Lovey LouAnn’s Carrot Cake

*Fork pictured was not found on the street.*

On Saturday, I had, as my particular friend called it, a visceral reaction to the suburbs.

We had dropped Khristian’s daughter off at the movies with a friend and planned a drink and some food at the least offensive of the chain restaurants in Hunt Valley (which turned out to be California Pizza Kitchen).

Things started out fine, as they usually do, and we ordered drinks and food at the bar.

After these diversions were settled I was able to look around.

The customers next to us were unhappy with something and a perfectly nice manager came over and soothed them.

The incoming male bartender, clearly an annoyance to our outgoing female bartender, overpoured for a lone male customer and mentioned that he (the bartender) would prefer some Rumplemintz. It was clear that the male customer was not really interested in the extra booze, but it was delivered in such a way that refusal would have seemed odd, so the male customer pretended it was fine.

It wasn’t really fine. I could feel it. The gesture of the extra booze came off as the “everybody’s doing it” kind of knuckle-dragging peer pressure one experiences around the beer funnel at a backwoods party.

Then we heard the same bartender mention Rumplemintz again at the other end of the bar. Soon after we watched him stick his finger in the neck of a bottle of some kind of juice mixer to unclog it before adding it to a waiting tray of drinks which was then, presumably, delivered to an unsuspecting patron.

Right around this time I started to feel…off.

I am not sure the last time I have been in a “fast-casual” dine-in chain restaurant, but I do remember saying that I didn’t want to do it again, and as I watched the people at the bar eating and listened to the modest din of their conversation or watched them staring into space or at the NCAA women’s basketball on the TVs over the bar I started to feel worse.

We finished our pizza and kale salad and paid. With time to kill, we boarded the escalator and descended into the belly of the beast: Wegman’s.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Wegman’s. And the Hunt Valley Wegman’s is legendary.

But the second I walked into the store I knew it was a mistake. It was hot, and it smelled strongly of food and people at the same time, in equal measure. Whole families were doing the weekly shopping, which translated into hordes of people, all with a determined look on their face and little regard for the people around them. We headed to the back of the store and perused the gluten-free section for a bit, and then I started to realize that the rest of our lovely day, the day that started with a walk to the Waverly farmer’s market for asparagus, a Blacksauce Kitchen biscuit, and a bag of Michele’s Granola, was not going to end well for me.

Anxiety is visceral. It may originate from a few random firing synapses in your brain, but the second those electrical impulses begin, the physical sensations are unmistakable with sensory detail that is clear, odd, and particular.

I could taste the last bite of kale salad in the back of my throat, where my breath lodged and came in short, shallow gasps. I was hot, and my clothes started to squeeze me. My mouth dried out. My heart beat in my chest, and I could feel the pulse in my belly, the one that connects to the vagus nerve, the transmitter of butterflies and anxiety and fear in a straight shot to the base of the skull.

Thinking to maybe head off the inevitable, I left my particular friend holding our few groceries and went to the restroom. Sometimes the quietness of the bathroom gives me space to collect myself. It may seem impossible that a public bathroom could become a refuge, but sometimes it’s the only quiet, peaceful space to go to when anxiety fires up.

The bathroom was rank-smelling and unclean. Loud music piped through the store, the kind of saccharine pop music that sounds like Christian rock but isn’t and involves no real instruments, reverberated against the oddly terracotta walls here. The bathroom was no help. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture, foul-tasting and pebbled with tastebuds that felt every particulate-filled, unrelenting morsel of inhaled air.

I will spare you the details of the next 45 minutes or so except to say that I visited that bathroom once more, plus a Peet’s coffee and tea bathroom and the movie theater bathroom (three times) before the girls finished their movie. I had taken an anxiety pill, then another half, and then another half. It’s hard to know if the medication sticks when you can’t keep it down. We made it home, where I took another pill, spent some more time in my (mercifully quiet and clean) bathroom, put on thick jammies (for the shivering when it came), and got into bed.

It’s not like I am unfamiliar with the trappings of the suburbs.

