It's been too long since I've written a post. I've been fiddling with the blog design, which is an ever evolving process of tweaking something, making a big mistake, trying to fix it, and starting all over again. This was the explanation I gave to my high school guidance counselor when we met to discuss why I was failing sewing class my freshman year. Basically, it was nearing the end of the semester and I had turned in nothing. I couldn't get past our first project, making a stuffed rabbit. It was to be made from a fabric of my choosing. I chose florals and lace with the idea of creating a Victorian masterpiece, a design the Laura Ashley company would want to add to their home collection. No one told me that sewing required patience and practice before I could turn out perfection. After a semester of seam ripping, multiple restarts, cursing under my breath, and parent-teacher meetings, I finally finished a rabbit worthy of county fair entry rather than the Laura Ashley Home Collection. At that point, nobody cared what it looked like, they just wanted me to finish and end our collective misery. In the end, my home-ec teacher took pity on my obsessive compulsive proclivities and graded me on quality rather than quantity. It still follows that when I get an idea for how I want something to look, I can't move on until it's exactly the way I had envisioned. As illustrated, this obsession with perfection can sometimes be a curse.
Sewing and I never reconnected after that and later in life baking became my thing. As of lately, cakes have been my focus and October Cake is one I've been thinking on for the past year. The important ingredient in the cake is apple cider. Using a locally made cider is worth your while for the quality of the taste and we are now in the height of apple season, so why not enjoy the fruits of the harvest? I picked up a half gallon produced by our local apple orchard. The idea for this cake was adapted from a 1959 copy of Farm Journal's Country Cookbook. In this book, the recipe is titled Cider and Spice Cake, but an accompanying note said it was referred to by someone's grandmother as October Cake and that's the name I liked best because it speaks to its seasonal appeal. The filling has a wonderful tart flavor set against the backdrop of apple and spice.
October Cake
Cake
3 cups sifted cake flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
3 eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp. lemon juice (freshly squeezed is preferable)
1 cup apple cider
Cider Filling
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. constarch
1 cup apple cider
2 Tbsp. lemon juice (freshly squeezed is preferable)
2 Tbsp. butter
Creamy Cider Icing
1/2 cup butter
3 1/2 Tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup apple cider
3 cups sifted confectioners sugar
For the cake: Preheat oven to 350 ℉. Butter and flour 3 round 8" cake pans. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, and beat until thoroughly blended.
Add lemon juice to cider. Add alternately with dry ingredients to creamed mixture, beating after each addition.
Pour batter into the 3 prepared pans. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean and the cakes are golden and spring-back when touched.
Set the pans on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before you flip them over and turn the cakes out to further cool on the racks.
For the cider filling: Combine sugar, salt, and cornstarch in saucepan. Add cider and combine. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture becomes thick and somewhat clear. Remove from heat and add lemon juice and butter. Set aside to cool.
For the creamy cider icing: Melt the butter in a saucepan, then blend in the the flour and salt. Add the cider and stir well. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add the confectioners sugar and beat well.
Assemble the cake by spreading half the cider filling on one cake round. Set another round on top and spread the rest of the cider filling on top of that layer. Top it with the third round and then frost the top and sides with the creamy cider icing. Top with something like walnuts or pecans or maybe even a sprinkling of cinnamon-sugar and you'll have a beautiful fall cake that wears the flavor of the season.
I'm pretty excited about this rainbow stack of books. They're little cookbooks by the French Chef, Keda Black. I was in one of my favorite thrift stores this week and discovered them on a bottom shelf. Each book has an ingredient theme and the recipes are simple. It's the little things in life sometimes.
