| Recipe |
| • Queen Cakes • Devil’s Food Cake • Classic Gênoise • Basic Yellow Cake • Almond Cake with Sugared Plums • Blueberry Lemon Bundt Cake • Banana Custard Cake |
| Links |
| • Cake |
“Dessert is sweet after dinner ends,” wrote the lyric poet Pindar in the fifth century BC, “even after limitless food.” Here! Here! I say.
It’s nice to know that the most looked forward to part of the meal, dessert, has an ancient lineage. Of course it wasn’t always called dessert, which derives from the French, desservir, meaning to remove what has already been served. But that’s just what it was, and when and how it was served. Little has changed and it is still something that awakens the child in us, restores a smile, and is that something for which we all “save a little room.”
Proper feasts in ancient Greece and Rome included the much anticipated “second tables.” For the Greeks, dessert was the tragémata, or what one chews alongside wine; for ancient Romans, mensa secunda. After the savory part of a long banquet had concluded, the tables, scattered with leavings and gustatory detritus, were literally cleared away and the ‘second tables,’ festooned with cakes, sweetmeats, cheeses, dried fruits and nuts were brought in along with more wine.
It was, and is, the saving of the best for last. In the indulgent court of pleasure mad Trimalchio, of Satyricon fame, it was the fruit festooned figure of a pastry Priapus that would end a long banquet and perhaps signaled the beginning of more licentious behavior. Of the pastry chef, chronicler of ancient Rome, Martial wrote in the first century CE, “His hand prepares you thousands of sweet forms; the honey bee toils for him alone.”
At the well-to-do medieval table, a meal would end with wondrous ‘soteltes’ (subtleties) — creations in spun sugar, sweets, jellies and pastries molded into eagles, lions, crowns or the family coat of arms — as well as edible sweets.
In 1530, Count Cesare Frangipani invented the almond pastry treat that bears his name. He certainly isn’t remembered for anything else.
On one Renaissance pope’s banquet menu there were three courses each including many dishes; 26 in the first, and 24 in the second. The dessert course, however, had 88 bowls and 128 dishes distributed among forty guests filled with “candied fruits, preserves, sugared almonds and pine kernels and boxes of quince paste.” Dessert reigned.
In the lavish court of the gluttonous, glorious, Sun King, Louis XIV, important dinners were of a restrained eight courses with eight dishes in each course. But it was the Pieces Montée for which everyone opened wide their eyes, held their breath — and loosened their breeches. These elaborate sugary decorative pieces, both edible and inedible, reinvigorated the overly sated appetite.
Antonin Carême, (b. 1784), perhaps the greatest chef of all time, without whom there would have been no modern gastronomy, was first and foremost a Patissier — a confectioner and pastry chef. An architect of sugar Carême perfected the Pieces Montée which helped open the door for him to the great Tallyrand’s kitchen.
There is just no short changing the importance of dessert. Everything undeniably changes with the dessert course. It even requires its own set of utensils; in times past dessert was preceded by a ritual of finger bowls to make ready for the supreme moment.
A relaxed demeanor invades the room when dessert is brought out, the possibility of mirth peeks out from behind the tasseled draperies of formality. Dessert, lets face it, no matter how serious or elaborate an undertaking, is always perceived as frivolous, light hearted, even silly. Why do you think we have so long enjoyed that popular, easy-to-make confection called a “Fool”?
Those who make desserts possess a different temperament, are set apart. The pastry chef, the maker of desserts, is regularly referred to as an “artist.” The patissier must create like the painter, sculptor or even the musician; requirements that are rarely expected of those who deal in savory. At times the patissier must be a deceiver creating trompe l’ oiel architectural and sculptural wonders, cakes that resemble buildings from antiquity, towers that would make Christopher Wren weep, or an animal, a musical instrument, a Venetian gondola, or a pastoral scene. Even the traditional French Christmas Yule log, the Bûche de Noël is an attempt to fool the eye. The simplest dessert, a crème caramel, a poached pear, a crêpe, is often elaborately garnished to trumpet its significance, as if we didn’t already venerate its very existence, didn’t find its fascination inescapably compelling.
Should you have any lingering doubts about the powerful artistry of dessert making, read what Marcel Proust (he of Madeleine fame) wrote in, Memories of Things Past, of the final dish in a long list of dishes of a Sunday dinner in the volume, Swann’s Way, “... a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the hand of Françoise would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an ‘occasional piece’ of music, into which she had poured the whole of her talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it ... would at once have been lowered to the level of the Philistine ... To have left even the tiniest morsel in the dish would have shown as much discourtesy as to rise and leave the concert hall while the ‘piece’ was still being played, and under the composer’s eye.” Attention must be paid.
