Granny’s Sponge Cake. Light and airy and citrussy. A Passover version is here, too!

Granny’s Sponge Cake

My Iraqi Granny made the most incredibly light sponge cakes. How did she do it?She whipped the whites into billowy clouds in a large platter with a fork and carefully incorporated them into the yolks. Of all the many things Granny baked, it’s her sponge cakes that I remember most. This happened in Shanghai, where my father, mother, brother, and I lived with Granny in a one-room apartment during world War II.

I’ve tweaked Granny’s recipe just a bit to include jolts of orange and lemon zest.

Smushing the finely grated zest with some granulated sugar extracts as much of the natural oils as possible, giving the cake its special taste. (To make this cake for Passover, please see the NOTE at the end of the recipe).

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From Missoula, Montana to Kauai, Hawaii

It’s been awhile since I posted a new recipe, and here’s why. We sold our home in Missoula, Montana, last fall and moved to Kauai! Moving out of our custom-built home after 44 years was not easy. We had so much stuff to deal with, including enough cookware to furnish a small restaurant and books galore–hundreds of Dorothy’s science and nature books and about 3,ooo of my cookbooks. Fortunately, our buyers love books and they said we could leave on the shelves what we hadn’t packed to store.

Why move to Kauai? It’s our favorite island and we’ve stayed there many times over 30 plus years. We also felt we needed a lengthy break to recover from the trauma of having to leave our beautiful home. Before we left Montana we were very fortunate to find an apartment rental in a building complex, Sun Village, for seniors 55-years-old and over. We knew the place well because we have friends who live there and a few years ago we were able to rent an apartment in the complex for 2 months.

Because the apartment was unfurnished, we had to buy everything we needed to set up our new home. We had arranged for a year’s least to begin November 1, 2021. We arrived October 31 and rented temporary quarters in Kapaa, a few miles north of Lihue, our new home city. Everyday we drove our rental car into town to scout furniture, etc., and deposited our purchases in the apartment. Once we bought a bed, we moved in, on November 10. Our two-bedroom apartment is on the top floor–the fourth–with vaulted ceilings and ceiling fans and we have views of the forest in front and the ocean to the right and mountains to the left. Our second bedroom is a study for Dorothy and a storage room, with just enough space for a one-person fold out cot. Very comfy, we’ve been told.

Before we left the mainland, we arranged to have our twenty-year-old Subaru Outback station wagon shipped to us from Long Beach, CA. And on November 18, we picked it up at Nawiliwili harbor. The shipping cost was actually cheaper than the 3-week car rental!

We love it here so much that we’ll be staying another two years, at least. If you haven’t already subscribed to my newsletter, please do. It’s called “So You Want to Live in Hawaii.” Visit gregpatent.substack.com to sign up. It’s free. You’ll learn what life is like here, the farmers markets, weather, and our live=in geckos, who control the insects. We have two small balconies and get to watch geckos eating pineapple and mango we put out for them. We also witness fights and jockeying for territory. Very exciting!

It’s taken awhile to set up doctors and dental appointments. And I’ve spent a few months developing a new sourdough starter. I had to leave my trusty 20-year-old mother starter in Missoula.

Story behind Pineapple Muffins

So here we are on July 4, 2022, and I am finally ready to make my first new blog post from Kauai. The recipe, “Pineapple Muffins,” comes from my first cookbook, “Big Sky Cooking,” published in 1980, and written to accompany the first series of 26 half-hour TV cooking shows that debuted on KECI-TV in October, 1979. That’s 43 years ago, bit it feels like yesterday–all the craziness of taping in our home kitchen, working with one camera, and making sure our dog was kept out of the way. You know why.

I modified the recipe to include Hawaiian ingredients–fresh ginger and vanilla–which have other sources that you can buy everywhere. The recipe comes together quite quickly. I originally named the recipe, “Pineapple Cupcakes,” but muffins seems more appropriate. These are not traditional muffins. They don’t swell to impressive heights, but they are moist and tender and more like little cakes. Very tasty. And they keep well, wrapped airtight, for about 4 days.

You will fill the muffin cups almost to the top, but the batter will not run over. TIP: If you live above sea level, say 3000 feet or so, reduce the baking soda to 1/4 teaspoon.

Happy baking and happy eating! It feels good to be writing a post again.

For this recipe, Greg uses King Arthur flour. You can order King Arthur flour and flavorings through Greg’s King Arthur Affiliate site, which helps pay the costs of this website!

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At around 1 p.m. the other day, my wife sent me a text: How about pizza tonight?

Without responding immediately, here’s what raced through my mind: I have no pizza dough in the fridge. Pizza dough should age a few days in a chilly spot to develop its flavor. I have no homemade pizza sauce. I have no fresh mozzarella. But I do have a bunch of fresh basil.

Sure dear, great idea! I texted back. Then I went to work. My favorite pizza dough recipe, the one I always use, comes from Johnny Francesco, a pizza chef in Melbourne, Australia. I make it in my KitchenAid. He makes it by hand. Here’s a video where you can see his entire process. it’s about 16 minutes long. I learned more from watching Johnny make pizza than from anyone else.

The Dough

The best flour for pizza is tipo 00 high gluten flour. Here’s what I have.

The dough Johnny uses contains 1,000 grams of flour, 600 grams of water, a small amount of yeast (I use 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast), and 30 grams of salt. This amount will make enough dough for six pizzas. I cut the recipe in half.

I put 300 grams of room temperature tap water into my 5-quart KitchenAid mixer bowl and stir in the 500 grams of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, then the 15 grams of salt. I scrape the side of the bowl, attach the dough hook, and turn the motor on low speed for 7 1/2 minutes. You may be tempted to add more water because it takes awhile for the flour to be completely incorporated into the dough. But don’t! Just leave the mixer alone.

