Spicy Cake from a Spicy Lady

I had Elise Logan over at my house the other day, and we baked!  I thought it only fitting that when baking with a spicy author we should make something spicy.  As it happens she had a spice cake recipe that was “to die for”.  I was a little skeptical.  I mean, a spice cake’s a spice cake, right?  Nope.  Apparently not.  This one really is amazing.  I’m not even sure why really.  It’s just the perfect combination of spices and it’s moist and well… fabulous.

Here’s what you need:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoon cinnamon
• ½  teaspoon nutmeg
• ½  teaspoon cloves
• ½  teaspoon ginger
• ½  teaspoon cardamom
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ cup butter, softened
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla
• 3 eggs

As always, make sure your ingredients are all room temperature.  Preheat your oven to 350 and line two 8 inch round pans with parchment.  (Or you can just butter them if you prefer.)  In a mixing bowl, place your flour, soda, powder, and spices.  Not only do they look really cool, but already your kitchen will smell spicy and delicious. 

Whisk those together until everything is evenly distributed. 

Add the sugar and whisk that in as well. 

Add the buttermilk

Butter

And vanilla, then mix until everything is combined.

Scrape down the sides and beat on high-ish speed for 2 minutes.  Turn the mixer down or off and add your eggs.  I know it looks like mine is going at turbo speed, but I promise it was on low. 

Mix until the eggs are completely incorporated. 

I know this is a bit of an unusual technique for making a cake, but amazingly enough, it actually works.  Pour your batter into the pans. 

Get them as even as possible, then drop them on the countertop a few times to flatten them out on the top.

Into a 350° oven for about 35 minutes.  You’ll know they’re done when they pull away from the sides of the pan. 

Allow the cakes to cool completely.  If you have time, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to even refrigerate them for a bit.  It’s always easier to frost a cold cake.  Speaking of frosting… Although this cake could stand on its own without any, (yes, it’s that good) why pass up the chance for cream cheese frosting?  Place two 8 oz. packages of softened cream cheese into a mixing bowl along with ½ cup of softened butter. 

Beat those until they’re nice and fluffy, scraping everything down at least once in the process. 

Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla and mix until it’s completely incorporated. 

Sift your powdered sugar as you add it one cup at a time.  Mix after each cup until you’ve added a total of 3 cups.  Taste it at this point.  Ours needed a little pinch of salt.  Pile a good heap of it onto the top of your bottom cake.  It looks like a lot, but some of it will end up being squeezed out the edges.  Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as too much cream cheese icing. 

Spread it out to the edge, keeping it level on top. 

Place your second cake upside down on top of that.  If you run a knife around the top and cut off that ridge, it’ll make the next bit much easier.  I was lazy and didn't do that, and had to fight with it while icing.

Next comes the crumb coat.  It is exactly what the name implies… a thin layer of icing that traps the crumbs.  Just spread a thin layer over the whole cake.  Don’t worry about it being pretty or anything. 

Now, into the fridge (not you… the cake.  I know it’s hot and you’ve had the oven on, but if your fridge is anything like mine, you’re not going to fit anyway.)  Pull it out after 30 minutes or so.  Plop the rest of the icing on top of the cake.  Yes, I said the rest.  You have a lot of cake to cover. 

Spread it out to the edges pushing some of it over onto the sides where you can spread it around the outside of the cake. 

Hey, that’s not half bad.  The only thing is that it’s just a little bit boring.  Nutmeg to the rescue!  Grab your nutmeg grater.  If you don’t have one… you really must get one. 

Then grate a very light dusting of nutmeg over the top of the cake.  How pretty is that?  Just a hint of what’s to be found inside. 

Slice yourself a big wedge.  You deserve it after all that.  See, I told you it wasn’t too much frosting in the middle.  It’s perfect! 

Now, before you sit down with your glass of milk and moist, fragrant, spicy cake, you need some spicy reading to go with it.  I did mention that Elise Logan is a spicy writer, didn’t I?  you can check out all of her fabulous works here, including the newly re-released Trusting Destiny! 

Whew!  Look at that cover!  I told you it was spicy!  Enjoy!

What’s your favorite spicy sweet food?

Chicken Salad - Round 2

I love things that are rolled up or stuffed. Or both!

I'd been planning on making a chicken salad (cold dinner, too hot to cook) with Asian flavours all week... and then I started getting cravings for Sriracha. (which I, and others apparently, like to call "cock sauce" thanks to the lovely rooster on the bottle)

I knew what I had to do.

I know most people unfailingly put mayo in chicken salad no matter what other flavours are going in, but not me. And not just because my mayo had been in the fridge so long it had expired.

