Bring me back

Here is a simple stunner of a cake. A blood-orange and Meyer-lemon-from-my-tree cake. A glistening, inverted, candied-orange-and-cornmeal to rescue you from the doldrums of winter (or work, or your laundry, or any manner of things you might like to avoid today) cake. 

I’ve been missing you and missing this space, and I’m hoping to make time for both this year. But I won’t make any promises, because I’m convinced that it will curse me, binding me to a blogless, readerless (cakeless) fate forevermore. Remember these recipe resolutions, for example?! No, you wouldn't. It was a year ago. [Horrified cat emoji, here.] 

So I won’t promise. But I will try.

For one thing, this cake is doing its part to bring me back. It has been floating around in my mind for five years or more. I first encountered something like it at Piccino Coffee Bar, a tiny alcove of a cafe in the once-rough (now rapidly gentrifying) Dogpatch. I worked a block away when I met this sunshiney cake: cornmeal-flecked, lacquered with a translucent, drip-down-the-sides glaze, and gluten free. Perfect 3 pm fare. 

Perfect “I can’t look at my computer for another second. Why did I think a desk job was a good idea?” fare.

The cake was there for me. I offer it to you today, as a gentle reprieve or a siren of rescue. (You decide.)

If you’re on the East Coast, I believe you may need a little sunshine, because the MTA has shut down in New York, there are multiple inches of snow on your curbs, and you’re likely apartment-bound. I used to dream of days like this as a New York City kid, doomed as I was to a childhood without snow days. Maybe you’re skipping in time, making circles ‘round your postage-stamp-sized apartment, or binge-watching Jane the Virgin (highly recommend), or tucking into a hypnotic urban tale like Open City (highly recommend, too). Or, maybe you’re stir crazy and could use a little baking and eating time.

Whatever the case, let this citrus beauty be your sunlight guide.

Blood Orange Polenta Cake

Adapted from Pink Patisserie, who adapted it from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

This is a moist cornmeal cake with barely any flour (6 tablespoons). I bet it could be easily adapted to become totally gluten free. The orange blossom water, though a scant offering in comparison to the other ingredients, perfumes the whole cake and makes it otherworldly. I love orange blossom water. I can still see the dusty glass jar of it that my Lebanese aunt kept in a low cupboard in her compact kitchen. It makes magic with whatever it meets. Try this brand. It's Lebanese.

Semi-Candied Citrus

2 blood oranges (or navel)

1 Meyer lemon (or regular)

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup water

Cake

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

14 tablespoons butter (just under two sticks), softened

1 cup granulated sugar

Zest from 1 orange and 1 lemon
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons orange blossom water
2 1/2 cups almond meal, gently packed
3/4 cups medium cornmeal

Slice the 2 blood oranges and the 1 Meyer lemon about 1/8–1/4 inch thick. In a large pot, combine 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water, and heat over medium until the sugar dissolves completely. Add the citrus slices and allow mixture to simmer for about 15 minutes. The citrus will soften and become malleable.

Remove the slices from the sugar syrup and set aside on a plate or a sheet of parchment. Reserve the sugar syrup to brush the cake with after its baked.

While the citrus is simmering, preheat your oven to 325 degrees and prepare the cake batter.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs and incorporate completely. Add the citrus zest and the orange blossom water and combine. Now, add the almond meal, cornmeal, and remaining dry ingredients and combine just until the ingredients are incorporated. Don't over-mix.

Line an 8-inch round cake pan with parchment. Arrange the citrus slices decoratively on the bottom of the pan, overlapping them slightly, and going just barely up the sides. 

Spoon the batter (it will be thick) into the cake pan, directly on top of the citrus slices. Smooth with the back of the spoon or a spatula to distribute evenly. Bake on a baking sheet for 50–60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Allow the cake to rest in the pan for 10 minutes. Then, place a plate or cake stand onto the surface of the cake, and gently but confidently turn it over. Remove the pan first, then peel away the parchment. Brush some of the remaining sugar syrup over the cake and allow it to cool completely before serving.