At the end of mixing and kneading, you’ll have a beautifully smooth ball of dough, maybe only a bit tacky, but easy to handle.

At this point, I’d divide the dough into three balls, put them into a tupperware container, and stash the dough in the fridge for a day or two before baking a pizza. Johnny stores his pizza dough in a cool basement temperature of about 65˚F. In Montana I could do that. In Hawaii I have no basement.

For pizza tonight—and by the time I made the dough and refrigerated it it was 5 p.m.—I had to rush to Safeway for the block of unsliced fresh mozzarella.

Back home I cut one-third of the cheese into 9 slices and set them on a towel to drain excess liquid. I also got out my pizza sauces.

Next, I turn on my trusty GE electric oven to 530˚F and preheat it with a baking stone on the bottom shelf. About an hour later it’s time to shape the pizza.

Next, brush the edge of the dough lightly with olive oil—or skip this step—and spread the dough with a thin layer of RAO’s and top it lavishly with fresh basil.

After 9 minutes of baking here’s the baked pizza. It’s about 8 p.m. The emergency is over. The pizza is fantastic! And we’re very happy.

Mangiate bene! Thank you for reading. And have fun baking!

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This fresh ginger recipe created a lot of buzz a few decades ago. Many of my baking colleagues told me that I just had to make them. “They’re so gingery,” many said. “You’ll love them,” some added.

Well, I happen to just love ginger in just about any form—fresh, dried and powdered, candied, or in ice cream. And in Hawaii it’s available year round.

The recipe for Marion Cunningham’s Ginger Muffins comes from her Breakfast Book.

I got a bonus buying this volume because it also includes her Supper Book.

About Marion Cunningham

For many years, Marion assisted James Beard in his cooking classes. When Knopf editor Judith Jones asked Beard if he could recommend someone to revise and modernize the 1896 Fannie Farmer Cookbook, he recommended Marion. Marion jumped at this opportunity. The job was a work for hire. She was given a lump sum and no royalty. As time wore on, Marion ran over budget as the project took much longer than expected, and she paid out of her own pocket to complete the recipe testing and writing of the manuscript.

The book was a huge success, and Judith then served as editor for the many other cookbooks that Marion would write—with advances and royalty!

Marion’s The Breakfast Book, first published by Knopf in 1987, features the recipe for “Bridge Creek Fresh Ginger Muffins.” It’s absolutely terrific and deserves all the accolades it receives.

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The Recipe

Makes 16 muffins

A 2-ounce piece of unpeeled fresh ginger

3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons lemon zest (from 2 lemons), with some white pith

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, room temperature

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk (240 grams)

2 cups all-purpose flour (10 ounces)

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat the oven to 375˚F. Grease the muffin tins.

2. Cut the unpeeled ginger into large chunks. If you have a food processor, process the ginger until it is in tiny pieces; or hand shop into fine pieces. (You should have at least 1/4 cup. It is better to have too much ginger than too little.) Put the ginger and 1/4 cup sugar in a small skillet or pan and cook over medium heat until the sugar has melted and the mixture is hot. Don’t walk away from the pan—this cooking takes only a couple of minutes. Remove from the stove and let the ginger mixture cool.

3. Put the lemon zest and 3 tablespoons sugar in the food processor and process until the lemon is in small bits; or chop the lemon zest and pith by hand and then add the sugar. Add the lemon mixture to the ginger mixture. Stir and set aside.

4. Put the butter in a mixing bowl and beat for a second or two, add the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, and beat until smooth. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the buttermilk and mix until blended. Add the flour, salt, and baking soda. Beat until smooth. Add the ginger-lemon mixture and mix well.

5. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins so that each cup is three-quarters full. Bake 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm.

A Few Details before Plunging Forward

1. The number of muffins this recipe makes is sixteen. Sixteen is an unusual number for muffins. Standard-size muffin tins have 12 cups. There are 6-cup muffin tins also, so one of those pans could accommodate 4 muffins. I use a USA muffin pan, and I can fill those 12 cups with all the batter. If you have just one 12-cup regular muffin pan, save the remaining batter until the first muffins are baked and out of the pan. Then bake the remaining four muffins.

2. Here’s what 2 ounces of fresh ginger looks like. The coin is there for a size comparison.

   

   3. The chopped cooked ginger

   

   4.The Lemon Zest

5 Cooked Ginger and Lemon Zest

6. The Muffin Batter

   

   7. The smooth batter

   

   8.Muffin Batter in the Pan

   

9. Bakes Ginger Muffins in the pan.

10. The Muffins in a Basket.

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Happy Baking!

Forty years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on my manuscript for Patently Easy Food Processor Cooking, a little voice—assertive and persistent—said “You must put me in too.” What’s going on? Who is this? A recipe is telling me it needs to be in my book? I say to myself, “My book has all the recipes it needs.” But I keep listening, and the voice says “A spice cake. I have to be in your book.” “But I already have a spice cake recipe in my book.” “Not mine. You need me, too.”

I’ve learned to pay attention to unbidden advice, whether voiceless or not, and that’s how Blue Mountain Spice Cake made its way into my book. It’s a simple recipe, mildly spiced, and ideal for snacking. I love it. I hope you will, too.

Here are the ingredients you’ll need.

I always begin by preparing the baking pan first. Then I preheat the oven.

To prep the dry ingredients, put the metal blade into the food processor work bowl and add the cake flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Process for 5 seconds and transfer the mix to a sheet of waxed paper.

Reinsert the metal blade in the work bowl and add the brown sugar and orange zest. Process for 2 minutes.

Next you add the egg and vanilla and process for 1 minute.

Next, add the softened butter.

And here’s the recipe as it appears in my book.

Happy Baking!

One final point. When making cakes in the food processor you mix the egg and sugar together first, then add the butter. The conventional method is to cream the butter with the sugar, then mix in the eggs and finally the flour.

