This seems the right time of year to post a recipe that will help you use up all that garden produce. This recipe originated with our Aunt Evelyn who used to bring it to family picnics. I’m sure it’s not unique, since it’s just sliced veggies and a warm sweet and sour marinade. There is no oil in this recipe and it only uses a 1/4 cup of sugar for a large amount of vegetables, so it’s diet friendly too. The salt content might be a little high for some, but I expect you could cut back on that and use additional spices to boost the flavor.

You don’t have to use both zucchini and cucumbers if you prefer one over the other. The dressing also works well on other cooked veggies. Green beans come to mind. They’ll get better with age.

The key here is slicing both the zucchini and cucumbers thin. Eventually they’ll become soft and nicely pickled and the dish can be used to top a green salad or served on its own. It keeps forever in the fridge. “Forever” being two weeks before we ate it all up.

Cucumber Zucchini Salad

• 1 small red onion
• 2 medium zucchinis unpeeled
• 2 medium cucumbers peeled
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 2-3 garlic gloves, peeled and slightly crushed
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• black pepper to taste (lots)

Chop up the onion as fine as you like.

Score the zucchini and cucumbers with a fork and cut into very thin slices. A mandolin or food processor makes the job go faster, but a really sharp knife works just as well.

Alternate layers of zucchini, cucumbers and onions in a bowl. You’ll want to leave enough room at the top for the water that will eventually cover the veggies.

Dissolve sugar and salt in a cup of hot water (I think I used boiling, allowed it to cool before pouring over the salad). Add the rest of the ingredients and stir well.  Pour over the veggies and mush the garlic down into the salad.

Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to let the flavors blend and the veggies soften. Stir at some point.

Goes great with meat or chicken, hamburgers and BBQ, but probably not pancakes.

P.S. I just noticed that when I made this, I added some other spice, see those little yellow seeds in the picture above. I have no idea what I did there. Which just goes to show you can open the spice cupboard and throw in whatever floats your boat. I bet that’s mustard seed.

Sunday Supper

It’s 95 degrees here and humid. I want ice cream for dinner. What we’ll probably have is grilled salmon, new potatoes and string beans. Or maybe a salad so I don’t have to turn on the stove at all. After washing the potatoes, I’ll put them in foil with olive oil, salt and pepper and dill, parsley or chives (or a combination) and roast on the grill until done, +/- 20 minutes. For the last 10 minutes, I’ll move the potatoes to one side of the grill and add a couple salmon slices with dill and lemon.

Brownies for dessert.

What’s on your plate?

I took this quick picture before we devoured this cake so you won’t see any attempt at staging a shot. This is straight kitchen-counter, indoor-lighting, no-frills photography. What you can’t see is Jack sitting at the table with a fork and a glass of milk, waiting for me to “cut the damn cake already”.

I don’t know how long I’ve been making chocolate sauerkraut cake but I know that I had a hard time finding a recipe for it, so it must have been pre-Google. Turns out that putting sauerkraut into a chocolate cake isn’t all that unusual  — I found 69,000 links to “chocolate sauerkraut cake” when I Googled it last night. Who knew?

Thanks to the buttermilk and sauerkraut this cake is moist and flavorful. Be sure to rinse the sauerkraut well. If you chop it fine enough, the sauerkraut disappears in the cake. But if you do a fast, rough chopping, you’ll be able to see the kraut and feel the texture, which will remind you of coconut.  In either case you’ll end up with a deep chocolate flavor.

And you do know that if there’s no buttermilk in the house, you can make your own sour milk by adding lemon juice or vinegar to milk and letting it stand for a bit, right? A tablespoon of vinegar or slightly less of the lemon juice works.

I usually make cupcakes and a small cake from this recipe, just because I swing that way. We eat the small cake right away and I freeze the cupcakes.  It’s easy to pull one cupcake out of the freezer for Jack and I don’t have the temptation of a whole cake sitting on the kitchen shelf. I do that with most cake recipes; even if I bake a Bundt or layer cake, at least half of it gets frozen.

