entries categorized as ‘desserts’

Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze

November 10, 2008 · 7 Comments

A few months ago, I mentioned my love for Crescent Dragonwagon, a self-professed “closet vegetarian” for years who finally outed herself in her wonderful cookbooks.  She’s done a lot to influence the way I think about food, and has much to do with my refusal to see vegetarianism as a limitation.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that she had commented on the entry!  She had her publishers send me a promo copy of her newest book, The Cornbread Gospels, and while I think it is indeed possible to beat a single food item into the ground, I trust Crescent to make anything well.  I finally cracked it open last week, to make her Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf.  The bread itself was definitely above average, cakey and moist and everything it should be in Crescent’s magical kitchen, but I was astonished to see that the recipe called for orange zest without making use of the orange juice that would be left over!

Well, I said to myself, we’ll just fix that.

So I made this glaze and holy cannoli, it’s amazing.  I understand that part of the point of having a food blog is to toot one’s own horn, and I try not to do that too much, but, really, I am a GENIUS.  I had my doubts when this stuff first started heating up on the stove - the five-spice powder + Cointreau was a bit overpowering - but once it started to thicken, any sharpness mellowed and I considered buying a funnel so that I could just pour it directly down my throat.  That method, however, would neglect the cornbread itself, with which this goes brilliantly.  I’ll mention that all of the measurements for the glaze should end with “or so”, since I added a bit of this and a sprinkle of that. All raves aside, I can say no more other than that you really need to drop whatever you’re doing and make this.  You know, now.

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Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze
adapted, and in some cases, directly copied, from a recipe by Crescent Dragonwagon

vegetable oil cooking spray
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (I used half milk and half yogurt)
finely grated zest of 1 orange - save the juice!
1 cup cranberries, washed, picked over, and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup rolled oats

Preheat the oven to 350F. Coat an 8″x8″ pan with oil. Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, oil, buttermilk, and orange zest. In a third bowl combine cranberries, pecans, and oatmeal. Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour mixture over them, and toss well.

Quickly combine flour mixture and egg mixture, using as few strokes as possible. Gently stir in the cranberry mixture. The batter should be stiff. Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 45-55 minutes. Check two-thirds of the way through the baking period; if the loaves are browning excessively, tent them loosely with foil.

Let the baked bread cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then run a thin knife around the edge of the pan and turn the loaf out. Drizzle with glaze: in a saucepan, combine…

1/2 cup powdered raw sugar (I used Mexican sugar)
juice from the orange you zested
a splash of Cointreau
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

Bring to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until reduced to a thick glaze. (This will go fast - watch it!) Pour it on, baby.

Categories: autumn · baked · breakfast · desserts · fruity · pantry-dependent · quickbreads · snacks · wintery

Mango Meringue Pie

September 15, 2008 · 8 Comments

There’s a scene in Kissing Jessica Stein when the two main characters are discussing the phenomenon known as Sexy Ugly.  Famous men falling into this category include: Mick Jagger, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Alan Rickman. (I’m adding Alton Brown to the list as well.)  Upon doing some more research into this descriptor, I found only one woman who is commonly considered for the prize - Sarah Jessica Parker. We could talk about this at length, taking any one of the several levels offered up for discussion, but this is a food blog, not my gender studies thesis. Which was excellent, by the way. (And what about Janeane Garofalo?)

Yesterday I made a pie. I screwed it up in several ways, but oh my heavens is it still delicious. This, friends, is the Lyle Lovett of pies - the ugliest sexiest pie I’ve ever made.

My biggest mistake was overbeating the egg whites. I’d never done that before, and I always figured that you’d have to try awfully hard to actually get them to such a point. Turns out, not so much with the trying.

Another stellar move: after cooking the mango curd, I rinsed out a bowl to store it in the fridge for a bit, and I didn’t toss out every last drop of the rinse water, so when I poured in the curd, there appeared little pockets of non-curd liquid that I cursed at and mopped up with a paper towel. This was a Sunday afternoon full of pitfalls. I’m sure I avoided a few of them by cheating on the pie crust. (Store bought! I refuse to feel guilty. I have made hundreds of great pie crusts. Well, maybe tens. But I’ve put in my time. I can buy a frozen pie crust from Whole Foods now and again. So can you. It’s okay.)

