A Bit of Seed Cake

Knock around old American and English cookbooks and household manuscripts for any length of time and you’ll come across recipe after recipe for seed cake. Not poppy seed cake, mind you; that still has adherents. Rather, I mean a decidedly more old-fashioned seed cake, dating to at least the 17th century, in which the nutty, musty, vaguely anise-like smack of caraway infuses the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. You’ve had caraway in rye bread, maybe sauerkraut, goulash, or some cheeses. It’s integral to the taste of a Reuben sandwich, but those are all savory. It’s out of place in a sweet, right? Look, if you hate all those things, then skip seed cake; it might be caraway itself you don’t like. But if you do like them and just had never given any thought to sweetness and caraway, give it a try in cake.

Not just any cake, though. Not fancy, multi-tiered, extravagantly decorated cakes. Simple. In fact, the old recipes are essentially pound cakes with a small amount of caraway tossed in. I can’t quite emphasize that enough: a small amount. Poppy seed cakes sometimes call for so much of the blue-black seeds that they look as if someone dropped slices into a cinder pile. A caraway seed cake, on the other hand, should have a light scattering of seeds (fruits, really, but we call them seeds) peeking out of each slice. A teaspoon — at most one and a half — is enough to flavor a three-pound cake.

When I made a loaf yesterday, I overcooked it a bit when I was pulled away by a phone call from a UK distiller — the edges are a bit crusty, but the interior remains moist. Keep a closer eye on your cake than I did mine. And maybe turn off the phone.

Hundreds of recipes are available from the past several centuries, but contemporary chef Fergus Henderson of the London restaurant St. John has got a bit of reputation for his version which he pairs with a glass of Madeira. Me? I take mine with hot black tea.

Seed Cake 

9 oz/260g soft unsalted butter
9 oz/260g caster sugar
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
5 eggs, beaten
11 oz flour, sieved
1 Tbl baking powder
¼ tsp salt
5 oz/150ml full-fat milk (or use 4 parts whole milk, one part heavy cream) 

Grease a 16 x 10 x 8cm loaf tin with butter and line the base and sides with baking parchment. 

Cream the butter, sugar and caraways together either with an electric mixer or in a bowl with a wooden spoon until they are white and fluffy. Gradually mix in the beaten eggs, adding them little by little to prevent curdling. Then sift in the flour and mix until incorporated. Lastly add the milk. 

Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and bake in an oven preheated to 350°F/180°C/ for 45-50 minutes or until it is golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out

~ From Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gallatly (2007) 

  Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking Part II

Goes well with:

• Nigel Slater, another British writer, has a number of books out now. I've got UK editions of all of them. He's worth tracking down. Here was my introduction to his writing (and a recipe for chicken liver pâté). Why UK editions? When possible, I prefer them, especially since I use a combination of eyeballing ingredients and weighing them on a kitchen scale. American editions of books by metric-using authors, on the other hand, have such clunky, bizarre measurements: 2/3 cups plus 1 and one-half tablespoon of flour. What? Did...did you mean 100 grams? Intolerance for making things harder and more complicated might be a carryover from my science background.

Root Beer Cake

Root beer cake. Yeah, I know. Sounds like something Ernest Matthew Mickler would've praised. But I stumbled across a recipe for just such a thing while reading Andrew Carmellini's new book American Flavor and it struck a nostalgic chord. I've also been on soda and baking kicks lately as well as preparing to move (we bought a house this week), so anything that reduces the number of cans, bottles, and boxes from the kitchen larder or the liquor closets get boosted to the top of the to-cook, -drink, -make list.

When I said I'd made a root beer cake, the looks at home could only be described as nonplussed. If  I had described it as a dark spice cake or a moist cousin of German lebkuchen, the initial response might've been more enthusiastic. Turns out that the cake is very much like a spice cake, spiked with star anise, cardamom, nutmeg, lemons, and pepper. The top is covered with with spiced glaze flavored with some of the same spices.

Like a spice cake, it gets better on the second day. And the third. I'd make this for kids and to bring along on picnics, but, man, the doughnut potential here is so, so tempting.

A word of warning; the batter is very liquid. You might think something is amiss (especially since the measurements for the cake are odd). Not to worry; it comes out just fine.

From Andrew Carmellini's American Flavor, here's...

