Seasons of the year certainly affect how and what I cook. And I’m not ready for the winter to be over with yet, as far as making soups, stews, good old comfort food, pumpkin things, and today, a gingerbread. Based on some recent temps, however, you’d think we were already in Indian Summer. The thermometer topped 100 the other day, and we had the A/C running full blast. You folks who lives east will be getting it any day.

You’ll see over on my blogroll (right sidebar) that I read a whole bunch of blogs. Unfortunately for my pressured and precious reading time, I keep adding more blogs to read rather than taking any away. But one of my favorites that I click on early in my reading is Marie’s A Year From Oak Cottage. Marie is a transplanted Canadian, lives in Kent, England, with her husband and dog. She’s a chef/cook for a family at a large manor house (they live in Oak Cottage on the property). Marie always has interesting stories to tell about her life, what she cooks, and the goings-on at the big house, about the Mrs. and the Mr. She’s a good photographer, and relishes the quiet country life she’s now leading.

We have friends in England, that we made on my DH’s and my first trip to the U.K. in 1981, and Pamela was also a cook/chef at a country estate. If you’re interested in reading about my introduction to making a proper pot of tea, or about one particular Sunday lunch and Pamela’s green pea soup, then maybe you’ll know why I was intrigued when I first ran across Marie’s blog.

Over the year or so I’ve been reading Marie’s stories, I’ve made a couple of things, but I always perk up when she mentions that a recipe comes from her beloved “blue notebook.” That means it’s one of her tried and true recipes, one that she’s been making for eons. So when I read that this gingerbread came from her blue notebook, I printed out the recipe from the post, and made it the other evening.

Lest you think that a gingerbread is just a gingerbread, let me dissuade you from that idea. This one’s a tad bit different. It has all of the same ingredients – it is just a cake after all – but there are some different techniques in this one that caught my attention. For one thing, you have to whip the eggs until they’re the consistency of whipped cream. It’s an important step to get the texture Marie relies on. She mentions using an electric whisk – I haven’t a clue what that is unless it’s an immersion blender. So I whipped and whipped by hand until my wrist was about to fall off. And this cake uses honey as well. And hot water. It’s also not all that sweet (which I like). It produces a relatively short (in height) cake (about 1 ¼ inches high, I’d guess). After it had cooled for about 30 minutes I just had to dig into it – it was still warm from the oven, and had the most wonderful soft texture (must be the whipping of those eggs). The spices added a lovely rounded flavor to the cake – I might even add more next time.

The next morning the texture wasn’t quite so soft and ethereal, but it tasted mighty good. I did just what Marie suggested: I cut a slice in half and had it with my breakfast instead of toast. She spreads it with butter and ginger preserves. Just the mention of ginger preserves takes me instantly to England, where such preserves are a staple in everyone’s larder. There’s only one brand available here in the U.S., Robertson’s, and it’s nowhere near – by a long shot – as good as the brands there. I’ve brought some home with me on trips now and then. But I’ve been out of it for awhile, and I just won’t buy Robertson’s. They don’t include all that much ginger in the jar – and the texture is too thick besides. And it’s the ginger that I like, not the sugared pectin syrup. I should learn how to make it – it can’t be that hard. If any of my readers from England or the U.K. have a good recipe, I’d love to hear about it.

Two of our grandchildren (John and Sabrina) enjoying some of the cake. It was warm enough to go swimming here in So. California a few days ago when they were here.

So, here’s Marie’s Warm Honey Gingerbread, which likes to be served with some ice cream or whipped cream on top or a caramel sauce. If you keep portions small, it’s a fairly light dessert, actually, and is very low in fat (only half a cup of butter for the whole recipe which equates to 7 grams of fat). It’s made in a 9×13 pan, so would serve at least 15 people, as long as you served it with ice cream or a sauce. Oh, that’s sounds yummy. I may have to sneak another little bite after lunch today.
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We  had our friends, Bud & Cherrie, over for dinner the other night, and I pulled out some old favorites to serve as part of the meal. First, I wanted to serve them some of the Kurobuta Ham that I wrote up last week. Since I’m now a big fan of the David Rosengarten specialty ham, I wanted Cherrie to taste it. I had some of the mustard sauce leftover, which I included in the post about the ham. I’d stored it in a heavy-duty glass container, so I plunked it into a pan of water and brought it up to a simmer until the sauce just warmed through and thinned out.

