Roasted Nectarine and Lime Custard Cake

I recently started watching The Wire, obviously years behind everyone else in the universe who has cable, a wallet, or Netflix. What can I say? I know I have no self-control, and things with a tendency toward developing an addiction, including shows like The Wire, require special circumstances in which I will not be beset by the guilt of shirking my duty coupled with the knowledge that there’s nothing I can do about it. Okay, maybe I’m not quite that delinquent, but I do know that The Hunger Games, The Wire, and reading everything ever written about Nectarine paste is something best left for an overabundance of spare time. Thank goodness teachers get a summer break. (Anyone who had to talk to me at any point in June is probably echoing these sentiments right now).

At any rate, despite the fact that this show clearly portrays life in inner city Baltimore through a completely un-sugarcoated lens (and perhaps, by proxy, other urban settings), I periodically find myself giggling as I watch the show. Is it the odd juxtaposition of drug violence and the beautiful green sweater I am knitting as I watch it? Or the fact that there is one scene in which literally the only word they use starts with F and ends with K, and has a U and a C somewhere in the middle. Even I, who have burned myself on more than enough hot glass, metal, and ceramic objects in the last decade to have quite a colorful vocabulary, and no doubt said some really obscene things the last time a taxi-cab tried to turn right through me on my bike, have never used such a spectacular array of F-bombs in conjunction with other words. Did you know that it can apparently be used as a noun, verb, and adjective, and frequently, all in the same sentence? Possibly without even other words? Maybe you did know that and you are just too polite to show off your knowledge. Intonation is also important. Keep that in mind the next time you want to show that you can make a grammatically correct sentence using only one word. (I actually read about this in a linguistics book once, but I think they were using a more docile word like “fish” as the example).

In the interest of making it through my first three days of summer break with more than two braincells left, however, I decided to take a break from watching this afternoon and make dessert. I’ve heard there’s a website where you can type in the stuff you have in your cabinet/refrigerator/etc and it will tell you what you can make. I prefer my own version of this, which involves me deciding I want to use some random thing staring mournfully at me from the counter and start mixing and matching recipes until I get what I want. That’s more or less what happened here. I bought nectarines two days ago. I have no idea why, except that I love them. I had no plans for them, and realized that my impending travel plans made nectarine usage a virtual emergency. I also, for some reason, decided I wanted a custard like thing. Despite the name, though, I really think this is more like a soufflé. It’s really not a cake. That is misleading. It has a spongy consistency which is utterly delightful and I would eat all of them if that wasn’t as socially inappropriate as my use of profanity outside of the bike lanes of Philadelphia.

I will say several things about this recipe before we get on with it. First, quantities of things like the lime zest and the nectarine are negotiable. Originally, it was supposed to be lemon. I didn’t have any and was far too lazy to go find one. But for some strange reason we had three limes. So that’s what I used. Second, the foundational recipe also suggested three cups of nectarine paste. From my own experiment, that would involve 12 nectarines and more nectarine past than I think is really necessary.

Roasted Nectarine and Lime Custard "Cake"

8 small custard cups, a muffin tin, or something with similar size/shape

¾ cup sugar

zest of 2 limes

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened, + more for pans

3 Tbsp flour

3 eggs, separated

1 cup milk

4-6 nectarines

Cut the nectarines and remove the pit. Place them face down on parchment paper on a baking sheet, and put this in a 350 degree oven for about an hour, until they are nice and soft. Please don’t forget the parchment paper, or the sugary juices of the nectarine will effectively glue the nectarines to the baking sheet. Let the nectarines cool, and then pulverize them in a food processor. You are aiming for a “paste” here. If your nectarines were anything like mine, you will have about 1 ½ cups of paste. Ultimately, I only used one cup, but you could use more if you want, and if you have leftovers, spread it on a piece of oatmeal bread and there will be nothing to worry about.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Diligently butter the custard tins.

Zest the limes into the sugar. Mix the sugar and lime together with the back of the spoon, infusing the sugar with the lime flavor. I learned this trick from one of my favorite blogs, Joy the Baker. It makes the sugar deliciously limey. I honestly don’t know how different the final product would be if you didn’t bother with this but it was so good this way, I say go for it.

Cream the butter and zested sugar together. (It’s not really creaming, honestly, because there’s not that much butter, but at least mix it). Add the flour and egg yolks, and mix thoroughly. Slowly add the milk, and then the nectarine paste to taste. You should have a very liquidy mixture. At this point, I would adjust the nectarine and lime flavors to taste. If you dip your finger in it (ignoring any salmonella dangers) and immediately think “Mmmm, heaven”, then you’re probably all set.

