If you enjoy a tart, citrusy dessert, this one is a must fix. If you like pucker-power, but with a sweet and sour finish, you need to make this cake! I’ve made a lemon upside down cake before (with almonds), but it was a PUDDING cake, not an upside down cake. So it’s similar. But different. This one is definitely in the style of the old-fashioned pineapple upside down cakes my mother used to make, with the canned pineapple rings and a maraschino cherry in the center of each ring. Remember those? Some of you may be too young to remember them – a favorite dessert from the 1950’s.

What I have right now is lots of Meyer lemons, with probably another 30 hanging on the tree yet. So last Sunday I decided to feature lemon in every possible way. It was in all but one thing I made. Really. In the lamb marinade, in the dressing on the grilled vegetable salad, in the dressing on the Syrian pita bread salad and in this dessert. We were celebrating our friend Bud’s birthday, and he’s a particular fan of lemon anything.

First you make a lemony brown sugar layer in a large nonstick frying pan (a 10-inch preferably). You add the thinly sliced lemons (devoid of seeds, of course), butter and brown sugar. That gets boiled briefly, and you carefully place the lemon slices in a decorative manner. Then you make the batter. It contains lemon zest in it, but no lemon juice. You whip up the egg whites to lighten the batter – but it’s a bit difficult since you’re only using 2 egg whites – hardly enough. But it helps. Pour (if you can) or place small globs of the cake batter on top of the lemons, and I eventually used a dampened finger to spread the batter as best I could. There isn’t enough batter to completely cover the pan. If you look at the photo above you can see some little holes all over the cake – that’s where the juicy lemon layer oozed up through the cake. Or where I couldn’t quite spread the cake batter! So then it’s baked. Simply baked. When done, you let it rest 10 minutes, then carefully turn the pan over and let it sit. It took a couple of minutes before the cake slid out onto the serving plate.

Ideally, serve this warm. It wasn’t warm by the time I served it (I suppose I could have re-warmed it briefly, but I didn’t). And I added a big dollop of sweetened whipped cream. I happen to think that you NEED highly sweetened whipped cream for this because the cake is SO tart. But use your own judgment. If you use regular lemons, I think you might need even more sugar in the cake. Or more brown sugar in the glaze. Or sprinkle the finished cake with a little bit of granulated sugar – or some of that pretty larger-grained sugar I’ve seen in some places. Just be aware, this cake, although sweet, is also VERY tart. Everybody liked it, though. A LOT. I’d definitely make this again. Can’t wait to eat the leftovers, actually! With more sweetened whipped cream.

A year ago: “Great Coffee Cake” by Marion Cunningham
Two years ago: Lemon Sponge Pudding

Do you, by chance, have a package of fresh cranberries gathering moisture in your refrigerator – - – like I did? Leftover from the holidays? I’d stuck the package down in the bottom of the produce drawer and forgot all about it. I could have frozen them, but I thought I’d make this instead. A few berries needed to be tossed, but mostly the cranberries were still in good shape, considering that they’d been in my refrigerator for about 2.5 months! I’m embarrassed to tell you that I still have a package of cranberries left over from Christmas 2008 in my freezer. Shhhh.

And what an easy recipe this is. About 8-10 years ago I found this in the cookbook owned by a friend, Janet, called The Cranberry Cookbook by Beatrice Ross Buszek (it’s out of print). I also found it on the internet, though, so it doesn’t appear to be anybody’s “original.” I do like pudding cakes – my favorite being lemon. I have Marcel Proustian memories when I think about Rita’s lemon sponge pudding cake – they’re friends who live in England. But this one is cranberry, and what a festive dish this is. And easy to make besides.

First you cook up the cranberries in water (about 5 minutes), then you add sugar mixed with cornstarch, plus a little jot of freshly ground nutmeg, and cook it about a minute until it’s just nicely thickened. That gets poured into the bottom of a 8×8 glass baking dish. The cakey topping is flour, sugar, baking powder (no salt, interestingly enough), butter, milk, raisins (I used currants), dates (I didn’t have any so eliminated that part) and walnuts. Once that’s mixed up you kind of spoon small blobs of it on top of the cranberry part and into the oven it goes for about 55 minutes.