I made a new cauliflower dish, which I posted a day or so ago, and a big green salad with some dressing I’d made a week ago. And I had a tube of Pillsbury biscuits in the refrigerator. Now I must tell you, I don’t use package mixes or ready-made food much. In fact, very rarely! But these biscuits I’ve been making for about 35 years are an exception. I posted about them last summer, but I didn’t have a photo. Now I do. I won’t re-write the post here, but will just tell you that these are so awfully good. They’re slathered with an herb and lemon butter before baking. Cinchy easy. If you want to read the post and try them, just click on the link above. The recipe was given to my by a friend named Zelda, in Oklahoma, eons ago.

I didn’t want to make a dessert, but my standby in that department is a chocolate sauce I’ve been making also, for about 35 years, to drizzle over vanilla ice cream. It was also given to me by a friend, and even after trying at least a dozen other combinations of chocolate, cream, butter, etc. I revert to this one as my favorite. It’s made with German’s sweet chocolate, and keeps in the refrigerator for ages (you just have to reheat it whenever you want to use it). Here’s photo of that one. I posted the recipe last year HERE. It’s so very easy to make and blows away the competition, even Hershey’s Syrup, which is pretty darned good considering that it’s a bulk-produced sauce.

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Knowing I wouldn’t have lots of time to prepare dessert for Easter Dinner, I whipped through my tried and true recipes for one that is easy, but looks like you slaved for hours. Aha! This cake fit the bill. It’s a rich, delicious flourless chocolate cake, with an easy caramel sauce that you drizzle over it. When Phillis Carey made this she talked about how easy it was to make. It truly is – you melt chocolate and butter, then combine with sugar, cocoa and eggs. That’s IT. Pour it into a greased and parchment bottomed springform pan and bake. Done. Then you just have to make the easy caramel sauce, which can be made up to a day ahead.

The flavor? Rich chocolate, no question. Low calorie? No, certainly not. Delicious? Oh yes. You need ice cream on the side, though, to cut the richness. And you can easily cut smaller servings to feed about 16 people if you need to. A small, very small, wedge is sufficient. We fed 9 on Easter and there were still 5 or 6 slices leftover. And I think the slices were too big for a dessert following a rich dinner.

You’ll be very happy you tried this. I’ve made this several times, always to good reviews. When it was first served to me at the cooking class, Phillis told us it’s better warm – so if you can, re-warm the cake in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. If you have leftovers, store them in a sealed container at room temp for up to 4 days.
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My mother used to make a simple applesauce spice cake, so when I ran across this recipe (from Gourmet, December, 2005) it took me back to my childhood. Reminded me of coming home from school and the house would be perfumed with spices. Those apple-pie kind of spices. I don’t have my mother’s recipe, so this offered an opportunity to try a similar one. I think my mother used to add chopped apples and raisins to hers. They would be an easy addition, even to this recipe.

This is a simple cake to make, including the frosting. Once you get all the ingredients together in one place, it’s quite simple to mix up and pour into a greased springform pan to bake. Once the cake is cool, it’s frosted with an easy cooked frosting flavored with rum. The cake has a couple of teaspoons of rum in it too (you could easily use rum flavoring instead). If you go onto epicurious, you can read reviews of the cake. By and large, everyone who made it enjoyed it. A couple of cooks thought it needed more spices, and a couple of people thought the frosting was too thin, so I added a bit more powdered sugar than was called for. You pour the frosting all over the cake and let it drip down the sides.

My family went absolutely nutso over this recipe. I believe more than one piece was consumed the next day with breakfast (ah, I am guilty, your honor). It was that good. But, having read some of the reviews on epicurious, my supposition is that the frosting makes the cake. It’s not a normal frosting – but kind of a cross between a frosting and a caramel sauce. And maybe it’s the turbinado sugar too that makes such a difference too, although turbinado can be interchanged with brown sugar.
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With family visiting this week, and needing to get much bigger and easier dinners on the table every night, I flipped through the to-try recipes and this cake was the perfect solution. Easy. Made in a 9×13 pan with a oh-so-easy sugar topping. No frosting needed. I probably would have passed by the recipe except for the write-up about it. From Gourmet in 2005 (April), the brief blurb about it said that it’s a family favorite of Cynthia Knauer, the mother of one of Gourmet’s cross-testers, Ian Knauer.

