Serious Gingerbread

Gingerbread is the ideal counter cake. It sits on the counter and gets more and more delicious every day. Friends drop by during the holidays, you cut a few slices, and damn it’s good — intensely spiced, moist and tasty. It also goes really well with eggnog.

This recipe was developed by Claudia Fleming when she was the pastry chef at New York City’s Gramercy Tavern. The chef and the restaurant are respect-worthy. I have a penchant for cooking with beer so that’s another reason this recipe appealed to me.

When you inhale the aromas of the boiling beer and molasses, you know it’s going to be gingerbread unlike any other. It’s serious gingerbread. My choice of beer, a roasty and robust Highland Brewing’s Oatmeal Porter, gave a deep flavor to this hearty chewy cake. Pour a glass of nog or winter brew and enjoy!

photo by Natalie Herr at Oven Love

Serious Gingerbread

• 1 cup oatmeal stout or porter, or regular stout or porter, like Sierra Nevada or Anchor — try to find an American microbrew stout or porter, otherwise, there’s always Guinness!
  
• 1 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 Tbsp ground ginger (yes, tablespoons!)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• Pinch (or more) of ground cardamom
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• Confectioners sugar for dusting
• Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream for serving

Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously, and I mean generously, butter a 10-inch (10- to 12-cup) bundt pan and dust it with flour, knocking out the excess. Removing a cake from a bundt pan can be a nightmare unless you’ve greased your pan extremely well. Even then, sometimes the pan won’t cooperate.

Bring stout and molasses to a boil in a large saucepan and remove it from the heat. The mixture will boil up once you whisk in the baking soda, so make sure your pan is large enough to prevent overflow. After you whisk in the baking soda, let it cool to room temperature.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and spices in a large bowl. Whisk together the eggs and sugars in another bowl. Whisk the oil into the eggs and sugars, then whisk in the molasses mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and whisk until just combined.

Pour the batter into the bundt pan and rap the pan sharply on the counter to eliminate air bubbles. Bake in the middle of the oven until a tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs adhering, about 50 minutes. Cool the cake in its pan on a rack for 5 minutes. If you’re able, carefully loosen the cake from the sides of the pan with a slim knife or spatula. Turn out onto the rack and cool completely.

Serve the cake, dusted with confectioners sugar, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. It’s even better if made a day ahead. The cake will keep three days, covered, at room temperature.

Original recipe: Gramercy Tavern Gingerbread, Gourmet, February 2000

Photo courtesy of Natalie Herr at Oven Love

Aschaffenburg Christmas market (flickr photo by herownjourney)

Cranberry Apple Cake

I love baking with cranberries and apples in the fall and winter. I found this Ina Garten (aka The Barefoot Contessa) recipe from her cookbook, How Easy Is That?, on the Serious Eats website. Ina calls it “Easy Cranberry Apple Cake,” and it lives up to the “easy” part of that title.

I grew up near cranberry country in southeastern Massachusetts. A few times during my teenage summers, my neighborhood friends and I cooled off with a swim in the irrigation canals of the cranberry bogs in the next town. We were young and stupid, not thinking about the pesticides that probably lurked in the water. We’d hang out there until the migrant workers started hooting from afar at two of my more buxom friends.

Nowadays the closest I get to the bogs is on visits home when we drive by them on our way to Plymouth. Ocean Spray used to have a museum in Plymouth, I think it was called Cranberry World, but, alas, it is no longer there.

Cranberries freeze really well so stock up your freezer while packages are still in your grocer’s produce section; they’ll be gone in a few months. They’re incredibly tart on their own, but if you add a little sweetness to them, they’re fabulous in all kinds of baked goods. I like to keep small amounts of homemade cranberry sauce in my refrigerator so I can stir it into yogurt and oatmeal, add it to savory pan sauces, spread it on sandwiches or serve it on the side with meats. Plus, it packs a nutritional punch.