Above left, the cranberries on the bottom with the blobs of batter on the top, ready for the oven; right, just out of the oven, nicely golden brown.

Served with a bit of vanilla ice cream on top, this makes a very nice dessert. Homey. Comfort food. Probably more ideal for December, but it tasted pretty darned good in February. Don’t use any dish larger than an 8×8 pan as you’ll end up with more cake than pudding, and it’s the tart-sweet pudding part that makes this. I liked the chopped walnuts in it too – gave it good texture. It keeps for several days, although the topping won’t be as crispy as just baked. Ideally serve it warm.

A year ago: Pear Cranberry (Vanilla) Crumble
Two years ago: Almond-Crusted Orange Roughy

The other day, when I was writing up the post all about oranges, the simple recipe Russ Parsons included in his book How to Pick a Peach- The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table, sounded so easy. I had a Cara Cara orange on hand. Even had a pink grapefruit (bottom left in the photo above). It took about 1 minute to measure water, add sugar and a vanilla bean. I worked on peeling and slicing the oranges while the vanilla syrup simmered for 10 minutes. I removed the vanilla bean, allowed the syrup to cool down to room temp and poured it over the oranges, then chilled them for awhile. Meanwhile my DH grilled some thick pork chops and we enjoyed these slices after dinner. With a few sprigs of mint from our garden. The recipe makes more syrup than you’ll need, so you could halve it and there will be plenty to pour over 3-4 oranges.

They were so refreshing. Loved the color of them. Loved the ease of making them. I felt virtuous while enjoying a very nice dessert. With one of the triple ginger cookies I made last week.

A year ago: Chicken Bamako (a family favorite)
Two years ago: Peas with Pancetta

It was some months ago that this cake was served at one of my book group meetings. A friend, Ann H. brought the cake to our get-together. Just about everybody went nuts over it, and Ann kindly forwarded the recipe to many of us in the group who wanted it. It’s not a difficult cake to make – actually I’d say this is a VERY EASY cake to bake, even with the nice glaze on it. It’s moist. It’s not as dense as a pound cake, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of one. I served it, actually, with a drizzle of heavy cream on top (probably not more than about 2 teaspoons per serving).

The cake is a fairly standard recipe – eggs, flour, fat (in this case shortening – I used non-hydrogenated – but you could certainly substitute unsalted butter). The cake has almond extract in it, added in at the end. You could probably use a hand mixer, but I used my stand mixer. Once baked, you prepare a melted sugar-butter-water glaze with just a tad of almond extract in it. The glaze is spooned or drizzled all over the cooling cake. I poked holes in the cake so it would get down inside, but mostly the glaze stays on the outside and just absorbs into it slightly. The cake is tender (although not really soft), and very tasty. We all enjoyed it very much. And thanks to Ann H. for the recipe – she said it was given to her by a friend. I hunted on the internet and found no other cake even similar.

A year ago: Avocado Cheese Roll
Two years ago: Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone Cheese

My friend Norma, for whom I’ve been making puddings and other soft foods for some months as she recovers from chemo and radiation, asked me if I’d make her a chocolate cake. Sure, I said. She had a recipe she wanted me to try from a magazine. It was a Joanne Weir recipe – I found it in my copy of Joanne’s cookbook, Joanne Weir’s More Cooking in the Wine Country, and also online. According to the story, when Joanne was growing up, her mother (a professional caterer) would ask her daughter what kind of cake she’d like for her birthday. Always, Joanne craved this chocolate cake with frosting.

There’s nothing all that unusual about the cake ingredients – it’s the standard flour, sugar, butter, eggs, chocolate, etc. BUT, it does have a cup of coffee in it, and it also contains both baking powder and baking soda. The latter I’d guess help make this a tall and really soft, tender cake. The frosting was easy – although I will say that there was barely enough frosting to provide some filling in the middle, and also to do the top and sides. If I were making this again, I’d increase the frosting by 50%, so I’ve changed the recipe below.