You can, of course, make this cake in the conventional way with a mixer.

Oh, another thing. You should shake the buttermilk container to make sure the milk is smooth. It tends to separate a bit in the fridge. When shaken, the buttermilk will be bubbly, so it’s best to weigh it—230 to 240 grams.

And Please…

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Strawberries and rhubarb have worked their magic together in sauces, compotes, puddings, crisps, and pies ever since cooks first thought to combine the two.

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I know. I know. Easter has come and gone this year. In Italy, however, this traditional Easter pie is made by many bakeries year-round. Why? Because of public demand. The crunchy sugary crust holds a whole grain eggy ricotta cheese filling scented with the beguiling aroma of orange flower. The combination is just too wonderful to be eaten at just one special time of the year.

I tasted Pastiera for the first time when my family and I lived in Naples. Cooked grain in a pie was new to me, and I loved how the chewy berries contrasted with the creaminess of the filling. I also just loved the sugary and buttery crust. That pastiera was enormous, at least 18 inches in diameter. The crust alone contained 18 egg yolks and the filling 12 yolks!

Italian author, Amedeo Colella, who writes about Neapolitan life and food, says that pastiera, as with just about all the great Neapolitan pastries, was born in a convent, specifically the Convent of San Gregorio Armeno in Naples’s centro storico (Old Town). The convent nuns were the first to bake hundreds of pastiere (plural) for the Neapolitan bourgeoisie. And that’s why the best pastiera is still to be found in bakeries near the monastery.

Old recipes for pastiera say to soak soft winter wheat berries in multiple changes of water for three days and to cook the berries for an hour or two. This never worked for me. What does work is cooking pearled farro for minutes instead of hours. In italy I queried several bakers, and they all said alternative grains are completely okay to include in pastiera.

Amadeo Colella ends his essay on pastiera with these words: “Pastiera is the very symbol of inclusiveness and hospitality, virtues in which the city of Naples has always excelled.”

I’ve adapted the recipe here from my friend, Arthur Schwartz, who has written many authoritative cookbooks, including “Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania” (Harper Collins, 1998). By pastiera standards, his pastiera is small, but big enough for 8 to 10 servings.

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RECIPE

Makes 8 to 10 servings

Pastiera Napolitana

The traditional grain for this pie is wheat berries, but nowadays many bakers use farro or barley in place of the wheat. I opt for pearled farro. Pearling removes the tough outer coat of the grain so boiling time is just about 20 minutes. I bake the pie in a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.

The Pastry

2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons sugar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

10 tablespoons (5 ounces) cold unsalted butter

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla

The Grain

1/3 cup pearled farro

2 1/2 cups water

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup whole milk

Finely grated zest of 1 orange

1 tablespoon butter

Ricotta Filling

1 15-ounce container ricotta

1/2 cup sugar

Cooked farro from the recipe above

Grated zest of 1 large orange

1 teaspoon orange flower water (or vaanilla if you don’t have the orange essence)

2 large eggs

2 large egg yolks

1. Make the pastry. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, lemon zest, and sugar. Cut the cold butter into pieces and add to the bowl. Use a pastry blender or your fingertips to work the butter and dry ingredients into a coarse meal. In a small bowl, beat the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla together with a fork tocombine well. Add to the dry ingredients and mix vigorously with the fork until everything comes together. Then reach in with your hands and squeeze the dough repeatedly until it unites into a smooth mass. This is your pastry. It will weigh about 21 ounces.

Divide the dough into two pieces, one about 2/3 of the dough and the other 1/3 of the dough. Shape each piece into a 1-inch-thick disk; wrap them in plastic, and refrigerate.

2. For the grain. In a medium saucepan (2-quart is ideal), combine the farro, water, and salt. Set the pan over medium-high heat and bring to the boil, stirring a few times. As soon as the water boils, reduce the heat to medium-low—thewater should be bubbling very gently—and cook, stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes, until the berries are al dente—tender but slightly chewy. Take the pan off the heat and set it aside to cool to room temperature. Drain off any water.

3. Add the milk, orange zest, and butter to the cooked wheat. Set the pan over medium-low heat and bring to the simmer, stirring occasionally. The liquid should be bubbling gently and the bubbles will be small.

Continue cooking, stirring now and then, for 10 to 15 minutes more and watch the bubbles carefully.

Take the pan off the heat and set it aside to cool. The contents of the pan should look creamy, not dry. If necessary, stir in a little bit of milk to restore creaminess.

4. Make the ricotta filling. In a medium bowl, whisk together the ricotta, sugar, all the cooked grain, orange zest, orange flower water, eggs and egg yolks, until well combined. Taste a dab carefully. The filling may need more orange flower water.

5. Assembly and baking. Take the packets of chilled pastry out of the fridge and let them warm up a bit at room temperature, fifteen minutes or so. If you try to roll the dough when it’s cold, it will break into pieces. Dust your work surface lightly with flour and coat the larger piece of dough on both sides. Roll the dough gently, without forcing it, in a back and forth motion with a rolling pin into an oval shape about 8 to 10 inches long. The edges of the dough are likely to crack in spots. That’s what a sugar pastry does. Just pinch the edges together to smooth them out. Flour the dough lightly, as necessary, to prevent sticking. Turn the oval of dough ninety degrees and roll back and forth to make a circle. Now that you have a circle of dough, continue rolling from the center outward in all directions, turning and flipping the dough from time to time, to maintain the circular shape.

Flour as necessary to prevent sticking, and pinch together any cracked edges. Stop rolling when you have a 12- to 13-inch circle of pastry.

