The Chocolatiest, Quickest, Most Rewarding Treat for No Effort at All: Amazon Cake

Thank god for the internet, that’s all I can say.

This afternoon I got a little stir-crazy—I’m just finishing one of my long-term on-site freelance gigs, which means I suddenly have my days free. I’ve got plenty to do: There’s the freelance stuff I can do in my pajamas; the apartment hasn’t had a real, thorough clean in, um, well…; and my To-Do list before junior arrives currently has 22 separate items on it. So how do I decide to spend my newly abundant free time? Baking an Amazon Cake.

I cut this recipe out of the Times several years ago and used to make it fairly often, whenever I wanted a hit of deep chocolate flavor with minimal effort, minimal fat, and minimal cleanup. There are no eggs in it, nor butter, nor animal products of any kind, so it’s both pareve and vegan—but for once, it’s also incredibly satisfying. The whole thing comes together in ten minutes, mixed by hand, but it’s tasty enough to serve to company—especially if you went the extra step and frosted it. (You could also double the recipe and make a traditional layer cake out of it.)

So where does the internet come in? Well, sometime between my moving in with Stephen a few years ago and now, I lost the clipping. After twenty minutes of painstakingly turning every.single.page in my recipe binder—even the non-dessert sections—I finally realized that the original article must still be on the Times’ site. Sure enough, here it is, in an article about cocoa powder. And it’s by Regina Schrambling, no less, whose tart, sometimes head-scratchingly oblique commentary I read faithfully on her blog Gastropoda. Her description of the cake is as good as I can hope to achieve, so I’ll quote her directly:

Cocoa works best in recipes that are designed for it. . . . Even something as simple as the classic Amazon, or black-bottom, cake found in so many cookbooks uses no dairy products or eggs, only vegetable oil and vinegar with cold water. The cocoa reacts to the combination to produce the darkest, moistest cake seen outside the photo on a box of mix.

I can’t explain exactly why this happens, but Regina’s absolutely right: This cake is as picture-perfect, moist, and easy to make as a mix, but it’s 100% homemade.



Amazon Cake
From The New York Times
Adapted from Cafe Beaujolais by Margaret Fox and John S. Bear
serves 6 to 8

1 ½ cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa [I used Double-Dutch Dark]
1 t. baking soda
1 cup sugar
½ t. salt
5 T. corn oil [I used canola]
1 ½ t. vanilla
1 T. cider vinegar
Confectioners’ sugar.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, vanilla and vinegar with 1 cup cold water. Whisk in the dry ingredients, blending until completely lump-free. Pour into a greased 9-inch round cake pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top springs back when pressed gently. Cool before removing from the pan and dusting with confectioners’ sugar, or frosting if desired.

Continue reading

Mushroom Risotto, for Stephen

You know, risotto’s never been my bag. Don’t get me wrong, I like the taste of it just fine, quite a bit in fact, and the texture can be mighty comforting. But generally I find myself getting a little, how you say, bored with it when it’s all alone on my plate. In all my years of cooking, it’s never once occurred to me to try to make it.

Until one night mid-Passover, when Stephen and I went out for dinner. I ordered my sorta-kosher-for-Passover roast chicken (kosher only because it didn’t have any overt chametz—we definitely weren’t in a kosher restaurant, not by a long shot); Stephen surprised me by ordering risotto. I’ve never seen him order it before, so I asked him about it—turns out his mom used to make risotto as a treat every so often, and he grew up loving it. Plain, simple, basic risotto, with just a bit of onion but no other vegetables. In my chametz-deprived stupor, this suddenly sounded incredibly appealing; I resolved to make a batch for Stephen PDQ.

Of course, now that my bread-blood levels are restored to their normal balance, the idea of plain risotto has lost some of its luster. Instead, I floated the possibility of making a mushroom version by Stephen tonight, and luckily he bit. Pulled out Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which I tend to trust for basic recipes like this, and sure enough there was a version using dried mushrooms and one that called for fresh. We had both in the kitchen, and since I liked the idea of using the mushroom soaking liquid in the risotto for a flavor boost, I decided to combine the approaches.

Stephen and I took turns stirring—you don’t have to work the spoon endlessly, as risotto mythology would lead you to believe—but you can’t really walk away from the stove for more than a minute at a time. While one of us stirred, the other chopped vegetables for a big salad. The end result was quite yummy indeed, filling and healthy (there’s not a lot of fat in the recipe as I adapted it, just two tablespoons at the beginning and a handful of parmesan at the end). And as long as I had a forkful or two of sprightly salad to break up the monotony, I didn’t get bored once.