I spent 13 years in the suburbs of Atlanta. Without knowing it, in those 13 years, I lost bits of myself. It was subtle at first. Weekend shopping and meal planning on Sundays. Casual acquaintances who never really knew me (or cared to, really). Weekends consumed at the softball field, my child the center of the universe.

I kept the house, bossed my husband (Dane, for those who are just joining in) around, swore he couldn’t live without me (even went on strike once, like a total douche), and fully developed the raging anxiety that first surfaced when I was young. Every moment was gogogo, working for the weekend, taking care of business. The joy of teaching I experienced in Seattle evaporated in Georgia under a domineering boss who spent faculty meetings yelling at us.

We bought a farm. We lost a baby. I quit my job and started a school. Dane lost his job. We lost the farm. Dane died.

Sicily and I fled the suburbs for Baltimore.

Forgive me.

The vacuous homogeneity, the forced joie de vivre, the conspicuous consumption, and lack of individuality of the suburbs nearly killed me.

The low-key unhappiness that no one will admit to. The women complaining constantly about their husbands, who continue to ask forgiveness, not permission, of their wives.

The soul-killing lack of creativity, a hole that women attempted to fill chock-a-block full with Mason jar crafts, Pinterest boards, and wine painting party girls’ nights out. The insistence on calling each other “girls” in the first place.

The apathy towards politics, or the overwhelming conservative nature of the politics they did participate in.

The sheer size and number of SUVs and the callous, blatant disregard for fellow humans who are not in the inner circle, as evidenced by the lush green lawns and huge bags of garbage.

The subtle once-over every time you walk in someone’s door.

The endless evenings and weekends driving to activities or playdates or else keeping up the lawn, the house, the charade.

Forgive me.

It’s small wonder that in terms of volume and sheer violence, most heinous crimes are perpetrated not in rural areas or in the darkest parts of the urban jungle but just outside the beltway. School shootings happen in the suburbs, most often carried out by deeply unhappy people with startlingly easy access to guns.

But I digress.

I didn’t realize how miserable I was being the person I was never meant to be until I didn’t have to be that person anymore.

I shared these thoughts with Sicily the following day. We were walking across a parking lot, and when I told her my thoughts, her chin quivered and she lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes.

“Do you regret it?” she asked me. “Being a softball mom?”

I stopped in the parking lot and looked her full in the face. I reassured her that she is the joy of my life. She made me understand the unfathomable depths of love and has given me the most blissful moments I have yet experienced in this incarnation. I am who I am today because she was born – she has made me a better person.

In truth, as much as my flight from the suburbs was about excavating the person I buried for so many years, it was also about being someone my kid could look up to. To show her that even from the shadow place of grief and through years of feeling unworthy, there is a way to come back. That it’s a sad and hard and joyous and exhausting and frustrating and hilarious and angry-making journey filled with ten tons of bullshit but also an equal measure of tears and laughter and the full range of emotion.

That feeling the full range of emotion – the crevasse of the depths and the universal height of joy – is the necessary thing. It’s the thing I couldn’t feel for 13 years. It’s the thing that came surging through me as we wandered the chaos of a strip mall in suburban Hunt Valley on a Saturday, only this time it came like a coiled snake, snapping out of a clay pot.

I want my beautiful daughter to know that it doesn’t have to be so for her. She can be who she is, just as she is. The Wiccans express it thus: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” And so I say now to both myself and my daughter.

As my anxiety receded, I felt like eating. Usually, I don’t eat for the rest of the day after an anxiety attack, and today was no different, but my cravings are always specific – sweet, comforting things, usually in the form of cake. I am possibly cake’s biggest fan.

In light of the burgeoning spring that has begun to sprung outside my bedroom window, and to honor my heart walking around outside of my body as we both continue to move towards who we are, I present to you this lovely, easy, unfussy carrot cake. I made carrot cake for Sicily’s first birthday. She ate it with a fork, no sticky fingers for her, and I knew, even in the middle of the suburbs, that she and I would somehow get to be just fine.