A note about the baking temperature. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth over what temp I bake this at.  I’ve found that 375 degrees works better than 350 degrees for this recipe. I tested it again this time by baking the cupcakes at 350 and the cake at 375. The cupcakes didn’t rise and dome nicely as they should; the top was flat even with the toothpick test said they were done. The cake domed nicely, set well and seemed to come out a little firmer and resulted in a cake I was pleased with. The cupcakes taste fine — the flat top keeps the icing from falling off but they won’t win any prizes for looks.

So if you can’t taste the sauerkraut why use it?  Why do we put zucchini in all kinds of things? I don’t know why it works but it does make a great cake. It also uses up leftover sauerkraut  when you have half a jar sitting in the fridge and no desire for short ribs and kraut, or sausage and kraut, or pork chops and kraut.

Let me know how your cake turns out.

Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake

• 8-oz sauerkraut
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 2 teas baking soda
• 1/2 teas salt
• 1/4 cup cocoa, I use Dutch processed
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature is best
• 1 teas vanilla
• 3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk
• 3/4 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour your pans (I use Baker’s Joy spray) or line your muffin cups. This cake lends itself to almost any pan size.

Rinse the sauerkraut well and squeeze it dry. Put it in a food processor or blender and chop it fine. I have a small food processor thingy that I use and it comes out great.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa and set aside.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until light in color and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; add the vanilla. Mix well.

Alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk/sour milk to the batter. Add the sauerkraut and mix well.

While you’ve been mixing the batter, your water should be brought to a boil. I usually fold the water in by hand. It tends to spatter if you use the mixer, even on low speed. Plus it seems like I can incorporate the water more quickly with a spatula.

Turn the batter into your pan(s) or cupcake tins and bake until a toothpick in the center comes out clean and the cake is nicely risen.

I made 12 cupcakes and a 6 by 9 inch cake. Here’s where my memory fails me. I believe I cooked the cupcakes for about 22 – 25 minutes; but I lost track, so start checking them around 15 – 18 minutes (sooner if you’re baking at 375 degrees). The small cake took about 25 – 30 minutes, but again it was one of those things where I checked it and put it back in the oven for another 3 – 4 minutes a couple of times. I’d start checking it around 20 minutes and go from there.

Cupcakes should be removed from the tin as soon as possible so they don’t steam. Let the cake cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then turn it out and let it cool completely before icing . If you’re making a sheet cake to take to a potluck, it can stay in the pan and you can just frost the top. In this house, frosting goes on ALL sides, not just the top; what’s the point of cake if there’s no frosting? So I take my cakes out of the pan.

The following frosting is finger-licking good, or use your own standby.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

• 3 oz cream cheese
• 2 – 3 Tbsp milk or half and half
• 2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
• 1 teas vanilla
• pinch of salt
• 2 – 3 cups confectioners sugar, sifted

Place the cream cheese in 2 tablespoons of milk or half and half and soften it in the microwave until you can mix it easily together, a couple short bursts works best. Blend in the melted chocolate, vanilla and salt and mix well. Add the sugar, a cup or so at a time, until the frosting is a consistency that you like. If it gets too thick, you can thin it with some of  the extra milk; a teaspoon at a time works best. The frosting might seem thin, but it thickens as it sets and spreads easily. And it tastes great right off the spoon. Don’t ask me why there are two cupcakes without any frosting in the freezer. Just never you mind.

Anyhoo, let’s talk about something much more fun.

Like chocolate.

Specifically chocolate cake.

Specifically chocolate cake that’s low-cal (sort of), moist and great tasting.

I don’t know if I’ve said it before but I use the Eating Well website all the time and subscribe to their magazine. They cook the way I mostly like to cook. They use real ingredients and concentrate on making food that’s healthy and still tastes good. Their recipes limit butter and saturated fats, opting for olive or vegetable oil and use ingredients like buttermilk in baked goods to keep them moist and tender. Not everything I’ve made from their recipes works, but I can usually tweak the ingredients to suit our tastes.