We’ve got some leftovers, so tomorrow night I think I’ll try my hand at risotto cakes—with their crispy golden outsides, I’ve never been bored by them!

Mushroom Risotto
Serves 3-4 as a main course, 4-6 as a side or app
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

1 ounce dried mushrooms [my package was a variety of different ones]
1 ½ cups hot water
3-5 cups chicken or vegetable stock, or water
2 T butter and/or olive oil
2 shallots or 1 medium onion, minced
1 ½ cups fresh cremini or porcini mushrooms, chopped
1 ½ cups Arborio rice
Salt & pepper
½ cup dry white wine [I used vermouth]
A big handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese

Soak the dried mushrooms in the hot water. Warm the stock over medium heat and leave the heat on.

When the mushrooms soften, place the butter/oil in a large saucepan [Bittman recommends nonstick, but I used a regular pan and had no problem] and turn the heat to medium. When it’s hot, add the shallots or onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 minute. Add the fresh mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, for another 5-7 minutes. Drain the dried mushrooms, reserving the soaking liquid. Squeeze them dry, chop, and add to the pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 3 minutes; do not let the mushrooms brown.

Add the rice and stir until it is coated with butter/oil. Add a little salt & pepper, then the wine or vermouth. Stir and let the liquid bubble away.

Strain the mushroom-soaking liquid and add it to the rice; stir and let the liquid bubble away. Begin to add the stock, ½ cup at a time [I added a large ladleful, no measuring], stirring after each addition and every minute or so. When the stock is just about evaporated, add more. The mixture should be neither soupy nor dry. Keep the heat medium to medium-high, and stir frequently (constant stirring is not necessary).

Begin tasting the rice 20 minutes after you add it to the pan; you want it to be tender but with still a tiny bit of crunch. It could take as long as 30 minutes to reach this stage [ours took about 25]. When it does, add the parmesan and remove from the heat. Check the seasoning, adjust if necessary, and serve immediately.

Continue reading

Bring on the Chametz!

What does it say about me that I've been dreaming of a chewy, cheesy, greasy, salty slice of pizza for the last week?

A short list of things I plan to eat in the near future:

Pizza • pumpernickel bagel (scooped out, since the outside’s the best part) • pasta with a simple tomato-basil sauce • black lentil stew • some good crusty bread from Napoli bakery on Metropolitan (ok, I just had some of this and it was gooooood) • oatmeal pancakes • homemade risotto, a special request from Stephen • oven-fried chicken cutlets • mmm, popovers • a chocolate chip cookie from City Bakery (just one, I promise) • blue corn tortilla chips straight out of the bag • curry roasted chick peas • chewy cocoa fudge cookies • grilled polenta with sautéed mushrooms or maybe marinara & parmesan • spaetzle • American chop suey • one really good brownie, of the fudgy variety • sesame noodles with shredded chicken • nibblings from the bread basket in a nice restaurant • chocolate pizzelles • French toast • couscous • a homemade biscuit with fig jam from Egg

A few things I won’t be eating again for another year:

Matzo • egg matzo • matzo farfel • Tam Tam crackers • chocolate-covered coconut macaroons • any other kind of coconut macaroon, if it comes from a can • matzo brei • potatoes (ok, maybe I’ll eat them before next year, but it’ll be at least a week before I can stomach them again)

If you kept kosher for Passover, what are you dreaming of eating?

Continue reading

Acquisitions Department: My Life in France by Julia Child

From the Introduction:

“This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in life: my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of cooking and eating. It is also something new for me. Rather than a collection of recipes, I’ve put together a series of linked autobiographical stories, mostly focused on the years 1948 through 1954, when we lived in Paris and Marseille, and also a few of our later adventures in Provence. Those early years in France were among the best of my life. They marked a crucial period of transformation in which I found my true calling, experienced an awakening of the senses, and had such fun that I hardly stopped moving long enough to catch my breath.”

Kind of makes you want to keep reading, doesn’t it?

Years ago when I worked at Doubleday, we published a biography of Julia called Appetite for Life, by Noel Riley Fitch. At the time I was much more focused on losing 100 pounds than I was on eating well (think plain steamed vegetables for dinner several nights a week), but reading about Julia’s life was a cherished distraction. I’ve got that book around here somewhere—perhaps I’ll dig it out and re-read it when I’m done with this one. It’ll be interesting to compare Julia’s own take on things to a third party’s.

