Mocha Rum Cake from Epicurious

Love, love, love Epicurious recipes.  Always delicious. 

This cake is no exception.  It's in my "personal" dessert cookbook, but I've no idea where it came from.  Likely Gourmet or Bon Appetít. Aha!  Actually, Gourmet, 1994.  From back in the day.

Half a cake is better than none.  OK, a bunch of people ate some before I thought of taking a photo.  It is dense and dark and chocolaty.  Kind of a pain in the butt to make, but most wonderful things require some degree of effort. 

Here is the recipe:

Mocha Rum Cake from Epicurious:

Gourmet Magazine, 1994

Ingredients

   

• cocoa powder for dusting
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 pound fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped    
• 3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/3 cup dark rum
• 2 cups strong brewed coffee
• 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• confectioners' sugar for dusting
• lightly sweetened whipped cream
•  
•  

Preparation

1.  
1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Butter a 4 1/2-inch-deep (12-cup) Kugelhupf or bundt pan and dust with cocoa powder, knocking out excess.  Butter well!

2. In a bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. In a large metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate and butter, stirring until smooth. Remove chocolate from heat and stir in rum, coffee, and granulated sugar. With an electric mixer beat in flour, 1/2 cup at a time, scraping down side, and beat in eggs and vanilla until batter is combined well. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake cake in middle of oven until a tester comes out clean, about 1 hour and 50 minutes. Let cake cool completely in pan on a rack and turn it out onto rack. Cake may be made 3 days in advance and kept wrapped well and chilled.
1.  

2.     Dust cake with confectioners' sugar and serve with whipped cream.

Notes:  Make sure pan is well-buttered, so cake won’t stick.  I used 3 4oz. bars of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate.  Used a very potent dark rum.  Made instant coffee from Megdalia D’oro expresso.

                       

Farmer's Cheese and Berry Tart

So I finally managed to take a photo before we ate the whole freakin' tart 

The crust and the filling are both made in the food processor.  Easy and elegant.  Isn't that what we all want in a dessert?  This is an old Gourmet Magazine recipe.  I clipped a million of them.  All good.   Thi was a simple one.  Hooray! 

Orange Melaways from Gourmet Magazine - (Holiday Cookies)

Something about sweet-tangy citrus and the holidays.  I made a batch of Orange Meltaways this week, and they do melt on your tongue.  Couldn't find the exact recipe on the 'Net, so here is the one I used, which looks to be from an old Gourmet (RIP) Magazine.

In a large bowl cream together 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter, softened, and 1/2 cup sifted confectioners sugar.  Into a bowl sift together 1 cup sifted flour (you are a sifting fool) and 1/2 cup cornstarch, stir the mixture into the sugar mixture, and add 4 teaspoons grated orange rind  (do not skimp). and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix thoroughly!
Chill the dough, covered, for 1 hour, or until it is firm enoug to handle.  Form the dough into a 10 inch strip on a doubled sheet of wax paper, roll it rightly into a 10-inch roll, using the wax paper as a guide, and chill it, wrapped in the wax paper and foil, in the freezing comparting of the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Roll the dough in granulated sugar and cut it into 1/4-inch slides with a sharp knife.
Arrange the slice on  lightly buttered baking sheets and bake the cookies in a preheated moderately hot oven (375 degrees F) for 10 minutes (my oven took longer) or until the edges are golden.

  Makes about 40 cookies. Like many  cookies, these are better the second day.  Make sure to cut into 1/4 inch slices or they will be too fragile and break.

Yummo!

Adieu, Gourmet, and Thanksgiving from Scratch

My home-made cookbook has, typed on a portable Royal, my first Gourmet recipe, for Gazpacho.
Combine in the container of a blender, 5 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, 1 cucumber peeled and chopped, 1 green papper, seeded and chopped, 1 onion, chopped, 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 garlic clove, crushed.

Cover the container and blend untl the mixture is almost smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups tomato juice, 3 T. olive oil, 2 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. paprika, sale and pepper to taste, and chill the soup thoroughly.

Serve the gaspacho individual, chilled soup bowls. With the soup one may serve several dishes of tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, and red onion, all peeled, seeded if necessary and appropriately diced.