While never one to pass up a cookie or a cream filled cornet, cake has to be the apotheosis of dessert desirability. Although Cakes, Gateaux and tortes (terms once used interchangeably) claim to have millennia of lineage, cake, as we know it, is a Nineteenth century phenomenon. This is when, as a confection, it was wrested from the yeast risen category and became reliant on eggs and other leavening agents for its propellent to greatness. That basic building block of so much French patisserie from round multi-layered, butter cream slathered cake to fondant wrapped petit fours, and an essential requirement in any cake maker’s repertoire, is Gênoise. While the French take credit for this airy sponge cake made from eggs, sugar, flour and butter the name comes from the Genoese cake, the Italian sponge cake. The Genoa cake or Gênoise had significant traction by the time of Queen Victoria.
Like so much in the hands of the Victorians, the cake blossomed into the realm of the fantastic. Cakes, properly conceived, are meant for drama. A cake should be the ta-da moment. Even humble Bundt cakes were popped from fantastically crenellated or swirled moulds and iced or showered with sugar. Victorian sponge cake and Queen cake were both products popularized by the Queen who established white as the proper color for a proper wedding and the wedding cake of monumental proportions as the ultimate cake. For her rainy wedding day, the 10th of February 1840, the largest of Queen Victoria's wedding cakes weighed in at 300 pounds, measured nine feet across, was adorned with roses and topped with an ice sculpture of Britannia surrounded by cupids. The multi-tiered cake followed when her daughter Princess Louise married in 1859 (five feet high and weighed about 225 pounds). When Princess Elizabeth, the sitting royal, married Prince Philip in 1947, the official wedding cake stood nine feet high and weighed five hundred pounds. The cake was four tiers and featured sugar replicas of Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Balmoral. That’s a cake, children
While there may be a world of difference for some between a tart au citron and a lemon meringue pie, between a gateau chocolat and a devil’s food cake, a cup cake and a wedding cake — it’s all dessert to me. I don’t feel the meal at an end until something sweet has passed my lips. It is fundamental to the gestalt of dining. “The dessert,” wrote master chef Louis De Gouy in the middle of the last Century, “should be dramatic. It should have glamour."
Basically, there is no such thing as a sweet nothing.
|
Queen Cakes 1 lb flour Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Work in the flour a little at a time, alternating with the cream. Add the currants and almond extract and beat well. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake in small buttered pans or moulds or one buttered bundt pan for 1/2 hour or less for small pans, and 1 hour or until the tester comes out clean for a larger single cake. Garnish with whipped cream and fresh assorted berries. |
|
1 cup water, boiling Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three (8- by 2-inch) round cake pans and line bottoms of each with rounds of parchment paper. Butter paper and dust with flour, knocking out excess. Whisk together boiling water and cocoa powder until smooth. Add milk, vanilla and cinnamon. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat butter and sugars in an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in flour and cocoa mixtures alternately in batches (may look curdled, not to worry). Divide batter between the pans; smooth tops. Bake in middle of the oven, 20 to 25 minutes or until a tester comes out clean (cake layers should just be pulling away from sides of pans. Cool on wire racks 10 minutes, then invert onto racks, remove parchment paper and cool completely. (May be made 2 days ahead and kept wrapped in plastic wrap, at room temperature, refrigerated or frozen up to 2 weeks.) With a serated knife take a thin slice of the rounded top of each layer to make them fairly level. Put one cake layer, on a pretty serving plate and spread slightly less than a third of chocolate cream cheese frosting evenly on it. Top with the next cake layer and spread slightly less than a third of chocolate cream cheese frosting evenly on it. Top with remaining cake layer and frost top and sides of cake with remaining chocolate cream cheese frosting. (Cake may be assembled 1 day ahead.) Chill a bit before serving. Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting 9 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped Stir chocolate and butter in heavy bottomed saucepan until melted and smooth. Add vanilla and remove from heat. In a stand mixer, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Slowly add the now tepid chocolate mixture. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until well combined and smooth. |
|
Classic Gênoise for one 9-inch layer One 9-inch round cake pan or 9-inch springform pan, buttered and bottom lined with buttered parchment or wax paper; a strainer or sifter Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Half-fill a medium saucepan with water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat so the water is simmering. Whisk the eggs, yolks, salt, and sugar together in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer. Place over the pan of simmering water and whisk gently until the mixture is just lukewarm, about 100 degrees (test with your finger). Attach the bowl to the mixer and, with the whisk attachment, whip on medium-high speed until the egg mixture is cooled (touch the outside of the bowl to tell) and tripled in volume. The egg foam will be thick and will form a slowly dissolving ribbon falling back onto the bowl of whipped eggs when the whisk is lifted. While the eggs are whipping, stir together the flour and cornstarch. Sift one-third of the flour mixture over the beaten eggs. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the flour mixture, making sure to scrape all the way to the bottom of the bowl on every pass through the batter to prevent the flour mixture from accumulating there and making lumps. Repeat with another third of the flour mixture, and finally with the remainder. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake the Gênoise for about 25 minutes, or until well risen, deep gold, and firm to the touch. Immediately use a small pairing knife to loosen the cake from the sides of the pan. Invert the cake onto a rack, then re-invert onto another rack and let the cake cool right side up on the paper. Remove the paper once the cake has cooled. Ice, glaze, frost, decorate as you wish. Variations : Chocolate Gênoise: Reduce the bake flour to 1/3 cup, increase the cornstarch to 1/3 cup, and add 1/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder to the flour and cornstarch mixture, sift. Gênoise Sheet: Bake either the plain or chocolate batter in a 10 x 15-inch jelly-roll pan that has been buttered and lined with buttered parchment at 400 degrees for about 10 to 12 minutes. Make sure the cake doesn't over-bake and become to dry, especially if it is to be rolled. |
|
Basic Yellow Cake 2 cups flour Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 13 x 9-inch baking pan (if sheet cake) or two 9-inch cake pans, line bottom(s) with waxed paper. Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together eggs, milk, and vanilla. In an electric mixer, beat butter until light and creamy. Gradually beat in the sugar until light and fluffy. Lower the speed and, beginning and ending with flour mixture, alternately beat the flour mixture and the egg mixture into the butter mixture until well blended. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack. Remove waxed paper and cool completely. Ice, glaze, frost, decorate as you wish. |
|
Almond Cake with Sugared Plums 11/4 cup sugar Mix together the “dry ingredients” — flour, baking powder and salt. In mixer or food processor beat together the sugar and almond paste until combined. Add the butter an mix until combined. Add the lemon zest and vanilla and beat well. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Now, work in the dry ingredients. Pour the batter into a 9” springform, or better yet a tube springform, pan that has been buttered and floured. Rinse the plums or your choice of fruit) and while still wet roll each in the sugar and plunge them into the batter evenly in a circle. Bake in a pre-heated 325 degree oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until springy on top (and tester comes out barley clean). Don't overbake. Cool, run a knife around the edge and release the springform. Let cool to room temperature before serving. Actually tastes better the next day— go figure.
|
|
Blueberry Lemon Bundt Cake 2 1/3 cups flour For the syrup 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Cream butter and sugars until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add eggs on at a time. Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternating with sour cream beginning and ending with flour. Fold in 1 cup of the blueberries and zest. Spoon one third the batter into a buttered and floured 10-inch (3-quart) bundt pan, spreading it evenly, and sprinkle on 1/2 the remaining blueberries. Spoon half the remaining batter into the pan, spreading it evenly, and sprinkle the remaining blueberries over it. Spoon in the remaining batter. Bake in the middle of a preheated 350°F. oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Make the syrup while the cake is baking: In a small saucepan combine the lemon juice, Gosling’s Gold Bermuda Rum and the sugar, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved, remove the pan from the heat. Remove the cake from the oven, poke the top all over with a wooden skewer, and brush it with half the syrup. Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, invert it onto the rack, and poke again. Brush the cake with the remaining syrup. |
|
Banana Custard Cake 3/4 cup plus 2 tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature for the custard: 3/4 cup plus 1 tbs unsweetened coconut milk Assembly: 3 bananas, peeled and sliced For the cake: Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9-inch round cake pans. In a mixer, beat together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Continue beating until very light and fluffy. Mix in the buttermilk and mashed banana. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat on low speed just until moistened. Increase the speed and beat for 1 minute. Fold in the cashews. Pour the batter into the prepared pans, dividing it evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25-35 minutes. Transfer to racks and let cool in pans for 5 minutes, then invert the cakes onto the racks to cool completely. For the custard: Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the coconut milk and whole milk and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and set aside. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and cornstarch. Add the eggs yolks and stir until blended. Whisk half of the hot milk into the sugar-yolk mixture to temper it, then whisk the sugar-yolk mixture into the remaining hot milk in the saucepan. Place over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until smooth and thick. Spread the custard on the prepared baking sheet; cover with a sheet of parchment paper to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until cool. Assembly: In a bowl, toss the banana slices with the lemon juice and sugar. Trim the top of a cake layer with a serrated knife to level it and put on a serving plate. Spread with a thin layer of the custard, arrange the banana slices on top, and then spread a thin layer of custard over the bananas. Place the second cake layer on top, bottom down, and spread the top with the remaining custard. Garnish with the coconut, mounding some on top. Serve at once or cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. If refrigerating, apply coconut garnish just before serving. |
Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.
Image is a painting by Wayne Thiebaud via double dose: Flickr (Creative Commons); "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.
