Birthday Cake

Decadence is a term that communicates luxury and excess, richness and indulgence. So what better term to describe the ideal birthday cake. Credit for this one goes almost entirely to this post of Orangette, where a great many scrumptious things may be found. But, as usual, a twist was in order - in this case a little touch of lavender. The cake truly is sumptuous as well as scrumptious: It is light without being thin, and yet heavy without being a rock settling in your stomach. It's full of carroty goodness both in flavour and vitamins, and yet it could get anyone to eat vegetables. And it would be completely in its element in the exalted company of the Black Forest Gateaux, Flourless Chocolate Cakes, Strawberry-Caramel Cheesecakes, and Custard Cream Pies of cakey heaven. I very slightly changed two things about the recipe, in addition to the lavender twist. First, I baked the layers in pyrex pie-plates, since I'm increasingly uncomfortable with cheap non-stick-oleum cookware. Apparently the conversion is easy. If anything, lower the oven temperature 15-25 degrees, or shorten the baking time by about 10%. Just don't forget to grease and flour the baking dishes - I even used parchment paper in the bottom just in case, which turned out to be a good move since this cake is so moist it is a bit sticky until it cools a bit. The other thing I changed was the amount of lemon in the icing. As I was adding the lemon juice, it kept tasting better and better, so I probably ended up with about triple the recommended amount purely as a matter of taste. It did make the icing a little soft...The lavender twist was as follows: I took a little of the plain icing, before adding the lemon, and added a very few drops of lavender oil to it. Careful! Lavender oil is strong stuff and many people think it tastes like soap if it is at all overdone. The trick is to make the flavour the same as a passing whiff of a fresh lavender field - sweet, warm, herbal, and a little dusty - with none of the astringency that comes with the concentration of the oil. In short, lots of sugar to very little oil. Once flavoured, I colored the icing to lavender purple and then used it to write on the cake. It was a little soft for cake-writing, but it worked and it gave each piece just the slightest hint of lavender, which went really well with the lemon in the rest of the icing and the deep, slightly savoury sweetness of the cake. I'll not reproduce the recipe here, since the link above will suffice. If trying the lavender experiment, start with ONE drop in about 1/2-cup of icing, mix well and taste. Then increase in strength one drop at a time until you think it is good. Oh, and I also dusted the whole thing with powdered sugar when finished which helped retain the icing and also looked a bit like snow.

Mycological Lobster

The natural world is full of things that resemble other things, sometimes in look, sometimes in smell, and sometimes in taste, too. And after all, human description of food often resorts to simile: "It tastes like chicken." Of course, this gives rise to the joke that God, when defining the tastes of things, ran out of ideas when it came to chicken so just made chicken taste like everything. But I digress.

Lobster would seem to be one of those very delicious, prized, and, above all, unique tastes that is not found anywhere else. Well, whether by reality of the tastebuds or by sheer power of suggestion, a non-lobster lobster seems to exist. The lobster mushroom is so named because it is the speckled orange color of a cooked lobster and also has been described as having a taste that is both earthy and lobster- or shellfish-like. I should clarify that the lobster mushroom is not actually a single species of mushroom in itself, but rather is the result of a parasite fungus colonizing a host mushroom - mushrooms on a mushroom, as it were. The parasite responsible for the unique coloring and flavour is Hypomyces lactifluorum and it colonizes various host species, most of which are edible. (The Mushroom Expert) This presents a challenge when determining if a bright orange speckled mushroom you happen across on a hike will make a good mushroom fry-up followed by a pleasant afternoon nap or by agonizing pain and death. In short, DON'T PICK THEM YOURSELF UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Identifying the host (and therefore the edibility) can be very hard since the parasite causes the mushroom to deform a lot as it matures. In France, you could take your mushroom to a pharmacy and they'd tell you if you could eat it, but I think bringing a muddy orange blob to your urban neighborhood pharmacy might cause some consternation. Some universities may have people in the mycology department willing to help determine if a mushroom is edible and these folks also occasionally have mushroom festivals, usually in later autumn or spring. But, lest we get carried away with the fear-mongering, more important is that when you find lobster mushrooms that are edible, you should eat them. They really are quite fabulous and different from other mushrooms I have eaten. My favorite mushroom preparation is to saute mushrooms in a little butter with a pinch of sugar, salt, and pepper until the mushrooms are cooked and the edges are starting to brown. Many mushrooms I have tried cooking like this have become soggy because I have messed up in one of many ways, but the lobster mushrooms did not. They stayed meaty and springy the entire time, so much so that I had some trouble determining when they were done. Finally I poured them and the chantrelles I had cooked with them out onto a bed of spinach, tossed a little salt over the top, and ate. The taste surprised me as I did not expect them to taste at all lobstery, but they did. Perhaps it had something to do with the preparation - buttery with a little salty sweetness? I like to think that somehow the mushrooms are imbued with the aura of lobster. The texture was also surprising, striking me as more bamboo-like rather than mushroom. They were not fibrous, but definitely toothsome - as in "al dente" like pasta. A little meaty even. And really really satisfying.