I was pleased when I found a recipe for a chocolate cake that looked like something we’d enjoy and I was right. I’ve made it a few times now and it’s become a favorite. It’s quick and easy to make, no sifting of flour a million times, no separating of eggs and whipping whites and all that jazz. Yet you still end up with a cake that is moist with plenty of chocolate flavor and just the right texture and heft.

I’ve made a minor modification to the recipe, which was to substitute espresso powder for hot coffee. You don’t taste the coffee in the cake, but I think it helps intensify the chocolate flavor. I also changed to a chocolate glaze because I didn’t like the icing they used. My glaze increases the calories and fat but I believe it’s worth it.

The calorie count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 225 – 275 calories, depending upon if you use their icing or my glaze. Without the glaze there are 4 grams of fat and only one of those is from saturated fat.

And truthfully, this cake is so moist you don’t need any icing, just a dusting of confectioners’ sugar if you’re feeling just the tiniest bit guilty about eating chocolate cake.

(Of course you know that if you eat your cake standing up over the sink, there are no calories or fat grams at all. I think that’s true of potato chips too.)

Sorry I don’t have a better picture but we were reaching the end of the cake when I remembered to take a photo. By then all the good-looking parts had been eaten.

Got milk?

Here’s the original Died-and-Went-to-Heaven chocolate cake

My version:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 – 4 teaspoons (rounded) espresso powder
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly oil a 12-cup Bundt pan or coat it with nonstick cooking spray. Dust the pan with flour, invert and shake out the excess. (This never works for me. The only way my cakes don’t stick is if I use Baker’s Joy spray.)

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, white sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Add buttermilk, brown sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla; beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Combine boiling water and espresso powder and whisk into batter until completely incorporated. (The batter will be quite thin.)

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes; remove from the pan and let cool completely. Glaze and enjoy.

Chocolate Glaze:

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup milk or half and half
6 oz. or 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Put sugar, butter and milk in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Let boil for about a minute then remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips.  When the glaze is smooth, pour it over the cake. This will be thin but it will firm up as it cools.

This recipe makes a LOT of glaze. I had a little fudge lake in the middle of the cake with little puddles of fudge around the outside. So if you’re just not into that much fudge you might want to cut the glaze recipe in half. Silly you.

I haven’t made this cake in anything but a Bundt pan but I don’t see any reason you couldn’t turn it into cupcakes or a layer cake.

Fruitcake biscotti

It appears that I’m not done talking about fruitcake. In this case, it’s fruitcake biscotti, another holiday favorite in our house. This recipe is from an old issue of Eating Well magazine. It’s quick and easy and makes a lot of small biscotti.

Compared to some of the butter laden holiday treats we’ve been eating these are pretty healthy, since they contain no fat beyond what’s in two egg yolks. The original recipe listed these cookies at 36 calories apiece.

A cup of tea and a couple of these in front of the fire would be a nice way to spend a late winter afternoon. They are crunchy and sweet without being overwhelming. Dunk before enjoying and don’t forget to grab your knitting!

Fruitcake Biscotti

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.

• 2 1/4 cups mixed dried fruit, chopped
• 3 Tbsp candied orange or lemon peel or citron, chopped
• 1/4 cup rum
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur unbleached)
• 2/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 large eggs and 1 egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Mixing

Dried fruit with rum (yum)

Combine dried and candied fruit with rum, let sit at least 15 minutes.

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl.

Whisk together eggs, egg white and vanilla extract and add to flour mixture, stirring to incorporate. Stir in fruit and rum until mixture is well incorporated.
The dough will be sticky and you’ll probably want to flour your hands for the next step.

Shaping

On a well-floured surface, divide dough into 3 logs, 1 1/2 inches wide and 14-16 inches long. The logs look very skinny at this point, but they do expand while baking.

Place logs on prepared baking sheet and bake 25-30 minutes or until firm to the touch. Remove logs from oven and let cool slightly (5 – 10 minutes) for easier handling.

Biscotti after first baking

Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees.