In the end, after all my fussin’ and cussin’, when the pie came out of the oven, it was ugly as sin and just as good. The mango curd was strained not once but twice, making it super silky and light. The meringue has just a bit of sugar, and while I would recommend not overbeating the egg whites, this is proof that life goes on even when the albumen disagrees with you. I served this on a plate that’s seen five too many dishwasher cycles - it seems only fitting. And I’m eating it with ginger chips from Trader Joe’s. You could throw some powdered ginger in the meringue and/or the curd for the same effect. Or maybe crystallized ginger in the crust, if you eschew the frozen foods section and make your own crust. Ooh, that’d be good. You’d also do well to serve it with some toasted coconut. But don’t go makin’ it too pretty.

Lyle Lovett Sexy Ugly Pie
aka Mango Meringue Pie
makes 1 pie

1 good quality pie crust

2 large dead-ripe mangoes, peeled and roughly diced
quick squeeze of lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons sugar
pinch of salt
8 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat to 400F. Prick holes in the pie crust with a fork and put in the oven to prebake until very lightly done, about 30 minutes. Set aside.

While crust prebakes, combine mango, lemon juice, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt in the blender, and puree until smooth. Add egg yolks and buzz it again. (We’ll use the egg whites in a little while.) Strain mixture through a sieve, discarding remaining pulp, and put it in either a very thick-bottomed saucepan or the top of a double boiler, with the butter.

Cook on low heat, stirring almost constantly, until mixture starts to thicken, 10-15 minutes. Strain it again. Let cool at room temperature, then pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap - make sure the plastic wrap is touching the whole surface of the mango curd, so no condensation occurs. Refrigerate at least an hour.

Preheat to 350F. Pour mango curd into prebaked pie crust and bake 50-60 minutes or until curd is still just slightly wobbly in the middle. Turn off the convection heat and fire up the broiler to high. Whip egg whites with remaining 2 teaspoons sugar until peaks form, then pile it on top of the pie, making sure to spread the meringue enough that it covers the edges of the filling. Broil until it starts to brown, then remove from oven and use your superhuman strength to wait until it cools a bit before you slice into it.

ps.  Yes, I saw the Keri Russell pie movie.

Categories: baked · desserts · fruity · pies · summer

Four sorbets: lavender rose, watermelon, coconut lime, and orange blossom

August 21, 2008 · 6 Comments

In the past two years I have been finding more and more ice cream recipes, as everyone in America seems to have discovered that what you get at the supermarket is nowhere near what you can make at home. Trouble was, I was NOT in America, and I did not have an ice cream maker, nor could I even dream of affording one. So I spent my time filing away frozen dessert ideas, and now that I’m ensconced in my parents’ kitchen until next Saturday, I pulled out the ice cream maker to play with the recent Tuesdays With Dorie Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream. (I used blackberries, brown sugar, and lime. Two thumbs up.)

But, you know, that ice cream maker is heavy. So why not just leave it out on the counter for a bit longer, and get my - er, my parents’ - money’s worth out of it? Result: It’s sorbet madness over here. I’ve got a friend coming to visit this weekend, and I hope she’s bringing a spoon.

I’ve learned that a couple of tablespoons of booze keeps it scoopable, since the alcohol won’t freeze solid, and I’ve basically been following a 2 cups liquid : 1 cup sugar ratio, always with a dash of something citrusy. If you’ve got a well-stocked pantry, you can make some pretty outrageous sorbets, and if you’ve got a decently-stocked pantry, you can still make some awfully neat ones.

When I was living at home for the three months between Peace Corps assignments, a couple of years ago, I made a giant order to a Middle Eastern online grocery, and last week, I found some remnants of that order (in the liquor cabinet, heaven knows why): rose syrup and orange blossom water. Orange blossom water, also called orange flower water, costs an arm and a leg in tiny little blue bottles at your Finer Grocery Shoppes, but if you buy it online, or if there’s a Middle Eastern grocery in your town, you can get a bigger size at a better price.

Rose syrup is available online, too, or you can buy some rosewater - more widely available and less expensive than orange blossom water. It won’t turn the sorbet pink like my fluorescent-dyed syrup did, but you can also use it with sparkling water to make a nice rose soda. (This is my other favorite thing to do this summer - I’ve made fig soda, too, with some of the syrup that I also used in the roasted peppers.) Of course, you could make your own rose syrup, with rosewater and sugar.

