Flourless Chocolate Espresso Cake

This cake was a hit from the time it left the oven in Providence Thursday morning to the time I left Addie's apartment at 11:30 that night. It even attracted the attention of an MBTA conductor who would have given me a free ride if I'd only be willing to cut her a slice. I would have, but a cake less one slice isn't a very nice thing to bring to a dinner party.

Addie and Alexis were having an "apartment cooling" party before they moved out of their loft, since they had never had an apartment warming. They made stuffed Cornish game hens,
asparagus and potatoes, which were all delicious. The meal was rounded out with several bottles of wine and their homemade beer and mead.

Addie offered to let me bring dessert, so of course I spent the next 24 hours thinking about what I would make. I think cakes are nice for celebratory occasions, but it had to be able to survive the train ride from Providence to Boston, then the subway, and finally, several blocks of walking - during which it just happened to be raining. So layers were out. Anything unstable at a range of temperatures was probably a poor idea. Nothing that could fall over or deflate. Finally, I had a pie-sized pasty box lying around, but no cake boxes, so it would be nice if it was no more than 2 inches tall.

These constraints led me to one of the most decadent, chocolatiest caffeinated desserts this side of a heart attack. The recipe (on epicurious.com) is from the September 1995 issue of Bon Appétit, and it's as good now as it was then. I know it's not exactly health food... but this is one of those cakes you don't need more than a sliver of, so you won't be eating more than a fraction of the ingredients (especially if you leave the leftovers with your dinner party hosts.) Since there's so much chocolate in the cake, it's important to use the good stuff. I used half Scharffen Berger bittersweet (70% cacao) and half Ghirardelli. I also sprung for real espresso from a café in Wayland Square where I know its good. However, I wasn't sure how many shots were in a cup, so the guy working the register guessed 4 for me... which was only half right. Turns out a cup is about 8 shots, so I made half a cup of instant espresso and mixed the two (sacrilege, I know.)

You may notice, as it's baking, that the top of the cake is really ugly. Like a mud pie, or perhaps a sinkhole. But never fear! The cake is served upside-down, presenting a beautiful mousse-y surface begging to be decorated with raspberries. Just don't let anyone flip their piece over.

Finally, whatever you do, don't skip the raspberry sauce. No matter how much you love chocolate and coffee (which I do, very, very much) the raspberry sauce is key for elevating this cake into the realm of the divine. That said, I didn't follow the Bon Appétit recipe, which calls for frozen raspberries in syrup. Instead, I stirred a couple tablespoons of sugar and a little cornstarch in a pot, then added two thawed bags of frozen raspberries (Ingredients: raspberries) and mashed them with a wooden spoon while it cooked. I let the liquid thicken a bit and mashed the raspberries pretty well, then strained the whole shebang into a bowl, which involved more mashing with the wooden spoon and a good deal of waiting. But I wound up with a cup and a half or so of beautiful, seedless raspberry sauce (and one very red wooden spoon.)

Unsurprisingly, the results were absolutely delicious and satisfyingly decadent. And very appropriate after an equally delicious dinner, especially if you need to wake up a bit before heading home! Anyway, I'm determined to make this cake again soon, so if anyone wants to have a dinner party....

Dana's Birthday!

My springform pan is quickly becoming the official cake pan of birthdays at 106 Governor Street. As you may remember, I bought it for Nick's Ice Cream Cake, a delicious if unwieldy creation. Sunday was Dana's birthday, and although she's game for pretty much anything sweet, fluffy and delicious, she has a soft spot for cheesecake.

I've never made a cheesecake before, in fact, I don't even like cheesecake that much. Dana, on the other hand, considers herself something of a cheesecake connoisseur, so I was understandably nervous. But then I found this easy recipe on the Bon Appetit Project Recipe Blog, and figured if Bridget could do it, I could too. (I even have a metal food processor blade! Actually, it's Vicky's, so I only have it for another 6 days.)