Carefully roll the pastry around the rolling pin and slowly unroll it over the 9-inch tart pan. Without stretching the dough, lift the edges of the pastry and nudge it onto the sides of your pan. If the pastry cracks at any point—and just so you know, this is likely to happen—do not despair, just pinch the edges together and patch large gaps with some of the overhanging pastry. Once your pan is lined, cut away the excess pastry with a sharp knife. Gather scraps together and wrap in plastic. Read caption below about extending the pastry rim above the pan edge.

Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Roll the smaller piece of dough on your lightly floured surface to a 10-inch circle. Cut the dough into 1/2-inch wide strips.

Whisk the ricotta filling a few times and pour into the pastry-lined pan.

Carefully lay strips of dough on the filling to make a diamond pattern. Three or four strips in each direction should do it. Cut off overhanging pastry. Gather up scraps and add to the first batch of scraps. Shape into a disk, rewrap, and refrigerate. Leftover dough makes great cookies!

6. Bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the filling is set and jiggles a bit only in the center. Cool completely on a wire rack, 2 to 3 hours.

7. Serving. Pastiera is usually served plain. Cut into portions and set them on dessert plates. I usually add a few berries for color and taste. Store leftover pastiera in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before serving.

A final note: In a pinch you can buy cans of cooked wheat to make pastiera. The contents of the can replace the cooked farro. Just cook it further following the instructions in steps 3 and 4 above and it’ll be ready to pour into your pastry shell. Look online to find sources for the cooked grain.

Happy Baking!

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Passover, also known as Pesach, begins at sundown on Saturday, April 12th, and ends at nightfall on Sunday, April 20th.

I just love eating matzoh. The crispiness and crunch get me every time.

Commercially manufactured mazoh is square in shape and each piece bears lines of browned areas that look quite appealing. The mazohs are crisp and addictive. I like spreading them with some softened butter or peanut butter or just layering some sliced cheese on top. This is something I do today and have done for most of my life. I grew up eating matzoh, and it was always store bought.

Homemade matzoh is an entirely different thing. The dough is rolled paper thin, docked with a fork, and slid onto a preheated baking stone in a 450˚F oven. In two to three minutes, you’ll get a puffy, bubbly homemade matzoh that becomes shatteringly crisp as it cools. One bite will hook you.

Here’s what home-baked mazoh looks like:

Where I Learned How to Make Matzoh

About twenty years ago, when I was seeking recipes for my cookbook, “A Baker’s Odyssey,”(Wiley, 2007) Cindy Klotz answered my call for help. I did not know that people actually made mazoh at home, but Cindy does it every year at passover. She makes batch after batch and works so fast she sometimes becomes a blur.

One thing about passover: Rabbinical law says that when flour and water meet, you have 18 minutes to get what you’re making into the oven before fermentation starts. When the Jews fled Egypt during their exodus from slavery, they had no time to bake. So any bread they ate had to be unleavened. Matzoh dough takes little time to make—it’s just flour and water—and it’s rolled so thin that it could bake quickly in the desert heat.

When I was growing up in Shanghai, and the youngest person at the seder, I was given the honor of having matzoh dough wrapped in cloth and strapped to my back to symbolize how matzoh was believed to have been baked during the long journey out of Egypt. Those seders lasted for hours, and all I wanted was some food.

Making Matzoh: The Steps

Move an oven rack to the lowest position and remove the second rack or place it in the highest position. Preheat the oven to 450˚F about 45 minutes before you actually roll out the first matzoh.

Mix flour and water together in a large bowl. Put 8 3/4 ounces (247 grams) of unbleached all-purpose flour into the bowl and, with a fork, gradually stir in 6 ounces (170 grams) of room temperature water to make a shaggy, slightly sticky lump of dough. Do not beat the dough. If you only have dry and liquid measuring cups, use the dip and sweep method to measure 1 3/4 cups flour and a glass measure for 3/4 cup water.

Transfer the dough round to a baker’s peel or rimless cookie sheet. To do that, working quickly, fold the dough in half, move it to your sliding surface, and unfold it so it’s a round again.

Slide the matzoh onto the baking stone, and bake for 2 to 3 minutes, sometimes a bit longer depending on your oven, until the matzoh is browned in spots, bubbly looking, with areas that are mostly clear. With tongs, transfer the matzoh to a cooling rack.

Repeat the rolling, pricking, and baking with the remaining matzoh balls.

Once you get a rhythm going, you can all the baking done in 30 to 40 minutes.

When completely cool, store the matzohs in a large ziptop bag where they’ll stay crisp for 4 to 5 days.

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Have fun with this. This is a great recipe to make with kids. There’s no rushing around. And you’ll all have so much fun!

I am completely smitten with a smashing new cookbook on Russian cooking, “T-Bone Whacks and Caviar Snacks” (2018, University of North Texas Press), written by Sharon Hudgins, a Russian scholar and former University of Maryland professor. Sharon and I have know…

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Since moving to Hawaii, I’ve become fascinated by the color purple, especially in foods. Taro root’s purple is modestly so. But what really grabs me is the purpleness of the sweet potato. Its brilliance is just stunning, and its sweetness a pleasure on the tongue.

Filipinos cook and bake with it in a multitude of ways. They turn it into a jam that’s eaten as a spread or added to cakes and cookies. When dried and ground to a powder the flavor is concentrated and adds a punch of flavor to all sorts of baked goods.

On a recent shopping trip, I spied a display of packaged ube crinkle cookies and grabbed a bag.

The texture of these cookies was soft and they crumbled easily. Their flavor—quite mild—came from ube halaya, a commercial jam, and ube flavor. The flavor gives the cookies their special color.

I knew I could do better. I wanted a firm dough that featured the ube taste. After a rigorous searching of the internet, I learned that ube powder gave the best ube taste. It’s pure ube. Nothing added.

One recipe, from theskinnypot.com, drew my attention, and that served as the model for my recipe.