Using a serrated knife for best results, cut logs into 1/2 inch diagonal slices. (You have my permission — like you need it — to eat the crumbs.) Stand slices upright on baking sheet and bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until golden.

Cool completely before storing.

Notes

For the first baking, I can fit all three logs on one cookie sheet but once I’ve cut them into slices I find it’s helpful to divide the slices between two sheets for the second round in the oven.

Also, after the second baking, the cookies may still feel slightly soft, but they firm up as they cool. Since you want crunch not bricks, don’t overcook these.

I often soak the fruit in the rum the night before, just because it gives me a jump on the recipe. I use whatever dried fruit I have on hand, which this year was dried cranberries, cherries and pineapple; currants, apricots and a few dates. And if you’re making fruitcake cake, just prepare two extra cups of fruit, throw the rum in and let the mixture sit until the next day.

This recipe is so easy to pull together you don’t even need to get your mixer out. I use my favorite wooden spoon to combine everything. Don’t worry if at first there doesn’t appear to be enough moisture to bring the batter together. Let it sit for a minute or two after adding the fruit/rum mixture and you’ll find there’s plenty of liquid to mix your dough.

I’ve never used nuts in this recipe, although I intended to this year and simply forgot. Chopped almonds would be good I think and I would probably cut back the fruit by half a cup maybe.

I wish I had a better picture for you but the camera is still in the shop and anyway, all that’s left of this year’s batch are a few crumbs. Give this recipe a try if you’re looking for a little different sweet treat for the holidays.

Pecans for fruitcake

I have a husband who likes fruitcake. Now I know fruitcakes are easy targets for ridicule. They’re heavy, rich and full of booze and last forever. While that last feature is often desirable in such things as good times and batteries, not so in most fruitcakes.

But there can be exceptions. Jack has specific ideas about what he wants in a fruitcake: more dried fruit than candied fruit, some nuts but still leave plenty of batter. And go easy on the alcohol.

For years we bought commercial fruitcakes to see if they met his expectations. For a while the closest we came was the apricot pecan cakes from Collins Bakery. Which are delicious and come close to the idea of a fruitcake, but at $36 for less than 2 pounds of cake they were an indulgence. And with only one fruit they seemed to lack the flavor surprise that a fruitcake provides. The search continued.

We tried the ones from Gethsemeni Farms which were dark, heavy and very rich. And so full of bourbon that we got lightheaded just unwrapping it. Since he doesn’t like the overwhelming taste of liquor in his desserts, these were given a pass after one try. I think we also ordered their bourbon fudge, don’t ask me why.  It’s the only time I remember throwing out fudge.

There were others, equally as expensive and equally full of brandy, bourbon or rum. Then there were those cheap little fruitcakes you see in the grocery store with tons of toxic neon red and green candied fruit and a nut or two. When he started bringing those home, I decided it was time to try my hand at baking fruitcake.

After much searching I found an old recipe that looked inviting in King Arthur Flour’s 200th anniversary cookbook. What attracted me first was that it’s a light fruitcake, both in the sense that it’s not heavily seasoned and the batter is pale yellow. But it’s not light in weight: this year’s batch weighs 5 pounds.

I’ve made this fruitcake for at least 5 years now and each year I’ve modified it. It’s still not where I want it, but it’s getting better.

Lots of dried and candied fruit

One of my modifications is to alternate soaking the fruitcake with rum and apple juice. For the first week I use all rum, then switch to apple juice for the next week and then rum during week three. This is purely a personal taste preference. If you like heavily rum-soaked fruitcake, use all rum and damn the torpedoes.

The cake really should be baked in early November to allow enough time to season for about 6 weeks before eating. I never remember to do that — partly because I never start thinking about the holidays that early. This year’s batch just got baked about 10 days ago and with some intensive soaking should still be fruitcake within about a month. It does get better with age, so if you can remember to make it in early November and give it more time to sit, you’ll be rewarded with a sweet, lightly spiced fruitcake that just might change your mind about this classic.