If you really pushed me to pick a favorite from these, I’d go with the coconut. It’s vegan paradise - creamy without the soy aftertaste that so often plagues dairy-free desserts. It’s not too sweet, and it’s a classic combination of ingredients in perfect summer form. It’s hard to call this one ahead of the others, though - the feeling of eating pure frozen flower essences from the lavender/rose and orange blossom sorbets, and the simple bliss of the watermelon… You really should just make them all.

But if you make the lavender/rose one, take a nice picture for me - our batch got eaten before I could whip out the camera.

Lavender Rose Sorbet
I served this with some rosewater-soaked almonds on top.

2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon dried food-grade lavender flowers
juice of 1 lime
1 tablespoon rose syrup or rosewater
2 tablespoons vodka

In a saucepan over high heat, bring water, sugar, and lavender to a boil. Let simmer 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and leave to steep for another 10. Strain and mix with lime juice, rose syrup, and vodka, then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s manufacturer’s directions.

Watermelon Sorbet
Not that watermelon ever needed to be improved. I love watermelon and rose together, so if you want to put in a splash of rosewater, no one’s going to stop you.

flesh from around 3 pounds of watermelon, black seeds removed
1/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons vodka

Mash up the watermelon a bit and put it in a saucepan over high heat with water and sugar , and bring it to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Put this mixture in a blender with lemon juice and vodka, and buzz until smooth. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s manufacturer’s directions.

Coconut Lime Sorbet

This one needs much less sugar due to the natural sweetness of the coconut. I used palm sugar, which has a subtle grassy flavor, and is also a southeast Asian staple. If you don’t have it, though, regular cane sugar will do fine. Brown sugar might be nice, as well as a dash of rum instead of vodka. You could also split a vanilla bean and put it in to simmer with the coconut milk; I didn’t have one around, so I just used vanilla extract.

11 oz coconut milk (I used two 5.5-oz cans) or coconut cream
1/2 cup water
juice and zest of 2 limes
1/2 cup palm sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons vodka

In a saucepan over high heat, bring coconut milk, water, lime juice, and sugar to a boil. Simmer, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and add vanilla and vodka; freeze according to your ice cream maker’s manufacturer’s directions, adding the zest towards the end of freezing time.

Orange Blossom Sorbet

Also needs less sugar. Jasmine green tea could be fun.

1 cup fresh orange juice
1 cup water
2 bags plain green tea
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
2 tablespoons vodka
zest of 1 orange

In a saucepan over high heat, bring orange juice, water, green tea, and sugar to a boil. Simmer, stirring until sugar dissolves, then remove from heat and let steep 5 minutes. Combine with orange blossom water and vodka and freeze according to ice cream maker’s manufacturer’s directions, adding orange zest towards the end of freezing time.

Categories: desserts · fruity · middle eastern · pantry-dependent · summer · under 5 ingredients · vegan

Dry Yogurt with Chocolate and Cinnamon

May 24, 2008 · 13 Comments

Bulgarians are very proud of their food.  And with tomatoes this good, who wouldn’t be?  Bulgarian food, while not a crucial cuisine in the curriculum of international culinary arts, has some wonderfully simple dishes based on fresh, seasonal, often home-grown food, and there are many ingredients and dishes that I am so happy to have eaten.  Sirene, the feta-like cheese about which I frequently wax poetic, is an essential here, and red bell peppers are a way of life.  I’ve been asked often if XYZ exists in the U.S., and sometimes I have to stifle a laugh - yes, we have tomatoes - but many folks are astonished when I tell them that red bell peppers can reach $6 a pound.

There is one ingredient so vital to the Bulgarian kitchen that its Latin name references the importance it has here: yogurt, soured with the culture Lactobacillus bulgaricus, is so common that if you go to the shop and ask for milk, they’ll ask if you want fresh milk or sour milk, “sour milk” meaning yogurt.  Bulgarians have little problem substituting yogurt for milk in almost any recipe and put it in everything from soup to sauces.  I am lucky to have a dairy in my town that makes fantastic yogurt, and there is always a container or seven of it in my fridge.  I was never one of those that was afraid of plain yogurt before I came here, and would often stand in the kitchen at my parents’ house, eating spoonfuls of Cascade Fresh straight out of the jumbo tubs we bought it in, but I was a little fearful of yogurt cheese.  I saw some little balls of it on a buffet table once and thought they were mozzarella, so I popped a whole one in my mouth and bit down on what I soon assumed to be bocconcini gone bad.  Moments later, still trying not to grimace at the flavors lingering on my gums, I overheard someone say, “Aren’t these little yogurt cheese bites just wonderful?” but it was too late.  I was scarred.