So here’s what you’ll need for these ube crinkle cookies:

Purple Ube Powder and Ube flavor

Make sure you use a very fine ube powder. Some powders are very gritty, and you do not want any grit. A fine strainer can help, but it’s best to buy a brand that is free of grit. What you see in the photo is Suncore brand. It’s the brand I use and it is by far the best ube powder I’ve baked with. It’s also the most expensive. You can order it online and it comes in different weights. The package above weighs 5 ounces. It’s a better deal to order one size up. After testing several brands of ube powder Suncore came out the clear winner. The crinkle cookies made with it tasted the best, had the best texture (slightly chewy), and stayed fresh for almost a week stored airtight at room temperature.

Ube flavoring, made by McCormick, is sold in Filipino or Southeast Asian markets, and it is also available online.

The cookie dough is stiff and very easy to work with. Once made, cover and refrigerate it for 1 hour. Then pat it into a square on waxed paper or cooking parchment; cut it into sixteen squares and roll the dough between your palms into balls.

Line two large cookie sheets with cooking parchment. My aluminum cookie sheets measure 14 x 16 inches.

To give the cookies a surface that’s slightly crunchy when you bite into them, drop them one at a time into a bowl with granulated sugar and roll them around to coat. Then plop the ball of dough into a bowl with confectioners’ sugar and toss them around to give them a white coating.

Transfer the coated balls to one of the lined cookie sheets, spacing them 2- to 3-inches apart, eight cookies on a sheet.

Flatten each cookie with your fingertips to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. The cookies don’t spread much during baking.

Bake one sheet of cookies at a time in a preheated oven—350˚F—on a rack in the center or lower third position for 12 minutes. There is no test for doneness. The cookies will not spread much as they bake. Be sure the oven is at the correct temperature. Some ovens take longer to preheat than others. Always use an oven thermometer to make sure of the temperature.

Let the cookies cool about 30 minutes before tasting. The outside will feel firm and the inside will be soft and tender. The flavor will be of ube and not too sweet.

The cookies are at their best within a few hours of baking. They will keep well and taste of ube up to a week later stored airtight at room temperature. You can also freeze the baked and cooled cookies and store them airtight in the freezer. To enjoy later, thaw as many as you want on a plate at room temperature. The cookies are wonderful all by themselves or with a cup of tea or coffee.

Here’s the full recipe.

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Ube Crinkle Cookies

Makes 16 cookies

These cookies, startlingly purple in color from ube powder, are thick and slightly chewy, with a crispy coating of granulated and confectioners’ sugar. They keep well, tightly covered at room temperature, for up to one week. I adapted this recipe from theskinnypot.com.

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (180 grams)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon table salt

½ cup Ube powder (80 grams), preferably Suncore Foods

1 cup granulated sugar (200 grams)

¼ cup peanut, grapeseed, or coconut oil

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon Ube flavor

Sugar Coating

1 cup granulated sugar in a small bowl

1 cup confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl

Directions

In a medium bowl, whisk together thoroughly (30 seconds) the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl, whisk together the ube powder,1 cup granulated sugar, oil, eggs, and ube flavor until very smooth. Batter will be thick. Stir in the dry ingredients to make a very stiff dough. This dough is not sticky. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour before shaping into cookies. The dough may be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Scrape the dough onto a sheet of wax paper or parchment and shape it by hand into a 5-inch square. Cut the dough into 16 squares. Roll each between your palms into smooth, round balls.

Set an oven rack in the middle or lower middle position and preheat the oven to 350˚F.

Line two large cookie sheets (14 x 16-inches) with parchment. Mine are Nordic Ware but any large baking sheets will work. Put a ball of dough into the bowl of granulated sugar and roll it around with your fingers to coat. Then transfer the ball of dough to the bowl of confectioners’ sugar and roll to coat. Set the cookie on one of the baking sheets. Continue sugar-coating the remaining cookies, and place 8 on each cookie sheet 2- to 3-inches apart.

Flatten each cookie with your fingers until they’re about ½-inch thick. Bake one sheet at a time for 12 minutes. Cookies will have crackly tops and feel soft, but they’re baked. Transfer cookies with a metal spatula to a cooling rack and bake the second sheet of cookies. Serve the cookies at room temperature.

NOTE: If you wish, uncoated balls of dough may be stored, covered, in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days. Bring them to room temperature before coating and baking.

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Making Pastry with the Food Processor

The easiest path to crispy, flaky pastry begins with the food processor. I developed my method decades ago, even before Carl and Shirley Sontheimer hired me to be Cuisinarts’ national spokesperson.

The Cuisinart food processor, first marke…

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Did you know that bananas are the world’s most popular fruit? When Dorothy and I were writing A Is For Apple, we thought apples were, but our copy editor corrected that notion. Who knew?

Banana plants grow mostly in tropical areas, and they grow quickly. The bananas are harvested green; they’re hardy and can be shipped all over the world. In their new destinations bananas ripen and turn into their familiar yellow color.

In farmers markets, banana sellers usually have tables full of many different banana varieties.

Some bananas, such as Thai bananas, are great to cook with. But our favorite, the apple banana, is great to eat out of hand and to bake with.

Bananas grow from banana flowers. These large, purple structures can give rise to dozens of small fruits

The banana flowers are miracles of reproduction. I dissected one and discovered layer upon layer of leaves with tiny bananas between them. I had read that these bananas were edible and I spent hours following directions online for how to ready them for cooking. In the end, I decided the result was not worth the effort. But I learned a lot about banana flower anatomy!

Ever since, I’ve limited my cooking with bananas to cakes, cupcakes, muffins, puddings and ice cream.

Here’s a new recipe.

Banana Muffins with Dried Cranberries

Makes 12 large muffins

You’ll need a full-size muffin pan with 12 cups. Any such pan will do the job. I have a USA pan. I’ve used it for years. The cups are naturally nonstick, but I always give them a quick spritz of nonstick spray.