Light Fruitcake

This is a big recipe and makes a goodly amount of fruitcake. About 5 pounds worth actually. I’ve found it helps to combine the wet with the dry ingredients in two batches and do the final mixing in one bowl once he batter is mostly moistened. Otherwise you’ll need the muscles of a stevedore to mix the batter.

Adapted from The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook

• 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (King Arthur preferred, natch)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 to 4 cups or 1 1/2 pounds of pecan halves
• Up to 5 cups (2 1/2 pounds) of dried and candied fruit. I generally use a combination of crasins, chopped apricots, dried cherries, dates, golden raisins, candied orange and lemon peel, citron (if I have it) and dried or candied pineapple
• 2 sticks butter (unsalted), softened
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons rum

More rum for maturing process

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, spices and salt. After mixing, divide the dry ingredients into two large bowls. Then add half the nuts and fruit to each bowl. You don’t need to be exact because it will eventually all get combined again anyway.

I also had some orange peel and powdered lemon peel from Penzey’s Spices in my refrigerator so I threw in a little of that this year. I wonder if I’ll be able to taste it.

I usually go a little light on the nuts so the proportion of batter to ingredients leans a little more to the cake side. But I screwed up this year and added more pecans than normal so we’ll see if we like it as well this way.

Using your electric mixer, cream the butter until it’s light. Add the sugar, about a cupful at a time, beating until the mixture is light and lemon colored. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until the batter is fluffy. Blend in the rum.

Now spoon about half of the wet into each of the fruit and nut combinations. Stir each bowl until roughly combined then pour one bowl into the other to finish mixing. Believe me it’s easier to work with half the batter to start with.

Grease and flour your selected pans well. I use 3 different size pans: 3 x 5 or 4 x 7 for gifts, and 5 X 9 for us. Fill your selected pans about two-thirds full and bake for about 2 to 2.5 hours or until golden.

Maturing the cake

As soon as the cakes come out of the oven, pour more rum over the top. How much rum? Maybe a tablespoon on the small cakes and 2 – 3 tablespoons on the bigger cakes. You be the judge. Once it has soaked in, remove the cakes from their pans and let cool.

Be careful not to over bake your fruitcake as I think I may have done this year. The edges can always be trimmed but why waste any of that fruity goodness?

Maturing the fruitcake

Once the cakes are completely cool, wrap in plastic and then aluminum foil. Store in a cool place. Every few days sprinkle with rum or apple juice.

While the recipe called for “sprinkling” the cake with rum, I’m more of a pour-it-on kind of girl. This year I’m trying something new: I’ve been poking holes in the cake with a metal skewer and using the fine tip on my baster to inject liquid into the middle of the cake.  I’ll let you know how that works. So far it seems to be speeding up the process of maturing the cake.

When you can’t stand waiting any longer, slice and enjoy.

There. That’s how I make fruitcake that we actually enjoy. The matured cake tastes of lightly spiced sweet rum and fruit. The rum flavor is there, but it doesn’t knock you out. This cake keeps forever in the refrigerator and is excellent with a glass of milk or a cup of hot tea. I’m looking forward to the first slice in another couple of weeks.

ETA: I just weighed the cakes and this recipe actually makes seven pounds of fruitcake. It’s a good thing some of them are being given as presents. Also, for you fruitcake fans that haven’t yet found the perfect one, there’s another (and smaller) recipe that I’m going to try in the 2008 issue of Holiday Baking from Cook’s Illustrated (on sale now) called White Fruitcake. It doesn’t call for any alcohol, doesn’t have to mature and it’s steamed rather than baked, all of which sound intriguing. It relies heavily on candied cherries (bleah) so I’d replace those in my version.

Also, the idea of injecting the rum and/or apple juice appears to be working. The cakes are maturing much faster this year than they have in previous years, when I’ve just poured the liquid on the cakes. I think they may be ready to eat by next week.

A while back I found a recipe for No-Knead Bread via the Farmgirl Fare blog which originated with the New York Times in 2006 and which they got from some other guy (who is probably a pretty good baker because Farmgirl Susan really likes his stuff and I think she knows her stuff, but I don’t know him).