I made this rustic-looking cake for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure “cake” is the right name for this dish; it reminds me of a pie too. It’s like an upside-down cake but with a sweet coffee cake texture. I used a 9″ dish instead of the 10″ dish suggested in the recipe. You can tell by the photo below that my pie expanded as it baked. I ended up with some sticky filling on the bottom of the oven. The pastry outgrew the dish and I had to scrape some of it off the sides. However, it was delicious. The leftovers were great for breakfast, with or without vanilla ice cream.

Cranberry Apple Cake

• 12 ounces fresh (or thawed frozen) cranberries, rinsed and picked over for stems
• 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and diced
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
• 1 Tbsp grated orange zest (2 oranges)
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 tsp plus 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup plus 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sour cream — I used low-fat sour cream
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Combine the cranberries, apple, brown sugar, orange zest, orange juice and 1 tsp of the cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of a mixer, beat the eggs on medium-high speed for 2 minutes. With the mixer on medium, add 1 cup of the sugar, butter, vanilla and sour cream and beat just until combined. On low speed, slowly add the flour and salt.

Pour the fruit mixture evenly into a 10-inch glass pie plate. I only had a 9-inch plate available and it overflowed in the oven while baking.

Pour the batter over the fruit, covering it completely. Combine the remaining 1 Tbsp of granulated sugar and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and sprinkle it over the batter. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean and the fruit is bubbling around the edges.

Serve warm or at room temperature. It’s fantastic with vanilla ice cream.

Original Recipe – Easy Cranberry Apple Cake, Serious Eats, adapted from Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That? by Ina Garten

Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes and Apples

My brother Ed, our friend Jasper and Jasper’s father all make a sweet potato and apple casserole for Thanksgiving. I’ve had all three. Each makes his just a bit different than the others. Ed gave me his recipe, but also referred me to a recipe on the Food & Wine website from Jasper White, not our Jasper.

I still remember Jasper White’s appearance as guest chef on an episode of In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs, one of Julia Child’s PBS cooking shows. He made pan-roasted lobster. I can still see and smell that pan of lobster in my dreams. I don’t know if this New York Times recipe for pan-roasted lobster is the same one he made with Julia, but it looks pretty close.

But let’s get back to sweet potatoes. The Food & Wine recipe is an adaptation of one in his cookbook, Jasper White’s Cooking from New England. Since I only had 1/2 cup of  maple syrup, instead of the whole cup the recipe called for, I increased the cider by 1/2 cup to make up for the missing liquid. I also added one tablespoon of maple sugar to boost the maple flavor.

This recipe is easy to make, aside from slicing lots of sweet potatoes and apples. It would be easier to do that using a mandoline but that’s one kitchen appliance I never bought. The leftovers, if you have any, make a delicious breakfast.

Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes and Apples

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2-1/2 to 3 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced ¼” thick
• 2 pounds Granny Smith apples (4 large)–peeled, halved, cored, sliced ¼” thick
• 3-4 strips bacon, chopped
• 1 cup pure maple syrup (less is okay if that’s all you have)
• 3/4 cup apple cider
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease a 9×13 baking dish using 2 tablespoons of the butter. Alternating the sweet potato and apple slices, arrange them tightly, standing on their edges, leaning with this angle / in the dish. If you don’t have enough for the dish, use more of an angle.

In a medium saucepan, sauté the bacon. Then add the maple syrup, cider, 4 tablespoons of the butter, salt and pepper. Simmer over moderate heat for 5 minutes. Pour the mixture over the slices and cover the dish securely with foil. Bake in the center of the oven for 40 minutes, or until the apples release their juices.

Remove the dish from the oven, uncover and baste the apples and sweet potatoes with the pan juices. Increase the oven temperature to 450° and place the dish in the upper third of the oven. Continue baking for about 35 minutes longer, basting a few more times, until the sweet potatoes are tender and nicely glazed. Mine didn’t appear glazed but that might be due to the decreased amount of maple syrup. Serve hot.

The recipe can be prepared up to 1 day in advance and refrigerated. Reheat, covered, in a 400° oven for 25-30 minutes.

Serves 8-10 people as a generous side dish.

