A Simple Easter (or Passover!) Cake

April 7th, 2023

Photos by Peter Beck

Holiday cooking is often elaborate. But sometimes it can, and should, be simple.

My friend Peter Beck recently won my heart (as he often does) by sharing a cake that is uncomplicated and relatively healthy … and tastes like spring. If you want something a little dressy but not too gloppy for an Easter dessert, I recommend trying it.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that although this cake contains baking soda, it is still usable for Passover as well, although if you keep kosher you may have to seek out kosher-for-Passover baking soda.

I grew up thinking that leavening agents were forbidden during this eight-day holiday. When the Jews were finally allowed to leave Egypt, according to the Exodus story, they were in such a hurry that their bread didn’t have time to rise. Jews remember this by eating mainly matzo, unleavened bread, at Passover.

Nevertheless, the prohibition is not on leavening agents like baking soda, baking powder, and yeast but actually on the way in which they interact with certain grains, specifically wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt. Peter’s almond flour and baking soda are therefore allowable.

Peter didn’t actually design this cake for the spring holidays. He isn’t a baker in general, although I can testify that he is an amazing cook.

He loves to offer a dessert of some kind when he entertains, however. Like me, he lives in Hawley, Massachusetts, which abounds with lovely hills and wildlife but offers absolutely no bakeries. He didn’t want to have to go somewhere to purchase baked goods. He consequently decided to develop a relatively fool-proof cake.

He also liked the idea of a cake that doesn’t have icing. A number of his friends prefer cake to icing, he told me, and he wanted to make them happy. I like icing, but I must admit that I didn’t miss it in this recipe, particularly when Peter dolloped a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side of each slice of cake.

“I’m also considering a combination of cream and mascarpone,” he told me dreamily. “Just a dollop.”

“I wanted [the recipe] as simple as possible,” he said of the recipe’s development. I looked at almond-flour recipes. The egg holds the cake together and gives it some lift.”

He also liked the idea of having a small cake, he told me. This recipe fills an 8-inch cake pan and serves six with good-sized but not scary servings. The almond flour doesn’t make the final product taste like almond extract (not my favorite flavor), just like cake. And the citrus flavors sing of spring.

Peter told me that he first put the recipe together about a month ago and has made it at least 10 times. (He entertains often!)

“It’s just easy to have on hand,” he elaborated. “It’s nice for tea. One of the things that strikes me as kind of similar but I really think if you can nail it it’s great is a scone. Also, it’s such an easy thing, and people like that you’ve made a cake for them.”

I was flattered by Peter’s assertion that my own go-to desserts, fruit crumbles and cobblers, also inspired him to find a dessert recipe that didn’t entail a lot of fuss.

I firmly believe that every cook needs desserts in his or her repertoire that can be assembled quickly in the late afternoon if one learns that unexpected dinner guests are due. This cake is just such a dessert.

“After baking it one or two times, you’ve pretty much memorized it,” Peter said of his recipe. “You can put it together on the spur of the moment.”

He notes that a completely different tasting, but similar to make, cake may be constructed by substituting 1/2 cup cocoa powder for a third of the almond flour. I may try that for Easter. Or for another occasion.

When I ate it at Peter’s house, his cake was served in honor of the 40th wedding anniversary of other neighbors, Maggie Speier and Roy Lewis. Peter is camera shy so I don’t have a photo of him with his cake, but Maggie and Roy were happy to pose.

If you have no almond flour on hand, that ingredient may be purchased at many supermarkets. Peter tells me that Bob’s Red Mill makes an excellent version of this low-carb flour.

Happy Easter and Passover!

Maggie and Roy

Peter’s Almond Cake

Ingredients:

about 1/2 tablespoon butter for greasing the pan
4 large eggs
1/2 cup local honey
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups finely ground blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
any flavor profile that appeals. Peter used 1 teaspoon dried orange peel and 1/2 teaspoon orange oil when he served the cake last week. He also likes to throw in a little Fiori di Sicilia, a lovely mixed-citrus extract.