It comes together in a jiffy. You first make an egg and sugar batter, but you beat the heck out of it until it’s really fluffy and ribbony. Meanwhile, you melt milk with a cube of butter until piping hot. After adding a flour and mace mixture to the eggs, you stir in the hot, hot milk and butter, pour that into a pan and bake, after sprinkling the top with a mixture of sugar and mace. It probably took a max of about 15 minutes to prepare the cake, and another 25 minutes to bake.

I really, really liked the cake. Lovely, subtle, soft flavors of the mace. I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake or anything where the predominant flavor was mace. You know what mace is, don’t you, other than just one more little jar on your spice rack? It’s from a covering on nutmeg pods. They’re beautiful looking, these coverings, in a kind of whorly-swirl, a kind of husk.

I read the recipe over at epicurious also, as well as the reviews of the cake. All but one person liked it a lot. One person mentioned she’d made it with some new mace she’d ordered from Penzey’s. Gave me an idea, since I’m certain my little jar of mace is many years old. The cake is nearly white-white, and with the sugar/mace icing, it’s still a very light-looking cake. So serve it with strawberries (recommended by the author). She also said that it never lasts very many days in her house as everybody stops by the pan and has a little slice every time they go through the kitchen. I understand. I had to laugh – our family has done the same thing, slicing off just a little bite here and there. A tiny snack.
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I’ve been promising you, all my loyal readers (thank you, by the way), that I’d post this recipe. I mentioned it way back last Fall, saying that I had this low calorie, low fat dessert, perfect for the autumn months. I’m sure I’ve mentioned, I’m a big fan of anything pumpkin. Pumpkin pie is my most favorite pie. But I don’t make it, really, except at Thanksgiving. My will power is about zilch when it comes to pumpkin pie. I have an entire stack of recipes in my archives devoted just to all-things-pumpkin. Pies, cakes, tortes, breads, muffins, cookies, tarts, pudding, etc. But I try to stay away from them as much as possible.

The recipe came from Cooking Light, back in 2001. And the writer/developer raved about the flavor, telling readers it was worth making. I couldn’t agree more. This little number satisfies my yearning for pumpkin pie, but without all the calories, without the crust, and with a lot less fuss. And with very little fat. And it’s easy on top of it.

You’re wondering . . . where’s the praline? I ran out of time, so this time I served the custards with just a little covering of heavy cream (less than a tablespoon each). I make these in custard cups, espresso cups, or ramekins. If you use small cups, rather than ramekins, you’ll be able to serve more.

Whipping this together takes all of about 10 minutes (yes, really), then you bake them in a water bath for about 50 minutes, cool, serve. You whiz up the custard in the blender, to make sure the cinnamon gets distributed (ever noticed how cinnamon kind of floats everywhere it goes, especially liquid?). You definitely want it to disburse in this custard, so do use a hand mixer or a blender. But the ingredients can all fit in the blender bowl and takes but a few seconds to combine. Then you pour it into spray-covered ramekins and bake. I started the tea kettle to boil before I started the custard prep and by the time the water was boiling, I was all ready. But be sure to preheat the oven first – my oven wasn’t even hot when I was ready to put these in. That’s how quick they are to make.

A little bit about nutmeg here. I can’t stress enough, that there is real value (taste value) in using freshly grated nutmeg. Here’s a photo of a nutmeg pod. It’s about ½ inch in diameter, and I’ve had my nutmeg for years and years. I don’t think they go bad as long as they’re still in the whole form. So I bought this little gizmo, a nutmeg grinder, some years ago. It’s nothing fancy, comes apart in a jiffy, and contains the whole pods in a compartment in the top (you can see one pod inside) and the bottom part is the grinder. The flavor is so enhanced with fresh nutmeg. If you like to bake, you’ll find it worthwhile to have one of these grinders. As an aside, I went online and was going to give you a recommendation of a grinder, but having read reviews of several brands, I’m not sure which one I’d buy. They range in price from about $15 – $75. My little plastic one was under $10 when I bought it. Do read the reviews, though, before deciding on any of them. It appears the William Bounds ones get better write-ups.
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I wish it weren’t so, but put anything in front of me with chocolate in it, and I’m a goner. About the only thing I don’t eat of the chocolate variety is candy. Unless it’s chocolate covered nuts.

