Rhubarb Cinnamon Polenta Cake
May 12, 2012 at 3:13 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, simple cakes, sweet things | 12 CommentsTags: baking, cake, fruit
May is a good time to be in New York City. People are happy to be out and about. It’s nice sleeping weather (our house doesn’t have A/C, so this is a big thing for me!). And there’s finally more at the greenmarket than tired ol’ potatoes and apples. About the same time I saw the first rhubarb here, my copy of Nigel Slater’s Tender, Volume 2 (called Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard in the US edition). I knew he’d have some good rhubarby ideas for me…this guy has a London city garden that puts my weedy Brooklyn backyard to utter shame. I’ll certainly never have a mini orchard like he does, but maybe one day I’ll have a couple of raised beds for a few homegrown herbs and things. Until then, I’ll have to tote my seasonal fruit and veg home from the market.
Slater’s Rhubarb Cinnamon Polenta Cake would be just as good for breakfast as it is for dessert. It’s made from more of a dough than a batter. The cake is a little crunchy from the cornmeal and perfectly moist, but sturdy enough to support the layer of baked rhubarb that makes a pink stripe in the center. I make a stove-top rhubarb compote a lot when it’s in season, but I kind of like the more hands-off baked method from this recipe, and I’d use it again even if it’s just for my morning granola. The rhubarb more or less keeps its shape when handled this way and you get to pour off the gorgeously pink liquid it releases. Even if I wasn’t going to serve it alongside the polenta cake, I wouldn’t think of pouring this down the drain. Hello, homemade rhubarb sodas, cocktails, yogurt or ice cream drizzle…I could go on.
Rhubarb Cinnamon Polenta Cake– makes an 8-inch cake
adapted from Tender, Volume 2 by Nigel Slater
Note: Use a medium to coarse cornmeal/polenta for the best texture. The cake is fragile when warm, so it’s best to serve it cool, together with the reserved juices from the cooked rhubarb.
for the filling
500g rhubarb
50g sugar
4 tbsp waterfor the cake
125g medium to coarse cornmeal/polenta
200g AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of ground cinnamon
150g sugar
grated zest of a small orange
150g butter
1 large egg
2-4 tbsp milk
1 tbsp demerara sugar
-Lightly butter am 8-inch (20-centimeter) loose-bottomed cake tin, preferably spring-form. Set the oven at 350°F (180°C/gas mark 4). Put in a baking sheet to get hot.
-While your oven is heating, trim the rhubarb, cut each stem into three or four pieces and put them in a baking dish. Scatter over the sugar, toss, and let everything sit until the oven is hot. Sprinkle over the water and bake for about 30 minutes until the rhubarb is soft but still retains its shape. Remove the fruit from the dish and put them in a colander to drain. Reserve the juice to serve with the cake.
-Put the cornmeal/polenta, flour, baking powder, cinnamon and caster sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Add the grated zest and the butter, cut into smallish pieces, then blitz for a few seconds till you have something that resembles breadcrumbs. (You could also do this by hand, rubbing the butter into the polenta with your fingertips as if making pastry.) Break the egg into a small bowl and mix with the milk, then blend into the crumble mix, either with the food processor or by hand. Take care not to over-mix: stop as soon as the ingredients and liquid have come together to form a soft, slightly stickydough. If it isn’t sticky, add a little more liquid.
-Press about two-thirds of the mixture into the cake tin, pushing it a couple of centimetres up the sides with a floured spoon. Place the drained rhubarb on top, leaving a small rim around the edge uncovered. Crumble lumps of the remaining polenta mixture over the fruit with your fingertips, and don’t worry if the rhubarb isn’t all covered. Scatter over the demerara sugar. Bake on the hot baking sheet for 45-50 minutes, then cool a little before attempting to remove from the tin. Serve in slices with the reserved rhubarb juice. You can wrap leftovers in plastic and refrigerate for a couple of days…just bring back to room temperature before serving.