The cake? Absolutely scrumptious. I mean really, what is there not to like about a 2-layer frosted chocolate cake, made with good chocolate. It was so tender and tasty. Sometimes homemade layer cakes are a bit on the firm side (know what I mean?). Definitely not the case here. The cake is truly soft and tender – I know I’ve said this now about three times in this post! I’d definitely make this again.

A year ago: Coffee Cardamom Pot de Crème
Two years ago: Refrigerator Bran Muffins

Sometime a year or so ago I wrote up a post about this Pear Crisp (which came from Smitten Kitchen’s blog, and she adapted it from a Gourmet Magazine recipe). It was one of those awesomely good things that enveloped you in comfort with every bite. It contained a flour-nut topping. And the fresh pears just soaked up the goodness of the vanilla browned butter. Looking at the recipe I decided to make this again, but make it gluten-free for my cousin Gary. It was a very easy fix to do that. It called for 1 1/2 cups of flour. I substituted 1 1/2 cups of blanched almond flour instead. It was mixed with whole almonds and spices to make the topping, that turned a very toasty brown (those very dark brown parts you can see in the photo). The crisp went from nice golden brown to nearly burned in a matter of about 5 minutes in the oven. But it wasn’t burned – quite – and those dark brown parts actually tasted quite good.

Ideally, make this when the pears are at their PEAK of flavor. Not when they’re one day past. It still tastes good, but it’s better if the pears are on the underside of ripe rather than the overside of ripe, if you get my drift. The photo at left is the crisp prior to baking with the nut crumbly topping sprinkled all over.

A year ago: Shrimp & Shellfish Chowder

This year I was asked to bring dessert to the large family Christmas Eve celebration. And since there would be over 20 people in attendance, I needed something that served a lot of people. I found this recipe in my to-try file. I’ve had it around since 2005. But the recipe’s credentials are very blue-ribbon worthy as it won a Sunset Magazine contest that year, for the dessert category.

Roasted sweet potatoes (the orange-flesh yam type ones) are combined with typical cheesecake ingredients, but with some added fall spices, and baked in a nut crust. The original recipe, submitted by Kari Bowers of Bellevue, Washington, had a pecan and flour crumbly crust. I changed that in order to make this eat-friendly for my cousin Gary, who is wheat intolerant. If you’d prefer to make the prize-winning crust, just go to the Sunset site. This version is made with a ground pecan-cinnamon-butter crust. Very simple. In any case, my version here, is gluten-free. Generally, cheesecake is already GF, but I merely changed the crust to a nut crust.

Don’t attempt to make this if you’ve got 5 other things you’re making for a special dinner. It takes time and a whole lot of bowls and dishes. It’s not difficult to make, just time consuming. But probably no more than any cheesecake, if that’s any better explanation. It is recommended that you make this a day or two ahead. I slightly increased the recipe, since I wanted to serve more people, so mine is certainly taller than the original recipe. I also had to bake it longer too, in order to get it to the just-barely-jiggling-in-the-center done-ness.

People who submitted comments to the Sunset site talked about how good it was, but many mentioned the texture – super smooth. Like silk, one person wrote. It definitely served 20, and it definitely was fine 3 days later, even. Velvety smooth texture. We liked the nut crust, actually. The maple whipped cream was very nice, although I couldn’t really pick out the maple syrup added – I guess there were so many flavors going on in the cheesecake, I couldn’t really taste the maple in the whipped cream. We needed and wanted more whipped cream than the recipe indicated, so plan on whipping up about double the quantity. I’d make this again, with no changes to the recipe except the whipped cream topping. Delicious. Particularly lovely for Fall. Or Thanksgiving.