Root Beer Cake

The Cake

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature, for the pan
1.5 cups plus 1 Tbl all-purpose flour
One 12-ounce bottle (1.5 cups) root beer
½ cup molasses
½ tsp plus 1/8 tsp baking soda
¾ cup dark brown sugar
¼ cup plus 2 Tbl vegetable oil
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated on a microplane or on the finest side of a box grater (1 tsp)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 ¾ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ tsp ground star anise
1 ½ tsp ground cardamom
½ whole nutmeg, grated (or 2 tsp ground nutmeg)
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp fresh-ground black pepper

The Root Beer Glaze
¾ cup heavy cream
1 Tbl sassafras bark (or ½ tsp sassafras extract; see Note)
2 cups powdered sugar
Pinch of ground star anise
Pinch of ground cardamom
¼ tsp kosher salt
¼ whole nutmeg, grated (or about 1 tsp ground nutmeg)
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon


To Make the Cake

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Grease the bottom and sides of a 10-inch cake pan with some of the butter.

Cut out a piece of parchment paper so it fits closely into the bottom of the cake pan. Line the bottom of the pan with the parchment, and then grease the parchment with more butter.

Shake 1 tablespoon of the flour into the cake pan, and shake it around so it sticks to the butter. Tap out any excess flour that doesn't stick to the parchment or to the sides of the pan.

Pour the root beer and molasses into a deep medium-sized pot, and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. (You need those high sides because the baking soda will froth up very high, and you don't want it to spill over! So make sure there's some meaningful space between the liquid and the top of the pot.)

Pull the pot off the heat and whisk in all the baking soda, so it froths up. Then put the pot right in the fridge to cool down a little.

While the root beer mix is cooling down, whisk the brown sugar, vegetable oil, granulated sugar, ginger, and vanilla extract together in a mixing bowl. The mixture will be a little chunky at this point.

Crack the egg into the bowl and whisk well. The egg is what makes everything come together smoothly: you should have a thick paste. Set this aside.

In another mixing bowl, combine rest of the flour with the baking powder, star anise, and cardamom. Grate in the nutmeg and lemon zest, and add the salt and pepper. Whisk everything together so it's well combined. Take the root beer mixture out of the fridge. Pour a third of the flour mixture into a large mixing bowl; pour in one-third of the root beer mixture, then one-third of the sugar paste. Whisk everything together slowly (so it doesn't splash everywhere), and then add another one-third of the flour, another one-third of the root beer, and so forth, until everything is combined in the bowl. (The mix doesn't need to be completely and smoothly combined until the last of the wet and dry mixtures are in the bowl.) You should have wet, almost liquid batter.

Pour the batter into the cake pan, put the pan on a cookie sheet (to catch drips and splashes), and put on the middle oven rack.

Bake the cake for 45 minutes without opening the oven at all (this cake will sink if you shake it up while it's baking). Check it: the cake should be high and dark brown, with a little bit of spring-back when you touch it (but not too much-it's a very moist cake), if it's not quite ready, rotate the pan and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes before checking it again. The whole baking process shouldn't take longer than 55 minutes, even in a slow oven.

While the Cake is Baking, Make the Glaze

Whisk the cream and sassafras together in a small pot, and bring it up to a boil over medium-high heat. As soon as it boils, pull the mixture off the heat, pour it into a glass or ceramic container (something that won't crack from the heat), and put it in the fridge. Let the mixture cool for about 30 minutes while the sassafras steeps into the cream, so you have a nice root beer flavor.

In a mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar, star anise, cardamom, and salt. Grate in the nutmeg and lemon zest, and whisk everything together.

Strain the cooled cream through a fine-mesh strain into a small mixing bowl (so the sassafras pieces don’t end up in the glaze).

Gently whisk ½ cup of the cream into the powdered sugar mixture, holding back the last 2 tablespoons see if you need it. If the mixture is dry and not coming together as a glaze, add more cream. Whisk the mixture well, until you have a shiny, thick liquid.

To Finish the Cake

When the cake is ready, pull it out of the oven and let it rest for about 5 minutes.

Flip the cake out of the pan onto a serving plate. Spread the glaze thickly on top of the warm cake with a spoon. The glaze will melt and drip down the sides as you slather it on.

You can serve the cake as soon as it's cooled to room temperature-but like all spice cakes, it's even better the day after you make it. Store it covered at room temperature.


Andrew Carmellini (2011)
American Flavor
336 pages (hardback)
Ecco
ISBN: 0061963291
$34.99

Goes well with:

• Drinking Cheerwine Like It's My Job. Root beer's all well and good, but I swear that there will come a day when a Cheerwine cake will cool on our kitchen counter. 
• My review of Andrew Schloss' new book Homemade Soda — and how my mom came to think there was a drive-by shooting in her dining room.
• My take on Brad Thomas Parsons' new book Bitters. It's because I make my own bitters, infusions, and extracts that I happened to have everything on the ingredient list for this cake.