Some other reads I've been spooning this week:
{The Mother Jones article, Why Your Supermarket Only Sells 5 Kinds of Apples, is a fascinating history of apple growing and explains how many unique varieties have been lost in America. John Bunk is determined to find and save them.}
{Marcella Hazan, 1924-2012, Changed the Way Americans Cook Italian Food is the New York Times tribute to the great chef who passed away last week-end. Oddly enough, both Marcella and Lidia Bastianich showed up in my dream last night.}
{The Guardian article, Rise and Shine: the daily routines of history's most creative minds, is great. Did you know Benjamin Franklin was a nudist throughout the morning? Anyways, I've been inspired to look at my own routines and see how I can make them more bizarre in order to fan the creative flames.}
{One of my all-time favorite authors, Wendell Berry, was a guest on Bill Moyers this week. If you have the time, check out the interview. Wendell writes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, philosophy. He does it all, but his nonfiction, specifically his Agrarian essays have had a major impact on me. It should be noted that Mr. Berry rarely gives interviews.}
{If you like beer then you have to look at this beer chart. It's like a beer family tree that connects brands and types. Impressive design work.}
{I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen. Read a little interview with her here.}
Have great week!
The best thing about traveling is it removes me from my comfort zone of daily routine and vicarious living by way of TV dramas and social media updates. I also find that when I take leave of my collective belongings and reduce my necessary material items to whatever fits in a suitcase, that a burden has been lifted from me. All I have to worry about is a bag, and when that's gone, as I experienced in Ireland, then I'm confronted with the mere fact that life goes on with or without belongings. In Ireland, I found myself being internally realigned to value real life moments more than things. You see, the Garda in Drogheda did recover my bag, which I'm guessing turned up on the side of the road. They called us at Ballynahinch castle on our second to last day in Ireland and said we could come get it if we wanted. However, that meant a five hour drive back to the east side of Ireland on our last day of visiting Connemara and the castle. I thought about it for a few minutes, but it was a no-brainer. There was nothing in my bag worth the sacrifice of mine or my aunt's joyful time at Ballynahinch. The Garda offered to donate my things to a local shelter and I felt nothing could be more perfect or right with the world than that.
I think traveling also challenges your assumptions about people, places, and things. There's no good way of really knowing the truths of the world without seeing and experiencing first hand. My assumption, however minor, that was challenged in Ireland was my belief that anything called porridge was a horrid gruel served by cruel adults to children living in an orphanage. Imagine my surprise when at breakfast on my first day in Dublin and at every subsequent breakfast to follow in Ireland, there was always a big pot of porridge. Yet, we were not bunking at any kind of institutional care facility. I avoided it on my first day, but on the second I had to cross the gauntlet. I stood back and watched a well dressed woman who was dipping the ladle into the pot o'paste. After she dumped a ladle full into a bowl, I watched as she dressed her porridge with cream, dried fruit, brown sugar, maple syrup, and muesli. Wowee!!! I hadn't noticed the accoutrements before! I suddenly had a feeling about porridge. I scooped my own ladle full, dressed it up with all the fixings, and raced back to the table. First bite in and yes, oh yes, it was amazing. Figuring out how to make it was the first order of business upon returning to the states. Basically, Irish porridge is oatmeal made from steel cut oats, which you can find in most grocery stores. Steel cut oats are not flattened and rolled like the quick cooking oatmeal we're used to in the states. If you really want to do it right, get a can of McCann's imported Irish oats. Just follow the cooking instructions on the package and then dress up your porridge with whatever you want or have at home. It's thick, but not pasty, and it becomes a wonderful canvas for whatever flavors and textures you add.
This trip to Ireland also rekindled my love of poetry. Maybe it's because the beauty of Ireland has been the inspiration for so many poets and because I was traveling with my aunt, who is a huge lover of poetry herself. On my second night at Ballynahinch Castle, I stayed up talking to John, the night porter, and we were having a discussion about William Butler Yeats. John shared his favorite Yeats poem with me titled He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. In this poem, Yeats is expressing how if he had the means, he would bestow wonderful riches upon the one he loves, but because he is poor, all he can offer are his dreams. He asks his loved one to take that into consideration in the handling of his heart since his dreams are all he has. This trip for me, was like being offered the Cloths of Heaven. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been to for so many different reasons. I did find adventure and the love I found was that of the country itself. I am forever grateful to Lucy and my parents for making this adventure possible. I hope I can go back someday, but until then I have to experience it through literature and film. If you're interested in the Irish culture I've been partaking of, you may want to browse my online bookshelf. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you William Butler Yeats:
He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven
Had I the heaven's embroidered clothes,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-William Butler Yeats