Conveniently, Seth had whisked Dana away to Cape Cod for her birthday, so I had all of Sunday to work on my cakes. I dragged Nick through the grocery store Sunday morning and got started right away.

As the Bon Appetit bloggers pointed out, the theme of this cheesecake is food processing. First, in go the butter and shortbread cookies (I used Walker's, and while it didn't resemble a crust at first, it turned out delicious. Even Dana thought so.)

The rest of the ingredients are basically just thrown into the food processor together, then poured into the pre-baked crust. Although Bon Appetit blogger Chris cautions against using too many pre-processed ingredients, I used Philadelphia cream cheese because that's what my mom bakes with. (And if you've ever eaten something she's baked, you understand why this is reason enough.) I did take Chris up on his suggestion to leave out the almond extract, mostly because I'm moving out in a week and already have an almost-full bottle of bourbon extract to use up somehow (if I added it to cheap vodka would it taste like whiskey?)

I had no idea how to tell when a cheesecake was done, but apparently I guessed right, because the cheesecake received rave reviews. Even Dana, cheesecake connoisseur, said it was among the best cheesecakes she'd ever had. Victory!

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

My mom used to grow rhubarb in our front yard when I was little. Sometime in May, the stalks would begin to turn bright red, and I could traipse out front as I pleased and yank out a stalk to much on. I remember pulling so hard at times that I would fall over backward when the stalk finally came free. (Only recently did my grandmother - the gardener, not the baker - inform me that this can easily be avoided by pulling the stalk at an angle to the ground. But where's the fun in that?)

Every year (or on two separate occasions at the very least) this gangly plant became the star of the Rhubarb Olympics – a series of pint-sized sporting events featuring rhubarb in some way. I can't actually remember what they were, but one definitely entailed running with rhubarb and another somehow involved wearing its giant leaf as a hat.

For those too old to enjoy running around with poisonous leaves on their heads, rhubarb season meant strawberry-rhubarb pie – and lots of it.

But despite my long history of pie-eating, this May marked the first rhubarb season of my pie-making life. Remembering the taste of my mother's pies, I made several pilgrimages to the grocery store in search of that flavor. The first few trips turned up nothing but the same root vegetables of Winter and asparagus of early Spring. But as the price of strawberries began to fall toward affordable levels, I knew it couldn't be long. And then, one day, lo and behold! Rhubarb! It had been denuded of its poisonous leaves and sat unassumingly in a small basket, dwarfed by the towers of more popular vegetables. But among the floppy ruby-colored pieces and the thin green ones were a handful of the firm candy-apple colored stalks of my childhood. I gathered them up, brought them home and attempted to cajole my roommates into eating some. Vicky was the only taker, and was pleasantly surprised to find it did not taste like celery. I knew what it tasted like, but I wasn't expecting to feel eight years old after the first bite. It was such a throwback to my childhood I half expected to shrink until my eyes were level with the counters (although I'm probably underestimating my eight-year-old height.)

Luckily, I stayed tall enough to roll out dough, because the pie that resulted was a much bigger hit with the roomies than the raw rhubarb had been. To make your own slice of childhood, you'll need enough rhubarb and strawberries to fill your pie dish. You want the fruit to make a nice big mound, because it will cook down a lot. I like to do half rhubarb and half strawberries, but if you're not sure how you feel about rhubarb, feel free to tilt the balance toward strawberries. Just compensate by cutting down on the sugar. Alternatively, put in twice as much rhubarb as strawberries, and add a half-cup of sugar. For my 9" pie, I probably used about 9 firm pink rhubarb stalks and a pound and a half of strawberries.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

For Pie Crust:
2 1/2 cups Flour
1 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 tsp. Sugar
2 sticks cold Unsalted Butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup ice water

For Filling:
Strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced in half (or smaller pieces if very large)
Rhubarb, washed and cut into 1/2-inch slices
3/4 cup Sugar (if doing half-and-half)
1/3 cup Flour

For Finishing:
1 Egg White
Light Cream (or some other kind of cream, it doesn't seem to matter)
Sparkling Sugar

Making pie is a two-step process best spread over two days (in my opinion.) The first day is for making the dough, the second is for making it into a pie. In between, the dough sits in the fridge and gets nice and cold, which makes it much easier to roll without it breaking into a million pieces.

