A recipe for a family favorite: Zilla's cake

First question that pops to mind when you hear the words "Zilla's cake": who (or what) is "Zilla"?
My answer: "Good question, and you know what? I have no clue who (or what) is 'Zilla.'"

I do know what a "Zilla's cake" is: it is essentially an English warm milk cake. And it is the perfect cake for any occasion, especially since it's a cinch to whip together. It is wonderfully spongy: when you press on it lightly with your finger, you can hear the spongy sound of the air releasing from inside the tiny bubbles of the cake. This sponginess makes it ideal for soaking flavorful syrups, or liqueurs like sweet sherry for a trifle. I'd say it's comparable to a genoise in that sense, but much, much easier to throw together: none of the careful folding in of the flour into airy eggs and sugar. It's my mom's favorite cake recipe, passed down from her mom, which makes this recipe extra special. And now, I'm passing it on to you. Here's the recipe for the Zilla's cake, exactly as it is written on my mom's recipe card (yes, that's right, it's hand-written on a recipe card!):

Zilla's cake
Makes 1 loaf or 1 tube cake

•     2 eggs beaten well  - electric mixer
•     Add 1 cup white sugar gradually
•     Sift 1 cup flour and 1 tsp baking powder and salt.
•     Heat 1/2 cup milk with 1 tbspn butter. add 1 tsp vanilla
•     Add dry ingredients alternately with wet ones.
•     Bake 350 degrees - 35 mins

Notes:

1. If you have the patience, you can beat the eggs and sugar to the ribbon stage. If you don't have the time, just make sure that they are frothy. I'm not sure that beating them to the ribbon stage is necessary, but this time I did go the extra mile and was pleased with the extra sponginess that it gave the final cake.
2. When adding the wet and the dry alternately, remember to start and end with the dry. Thus: dry, wet, dry, wet, dry. This is one of the golden rules of baking, although I'm not quite sure why.
3. We always butter (or spray with cooking spray) the inside of the pan and coat it with sugar (not flour) because sugar is delicious, whereas a layer of flour on the outside of a cake can taste gross. This means that you have to be very careful and get the baked cake out of the pan when it is just cool enough to release from the pan, but not so cool that the sugar has recrystallized, thereby irreversibly gluing the cake to the inside of the pan. Let it cool a maximum of 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan.
4. The 35-minute baking time is pretty exact. Normally, my mom and her mom would bake this in a tube pan (angel food cake pan). It always takes exactly 35 minutes for the cake to bake. No joke. This time, I chose to deviate from the tradition, and I baked it in a loaf pan. And, once again, it came out perfectly! The only difference was that it baked for 47 minutes. Now, I've only baked it once in the loaf pan, so I cannot say for sure that it will take you 47 minutes. So start checking it after 45 minutes, or when you notice the edges coming away from the sides.

Instead of making a trifle, I opted to top slices of Zilla's cake with whipped cream sweetened with just a touch of sugar (and please, no whipped topping! It's REALLY not the same as fresh whipped cream), and a fresh raspberry sauce made with crushed fresh raspberries, sugar, and Chambord (raspberry liqueur). The end result was divine, for dessert (and breakfast the next morning). Zilla, I love you, whoever (or whatever) you are! Your cake rocks!

For the love of bread

I am an avid baker. Everyone knows it. And yet, I have avoided bread-making for years! There were random attempts at baking bread  (it didn't rise properly; baked it too long; why does this taste like a mouthful of yeast?), including a couple of valiant stabs at Christmas stollen in seasons when holiday cheer made me think that I can masterfully pull it off.... nope! And then for Christmas 2009, I received Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible from my mom.

I have RLB's Cake Bible. I have used it a handful of times. Her Italian Meringue and Buttercream work out beautifully and I adore her lemon curd, made extra tart by the optional addition of extra lemon juice. But her "Lemon Cream Illusion" which she called "firm enough to use as filling for a cake roll" was a disaster for me. I am not saying for one second that the problem is the book. It may in fact be the baker (i.e. me). In any case, my try at the "Lemon Cream Illusion" recipe turned one beautiful RLB Light Italian Meringue into soup. Yikes. I salvaged the "cream" by slowly adding in cubed, cold butter as you would when making a real buttercream. I set the Kitchenaid to high to whip it into submission and it did submit. The texture was creamy, but a little like finely granular cottage cheese. Fortunately, if you ignored the texture, the taste was great! After this lemon cream disaster, I put her book away and I didn't glance back once.