LouAnn’s Carrot Cake

Sicily, a.k.a Muffin Girl and Lovey LouAnn, maybe would have chosen a different cake for her first birthday, were she given a choice. I made this to try to reconcile her steady diet of organic, handmade meals and snacks with my deep love of sweet, sweet birthday cake. This recipe is a mash-up of several different recipes I have made over the years, with tweaked spices and a new technique that is shamelessly stolen from Cook’s Illustrated. After making cake in this way, I may never return to the round.

(serves 10)

Ingredients

Cake

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular AP works here, too)

1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3 large eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup well-mashed banana (about two bananas)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 2/3 cups shredded carrot (about 3 large carrots – this measurement needn’t be exact)

Frosting and decoration

12 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 stick butter, softened

Optional: 1/4 cup buttermilk powder

2 teaspoons lemon

3 cups powdered sugar

Optional: milk, as needed

2 cups pecans, toasted, cooled, and chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (allow overhang at the ends) and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

In a larger bowl, use the same whisk to combine eggs, oil, bananas, and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly until egg and oil are completely incorporated.

Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined (note: if you are using regular AP flour, do not overmix). The batter will seem fairly thick, closer to brownies than cake.

Fold carrots into the batter.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Use an offset spatula to even the surface and make sure it is level.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is dry. You can use a cake tester or toothpick to test also; no crumbs should stick to either.

Cool in pan for five minutes, then carefully life with the edges of the parchment paper and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting, place cream cheese, butter, and buttermilk powder (if using) in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar (sift if you are particular; I am not), one cup at a time, beating well between additions. If your frosting is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk at a time, beating well, until it achieves a smooth, spreadable consistency.

To assemble, use a sharp knife to cut the cake into four pieces: one big cut across the longest part of the cake and one on the shorter side (you will end up with four rectangles that are about 6″ x 8″ each).

I use a rotating cake stand to frost, but since this is a round cake that is not entirely necessary. Frost and fill, allowing plenty for the top. If some crumbs show through on the sides, that’s okay.

When the cake is frosting, press handfuls of pecans into all four sides until covered. Pro tip: DO NOT DO THIS OVER THE SINK (don’t ask how I know). What happens is you waste a ton of pecans, which are very expensive. Complete this by holding the cake in one hand over the same rimmed baking sheet it was cooked in, using the other hand to press a handful of pecans into the sides at a time. Whatever is leftover can be used in another application.

Try not to eat it all, but remind yourself that since there are carrots in there it’s practically a vegetable.

Recipe Notes

You can substitute applesauce OR drained crushed pineapple for banana in the same amounts.
Buttermilk powder is not strictly necessary, but it’s nice to have around and lasts forever. Find it in the baking aisle near the canned and powdered milk.
You could also add currants to the batter…if you were a MONSTER.

A Balm For Memory Loss: Smith Island Cake

For someone of my age this may seem an overly dramatic statement: I am losing my memory.

For the record, I am 46, born in 1971, so just a shade away from 47 which is officially the late 40s but I don’t really care.

What I care about is that I cannot remember things.

Part of this is a car accident when I was 16. I can remember THAT: staring up through the spiderweb of the windshield, one leg on the driver’s side of my dream car, my 1971 refurbished Volkswagen Bug, the emergency brake raking open a long, bloody seam up the back of my left thigh, and the rest of me in the passenger side. An EMT with a shaky voice, tending to a cut on my head, saying, “It’s fine. You’ll be fine,” and then nothing until the vision of my mother storming through the curtains in the ER, brusque: “You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”

The doc, several weeks later, telling me that my memory would be affected forever by the early trauma to the frontal lobe.

Part of this is other trauma in childhood, some of which I remember and am addressing with My Therapist, some of which I believe is so deeply buried that the excavation itself would cause trauma.

Fast forward decades, when this – this memory loss thing – wasn’t really an issue, to now, when it has suddenly become one.

I can’t remember shit.

Not the funny, old-timer CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) disease.

Whole swathes of my life, gone with no real understanding of what happened or where they went.

Me in a formal dress next to a boy in formal dress: no idea the occasion or the boy.