Day One:

Blend flour, salt, sugar and butter in a food processor just until butter forms pea-sized balls. Do not overmix. Pour water (no ice!) into running food processor in a steady stream (pour slowly, but it should take no more than three seconds or so.)

Turn crumbly dough out onto a clean surface and divide into two piles, one slightly smaller than the other. With your hands, forcefully but quickly knead each pile into a cohesive cake of dough, shoring up the sides as necessary to prevent cracking. This took me many pies to master, but never fear, even if your dough is a disaster, the pie usually still tastes great.

Slide each cake into the corner of a separate plastic bag and, if necessary, press down until it is about 1/2 inch thick. The thinner your dough cake is, the easier it will be to roll out. That being said, if it gets too thin, it will fall apart. Use your judgment.

Place both doughs in the fridge, on a flat surface, with nothing on top of them.

Day Two:

Preheat the oven to 400º. Place a piece of tinfoil on the top rack, to catch dripping juices from the pie.

First, make the filling. You might want to sprinkle the rhubarb with a little water first so the flour sticks better, or you can just toss it with the strawberries if they're damp. Then mix in the flour and sugar.

Now it's time to roll the dough. When I do this at home, I start by covering one of my mother's lovely marble counter tops with ice packs first to let it get nice and cold. But my counters here are some sort of laminate that is a pretty much constant temperature, besides which they're too small to accommodate dough rolling. So instead I use a cheapo fake wood desk that was in the hallway when we moved in (it's in the kitchen now and I've cleaned it thoroughly.) Not only is the desk a good height for putting your whole weight behind the rolling (my arms are skinny weak little things) but the fake wood laminate seems to have magical non-stick properties. All in all, I'm surprised to say I'm going to miss it.

In any case, you can use whatever you like to roll out your dough, just sprinkle it with a little flour first. Also sprinkle your rolling pin. (Mine is OXO from Target and I love it!) Then take the larger dough cake out of the fridge and sprinkle it with a little flour too. Roll the dough out to about 1/8 inch thick, flouring the top and bottom as needed to prevent sticking. Cut out a circle about an inch larger than your pie dish, then gently lift the dough into the dish.

Fill the dish with your strawberry and rhubarb filling, and slice a tablespoon of butter over the top.

To make a lattice crust, roll out the second dough then slice it into strips. A lattice is actually easier to make than you might think – check out this video on bonappetit.com if you've never done it before. (Oh, how I wish I had a pastry wheel!)

Finally, to finish off the pie, curl the bottom crust up over the edges of the lattice strips, or tuck them under if you'd rather. Use a pastry brush to lightly brush the top crust with a mixture of egg white and a little cream, then sprinkle with sparkling sugar.

Slide the pie into the oven, on top of the tinfoil. Bake for 15 minutes at 400º, then turn the oven down to 350º and bake for another hour, or until the crust is golden brown.

Mother's Day Brunch

My mom's one request for Mother's Day was that she not have to decide what to eat, nor cook. So my sister Addie and I shouldered the culinary duties for the day, which we decided to pare down to 2 meals: brunch and dinner. Dinner would just be my family, but we had my grandparents and some cousins over for brunch. The larger quantity of food required wasn't so intimidating as the fact that I would be cooking for both my mother and my grandmother – the best cooks I know and the source of most of my kitchen wisdom. All my best recipes are theirs, and they make them better. I took a two-pronged approach to compensate for my third-generation handicap: frittatas and scones.

