Heaven and Hell Cake

There are certain things I might have eaten when I was 12 but that I'll probably never eat from here on out. I mean, the Cadbury Creme Egg deep fried in funnel cake batter. Bacon, cheese and sour cream on a baked potato. Something wherein the "soup" is really "melted pork fat" (I tried to let it drain out, but I was being watched).

But this cake, this cake gives me pause. Layers of peanut butter mousse, angel food cake, and devils food cake covered in chocolate ganache. It's more of a concept cake, and I'm pretty down with that most of the time. But it seems to cause a kind of insanity or ruckus. I mean, it's a cake that causes TROUBLE.

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In other news, I made a gluten free blueberry breakfast cake with garbanzo flour and the batter tasted like a dog's ass. I think I was supposed to roast the flour first. Or it will not have that bitter grassy aftertaste after baking. This is the birthday cake of someone who can't eat wheat. But Lord, I am already thinking about the back-up cake I will bake, and I don't have time for a back-up cake. If I did, it would be gluten free one-bowl chocolate cake. I hate that gluten free baked goods are so freaking sweet. But that chocolate cake recipe describes and links to a home mix of gluten free flour and I feel like if the inventor claims it can be used cup for cup as a substitute for flour, Ima try it.

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Yesterday, I made Martha Stewart's Jewish Apple Cake. Let's be serious, it was the apple cake recipe of Arthur Schwartz' Jewish Home Baking as passed on by Martha Stewart. It reappeared on a different site as Passover Pareve Apple Cake. To be safe, I'm putting it here. For five minutes I couldn't find it and panicked.

INGREDIENTS

• For the topping
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, or a combination of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and ginger
• For the cake
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup matzo cake meal
• 5 medium apples, peeled, cored, halved, and cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices (about 5 cups), preferably Golden Delicious, Crispin (Mutzu), or other apples that keep their shape when cooked
• 1/3 cup raisins (optional)

DIRECTIONS

• 1. Position an oven rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly oil an 8-inch-square glass baking dish.
• 2. Mix together the walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl; set aside.
• 3. In a bowl with a hand-held electric mixer, beat the eggs on medium speed until well mixed. Beat in the sugar, about 2 tablespoons at a time, beating until the mixture is thick and foamy. Beat in the oil, adding it in a steady stream. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula. With the spatula, stir in the matzo cake meal, blending well.
• 4. Pour half of the batter mixture into the prepared pan. Sprinkle about half the topping mixture evenly over the batter. Top with half the apples and all the raisins. Scrape the remaining half of the batter over the apples, spreading it out to cover the apples. Arrange the remaining apples on top of the batter. Sprinkle evenly with the remaining topping mixture.
• 5. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the sides of the cake pull away very slightly from the baking dish and the topping has begun to caramelize. (A cake tester is not reliable. It will not come out clean due to the moist richness of this cake.) Let sit in the baking dish for several hours, until completely cool, before cutting into serving portions. This cake is yet another Yiddish food that improves with age. Keep the cake in its dish, covered tightly with plastic, and the next day the topping will have become a moist, candy-like coating.

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Me: I'm making the apple cake for Passover.
JW: Oh really?
Me: Yes, a Martha Stewart recipe, so you know that it's been tested, that it will work, and that feelings were hurt to get there.
JW: (Wistful) Yes, feelings were definitely hurt.

Also:

Me: Got any plastic wrap?
S.: No. Should we go get some?
Me: No, it's just supposed to be airtight. It'll get better over the course of two days, supposedly.
S.: (Crimping the foil top over the foil pan of cake).
Me: Also, if an intruder breaks into your apartment, you can just hit him with this cake. Seriously. You're more important.
S.: That is a heavy cake.
Me: That's ten apples my friend. (And nine eggs...and I hammered the walnuts while they were in a Ziplock, oh the therapy).

***

Next: garbanzo cassoulet...

Apple Walnut Whiskey Cake

When I was a kid, my mom used to make a German Apple Cake. Our recipes mostly came from neighbors trying to help out a lady from France who could barely speak a lick of English but had two hungry non-stop sons. It was stiff batter with apples, sugar and cinammon on top. It absorbed more milk than a black hole, almost. Dense, plain, you could taste the salt in some bites of the bottom of the cake, and she burnt it sometimes, so it felt like a kind of penance to eat some, save for the apples being still good.

I tried to make a healthy apple cake from Heidi Swanson's blog, but it was too dry and healthy for us, probably because we are not from California or used to cakes so crumby and dry. I mean, 2.5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour! I think she undercooked it, said she undercooked it, and then gave a time for it to bake that was *not* undercooking it. My mistake.

So then I took my standby Martha Stewart Saffron Pear Cake and made some serious adjustments. To avoid confusion, here's the recipe in its entirety:

9 X 13" ceramic or metal pan (aluminum makes a more caramelized topping for some reason -- hotter).

3 apples sliced thin and put in lemon water
a bag of crushed walnut pieces
1 stick of butter
1.5 cups sugar
1 7/8 cup flour
scant 2 t baking powder
3/4 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves/nutmeg
3/4 t salt
7/8 C buttermilk
1/3 C vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Let butter be very soft. Mix it with 1/3 C of the sugar, a third of the cinnamon, and dashes of cloves and nutmeg. Mix until fluffy.

2. Put parchment paper in the bottom of the pan. The strip of it can be a little narrower than the pan.

3. Spread this butter mixture evenly over the bottom of the pan.

4. Sprinkle walnuts in a pretty thick layer over the butter and sugar mixture, but leave about an inch free of nuts all the way around the edge of the pan. Move a nut if you have to. If you don't do this, the apples will slop out when you flip the cake: it'll look like a dog got to it.

5. Layer apples thinly over walnuts. Leave that perimeter of butter alone.

6. Mix the rest of the sugar and everything else together. Pour carefully over the nuts and sugar/butter mixture.

7. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Make sure toothpick comes out pretty clean, maybe a little crumb or two on it.

8. Let cake sit for 10 minutes. IMPORTANT.

9. Find a platter big enough to turn the cake over on. Do it. Peel off the parchment.

10. Let this cool.

11. Then, while it's cooling, drizzle some Jim Beam on it somehow. Poke little skewers in it and soak it through or give it a Jim Beam IV. Whatever it takes, maybe even the way they get whiskey into a drunk fruitcake. You wouldn't want it to cook it off either.

I'd serve with plain whipped cream, or if you can't imagine drizzling Jim Beam directly on the cake, put it in the whipping cream where it can be present more subtly.

The top should be between a sugar syrup and a carmelized sauce.

Someone else thought apples and whiskey were a good idea: Butterscotch Whiskey Sauce. Indeed.