Hungarian Sour Cherry Cake

On her blog Edible Living, Sarah Copeland writes about the sour cherries one finds in Hungary during the summer. As it happens, both cherries and Hungarian cookery have been on my mind lately, so I was all ears and pupils when I came across her family recipe for a Hungarian sour cherry cake. I’ve tweaked it to accommodate a standard 9” x 13” Pyrex baking dish and to take advantage of a 2-pound jar of sour cherries I’d put up in the brief period we get them here in San Diego.

Whole wheat flour is not something I use much around the Whiskey Forge, but I’m very glad not to have substituted white flour as was my original intent. It provides a sturdy — but not too heavy — framework for the cherries. Sweet, but not too sweet. The day I made it, I had some for tea n the afternoon. What was left of it the next night, we had with a cardamom-orange ice cream I’d made the week before.

Hungarian Sour Cherry Cake

2 lbs/900g pitted canned sour cherries, drained
8 oz/230g unsalted butter
1.5 cups/200g sugar
3 Tbl/45ml brandy or kirsch (I used the Jepson’s Rare Alembic Brandy)
1 tsp/15ml vanilla extract
1 egg
2.25 cups/350g whole wheat flour
1 Tbl/15ml baking powder
.75 tsp/3.5ml kosher salt
1 cup/250ml milk
Butter and flour for the pan

Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter a 9” x 13" Pyrex baking dish and dust with flour; set aside. In a Kitchenaid mixer or large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, brandy/kirsch, and vanilla on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Add the egg; beat until incorporated.

In a medium bowl, whisk together whole wheat flour, baking powder, and salt. With the mixer running on low speed, alternately add flour mixture and milk in 3 batches to make a batter. Spoon the batter onto reserved baking sheet and smooth evenly. Sprinkle cherries over the top and press slightly into the thick batter. Bake until cake is golden brown, 40-45 minutes. Let cake cool 30 minutes, then cut into squares or bars.

Goes well with:

• Sarah Copeland’s story about the cake
• Saveur magazine published Copeland’s recipe for this short cake dotted with cherries

Lost Abbey Gingerbread Cake

Serpent’s Stout is out now. Drink some now, eat some later.

Last year, I spent the better part of a Friday night with brewer Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey just north of San Diego. Before that, cheesemonger Zeke Ferguson, photographer John Schulz, and I began with lunch under the hop vines at Stone Brewing’s beer garden. We ended up at Lost Abbey among racks of oak barrels, eating cheese, breaking out funky chocolates, and sampling a load of Tomme’s specials, including some vintage bottles he pulled out so we could taste the variations over years. All in all, it was a great night.

It also made me more appreciative of Lost Abbey beers, so I’ve been scoring more of them since then. This week, I grabbed a stout. At 11% abv, Serpent’s Stout is a seasonally available beer (early winter) in a 750ml corked bottle. It’s a very dark, malty beer, light on the carbonation, with an almost creamy texture. Given its notes of chocolate, molasses, and even coffee, I immediately realized how well it would work in baking.

After lightly chilling the bottle, I poured out 8 ounces, then savored the rest as Tomme intended. The portion I set aside went into a dense, dark, moist gingerbread cake that carried over the lingering taste of Serpent’s Stout with undertones of molasses and racy ginger. Photo to the left courtesy of StudioSchulz.com.

Adapted from Claudia Fleming’s Guinness Stout Ginger Cake in The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern, this version contains slightly more ginger and double the cardamom of the original.

Lost Abbey Gingerbread Cake

1 cup Lost Abbey Serpent Stout
1 cup molasses
½ Tbl baking soda
3 large eggs
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
¾ cup canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ Tbl ground ginger
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cardamom
1 ½ Tbl peeled fresh gingerroot, grated or finely minced

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9- X 5-inch loaf pan, line the bottom and sides with parchment, and grease the parchment. Alternatively, butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan or ring mold.

(1) In a large and deep saucepan over high heat, combine the stout and molasses and bring just to a boil. Turn off the heat immediately, stir to mix thoroughly, and add the baking soda. The resulting foam will subside after a few beats.

(2) Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and both sugars in a bowl, then whisk in the oil.

(3) In a separate bowl, sift the flour, then whisk in ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom.

Combine the stout mixture (1) with the egg mixture (2), then whisk this liquid into the flour mixture (3), half at a time. Add the fresh ginger and stir to combine.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 1 hour, or until the top springs back when gently pressed and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not open the oven until the gingerbread is almost done, or the center may fall slightly. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Because of the canola oil, this cake keeps at room temperature for several days. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, or just plain with a cup of coffee or tea.

Goes well with:

Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights at The Lost Abbey’s tasting room.

Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey
155 Mata Way, Suite 104
San Marcos, CA 92069
(800) 918-6816