My upset over the Cake Bible prevented me from picking up RLB's Bread Bible. Now that I have tested it a few times, I regret this rejection with all my heart! Having worked with this tome for the last month, I realize that it is great for all those bakers who fear bread-making, like me. You can do it and RLB will help you. I have so far focused on her "Hearth Bread" chapter. I have achieved bread-making success. This book is great. I think the reason I am so attached to it is because I know next to nothing about bread-making and this book allows me to understand the process and bake a delicious loaf of bread from the simplest of ingredients: yeast, flour, water, honey, salt. The end result is wonderful. Perhaps with my amateur skills, they don't always look perfect (recall my first attempt at RLB's Basic Hearth Bread) but they taste awesome, with a beautiful, golden crust, and a soft, light interior. The breads I have baked with this book have made me truly happy. There's no panicking, no sweat and tears. The recipes I have done have had lots of steps (true to RLB form) but enough so that the guess-work of bread-making is gone. You can confidently plow through each step and it will work out in the end.

This week-end, I used RLB's Bread Bible to make her "Heart of Wheat Bread." The recipe for this bread is much quicker than her "Basic Hearth Bread" which was really simple but the steps were spread over 3 days (due to overnight risings in the fridge). This wheat bread could be baked within a day.
You prepare a sponge and let it ferment for 4 hours so that the yeasty wet mixture bubbles through a layer of flour and more yeast.

Then you knead it into a sticky very elastic dough (look at it stretch!).

Then you let it rise (in the oven with the oven light on) a bunch of times for 45 minutes each time.

You shape it and let it rise once more, score it with a knife, and set it in the oven.
Thirty minutes later. Bread! Wonderful, delicious bread.

With my delicious bread, I made... corned beef sandwiches! I know what you are thinking, but do not judge! I love corned beef sandwiches made with Hereford corned beef (yes, straight from the can and sliced),  with slices of dill pickles, and toasted of course. Yum!

What I've been reduced to....

I apologize for another long post and, to top it off, not a recipe in sight. I haven't turned on the oven or used the stove for anything worth posting in a week!

A box of KD for dinner. This is what I've been reduced to. I do love KD, but I think I could do better than a box of KD on a Friday night! I am mildly embarrassed by my dinner tonight.

I spent 10 long years in University. Not 3. Not 4. Ten. I put my heart and soul into 10 years of University. For the last 6 of them, I was working towards a PhD in Organic Chemistry. A PhD means very long work hours. Research is demoralizing, on a good day. On a bad day, it's downright depressing. At the end of my 10 years, I swore that I had paid my dues, that I deserved better than 12- and often 16-hour days that paid next to nothing. I don't think it is that I got lazy over the years. I'm assuming it is just a sign that I just wasn't cut out for it. So what next?

As I grew more and more miserable at school, I reassessed everything. Maybe I could start a cupcake bakery in Montreal! This was before the time when cupcakes were big here. I started to make a website. I tested recipes and fed them to the starving grad students I worked with (even when they were dry and/or burnt, they would eat them with a smile, and I love them forever for supporting me through the good and the bad baking). Then research/school took over, and I put "my" cupcake shop on hold. And then, cupcake shops opened all over Montreal.... Oops: My oven was cold and "my" bakery was still on hold. Clearly, I missed the boat. So, I thought about what I want to be when I grow up a little more.

I like to write, and I like to edit. I'm the type of girl who is constantly reading a book, and I always have a pencil with me, in my bag or on my nightstand, so that I can mark all the typos and spelling mistakes. I got to do a fair amount of it editing and writing over the years too. Lots of grad students (and my PhD supervisor) would get me to edit their written work for them. I applied to a bunch of great science and chemistry journals with no luck. One editor told me that I should be tweeting and blogging about science to get my name out there, and that maybe, after all that, then I'd find a position. But I don't want to tweet about science and chemistry. I'd rather write about food. I'd rather bake!