Maple-Roasted Apples with Candied Nuts
October 28, 2011 at 10:46 am | Posted in other sweet, sweet things | 3 CommentsTags: baking, dessert, fruit
I do bake all day at work, but when this time of year rolls around, I’m also more than happy to dial up the oven when I get home. The kitchen is the coziest place in this old house on a chilly day (we really need to get our front windows replaced!). When a new book called All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art by Molly Stevens found its way into my hands, I immediately began plotting out a Sunday roast-fest!
The book goes into great detail about how to perfectly roast meat and fish, the science behind it and how to get the most out of the technique, but there are also recipes for gorgeous roasted veggies and fruits. Steven’s Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Capers and Lemony Browned Butter will for sure be on my Thanksgiving table, and maybe I’ll show you those later, but that I assume you are here for the sweet stuff. My CSA has given me four bags of apples in two weeks, so I’m just searching out things to do with them. Then my eyes hit this recipe for Maple-Roasted Apples with Candied Nuts, and I knew it would be the first one I’d try. This has the same warm, sweet flavors of baked and stuffed apples, but they are so much easier to prepare…no tedious hollowing out or accidentally ripped skins. Here, I followed the author’s suggestion to sever these apples warm over vanilla ice cream, but I can tell you that they are also great over waffles (that’s what I did with the leftovers) or pancakes, and I can’t think of a better topping for oatmeal.
Maple-Roasted Apples with Candied Nuts- makes 4 to 5 servings
adapted from All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art by Molly Stevens
Steph’s Note: Prefer your apples with cinnamon or vanilla? Feel free to switch out the nutmeg and ginger for whatever spices you’d like.
4 large tart, crisp apples (1 1/2 to 2 lbs), like Gravenstein, Cortland or Braeburn
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon maple syrup
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
salt to taste
3/4 cup nuts (any you like…I used walnuts and pecans)
-Position racks in the top and lower thirds of the oven and heat to 400°F (or 375°F if you are using convection). Line a large heavy-duty rimmed baking sheet and a smaller sheet (like a quarter sheet tray) with foil, parchment or Silpats.
-Cut the apples into quarters (it’s up to you if you want to peel them first…the skin does look pretty and helps the pieces hold shape). Remove the cores/seeds and cut the quarters into 1/2-inch cubes. Pile the apples onto the larger baking sheet. In a measuring cup or small bowl, stir together 1/4 cup maple syrup, 3 tablespoons melted butter and the nutmeg, ginger and a pinch of salt. Pour the mixture over the apples, toss to combine and arrange in a loose single layer.
-Roast the apples on the bottom rack, tossing after 15 minutes and every ten minutes thereafter so they roast evenly, until soft and slightly caramelized, but not completely collapsed. This took me 25 minutes here, but may take as long as 40 minutes.
-Meanwhile, pile the nuts on the smaller sheet and drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon maple syrup, 1 tablespoon melted butter and a pinch of salt. Toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Roast on the top rack above the apples, stirring once or twice until they are toasty brown, about 10 minutes. Let the nuts cool before serving, and they will become crisp.
-Serve the fruit warm as a topping for ice cream, oatmeal or whatever you choose, and drizzle any juices from the pan over top. Scatter with candied nuts and serve. If you are storing this, keep the fruit and juices in a covered container in the refrigerator, and reheat at 350°F for about 10-15 minutes to warm slightly. Keep the nuts in a separate continued at room temperature.
Please note that the publisher, W.W. Norton, sent me a copy of this book…but I just bought another copy for a friend!
Apricot and Cinnamon Cake
August 19, 2011 at 4:13 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, simple cakes, sweet things | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cake, dessert, fruit
No big story here…some apricots that needed using up led me to rifle through my cookbook collection for inspiration. I found this Apricot and Cinnamon Cake in Bill Granger’s Every Day. When we lived in Sydney, visiting one of the bill’s restaurants was always a special treat, and I think he is a master of simple cakes and baked goods (and he makes the best pancakes!).