Frittatas (my dad's idea) are something my mother never makes, but they're pretty easy, and my roomies and I pulled off a pretty good one for brunch earlier this semester. And it turns out I had a secret weapon in the kitchen: apparently Addie is a frittata master. What I didn't have was time to go to the grocery store, so these were whatever-is-in-the-fridge frittatas. Because my mom's fridge is like a grocery store, that meant one kid-friendly swiss-bacon-potato frittata and one feta-zucchini-asparagus-tomato frittata (we used goat feta, which I wholly recommend trying.) Luckily my aunt and uncle raise chickens down the road, so acquiring another dozen eggs at the last minute wasn't a problem. As a bonus, truly farm fresh eggs have enormous, bright orange yolks that gave the frittatas a beautiful golden color. Lacking frittata pans (something that's both stovetop and oven safe, like a cast-iron frying pan) we took the rubber handles off my mom's enormous aluminum frying pans to make some. They worked great and both frittatas were delicious (although the veggie one was first to disappear.)
To make a Frittata: Simply sauté the fillings you're using in the frittata/frying pan with a little olive oil until softened and/or browned. (Cook things like bacon or asparagus beforehand.) Beat the eggs with salt and pepper. (We used a dozen per frittata, but most peoples' frying pans aren't that large.) Pour the eggs over, and let set, lifting the edges occasionally to let uncooked egg flow underneath. Sprinkle with cheese and cook until bubbling and somewhat set around the edges. Then throw it under the preheated broiler until set in the middle. Voilà!

My second prong of attack was scones, which my mom used to make all the time. I'd gotten her recipe and made them for Nick and the roomies a couple weeks ago, with frozen blueberries I'd stolen from the freezer at home. (More on our perennial stash of frozen blueberries later.) They were pretty good, but I thought they could be improved upon. Specifically, I wanted to flavor the batter somehow. So for mother's day I decided to make orange scones, and bought an enormous bag of organic Valencia oranges to zest (this part I did plan ahead.) Then Nick, in a rare moment of culinary genius (no offense; he makes good sandwiches) suggested I make cranberry orange scones, which I thought sounded like a brilliant idea. Luckily, my grocery store of a freezer had some cranberries in it. Finally, I decided to finish the scones with an orange glaze. It made them a lot sweeter, so it might not be the best thing for an early breakfast, but at 11:30 it was a nice touch that eliminated the original scones' need for jam (in my opinion.)

We rounded out the meal with a mixed greens salad and had strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. To drink, mimosas (which are fantastic with fresh-squeezed Valencia orange juice) and coffee (which is always fantastic.)

Cranberry-Orange Scones

I wish I could put my mother's original recipe for "British Scones" here; it's illustrated with the most adorable little scones and a pot of tea. But I don't have a scanner, and it's a bit lacking in instructions anyway. (She writes recipes only decipherable by people with a great deal of "kitchen intuition," fairly common in my family but something I'm still working on.) So here's my version:

For Scones:
4 Tbsp. Unsalted Butter, very softened (if it's not warm out, microwave it)
2 Tbsp. Sugar
1/2 tsp. Salt
2 cups Flour
2 Tbsp. Baking Powder
2 Eggs, beaten
1/2 cup Milk
1 Tbsp. Orange Zest (or more)
1 cup fresh whole Cranberries, roughly chopped (use a food processor)

For Glaze:
2 Tbsp. fresh-squeezed Orange Juice
Confectioners' Sugar
1 tsp. Orange Zest

To make the Scones

Preheat oven to 400º and lightly coat a large baking sheet with nonstick spray.

Cream the butter and sugar briefly until combined. In a separate bowl mix salt, flour and baking powder. Mix into butter/sugar until combined. Add eggs, milk and orange zest and mix just until almost combined, then fold in cranberries until combined. (Use your hands.)

The dough will be very thick and sticky. Form it into a ball, more or less, and let it sit in the bowl for 2 minutes.

Lightly flour a wooden cutting board. (If you don't have one, lightly flour something else flat.)

Place the dough on the board (it should be less sticky now) and pat it out until it is about 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into 6 or 8 wedges (like a pizza) and gently place them on the baking sheet.