After graduating this May, I took a job as a Medical Writer. It seemed like a good opportunity to break into the writing world. It seemed like a good opportunity. Obviously, there were pros and cons to this job. And because I always give it my all when I have a job to do, I find myself working long hours, and bringing work home again... The job is not the 9 to 5 position I was hoping for. The people at work are great, but I don't think this job is for me.

The honeymoon phase is over. I worked a lot this week. My apartment is in a state resembling the time I was writing my thesis. I just ate an entire box of KD for dinner: I thought I was past the phase in my life when I ate foods that came in boxes with pictures on them. I ate the KD straight out of the pot I prepared it in because all my dishes are dirty in the sink.


I guess that I am headed for another round of serious soul searching for the next little while. Although, I hardly have time for soul searching with all the work I have to do.

The thought of baking for a living is scary. What if I fail?


I will just have to keep day-dreaming at my work computer as I write about cancer or antibiotics. Hey, it pays the bills! I will imagine myself as a happy bakery owner, selling delicious, reasonably-priced, homey baked goods with a smile. I will picture people smiling as they take a bite of my famous cakes and cookies. A girl can dream, right?

For now, I guess I'll eat my box of KD, straight out of the pot.

Peach meet Jack Daniel's! Jack Daniel's, this is Peach! Peach and whiskey crumble pie

I must admit that, although my last pie was delicious and I did eat it all within the span of 5 days, it was not perfect. I had followed the lovely Smitten Kitchen's recommendation of upping the amount of tapioca to create a pie that was perfectly set. Oh yes, it was definitely set. I think the problem was that the fruits I used were just not juicy enough for a 1/4 cup of tapioca (seems like overkill if you ask me). There was an absence of pie juices at the end because the pearls had soaked it all up! The texture of the pie thus had a pearly finish. Interesting. Delicious, but interesting. Not quite what I was going for. I ate the whole pie nonetheless (Do I act like the type of girl who would let a homemade pie go to waste? Hell no!).

Five days later, I am left with a void in my life where the pie once was. Sadness. I miss you pie! I should have savored the moment with you. I must make another. In the spirit of my purist ways, I settle on one fruit for my next pie: peaches since it is peach season (enjoy them while you can!). I adore peaches and nectarines. I eat them plain, or with some cheese, cheddar or blue. I even add them to salads, like this one with goat cheese.
Having selected the peach as my fruit of choice, I wondered if I could booze up the pie a little by adding in some bourbon. I'm not a bourbon drinker, in fact, I'm not even sure what bourbon tastes like, but I still have a hunch that when bourbon meets peach in my future pie, they will hit it off and it will be spectacular! I have an email discussion with Lynn, and we decide that it will be a delicious combination! The only problem: the SAQ (Société des Alcools du Québec) doesn't sell bourbon. They do sell whiskey (Jack Daniel's), which they claim is the same thing. Even though I am no expert, I know they are wrong. Bloggers like this guy would agree that not all whiskeys are bourbons although all bourbons are whiskeys (confused much?). In any case, Jack Daniel's is not quite bourbon. Oh well. It's all good! Peach is flexible and willing to meet Jack Daniel's.

So, after much deliberating, I decide on a peach and whiskey crumble pie. My pie crust is made from the leftover scraps of dough from my previous pie (see Smitten Kitchen for recipe). I blind-bake the crust to avoid a soggy-bottomed pie. Meanwhile, I make a filling of chopped peaches, brown sugar, vanilla and Jack Daniel's. I use tapioca as a thickener (1/8 cup tapioca this time) and I let them mingle while I'm blind-baking the crust. I top the baked crust with the syrupy fruit and pile on the crumble topping (with oats for added nutrients!). I bake it et voilà! I had one small issue with this pie: because I was using scraps of dough to create my crust, the crust did not quite come to the top of my deep-dish pie plate. The juices overflowed a little in the oven, making serving a slice a little complex. I managed to get one photo for this posting, but I guess I'll just have to eat the rest straight out of the pan. Life is tough.


I'm not going to lie: this pie is pretty boozy! Not for the faint of heart. It's like peach pie for adults. Pretty delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if you ask me. Next time, I might use dark brown sugar to get a bolder caramel flavor.
And so, Peach met Jack Daniel's and they lived happily ever after... in my pie.