Beat the egg whites until you have soft peaks. Gently fold this into the other mixture with a rubber spatula until it is thoroughly integrated. No omelets in the cake, please.

Pour the mixture into the custard pans. Place these in a baking tray (such as you might use for brownies or a sheet cake) and pour hot water around them. I actually boiled water way earlier in the process, put the custard tins into the tray, poured in the mixture, and then poured in the water, in that order.

If you’re feeling really fancy (which I was this afternoon), you can take a hint from some other delectable custard recipes, and pour caramelized sugar in the bottom of the custard cups before you pour in the custard. To make this, mix:

8 Tbsp sugar

4 Tbsp water

In a saucepan, and heat over medium-high heat until it is a light amber color. Pour immediately. Seriously. You are caramelizing sugar. Don’t wait.

There appears to be some debate about whether you are supposed to stir the sugar-water mixture or not. Some recipes are adamant that you don’t touch it at all, while others insist that you stir constantly. I don’t know what you should do. I stirred whenever I felt like it and wasn’t doing something else (yes, I realize that multitasking in a kitchen with multiple hot things going probably increases my risk of burning and thus unacceptable levels of profanity).

I ate this after a lovely dinner of pesto-grilled chicken with a glass of homemade sangria. I encourage you to do the same.

Banana Cake with Maple Buttercream Frosting

There are many things about this recipe that fall under the category of “I used to. . . but now. . .” which makes it even more exciting than the name might indicate. Two friends of mine decided to host a “Day of Awesomeness” in which each attendee would teach the rest of the attendees. . . something. Anything really. Something that we were good at, passionate about, etc. One friend of ours taught us how to draw a portrait that didn’t look like an alien (something I have never successfully been able to do prior to this), we played Improv games (which was the best thing ever, and extra fun ever since I saw this video), and we had a wine-tasting in which we were introduced to the difference between oaked and un-oaked chardonnay (especially exciting since I never knew there was such a thing). So many new skills. Naturally, I taught my friends how to make frosting, a special frosting that I used to think of as something mysterious and complex.

I used to be scared of buying too many bananas because I have (a) a strong dislike of eating bananas that have more than a few brown spots (flashbacks from my mom saying, “It’s not that bad” and eating something that fruit flies would have happily spent abnormally long and healthy lives in) and (b) tremendous guilt about wasting food. However, I then had a culinary epiphany in which I realized that bananas never really go bad. If you, like me, are unjustifiably picky about the bruise level on your fruit, you will be happy to know that bananas can have a wildly successful second life as a baking fruit. In fact, I would actually argue that bananas that are past their raw eating prime are infinitely better for baking. Juicier, more concentrated flavor, and altogether easier to squash. After far too many down and out battles with fruit flies, which simultaneously drive me crazy, gross me out, and make me unwilling to eat any of the fruit in my kitchen, I started pre-empting the rotten fruit problem by freezing bananas I wasn’t going to eat (I also used to think this was a no-no. Wrong. GREAT idea). Let’s be honest: I know when I’m not going to eat them. I look at them and think “Gross.” I don’t eat things that I think are gross (which includes store-bought cookies most of the time). Rather than allowing myself to think that over the course of multiple consecutive days, I now just put them in the freezer as soon as that point comes. Or as soon as I’m thinking, “Oh darn, I just bought eight bananas and I’m leaving town.” As previously stated, I don’t worry about doing that anymore because they will still be good for baking.

The best part is that when you taking them out of the freezer and let them unthaw, they are so deliciously juicy, and just slither right out their peels. (I severely grossed a former roommate out once when she saw me making banana bread with bananas like that. She declared it could not possibly be healthy, and I retaliated that she should just wait until she tasted the banana bread that would have the richest banana flavor she had ever tasted). I sometimes even put them in the freezer before they’ve reached the “gross” stage when I’ve decided I want to make banana-something just so I can get that concentrated flavor.

The central component of this recipe comes from the Joy of Cooking. I confess that the movie Julie and Julia in no way diminished my love of this book, despite it’s withering commentary. First, it has a banana cake recipe, which is so delicious and fluffy that I would literally eat it every day if I could. Second, it has such delightful skeleton recipes for so many different base foods that even if I don’t make the exact recipe, I am able to construct a recipe around the guidelines given. Third, I like the way the recipes are laid out with the instructions interspersed with the ingredients so I don’t accidentally add all of the sugar when I was only supposed to add half of it. (I have maintained the original structure below so you too can enjoy that. Or decide you prefer the traditional method. The only problem is that it makes marshalling all of your ingredients ahead of time a tad challenging as you hunt through the recipe for each component).