No such thing as perfect

A few weeks ago, I wrote about this little ricotta cake—it was stout and petite and rather heavy with cheese. Immediately after making it, possibly even the next day, I made another ricotta cake (see above). I told people that night at dinner, slightly embarrassed, cake in tow, “I’m trying to find the perfect ricotta cake recipe.” My friend Josh—who spent a year baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies every morning (and I mean, every morning) in search of the perfect recipe—wisely said something to the effect of: “Quit while you’re ahead. There’s no such thing as perfect.” 

So, shall I call myself an expert after two tries, and declare this version the shining victor? 
Maybe. 

Is that a giant cop-out? 
Yes. 

Does it matter? 
Not really. 

Whether or not I keep going, you still get this recipe, all nestled with Italian prune plums—those dusty, almond-shaped, little specimens, the color of a bruise, that you can only find for a couple weeks in early Autumn. You get those airy, glistening-with-olive-oil pockets of cake as your fork spears the powdered-sugar surface. You get mouthfuls infused with orange zest, the baked plums like spoonfuls of jam. You get all of this—so many things!—and I only had to give it two goes. 

There is the even more dire imperative of needing to get this recipe into your hands before prune plums disappear from the markets. I recommend buying these plums by the bushel. I guarantee you will always find something to do with them. They bake incredibly well, making easy stove-top jam in no time, reducing quickly to an earthy-sweet compote for pork, or eating out of hand, cold and beaded with condensation from the refrigerator. They are so small and tear-drop shaped that you usually want to eat more than one in a sitting. They are a perfectly simple dessert, all on their own.  

We used to buy these plums from a roadside stand in the summertime in upstate New York from a farmer, was his name Walt?, who had a disfigured tongue from a sledding accident. He had a permanent lisp as a result. I think his shining moment was showing the kids who passed by his stand his deformity and gauging reactions. I had never before encountered a tongue injury… but I wasn’t from the country, and there wasn’t much sledding in New York City.

But enough with tongue injuries. 

You know what would be great for your tongue? 
Eating this cake. 

You’ll have to make it first, of course. But you only need a couple of hours for that. I dare say you could even drop figs into this batter, if you wanted to shake things up a bit. 

Speaking of which, I’ll be back soon with more fig recipes. For now, happy Sunday, folks. 


Ricotta Cake with Italian Prune Plums
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen via Food52

Butter for cake pan
1 cup fresh ricotta, such as Bellweather or Belfiore
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon orange zest (organic, since you are using the rind)
1 cup (scant) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
8 Italian prune plums, or other small plums
Confectioner's sugar (for dusting)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch round cake pan, line with parchment, and butter the parchment. Halve the plums, remove the pits, and set the halved plums aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the ricotta, olive oil, orange zest, and granulated sugar. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl with the ricotta, oil, and eggs. Fold wet and dry ingredients together gently until just combined.

Pour batter into cake pan. Smooth the surface lightly with a wooden spoon. Place the plum halves, cut side down, onto the batter.

Bake for 40–45 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown, and a toothpick inserting into the center (avoiding the fruit) comes out clean.

Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then remove the cake from the pan, using the parchment to pull it out gently, and finish cooling completely on a wire rack.

Dust with confectioner's sugar (by placing a couple tablespoons of confectioner's sugar into a sifter, and tapping it against your palm over the cake) right before serving.

You may feel differently

Helloooooo, friends. Just popping in to talk to you about a little cake that is very short and very sweet and very full of cheese. It sounds weird and strange, I know. But when I tell you that the cheese is ricotta and the sweetness is powdered sugar and the shortness translates to perfectly portioned, creamy mouthfuls, you may feel differently.

I made this cake in a hurry when I was having a what-do-I-make-for-the-blog, I'll-never-have-readers-again, I'm-a-failure-of-a-cook panic—(no biggie)—which, in case you haven't already guessed, is not the best of circumstances for beginning a project. Nevertheless, the cake could not be pulled into this madness, and baking, however forcefully I pushed it onto myself, helped quell this torturous mess of self-doubt. (I wonder how many of you out there encounter this sort of thing with your creative work? Because I have been trying to shush that chorus for years, and it seems to dim at times, but never fully retreat...)

But enough ranting. This cake is the opposite of all of the above. It is so simple and unassuming, so grandmother- and farmhouse-inflected, that when you eat it, the chorus of panic will become a soft hum, barely a whisper, easy enough to push aside, as you reach for a second piece. The cake comes from someone named Louisa, who lives in Castellina in Italy, and who seems to, by all accounts, be able to throw culinary masterpieces together without a recipe. (I aspire to your greatness, Louisa.) I am particularly attuned to all things Italian since taking up with a Pugliese—especially all the cake-like Italian things—so I rushed toward this recipe.

