Drawing Down Inventory III: One-off Cakes

     

 

It’s that time of year again: time to make room in the freezer.

Every year I have odd quantities of dried and glazed fruits, nuts, breads, cakes, cookies, etc., leftover from holiday baking. Which they are, and how much of each, depends on what the focus of holiday baking has been that year. Or what I had planned to make but didn’t get around to. Or, what I haven’t eaten or given away.

Usually, I am polishing off the last of the cookies right around now. It is a great pleasure to, ever-so-slowly over the course of the months between New Year’s and March, nibble away at the cookie inventory. Cookies age very nicely; in fact, I think the freezer greatly improves many of them, as the flavors meld and intensify in storage. And of course, it is wonderful to reach into the freezer and pull a cookie out for dessert after dinner.

So, having eaten the last cookie a few days ago, a fair amount of space has been freed up. But still, there remained all those bags of fruits and nuts, and a little more than half an orange olive-oil cake. I ate a small piece of the cake—excellent, still—essentially evening it off to a neat half. Then I used everything to make the cake below, and took it to the office. I probably won’t have everything on hand to make this cake in exactly the same way again, but as you can see, the recipe could easily be adjusted according to what you do happen to have, producing a different cake each year.

One-off Post-holiday Cake

This is rich, moist, dense, and spicy. Serves 10.

3 cups medium cake crumbs—about ½ of a 10” tube cake (see Note) 
1 cup candied citron
¾ c fresh crystallized ginger
½ cup raisins (I used mixed, mostly large flames)
2 T marsala or sherry (I used Spanish mistela)

¼ c light turbinado or pure cane sugar
½ c Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa
2 large brown eggs
Juice and grated rind of ½ medium navel orange
¾ whole milk
5 oz unsalted butter, softened
2 tea baking powder
3 tea mixed best-quality fresh ground spices, to taste (I used: 1 tea cinnamon, ½ tea cardamom, 1/3 tea cloves, ¾ tea nutmeg, 1/8 tea white pepper, big pinch salt)

1/3 cup blanched slivered almonds (chopped hazelnuts would do)

Pear or other fruit syrup for glazing (optional)

Use a deep 8” cake or springform pan. Butter it, line it with parchment, and butter and flour the interior.  

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Divide the crumbs in half. Put ½ half into a medium bowl, the other into a food processor.

Soak the raisins in the alcohol.

To the crumbs in the processor, add the citron and crystallized ginger and pulse until the fruits are ground and crumb mixture looks medium-fine.

To the crumbs in the bowl, add the sugar, eggs, cocoa, milk, juice and rind, baking powder, and spices, and stir until smooth. Add the fruit/crumb mixture and the raisins and their liquid (if the raisins are very large, cut them in half using a wet knife), stirring well to blend. Beat in the soft butter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and scatter the slivered almonds across the surface (I sliced whole blanched almonds in half).

Bake at 325 for about 1 hour, until the surface is puffed and lightly cracked, the nuts are turning golden, and a cake skewer inserted midway between the center and the edge comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes, then turn carefully out. The cake will pull away from the sides as it cools. While still warm, you can brush the top and sides with a syrup if you wish; I had some leftover pear syrup from poaching pears for a pear tart for my students before Christmas, so was able to use some of it. But not necessary.

Note: I used a cake made with olive oil because that is what I had, but any plain, rich cake would do, such as pound cake. The cake does not have to be at its peak, but it should not be dried out—i.e., should not be stale.

 

      

