A Spice Cake to Remember

August is my favorite month.  It is a month of late summer where lounging on my patio and sipping a Corona becomes high art.  August is the month of my birthday and our wedding anniversary.  And harvesting fresh produce out of the garden.  I relish my birthday the way five year olds do, which may change when I turn forty next year, but I hope not.

Two days before my birthday I decided to bake myself a cake.  Not just any cake, but the Faulknerian Family Spice Cake,with Caramel Icing, which I found on Food52.com which is a fabulous foodie online haven.  When I was five, my Mom baked me a spice cake with a Barbie doll in the center with the Bundt cake frosted as her ball gown.  I loved that cake and how my Mom made me chicken noodle soup with her homemade egg noodles on an afternoon that reached over 100 degrees.  Our guests cooled themselves in the wading pool and my Mom never again made me whatever I wanted for my birthday dinner.  To this day, soup is my favorite food.  But, I wanted spice cake.  And this recipe that I found was decadent.  It called for too much butter, eggs, and Crisco and topped with caramel icing, so I had to make it. 

I pulled out my favorite spatula and started baking.  I enjoyed the fragrance of fresh ground nutmeg and all the other spices.  I took pictures of the batter as it mixed. 

And in the pan.  I deliberately dropped the pan on the counter to pop an air bubbles in the batter, which I won’t do next time to see if the cake rises higher.

And it baked into a nice dense loaf.  After the cake had cooled, I started melting the butter for the caramel frosting.  I reached up to grab the powdered sugar from the highest shelf and I accidentally bumped the 16 ounce bottle of red food dye and it flew down and exploded in front of me on the kitchen floor.  

I looked like a gunshot victim and the kitchen was spattered in red droplets all the way up to the ceiling.  My Pirate rushed into the kitchen and paused in shock.  And I laughed until I cried as I cleaned up the kitchen with his help.  And he just glowered and silently shook his head at me.  At one point he said, “You’re talking to me?  You better not be talking to me.”  Which only made me laugh harder.

The red dye easily wiped off the cabinets, but the ceiling is permanently stained.  And I’m still finding red spatters.  The grout will need to be repeatedly bleached.  And I have learned a valuable lesson.  Store the messiest ingredients close to floor not up in the corner on the highest shelf.  And when you buy a huge bottle of red food dye for the red velvet cake testing, wrap it in multiple Ziploc bags or better yet, put it in the garage. 

Once the kitchen was scrubbed and reeked of bleach, I iced the spice cake and gave My Pirate a slice with a glass of milk.  And he forgave me on the spot; which means that this is one magical spice cake.  It’s everything that a spice cake should be it’s aromatic, spicy, complex, rich and dense and the caramel icing makes it decadently sweet.  And it slices nicely into thin slices.  My cake was spattered with red food dye but that only made us laugh and cringe.  And it only took a couple of days for the red dye to wash off the soles of our feet.     

Faulknerian Family Spice Cake, with Caramel Icing

This recipe serves 10-12

           

1/2 pound butter, softened

            1/2 cup shortening (yes, shortening)

            3 cups sugar

            5 eggs

            3 cups flour

            2 teaspoons cinnamon

            1/2 teaspoon mace (don't leave this out)

            1/2 teaspoon allspice

            1/4 teaspoon nutmeg—fresh ground

            1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

            1/2 teaspoon salt

            1/2 teaspoon baking powder

            1 cup plus 2 TB milk

            1 teaspoon vanilla

            In your electric mixer cream the butter, shortening, and sugar until it's fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time.  

         
           Whisk together the dry ingredients then add to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk and vanilla. Bake at 325 for approximately 1 hour and fifteen minutes in a greased floured tube pan.  Top with caramel icing.

           Caramel icing
            Melt 1/2 cup butter in a saucepan then stir in 1 cup packed brown sugar and 1/3 cup cream. Remove from heat and stir until smooth. Return to heat and bring to boil for 1 minute. Let it cool for a moment. Then beat in 2 cups confectioners sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Bouquet of the Week

This week I decided to pick a bouquet for me.  And this one made me giggle.  It's like the pink flamingo of bouquets and it celebrates two of my favorite plants.   Last year, I fell in love with the Rice Paper Plant, Tetrapanax Papyrifer 'Steroidal Giant' and Othello Ligularia.  I found the indigo blue vase for 25 cents at a garage sale in SE Portland. What do you think of this bouquet?

Garage Sale Swag

 Look at what I found at a garage sale this weekend!  I popped by a moving sale in SE Portland last Saturday, on a whim, when I was early for an appointment.  And I found these vases and a handmade leaf plate all for a total cost of $1.50.  I'm in love.

These can vases look like they were modeled after an energy drink can.  And I'm sure that they'll showcase a single bloom nicely.  I think I'll try them out with a Japanese Anemone blossom first.  

Good dog!  

Bouquet of the Week

This week, I decided to create a bouquet for my hairdresser, Michelle Krause, who is a true artist, gorgeous, and dresses in creative outfits that express her personality.  I simply couldn't give her a bouquet of flowers in a glass mason jar.  No, I needed to give her something with flair, so I decided to use my recent garage sale find, a red mosaic glass vase that added sparkle and texture for $2.50.  And then I paired it with the the ruby stems of ligularia blooms.  I added some smaller ligularia leaves, coleus, and some gold foliage.  And I liked it enough to photograph it.  