Yesterday – what I did, where I was.

Some of this can be attributed to the lifestyle of a freelance writer. I have only one real standing appointment every week; otherwise, the days are all meaningless, fabricated markers of time. Other of this can be blamed on my Ayurvedic dosha – vata – which has me consuming large quantities of information and then promptly forgetting it.

But this loss of memory is distressing.

I can’t remember significant events in my life, events that make me the person who I am. Events that have forged relationships with people I love.

The thing that has saved me in many ways is my friends.

In my head, I call them the Keeper of Records.

I have friends who have known me for forty years- they have a grave responsibility to recall the child that they thought I was to the adult I am now.

I have friends who have only known me since this move back to Baltimore in 2014. They have less responsibility, perhaps, but they also have less invested in me. Perhaps they will grow weary of reminding me of their important dates, or nudging me towards our shared memories that are even now, just these few years on, receding.

It’s hard to go on record like this. It feels like failure.

And nothing soothes that feeling better than baking, and eating, cake.

Full disclosure: I have never before eaten Smith Island cake.

#Shocking

As a native Marylander, this is also something of a failure, but I choose to let this one go. I am letting it go because as I type this I am having a big slice for breakfast, which means not only am I not a failure in the long run, but I am also a fucking grownup who can eat cake for breakfast if I feel like it.

Plus, as I was researching this recipe I found out that the one lady on Smith Island who is super famous for her “authentic” Smith Island cake uses BOXED CAKE MIX.

GTFO. That’s just DUMB.

So I looked deeper and found the “original” recipe from Frances Kitching, an innkeeper on Smith Island who is believed to have created this iconic cake. This lady is the real deal; from her linked obituary, she delivers gems like:

“The best thing you can do to a crab is let it be. Clean it, fry it, and watch that it doesn’t pop in the skillet and burn your arm.”

And, when someone asked if they could keep their beer cold in her fridge while they ate:

“You’d be the first. I have simply turned down some people who appeared to have been drinking when they came here to eat. They were in no condition to enjoy and appreciate good cooking.”

The New York Times even stopped by her inn in 1979 to write a story about her. The article is notable in its description of not only the meal the writer enjoyed but also in the beauty of the descriptions of life on Smith Island.

In 2008, Smith Island cake became Maryland’s state dessert. You will note in the description that in order to be a Smith Island cake proper, flavor doesn’t matter, but the number of layers does: between eight and 12 is the standard.

So don’t look too closely at the picture above (hint: mine only has six, but in my defense I was feeling a little woozy when I made this AND it’s my first one AND I am not actually particularly fond of crepe cakes, which is what it begins to be when you have too many layers, so BACK OFF).

Never you mind the layers. I am calling it a Smith Island cake that cannot count. The next one will come correct.

But in the meantime, back away from the boxed cake mix and use Frances Kitchings’ own recipe, as I did. I subbed out my gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, and it was, as usual, spot-on.

And also, for those of you following along at home, this little thing happened:

Chad and I have been working on The Food Market {at Home} for nine months (my name is on the inside: “Written with Suzannah Kolbeck”), and it came out on Black Friday. You can order it online, or you can get it at either of his two restaurants, The Food Market in Hampden and La Food Marketa up in the county. I am not shilling this because I make any cash on the deal (I don’t), but it’s a nice big deal, and I am proud of the work.

There is even a recipe for Smith Island cake in here, Chad’s interpretation with a crazy good strawberry-flavored whipped cream cheese filling, microbasil, strawberry dust, and dehydrated strawberries. You, too, can get fancy at home (without too much fuss – seriously).

It’s Time For Fall: Frank’s Holy Bundt

It may not look like much, but it’s basically religion in a bundt pan. #Trust

It’s fall, people.

The calendar may argue the point, but the weather surely doesn’t.

And not a moment too soon. My schtick is not depression lit, but I have made no secret of the fact that in my personal life it can be hard to find a lot of things to get it up for on a daily basis (yes, I said “get it up for” not “get up for.”). Often life seems like a silly march towards the end, just looking around for things to fill the days until you don’t really have to look around anymore and can sit in a chair, watch the news, complain about the weather, and worry about your 401K.