Glistening Glacé: Let the Holiday Baking Begin

The boxes have arrived: ten pounds of dried and glacé fruit. Cherries, citron, orange and lemon peels, dates, pineapple, apricots, three kinds of raisins. Plus pristine whole blanched almonds and freshly shelled hazelnuts, pistachios, and pecans. For the next three weeks, it’s into the baking black hole, that place where the world disappears and there is nothing left but my kitchen, where time really is relative and normal needs for eight hours of sleep are suspended without the slightest difficulty, where actions are concentrated under one bright, microscopic lens, my workspace.
The ingredients are as exciting and abundant, in their own pantry way, as summer's earthy produce. If sour cherries and currants are summer's gemstones, surely glacé fruits are winter's. And if glacé fruit weren't so sticky, you just might string it up and wear it, or pin some to your winter coat. It sparkles, like all good jewelry.
If you're wondering whether glacé fruits are the same as candied fruits are the same as crystallized fruits: well, sort of. All will have been cooked in sugar and water to start with, and the terms glazed and candied are often used interchangably. They may be finished differently, however. Crystallized fruit is generally sugared after being cooked in a syrup; though a root, not a fruit, ginger is the classic example. Very fresh crystallized ginger is a hot and sweet treat that I always have on hand to satisfy that after-dinner sweet craving. True glacé fruits are just-ripe fruits cooked in water and then preserved in a sugar syrup in a multi-stage process. Over the course of several days, weeks, or even months, the fruit is heated and steeped in syrup of increasing sugar concentration, gradually replacing a significant percentage of the water content of the fruit, and then dried.
Sensitive to the vagaries of timing, technique, and moisture, glacé fruit qualifies as an artisan product. Historically, glacé fruit falls into the category of luxury food items, traditionally reserved for holiday eating and baking; indeed, the heavy cake of fruit barely held together by other ingredients was nothing so much as a demonstration of bounty, sort of like having a clutch of black truffles or pound of best beluga on your table. Today, quality glazed fruit still commands a premium price, and a fine fruitcake is still a splurge. Indeed, the price can seem like a barrier because it is hard to buy good quality in small amounts--certainly not in the quarter- or half-cup amounts that some recipes might call for. Fortunately, because glazed fruits are essentially preserved fruits, they keep extremely well, and can be frozen. While you may not use cherries much after the holidays (although they are surprisingly good folded into vanilla ice cream or plain white bread for toasting), peels are versatile in the kitchen year-round, in baking, candy making, Asian cooking, and just to nibble on. Another strategy is to divide and conquer: buy a pound, and share the cost with a friend.
Working with glacé and sugared fruits is a sticky job. I use a sharp chef's knife for slivering or fine chopping, and use scissors when I want larger pieces--e.g., to cut cherries in half or apricots into quarters. Keep a damp cloth at hand as you work and wipe the blade of your knife or your scissors frequently.

Maple Ginger Orange Peel Bread
Recipes for orange peel bread are in some of my early 20^th century cookbooks; my adaptation is richer and denser, with a more complex flavor. Use the finest and freshest fruit you can find and afford; as always, quality makes a huge difference (see note for sources). This tight-crumbed, moist bread is suited to the paper-thin slicing that makes fruited products satisfying rather than overwhelming. It makes great sandwiches with cream cheese, butter, or a little homemade deviled or plain ham (see note below).
1 ¼ cups glazed orange peel
¼ cup crystallized ginger
2 T unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs
½ cup sugar
Scant ½ cup 100% maple syrup
3 ½ cups a-p flour
5 T baking powder
¼ tea cardamom
1 ½ cups sour milk
For glaze: 2 T apricot jam, 1 T water
Preheat oven to 325 F. Butter a 13x4.5x2.5 loaf pan; line with waxed paper, butter the paper, and flour the bottom and sides of the pan. You could also use a standard 8.5x4.5x2.5 bread pan plus one mini bread pan.
Slice the ginger and the peel into fine slivers; pack lightly to measure, and set aside. In a large bowl (use a standing mixer if you have one), beat together the melted butter, eggs, sugar, and syrup. Gradually add the dry ingredients and the milk alternately, beginning and ending with the dry. Beat a good four minutes until well combined, scraping the bottom of the bowl if necessary to incorporate all flour; the batter will be thick. Fold in the orange peel and ginger, distributing well.
Pour the batter into the pan and let it sit on the counter for 15-20 minutes. Just before putting it in the oven, decorate with a few thin slivers of orange peel, laid diagonally on the batter. Bake until a toothpick in the center comes out clean; for the long loaf pan, this is 50-55 minutes. Start checking after 40 minutes. The top will split near the end of the cooking (one aggressive old recipe even tells you to slash the top part-way through in a pre-emptive move). Surface will be dry and pale.
Remove to a rack. Melt 2 T apricot jam with 1 T water in a small saucepan and brush over the top of the cake while warm. When cool enough to handle the pan, turn the bread out and allow to cool completely on the rack. Wrap well. If you bake a standard and a mini, you may consider the latter an extra and eat it all.
Note: If you live in a city, you can probably find good quality fruit at this time of year: try the Italian, Eastern European, or German neighborhoods or look for specialty nut and candy shops. In Boston, I used to go to Dairy Fresh Candies in the North End (they don't carry quite as much as they used to); in Philadelphia, Nuts to You; the stores generally have a more comprehensive selection than is sold online. Other online sources include www.nutsonline.com, in New Jersey.
To make deviled ham: Cut a 1/2 lb slice of smoked ham into chunks and toss in the food processor with 1 tea mayo, 1 tea minced onion, 1-2 tea Dijon mustard, a T each of golden raisins, maple syrup, finely chopped dill pickle, and cider or orange juice. Add a dash of salt, white pepper, and allspice. Whiz a few minutes until it forms a loose, spreadable pate.