A year ago: Cranberry Porter Trifle (the dessert I made for last year’s Christmas Eve dinner – it was delicious too)

The other night I/we had a gathering here at my house. Of the investment club that 5 of us were still in. Except that the club finally folded its doors this month after 12 years. But this festive gathering included current and used-to-be members. About 16 of us altogether. We’ve been having these parties nearly every year. We all enjoy each other’s friendship, so most years we get together with everyone. It’s a potluck affair. I offered to make dessert. I’d made cookies last week (the chocolate sable ones and the harlequin pinwheel cookies), so I could have put those out. But even though the group doesn’t usually eat a lot of desserts, I thought it would be fun to try a new recipe. I’d had this one in my to-try file and thought it sounded good. Guests could take a really small slice if they wanted to.

It wasn’t hard to prepare. A butter-rich crumbly crust is pressed into a springform pan and partway up the sides. Then a fresh bread crumb layer (very little) is made with just crumbs and butter. That gets sprinkled on the bottom. Then fresh apples are peeled and sliced. Oh, and meanwhile, you have soaked a few raisins in rum too and the raisins are sprinkled over the top of the apples (tossed with lemon juice and sugar) after you’ve piled them into the crust (I did a little bit of arranging of the slices, but not a lot) and it’s baked for 15 minutes. Meanwhile you make a custard with eggs, sugar, milk and the leftover rum. That gets poured on top of the apples and it’s baked at a slightly lower oven temp for about an hour. Then you have to let it sit until it’s completely cool before removing the springform rim. Obviously it’s fragile and you need it to cool and “set up,” before making it look purty.

This recipe is listed on lots of websites, so I don’t know the origin of it. None of the sites listed one. But I do know that it’s a German type cake, because it’s also called rahmapfelkuchen, or rahm apfelkuchen. Kuchen means cake, apfel is apple, and rahm is cream. So, cream-apple-cake. In my prowling around the internet I found that in Germany you can buy a boxed MIX for this cake. Hmmm. It’s not hard to prepare, so why would you need a box mix. Oh well.

Among other things, the cake is really attractive looking. You can see the raisins poking through the top. The custard filters down through the apples to hold it all together. I served it with whipped cream. Germans and Austrians mostly serve desserts mit schlag (with whipped cream). I drink coffee with cream – always have – though not usually whipped. But in Salzburg one time my DH and I stopped in a cute little cafe and ordered some kind of cake with coffee in the mid-afternoon. We’d walked for miles all around the castle/fortress. The waitress said “mit schlag?” Never forgot the term after that. In subsequent foreign trips I usually learned how to ask for cream in whatever language I needed to know. Mit schlag. Yup.

In looking at the photo at top, you might think that’s it’s more cake. It’s not. The part in the middle is all apples with the custard around it. There is a very small breadcrumb layer under the apples, too. But, I sort of think the name is a misnomer. The only thing that’s “cake” is the crust. The filling is just apples, raisins and a custard mixture. It’s almost more like a pie, really. Or a tart, since it’s made in a springform pan with straight sides. So how was it? Delicious. The rum added a nice side note to the apples. It’s a soft kind of dessert – the apples are very moist. The custard of course, is smooth. The crust is crumbly and good. Altogether delicious. Will I make it again? Maybe. Certainly not because I didn’t like it – I did – but I might try something similar, and different. If I were to change anything I don’t know what it would be.

A year ago: Spiced Peaches (goes well with a breakfast, brunch, holiday breakfast)
Two years ago: Chicken & Dumplings (oh, delicious)

Sometimes when I decide to print-out, tear out or otherwise keep a recipe to try, it’s because of the name. Or the ease of it, maybe. Or the fact that it might be unusual. Or where it came from even. Like a name chef, perhaps. In this case first it was the name. Portuguese? I know very little about Portuguese cuisine, let alone Portuguese baking, even though I’ve been to Portugal twice. But this time it was the photograph that had me intrigued. The recipe said tartlet, but it looked like a muffin. If you go over to Marie’s blog, The English Kitchen, you’ll see her photos look much like mine, although hers are more brown on top. But in this case when I read the recipe, I also read the ingredients. Hmmm. Puff pastry? With a custard thing in the middle. Sounded different. Interesting. So I tucked it away for some day when I needed just that something special for dessert.