I've been making various versions of a peanut butter and sesame based salad dressing for a while now, and that's how this salad stays together. It's basically a vinaigrette, but with peanut butter as an emulsifier. Watch, you'll see.

Chicken Salad Rolls

The Dressing:

• 1/4 c peanut butter
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• sriracha to taste
• peanut oil

The "vinegar" part of this dressing can be replaced partially or entirely by citrus juice. My ideal is a combination of lime and vinegar, but all I had when I made the salad was lemon, so that's what I used.

In a bowl, combine the peanut butter, juice and / or vinegar, fish sauce, ginger, and garlic.

A microplane grater (or citrus zester) is the ideal thing for ginger.

If you can't find fish sauce, or if you're kinda scared of it (lots of people are, it's okay to admit it, and admitting your fear is the first step to overcoming it) you are free to leave it out, but it really is what's missing in all the home made Asian food that never quite tastes the way it does in the restaurant...

Whisk together the stuff in the bowl, and keep whisking as you drizzle in the peanut oil.

Drizzle until you have a slightly thicker than usual salad dressing.

Use a bit of carrot or rice wrapper to taste it. Mine needed a bit more sour, so I squeezed in another tbsp or so of lemon juice.

If you want to put this onto a green salad, I'd suggest doubling the oil and vinegar amounts. What you have here should be pretty thick.

The Salad:

• 2 c cooked chicken
• 2 carrots
• a few radishes (daikon, if you can find it)
• 1/2 c cashews
• 1/2 c cilantro
• 1/2 c basil
• 2 green onions

Yes, there is a pretty high veggie and herb content in this salad. Damn tasty, and makes for a full meal. I couldn't find decent bean sprouts, but some of those would be nice in this if you have them.

Start with the nuts.

Toast the cashews in a dry pan over medium heat. Shake them around in the pan until parts of them start to turn golden. You should also be able to smell them.

Next, the sesame seeds... yes, I know they're listed in the next batch of ingredients, but they're in the pic in this section so toast them now while you have an already hot pan.

Dice all your veggies to about the same size, chop the chicken, and chiffonade your basil.

Thow it all into a bowl, mix it, pour the dressing over top, and mix again. Or just mix once. Up to you.

Now, at this point, you have a perfectly viable chicken salad. You could eat it as is for lunch or dinner. You could serve it with some fried rice (I haven't made fried rice yet, have I? I need to do that soon) or some noodles. You could roll it up in lettuce like I did with the last chicken salad.

Or you could roll it up in rice wrappers.

Have I mentioned that I love food that is rolled up and stuffed?

The Rolls:

• rice wrappers
• sesame seeds
• sriracha

Now, you've already toasted your sesame seeds, so we've got that covered.

Next is the rice wrappers. If you've ever had Vientamese "salad rolls" you know what I'm talking about. Rice wrappers are these lovely stretchy things that you can wrap around all kinds of fresh food to make a hand held salad.

They're a really fun ingredient to play with, and though they look delicate, they are fairly resilient and can stretch quite a bit.

The set up: you need rice wrappers, a dish of water (pie plate works), a plate to work on, and a plate for your finished product. Hmm... I didn't seem to take a pic of the set up, but this is almost everything...

What you see on the plate there is a dry rice wrapper. They start out crispy, but with a little moisture will soften quite nicely.

Dip the wrapper into the water in the pie plate. All you need to do is get it wet, but you need to get all of it wet.

Lay the moistened wrapper on the working plate, and wait about 15 seconds. It will suddenly be flexible and extremely pliable.

Put a small-ish amount of chicken salad in the middle of the wrapper. Too little and you won't get a nice proportional roll, too much and, though it will roll up, the filling will fall out when you try to eat it.

You're going to roll this up just like you would a burrito. Start by folding the edge closest to you over the filling.

Then, fold each of the sides in.

Then, lift the filling and roll it away from you until you have a perfectly stuffed, beautifully rolled, chicken salad.

Sprinkle the rolls with the toasted sesame seeds. If you don't want to dip your rolls directly into hot chili sauce (Taneasha now understands why she keeps seeing me chop jalapenos with bare hands; relatively high tolerance for capsaicin), you can make another batch of salad dressing, or a bit of hoisin instead.

One thing to note about rice wrappers: they will dry out in the fridge if you have leftovers. They won't revert back to their original dry state or anything, but they will lose their stretch and pliability, and are much more likely to fall apart. 

To prevent them from drying out too much, roll each roll in a dampened paper towel before you put it in a container. Even if they do start to lose their structural integrity, you can just tear the wrapper into pieces, dump it all into a bowl and eat it with a fork.

What kind of rolled up or stuffed food do you like?