If not using the glaze, it's nice to sprinkle the scones with some sparkling sugar at this point.

Bake the scones 10-12 minutes, until puffed and slightly golden on the edges.

Let cool.

To make the Glaze

Pour the orange juice into a small bowl, and add confectioners' sugar, whisking constantly, until it's the consistency of... a glaze. Um, it should be slightly thick but still drip slowly off the whisk when lifted. "Use your judgment," as my mother would say. Whisk in the orange zest at the end.

Glaze the scones by pouring or drizzling the glaze on with a spoon. Let sit a few minutes, until the glaze has hardened enough to put them in an attractive basket. Use your judgment.

Delicious Reads

Terrible news: I can't eat. 

This tragedy was brought on by the removal, yesterday, of all four of my wisdom teeth. They were replaced, in a rather unequal trade, I think, with four stitches, which greatly inhibit the process of eating. As a result, I have been subsisting on soup and milkshakes for two days now, which, despite the caring ministrations of my loving family, is getting a bit old.

The limited upside of this situation is plenty of time to kill while I laze about with bags of frozen peas on my face (which do wonders to prevent bruising and swelling, for those of you still in possession of your wisdom teeth). So what have I been doing? Reading about food, of course! I should probably do less of this, as it is making me hungry, but knowing me, I'd be hungry anyway. And there's really nothing quite as great for taking my mind off this world as a great story about great food.

So if anyone else, masochistic or not, would like to read some great food writing, I have the following suggestions:

Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell — In a word, great. In three:

 fantastic, hilarious & edifying. This book came out a few years ago, but I just got around to reading it, and at the perfect time. It's not so much about food as about doing what you love, although there's plenty of food. (Much of it disgusting, especially all those aspics.) Things I learned from this book include a) that Julia Child and my mother have a lot in common, including extra-tall marble counter tops, b) that doing what brings you joy really is the way to live your life and c) 2 new ways to kill a lobster. Julie Powell isn't much of a cook, even after slogging through 524 French recipes, but she's a captivating, brutally honest writer who had me laughing out loud on the commuter rail.   If you haven't yet, read it.

 Service Included, by Phoebe Damrosch — An enlightening look into the dining room of one of New York's finest restaurants. An enthralling read throughout, from Phoebe's crash course in truffle varieties to her thoughtful musings on why this world of prohibitively expensive meals exists, and why she has chosen to become part of it. And while she may not in the end provide a satisfactory justification for this restaurant's existence (does it need one?) she provides plenty of humorous tips of how - and how not to - behave when dining there.

On the lighter side, my mom's friend Nina Simonds pointed me toward some great food blogs. I'm still exploring all her fantastic recommendations (and all their recommendations, in turn) but here are some of my favorites so far:

Leite's Culinaria — Thoroughly tested recipes, gripping features, advice on buying knives. They host some lectures/programs/scholarships in the "real world" too. Quite the outfit.

Serious Eats — I love this one. It's not in the least bit serious, and they've got everything: recipes, restaurants, tips, travels and good old funny pictures of dogs. The user-generated content is top-notch too.

The Kitchn — As the name implies, this one is as much about kitchens as it is about what's made in them. But they're careful not to alienate those of us without the counter space (or budget) for Kitchen Aids and Cuisinarts.

Caffeinated Chocolate Espresso Cookies!!

There is a widely held belief that something is always baking in our kitchen. This isn’t too far from the truth. We have baked innumerable cupcakes heaped with a variety of fluffy buttercreams or crunchy glazes, two-tiered cakes of both the carrot and chocolate variety, many a pie filled with fresh fruits and dusted with sugar. But cookies, somehow, have fallen between the cracks. Maybe they seem somehow overdone, the perfect consistency of then elusive (and here’s where I get controversial, because that consistency is a yielding, moist chewiness, not a tooth-breaking crunch). And everyone can bake chocolate chip cookies, right? So really, it’s just not worth it.