The ingredients' list is remarkably short, and will come mostly from your pantry, with the exception of, perhaps, the fresh ricotta, possibly the apple, and, if you are unfortunate enough to live without a lemon tree (my heart goes out to you), maybe the lemon, too. The rest of the ingredients can be counted on one hand, and in roughly half an hour, you will be in nonna heaven: sifting powdered sugar all around, garnishing with currants, listening to your hungry stomach growl.

Because this comes together so quickly, you will have plenty of time left in the day for brooding, which comes as a relief, really, after all that happy cake time.


Louisa's Cake
Adapted from Food52

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups flour
Pinch of salt
1 cup fresh ricotta, such as Belfiore
Zest of a lemon
1 apple
1 tablespoon baking powder
Powdered sugar

Butter a 9-inch-round cake pan. Line with parchment once across, and then butter the parchment. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

With a wooden spoon (or a stand mixer), cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.

Peel the apple, and then grate it using the widest holes of a box grater. Into the egg mixture, add the flour, salt, ricotta, lemon zest, grated apple, and baking powder. Stir until just combined—do not over mix.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 30–35 minutes, or until the cake is pleasantly golden and pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then pull out using the parchment, and continue cooling on a wire rack.

Sift powdered sugar on top, and serve with seasonal berries, such as currants and strawberries.

No less hungry

I’ve made this cake before here, but under very different circumstances. Coming out of a bad breakup, I decided to make the single most romantic cake that I could think of. The answer was obvious: Julia Child’s Reine de Saba. I liked this cake because it was a series of contradictions, as I took the whole venture of love to be. It was not too sweet, nor was it particularly heady. It was complex enough to make your palette inquisitive, but easy enough to go down smooth, happy and unquestioning. I cited some poems in that entry, and then I ate my cake, one slice at a time, for a solid week. When I photographed it, I added an extra teacup to the tableau, for fear of depressing my readers. But in actuality, it was just me. Me and the reine (“queen”). 

This time, I made her with a particular person in mind; someone who you have not yet met on the blog—my guitar teacher, Marcelo. It’s been a good year-and-a-half or more that I’ve been taking lessons with Marcelo, and, although I rarely practice, he seems to put up with me, and more than that, is and has always been a fervent supporter of the blog. Marcelo, I have learned, appreciates good food. He loves to laugh and he loves music. He might not know this, but when I was going through the saddest of times, our lessons were often a grounding element for me. After a few short months, we were sharing stories with each other, and then, before I knew it, we had become friends. 

In all this time, though, that we’ve talked and laughed and looked at photographs of the food I was making for the blog, and in which he sent me links and shared ideas, I had never baked anything for Marcelo. The timing would always be off—something I made over the weekend would be gone by Monday, for the next lesson, or we’d have a break in the schedule, or I would simply forget, or any number of other reasons why we don’t do the things that we want to do, that we, for all intensive purposes, mean to do. I was determined to change this.

Knowing a bit about Marcelo, I settled on making him the Reine de Saba (or, as Marcelo calls it now “the reina.” This cake tends to be the thing that I make when someone is close to me and I want to, in my own way, celebrate them. I brought him half the cake, so as to not overwhelm him. As I was packing it, fitting it snuggly in its parchment-lined tupperware, I wondered if I should make a single cut—one discrete slice—so that he could try it immediately. I wondered for a moment, and then I got distracted and forgot. The cake got packed and so did my instrument and away we went. 

When I arrived bearing cake, we were both happy. Marcelo immediately looked for a knife, or a fork, or any implement at all, so that he could taste it. I scoured my purse in case a previously stowed plastic utensil could be recovered. He went to the front desk and inquired. There was nothing. “How am I going to wait?” he wondered out loud. (THIS, I decided, is the kind of compliment a cook lives for.) We managed to turn back to the lesson, the reina just sitting there, on the piano in the practice room, without an eater. We played Dylan’s “Moonshiner” and talked about my difficulty with the F-chord (still, really, after 10 years). As the lesson ended, back on the hunt for a utensil, I asked Marcelo how long he was going to have to wait. When would he be home so that he could try it?! It was going to be at least two more hours, which we both decided was much too long. And then Marcelo looked at me and said something that endeared him to me even more, something that spoke to me on levels unknown and unuttered: “How can I say this…” he sighed. “I have the soul of a fat boy.” 