For Gene, Wendy, and Eliana

Not long ago, a remarkable man and dear family friend passed away. Illness prevented Gene from frequently indulging in decadent gastronomy, but I imagine that made him appreciate those experiences all the more. As it happens, I sent cookies to my mother one day and she took them over to Gene and Wendy's house for dinner. And the cookies promptly disappeared. Freed from a restrictive diet, Gene could eat what he loved and happened to love my cookies, and so did Wendy. Not only did this bring them pleasure, it made me feel good, too, to be able to help keep up their strength and spirits.Later, as Gene's condition worsened, I told my mom how to make the cookies so she could maintain a ready supply. Gene was no longer eating very much, but apparently he kept consistently eating cookies. As did Wendy, as she later told me, who joked that they were what kept her going as she wasn't eating much, either. She closely guarded them to ensure they didn't run out.

Gene died, and while I was not there in person, Wendy tells me that I was certainly there in spirit and I feel I was, too. And that's something that I value about the experience of cooking and eating: sharing is as much a part of the experience as the actual chopping or chewing. By sharing a recipe, a flavour, a technique, you can share so much more, even across continents, becoming part of the interwoven fabric of humanity.

I feel very fortunate to be woven closely with Gene, Wendy, and Eliana, and this one is definitely for you.

GENE COOKIES
A variation on the more common Mexican Wedding Cakes, Russian Tea Cakes, and Pfeffernusse that often show up among Christmas Cookies.
Note: These are basic proportions - multiply as appropriate.

1 C Butter, chilled but not cold.
1 C Flour
1 C Mixed Nuts, ground - a good mix is Hazelnuts, Pecans, Cashews, Almonds, and Walnuts. Grind them in a food processor until very fine and starting to clump.
1/2 t salt
1/2 C Confectioners Sugar, plus more for dusting.
1/2 C Candied Ginger, chopped - you can buy this in bulk in many stores now and the pieces are about 1/2 in cubes. Avoid the expensive stuff that is sold in little jars.
1 t Cinnamon
1 t Nutmeg
1/2 t Ginger, ground
2 t Vanilla Extract (NOT fake)
2 to 4 t Orange Extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Mix all ingredients in a bowl until well incorporated. (You can do this the quick-and-dirty "throw-everything-in-at-once" way or you can do the more formal "sift-all-powdered-ingredients-together-and-then-mix-in-butter-and-then-liquids-and-then-chunky-stuff" method but they end up coming out about the same.) The dough will be crumbly but will hold together when you roll it into a ball in your hands.
3. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on parchment-papered cookie sheets. They expand hardly at all and do not flatten so you can space them close together.
4. Bake for ~15 minutes (every other recipe seems to indicate too short a baking time - they should start to squat a little and turn golden, and have a dry exterior that yields to the touch only a little when hot.)
5. Transfer to cooling rack and dust liberally with more powdered sugar. Some recipes say when hot, some when cool. It's up to you.

Enjoy with a steaming mug of spiritual humanism.

Upcoming Munching

It has been an eventful month since I last posted, but I hope to pick up the pace of cooking and writing about it here shortly. Here's a preview of what's to come:

The great pasta-making adventure!
In which I try to figure out how to make pasta without being an Italian grandmother and without owning a pasta-roller.

Dark-chocolate-honey-rosemary truffles.
In which my first official foray into chocolate-making turns out a little squishy and time-consuming, but rich, smooth, delicious, perplexing, and knee-weakening nonetheless.

Birthday cake.
In which I pay homage to the birth of my lovely occasional photographer with a particularly sumptuous creation, moslty from Orangette, but with a twist of my own.

Soon!