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to try this recipe for months and I finally made time for it this weekend. In between baking the cookies and fixing tacos for dinner yesterday, I threw the batter together. After all it’s only flour, yeast, salt and water and I’ve baked bread before, so no big deal.

Mixing the batter
I discovered I didn’t have enough bread flour and practically no all-purpose flour either (see cookies and cranberry bread). No worries, I just added a cup of whole wheat flour. And I threw in an extra pinch of instant yeast just to make sure. Mixed it up and set it aside to rise overnight. I expected to find it bubbling and overflowing the mixing bowl this morning. Like the time I made waffles with yeast and left the batter to rest overnight. An hour later, the plastic lid blew off the bowl from all the yeasty goodness.

Which it might have done if I hadn’t turned the thermostat down to 66 degrees before going to bed. The recipe recommends a 70-degree room.

So the batter went into the oven to finish proofing this morning. It never did rise as much as I thought it should, but after a couple hours I got tired of waiting for it to do something so I moved on to the next step. I got out my Pyrex casserole for baking. The recipe wants you to put the empty baking pot into the oven while it preheats to 450 degrees.

And discovered that my 2.5 quart Pyrex dish was a teeny tiny bit smaller than the 6-to-8 quart pot the recipe called for. Anything I have that big is non-stick which shouldn’t go into a 450 degree oven.

So, I decided to punt (again). I divided the very sticky dough in two and used both my slow cooker pot and the Pyrex casserole and hoped to hell neither one of them cracked while preheating in the oven.

Putting empty pots into an oven seems so-not-a-good-idea to me. I couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting for them to explode so I left the kitchen until it was time to dump the bread into the pots.

And of course the bread STICKS to the napkins despite my generous use of flour. Muttering nasty words, I scraped the dough off the napkins into the hot pots and threw them into the oven. Only then realizing I’d forgotten to test whether the dough had risen enough. Too late.

By this time I’m so done with this recipe I’ve got a fork in me.

Then wait wait wait some more while it cooks.

The most annoying thing about this whole process? The bread turned out great. Brown and crispy crust with lots of big airholes for soaking up tonight’s beef stew. The whole wheat flour gave it a little extra flavor and it’s toothsome enough without being overly hard to chew. It’s not the best bread I’ve ever eaten, but then we have Wheatfield’s Bakery to thank for that.

This recipe is ridiculously easy if you don’t freak out about the little stuff. I plan to make it again as soon as I buy a 6-quart cast iron pot.

Or maybe not. Farmgirl Susan says you don’t even have to do that.

Some days you just have to accept that you’re an idiot.

I found this recipe years ago courtesy of a blogger who no longer has a site. This was long enough ago that blogs were still new and she was an early adopter. I don’t remember her name or the name of her site but she was an attorney who worked for the State of New York, lived outside of Albany, was both a knitter and a sewer and was married with 3 kids I think.

I have in my notes that this recipe originated with Berta’s Carrot Cake recipe in The New Basics cookbook, although the original blogger made some changes to cooking times.

This recipe calls for cooked pureed carrots. It does seem to help keep the cake moist and there’s no carrot shredding necessary. That by itself is enough to sell me on this recipe. If I shred carrots on a grater I always lose a fingernail or scrape a knuckle. A food processor works fine but then I have a bazillion parts to wash. This way, I peel the carrots, steam them, mash them up and I’m done. I’ve discovered that the puree doesn’t have to be completely smooth either, small chunks work just fine.

It’s the only carrot cake recipe I’ve used for more than five years. There are no raisins but lots of pineapple, coconut and walnuts, all the yummy stuff.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup oil (I used canola)
3 eggs beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups pureed cooked carrots (DO NOT skip the step of steaming the carrots until very soft, pureeing them, and cooling them down. One pound of carrots will give you just enough puree for one cake. The secret to this cake’s moistness is in the pureed carrots).
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup canned crushed pineapple, drained

Preheat oven to 350. Sift flour, sugar, baking soda and cinnamon together in a bowl. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla and beat well. Fold in the carrots, walnuts, coconut and pineapple. Pour the batter into your prepared pan(s) (see below) and bake.