Banana Cake (from the Joy of Cooking):

Says the recipe: “Do try this, if you like a banana flavor”. (I’d say try it even if you’re on the fence)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two 9-inch round pans. The original recipe says “greased”, but I wrote myself a very assertive note in the margin that says “grease not enough!” I suspect because I once ripped the entire bottom layer of the cake layers trying to get them out of a greased pan. I recommend also using parchment paper (and greasing that as well) or dusting the grease with flour. Otherwise you may well have a horribly depressing experience in which your cake layer becomes chunks o’ cake on your cooling rack.

Have all ingredients at about 75 degrees (or whatever room temperature is for you these days.) It is always wonderful and highly effective if you can actually do this, but not really the end of the world if you forget to plan that far ahead and just yank things out of the refrigerator.

Sift before measuring:

2 ¼ cups cake flour*

Resift with:

½ teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon soda

½ teaspoon salt

Sift (separately):

1 ½ cups sugar

Cream:

½ cup butter

Add the sifted sugar gradually. Cream until very light. Beat in, one at a time:

2 eggs

Prepare:

1 cup lightly mashed ripe bananas

Add:

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ yogurt or buttermilk**

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in about 3 parts alternating with thirds of the banana mixture. Stir the batter after each addition until smooth. Bake in the prepared pans for about ½ hour. Cool completely before frosting.

Although I have never tried it (because I rarely have ripe and frozen bananas out at the same time), the recipe suggests putting banana slices between the layers and then using a white frosting. It also says that if you are serving immediately, you can just sprinkle with powdered sugar or serve with ice cream. However, since I was trying to teach my friends how to make frosting, I decided on the exact opposite of this simple approach and went for a maple buttercream frosting. You could do almost any kind of frosting you want that would taste good with bananas: lemon icing, chocolate ganache, whatevs. Knock yourself out. This frosting was wonderfully fluffy and creamy, and I managed to avoid the thing that often drives me crazy about buttercream frosting which is the tooth-rotting sweetness.

Maple Buttercream frosting

1 stick of unsalted butter, at room temperature but NOT melted

A few tablespoons maple syrup

3 cups (+/-) powdered sugar

Milk as necessary

I think this kind of frosting is one of the most obvious examples of situations in which you should most definitely not melt your butter if you are trying to get that light fluffy frosting. That means you need to plan ahead and let it sit out for several hours. Fortunately, since the cake layers have to cool, if you get out the butter when you start the rest of the cake (or even when you got out the butter for the cake), you’ll be in good shape.

Using a hand mixer, cream the butter until it is “light and fluffy”. Add the maple syrup (to taste, as they say, although if you start tasting the butter-maple syrup mix you may never actually get as far as having frosting. . . Once that mixture is well mixed and creamy, sift in the powdered sugar. I would argue again for the “to taste” approach here, because you can always add milk if you add too much sugar. I added a small enough quantity of sugar that I didn’t need to add any milk, and there are a range of consistencies that could work out really well.

If the frosting is too runny when you are ready to frost, you can either add more sugar to stiffen it up (if that doesn’t interfere with the flavor you want) or put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes.

*Since I rarely actually buy cake flour at this point, I used all purpose flour. According to the Joy of Baking website, you can substitute one cup cake flour with ¾ cup all-purpose flour and two tablespoons corn-starch. It works amazingly well.

**I have used both at various times with equally great success.

Best Ever PB&J Bread

Up until very recently, when I discovered that when I make oatmeal I can put all kinds of delicious things in it that my mother would never approve of (maple syrup, for example) and also found this recipe, James Beard's Oatmeal Bread is the only form in which I willingly ate oatmeal. And when I say willingly, I mean that I actually have a mental block when it comes to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that makes it hard for me to imagine them NOT on this bread. I probably ate this bread every day of elementary school, slathered in Adam’s All Natural Peanut Butter and homemade jam (yes, that also makes the sandwich better. . .) and still probably eat it two to three (some times even five) times a week. I also think it is completely insane whenever anyone suggests using this bread for anything else, although it is quite delicious for many things, including roasted vegetable sandwiches with mustard and melted cheese.