(Pictured above, the tartlets just before baking.) I purchased the Pepperidge Farms puff pastry. And I checked the date on the box right there at the frozen food aisle – good until October 2010. Okay. Good. Following the instructions I defrosted the puff pastry overnight in the refrigerator, then unrolled each tri-fold piece of pastry and rolled it up in a tight roll from the short side. Then cut that into six pieces. I have silicone muffin tins, so it was very easy mushing the pieces of puff pastry into each muffin cup, with my fingers dampened with cold water. I ended up shaping them a bit in the palms of my hands first, then carefully placing each down into the muffin cup and then pushing it out and up the sides. Be careful you don’t get air bubbles underneath – if so, pull the circle away from one side and gently move it back into the right position. The shells went into the freezer while I made the filling.

(Here are the tartlets just out of the oven.) The filling: It was a bunch of egg yolks, heavy cream, grated lemon zest, cornstarch and a tiny bit of salt. That’s gently brought to a simmer, stirring constantly, until it’s about the texture of lemon curd. It ISN’T lemon curd, though, since it has no lemon juice in it. That custard eggy stuff is scooped into each puff pastry tart shell and baked at 500° (yikes, is that ever hot) for 15 minutes. And they’re done. Cool. Serve. I made a double batch (makes 12 – using the full box of puff pastry) because I needed more than six, but there’s no difference in the preparation whether you’re doing six or twelve.

Okay, now on to the taste. They’re incredibly rich – well, when you consider puff pastry (think butter, butter, butter) and the filling with egg yolks and cream. Okay. Rich. But oh so delicious. As I’m writing this I’ve eaten a half of ONE. Loved it. Most of my guests ate the rest, but we do still have a couple. I think they’re best warm or at room temp, so keep that in mind. And they’re not as good leftover, I’m sure (haven’t tried it yet) because the puff pastry will get a bit soggy. So just make as many as you’re certain you’ll eat. But make them you should for a special occasion.

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A year ago: White Batter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Two years ago: Watercress, Belgian Endive & Olive Salad

A week or so ago I was trying to find yet another pudding that my friend Norma could eat. Since I’ve made so many, I’m having some difficulty trying to do something different. I’ve done some twice, but my eye scanned over a lemon pudding cake and this one I found in several places on the internet had different proportions than the recipe I’ve always used. How odd, I thought. You’d think a pudding cake would require almost identical quantities of liquid to flour to eggs. But, with this recipe, I’ve now learned that it does not. This one has more eggs, less milk, more flour and more sugar. Very odd altogether. But it worked. This one is less lemon-forward, if you will. But it was tender and unctuous. I made one big bowl and poured just a tad of batter into these teensy-tiny little bowls I have (above) which provided about 6 bites for each of us. The bowls are hardly larger than the bowl of a spoon, as you can see. The sliced almonds are placed in the bottom of the buttered dish. And you do have to put this in a water bath – although my water bath wasn’t big enough for both of these little puds, so the one above actually sat out on the oven shelf. It was fine! A little more done than the other one, but still very moist and tender. So if you don’t feel like doing the water bath, I’m not sure it’s necessary!

Here the progression:

There’s the buttered bowl with the sliced almonds sprinkled all over.

The egg whites were whipped up and sweetened. The egg-lemon cake batter was mixed, then the two were gently combined. The mixture was poured into the prepared dish (and the two little ones I did on the side).

There it is just out of the oven, still sitting in the water bath. You let it sit for about 15 minutes to cool enough so you can pick up the bowl. Ideally you should let it cool completely, then, and chill before serving. Sometimes I serve pudding cake with a dollop of whipped cream, but my favorite is a little bit of half and half. This was good. I suppose I’d have to taste my other recipe side by side with this one to determine whether I like one better than the other. This one, however, is fairly low-fat. That’s always a good thing!

A year ago: White Turkey Chili
Two years ago: Apple Parsnip Soup