Sponge Cake (or what about English Desserts?)

Sponge Cake (or what about English Desserts?)
Traditional English food is not known for its gourmet, healthful or even edible qualities. Steak and kidney pie is appealing only to the initiated, Sunday's roast dinner is heavy enough to leave most in a post-meal stupor and the other famous English dishes are borrowed from other cultures. Chicken tikka masaala takes all its flavors and name from Indian food, fish and chips were brought to England by Jewish Portuguese exiles and even that great lamb stew is Irish in origin. But what English cuisine lacks on the savory side it tries to make up with the sweets. Sticky toffee pudding can be found on menus of even very chi-chi restaurants here in the US. Spotted dick, treacle tart, steamed pudding (the most famous of these is the annual Christmas pudding) and blancmange are all classic English desserts. They translate to other cultures with varying degrees of success (can you imagine if the public schools here tried to serve a food called spotted dick? The mass hilarity would scupper all attempts at decorum in the lunch room.) But everyone can agree that sponge cake has universal appeal. Baked round, split into layers then filled with jam and whipped cream and served sprinkled with powdered sugar is the way it appears most often in England. I like to bake it in individual sized cakes then glaze them with truffle ganache. The cake can be complicated and involve many steps and extra ingredients. Here is a basic, easy recipe and some suggestions. Make an English expat happy.To make one 8 inch round or 8 individual cakes:4 eggs9 tablespoons sugar(zest of one orange or lemon)1 cup and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, siftedPreheat oven to 340 degrees F; grease your pans. Start with all ingredients at room temperature. Put the eggs and sugar in a large bowl, whisk or beat to mix then place over a pan of simmering water (not boiling - too hot and you'll get scrambled eggs.) If you are using zest add it at this point. Either using a whisk or an electric mixer beat the eggs and sugar until they are light and airy. The mixture should be thick enough for a visible ribbon (when you lift the mixer a ribbon of the mixture should stay on top for a few seconds before sinking in.) Remove from the heat and keep beating until cool. Add the sifted flour (the sifting is important in this recipe. If you don't have a sifter then pass the flour through a small sieve) in three additions, carefully folding it into the egg mixture each time. You want the flour to be thoroughly incorporated but don't want to mix it vigorously and deflate the eggs. Pour into pans, very gently shake to evenly distribute the batter. Bake until golden and spongy, for a large cake about 20-30 minutes; 10 for individual ones. Cool slightly, remove from pans, cool completely on rack or plate. Once it is cool cut the large cake in half, spread the bottom with raspberry jam and a thick layer of stiff, slightly sweet whipped cream. Replace the top layer and heavily sprinkle with powdered sugar. Garnish with fresh berries and eat. Or make a truffle ganache: heat 1/2 cup whole milk or cream then stir in 1 cup dark chocolate, a drop of orange oil and 1 tablespoon butter. Allow to cool slightly then glaze the individual cakes with the ganache. (To do this put the cakes on a rack and spoon the ganache over each one until it runs down the side. You can do two or three layers of chocolate, as it starts to cool it will make a thick truffle layer over the cake.) Allow to cool completely and the chocolate to harden. Serve with whipped cream, berries, ice cream, sorbet or plain. Yum!

Hamentashen and Purim

Time to be irreverent, drunk and becostumed; it is Purim. Along with the shtick, the jokes and the gifts of food comes another, possibly even more important, Purim tradition - the hamentashen. These tri-cornered cookies that remind us of the hat Hamen (the foe of the Jewish people in the Purim story) wore. Translated into English hamentashen means Hamen's pockets. These cookies are often traditionally filled with poppy seeds and in a nice little play on words mon is the Yiddish word for poppy seed so you could also translate hamentashen as poppy seed pockets. Here is the best recipe for small, cookie dough hamentashen (they are also sometimes made with yeast dough). Fill them with your choice of Solo brand fillings (I like apricot, raspberry and almond; prune and poppy seed are also very popular), chopped nuts with honey and cinnamon, chocolate chips, marzipan, dried fruit with honey or jam. Make sure to use a small dollop of filling, especially of the runnier ones as otherwise it will leak out. You can make these dairy-free by substituting pareve margarine (I only use Earth Balance) for the butter. The number of cookies you get depends on the size of the glass you use for cutting. I use a standard sized wine glass and get around 4 dozen. Enjoy!1/2 cup butter, room temperature3/4 cup sugar1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder1 egg1 cup and 1 1/2 cups flour, separated2 tablespoons orange juiceyour choice of fillingsbutter for greasing the panHeat oven to 350 degrees F. In a mixing bowl cream butter, sugar and baking powder. Add egg and mix together until well-creamed. Mix in 1 cup of flour, then the orange juice. Add the final 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix until the dough mostly holds together. Remove from the mixer, form into a ball and wrap in waxed paper or plastic wrap. Working with half or a third at a time, roll the dough to 1/8 inch thick using flour to keep it from sticking to the board and your rolling pin. Cut rounds with a glass, place a dollop of filling in the center of each round then fold into a triangle, leaving a tiny space in the middle to see the filling. Pinch the dough edges together then place each cookie on a buttered baking sheet. Bake about 10-20 minutes (depends on your oven, the pan, how thick the dough is, etc) checking after about 7. The edges and bottom of the cookies will be golden, the rest will stay white. Save the scraps in a ball, wrap them up while you work with the rest of the dough and re-roll it. You can re-roll the dough several times before it becomes too stiff. Allow them to cool on the pan then remove. Eat them, share them, give them as gifts. Chag Purim Sameach!

Shaved Ice

Ah, summer, that time for peaches, hot sun, swimming lessons and shaved ice. I am still looking for the perfect snow cone/shaved ice/slushy. It may be my memory playing tricks but I am pretty sure that one year there was a cart on the mall here in Boulder that sold shaved ices flavored with Torani Italian syrups. They were incomparable. Plenty sweet with rich, deep, real flavors. No artificial color, no artificial flavor metallic after taste - just amazing. Almost too fancy for a summer shaved ice, which might explain why I have never seen them again. No matter, I also love the bright blues, yellows and reds of the common variety shaved ice. Half coconut and half pineapple is a favorite of mine at the carts with fancier flavors. Blue raspberry or cherry at the places with simpler tastes. Either way, nothing says summer like feeling the heat come up from the pavement through your plastic flip-flops while sucking the melted liquid out of the paper cone of a shaved ice. Mmmmmm.

Fall Feelings

Aaah, the foods of autumn. Hot cider, pumpkin anything, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, the end of season veggies, the first of the apples and pears. There is nothing that says fall quite like a cinnamony spiced baked good making delicious smells in the house. These days I am loving struesel topped apple pie, coconut ginger pudding cake baked in a pumpkin and sweet potatoes baked till soft then mashed with maple syrup and butter. We bring out the stew pots and the soup ladle and eat soup, stew or chili for dinner several times a week. What are your favorite serve-in-a-bowl meals for fall?

But right now the World Series (gotta' root for the home team, go Rockies!) is also making me think of crispy grilled hot dogs and salty peanuts. I like a fat, juicy kosher dog with sauerkraut, onions and mustard. Add a side of ripple chips and an cold bubbling drink and you've got you another taste of the season.