But, even as I photographed it with The Assistant.  I felt like something was missing. 

The bouquet simply looked unfinished and like it needed some more height.  So, I added some zebra grass, gold smoke tree, yellow cape fuchsias, new ostrich fern fronds and a big Sum and Substance hosta leaf in the back.  Ta-Da! Now that's more like it.  

Don't worry cupcake; it's a piece of cake!

Costco’s carrot cake is my favorite cake to bring to classroom or office parties.   It’s affordable and delicious.  And your friends smile as they swoop a finger through the frosting before stuffing it in their mouth.  What is it about cream cheese frosting?  Peace treaties could be built on the stuff.

So, when two of my friends told me that carrot cake is their favorite birthday cake, I decided that it was time to figure out a great recipe.  I researched carrot cake and even though George C. Page created the first carrot cake recipe to get rid of his military surplus of dehydrated carrots from World War II.  I think that he was onto something brilliant; a moist spice cake filled with shredded carrots and topped with cream cheese frosting.  I flipped through various cookbooks and searched my favorite food blogs and collected carrot cake recipes.  One night standing in line at New Season’s, the cover of Cook’s Illustrated caught my eye and I read about their square carrot cake and knew that was where I wanted to start.

 I decided to bake up three different cakes and have the birthday boy and girl help me tweak a special recipe for each of them.  I baked up the Cook's Illustrated Square Carrot cake, the Bon Appetite carrot cake that Molly Wizenberg posted on her blog Orangette, and tropical carrot cupcakes filled with rum soaked gold raisins, macadamia nuts, and crystallized ginger topped with coconut cream cheese frosting. Then I sliced up the cakes, texted my friends and dropped by their houses to have them sample the cakes and give me their feedback.  Five stops later, we had come to a consensus and the two carrot cake lovers agreed to the same cake concept.

The night before the birthday party, I baked the three layer Bon Appetite Carrot Cake and topped it with Fine Cooking’s cream cheese frosting and pressed toasted pecans into the sides. The warm evening softened the frosting to the consistency of toothpaste and I was afraid that the pecans were going to slide down the sides of the cake into a puddle so I quickly closed the sides of the cake box and slid it into the fridge.  I was relieved that it firmed up nicely.  And then I let it rest in the fridge overnight to help bring all the flavors together. 

After the grilled barbecue birthday dinner, we sat out on the patio enjoying the beautiful evening and smiled and laughed over our slices of carrot cake.  And one of my friends said, “Laura, this cake is perfect.”  And I thought, we did a great job picking out this cake!

P.S.  I'm sorry that I forgot to take pictures of the cakes.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Toasted Pecans

Adapted from Bon Appétit, Orangette, and Fine Cooking

For the cake:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 (slightly heaping) tsp. baking powder

2 (slightly heaping) tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg—make sure to use the freshly ground!

¾ tsp. ground ginger

1 ½ cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs

½ cup unsweetened applesauce mixed with several spoonful’s of apple butter*

3 cups finely grated peeled carrots

2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped and toasted in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes.

Position racks in the top and bottom third of the oven, and preheat to 325°F. Lightly grease 3 (9-inch) round pans with butter or cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper, and then grease the paper too.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Whisk well to blend.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar and oil until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well to incorporate after each addition. Add the applesauce, beating to mix. Add the flour mixture, and beat to incorporate, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula if needed. Add the carrots and beat briefly.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans. (It will look pretty skimpy, but don’t worry; the cakes will rise nicely in the oven.) Slide the pans into the oven – I put one on the top rack and two on the bottom and rotated them once or twice during baking – and bake until the cakes begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Bake for 30 minutes or a little less.  Check on them at 25 minutes. Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 15 minutes; then turn them out onto the rack to cool completely.

When the cakes are cool, make the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting 

by Fine Cooking

1-1/4 lb. cream cheese, at room temperature

2-1/2 sticks (1-1/4 cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 (2-lb.) bag confectioners’ sugar (about 7-1/4 cups)

To make the frosting

Beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand mixer) on low speed to combine. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until aerated and light, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer and add a few cups of the confectioners’ sugar, incorporating it into the cream cheese mixture on low speed until combined. Repeat with the remaining sugar, adding it to the mixer in two additions. Once all of the sugar is added, increase the speed to medium-high and beat until fluffy, about 1 minute.

To assemble the cake, place one layer on a platter or cake stand. Spread it with ¾ cup frosting. Optional—swipe a layer of apricot jam on top. Carefully place another layer atop it. Spread with ¾ cup frosting. Top with the third cake layer, and then spread the remaining frosting over the top and down the sides. Press the toasted pecans into the side of the cake. Refrigerate overnight.  Serve at room temperature.

Note: You can make the cake layers one day before assembling the whole cake. Wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and store them at room temperature. The assembled cake can be prepared up to 2 days before serving. Store it in the fridge, covered with a cake dome, and allow it to come to room temperature before serving.

Yield: 10-12 servings

*Apple butter is my secret ingredient in this cake.  I find that it adds a caramel note to the cake.  But omit if you don’t have it.