But I have gained nothing in Peace Corps if not resiliency, so I decided not too long ago to strengthen my resolve and make what Bulgarians call “dry yogurt” - basically, yogurt with much of the liquid strained out.  This is, seriously, the easiest thing ever, and so smooth.  You can use this as a substitute for sour cream, whipped cream, cream cheese… you get it.  Creamy.

A ridiculously simple dessert that I like to make is to add cocoa powder, sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon to the yogurt before I strain it.  If you don’t dig chocolate, use something else - caramel, fresh or dried fruit, dulce de leche?  A wonderful base for any number of combinations.  Just make sure to use yogurt with no additives - if it says ‘gelatin’ anywhere on that package, just put it back on the shelf.  No one should be eating that garbage, anyway.

Dry Yogurt with Chocolate and Cinnamon
serves 1

12oz plain low-fat yogurt (I use 2%, but if you don’t see any 2%, get whole rather than fat-free)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
sugar to taste
toasted walnuts, to garnish

OK now, focus. This is tremendously complicated.  Ready?  Ready.

Combine yogurt, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and sugar and stir well.  Pour into a cheesecloth-lined sieve set over a bowl.  Come back in three hours.  Spoon into a bowl.  Garnish with walnuts.

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I also just wanted to show you this picture I took of some bucatini that I put in baked spaghetti last week.  (Well, baked bucatini, I suppose.)  I’m not sure I understand the culinary advantage of having center holes so tiny, but hey, it makes for cool photos.

Categories: desserts · neo-bulgo · pantry-dependent · under 5 ingredients

Shortbread with Lavender and Sleepytime tea

May 20, 2008 · 8 Comments

Bulgaria is the world’s largest producer of rose oil, and most (if not all?) of the country’s roses are grown across the wide belt of the Rosova Dolina, or Rose Valley.  Every year, on the first weekend of June, the cities of Kazanluk and Karlovo, which bookend the Rose Valley, hold their arms wide open for the Rose Festival, three days of singing, dancing, and a beauty contest.  I went to the festival last year in Kazanluk and while everyone was in the center of town enjoying the performances, a few friends and I walked out to the Rose Institute, on the edge of the city, to see if anything was happening out there.

To our surprise, absolutely nothing was happening Out There.  A couple of staff members were milling about, but there were no tours going on, no special signage, nothing.  The only clues that this was a weekend celebrating the efforts of the Institute were a couple of souvenir stalls at the front gates and a bunch of Japanese tourists that came in as we left.  We took advantage of the lack of personnel to peek around a bit.  We followed our noses to the distilling room, where large, puffing, steaming vats were connected to each other by various tubes and gizmos, and where one very frustrated worker was banging and clanging an uncooperative machine.  

Towards the front of the complex was a building housing a large lobby that served to educate visitors on the many kinds of herbs - not just roses - grown and studied by the Institute, including chamomile (лайка), lavender (лавандула), and many other plants whose names I couldn’t translate.  I noticed that they made chamomile oil, something I’d never seen before, but when I asked the lady working at the little sales kiosk in front of the building if she carried it, she said no.  I was sad but only momentarily as my eyes wandered up to see boxes of food-grade lavender for sale.  I bought two and brought them home to fill up a Ziploc bag, where they have sat, waiting patiently for my inspiration to strike them, ever since.

I have decided, finally, to put some in shortbread.  Not terribly original, but I don’t have an ice cream maker (I have been wanting to make lavender ice cream for as long as I can remember), and I have been feeling quite stuck as to what else I could do with them.  Maybe jam?

This was my first time making shortbread (shameful, I know), and I was a little bit nervous about rolling out a dough so crumbly, so I decided to just pat it into a pan.  As I was rummaging around for a cake tin, I saw my muffin pan and said “Oh-HO!”  And so these were born. These are not dainty tea cookies - these are flowery little butter bombs that will satisfy your sweet tooth but won’t leave you feeling like a brick. I really love the flavor added by the tea as well.  (In response to a question, Sleepytime is about half peppermint and half chammomile.  One teabag’s worth is half a tablespoon.)  They would be great, too, with some lemon zest added in - I think I’ll do that next time.  I used up the last quarter cup of whole wheat flour that I had hanging around, so these are a bit browner than they would be if you followed the recipe exactly as I wrote it, with only white flour.

