Christmas Cake: Day 2

I made two Christmas Cakes!  They are soaking up whiskey and waiting for Christmas and, hopefully, not growing any pathogens. I'll post an updated picture when it comes time to pour a little more bourbon on them this weekend.  Every Sunday between now and Christmas they get a little drink!

Christmas Cake
Adapted from Felicity Cloake's Recipe

Takes 1 hour + 2 hours baking + weeks of waiting
Makes 1 cake

1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon butter, very soft or melted
1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon muscovado or dark brown sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice (a suggestion: 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon + 1/4 teaspoon clove + 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg; you can also use pumpkin pie spice if you have it)
1/4 cup ground almonds
zest of one lemon (an unwaxed one if possible)
1/4 cup blanched almonds
Boozy Fruits

Preheat oven to 280 degrees fahrenheit.

With two layers of parchment, line and butter an 8 inch cake tin, or what I like to use is a 1 1/2 quart Corning bakeware or similar casserole type dishes. Trim the excess parchment.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking in each until fully incorporated. This will take some time, but when you are done, your batter will look very smooth and rich. Add boozy fruits and their juices, lemon zest and almonds, and stir until just combined.

In another bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, mixed spice, ground almonds and a pinch of salt. 

Fold flour mixture into butter mixture until just combined.

Pour into prepared cake tin and create a hollow with your spatula. This trick prevents a dome from forming on your cake!

Bake for one hour.  Cover loosely with tin foil and bake for 30 more minutes. Check to see if it's done (an inserted fork comes out clean). If it's not, cover again, and bake in 10 minute intervals until cooked. Each cake took approximately an extra 40 minutes for a total baking time of 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Let cool completely. When cool, poke holes almost all the way through the cake.  Brush with whiskey.  Wrap in foil and keep in an airtight container. Brush with whiskey, around once a week until Christmas!

Cardamom and Saffron Mandelbrot

I love the holidays!  I love the occasions to gather over food with loved ones, the opportunities to reflect on the year that has passed, and to simply enjoy being together.

I also love the family recipes that get brought out around holidays and the stories that go with them.  A friend and I had an early Hannukah brunch where we made Jewish classics with Indian flavors.  She made curried sweet potato latkes, and I made an interpretation of matzo ball soup (recipe coming soon).  The highlight though, might have been cardamom and saffron mandelbroit, adapted from another friend's family recipe.  It came with instructions from Aunt Alice and my friend's mom, and this post-script: "Aunt Alice was the coolest. She was a big, fleshy, jolly, southern Jewish woman from Atlanta with a drawl and a really sassy sense of humor. I am told that at one point she owned a cat named "Damnit" so she could have the thrill of hollering "Come here, Damnit!" off her porch in the evening."

Damnit would totally come running if he smelled these coming out of the oven!  They are delicious--not too sweet, not too hard, but like a cross between a very dry cake and shortbread.  And very nutty too!

I adapted Aunt Alice's recipe for vegans by substituting flax meal and water for the eggs (1 tablespoon flax meal + 1/4 cup water = 1 egg).  Flax meal is a wonderful substitute for eggs in recipes that use them to bind the ingredients together.  It will not help your baked goods rise however!  If you would prefer to use eggs, just switch out the flax meal and water with 4 eggs.

Yum!  Perfect to have around the house for the holidays, or good for any day along with a cup of tea!

Cardamom and Saffron Mandelbrot

Adapted from Aunt Alice's recipe and Nehama Stampfer Glogower's instructions

Takes 2 hours

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

1 cup (plus a little extra) raw almonds

1/4 cup flax meal

1 cup warm water

1 pinch saffron

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup sugar

6 cardamom pods, powdered fine

1 cup oil (I used grapeseed, but I wish I had had almond oil)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees fahrenheit.  Toast the almonds for 15 minutes.  When cool, pulverize to coarse meal in a food processor.  Set aside a few tablespoons to dust the cookies.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit, and make sure the rack is in the middle of the oven.