July Gourmet, 1964 . I have a note: "try adding a bit of chopped raw spinach." I'm sure we served the soup in those elegant little glass bowls that fit into a bed of chopped ice, originally intended for shrimp cocktail, but also great for vichysoisse. See photo, from EBAY. I had to key "vintage" to find them. Obviously passe along with Gourmet and the coat and tie. Adieu gracious living. Adieu Gourmet.

I still use this recipe, although to this day I've never served little bowls of chopped anything with it Maybe a few croutons.

Some years later, my friend Karin and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner from Gourmet. Part of the dinner involved roasting chestnuts in a very hot oven and peeled them while they were still hot. My hands looked like holy shit afterward, and that was my first, last, and I guarantee, only time my hands will EVER touch a raw chestnut.

Below is an account of the event from my Toastmaster's speech recording the festivities.

Thanksgiving from Scratch ©

I have cooked over 35 Thanksgiving dinners, including one in Germany. The first one sat on an overflowing card table a month after our wedding. This year, alone again, we’ll have a turkey breast, with sides. The traditional Thanksgiving meal holds no trauma or terrors. It wasn’t always so.

I was five months pregnant and we drove to Houston to be with old friends Jim and Karin for Thanksgiving. When we arrived, Karin announced that we were going to cook the GOURMET MAGAZINE THANKSGIVING DINNER. From scratch.

Cooking From scratch? What does that mean? My grandma didn’t know of any other way. From scratch? From the very beginning. Using raw materials.

Our menu began with pumpkin soup and ended with a grand finale of crème brulèe. In between came turkey with chestnut stuffing. Mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies and an extra special cranberry sauce. It sounded a little intimidating, but we were sure two cooks could carry it off.

We got going early, around 8:00 a.m., planning a 5:00 o’clock dinner. That seemed a bit optimistic.

Husbands and kids were shooed out of the kitchen. This was woman’s work. Since this was Houston, we had to shoo the cockroaches, too.

Fortunately, Karin had already done the shopping. The raw materials were awesome.
A pumpkin
A skid load of rock hard chestnuts
Oceans of thick heavy cream
Tons of butter
A stupendous turkey
Five pounds of potatoes
Cranberries

We had one oven, one sink, and a four burner stove. Because this was Houston, there was a second refrigerator in the garage. No Cuisinart back then, but we had a blender and a mixer. By today’s standards, the kitchen would be a relic for Pioneer Village. As old fashioned as cooking from scratch.

We tackled the soup first, and in no time we had orange bits of pumpkin on every surface. Never mind. We cooked the pumpkin that wasn’t stuck to something, added broth and cream and the spices and pureed the soup in the blender. Fantastic! Smooth as silk. Onward.

Dinner will be served at 6:00.

I fixed chestnuts twice that day. For the first time and the last time.
This is the advice on how to roast chestnuts:
Roast in-shell chestnuts in the oven, but you MUST pierce the shell with a small cut or cut them in half beforehand with a knife to prevent them from exploding when they cook!
Pierce the shell with a small cut. About as easy as piercing a diamond with a small cut. Many of the cuts were on my hands. From scratch took on a new and more sinister meaning.
Next, place the chestnuts in a heavy cast iron pan. Put the pan in a 400 degree oven for a while.
Remove from oven and peel off the shells with a small knife. Do it while they are still hot, if they cool, they will be harder to peel.
This means you pick up a chestnut that has been in a 400 degree oven with your bare hands. Painful burns topped the cuts and the chestnuts dyed my injured fingers the brown color of old boots.
Dinner will be served at 7:00.
Somehow we got through the chestnuts. Husbands chased over to the quick mark to buy even more butter. Good thing I was eating for two.
The turkey had gone into the oven, late of course, and it became obvious that we would serve dinner about 8:00 p.m. If all went well. Meanwhile, the guests were arriving. The host opened the wine. Probably a bad idea.
Cranberries and veggies were not so complicated, but the crème brulèe was one for the books! We had to make a custard from scratch. Into the pot went the rest of the heavy cream. Cook, stir, “coat the spoon.” We poured the custard into the serving dish. Karin sifted heaps of brown sugar over the top and we tucked the dessert into the fridge which now had a “feeding the multitudes” look.
More friends arrived. The kids were starving and we had to offer nibbles and snacks.
We served our scrumptious meal at 9:00.
It was the best tasting thanksgiving dinner ever! Mostly I was giving thanks that the cooking was over. We had survived the ordeal. We were full, sated, as stuffed as the turkey.
Time for the dessert. At 10:00 p.m., we took the crème brulèe out of the fridge and popped it under the broiler to caramelize the sugar. This is a say a prayer and have another glass of wine moment. The cook is hoping she won’t take a melted soggy mess to the table.
Voila! Just like the photo! A spectacular finale. Somehow, the guests made room for our masterpiece. The dinner was a huge success.
I’ve cooked many Gourmet recipes since then, but I never made another Gourmet Thanksgiving Menu. No more pumpkins, certainly no more chestnuts, ever.
Bon appetite! Adieu Gourmet.