My Life in France just arrived, and unfortunately I have to run to work. I know what I’ll be doing all day Saturday, though…

Continue reading

Passover Salt Fix: Baked Potato Chips

I hate Passover (funny, I said the exact same thing last year). Not only do I get sick of matzo almost immediately, I have a tendency to not plan very well: In the weeks leading up to the first seder, I’ll consider whether or not I should hit a supermarket that has a well-stocked Passover aisle, which means making a special trip outside the neighborhood, which means I don’t do it. Instead, every year I decide to look at the eight days as a sort of Atkins-esque diet, a chance to focus on eating more lean protein and vegetables and less carb-heavy, bready yumminess. I allow myself to purchase one box of matzo (necessary for matzo brei, otherwise, not so much), one box of Tam-Tam matzo crackers, and one small package of chocolate-covered macaroons. By last night I was already regretting this decision, as I do every year. It’s one thing to choose not to eat a high-fat, salty snack, but it’s quite another to literally not be able to eat one.

When I left work this afternoon, I considered stopping at a supermarket to buy something, anything, that I could munch on. Instead I decided to take charge of the situation in a different way: I went straight home and made potato chips. They’re easy, they’re crunchy, they’re salty, they’re yummy, there’s almost no added fat, and they’re much, much cheaper than buying a bag of greasy kosher-for-Passover chips. Of course by tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be sick of eating them, and then I’ll be back to hating on the holiday.

At least tomorrow morning there'll be matzo brei.

Baked Potato Chips
Serves 2

2 large baking potatoes
Cooking spray
Salt

Preheat oven to 425. Position the two racks in upper and lower thirds of oven. Line two baking sheets with silpats, or use aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray. Set aside.

Using a mandoline, if you have one, or cutting carefully by hand, slice potatoes crosswise into 1/8-inch rounds. Arrange in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets, then spray the surface lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 30-35 minutes, switching the placement of the trays halfway through, until they’re as done as you like them (I prefer them more on the brown/crispy side, but if you take them out at the 30 minute mark they’ll have a nice chewiness to them.) Sprinkle liberally with salt and serve.

Continue reading

Raspberry Tunnel of Runny Lava Cake

It all started out well enough. Following the recipe for Raspberry Tunnel of Fudge Cake in Chocolate American Style by Lora Brody, I made a quick ganache with 8 oz of dark chocolate, ½ cup of heavy cream, and 1/3 cup of raspberry jam, then scooped it onto a ring stencil I’d traced on a piece of wax paper. Into the freezer it went while I prepared the cake batter. This would be my Tunnel of Raspberry Fudge.

The batter smelled (and tasted—a girl’s gotta lick, right?) intoxicating, deeply chocolatey and still light and fluffy. Three different kinds of chocolate—unsweetened, semisweet, and cocoa powder—plus buttermilk seemed to be a recipe for birthday bliss. And then, the moment of truth: It was time to assemble. I spooned half the batter into the bottom of the bundt pan, and pulled the ganache ring from the freezer—it was to be sandwiched between layers, forming the Tunnel of Fudge as it baked. What the recipe didn’t mention was that fresh ganache spreads, so unless you’ve created a mold of some sort, what started out as a neatly measured ring will become a flat, wide disk by the time you go to use it—picture a donut, run over by a semi. Somewhat frantically, I started cutting away excess ganache, hoping to reduce the ring back to a size that would fit in the bundt pan. While I did that, Stephen cut hunks from the excess and piled them in on top of the now-neat ring. All of this was done as quickly as possible, as the heat of the preheated oven (not to mention our fingers) was making the ganache melty and hard to work with. Five minutes later, we had something that approximated a Tunnel of Fudge, and licked our raspberry ganached fingers in satisfaction. I covered it with the remaining batter and popped it into the oven.

Over the next forty-five minutes, the apartment filled with an aroma that threatened to drive us insane—if the recipe instructions didn’t state explicitly that the cake had to sit for a minimum of twenty minutes before serving, to allow the filling to settle, we’d have dug into it right in the pan, burned tongues be damned. But we managed to restrain ourselves—the cake came from the oven just before we sat down to dinner, and by the time we were ready for dessert nearly 45 minutes had passed.

And then was our second moment of truth: When I cut it open, the filling rushed out like a dam had broken. The inner wall of the cake collapsed under the knife. It threatened to become an unholy mess. Here’s a flash picture that’s truly terrifying:



It tasted pretty darn good—too rich for me in my pregnant state, but Stephen was happy. I built walls of aluminum foil around the two cut sides, to prevent further leakage, and popped the leftover cake in the fridge. All in all, not exactly a disaster, but not a recipe I’d share with you—unless, of course, you have ideas about how to prevent that fountain of ganache from happening again…

Continue reading

Press Sighting: Easy Passover Lunches

A piece I wrote for WeightWatchers.com, about work-friendly, diet-friendly, kosher-for-Passover lunches, went live today. You can read it here.