This recipe comes together quickly. You mix the wet ingredients in one bowl, the dry in another, and stir them together. That’s it.

2 cups all-purpose flour (250 gm)—spooned into the cup and leveled

1 cup granulated sugar

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon table salt or 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

2 large eggs

1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 2 medium)

¾ cup sour cream (full fat)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup coconut oil or melted butter

1 cup sweetened dried cranberries

1. Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350˚F. Lightly coat a 12-cup regular size muffin pan with cooking spray or brush the cups with softened butter.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together thoroughly the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Take about 30 seconds for this step.

3. I a medium bowl, whisk the eggs until well-combined. Then whisk in the mashed banana, sour cream, vanilla, and coconut oil or butter.

4. Add about one-third of the dry ingredients and stir them in with the whisk. Repeat twice more with the remaining dry ingredients, whisking until smooth. Stir in the cranberries.

5. Divide the batter evenly into the muffin cups. The cups will be almost full. Bake for 23 to 25 minutes, until the muffins dome up and spring back when their tops are pressed gently. A toothpick should come out clean.

6. Cool the muffins in their pan for 10 minutes, then remove them to a cooling rack. The muffins are delicious warm or at room temperature. Store leftovers in an airtight container. The muffins are at their best when very fresh.

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Here is an elegant dessert that can be assembles in minutes for a special-occasion dinner, as most of the components can be made ahead. 

What is a quick dessert with a few ingredients made ahead of time?

Souffés de Crêpes à La Vanille with Sauce au Chocolat.

Here is an elegant dessert that can be assembles in minutes for a special-occasion dinner, as most of the components can be made ahead. Large crêpes, which you need to make ahead, are filled with a vanilla soufflé made from a pastry cream and baked for a few minutes, The souffléd crepes, which puff magnificently, are complemented by a bittersweet Sauce au Chocolat. Both the Crêpes and chocolate sauce can be made a day or two ahead.

What is a soufflé?

What I learned from Julia Child were the basics of making soufflés. A soufflé has two parts: a base, which carries all the flavor and must be seasoned strongly, and the whipped egg whites, which must be beaten correctly and incorporated int0 the base gently to maintain as much a air as possible. Why? Because it’s the whites that are the active part of a soufflé, causing it to rise. And, in French, souffle means “puffed up”.

How can Crêpes be Used?

Oh, the wonder of crêpes. They are delicious on their own, with butter and sugar, with jam or Nutella, or rolled around a myriad of ingredients both sweet and savory. And surprise, surprise, they are fabulous wrapped around soufflés. Just remember the the batter needs to rest at least an hour-or up to one day- before you use it, so plan accordingly.

An Easy Chocolate Sauce Useful for Many Desserts.

The quick and easy bittersweet chocolate sauce is luscious poured over soufflés and ice cream. Make a hole in the center of a soufflé and pour in a tablespoon or two of the sauce.

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Not too long ago, in this newsletter, I wrote about Burnt Basque Cheesecake. I touted the recipe’s simplicity, creaminess, and taste, and how its luscious texture somehow survived in an oven temperature of 400˚F.

Lately my thoughts turned to the starchy purple sweet…

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These are tender, puffy-looking cookies that are not too sweet, with a pleasing anise and orange flavor.

Christmas Cookies with Anise and Orange

These are tender, puffy-looking cookies that are not too sweet, with a pleasing anise and orange flavor. They are typically made at Christmas, but they are welcome at any time of the year.

Can Lard be Used in Place of Olive Oil?

Catherine Cavallaro Goodmen, a second-generation Italian American, learned to make them from her Aunt Annie, one of many aunt who taught her how to cook. Aunt Annie said the recipe originally came from Gramma Cavallaro, who brought them from Pizzo Calabria, Italy. She added that the original fat for the cookies was melted animal lard or olive oil squeezed fresh from green olives off the trees. These cookies really are best the day after they are made.

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Covid struck and knocked Dorothy and me out for a few weeks. Dorothy’s fine,

now, and I’m not too far behind in getting healthy again. We both had lost our

appetites, but a home delivery of fresh produce a few days ago—a bag filled with

with fresh beets, carrots, and onion—made me want to make a steaming hot pot

of borscht, just like my Russian Georgian Baba made.

Borscht, a soup that has many spellings, is a classic bright red beet soup.

Borscht’s long history includes many Eastern European cultures, each claiming

the soup as its own creation. Basically a sweet-sour soup, borscht can also have a

life in the summer, served chilled. But hot is the only way I’ve eaten it. Including

in Hawai’i!

This soup is really packed with vegetables that you add

sequentially so that each cooks to its best texture. I begin by cooking the beets.

My favorite method is wrapping them in foil and baking them. While

the beets bake, I prep the other vegetables so they’ll be all ready to add to the

soup when their time comes. When the beets are cool enough to handle, I remove

the peel with my fingers.

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Here’s the way I make this soup. The full recipe follows.

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Here’s the recipe. Cook happy!

Georgian Borscht

Makes 6 hearty servings

6 medium size beets (2 pounds total)

1 large leek (about 1 pound)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onions (about 8 ounces), peeled and chopped

2 large carrots (8 ounces), peeled, cut in half lengthwise, and thinly sliced

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

2 red-skinned boiling potatoes (3/4 to1 pound total), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch

cubes

4 small sweet peppers, mixed color, (about 1/2 pound total), cored, seeded, and cut

into 1/2-inch pieces

1 1/2 quarts beef, chicken, or vegetable broth

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 cups shredded green cabbage (about 1/2 pound)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus more if needed

Sour cream or unflavored yogurt, for garnish

Fresh parsley or dill sprigs, for garnish

1. Wash the beets and wrap them tightly in heavy-duty aluminum foil. Set them

on a baking sheet and bake in the center of a preheated 375 degree oven for

about 1 1/2 hours, or until tender when pierced with a sharp knife. Cool the beets

in the foil. When cool enough to handle them, peel the beets and cut them into

1/2-inch cubes.