"Lite" chicken pot pie

What toothsome fare is that? Ye gods, it's a Gourmet Magazine "on the light side" Chicken Pot Pie. Those are mashed potatoes for topping, by the way, potatoes mashed with 2% Greek yogurt, water, and chives. The pie itself has chicken breast, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, peas, spices and broth. I went the long route and made my own chicken broth from the water I cooked the chicken in. I added a few green beans from the garden. Some wine in the sauce and a tablespoon of sherry made for some very good "light' sauce.

The only problem was that the recipe called for 19 (nineteen, count 'em) ingredients and the green beans made twenty. I made the potatoes from scratch (we frequently used the boxed around our house) and altogther this was fairly high on the labor side, but we ate for two nights and it did not seem like diet fare

Chives from the garden in the potatoes. The dish was colorful and had plenty of eye appeal. I cooked up the rest of the cranberries from 2008 today and also served a side dish of fresh broccoli. Can't ever get enough of those healthful veggies, don't cha know?

Tonight, at seventh inning stretch, we'll break out the apricot bars I made for my Toastmasters meeting today. Pretty good, with apricots from the 'cot king, grown in the flavor zone in California's central valley. http://www.apricotking/. The apricot syrup is incredible on pancakes and waffles. Don't apricots have vitamin A? Ya gotta keep eating them.

Tomorrow, we're back to salad, with a main dish of tuna, artichoke hearts, red onion and white beans. What's not to like?

Then more soup.

That's all.

Garbure

I'm making a French peasant soup, Garbure, that sounds like a cross between garbage and ordure. We've had it before and found it quite tasty. Of course, Dr. Atkins would NOT approve, since the soup contains beans and potatoes and bread. Did I say peasant? Hearty fare. I used a slice of ham instead of ham hocks which the store doesn't carry anymore. A head of cabbage is another ingredient. Even more common.


We're doing the yin/yang thing with some delicous stuffed apples from Gourmet. Actually, the garbure is also from Gourmet, a magazine not adverse to the random food of the people recipe.

In my latest work in process, In Flight, I have three characters (man, woman, child), eating a casual meal on a patio, with a contrast between the two bad guys who are having lunch at Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. The baddest one has a terrible hangover and just about loses it when a waiter splashes soup on his expensive pink shirt.

Significant Other found a CNN video with the Columbian (I guess) marines taking over a drug submarine being loaded with cocaine. Very cool, and I got a close up of the sub, which plays a small but important part in the new book and an even bigger part in the short story of my CIA robot fish. The short story and the book are cross-polinating each other right now. Of course I had "seen" the bad one in my mind's eye, but imagine my surprise when his photo turned up in the newspapers the last few days, the spitting image of Obama's chief of staff, who is supposed to be rather pugnacious and very smart--very rich, too. Writing bad guys, antagonists, whatever you call them is fun, as well as challenging, but I like my anti-heros be believable and my bad guy is good to his old mum. When I had his "voice" all wrong, I wrote him in the first person and that worked wonderfully well. He swears too much, but whatchagonna do?

Off to Handel & Haydn tonight at Symphony Hall. No rain in the forecast. Haven't had any culture for ages. La-di-dah.

Grapeshot