I distracted myself

Last night, when I got home, I was moderately mad at the world (for a variety of reasons, not just the one in the last post).

I did something I used to more commonly do when I was mad at the world and in need of distraction - I baked something. (Of late, dietary concerns coupled with an increased sense of "Meh" late in the afternoon tends to limit this activity).

But last night, I needed something different. And also, I had a few eggs in the fridge that were getting very close to their "Use them now or else" date, so I figured I'd bake something. (Slightly-old eggs are better in baked goods, I've found, than they are as scrambled eggs or such. Also, baked goods are heated longer and hotter than scrambled eggs are, so IF any bacteria have found their way in....)

At first I looked at a box of brownie mix I had on the shelf (I keep this on hand because I do randomly get asked to produce brownies for things like church functions, and a mix is a bit faster. But I also felt "meh" about that - didn't particularly feel like chocolate, didn't want something out of a box. I wanted something more "rustic" and more clearly homemade.

Then I thought of a recipe I'd been wanting to try. Over a year ago, when I was flipping through the Amy Vanderbilt cookbook, I spotted a recipe for what she called "Old French Cake." It's more like a coffee cake, and it intrigued me as the only real flavorings in it were mace and chopped-up raisins.

Also, she notes: "Be sure not to use an overly refined [I think there should be a hyphen there - "overly-refined" - but that's how she has it] cake flour for this. It is supposed to be of coffee-cake texture. Is long baking in a slow oven approximates the Dutch-oven baking of the French farm kitchen. We have this often with evening tea and there is never any left to grow stale"

So, I decided this might be a place to try out the whole wheat pastry flour I picked up last weekend at the Greenmarket.

It's a fairly simple recipe. The one oddball thing is that she recommends preheating  the oven for an hour (!) before baking the cake. And it is only at 250 Fahrenheit. I didn't preheat that long (It seems wasteful, and once a modern oven gets to that temperature, is there any virtue in holding it there for a long period of time before baking?) I did have to bake it a bit longer (perhaps 10-15 minutes) than the hour recommended, and at the end I turned it up to 300 to brown the top a bit more nicely (though you invert the cake on a plate to serve it, so....)

Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, well-beaten
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (I used one cup all purpose "white" (unbleached) and one cup Bob's Red Mill whole-wheat pastry. The cake was a bit heavy so I suspect two whole cups of whole wheat would be too much)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon powdered mace
1/4 teaspoon salt (I totally left this out)
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups chopped raisins (I was lazy and didn't bother to chop them, but then I had fairly small raisins. I think this would be even better with the little Zante currants. But then maybe it would be more Welsh than French, I don't know)

Grease and flour a 9" square baking pan (yes, 9", and back when I first thought of making this I had to buy one special as I didn't have one). Preheat the oven. (As she says: for an HOUR at 250 degrees)

Cream the butter and add the sugar gradually. When it is light and fluffy, add the eggs and beat until mixture is light. Mix and sift dry ingredients together, then add alternately with the milk. (She says: Do not beat. I kind of did and the cake came out okay). Sprinkle the raisins with flour (I didn't do that either) and add to batter. Pour batter in prepared pan. Bake an hour at 250 or until it tests done. (It took about an hour and fifteen minutes in my oven).

Let the cake cool a few minutes, then turn it out onto a platter.

Normally I don't frost these kind of "snack" cakes (I'm not a huge fan of frosting and it can be a pain to make) but the cake looked kind of bare so I used her frosting recipe for it:

soften 3 T butter, add 2 cups powdered sugar and combine. Then add 1 t vanilla and 3 T milk. Beat until smooth. (and sift the sugar! Powdered sugar these days is worse than flour for being lumpy). She also said you could flavor it with lemon or with coffee instead, subbing lemon (or orange) juice or strong brewed coffee for the milk.

It's not a *pretty* cake, but it tastes pretty good. I put the leftovers in the fridge both to set up the frosting (which is soft) and to protect it from mold (it's been very humid here, and I find that moist baked goods mold in a snap during humid weather.)


Oh, and a sort-of funny story about when I got my copy of the cookbook: This was one of the cookbooks my mom has, and when I moved down here I knew there were a couple of ones she had that I wanted my own copy of (The Settlement Cookbook, which I use all the time, was another). Anyway, I found this cookbook at one of the Denison antique shops. (It's 1961 vintage - Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook (drawings by Andrew Warhol - yes, THAT Warhol). It was cheap enough ($6.50) and when I brought it up to pay for it, the two guys (who were pretty much what Central Casting would send over if you asked for a "Southern 'gentleman' antique shop owner") looked at it, and one snarked a bit: "I doubt Amy Vanderbilt ever cooked a meal in her LIFE."

And I looked at him, and I said, "Maybe so, but the recipes are solid." (I don't know. I have low tolerance for random snark about stuff, especially stuff I have picked out to buy).

I like to think the look he gave me was one of slightly-greater respect after I revealed that (a) I was familiar with the cookbook, and (b) I intended to actually USE it.

She does have some slightly horrific recipes in there (Maple Mousse for Dieters, made with "Sucaryl" (whatever that was) and artificial maple flavoring, and skim milk and flour in place of the cream and eggs in the real thing). But most of them are good basic recipes, with a few unusual ones (like the cake I just made)