Then, my friend Ailish sent me an e-mail insisting that I look at a cookie recipe on her favorite vegetarian blog, 101 Cookbooks. What sort of cookies merited an e-mail, I mused, as I double-clicked and opened the window. And then I saw them and all became clear: espresso cookies, filled with cocoa, chocolate chips, and whole espresso beans enrobed in a thick layer of chocolate. I might have squealed. It’s possible I foamed at the mouth. Then I frantically posted the link on Chloe’s facebook wall.

This was actually the second time making these, as I wanted a tasty gift for my dad’s birthday. The recipe is easy and the result is indisputably delicious. Due to a dearth of organic ingredients in our kitchen, we substituted the original recipe with more basic supplies. I doubt anyone knew we used Morton’s salt instead of organic fine-grained sea salt. The chocolate and espresso flavors come through strongly but don’t obscure the rich butter base, and the espresso beans add a pleasant and surprising crunch to an otherwise soft and crumbly mouthful. The end result is like a smooth shot of espresso: addictive, rich, and certain to keep you awake a few hours past your bedtime.

2 ½ cups whole-wheat flour

2 tbsp. espresso powder

¾ tsp. salt

¾ tsp. baking soda

¾ tsp. baking powder

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 tbsp. vanilla

¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

¾ cup chocolate covered espresso beans

Preheat the oven to 375.

In a medium bowl whisk together the dry ingredients. Set them aside and cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. When they are well-mixed, add the eggs one at a time, then mix in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. I strongly suggest not adding the flour all at once even though it’s tempting; it has the tendency to go all over the place. Finally mix in the espresso beans and chips, making sure that they are distributed all throughout the batter. You don’t want any one cookies to be lacking in espresso beans (or, for that matter, you don’t want any one cookie to have 10 of them…that poor person may never sleep again).

The batter will be very thick. Take your greased cookie sheets and drop dollops of the batter onto them. This recipe makes a lot of cookies-probably 3 dozen or so. They puff up quite nicely and if you don’t roll them into balls the tops will be a mass of craggy, aromatic chocolate, oozing chips and espresso beans. Cook them on the middle shelf for just 10 minutes. They cook quickly and are better under-done than over-done. They are wonderful right out of the oven, moist and gooey. But we’ve found that they’re equally delicious after being in the fridge for a week: dense, cold, and buttery.

Polenta with Mushrooms and Asparagus

Made a nice vegetarian dinner with Dana and Seth last night. Well Dana and I made dinner - Seth washed the dishes, and opened the wine, which was from Oregon. (Lightest Pinot Noir ever - very nice.) For some reason all the food looks super shiny in the picture - probably the super-bright environmentally-friendly but terribly unflattering light bulb in our kitchen. But it was actually of a normal, healthy sheen and quite delicious.

I've been trying to use up a bag of fine yellow cornmeal for months, so we've made polenta twice now. First time was on Dana and Seth's alternate first date. They were going to go get sushi at a nice restaurant in Wayland Square, but then it was blizzarding. Sushi didn't seem like an adequate reason to walk 20 minutes in multiple feet of snow, so they decided to eat here. But since we hadn't gone grocery shopping in ages, I was enlisted to help make something out of the random ingredients we did have in the kitchen. Wound up making polenta with grilled asparagus and red peppers, plus a nice little salad of caramelized red onions and walnuts with sliced apples and blue cheese. It was surprisingly good, for a this-is-what-was-in-the-kitchen meal. I've made the salad again several times.

So we did polenta again last night, but as we were actually going grocery shopping, we picked up some mushrooms and an onion to go on top. Threw them together with some finely chopped sun dried tomatoes, cheap white wine leftover from our last meal together (asparagus risotto) and some herbs from the cabinet. (There were dozens of spice jars here when we moved in, and I'm still finding ones I didn't know were there.)

We cooked the polenta with some toasted pine nuts, then cut it into triangles and fried it in oil. And as we forgot to get something green to go with it, we wound up making asparagus again. Always good.