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Saturday, April 24, 2004 |
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The IC's Recipe of the Week-- Ruth's Carrot Cake Ruth's Carrot Cake Adapted (of course) from the Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour 3 cups sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon baking soda 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1 1/2 cup canola oil 4 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1-1/2 cups pureed cooked carrots 1 cup chopped walnuts 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut (I like to use unsweetened, but the sweetened, flaked kind is good, too--it will make the cake sweeter, however) 3/4 cup canned crushed pineapple in juice, drained Cream cheese frosting (recipe follows)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line the bottoms of 2 9 inch round pans with parchment paper or waxed paper, and grease and flour the paper and the sides of the pans. (I use spray canola oil, not butter.)
Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Add the oil, eggs and vanilla and mix well. Then fold in the carrots, walnuts, coconut and pineapple.
Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake until the edges have pulled away from the sides of the pans and a tester comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes. It's a good idea to rotate the pans (i.e., switch their positions in the oven halfway through.
Cook the cakes in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto racks to finish cooling. Remove waxed paper, and cool completely before filling and frosting the cake. You can press more coconut or walnuts onto the sides of the cake to gussy it up, if you like.
Cream Cheese Frosting I went to high school in New England, at a fancy pants boarding school where, on the surface of it, I had no business being. I was a middle class kid from the city of Chicago (not the suburbs; Old Town, for those who know the city.) But I heard about boarding school and to my over-protected, only-child thirteen year old self, it sounded like heaven, so I convinced my somewhat skeptical parents to allow me to go away to school in the ninth grade. It turned out that I did belong there, but it took a while for me to figure that out. At first, I spent a lot of time being blown away by the sophistication of the many New York (that' s Manhattan, my friends) kids in my class. They were, without exception, cool like Frigidaires. One boy, in particular, melted my heart. He was a little short, but had a face like an angel and the coolest Adidas sneakers I'd ever seen. No one has ever looked hotter in a tweed blazer and oxford shirt. My advanced, and never returned, crush on this guy caused me to buy Grateful Dead albums--you see, he was a deadhead. If you know anything about this, you know that Deadheads did not buy albums. They got their fixes via bootleg concert tapes. But I didn't know--I just wanted to have somthing to talk to this god of cool about. It tells you something about his fine character that he never, ever ridiculed me for any of this. In fact, when we turned up at the same college together, we became better friends (not because we were the only ones who knew each other--we had thirty other of our classmates there, too. But whatever.) He invited me and my roommate over to his apartment (he had an APARTMENT! OFF CAMPUS! EARLIER THAN ANYONE ELSE I KNEW! Tell me that cool isn't innate.) Anyway, he invited us to dinner, cooked, and then served us the original version of this cake for dessert. My crush was long over by this point, but I admit it, I swooned. I lost touch with him after college--he completed his B.A. and master's simultaneously, I think, and won a bunch of big academic prizes (SMART TOO!) and then moved to London. I haven't seen him in years--but I think of him every time I make this cake.
But wait, there's more. I eventually got over this long-simmering crush and found other objects of desire in high school--more than I care to admit. (I might not have been a slut, but I sure was boy crazy.) By the time high school ended, I was dating another too-cool-for-his-own-good Manhattan boy. His mother owned a couple of restaurants in the city, his aunt was a caterer on Martha's Vineyard, and he was a pretty mean cook himself. In the summer of 1984, the original Silver Palate cookbook was the height of fashion, and when Boyfriend and I decamped to his mother's house on Martha's Vineyard for the summer, we cooked meals redolent of that era's over-the-top aesthetic: Linguine with Brie, Tomatoes and Basil; Sesame Chicken; Ginger Pumpkin Mousse--AT THE SAME MEAL. Blecch. On their own, all of these recipes are delicious, if a little forward. In combination, they were kind of assaultive. But even with the overblown food (and a Boyfriend who turned out to be not so great a friend) my memories of those nights are balmy and divine. This was American food with red white and blue, nothing nouvelle about it. It was kind of the natural offspring of 1960s style heavy-sauce cooking. But I still love that cookbook, and the two that followed. I make their Apple Sausage Cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving every year, and if I have enough people coming, I make the insanely decadent Broccoli Pureed with Creme Fraiche, which is one of the greatest creations ever. Buy the book and make that, too. Have it with a perfect roast chicken and a nice white to cut the richness as soon as the air is hot enough to sit outside for dinner. |
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Baby Cake Where the hell did this week go? A wise woman (my friend, Dorrie, in fact) once said that when you are a parent, the days are long, but the weeks are short. My days are about to get a whole lot longer, when my full-time babysitter goes to half-time (or maybe even less) on May 1. Having the incredible Ruth as a constant in my household has been the single greatest indulgence of my entire life, but having less of her will be good, too. Not because she's not incredible (which she is) but because my child is so outlandishly appealing these days that I want to have as much time with him as possible before (sob! gulp! lump in my throat....) he starts preschool in September (assuming we're home,and not on the Isle of Man, or in Prague or some other European adventure spot. More on that someday soon, I hope.) Ruth was Dido's nanny from the time he was two months old, and cared for him when I went back to work full-time (not long after he was born--though I worked mostly from home for four and a half months, I never really took a maternity leave, something I deeply regretted.) She stayed when I stopped working for the Chuckleheads, and because she was supporting her family and had to have full-time work (and because she made my life so incredibly easy and flexible) we had an ungodly amount of excellent childcare. Now, with Dido going to school, soon, there will be no way to justify a paid full-time companion for me (we can barely justify having one for him) and so starting May 1, she'll work for two families: ours, and some of our best friends, who have one child Dido's age, and another arriving any day. I'm excited about this change, because it means we don't have to lose Ruth in all of our lives, we will hopefully still have her here when (someday!) we have another one, and because I get more one-on-one kid time. But it will be hard for the Little Man, and no doubt, somewhat constraining for this princess mommy who's totally had her cake and sucked it down, too, for the last eighteen months or so.
In honor of Ruth, and the cake she's added to our lives--today's recipe is for her favorite carrot cake. I am proud to say that when Ruth started working for me two and a half years ago, she was a self-proclaimed non-cook. Now, when she puts her mind to it, that girl can bake (and her kids and husband appreciate the results.) BTW, I am not just a baker, in fact, I don't think I'm so great at baking (much better at cooking, which is more fluid and forgiving) but I'm working on it. |
Last update: 5/4/04; 5:28:38 PM .