Shortbread with Lavender and Sleepytime Tea
makes 6 muffin-sized cookies

1 stick (8 tablespoons, 125 grams) butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups cake flour or 1 cup all purpose flour and 1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dried lavender flowers
contents of 1 bag of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea

Preheat to 350F and butter a 6-cup muffin tin.  In a bowl combine butter and sugar, then sift in flour and salt.  Mix until a dough forms, then add lavender and tea.  Knead dough a bit just to pull it together a little more, then divide mixture evenly into muffin tin.  Bake 30 minutes or until lightly browned on top.  Let cool at least 15 minutes before turning out.

Categories: cookies · desserts · pantry-dependent · snacks · traveling

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans

April 10, 2008 · 6 Comments

In Bulgaria we’ve got this thing called banitsa.

If you’ve ever been here, that last sentence just made you exhale like Homer Simpson at Krusty Burger. Banitsa is the ideal savory pastry. It’s similar to Greek spanikopita or Turkish byurek, but dough leaves called kori (a little thicker than phyllo) and the addition of Bulgarian sirene make this arguably one of the world’s best things to wake up to. There are a hundred variations but at its most common, it’s white cheese, eggs, and yogurt mixed together, rolled into kori sheets, made into a coil, then baked. You can add spinach, leeks, red bell pepper, pretty much anything you like. There are sweet banitsas, too, more often made in the colder months, with walnuts, sugar, and pumpkin or apples instead of cheese. Time spent in any Bulgarian city is practically uncountable if you haven’t found the best banitsa stand in town, and if you go to the village - you’ve got to find out which grandma’s oven draws the crowds.

Since I’m not really into publishing any straightforward traditional Bulgarian recipes, my neo-Bulgo twist on banitsa this week is one with sweetened cheese, strawberry jam, and an excuse to use up the last shipment of pecans from back home. (You could also use almonds or walnuts.) Instead of being formed into a coil, it’s layered, which dresses it up a bit and makes it look prettier when cut, but this is still a rather rustic dish. Again, if you aren’t anywhere near a Bulgarian grocery, you can use goat cheese instead of the sirene, and phyllo instead of the kori. Just make sure to do the usual phyllo treatment of brushing the layers with butter so that they don’t get dried out when cooking. You may have to trim the dough to fit your baking pan, which you can do it as you go - lay the whole sheets down in the pan, trim by running a very sharp knife along the edges, then cover with filling.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans
makes about 16-20 squares

500 grams sirene (preferably dunavia) or 1 pound goat cheese
4 eggs
200 grams plain yogurt (about a cup)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
grated zest of 2 oranges
2 1/4 cups roughly chopped pecans
1 package banitsa or phyllo dough
1 cup strawberry jam
granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400F. Heavily grease a 13″x9″ baking dish and set aside. In a large bowl mix together cheese, 3 eggs, and yogurt, blending until as smooth as possible. Sift in sugar, flour, and baking soda, and stir to combine. Add orange zest and 2 cups pecans, mix, and set aside.

Unroll banitsa dough and put 2-3 layers in the bottom of prepared baking dish. Spread with a quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down another 2 layers of banitsa dough and another quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down 2 more layers of dough, then spread all of the jam on. 2 more layers of dough, another quarter of the cheese, 2 more layers of dough, top off the cheese, 2 final dough layers. Whisk the remaining egg in a bowl and, using fingers or a pastry brush, coat top of banitsa with egg. (You’ll have a lot of egg left over. Mini-omelet?) Sprinkle with a little granulated sugar and remaining 1/2 cup pecans. Bake 30 minutes or until top is golden brown and edges are bubbling. Wait 10 minutes before cutting to serve.

Categories: baked · desserts · neo-bulgo · pantry-dependent

Gingerbomb Cake

March 15, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve been spending some time lately working on a community cookbook - a compilation of Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian recipes from friends and colleagues.  Last year I overhauled the previous cookbook that had circulated among us for awhile, and this year I’m just tidying things up a bit.  Another American friend, who will stay here for a year longer than I, has been helping shape it up, and she came over last weekend for a joint editing session.  It goes without saying that we cooked - some nice pizza on Friday, some fancy sandwiches on Saturday - but the star of the weekend would be the recipe for a triple-ginger bread that she toted along from allrecipes, that we of course tweaked.  Fresh grated ginger, dried ginger, and crystallized ginger form the trifecta of rhizome love that is this sweet, sticky, densely-flavored cake.