Peach and whiskey crumble pie
Makes a 10-inch pie

• 1 10-inch pie shell

Filling

• 7 cups chopped peaches (approximately 7 large peaches)
• 3/4 cups light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Jack Daniel's
• 1.5 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 cup instant tapioca
• 2 tbsp cold butter, cubed

Crumble topping

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1/2 cup butter (cubed and frozen)
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Blind bake the crust for about 30 minutes or until the edges are golden brown (be sure to use pie weights or rice to prevent the center of crust from puffing too much).
2. While the pie crust is baking, combine the peaches, brown sugar, Jack Daniel's, vanilla and tapioca in a medium mixing bowl. Mix well, and stir it every 5 minutes to ensure the fruit are evenly coated.
3. Prepare the crumble topping by combining all the ingredients in a separate bowl, and quickly incorporating the frozen butter with your finger tips. Continue until you obtain a coarse, even mixture.
4. Remove the crust from the oven to cool slightly and reduce the oven temperature to 375ºF.
5. Fill the baked crust with the soaked peaches and the syrup. Dot with bits of butter. Top with the crumble mixture.
6. Bake for 60 minutes until the topping is golden and the syrup is bubbling hot.
7. Let cool and enjoy with a scoop of ice cream.

Sometimes Soul needs pie!

Some days are just plain rough from start to finish. I woke up exhausted. I shuffled through my daily routine. My routine starts with some form of exercise at 7AM (yuck! why do I do this to myself? oh right! It's because I eat entire 9x9 Pyrex pans of brownies without thinking twice). Then, a quick shower (do I really have to shower? I realize I just exercised for an hour but still, do I really have to shower?) followed by work for 9 hours (don't even get me started on that...). Through it all, I am counting down the hours until the day is over so that I can shuffle to the metro and crawl home. My brain is screaming to just roll into bed and close my eyes until a new day peaks through the curtains of my apartment. My soul wants something more, something yummy, something sweet. I need pie.
There is something about baking a pie, from start to finish, that soothes the soul. It brings me back to those long-ago summers when I was off from school, without a care in the world, watching my mom make a pie. Pure relaxation. When was the last time you spent a day where the only worry was "when's dinner?" because Mom won't slice you a piece of pie until you've eaten your dinner? Tough life!
Back to the pie at hand. Some days, I need pie. In fact, I long to prepare a buttery pie crust by hand, literally: I don't own, nor do I use a pastry cutter. I love to work at carefully incorporating frozen chunks of butter into a bowl of flour, sugar and salt, until the butter forms pea-sized crumbs, working with just the tips of my fingers. Then, I switch to a sturdy wooden spoon, slowly incorporating ice cold water, a little at a time, until the pie dough just comes together. Of course, I can't have home-baked pie just yet. Nope. The dough needs to be refrigerated first. The saying "patience is a virtue" floats through my head.

The purist in me usually wants to keep the pie filling to just one type of fruit, but, on this day, my fridge revealed that I still have a bunch of rhubarb to finish up, and some apricots and peaches, and a few raspberries, and some strawberries... Clearly, this will not be a simple fruit pie. I prepare my pie filling with all the randomness of summer from my fridge. I use instant tapioca as my thickener of choice because I've been dying to test it out and one of my favorite blogs used tapioca in their strawberry-rhubarb pie. I also blind-bake the bottom crust in an educated attempt to prevent a disappointing soggy bottom. The fruit-filled pie is finally ready to be baked.

After a good 20 or so minutes of baking, the smell hits me: the fruit is cooking and the aroma fills the room. I breathe a lovely mêlée of roasting rhubarb, peaches and strawberries. In one breath, I inhale a carefree summer, home and vacation. However, more patience is required. Eventually, the pie is done. The pie looks beautiful in my grandfather's hand made pie plate. Deep down, I know that I cannot cut a pie fresh out of the oven. Plus, it's almost 11PM and I have to wake up at 6AM to start my daily routine all over. My summer fruit pie-tasting will have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe I'll have a slice before dashing to the gym in the morning...

In the meantime, here's the recipe, adapted from Smitten Kitchen with a hint of the NY Times thrown in.