Original recipe: Maple-Glazed Sweet Potatoes & Apples, Food & Wine

Thanksgiving Eve Kitchen Talk

By now, if you’re hosting Thanksgiving, you probably have your shopping done and your prep list ready to go. But before you get going, take a peek at what super kitchen scientist Harold McGee says about some common Thanksgiving turkey myths. He also shares Thanksgiving cooking tips with Serious Eats.

If, like me, you’re going elsewhere for Thanksgiving, you probably know what you’re bringing and will spend time today or tomorrow morning getting it  ready. If I had unlimited time, here are a few Thanksgiving ‘projects’ I wouldn’t mind trying. Maybe next year!

• Thanksgiving Turkey Cake – You have to check this out, it’s  Thanksgiving dinner in a slice! I’m so tempted to make this soon.
• Oreo Turkeys
• Chocolate Pilgrim Hats
• Cherpumple –  the “turducken of desserts”

wild turkey crossing by Ingrid Taylar (flickr)

If you’re truly a last-minute type and still don’t know what to bring, here are a few posts that might give you a good idea.

• The New York Times recently published another one of Mark Bittman’s 101 lists, 101 Head Starts on Thanksgiving – make ahead dishes that won’t take up a precious burner or oven space on the big day.
• The Providence Journal shared recipes from the Thanksgiving food sections of several newspapers across the U.S.
• The Thanksgiving page at Serious Eats displays their Food Lab posts that deconstruct and find the best recipes for many of the Thanksgivings classics. But the treasures are found in their Thanksgiving Recipe Roundups organized by type of dish.
• The guys at The Bitten Word collected 175 recipes from the November 2010 issues of the top ten food magazines.

I found a few other good tips for getting the most bang out of your buck during the holiday season.

• Do you have an opened can of pumpkin hanging around? Here are some ways to use up leftover pumpkin puree.
• The holiday season is a great time to stock up on things like nuts, butter and sugar. These items and more are sure to go on sale, and if you have coupons, even better.

What are you making this year? Any tips to share?

Nantucket Cranberry Sauce

I just found my favorite cranberry sauce recipe and wanted to share it with you in case you don’t have a recipe yet for Thanksgiving. I’ve got a lot to say about cranberries, surprise surprise, but I’ll save that for another time.

I found this recipe long ago in the December 1997 issue of Bon Appetit and have been relying on it ever since. They published it in their RSVP section by request of a reader who had the sauce at 21 Federal on Nantucket. Bob Kinkead, one of my favorite chefs, was in charge of 21 Federal back then. When I lived in Washington DC area, a long lunch at Kinkead’s was frequently a special treat I gave myself when taking a day off from work.

This recipe has all the New England flavors you would expect from me — maple, molasses and, of course, cranberries. You can make it ahead and pull it from the refrigerator a few hours before dinner to let it come to room temperature.

Cranberries by Liz West

Nantucket Cranberry Sauce

• 1 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup light molasses
• 2 Tbsps golden brown sugar
• 2 Tbsps butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 12 oz package fresh or frozen (thawed) cranberries

Combine everything except the cranberries in a heavy saucepan and stir occasionally over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low and add the cranberries. Simmer until the cranberries begin to burst, about 10 minutes. Increase the heat to high and boil until the mixture is reduced to about 1-3/4 cups, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

Serve at room temperature. The sauce can be prepared five days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.

Beer, Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving

“We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th of December.”

Those words from the diary of a Mayflower passenger are attributed to William Bradford who later became the governor of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The Mayflower’s original destination was the Hudson River but the overcrowded ship was running out of supplies, so after scouting around Cape Cod, they landed in Plymouth.

Beer was a mainstay of the diet back then because water was full of naughty micro-organisms and unsafe to drink, especially on board a ship. The Mayflower was loaded with casks of beer for the journey across the Atlantic. But dwindling beer wasn’t the only problem, with winter’s arrival they were also running out of time to build a settlement.

Did the Pilgrims have beer at the iconic first Thanksgiving with Native Americans? Beer romantics says yes, but beer historians say no. Given all the other challenges, building a brewery wouldn’t have been a priority yet, never mind having enough malted barley. But the beer at Thanksgiving myth lives on, and, frankly, I like it.