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease an 8-inch, non-stick cake pan with butter.

In a large bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. One by one, gradually whisk in the honey, the vanilla, the almond flour, the salt, and the baking soda.

Use a spatula to transfer the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake until the cake is fragrant and set, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 22 to 25 minutes.

Cool the cake in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes; then invert it onto the cooling rack and let it cool for 20 more minutes before slicing and serving it.

Sprinkle a little confectioner’s sugar on top if you want to. Serves 6 to 8.

Hot Dog! It’s Time for the Academy Awards!

March 9th, 2023

THE OSCARS® – Key Art. (ABC)

Those of you who know my academic background and my personal proclivities are aware that I am a pop-culture person. In honor of Sunday’s Academy Awards, I’m going to talk about my favorite nominated film. It seems to be almost everyone’s favorite … and for good reason.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is messy and complicated, but as anyone who has ever visited my house can tell you, I’m a firm believer that mess and complexity breed creativity.

The film’s Chinese-immigrant heroine, Evelyn, starts out middle aged and miserable. Her family and her business are in crisis. Domestic drama morphs into science fiction (and numerous other genres) when Evelyn discovers that she inhabits not just the world she knows but a multiverse … and that she alone of all the beings in that multiverse can save it from annihilation.

Along with her quiet husband, her rebellious daughter, and her disapproving father, she leaps through time and space. In her quest to rescue the cosmos, she inhabits several alternative versions of herself. She is a glamorous movie star with martial-arts training, like Michelle Yeoh, who plays her. She is a lesbian in a world where humans have hot dogs for fingers. She is a rock on a barren mountain and can only communicate telepathically.

Photo credit: Allyson Riggs

Evelyn’s infinite lives and personas can teach her, and us, an infinite number of lessons. I’ll share two here. First, the film reminds us that life doesn’t end with youth. At the beginning, Evelyn looks and feels defeated. She becomes a warrior.

I myself am approaching middle age. I have been approaching it for years and plan never actually to enter it. Still, I am old enough to appreciate the film’s message that humans can grow emotionally and physically at any age.

I find the film’s final lesson even more powerful. The editing is dizzying as Evelyn makes rapid shifts from universe to universe to universe. And then, suddenly, near the end, the film slows down. In the middle of a fight scene, Evelyn’s gentle husband freezes the action to ask everyone to STOP. “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind,” he pleads.

Like Evelyn and her family, if less dramatically, we can all inhabit many different versions of ourselves. We will be the best version if we follow this film’s ultimate lesson. The bravest course of action, it demonstrates, is often not battle. It’s forgiveness. Evelyn learns what prophets and songwriters have long told us: “What the world needs now is love.” I have a feeling that’s true in any universe.

Happily for me, there are a couple of food connections in this film.

The family begins the film getting ready for a Lunar New Year party. Unfortunately, the only food on hand is a pot of blah-looking noodles with some greenery stirred in.

I’m not into blah so I’m going with the hot-dog connection I mentioned earlier. The hot-dog fingers were such a hit with fans of the film that one can purchase hot-dog gloves to wear while watching Everything Everywhere All at Once. I won’t go that far, but I hope to serve hot dogs at my soiree on Sunday.

To make them more interesting (and to create an actual recipe to share with readers), I have decided to make chili dogs. Like the film, this dish is quite messy but ultimately satisfying.

Everything Everywhere Chili Dogs

I usually make chili with lots of beans, but when I was in graduate school my friend Shannon informed me that the protein in chili-dog chili should always be beef and only beef. So that is what I use here.

Ingredients:

for the chili:
1 splash olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon chipotle powder (if you don’t have chipotle, use another dried pepper, but I love the slight smokiness of the chipotle)
3/4 teaspoon salt
ground pepper to taste
1 can (14.5 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 cup water

for the chili dogs:
6 hot dogs (I prefer all beef)
6 hot dog rolls
the chili
grated sharp cheddar cheese to taste

Instructions:

Begin by making the chili. Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the onion, and sauté for a few minutes until it smells lovely and starts to brown. Add the garlic and sauté again briefly.