Shortbread, I praise thee! Lavender shortbread slices

Thankfully, the heat wave broke on National Shortbread Day, allowing bakers to re-ignite their ovens and honor this special day. I realize that National Shortbread Day is most likely not celebrated in Montreal, nor Canada... but let's just pretend! Besides, I'll celebrate any holiday if it's a reason to bake and revere a cookie!

Shortbread are rich and buttery. And it's funny to think that the shorter the shortbread is, the higher the butter content! Seems contradictory to me. However, according to Merriam-Webster, short actually refers to the flakiness of a cookie or crust. The shorter the cookie, the more crumbly it is, and the more crumbly it is, the more butter it contains. The amount of butter in a recipe is therefore crucial: a little "too much" and you may end up with cookies that, although sublimely buttery, just fall apart in your hands (if this happens, don't panic! Crumbly shortbread may not be serve-able, but they are still eat-able!) .

When life gives you lemons....

The saying goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade with them!"

Well, life has given me many "lemons" over the years (I probably carry a few too many in my purse on a daily basis, but we won't go there), but I do not want to make lemonade! Plus it isn't actually citrus season, so it would be very costly to make lemonade in July, in Montreal. We don't even grow citrus here.

What do I do instead? I spend quality time in my kitchen. I cook. I bake. I eat (sometimes I even eat straight out of the pan on the stove).

This week-end, I spent a lot of time in my kitchen. I started by testing out Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible for the first time: I made her "Basic Hearth Bread." I needed to make bread to go with my homemade strawberry, lemon and ginger jam. The bread recipe worked out really well, except for one small issue. I forgot to remove the top rack from my oven, and, much to my dismay (mixed with a sentiment of joy because my first bread was baking up really beautifully), the baking bread rose up to the top rack which left a dent on the top of it. Sadness. I guess that the mark gives my loaf charm?

I spent the rest of the week-end toying with local Quebec strawberries in the kitchen. I baked and ate an entire 9x9 pan of strawberry-studded brownies (nope, I'm not exaggerating, and yes, I know that a 9x9 pan of brownies should not be consumed by one person over the course of 24 hours, and yes, I really should watch what I eat). The recipe was pretty simple, and the brownies were best if you left them to sit at room temperature for about 24 hours before gobbling them up. If eaten earlier, the berries will be slightly watery and the brownies will therefore suffer from wet patches (yuck!). If left for 24 hours, the brownies are given a chance to soak up the fruit juice and you are left with a densely pleasant brownie. Here's the recipe.

Strawberry-studded brownies
Serves 16 (or, don't judge, 1, if that is the kind of mood you are in)

• 3/4 cup butter (unsalted of course)
• 6 oz. dark chocolate, chopped
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 cups strawberries, chopped
  

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Prepare a 9x9-inch Pyrex by greasing it and then placing a rectangle of parchment inside so that two of the edges hang on either side, like two handles.
   
3. Melt the chocolate and butter carefully. You can either do this directly in a saucepan on the stove and risk burning the chocolate, OR, place the chocolate and butter on top a double-boiler. It's up to you how you do it, just don't burn the chocolate! Let cool slightly.
   
4. When the chocolate is melted, beat the eggs and sugar until it is light and frothy (I actually went all the way to the ribbon stage because I was chopping my strawberries in the meantime, so clearly this recipe didn't mind the extra air).
5. Add the melted chocolate and mix.
6. Sift together the flour and cocoa onto the batter.
7. Mix again.
8. Gently mix in the strawberries (I did this by hand with a wooden spoon to avoid crushing the delicate berries).
9. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. Skewer the center to be sure it is just cooked.
10. Remove from oven and let it sit 24 hours.
11. Cut and enjoy!

Since it is strawberry season in Quebec, I continued using the berry in some "not so conventional" ways. I made some rice paper spring rolls with them (significantly healthier than the brownies and also pleasurable, well not in the I-can't-stop-shoving-brownies-in-my-mouth kind of way, but pleasurable nonetheless). I filled them with a strawberry and peanut salad, and some shiitake mushrooms. I love rice paper rolls, but if you are feeling lazy just eat the salad without rolling them up in rice paper. Equally satisfying.