This summer in particular has been one of the more difficult ones. Maybe it is the return of the prodigal daughter from France. Or the conflict and stress of a freelance project that is exciting and challenging but an ongoing battle. Maybe it’s the completely fucked state of the U.S. Whatever it is, things feel pretty meh, enough so that even a drop in temperature is enough to get excited about.

On this the first day of September, I had been planning to kick off a 30-day month with three things: 30 days of cooking, 30 days of writing, and 30 days of yoga.

I am a huge fan of the 30-day challenge, but only the ones I make up for myself because YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME. In an effort to cast about for something to focus on, I thought piling on the 30-day deadlines would be a good idea.

And then September 1st hit. Today. And I am still finishing up a recipe that I have been working on for two weeks and have a website with half-written blogs and a cell phone with jotted notes.

Turns out, sometimes you have to plan a little bit when you are gearing up for something.

Ah, well. In the wake of flooding in Texas, missile tests in North Korea, and navigating the complexity of emotions and people in combining two households with two teenagers (yes, I compared those three things. What of it?), planning has been…difficult.

So here we are, September 1st, and I am presenting to you a recipe from someone else.

The original recipe is not actually called Frank’s Holy Bundt.

Khristian (my particular friend, for those of you new to the blog) has a friend Peter with whom he performs. Peter lives with a roommate, Liz, whose boyfriend is Frank.

I met Frank briefly once before and only in passing, but a couple weeks ago I spent more time with him on Peter’s back porch. Cocktails at The Bluebird Room in Hampden had me feeling social, so I stopped by Peter’s house on the way home and found Peter, Khristian, Liz, and Frank.

Frank is a musician, constantly on tour. He has unruly hair, a beard, and an easy, warm way about him. As with many people, he also comes with verbal tics, one of which is “holy.” Everything that night was holy, from the cupcakes I made Liz for her birthday to a broken down car in western Maryland. Even the mashed potatoes they heated up later that night were holy.

In honor of Frank, and that warm summer evening, and the reminder that sometimes it’s nice to not worry about the big picture and just hang out on the back porch and enjoy what is, I present this, Frank’s Holy Bundt, a strange but incredibly delicious marriage of zucchini and chocolate. I only made slight adjustments to the original recipe mostly because I like to use what I have. If you have an abundance of zucchini, shred it and freeze it in two-cup measures so you can make this mid-winter.

Frank’s Holy Bundt

This cake has very little sugar for a cake, plus vegetables, so it’s practically health food. I used chocolate chips because it’s what I had on hand, but if you are fancy and have fancy chocolate, use that instead.

Ingredients

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons strong cooled coffee
3 large eggs
2 cups unpeeled grated zucchini (I used frozen and squeezed all of the water out)
3/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, chopped
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter until fluffy. Add the vanilla, coffee, and eggs, mixing well between each addition (see note below for why this sort of doesn’t actually matter).

In a separate bowl, combine the zucchini, chocolate chips, and a cup or so of the flour/cocoa mixture. Stir well to coat and separate as much of the zucchini as possible.

Add the rest of the flour mixture into the egg batter. Mix until just combined; the batter will be thick.

Fold the zucchini mixture into the batter, and blend with a spatula without overmixing (see Recipe Notes).

Pour into the prepared cake pan, and use your spatula to make sure the top is level.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool for 10 minutes, and then place the rack on top of the bundt pan. Flip the bundt over and allow to cool completely.

Use a fine-mesh sieve to sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar. Try not to eat it all but remind yourself that there is zucchini in there if you do and count that as a couple servings of vegetables.

Recipe Notes

I beat the shit out of the butter and forgot the sugar. When I added it after the next step, the batter was lumpy and gross looking, with clumps of butter. DID NOT MATTER AT ALL. This cake is very forgiving.
When working with cakes, muffins, pancakes, etc, you will often see the direction “mix until just combined,” or “do not overmix.” This is so the traditional flour doesn’t begin to develop the gluten and result in leaden cakes. With gluten-free flour, you can mix as much as you want. I don’t worry about it at all, but if you are using regular AP flour, tread lightly.