When thoroughly cooled, ice it with this frosting:

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 T butter, at room temp
3 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp vanilla
juice of 1/2 lemon

Cream the butter and cream cheese in a mixing bowl. Slowly sift in the confectioner’s sugar and continue beating — avoiding lumps. Stir in vanilla and lemon juice. The cook gets to lick the beaters.

What size pan to use?

The original recipe called for a 9 by 13 inch cake pan lined with greased waxed paper and said to bake for 50 minutes. I don’t remember ever using a cake pan but maybe I did when I first made this recipe. Go ahead and do that if you want to take the cake to a party or if it just floats your boat.

As you can see from the picture when I make a cake I almost always make cupcakes or mini-bundt cakes. I have silicone baking cups like these and these and some mini bundt pans (no longer available) that I got from King Arthur Flour. The small ones make the perfect serving size for me and the bigger ones are Jack-sized. (Guess who eats most of the desserts in this house?) I know some people have issues with silicone and how it bakes, but these seem to work well for me. I don’t grease the silicone pans. Cooking time: I start testing around 15 – 20 minutes, but you may go as long as 30 minutes depending on your pan size.

This recipe freezes well, including the frosting. Smaller portions will defrost while you eat dinner if you remember to take them out beforehand. If not, 10 – 15 seconds in the microwave does the trick.

Enjoy!

One of my favorite cookbooks is a slim little paperback called Golde’s Homemade Cookies A Treasured Collection of Timeless Recipes. When I’m in the cookie baking mood, which is often, this is the book I pluck off the shelves first. I bought this book soon after it was first published in 1984. Let me tell you, Golde knows her cookies.

You won’t spend a lot of money or time searching for fancy ingredients for Golde’s recipes. And the cookies aren’t trendy. These are the kind of cookies your grandmother made when you were a kid.  The 130 recipes include selections that I tend to think are season-appropriate: Mincemeat Cookies for holidays, Light Lemon Squares for summer. And you can search for cookies by name or through the category index: cookies to bake with kids, chocolate-lovers, bar cookies, etc.

Even though I use this cook book a lot, I tend to make the same recipes over and over including Mrs. Vincent’s Snickerdoodles and Butter Pecan Turtle Bars. This week I branched out and tried some of the others. I made the Cream Cheese Brownies and yesterday, after buying zucchini at the market, I made the Honey Zucchini-Nut Bars. Both were judged a success by the resident cookie monster.

Honey Zuchhini-Nut Bars
from Golde’s Homemade Cookies

Prep time: 20 minutes
Yield: 40 bars (I got about 30)

1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup honey
3 eggs, well-beaten
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup shredded zucchini, squeezed dry
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
Dash of salt

Topping:
1/3 cup sifted powdered sugar

Grease a 9″ by 13″ baking pan and set aside. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix pastry ingredients together in order listed. Spread into baking pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until lightly brown. Cut into finger sized pieces. While still warm, roll in sifted powdered sugar. These freeze well, but wait to roll in powdered sugar after removing from the freezer.

These are sweet without being overwhelming. More like cake than cookies, they have a delicate honey flavor that complements the dates and walnuts. The zucchini just blends in but does give these golden cookies moisture and attractive flecks of green.

I liked that I didn’t have to take out my mixer, the ingredients can be blended with a rubber spatula or spoon. I did use up all my measuring cups because I laid out all my ingredients before hand, but the dishwasher was ready for a cycle anyway, so that worked out fine.

Next time, I might drizzle an icing on these instead of rolling in the powdered sugar, which didn’t really add to the recipe (and melted by the end of the day). And even though I show them with a fork, you don’t really need one.

I used local eggs, honey and zucchini for these and baked them early in the morning before the kitchen got hot. I froze half the batch to have on hand later. Next week at the market I plan to buy more zucchini to shred and freeze in 3/4 cup servings to make these this winter.