In a large bowl, mix flax meal, water and saffron.  Let congeal while you mix together the ground almonds, flour, baking powder, and salt in another bowl.  Beat the sugar, cardamom and oil into the other wet ingredients.  Add dry ingredients, and stir until combined.

With wet or oiled hands, form the dough into three 'snake-like things', and place them length-wise and evenly spaced on a baking sheet lined with parchment.  Bake for 40 to 50 minutes 'until it looks toasty'.

Mix the set-aside almonds and a little sugar together.

Slide the parchment paper with mandel bread off of the baking tray onto a counter.  Sprinkle the tops of the snakes with the almond and sugar mixture, and cut into even pieces, about 1/2 inch.  

 
Lie them flat on the baking sheet and return to the oven.  Turn the temperature down to 300 degrees.  Bake for 10 minutes to dry them out.  Turn them over, and bake for 10 more minutes.

Thanks Aunt Alice!  Let the holiday baking begin!

Sorta Vegan Fat Rascals for Yorkshire Lass Kate

Maybe you have heard that Prince William is marrying Catherine Middleton, a woman whose family includes a Yorkshire miner!  This labouring ancestor has led many to anoint Kate a commoner, and just like the millions of working Britons (and Canadians and Australians and Jamaicans) who will one day be her subjects. I learned from the very good Channel 4 documentary, Meet the Middletons now showing on Bravo and E!, that her ancestors also include Leeds solicitors and mill owners.  The show highlights her social-climbing grandmother on one side, and on the other side, the deaths of her three great-great uncles in the Great War, which allowed for the establishment of a trust for their sister's family (we don't need to go into sexist inheritance laws that wouldn't allow this sister to come into the family money (or go into the family business) in her own right).  This trust allowed for the education of Catherine's father's family, and helped pay for her expensive private schooling.

OK OK, I digress, this is a blog about food after all.  It kind of makes me uncomfortable all the discussion of her blood and the royal line!  Very Harry Potter.  One thing is clear: the lady had a lot of ancestors in Yorkshire.  On my trip to England last month, I went to York and visited the famous and very popular Betty's Tea room.

That was the line to have tea in the tea rooms!  Their most famous baked good is a fat rascal, a yummy, fruity scone, topped with a rascal-y grin.

Here's a sorta vegan recipe in case you are waking up early to watch the big event, or, are just looking for something to eat with tea!

Be careful!  These little scones inspired rascalry!

Fat Rascals

Inspired by Betty's and adapted from the Elmwood Inn's recipe

Makes 6 scones

Takes 1 hour

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch salt
4 ounces vegan margarine
1/3 cup granulated sugar
zest of one orange

zest of one lemon
1/3 cup currants
1/4 cup milk, plus more for glazing

6 maraschino cherries, halved
18 blanched almonds

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.  Line baking tray with parchment.

Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. With your fingers, work in the margarine until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.  Mix in sugar, zests and currants. Add the milk and bring the dough together.

Divide dough evenly into 6 balls, and place on baking sheet.  Flatten, and make the rascal faces with 2 maraschino cherry halves for eyes and 3 almonds for teeth.  Glaze the rascals generously with milk.  This is what makes them brown nicely.

Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.They are even better the next day--if you can wait!

cardamom pear loaf

Hello readers,

Perhaps like me, you've survived the great snowpocalypse that attacked much of North America (yes North America, dear States-side readers. When you see weather systems disappearing beyond the borders of the US on TV, they come here to Canada).  I can't bear the idea of leaving the house, the slushy streets, icy sidewalks, and the mountains of snow to be conquered on every street corner! All I want is cup upon cup of tea, and a little cake to go with it!

Inspired by a recent recipe on Gourmet Live, I devised a (vegan) cardamom pear loaf.  The original recipe is for a molasses cake, and I was intrigued by the method, which required adding boiling water and then freezing the dough to supposedly evenly bake the bread.  It produced a delicious cake, so moist and fluffy, and with only one egg! that I thought it a fine recipe for vegan tweaking.