It’s more likely that first feast was accompanied by wine made from local grapes, and beer didn’t return until feasts in the years following. Modern day pilgrims to Plymouth can visit Mayflower Brewing. They just brewed their first seasonal, Thanksgiving Ale — a blend of American Strong Ale and English Old Ale that’s aged on American white oak. Maybe my dad will save me one to try at Christmas. Hint hint!  [Update: Dad came through; three bottles are waiting for me in Massachusetts. Thanks, Dad!]

There are plenty of blog posts suggesting the best wines for Thanksgiving – pinot noir is my favorite. Here are some suggestion for good craft beers.

• Turkey Day Beer Pairings from Ladies of Craft Beer – A mid-Atlantic list.
• Thanksgiving Day Beer List from Randy Mosher – His selections might be the easiest to find. If you can get your hands on The Bruery’s Autumn Maple, buy it up — limited distribution and infinite flavor.
• What to Drink at Thanksgiving: Beer from Serious Eats – Hard to find but exquisite beers (Goose Island, Odell and Founder’s).

If beer isn’t for you, Serious Eats has recommendations for another artisanal option — cider. With so many interesting seasonal beers appearing on the shelves in November, I find myself neglecting cider — an oversight I’ll have to correct. A trip to a good beer (and wine and cider) store might be in my near future.

Mayflower II in Plymouth Harbor

Sweet Potato Celebration

November is Sweet Potato Month! Go ahead, whoop it up a bit. Did you know that the farmers of North Carolina grow nearly half the sweet potatoes in the U.S.? That makes my state the top producer in the country.

Growing up in Massachusetts, winter squash was more likely to be part of our Thanksgiving meal than sweet potatoes. I’ve always been the only one who brings butternut squash to Thanksgiving, no matter what state I’m feasting in — Virginia, Maryland, California, Washington or North Carolina. I’ve converted a few over to the squash side but I’ve accepted that sweet potatoes are more popular.

It’s hard to compete with the Maple-Glazed Sweet Potatoes and Apples that my friend Jasper makes for Thanksgiving. When my brother Ed makes it, he first tosses the sweet potato slices with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasts them until half done. He adds a bit of nutmeg to the dish too.

Yam vs. sweet potato, what’s the real story? Who’s the imposter? The true yam isn’t found in our markets. Yams are native to Africa and Asia. They’re a different vegetable family than sweet potatoes. We have two types of sweet potatoes here in the U.S. — the white dry hard sweet potato and the orange moist soft sweet potato. Long ago the name ‘yam’ was given to the softer orange variety to distinguish it from the harder white one because they reminded African slaves of the real yams they knew in Africa. It’s just a name thing. Unless your market is selling real yams, I don’t think there’s any reason to get too picky about it.

photo by Natalie Maynor (flickr)

I went to a brewpub yesterday and had sweet potato fries on the side instead of regular fries. Attention restaurants, we love that option. Sweet potatoes, besides being more flavorful, are a superfood. In addition to fiber and potassium (great for those with high blood pressure), they’re full of Vitamins A and C and beta-carotene.

Trying to find more ways to get sweet potatoes in your diet? How about drinking them? Fullsteam Brewery, based in Durham NC, makes Carver Sweet Potato Beer, an amber beer honoring Doctor George Washington Carver, who, I learned from Fullsteam, was passionate about sweet potatoes. Besides traditional styles, the brewers at Fullsteam also create recipes that feature local ingredients — paw paws, basil, scuppernong grapes, persimmons and more.

Here are some sweet potato recipes that caught my eye recently and are on my list to make:

• Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle Pecan Streusel (enough said) from Cookin’ Canuck
• Spicy Crockpot Sweet Potatoes from Kalyn’s Kitchen — Crockpot dishes are portable and don’t take up space in someone’s oven.
• Sweet Potato and Sage Gratin from The Kitchn
• Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Maple Cinnamon Sage Brown Butter from Giada De Laurentiis at the Food Network
• Sweet Potato (and maple!) Pie with Pecan Topping from Simply Recipes
• Sweet Morning Potato, baked and topped for breakfast, from The Kitchn

Time to go shopping for sweet potatoes, I’ve got some cooking to do!