2. Split the leek lengthwise and rinse under cool running tap water to wash

away the dirt. Shake off excess water and pat the leek dry. Thinly slice the white

part and about 1 inch of the tender green portion. Save the dark green portion to

use in stock.

3. The best vessel for this soup is a 5- to 6-quart stainless steel sauté pan. This is

a pan with high straight sides and a 12-inch-wide cooking base that is ideal for

tossing and turning food. I find stock pots or Dutch ovens too confining. But use

any large, heavy pan that you have.

Add the oil to the pan set over medium heat. When hot, add the beets and cook

them for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown a bit.

Add the leek and onion and stir and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring

occasionally. Add the carrots and garlic and cook about 5 minutes, stirring

occasionally.

4. Toss in the potatoes, stir well and cook for 2 minutes. Add the peppers

and cook another 2 minutes. Add the broth and salt and pepper to taste. If your

broth is unsalted, about 1 1/2 teaspoons salt should be enough. Bring the soup to

the boil, uncovered, over medium-high heat. Stir in the cabbage and bring borscht

back to the boil.

5. Reduce the heat and simmer the borscht, uncovered, until the cabbage and

potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice. Adjust the

seasoning carefully with salt, pepper and lemon juice. You can make the soup

ahead and reheat it slowly until piping hot before serving.

6. To serve, ladle the soup — it will be thick with vegetables — into warmed

bowls and place a dollop of sour cream or yogurt in the center. Garnish with the

parsley or dill. Before eating, swirl the sour cream or yogurt into the soup.

Accompany with crusty bread of your choice.

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Here's another way to make a Souffle: bake it in a jelly-roll pan, fill it with sauteed savory vegetables, roll it up, slice it and serve with a creamy sauce.  Quite ingenious, oh so delicious and perfect as a vegetarian main course.

Souffle Roulade with Mushroom, Zucchini, and Bell Pepper

Souffle Roulade with Mushroom, Zucchini, and Bell Pepper also known as Souffle “Roulade” Aux Champignons, Courgettes et Poivrons

What is a vegetarian main course idea?

Here’s another way to make a Souffle: bake it in a jelly-roll pan, fill it with sauteed savory vegetables, roll it up, slice it and serve with a creamy sauce. Quite ingenious, oh so delicious and perfect as a vegetarian main course. While I have used mushrooms, zucchini and bell pepper, other vegetables would work just as well.

What is the difference between a béchamel and a velouté

The difference between these two French sauces is whether a stock is used or milk. Béchamel is a creamy sauce using milk, cream, or even a dairy free substitute. A velouté sauce begins like a béchamel but uses a white stock instead of milk and cream. A stock from fish, chicken, or veal. The sauce I serve with the roulade is a combination of a béchamel and velouté. Does it make it a bechoute or a velamel?

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A Little Background

Our dear friend, Dianne Jacob, and her husband, Owen Rubin, were coming over for dinner, and I said I’d make a cheesecake for dessert. I was thinking of lilikoi, passion fruit, as a possibility. But then, Dianne asked if I’d ever made Burnt Basque Cheesecake.

I frowned at the name, then shook my head, then shook my head again. Why would anyone deliberately burn a cheesecake? Intrigued, I picked up my iPhone and began searching for information about it. Turns out Basque Burnt Cheesecake is a real thing. People go wild over it. They blog about it, and they photograph it endlessly. And I had never heard of it.

There’s nothing unusual about the ingredients in the Burnt Basque Cheesecake. But what set off all my alarms was the baking temperature: 400˚F. For the entire baking time of 60 to 65 minutes!

If you don’t make cheesecakes, that direction may not seem strange. But most cheesecake recipes say to bake at a much lower temperature, 300˚F for 45 to 60 minutes. The cheesecake top winds up with a pale beige or off-white color and the cake’s texture is creamy and smooth.

Overbaking a cheesecake is easy because the center of a cake that’s been properly baked will jiggle, giving the impression that it’s underbaked. Not so. The cake is done. Time to take it out of the oven.

Meet Lindy’s Cheesecake

One exception to the low temperature cheesecake baking rule is Lindy’s Cheesecake. This classic New York style cheesecake sports a pastry crust on its bottom and sides. You put the cake into a preheated 525˚F oven. (Yes, no joke!). Bake for 10 minutes at this hellish heat, then decrease the temp to 200˚F and bake for an additional 60 minutes. The initial high heat gives the cake a deep brown color that looks as though it’s burnt.

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My Basque Cheesecake Adventure

So off I went to make Burnt Basque Cheesecake. It has no crust. You bake the cake in a 9- or 10-inch spring-form pan lined with parchment paper that you just scrunch into the pan to make uneven pleats. The 400˚F constant temperature breaks all the rules of cheesecake baking. Have we been wrong all these years? Why does this cake not overbake?

I followed the recipe from Bon Appétit magazine. The photo of the cake online is simply beautiful. Very dark brown on top, like Lindy’s Cheesecake, and the sides unevenly light and dark brown, a result of the pleated parchment paper.

My cake didn’t brown as deeply as did many online Burnt Basque Cheesecakes, but its creamy, smooth, unctuous texture hooked me. I gave some of the cake to my next-door neighbor. About ten minutes later he came knocking on my door asking for the recipe. He told me he’s not a fan of cheesecake, but he just loved this cheesecake! He had never tasted anything like it.

Burnt Basque Cheesecake

So here’s the Bon Appétit recipe. It says to use a 10-inch springform pan. I had a 9-inch pan, and it worked just fine. The batter came very close to the top of the pan but it did not overflow during baking.