Love And Anger: Chocolate Cupcakes With Mole Ganache and Cinnamon Buttercream

Four years and four months after his death in a car accident, I am beginning to only remember the bad things about Dane.

The stages of grief are not stagnant and are generally understood to be fluid and back-and-forth; you don’t reach one stage and then never backslide. I seem to be moving back and forth between anger, depression, and acceptance, settling in mostly to the easiest emotion for me to deal with.

Anger. Which often hides its evil bitch of a twin, depression. So there’s that also.

I think we most of us are very comfortable with anger. Every time I open The Facebook or listen to the news, there’s something else to be angry about. I feel it when I get behind the wheel of my car (this is infrequent lately) and spend most of my time driving talking myself down and taking deep breaths.

The hardest thing these days is moving towards love.

I believe deeply in love and compassion and kindness. This is at war with my general dislike and distrust of strangers, but it dovetails nicely with my deep-seated and long-held belief that love truly is all that matters. Real, deep, abiding love. It’s the one thing that is free and available to anyone. You don’t even have to have a target for that love. Love, in general, can be spread all around, like butter on a hot bagel (and just as delicious).

I think that love is healing and softening and strengthening and is, ultimately, the thing that every single person on this planet actually wants and needs to survive.

But shit, man. Sometimes people are deeply painful and difficult to love. This is our 5th Father’s Day without Dane. Every year Sicily and I mark the day by doing something that Dane might have liked to do, but this year I find myself increasingly angry when I see and hear all these tributes to great dads. I can only see the negatives, chief among them the fact that he did not take care of himself and has left his daughter father-less, for this Father’s Day and an infinite number of other days that will find his child with teary eyes because her father isn’t there.

I did love Dane, deeply. He was funny and clever (see also “Wormaggedon” to describe the surfeit of dead worms in our driveway after a gully-washer). He could fix pretty much anything, and if you wanted to have fun, he was your go-to. He was generous to a fault and took everyone at face value (a trait his daughter has deliberately and conscientiously cultivated in herself). He loved his child, and he loved me – it was obvious in the way he wanted to be with us all the time. No one was happier than he was, puttering around the house and hanging with his girls.

But he sabotaged himself at every turn, his death just another example of that. He was careless with his time and money and he often avoided responsibility, making me the bad cop (but also the person who kept our ship afloat and mopped up his messes). The aftermath of his sudden death is another example of that, and I have been the target of some spectacular grief outbursts from our child. I have parented very poorly at times these past years (well beyond minor poor parenting. Have you ever told your kid to shut the fuck up? I have. For the record, even though she really, really needed to shut the fuck up, I deeply regret telling her to do so.#ForReal), and I have, at times, found myself thinking about just how long I have to actually keep myself alive, respectably and so that our daughter is stable and set.

These have been rough days of late. No one tells you that grief lasts so long, not the wailing and teeth-gnashing part but the part where you have to figure out actually what the fuck and how to move forward.

Not surprisingly, I am craving comfort food. Chocolate comfort food, specifically. I guess I don’t actually know many people who crave a heaping bowl of kale when they stress eat, but I am also past the days when a simple piece of chocolate will do. If I have my say, my comfort food is cake of some kind, with plenty of frosting.

Just like love, these cupcakes are not just a straightforward chocolate smack in the face. They are complex and have deeply flavored layers of cinnamon and spice. They are warm and comforting – just like love – and spicy and easy to overdo – just like anger.

Chocolate Cupcakes With Mole Ganache And Cinnamon Buttercream

Ingredients

Chocolate Cupcakes

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar (not packed)

1 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular AP flour works, too)

3/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoons salt

2 eggs + 2 egg yolks at room temperature

3/4 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup hot coffee

Mole Ganache

2 heaping tablespoons (or to taste) prepared mole negro (see Recipe Notes)

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup + 2 teaspoons heavy cream

Cinnamon Buttercream

2 sticks butter, softened

3 – 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

2 teaspoon cinnamon (sifted with the powdered sugar)

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 (ish) tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place cupcake liners in a muffin tin. Set aside.