This bread is so good - it makes two loaves, one for now, one for later, and fills the house with the yummiest scent of cardamom and vanilla baking.

Vegan Cardamom Pear Loaf

Makes 2 loaves

Takes 1 hour (plus freezing time)

1 cup honey

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

3/4 cup + 3 tablespoons canola oil

2 inches of the black innards of a vanilla pod (or 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract)

1/2 tsp ground cardamom (5-6 pods)

2 cups flour

1 cup semolina*

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3 pears sliced up into little bits

1/2 cup pistachios, toasted and coarsely chopped

1.5 cups boiling water

Toast the pistachios in a toaster oven or the big oven on 250 for 8–10 minutes.  Careful they don't burn!  When they've cooled, coarsely chop them.  If baking bread right away, preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grease and flour 2 loaf pans.

In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in the honey (you may want to melt the honey in the microwave or on the stove).  When dissolved, add oil, vanilla and cardamom, and stir vigorously until it's well-combined.  Add the flour, semolina, baking soda and salt, and stir until the dough resembles course, sandy meal.  Mix in the pears and crushed pistachios.

Add the boiling water and stir, the dough will be runny like pancake batter.

At this point you have two options, to freeze the dough or to not the freeze the dough.  I find that there is no difference between freezing and not freezing the dough in the finished bread.

The loaf on the left was baked yesterday with immediately mixed batter, and the loaf on the right was baked today, from batter that was frozen overnight.  It has a slightly larger crumb, but other than the differences from my pouring a bit more batter into the pan, tastes the same and has (basically) the same texture.

Oh well.  Since this recipe makes enough for 2 loaves, you get a later loaf for when you've eaten all of the first one!

Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes (a bit more if you have a frozen loaf) until a fork comes out cleanly.  Let cool in the pan, and then turn out and enjoy!

*Semolina is also known as rava or cream of wheat.  It gives the bread an extra little crunch.  If you don't want to use it, you can use another 1.5 cups of flour (3.5 cups flour total).

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Another sorta vegan dessert!  These cookies came out so beautifully, and honestly, were the product of just what I had on hand thrown together (a perfect way to get rid of the small amounts of sugars left in the pantry).

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Takes 1 hour
Makes 26 cookies

1/2 cup almond oil

1/4 cup Earth Balance vegan spread

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup milk (lactose free)

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

2 cups chocolate chips

3 cups rolled or quick cooking oatmeal

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper (or aluminum foil).

Beat together the sugars and almond oil.  Then add Earth Balance and beat until thoroughly combined.  Add vanilla and milk and stir until smooth.  Add baking soda, cinnamon and salt, and stir until well-combined.  Add flour, stir.  Add oats, and stir.  Add chocolate chips and walnuts, and yes, stir until combined.

Using a 1/4 cup measure, spoon dough onto cookie sheets, about 8 per sheet.  Bake for 12 to 14 minutes (one sheet in the oven at a time), rotating half way.

Let cool (if you can!).

Banana Hazelnut Bread

Here's another sorta vegan (no eggs, no butter, only lactose-free milk) recipe, for banana bread.  The betrothed decided he didn't like the little bananas we found in the market.  Too sweet for him.  So I made this bread, I wish I had chocolate chips to throw in, but none in the house.

I label my recipes "vegan" because I think they could easily be made vegan by substituting soymilk, juice (depending on the recipe), or even water for the lactose-free milk.  As a vegetarian and a personal chef to someone with food issues, I am always reading recipes that include meat and dairy and eggs, and thinking about how I could make the recipe work for us.  So rather than a strict classification of the recipe, the "vegan" tag works as an indicator of the recipe's suitability for adaptation.