The photo here looks more like a plate of whipped cream with raspberries, but the chocolate cake is hidden behind. I was snapping photos of the food from a big dinner party we did the other night, and I didn’t take much time to compose the picture. I threw the plate in front of my fancy light and SNAP. Done. Whisked the plate to the table.

Obviously Phillis Carey, the cooking instructor who made this, likes chocolate too, as it features often in her class recipes. That’s all right by me.

This cake is not difficult – it has a minimum of ingredients (seven, by count) not including the whipped cream and raspberries served on the top, and it comes together in about 15 minutes. Just enough time for the oven to heat. I’m including a photo of the cake batter – I just love the combination of the colors – the rich egg batter and the melted chocolate. You don’t use the egg whites, so the batter is a very lemony yello color. Isn’t that purr-ty?

You melt the chocolate and butter together, cool it a little. The recipe calls for some instant coffee granules (espresso type). I don’t like to use caffeinated coffee in a dessert, so I made a very small amount of instant decaf espresso (no more than 2 T.). Alternately, you could use ordinary instant coffee dissolved in a tiny amount of water. An egg yolk and sugar batter is also mixed up until light, then the two batters are combined before popping into a greased springform pan. Bake. Cool.
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Warm lemon sponge pudding with a bit of heavy cream poured over.

Lemon sponge pudding hot out of the oven.

As probably with many of you, recipes come your way from so many different places. From people you’ve met along the paths of life (as in this case), or from a magazine at the doctor’s office, the grocery store even.

DH and I were fortunate to meet some very dear people, Rita and Roy, many years ago. They’re related to some friends of friends. You know how that goes. They’re from England, but come to the U.S. with some frequency to visit. DH and I were invited to their home in England (actually three different ones over the years) to stay, to use their home as a base for traveling in the area. They always made us so welcome, and we were very grateful for the hospitality.

One year, 1993 to be specific, my friend Cherrie and I decided to take a trip to England together. She’d never been, and since I had some experience driving on the left side of the road, we rented a car at Heathrow and set out on our journey. It’s through Cherrie that we knew Rita and Roy, and they’d kindly offered to let us stay in their home in Reading (pronounced like red-ing).

Every time I get behind the wheel in a right-hand drive car I have to familiarize myself with the mysteries of relearning some but not all of my driving motions. The gear shift is on the left, but the gas pedal is still on the right side. Most cars are stick shift in Europe. Not many people have taken to automatics, like we do here in the United States. That part was fine with me, but it does take a bit more concentration. The turn signal is still on the left side of the steering column, but you have to remember to look at the rear view mirror on the left (inside the car), and the outside mirror on the right. All very confusing. You do get used to it, but the first few days can be very frustrating.

When DH and I travel, he usually drives, and the first few days the passenger is responsible for navigation AND coaching the driver. As when approaching an intersection, reminding the driver to turn right, but keep in the left lane once you make the turn. Like “turn left ahead, but keep left.” Or when entering a roundabout, a reminder that we don’t have right of way. So Cherrie was my navigator and scout. She took on the role well through the whole trip. Only once did I come out of a parking lot where we’d been shopping, shopping, and I got into the right side of the road. Fortunately nobody was coming. She was johnny-on-the-spot to correct my error. We had a wonderful time on this trip, driving all over.