Sometimes Marcelo and I are very much alike.

The phrase rung in my ears for several hours, because, as I said, it spoke to something true in me (however funny). We are hungry, and that is why we bake and cook and prepare and eat and share and break bread and toast one other. Some of us are hungrier than others. Most of us are hungry in our souls, and food and love and warmth and friendship all become one. M.F.K Fisher famously expressed this sentiment in words that are so perfect they deserve to be quoted in full: 

“People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? […] The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it… and then warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one. […] There is food in the bowl, and more often than not, because of what honesty I have, there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more insistent hungers. We must eat. If, in the face of that dread fact, we can find other nourishment, and tolerance and compassion for it, we’ll be no less full of human dignity.”

To talk about hunger in the soul, of insatiable hunger, or of a hunger that is metaphoric and persistent, is to brush against this fact. M.F.K. Fisher wrote in times of war. We write and think about food in a supposed era of plenty. Yet, we are no less hungry. 

I feel fuller when I share cake. 

Reine de Saba 

(Slightly altered from my previous version, with some important, quality-retaining shortcuts.)

For the cake:
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate morsels
1 tablespoon instant espresso dissolved into 2 tablespoons boiling water
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
3 large eggs, separated
Scant 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Pinch of kosher salt
1/3 cups sliced almonds (with or without skins), ground fine
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 cups all-purpose flour, stirred through briefly with a fork

For the icing:
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate morsels
1 1/2 tablespoons strongly brewed instant espresso
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Notes: Julia Child's original recipe calls for blanched almonds (without their skins), as well as sifted cake flour. I have altered both of those ingredients in this recipe, and found the cake to be just as delicious as when I have stayed true to the original. I used sliced almonds with skins attached, as well as regular all-purpose flour that I did not sift. Instead, run a fork swiftly through the flour before you measure it, to simulate sifting. Another interesting adjustment to note: When I baked this, being still in the middle of a move and unable to find my measuring spoons, I approximated the teaspoon and tablespoon measurements called for here. It was, amazingly, and contrary to what we think we know about baking, totally ok. 

Set a rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8-inch round cake pan, tapping out excess. Line the cake pan with parchment across the middle, allowing it to overlap on two "sides." Don't worry about covering the bottom completely.

Place the chocolate morsels in a small saucepan with 2 tablespoons of espresso. Fill another pan with an inch of water and bring it to a simmer. Turn off the heat, and place the smaller saucepan in the hot water. Give it one stir, and then set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Beat in the 3 egg yolks. 

In a medium mixing bowl, whip the egg whites: first beat them until they begin to foam, then add the cream of tartar and a pinch of kosher salt and continue beating, either by hand or with an electric mixer, until they form a soft mass. Beat in 2 tablespoons of sugar, and continue beating until soft peaks form. They should hold their shape in peaks that drop off and fold over themselves slightly when lifted with a spatula. 

Stir the chocolate. If it is not completely melted, turn the heat back on under the larger saucepan, and heat over the double boiler until the chocolate is silky and no lumps remain. 

Stir the chocolate into the butter and eggs. Then stir in the almonds, almond extract, and the flour.

With a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, gently stir in one fourth of the beaten egg whites. The batter will lighten in color and texture. Add the remaining egg whites on top of the chocolate mixture, and fold them in swiftly but gently, until fully incorporated. 

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25–30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted 2 inches from the edge of the pan comes out clean. The center should still be somewhat soft and just set.

Cool on a rack in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn the cake onto a plate and allow it to cool completely before icing (about 2 hours).

When the cake has completely cooled, melt the chocolate with the espresso in a small saucepan over a double boiler. Remove it from the heat. Beat in the butter, one tablespoon at a time, until completely smooth. Continue beating the mixture over a bowl of cold water until it becomes a spreadable consistency. Ice your cake. You may choose to decorate the sides of the cake with sliced almonds, or leave it as it is, as I have this time.