I was really excited for my friend’s birthday to roll around last week, because I had been planning for weeks (weeks!!) on making this cake.
I was excited because, some two odd years ago, when we lived together in Berlin in an old Nazi-office-cum-apartment with wood floors, a deep red wall and a well loved kitchen, this cake really made an impact on us.
We had an old gas oven which, in order to light, required a courageous and somewhat terrifying reach into its depths with a barbeque lighter and demanded the user’s willingness to accept a few singed arm hairs. It was the sort of appliance that wouldn’t really fly in North America, and mastering it gave us a certain sense of satisfaction. Among the countless edibles glories that came out that… antique, we baked this cake together. We talked about it for months but, I guess due to its relatively long ingredient list, we never made it again. In my memory it was the most moist and intensely chocolaty cake I’d ever tasted. And those are not words I pass around lightly.
So I thought that this cake, laced with the sweet taste of nostalgia, would be perfect one to celebrate her 23rd. Sadly, this time around I found it to taste relatively ordinary. I’ve had cakes that tasted more intensely of chocolate with much less effort. It wasn’t by any means inedible, but I felt as though I was really just consuming it as an excuse to enjoy the frosting, which was incredibly thick and rich, deeply chocolaty with a slight accent of orange and, for me, the best part. And a truly outstanding cake is one in which the frosting is at least the second best part.
I tried to rationalize. This could be because of a number of factors. The circumstances in which we first had this cake, for example, could be one. It was the morning after my birthday, and our Spanish friends showed up at our door with their energetic smiles, rolling accents, and two tubs of Ben&Jerry’s. So the cake was eaten for breakfast, with good friends, ice cream and a hangover. This might have made it taste somehow richer.
Second, I had consumed a fair bit of plain dark chocolate as I baked the cake the second time round. This might have lessened the impact of the cake itself. To be fair, other eaters of the cake did say it tasted quite chocolaty. So, again this is just to be fair, I wouldn’t be opposed to the notion of giving this cake another try.
All this to say that I was happy to come home from her party to a bowl of surplus frosting – the recipe made much more than the cake needed. Turning them into something that resembled a truffle seemed a little classier than eating a bowlful of leftover frosting, so after a few spoonfuls I decided to shape the rest into little balls and roll them in cocoa powder.
Recipe: Tart Chocolate Orange Truffles
This recipe is adapted from the frosting of this cake. While the cake itself is decent, the frosting is delicious and turns into a lovely, flavourful truffle. I decided to swap half the butter for sour cream, and I love the slight tartness it added. I call them truffles, but they are a little softer than the usual truffle.
2 1/2 cups finely chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup thawed frozen orange juice concentrate
In a small saucepan or in the microwave, melt the chocolate. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Slowly add the melted chocolate, while mixing. Refrigerate for an hour or so. With your hands, roll about a tablespoon’s worth of the mixture into a ball, then roll it around in cocoa powder.
Try to keep these somewhere cool, they melt really easily.
A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I packed up our bags and hopped on the ferry to Departure Bay. My friend had invited us to her family’s farm on Vancouver Island to celebrate her grandma’s eighty-ninth birthday, and we were so happy to be included.
The days before heading over to the farm I’m always excited about three things. First, I get excited to spend time with whoever happens to be around, usually some combination of her sister, parents, aunts, cousins and grandmother, or all of the above given a celebration as it was that weekend. Then I get excited for the slow days, cruising around in her Subaru, maybe taking a polar dip in the lake or getting a milkshake from the DQ, always blubbing around their house, lingering in their brightly painted turquoise and yellow kitchen. My excitement for these two things is usually somehow superseded by the third thing that excites me greatly about the Torgerson Farm: the food.
After visiting the farm I bring home memories of snacking on beets from Linda’s garden that she pickles in a sweetly spicy brine, her freshly baked bread buns slathered with her delicate tasting pear jam or the dried apples she makes. I always look forward to the next time I can tear off warm, fluffy chunks of Alan’s bread, a loaf of which seems mysteriously to always be coming out of the oven the moment we step in the door. And I get nostalgic for the joy of cracking fresh farm eggs into a cast iron pan, sprinkling in a few different cheeses and watching the bright yellowy liquid turn into a soft, cheesy scramble.
This trip I brought home a new food memory and – joy of all joys – it is one that can easily be recreated in the city, without Linda’s father’s recipe for pickles or Alan’s knack for kneading. Just a few hours before leaving to catch the ferry back home, we baked the custard-filled cornbread from Molly Wizenbergs‘ book. In all its creamy glory, it was so delicious that my friend baked it again last weekend, and it is now firmly cemented as a favorite recipe in both our repertoires. And hearts. And bellies, of course.
The name cornbread is, I find, somewhat misleading. This is nothing like bread, and doused in maple syrup as the recipe instructs, it hardly tastes of corn either. Our addition of pear jam flavored whipped cream hardly made it more bread-like or corny. And though I love bread, and I love corn, this comment is intended in no way to suggest there is something wrong with this ”cornbread’. Far from it, there are so many things right.
It is basically your everyday cornbread (presuming you eat cornbread everyday), but with the addition of a cup of cream poured into the center of the batter before baking. This cream, though, is what makes the recipe special, turning into a delicate custardy layer that takes this cornbread far from the realm of everyday. Warm from the oven, with the coldness of softly whipped ice cream and the sweet stickiness of maple syrup the layering of textures, flavors and temperatures is what made me pledge allegiance to this recipe as an excellent snack, breakfast, or dessert – but probably not the cornbread you would serve alongside fried chicken and coleslaw.
Custard-Filled Corn Bread
from Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, originally from Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal — fine ground is better
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons butter — melted
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 cup heavy cream
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Butter an 8-inch square baking dish, and place it in the hot oven while you prepare the batter.
- Sift or stir together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and baking soda.
- In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and the melted butter until well-blended. Add the sugar, salt, milk and vinegar and beat well. Stir the dry ingredients into the egg mixture just until the batter is smooth and there are no lumps.
- Pour the batter into the heated baking dish. Pour the heavy cream into the center of the batter. Do not stir. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until the top becomes lightly browned.
- Serve warm, with maple syrup and whipped cream.
Celebrated my birthday casually over a couple of days. With family, with my boyfriend, with friends and then with friends again. It was lovely, silly, and fun and I feel very lucky to be another year older, healthy, and surrounded by so many wonderful people.