This is a cinnamon-spiced cake with halves of juicy apricots baked in. A crumb topping with more cinnamon gives it a perfect morning coffee cake vibe, but if you add a scoop of ice cream, it suddenly seems more like dessert. I used small apricots, but I think peaches or nectarines would be equally delicious (if they are large, they may need to be cut into thick slices, rather than simply halved, though). This cake smells wonderful in the oven.
Apricot and Cinnamon Cake— makes one 8″ cake
adapted from Every Day by Bill Granger
Steph’s Notes: The cinnamon is front and center in this cake. If you’d rather have it little more subtly spiced, I’d suggest leaving the cinnamon amount as-is in the cake portion and reducing it by half in the topping. If you don’t have self-raising flour to make the cake, you can use 140 grams of all-purpose flour combined with 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/8 teaspoon of salt.
for the cake:
140 g (5 oz) self-raising flour
1/2 t ground cinnamon
50 g (1 3/4 oz) sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
4 T milk (or 3 T Australian)
1 t vanilla extract
85 g (3 oz) unsalted butter, melted
350 g (12 oz) apricot halvesfor the topping:
40 g (1 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour
1 t ground cinnamon
35 g (1 1/4 oz) sugar
pinch of salt
35 g (1 1/4 oz) unsalted butter, chilled and diced
-Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
-To the topping, put the flour, cinnamon, sugar and pinch of salt in a bowl. Rub the butter with your fingertips until crumbs form. Chill while you assemble the rest of the cake.
-Grease and line the base of an 8″ (20 cm) round springform pan. (You can use a regular 8″ cake pan, greased and lined with parchment, instead, but you will need to flip the cake out and reinvert it if you want to serve it out of the pan.)
-Sift flour and cinnamon into a large bowl and stir in the sugar.
-Make a well in the center and pour in the egg, milk, vanilla and melted butter. Mix with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth, then spoon into the cake pan.
-Arrange the apricots, cut-side up, evenly over the batter and then press gently down. Scatter the topping evenly over the apricots.
-Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake is light golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave on a rack to cool before removing from the pan.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Stonefruit Crumble
August 16, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in cobbler/crisp/shorties, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 CommentsTags: baking, dessert, fruit
This was supposed to be a Tropical Crumble with mangoes and bananas, but like I mentioned when I made jam, I have apricots and plums up the wazoo right now. So this became a Stonefruit Crumble instead, with apricots and yellow plums (look, I kept the colors similar!), and a little red plum ice cream for good measure. I tried to keep my version along the same lines as the original, flavoring the fruit with ginger and citrus, but since my fruits were small and soft, I didn’t pre-cook my filling before baking the crumble and I added a sprinkling of flour to the fruit mix to help thicken the juices.
Does anyone know if theree’s technically a difference between a crisp and a crumble?? Maybe there is, because my topping wasn’t as crunchy as I thought it would be. It had pecans, brown sugar and butter (cut back from the original recipe by a couple of tablespoons), so it wasn’t bad, but it did just kind of meld into the smooshiness of the baked fruit.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Laws of the Kitchen, as it was Gaye’s turn to pick again. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Strawberry-Rhubarb Double Crisp
April 12, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in cobbler/crisp/shorties, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 53 CommentsTags: baking, dessert, fruit
We’re in that weird in-between time of year when there really isn’t any good fruit here. The rhubarb has still not made its long-awaited (for me anyway) appearance at my Greenmarket, and the leftover apples just look like they’ve been banging around in storage for the last few months. This Strawberry-Rhubarb Double Crisp is so tasty that I wanted to make it again this past week before TWD posting, filled with whatever, but I couldn’t find any fruit that really spoke to me. Luckily, I do have a crisp to show you…one that I made at the end of last May, when the rhubarb was still around and the strawberries were red through and through. The combination made for an intensely colored and flavored fruit filling.
If you’d like to know what the heck a “double crisp” is, it’s a crisp with a topping AND a crust…so that makes it double good. In addition to the usual suspects like oats and nuts, this crisp mix has a gingery zip to it, which I king of dug, but if it’s not your thing, simply leave it out.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here on NPR’s site) or read Teapots and Cake Stands, as it was Sarah’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
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