Whenever anyone starts talking about making bread, I just assume they use James Beard’s Beard on Bread. I once got a pub-quiz question right for which the answer was the James Beard Award. My copy of the book (which I bought the first time I saw it in a store) automatically opens to the page with this recipe (not that I need the recipe anymore, since not only is the recipe memorized but also my mother’s commentary from the first time she sent it to me, before I owned the book). I put the recipe in any “Family Recipe” collection gathered by friends, and have been known to plan entire weekends around my desire to make and/or eat it.

If you’ve ever woken up and wondered what kind of arm work out to do for the day, wanted to punch someone but decided that it was socially inappropriate, needed an excuse to spend the entire day in your house in your pajamas taking naps every two hours, or just wanted to eat the world’s best peanut butter and jelly sandwich, this is the bread for you. Since I purchased myself a stand mixer a year and a half ago, the otherwise muscularly challenging mixing process has been eased significantly, although I still do a considerable amount of the kneading by hand just because it is so satisfying and helps work out some of that rage-without-an-outlet that accumulates when you commute by bicycle in a big city. More on bike lanes at a later date.

The one caveat I have about this bread is that the rising is very challenging in the winter. As in, you may end up with dense midget loaves unless you preheat your entire kitchen. This could be a failure on my part in some way, but if I didn’t pretty much have an addiction to this bread that makes it seem like it should be a controlled substance, I would probably stop making it during the winter months. Hot humid summers in Philadelphia, on the other hand, are perfect, and you end up with light, moist loaves with a lovely crumb.

Adapted from Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread, James Beard’s Beard on Bread

Ingredients

4 cups boiling water

3 cups rolled oats (Quick or regular, either works)

7.5 to 8 cups all-purpose flour, approximately, preferably unbleached (but not whole wheat!)

2 packages active dry yeast

2 tablespoons salt

4 tablespoons salad oil (I use olive oil)

1/2 cup molasses (really, you can use anything from a couple tablespoons to 1/2 a cup, depending how strong you want that flavor to be; maple syrup also works but has a different flavor)

Pour the boiling water over the oatmeal in a large bowl and leave to cool. (You do not want it to be cold or entirely cool. It should still be warm when you get to the next step, just not boiling, and you want the oatmeal to fully absorb the water. Use your judgment but if you burn your hand when you touch the bowl, it is too hot.) Then stir in 2 cups of flour and the yeast. (I always feel like "stir" is a generous overstatement of what I'm actually doing here, but the goal is to mix the flour and yeast into the oatmeal as much as possible). Place in a warm, draft-free spot and allow to rise, uncovered, until doubled in bulk (roughly. A note about rising: the warmer it is, the faster it is. If you stick it next to a drafty window, you will probably still be waiting next Christmas. If you can't rely on the temperature of your kitchen, what I usually do is boil more water than I need and keep the remainder covered while the oatmeal is cooling. When it is rising time, I just put the bowl on top of the pot with the water, and this is usually enough warmer that it helps. Or, you could turn the oven on briefly and put the bowl on top). If you listen carefully later on in this stage, you can hear the dough making a gentle popping noise as it rises. . . the science nerd in me went crazy the first time I realized this. I wrote it in my book because it seemed really important.

Punch down and work in (stir) the salt, salad oil, molasses, and enough of the remaining flour to make a stiff dough (I struggle with this part because you really do want it to be pretty stiff before dumping it onto the bread board, but it is also REALLY hard to stir. So, pretty much, keep adding flour until you can no longer stir and integrate it. This part is a lot easier if you do it in the mixer with a dough hook). Turn out on a floured board and knead, adding extra flour if necessary (almost certainly necessary) to make a smooth, pliable, firm dough--about 10 minutes, but you cannot knead too much (okay, maybe it takes James Beard 10 minutes and my mom 5, but it usually takes me closer to 15 or 20. The key to kneading is that you are basically folding the far side of the dough towards you and than making a pushing away motion. There are some awesome YouTube videos of people demonstrating this. You are trying to turn the individual bits of flour into long gluten molecules, so think of it like pushing and stretching. When you have kneaded in one direction a couple times, turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat. It will basically get skinnier in one direction, and then when you rotate it, you are now using the skinny direction to your advantage). You can also do most of the hard work in a stand mixer, and then finish it off by hand (that's what James Beard himself suggests if you have a stand mixer. . .)

Divide the dough into three equal pieces (I always screw this up, but do your best to estimate even pieces), and form into loaves to fit three BUTTERED 9x5x3-inch loaf tins. Allow to rise again, uncovered, until doubled in bulk. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven 40 to 60 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when removed from the tins and rapped on top and bottom (and is a nice brownish color). Cool on racks before slicing and eating 17 PB&Js in a row.