Add the beef, breaking it up into small pieces as you stir and brown it. When the beef has browned, stir in the spices, the salt, and the pepper, followed by the tomatoes and the water.

Bring the mixture to a boil; then turn it down and simmer it for 30 to 40 minutes, until the flavors blend and the liquid has mostly, but not completely, boiled off. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Cook the hot dogs in your preferred method, boiling or grilling. While the hot dogs are heating up, lightly toast the hot-dog rolls.

Onto each roll place a hot dog. Partially slicing the dogs lengthwise makes it easier to add toppings: a generous helping of chili and some of the cheese. Serves 6 Academy-Award guests. This recipe may be multiplied.

Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs

Return to Cherry Pudding

February 19th, 2023

I actually posted this recipe (well, a slightly different version!) a number of years ago. I’m returning to it because it’s so very satisfying for February (I accidentally almost titled this post “Return to Cheery Pudding”)—and because this year I made a video to show readers how very easy it is. (If you’re following along on the video, however, be kind: I forgot to mention the lemon juice in it!)

Presidents’ Day was placed on the third Monday in February for a reason. That date is always close to the birthday of George Washington on February 22. The day honors all presidents, even the incompetent ones like James Buchanan and the downright dishonest ones like Richard Nixon. But Washington is its star.

Pedants might point out that our first president wasn’t actually born on February 22, 1732, but rather on February 11 as marked on the calendar in use then, the Julian calendar.

The Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain and its colonies in 1752, and all dates were shifted 11 days to allow the calendar to catch up with the solar year.

Washington himself counted the 22nd as his birthday, however, and I find him an excellent source on this subject.

Some historians believe that Washington was our greatest president. I’m not sure whether I always agree with that assessment. Washington’s ownership of African Americans tarnishes his reputation.

Over his life time he did, however, come to view the institution of slavery as “the only unavoidable subject of regret” he had for the American republic.

Moreover, he arranged to manumit the enslaved people he owned at his home, Mount Vernon, although they were to achieve their freedom only after his widow’s death. He freed only one person during his lifetime. Still, he freed more people than most of his peers among the Founding Fathers.

There’s one way in which he absolutely stands out as a leader. I would argue that Washington’s most celebrated and most impressive achievement as our first president was the grace with which he left the office.

His farewell address from 1796 counseled Americans to remain united against the dangers of partisanship and regionalism. It also argued on behalf of fiscal and international conservatism.

His address was and is a remarkable document. Each year a United States senator reads the address on or near his birthday to the Senate. Senator Tim Kaine of Washington’s home state of Virginia has said, “There’s no other speech that gets that treatment. There’s no other person that gets that treatment.”

Its specialness comes not just from its content, although it is a beautifully crafted document, one the president composed with the help of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Its specialness comes from its originality.

Although Washington was exhausted and ready to retire after decades as a soldier and statesman, many of his supporters wanted him to remain in office, to become a quasi-king.

His relinquishment of the presidency underlined the difference between the United States and most of the other nations in the world. It set an example of the peaceful transfer of power that would endure.

One of my favorite numbers in the musical Hamilton is “One Last Time,” in which Washington drafts the farewell address with his loyal friend and aide, Alexander Hamilton. “[I]f we get this right,” Washington sings, “we’re gonna teach ‘em how to say goodbye.” He got it right, and he delivered that lesson to posterity.

(You can see and hear Christopher Jackson and Lin-Manuel Miranda perform this song at the White House here🙂

It is traditional to make something with cherries to honor Washington’s Birthday, and I’m not one to mess with tradition.

Most Americans now know that the story about his chopping down a cherry tree and confessing the deed to his father because he was incapable of lying was almost certainly made up by Washington’s enterprising biographer, Parson Weems.