Since I've started sorta vegan baking, I've realized the egg replacement is the toughest challenge.  1 large egg equals 3 1/4 Tablespoons of liquid, but you not only have to replace the liquid for the recipe, but the eggs account for so much of the texture of baked goods, the fluffiness of cakes, and the dense chewiness of cookies.  Because I like dense, moist banana bread, I didn't add extra baking powder and vinegar to this recipe (a common elementary school science solution to creating a rise in vegan baked goods--think that food coloring volcano you did in third grade happening inside the oven).

It rose beautifully, and the finished bread had a crispy, thick crust, and a moist interior.   I used a local flour mill's unbleached "white" flour, so the the bread also had a nice crunch to it.

I also think the hazelnuts are a better flavor match with the bananas than the traditional walnuts.

Banana Hazelnut Bread

Takes 2 hours

Makes 1 loaf

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup almond oil

6 1/2 tbsps. milk

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (approx. 3 big ones, or we had 6 little ones)

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup toasted and crushed hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Grease and flour 1 loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

In the banana bowl, add the sugar and oil, and beat.  Add milk and vanilla and stir to combine.

Pour wet ingredients into the flour ingredients and stir until well-combined.  Add hazelnuts and pour into loaf pan.

Bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until a fork inserted into the bread comes out clean.

Let cool 10 minutes (if you can).

Yum.

Happy Birthday Cookies

By request, for someone's very special birthday, I made these sorta vegan chocolate chip cookies.  The no-egg, no-butter, lactose-free milk versions of amazing chocolate chip cookies.  These came out really well, the perfect size, crisp, but with some chewiness as well.

Chocolate chip cookies 
Makes 3 dozen cookies 

Takes 2 hours (for all the baking and cooling)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup Earth Balance, softened

1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

8 1/4 tablespoons Milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (16 ounces)

1/2 c. lightly toasted walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a small bowl.

Beat together Smart Balance and sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the milk and vanilla, and beat until combined.

Stir in flour mixture until just blended, then stir in chips and nuts.

Evenly scoop big spoons of dough onto 2 baking sheets, 8 cookies per sheet.  Pat them into a flat circle.  The cookies will grow very little while baking, so make sure you make them as thick or as thin as you want.  I prefer 1/2 inch thick cookies.

Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until golden, 12 or 13 minutes, turn sheet around in oven half way through if your oven is uneven. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool and keep making cookies.

These cookies definitely do not last as well as conventional amazing chocolate chip cookies.  They become hard the next day.  And yet, they are still very good!

experimental vegan ginger pistachio pear blondies

I've been trying to become a vegan baker since the betrothed is lactose-intolerant and is allergic to eggs.  He however loves baked treats and eats the conventional ones and gets some mild gastric distress!  Since he isn't vegan, I often use lactose-free milk and substitute almond oil or nut butters for eggs in recipes to make cookies.  This website is a very helpful guide to substitutions.

I thought the blondies I made for the Sugar-fest would be a perfect subject for vegan experimentation since they are dense, and already have fruit and nut flavors, which are key to flavorful substitutions.  I made poached pears the other night, and I thought the leftover poaching liquid* would be smart to use since it would bring additional flavor and be a good liquid replacement for the eggs.  These blondies were delicious, more moist and cake-y than the other ones, but still dense and toothsome.  Like the conventional blondies, we forgot to take a pictures before they were all gone!  Here they are, still in the pan, just out of the oven.  I'm thinking of making a version next week with chocolate chips, dried cherries and almonds.  I like leaving the betrothed with something in the cookie jar when I have to leave town.

Vegan pear pistachio ginger blondies
adapted from the martha stewart recipe
Takes 1 hour
Makes 16 blondie squares

9 tablespoons (1 1/8 sticks) Earth Balance, softened, plus more for pan

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar syrup / pear poaching liquid

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup brunoised pear, 1 ripe but not very soft bosc pear

3/4 cup shelled pistachios, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup coarsely chopped candied ginger

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Butter an 8-inch square pan.  Line with parchment paper, allowing 2 inches to hang over sides.  Butter parchment.

Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  Mix in pears, ginger and nuts so that they are just coated.

In a separate bowl, beat together Earth Balance and sugar until sort of fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Add vanilla and sugar syrup, and mix until combined.  Mix in flour-fruit-nut mixture until combined.

Dump dough into pan and spread evenly.  Bake in the center of the oven for 50 minutes.  It's done when a fork inserted into the middle of the pan comes out clean.  Let cool for about 15 minutes.  Lift the blondies out of the pan onto a cutting board and let cool completely.  Cut into squares.  They are best within three days.

*  The liquid was made by simmering 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 4 cups water, 4 pears (halved and cored), 4 crushed cardamom pods, 10 peppercorns, an inch of ginger, sliced, for about 30 minutes.  I can never bring myself to throw such deliciousness away, so I substituted 1/4 cup of poaching liquid for 1/4 cup of the light brown sugar.  Poached pears are one of my favorite winter desserts.  Use those pears that never seem to get soft enough to eat plain, or the ones that are grainy and mealy.

Yummy Plummy Crumble

This summer in Halifax, we've been enjoying a lot of delicious plums.  Yellow ones, sugar plums, and the delicious Italian prune plums that are so good preserved, crisped and tarted.

I made this Martha Stewart Plum Crostata earlier this summer, replacing the Port with a simple syrup I made from boiling the plum pits (which always end up with so much flesh: I am so bad at halving and pitting fruit!) with the sugar and water until it reduced to 1/2 a cup.

I made a version of this plum preserve recipe this summer.  We opened the jar earlier this week, and it is so good: tart with a taste of honey.  Extra good on buttered toast!

So when I saw prune plums at the market last week, I snatched them, knowing they'd probably be the last of the season.  I combined a recipe posted by Orangette for the fruit with this simple plum crisp recipe from Gourmet for the crisp, trading out the butter for a combination of Smart Balance and Special Hazelnut butter.  Paddy likes to mix hazelnut butter with honey to make a delicious spread for toast.  We had just a quarter cup left, so I mixed that with the Smart Balance.  Here's my masterpiece.

Vegan Plum Crumble with a hint of honey

Takes 2 hours

Makes 9 servings

Plum Filling

2 pounds Prune Plums, halved and pitted

2 Tbsp. light brown Sugar

2 Tbsp. raw cane Sugar

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

Crumble

3/4 cup raw almonds (or sliced)

1/4 cup Smart Balance (or butter)

1/4 cup Nut Butter (I used Hazelnut, Almond would work too)*

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup light brown sugar

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

Grease a 9x9 baking pan with Smart Balance.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees fareinheit.

On baking tray, toast almonds until golden, 10 minutes for the sliced almonds, 15 minutes for the raw almonds.  Let Cool.

Mix all the ingredients for the plum filling until combined.  Pour into baking dish.

In a bowl, combine 1/2 cup oats, all of the flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt, and mix until combined.  Work in butter (substitute) and nut butter until the mixture resembles crumble topping.

Once the nuts are cool (smash the whole almonds if you used those, either in a mortar or in a plastic bag with a heavy jar), add those and the remaining 1/4 cup of oats to the rest of the crumble topping.  Mix to combine.  Spread evenly onto the plums.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the crumble is browned and the plums are done (Stick a fork in a plum, if it's soft, it's done!).

We enjoyed ours last night while watching the Edith Piaf film La Vie en Rose.  Thank god we had this plummy crumble to remind us there is goodness in the world.  That film is sad.

*  Paddy thinks his Special Hazelnut Honey Butter is approximately 60-66% Hazelnut Butter and 33-40% Honey.  I forgot to reduce the amount of sugar I used in the Crumble Topping to compensate for the honey.  It turned out ok because the plum filling remains very tart in this recipe.  I think I will keep the crumble topping this sweet when I make this again next summer.