Rita’s sister Sandy lives here in the U.S., and Sandy had always told Cherrie that there wasn’t “anything” to buy in England. So Cherrie went on that trip with nary any space in her suitcase for anything to buy. I’m certain I told Cherrie that wasn’t true, but she trusted Sandy in this case. Hmmm. The second day in England we drove to Salisbury. We had fish and chips at a local stand-up bar. They were absolutely delicious. Since it had taken us a few hours to get to Salisbury, we couldn’t dilly dally, since I wasn’t anxious to drive back to Reading after dark. It was winter when we were there, so there were shorter daylight hours. But, I wanted Cherrie to see the Cathedral in Salisbury, which is so magnificent. She enjoys English history just like I do, so we found a carpark and headed off walking. There was a wide walking street from the carpark to the church, with solid stores left and right. We walked about 30 feet onto this walking street and passed a window of Boots, the well-known “chemist” (drug store) that is all over the United Kingdom. I paused at the window to look at some cute coffee mugs. Cherrie looked over and immediately was looking closely at the window display too. We went inside. Well, what can I tell you other than we never made it to the Cathedral. Cherrie laughed and roared. What in the world did [her friend] Sandy mean there wasn’t any shopping in England? The dollar was worth a whole lot more then, so exchanging dollars for pounds bought us more value than today. We bought things. We shopped. And we shopped some more.

As time went on, on this trip, Cherrie was filling up the boot (the trunk) of the car with her purchases. There were bags and bags in there. Because we were staying with friends, she hadn’t quite figured out what she would do with all this stuff. Eventually we headed off on our own, driving many directions, including to London too. Cherrie had to fit things in her suitcase. Oh, there was trouble in River City. She stuffed. She pried. She pushed and pulled. She found room for a lot of things. She tossed out some things too – some clothes that weren’t new, and some tour data, to make room for more of her purchases. As we approached the last few days of our trip Cherrie was still buying. She still kids me to this day about my remark, but I said to her, Cherrie, if that doesn’t fit in your purse, you can’t buy it. She bought a second small bag of some sort (a carry-on), which was mighty full when we got to Heathrow to fly home. But she managed. How, I don’t know, but she did. She was big-time motivated!

So, I need to get back to this wonderful pudding. This is Rita’s recipe. It was actually Cherrie’s and my second trip to England that Rita had this in the refrigerator waiting for us when we arrived. We got there late on that trip. She had a couple of plates of food saved for us too, which hit the spot. Then she pointed to the dessert and said help ourselves when we were ready. Cherrie and I were jet lagged and way off-schedule. Rita went off to bed and we had a couple cups of tea to calm down. Finally, we scooped out a serving and poured on some light cream (like half and half) on top. Oh yes, was it good. I’m a huge lemon fan anyway, so this hit the spot, as it has every time I’ve made it since.

If you’re not familiar with sponge pudding, it’s kind of a cross between lemon curd, lemon pudding, and a sponge cake. The preparation and baking process makes layers – a lemony pudding layer and a cake layer. So, you get two desserts in one. Thank you, Rita, for sharing the recipe.
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The photo doesn’t do justice to this delicious dessert. As some other blogger wrote recently, “beige” food doesn’t photograph well. Beige (pear) ice cream. Beige pears. Beige tart pastry. The only contrast is the chocolate horizontal stripe you can barely see at the bottom. That’s not just a shadow, but chocolate. Good chocolate. We were entertaining guests for dinner, and I didn’t take the dessert dish over to my good light (see photo below) I’ve put in the butler’s pantry. It’s just adjacent to the dining room. I didn’t want to disturb our guests sitting but a few feet away. This blogging business is a bit distracting sometimes. Distracting to our guests. Distracting even to me sometimes. So I took a photo with ambient light.

This doesn’t look like much, but it’s my new Lowel EGO blogging light. It lives in my butler’s pantry (for now anyway). It’s kind of innocuous looking, although larger than I’d thought. I’d like to hide it, but for now it lives out there in the open. It creates a very bright but diffused light to get better photos of the food. All for you, dear readers.

I know the drill! A picture is worth a thousand words, and I know photos make a food blog interesting. Photos make people read on. So, through hectic food prep, making merry, washing dishes and everything else that goes along with producing a dinner party, I gotta have PICTURES! Fortunately, our family & friends who had dinner with us were patient with me. They may be thinking I’m totally NUTS doing what I’m doing – maybe even rude. Hope not, but it’s possible! They all know I have a food blog, but it’s one thing to talk about it, another to pause and prop pictures in the midst of a party.