Nevertheless, the legend is so strong that Americans still associate Washington with cherries. The gift shop at Mount Vernon even sells souvenirs with cherry themes.

The cherry-tree tale is appealing and apt in its way. Washington was known for his honesty and indeed maintained that “the character of an honest man” was “the most envied of all titles.”

The cherry-tree story can thus be viewed as a metaphor for George Washington’s overall character. In an era when our politicians aren’t always strictly truthful, his forthrightness is refreshing.

Besides, I like cherries! And I’m very fond of Washington. When I was a little girl, my grandmother had a statue of him (marble or alabaster or something!) in a niche at the bottom of her staircase in Rutland, Vermont. We were instructed to salute the statue every time we passed it to honor “General George.”

Cherry Pudding

This recipe uses canned cherries because even in Washington’s home state of Virginia one can’t get fresh local cherries in February.

Ingredients:

1 can (14.5 or 15 ounces) tart cherries (NOT cherry pie filling)
the juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons sweet butter at room temperature
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
whipped cream as needed
toasted almonds or pecans (or even candied ones) as needed (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Drain the cherries, reserving their liquid. Combine the drained cherries and the lemon juice, and spread this mixture into a well buttered, 8-inch-square pan or a 1-quart casserole dish.

Cream the sugar with the butter. Sift together the flour, the baking powder, the salt, and the cinnamon, and add them to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk; be sure to begin and end with the flour mixture. Stir in the extract.

Use a spatula to spread the batter over the cherries as well as you can. Sprinkle the brown sugar over all. Pour the cherry juice over the top of the batter. Do not stir it in.

At this point your dish will look pretty messy, and you will begin to doubt yourself. Never fear: the magic of baking (or perhaps the inspiration of George Washington) will rescue your pudding. The cake batter will rise to the top and solidify, although there will be sauce at the bottom and the edges of the pan.

Bake the pudding until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, 45 minutes to an hour. Be careful not to insert the toothpick too far down in the pan, or it will hit the sauce.

When the pudding is done, dish it onto serving plates, making sure each serving has cake, cherries, and juice. Dollop a little whipped cream on the top, and put a few nuts on the cream if you like. (I tend to skip them, but some people want that crunch.) Serves 8.

Watch me make this dish!

 

Split Pea Soup: Just Under the Wire for National Soup Month

January 30th, 2023

January is National Soup Month. It was so designated in 1986 by the Campbell’s Soup Company as a promotional tool for its products.

I am not precisely thrilled about the origins of Soup Month, but I endorse the general idea. When temperatures turn cold outside, nothing beats soup to warm the cockles of the heart (and stomach).

Soup is one of humankind’s oldest foods.

The Food Timeline contends that the “act of combining various ingredients in a large pot to create a nutritious, filling, easily digestible simple to make/serve food was inevitable. This made it the perfect choice for both sedentary and traveling cultures, rich and poor, healthy people and invalids.”

Soup bowls are among the earliest receptacles found by archaeologists. The popularity of soups as restoratifs (foods that promoted health and digestive processes) made them street foods in France, eventually lending an adaptation of their name to the new word “restaurant” as their purveyors moved indoors.

The word “soup,” according to the lexicographer John Ayto, comes from Latin, German, and old English and was originally “sop,” a piece of bread soaked in liquid. Eventually, Ayto contends, people began eschewing the bread and serving the liquid on its own, and the word morphed into the one we use today.

Soup mixes of a sort were among Americans’ first convenience foods. People traveling in the American colonies carried what were called “pocket soups.” These cakes of dried animal juices were the precursor to today’s bouillon cubes.

The pocket soups were turned into a nourishing liquid with the addition of hot water. They were also known by the much less appetizing name “veal glue.”

When Meriweather Lewis and William Clark set off in 1804 to explore the Louisiana Purchase and find a way to the Pacific Ocean, they carried with them 193 pounds of commercial pocket soup to keep their troops going. The soup was valued at $289.50, according to biologist and historian Kenneth Walcheck.