Continue reading

From Beef Wellington to Hot Pastrami in Five Short Blocks

For his birthday dinner, Stephen really wanted to try Beef Wellington—he’d read about it somewhere and the curiosity had been burning for months. (Between his cholesterol issues and my dietary ones, it’s not exactly the kind of thing we dine on regularly.) So I did some research on Menupages (gotta love that find-a-food search, but why don’t they let you search all of Manhattan at once?) and found a place on Clinton Street called Salt Bar. It’s the same chef/owner as Salt in Greenwich Village, where I’ve eaten some really terrific meals, so I thought we were golden. Called up to make a res and was told they don’t take them for fewer than six people, but when I said it was my husband’s birthday eve the girl was sweet as can be: She took my name and told me she’d seat us right away. Great, I said, we’d be there between 7:30 and 8.

We arrived at 7:45, only to find the joint packed and a sign on the sidewalk: Closed for private party, reopening at 8. I was kinda pissed, since it’s Stephen’s birthday and the girl hadn’t mentioned anything when I called, but we managed to kill fifteen minutes without too much difficulty. Came back at 8 and were seated right away, a cozy table in the corner. The only problem—and it turned out to be a huge problem— was that the party showed no sign of breaking up. We were the only diners in the restaurant, and everywhere we looked there were large groups of people standing, flirting, and sitting over drinks. AND THEY WERE ALL TALKING really loud. Either that or the architects of the space had zero acoustical insight. Seriously, the noise level was so high that the waitress couldn’t hear Stephen when he placed his drink order.

Before we even read the menu, we were already talking about where else to go. The Lower East Side is packed with restaurants these days, so it’s not like we were without options, but neither of us wanted to take a chance on stumbling into another scene like this—it made us feel old and out of it and I’m pretty sure we’re neither of those things. In the end we returned to an old reliable: Katz’s Deli, on Houston Street at First Avenue. It’s bustling—loud, but in a good way—and fluorescent-lit and it smells like grease and well-done food, but oh.my.god the pastrami… We went to Katz’s a few years ago on a date—it’s one of Stephen’s favorite places—but for obvious reasons (see first paragraph re: cholesterol & diet) we haven’t been in ages.

Two pastrami sandwiches, one sour pickle, one square potato knish (they were out of kasha), and two diet Dr. Brown’s cherry sodas later, and we were a happy pair, chatting with the sanitation worker at the table next to us (his turkey sandwich looked so good, and his pickled tomato reminded me I’d forgotten to get one). It was about as far from Salt Bar as you could get, but we’d only walked five blocks. After half a sandwich each we were both full, so today I picked up some fresh rye bread, re-steamed the leftover pastrami, and we re-lived Stephen’s birthday dinner for lunch.

As for Stephen’s yen for Beef Wellington, we’ve agreed to return to Salt Bar, early on a weeknight, and hope for a better result.

Happy birthday, baby! And now I’m off to bake that Raspberry Tunnel of Fudge Cake…

Continue reading

Raspberry Bannock Scones (Thanks, Luisa!)

Stephen’s birthday is tomorrow, and when I asked him what kind of cake he wants, he said it should be something with chocolate and raspberry. The recipe I’m making, a Raspberry Tunnel of Fudge Cake, calls for two ingredients I don’t generally have around: buttermilk and raspberry jam. In anticipation of my baking, Stephen picked up a quart and a 20-oz jar, respectively—but the recipe only calls for 1 ½ cups of buttermilk and 1/3 cup of jam. I was facing a major surplus; for the jam it’s no big deal since it won’t go bad, but the milk… Imagine my delight when I saw Luisa’s post over on The Wednesday Chef, for Blueberry Bannock Scones: Not only does the recipe call for buttermilk, it’s also got wheat germ and chopped pecans, two ingredients I’m always happy to use. Luisa described the end result, with a layer of whole blueberries baked between scone batter, as “jammy”—dingdingding! I could substitute about 1/3 cup of my raspberry jam for the blueberries, leave out the extra sugar, and be on my way towards using up my excess.

Other than that small substitution I made the recipe exactly as Luisa posted it, so I won’t repeat it here (if you haven’t already checked out The Wednesday Chef, by the way, I urge you to head on over—it’s one of my favorites, filled with warmth and humor and fabulous pictures). The end result was wonderful: tender and crumbly, and slightly tart from the oozing jam. It’s a virtuous-tasting scone, though, not a decadent one (which makes me pretty happy)—the recipe doesn’t have a ton of butter or eggs, and the wheat germ and pecans make it taste almost like it’s made with whole wheat flour. Very satisfying on a rainy April weekend, and definitely something I’ll make again.

Continue reading