Note: My edition of Golde’s Homemade Cookies A Treasured Collection of Timeless Recipes was published in paperback by Williamson Publishing, Charlotte, Vermont in 1984. Amazon has a hardcover 2004 edition available from Gramercy Publishing. The cover is different and the index lists several recipes that aren’t in mine, but it could be they’ve just given the same recipes new names. The Honey Zucchini bars are still there, as are the Butter Pecan Turtle Bars and many others I recognize. At $9.99, it’s a bargain that will keep you baking cookies for years.

We like scones in this house. My success rate in baking scones, however, has been no more than average, edible but not memorable. I always end up adding more flour because of the stickiness of the dough. Adding more flour means more mixing which means tough flat scones. Not a recipe for success.  

I was flipping through a pile of old magazines recently  and came across an article by Corby Kummer in The Atlantic about Camp Bread in San Francisco: ” a three-day jamboree of classes and visits to bakeries, restaurants, and flour mills in the Bay Area” put on by the Bread Bakers Guild. The last half of his article was a recipe for Irish tea scones made with raspberries and raisins. There were several intriguing parts to the recipe:

• - the use of olive oil instead of butter (healthier and no cutting in),
• - adding an egg to help the dough to hold together and reduce the sticky factor,
• - and starting the scones in a super-hot 500 degree oven.

So first thing this morning, I brewed a pot of coffee and got out the sifter. An hour later, we had them for breakfast with scrambled eggs and fruit salad. They’re a keeper. The dough was well behaved and except for having to sift the flour 5 times, the whole process went quickly.  (And actually, sifting the flour takes less time than if I’d had to cut in butter.)

Thanks to the buttermilk, they were light and tender but with a chewy texture that was just what I was looking for. Not too sweet but with plenty of flavor. Even though I put jam on the table we used only a touch of butter. I’ll make these again and next time I’ll try other fillers. Maybe cinnamon and nutmeg with a few pecans. Blueberries and lemon zest. Cranberries and orange.

Below is my version of  the recipe. Read “The Secret of the Irish Scone” from the September, 2007 issue of The Atlantic to get the original recipe and some entertaining insights into bread baking.

Raspberry Raisin Scones

Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenreit

Combine and sift together five times before placing in a large mixing bowl:
1 3/4 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Whisk together:
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg

and then add
1/2 cup raisins to the liquid mixture to plump a little. I didn’t have enough raisins but I had some dried cranberries so they went in too

Measure out
1/2 cup frozen raspberries, but don’t thaw. IQF please, no syrup

Whisk together and set aside
1-2 eggs with a pinch of salt (glaze) (the original recipe called for 2 eggs, I think one egg is plenty)

Grease a cookie sheet or use parchment paper or Silpat. Get out a biscuit cutter and some extra flour for dipping the cutter in.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the milk/oil/raisin mixture. Blend with a wooden spoon, mixing gently and just till all ingredients are incorporated. The dough will come together much easier than any other scone dough you’ve tried before. Stickiness begone! 

Turn the dough out onto waxed paper and cover it with a second sheet to pat the dough out to about 8 x 10 inches. Remove the top sheet, sprinkle the raspberries over half the dough and cover them with the other half. Put the wax paper back on and pat the dough out until it’s about 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick. Remove the top sheet again, and using the biscuit cutter, cut rounds, dipping the cutter in flour each time. Place the scones on the cookie sheet, and pat out the leftover dough into more scones.  I got about 10 3-inch rounds and used every bit of dough.

Glaze the scones with the beaten egg mixture and put in the refrigerator to chill for 15 minutes (mine stayed in there for more like 25 minutes) or in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Glaze the scones a second time before putting them in the oven. Immediately turn the temperature down to 425 degrees. Bake for 15 minutes for medium size scones or 18 minutes for larger 3-inch scones. Don’t overcook them, they won’t be dark brown but the egg wash will give them a golden color.

Cool on the baking sheet for 10 mintues to let the bottoms brown a little more, then transfer to a rack to finish cooling. Enjoy with butter or jam for breakfast, tea or whenever.