For the cupcakes: In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl), mix together both sugars, flour, sifted cocoa flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a medium bowl, combine eggs, sour cream, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract and mix well to combine.

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just wet. Add hot coffee and mix until thoroughly combined, about one minute.

Fill cupcake liners 2/3 of the way full and bake for 15 – 17 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely before filling and frosting.

For the ganache: Place mole, chocolate chips, and heavy cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat and stir constantly until chocolate and mole are completely melted and mixture is smooth. Let cool slightly, then place in refrigerator.

For the frosting: Place softened butter in a large bowl and sift in powdered sugar and cinnamon. Add vanilla and one table of heavy cream to start. Use a hand mixer to beat until creamy and smooth and the consistency of frosting. If it is too thick, add more heavy cream; add more powdered sugar if it’s too thin.

Assembly: Use a demitasse spoon or sharp knife to remove a divot of chocolate cupcake (set that aside to freeze and then mix into ice cream). Scoop or pipe chocolate mole ganache into that divot, then pipe frosting in a swirl to cover (you can use a star tip and a pastry bag to make rosettes or a fancy swirl.

Eat a million of these. Recipe makes (annoyingly) 32 cupcakes.

Recipe Notes

I used mole negro from Guelaguetza, a specialty food company in California. Their mole is complex and spicy and earthy and delicious; I found it at the Emporiyum in Baltimore back in April. Previously, my go-to mole was Dona Maria’s, which had the bonus of coming in a lovely juice glass and is easily located in the Hispanic food section of most grocery stores. You can use whichever mole you wish.

Gratitude, Day 30: This Is The End, Now With Cranberry Cake

NOTE: I am a fan of 30-day challenges, and November is traditionally a time of two: National Novel Writing Month, and 30 Days of Thanks. As I am not a fiction writer, this year I have chosen to publish a daily blog for the entire month, expressing my gratitude. This may not be entirely food-focused, but expect recipes aplenty. Feel free to join me in the comments below. What are you thankful for today?

I won’t lie: this month of blogging about gratitude has been a bit of a slog.

I have learned that combining gratitude, a food blog, and reflection on life is just one thing too many, so I am sticking to food as it relates to life.

It’s not that I am not grateful, and it was never that I couldn’t find something to write about.

Sometimes combining three elements is a little hectic. Next year, maybe it will just be 30 days of cookie recipes, or 30 days of sauces. Gratitude can stay in my journal or shared with those it involves.

Today, the final day of this month-long occasional forced march, I am grateful that I am done.

To celebrate, I made the first of what will certainly be multiple cranberry cakes.

Full disclosure: this could have done with a few more minutes in the oven, but rather than show you a slice that clearly indicates this, I thought I would snap what really matters – the craggy soft interior of a moist, delicious cake that was eaten with fingers before it was barely turned out on the board to take the picture.

This cake is sweet and studded with fresh cranberries that are completely unadulterated. No chopping, no sweetening, no cooking. Nothing.

So what happens is you take a bite and get this luscious, buttery, sweet vanilla cake, followed by a bright/tart burst of fresh cranberry.

So. Freaking. Good.

It’s a bit underdone because this is the first time I made it in a Bundt pan, and I was slightly pressed for time. It takes just 15 minutes to throw together but a solid 75 minutes in the oven.

The other unusual part of this recipe is that it has no leavening agent; eggs and sugar are beaten together until they double in volume and become a ribbony pale yellow.

I would love to claim this recipe as my very own, but it isn’t. I added a touch of orange zest, used my gluten-free flour mix, and didn’t measure the cranberries (just dumped a full bag of frozen cranberries in), but other than that, this recipe is perfection, as is.

Oh, and side note: you could add a ton of sugar and calories by making the pecan topping in the recipe, but that is completely unnecessary.

Today, this last day of November, what are you grateful for?

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