I may not carry pocket soup on my travels, but I thrive on soup all through the year. It’s a versatile food and a handy conduit for leftovers.

When I make or buy the Indian dish known as dal—which always seems to come in large portions—I add vegetables, more spices, and vegetable or chicken stock to transform those lovely lentils into mulligatawny soup after a day or two.

Chicken bones are easily enriched with vegetables and boiled down into chicken stock. This can be eaten by itself as a warm, easy-to-digest liquid. Or it can form the base for any number of soups and stews.

In the summer I use produce of all sorts—corn, tomatoes, zucchini, herbs, and more—to make soups that are sometimes warm and sometimes cold. At this time of year, however, I embrace warm soup most of all.

Most recently, I countered extremely cold weather outside with split-pea soup. My family had enjoyed a ham dinner over the holidays, and we had to do something with the end of the ham, as well as the little pieces of meat adhering to it that were too small to eat on their own or in a sandwich.

The thick split-pea soup with which we ended up helped us fend off the freezing temperatures and lasted through a couple of meals. It was, in short, perfect for January.

I had to force myself to write down the ingredients as I added them in order to include the recipe in this paper: this is one of the soups I usually make without worrying about a recipe. There really isn’t any way to mess up pea soup, unless you forget to stir the soup from time to time and the split peas burn.

I decided to make our soup a little more complex than usual by adding celery and a bay leaf; I don’t usually use those when I make the soup. I may do so in future, however, as they gave it additional flavor and texture. Additional herbs and spices are an option, but I like my pea soup relatively plain.

I recently read that it’s possible to mimic the smoky flavor of the ham with smoked paprika. I may try that soon. I still have split peas, but I’m out of ham! And although soup month is about to leave us, the icky weather will be around for a while.

Your Basic Split-Pea Soup

Ingredients:

1 pound split peas
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
8 cups water
1 ham end, preferably with some nice bits of meat adhering to it
1 large carrot or 2 medium carrots, finely chopped
salt to taste (start with 1 teaspoon or less; the ham bone will be salty)
pepper to taste
1 bay leaf

Instructions:

Rinse the split peas and drain them in a fine sieve.

In a soup pot, heat the butter and oil until the butter melts. Stir in the onion and the celery, and sauté them for a couple of minutes. Stir in the drained peas, followed by the water, the ham piece, and the remaining ingredients.

(If you want to minimize fat, don’t bother to sauté the onion and the celery; just add them when you add the other ingredients, and skip the butter and the oil.)

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and simmer the soup, partly covered, until the peas soften and enough liquid has boiled off to give you just the flavor you want. This will take at least an hour and possibly up to two. Stir the soup from time to time during the simmering process.

Remove the bay leaf and the ham bone; then cut any meat you can off the bone and add it to the soup. Discard the bone and the additional fat on it. Serve warm. Serves 6 to 8.

A Birthday (or any occasion) Feast

December 12th, 2022

Dennis’s Dip

My birthday falls next week, just two days before Christmas. In recent years, my family has instituted a birthday tradition for me that I adore. We eat only appetizers and desserts—or rather dessert, since the dessert du jour is always birthday cake for me.

If I didn’t feel that I should worry about my health, I would eschew main courses and eat nothing but appetizers and desserts all the time; I’m not a big fan of main courses. (Or perhaps I wouldn’t. After all, the appeal of this meal is that it isn’t ordinary.)

I got the idea from my neighbors at Singing Brook Farm here in Hawley, Massachusetts, who celebrate “Appy Night” every year the night after Thanksgiving. They know that the Thanksgiving table revolves around the turkey and its accoutrements, and they relish that special meal.

The evening AFTER Thanksgiving, however, they pay tribute to foods that don’t get to star on Thanksgiving and devote themselves to sumptuous appetizers and desserts.