My favorite gingerbread recipe is the one from Baking with Julia that includes cocoa powder, coffee, and tons of ground black pepper.  This is a bit too much for many, and I can accept that, but I can’t make any gingerbread now without adding just a pinch of black pepper - it adds a layer of heat that plays perfectly off that of the ginger.

Bulgaria friends and colleagues: this recipe will not be going in the cookbook, since you can’t easily get crystallized ginger or molasses here.  But next week I will be posting something from the freshly-updated reference.  I’m still not sure which recipe I’ll use, though, so if there’s anything you’d like photographed and talked about, kazhi.

Gingerbomb Cake

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon table salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup apple juice
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Preheat to 350F (175C). Butter and flour a 10″ springform pan. In a large bowl sift together flours, cinnamon, cloves, powdered ginger, black pepper, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl combine eggs, sugar, oil, molasses, apple juice, and fresh ginger. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Fold in crystallized ginger. Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for an hour or until a thin knife inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake before releasing the sides of the pan. Serve warm.

Categories: baked · desserts · wintery

vegan chocolate cake

March 4, 2008 · 4 Comments

So I’m not vegan.  Veganism in many forms annoys me.  I rant often and at length against vegans, because so many of them have a love for soy cheese that baffles me and anyone who loves feta.  I love yogurt, I love honey, and although I have a weird relationship with eggs (more on this another time), I praise the blond haired blue eyed baby jesus that all of these things are readily available to me.  As someone who supports local foods, though, I of course encourage myself and others to buy all of these things as close to home as possible.  They’re better for us, better for the animals, better for the planet. 

Look, if you want to throw together a chick’n sandwich for a last-minute lunch, fine, but I am a firm believer that change in diet really means… change in diet.  Shift, don’t substitute.  And take it as an opportunity to learn new ways of cooking.  Find your favorite way to barbecue tempeh.  And don’t just blindly put tofu in place of ricotta.  Understand the way things ought to taste; don’t fight their flavors.  And don’t forget to eat a well-rounded diet.  No one likes a cranky vegan.

Moving on from self-righteous (yet valuable!) diatribes, I will say that I think vegan baked goods are great when they’re done right.  As the vegan movement gains momentum, the old Depression-era trick of combining baking soda and vinegar in cakes to create the leavening otherwise assisted by eggs is becoming popular again.  Butter is replaced with oil, milk with soymilk or water.  And, if the proportions are right, it’s not one of those stupefying combinations of rubber + rock that so often accompanies the mental image of vegan baking - in fact, it’s so dern tasty you’ll fool all your friends into thinking that they’re sinking their pearly whites into a chocolate cake straight from dairy heaven.  I say wait until they’re halfway finished, then let the cat out of the bag.  They’ll eat the rest and then maybe go home and jump on the vegan baking bandwagon.  (Or shall we say, vegan baking revolution?  OK, maybe we won’t.)

This recipe is adapted from one that I found on allrecipes.com. Of the things I’ve changed, the one worth noting is the red wine vinegar - the original called for distilled white vinegar, which I’ve never found here. I think it makes a difference in flavor if you eat the cake right out of the oven (mea culpa!), but by the time it cools, you can’t tell it’s there. The cinnamon is optional but highly recommended - the small amount by no means overpowers, but it’s enough to make people say, “Now what exactly is that lovely flavor?”

Vegan Chocolate Cake

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat or all purpose flour
1 cup sugar (I’ve used 3/4 cup and been fine)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 cup water

Preheat to 350F. Grease a medium loaf pan. (Mine is 7 1/2″ by 3 1/2″, but I live in the strange land of metrics. Use whatever you have and don’t sweat it.) It doesn’t hurt, with most vegan baked goods, to line the pan with parchment paper.

In a large bowl sift together flour(s), sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a separate bowl combine oil, vanilla, vinegar, and water. Pour wet into dry and mix until combined. Pour into prepared baking pan and bake 45 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. (But don’t overbake!) Let cool in pan 5 minutes then turn out onto a rack to finish cooling.

Categories: baked · desserts · pantry-dependent · vegan