The original recipe comes from La Viña, a café in San Sebastian located in Spain’s Basque region. What I’ve read says that in 1990, the chef, Santiago Rivera, began baking a new type of cake each day. Eventually, he developed the Basque cheesecake recipe. This cake’s been around for about thirty years! How could I have missed it?

Here’s a list of ingredients

Butter for the pan

2 pounds of full-fat cream cheese

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

6 large eggs

2 cups heavy cream

1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt or ½ teaspoon table salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/3 cup all-purpose flour (spoon into 1/3 cup dry measure and level with a straight edge)

Directions

All ingredients should be at room temperature. So have the cream cheese unwrapped and in the bowl of a stand electric mixer; the eggs ready to be cracked; and the heavy cream measured. The sugar, flour, salt, and vanilla will most likely already be at room temperature.

Here are specific tips in the recipe to guide you to success.

1. Prepare the pan: Butter the bottom and sides of a 10-inch (or 9-inch) spring form pan. Criss-cross two sheets of parchment, about 16 x 12 inches each, and press them into the pan to make a flat bottom with irregular pleats on the sides. The ends of the parchment should face straight up. Don’t fuss with this step. You want the sides of the cheesecake to have a rustic look.

2. Place the pan onto a rimmed baking sheet.

3. Preheat the oven to 400˚F with the oven rack in the center position.

Make the Cheesecake

My instructions call for using a stand mixer with flat beater and whip attachments. Mine is a KitchenAid with a 5-quart bowl. If you don’t have one but you do have a hand-held electric mixer, be sure to use a large bowl to make the batter.

4. Attach the flat beater to the mixer and beat the cream cheese on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stop the machine and scrape the cream cheese off the side of the mixer bowl. Beat again on medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes. The cream cheese should be completely smooth with no lumps. Scrape the bowl and beater. It’s very important that the cream cheese is completely smooth.

5. Start the motor again. On medium speed, slowly dribble in the sugar, taking about 1 minute to add all of it. Then continue beating for 2 minutes until completely smooth. Scrape the bowl and beater again and beat on medium speed for 1 minute.

6. Crack an egg into a small cup. Check to see there’s no shell. If there is, remove it with half an egg-shell.

7. Set the motor to medium speed and add the egg. Beat for 15 seconds. Continue cracking one egg at a time into the small cup, removing any shell, and adding the egg to the mixing bowl. Beat for 15 seconds. Repeat until all six eggs have been added. Scrape the bowl and beater and beat for 1 minute more on medium low speed.

8. With the machine on medium low speed, add the heavy cream in a gradual stream. Beat 30 seconds. Scrape the bowl and beater again and beat in the salt and vanilla.

9. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and remove the flat beater. Using a fine strainer, sift the flour over the batter. Attach the bowl to the mixer stand and use the wire whip for the final mixing. Turn the machine on to low and beat for 1 minute on low speed until the flour is completely incorporated and the batter is very smooth.  Scrape the bowl to make sure. It will be the consistency of heavy cream.

10. Carefully pour the batter into the prepared pan on the baking sheet and set the baking sheet in the oven.

11. Bake for 60 to 65 minutes at 400˚F. The cake should be very dark brown and the center will be very jiggly. Set the cake pan on a wire rack and cool completely.

12. Refrigerate the cake in its pan overnight. The next day, unhinge the springform pan and lift off the side. Transfer the cake and parchment to a flat surface. Carefully peel away the parchment to reveal the side of the cake.

To remove the cake from the parchment I gradually slide a large spatula between the cake and the parchment. When the cake is entirely on the spatula, I carefully nudge the cake onto a cake plate. A rimless cookie sheet or the bottom of a tart pan will also do the job.

And that’s it. Refrigerate the cake until you’re ready to serve. To cut the cake, rinse a large sharp knife in very hot water, shake off excess water, and make a cut in the cake. Repeat before making each cut.

Serve the cheesecake cold or at room temperature. It needs nothing else. Fresh strawberries are lovely with this cake only if they are completely ripe and full of flavor.

Afterword

Did you make this recipe? Please let me know how your cheesecake turned out.

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This post is for all my subscribers. Thank you all for supporting my work. And Happy Baking!

The cake has a light melt-in-your-mouth texture, and the ginger flavor and aroma lured me in immediately.

The Original Recipe

I first baked this cake after David Lebovitz republished the recipe in his December, 2022, Substack newsletter.  Lebovitz’s recipe has been reprinted on many food blogs, and recently the New York Times featured it again. What I focus on in the New York Times rendition of recipes is the comments. And boy, can they be all over the place. For the fresh ginger cake I read through over 200 comment.  Most were focused on health.  The cake has a light melt-in-your-mouth texture, and the ginger flavor and aroma lured me in immediately.

What is fresh (summer) ginger?

Ginger grows is Hawaii year-round, but what I call summer ginger is young ginger that springs up in July. I find it only in farmers’ markets. As you see below in the recipe, it’s beautiful and alluring. I keep it on my kitchen counter and cut slices to flavor tea or to chop up for stir-fry dishes. Brown-skinned ginger works fine in this recipe, too, and is my go-too rhizome for most of the year. Sometimes I peel it if the skin is especially tough.

Using Coconut Oil

Here is what I did and the cake was great.  Chop the ginger with the sugar to create a fine granular mix. This step is a timesaver. And it also assures there are no renegade large nubs of ginger that escaped the chef’s knife.   I subbed in coconut oil for the suggested vegetable neutral-flavored oil. Coconut oil adds a bit of sweetness that combines well with ginger’s assertiveness.  I use coconut oil a lot in my regular cooking. And now, let’s get baking! This cake is delicious all by itself. I cut a slice off the cake whenever I happen to be walking by. Excellent with tea.

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