I asked my friends and honorary cousins Molly and Liza Pyle how this tradition began. “It was during the Gam era,” Molly informed me. Gam was Mary Parker, the family’s much beloved (and occasionally much feared) matriarch. She died in 1989 so we calculated that Appy Night was born at least 35 years ago.

Thanksgiving was always the biggest annual holiday in the Singing Brook Farm family. As Gam’s grandchildren grew up and got married, they and their spouses prepared more and more elaborate dishes for the big meal.

One year in the 1980s, they went crazy with appetizers. When it came time to carve the turkey, no one had any appetite for it.

“And Gam was NOT happy,” Liza recalled. I shuddered mentally, remembering all too well that an unhappy Gam made for an unhappy family and an unhappy neighborhood.

The following year Appetizer Night entered the world, giving the family a chance to cook and consume foods that complemented the Thanksgiving board without overwhelming it, i.e. appetizers and desserts.

The practice also extends the holiday to more family members. Liza noted, “Often people arrive who can’t come the day before. It’s an opportunity to have that family connection.”

“And to contribute,” said her husband Dennis Bowen. The family is composed of a lot of active, competitive cooks who live to share their culinary talents.

The evening is relaxed. Not everything has to be served at once since the feast can last for hours. Food can arrive whenever it arrives.

This Year’s Appy Night First Course

I asked the family to identify some memorable dishes they had consumed during Appy Nights in the past. Liza and Molly’s brother David recalled a long-ago dish of baked bacon coated with brown sugar. Everyone was crazy about one sibling’s ex-wife’s rich crab dip. (I’m pursuing that recipe for the future.)

The gang seemed to agree that Dennis’s jalapeño dip was a perennial favorite, however. So that’s the recipe I’m sharing today.

The dip is considerably spicier the day after Dennis makes it, I am told. For some people, this will represent a warning; for others, a promise.

Appy Night usually includes some kind of salad as well as all the goodies, “for sanity’s sake,” Liza informed me. This year she threw together a Caesar salad. And of course there are myriad pies and sometimes other sweets.

The “dish” Singing Brook Farm’s current matriarch, Alice, enjoyed the most at this year’s gathering wasn’t actually edible. It was her newest great grandson, baby Jackson.

Thanksgiving is over for this year—but I encourage readers to try the appetizer-and-dessert model for other holiday parties.

It would work beautifully on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day … or on one of those evenings during Hanukkah or Kwanzaa when the family doesn’t want a big meal but still wants to celebrate a little. It would also work as a fun pot-luck format for entertaining at any time of the year.

Here is Dennis’s dip. I have a feeling it will appear on my birthday menu. Thanks to Molly Pyle Stejskal for the photos in this post!

And by the way, if you’re searching for a holiday gift, remember a cookbook makes a lasting one. There’s still time to ship them before Christmas! Mine can be purchased here:

https://tinkycooks.com/tinkys-books/

Alice with Little Jackson Santini

Dennis’s Jalapeño Dip

I should note that Liza and Dennis disagree on the proportions in this dip. Liza finds the topping a bit much and would prefer to reduce it by a quarter (to 3/4 cup crumbs, 6 tablespoons cheese, 3 tablespoons melted butter). Dennis likes it just the way it is, however.

Ingredients:

for the dip:
2 8-ounce bricks cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup shredded cheese (a Mexican blend or even a nice sharp cheddar)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 can (4.5 ounces) green chiles, undrained
4 ounces pickled jalapeño peppers, rinsed and finely chopped
1 fresh jalapeño, finely chopped

for the topping:
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) melted butter

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a pie pan or a medium-size baking dish. Combine the dip ingredients thoroughly; then spoon the mixture into the prepared pan.

In another bowl, combine the topping ingredients until they are well blended. Sprinkle the crumb mixture evenly over the top of the dip. Bake until the dip is bubbly and the top browns, about 20 minutes.

The Singing Brook Farmers served the dip with large wheat crackers and carrot sticks this year. “But whatever!” said Liza. Serves a crowd.

Dennis with His Dip