So, back to this dessert. Which is delicious, if I didn’t mention that before. I know I did – I’m just repeating it for emphasis. It’s a subtle dessert – cooked pears aren’t exactly bold, and there are just 8 ounces of chocolate in this, so you don’t get a huge punch of it. But the combination of the two, with the tender pastry and the cool frosty ice cream on the side, make for one great dessert. This dessert is NOT difficult to make, despite the list of ingredients, and the long list of instructions. It’s just that the steps are a bit detailed. You also need to have some Poire William, or pear brandy. Here’s a photo of my bottle of Poire William, purchased some years ago. It was dear, that I remember, but you only use a little bit at a time. Do note the pear in the bottom of the bottle. How do they do that, you ask? They place the bottle over the pear when it’s teeny tiny, somehow strap it to the tree branch, put an opaque cover over the top (otherwise the pear would burn in the sunshine), then let the pear mature.

This liqueur is not sweet – it’s not really for sipping. Although perhaps the French do. I only use it for cooking, and the rare item, to be sure.

So, where’d the recipe come from? Another cooking class. From Kate Hill, an American woman, who moved to France probably 20 years ago. She bought an old barge, the Julia Hoyt, from Holland and sailed it down to Southern France where she parks it on the side of a canal. She bought a small cottage there, and even takes paying guests on the barge now and then. She’s written a cookbook, called A Culinary Journey in Gascony, about her experiences, and with lots of peasant style recipes. She taught a cooking class about 5 years or so ago, right after her cookbook was published. This was the dessert she prepared. She has a blog, in case you’re interested in reading. She posts recipes occasionally, but mostly the blog is about her life. Her day to day, with her adorable dog Bacon.

Cook’s Notes: There are a few things to mention here. First, and most important, be certain your pears are the right stage of ripeness. I seem to have the toughest time with pears. The day they finally ripen, is not the day I’m ready to cook them. One day more and they’ve become grainy and inedible. So, this particular time I bought the pears 4 days before the event, and they were just the perfect shade of ripe. Thank goodness. Also, don’t roll the dough too thin, as it will break when you try to pull up the sides. If you do that, the cream fraiche topping will ooze out all over everywhere. Take it from someone who knows from first hand experience about that! So read the directions carefully.
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Kind of like lava. Thick gooey deliciousness. There’s nothing in this not to like – chocolate, white chocolate, raspberries, and whipped cream. This would make a perfect ending to a Valentine’s Day dinner.

If you happen to want to make something very chocolatety and very rich, this is your ticket to nirvana. I was surprised that it didn’t keep me awake the other night with the caffeine, although it’s only got 8 ounces of chocolate (dark stuff) in the whole torte, so that must be why.

Credit goes to Phillis Carey, from a cooking class I took. Over the years of taking classes from her, she’s made some really wonderful desserts, and some really good chocolate ones at that. So here’s another to add to the stable of chocolate yumminess.

Really, this is a fairly simple dessert to make. You do have to prepare the pan (springform) and line it with parchment. And you’ll mess up a few bowls getting all the different batters made, but all combine into one in the end, and you pour it into the springform and bake. It’s served with the frozen raspberries in syrup (from the grocery store), thawed, of course, and a nice mound of whipped cream.

Knowing when the torte is DONE is a bit tricky here. This one pictured, is probably a tad under-done – the center of it was too lava like. But it worked and tasted just fine. At about the 35 minute mark, you insert a pick into the center, and you do not want all sticky stuff. In fact, when this one was removed, there was just a tiny, tiny bit of goo, and just a few crumbs attached to the pick. And yet, it was still a bit underdone. Keep testing the torte every 3-4 minutes thereafter until it’s done to your liking.

Cook’s Notes: Phillis told us to buy white chocolate chips from Trader Joe’s because they do contain cocoa butter. Most white chocolate does not. Those other brands will work, but the cocoa butter ones are better. She also cautioned us to NOT chunk up a white chocolate bar for this because it will just melt into the batter and you won’t SEE the white chocolate at all (you can see the chips in the photo). That’s not what you want here. White chocolate chips contain something (is it wax?) to keep them from melting, like regular chocolate chips. And lastly, do not eliminate the whipped cream because this dessert is really, really rich, and you need the cream to cut down that solid richness. Also, Phillis’ recipe contained 2 full cups of sugar. I thought it was too, too sweet, so reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup in both instances (you add the sugar to two different batters as it’s made). You can use your own judgment.
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