spicy pumpkin cake with sugared ginger

This is the most wonderful cake - spicy, fragrant, and studded with juicy chunks of ginger. I've also been known to throw in some currants as well, but just the crystallized ginger is absolutely knock down fantastic. It's everything you ever expected a holiday cake should be.

I've been making this recipe for years - as Texas size muffins. Then one day I looked at the recipe and thought - why not make this as an 8 1/2 inch cake, so I did, and it's just perfect. I use cake tin with a high side - 2 inches. The recipe comes straight from the Nantucket Open-House Cookbook , and I've never changed anything ( although I do sometimes do a dairy free alternative) - the spices are just perfect.

I've been serving this with lightly sweetened whipped cream, but I just realized hard sauce would work as well. My stepmother was a native of Baltimore, and she was a strong believer in serving hard sauce with just about any dessert - especially around Turkey Day and Christmas. I've included the standard recipe for hard sauce below.

This recipe will make two cakes - or one cake and 6 Texas size muffins, which can be immediately eaten or stuck in the freezer(hurray!).

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grease 2 cake pans or one cake pan and one 6-cup Texas size muffin tin.

To make:

1 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree ( if you use homemade pumpkin, drain it in a sieve to make sure it isn't too wet)

2 cups brown sugar ( one box)

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted (or 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 cup applesauce for dairy free)

4 large eggs

1/2 cup apple juice or cider

3 1/2 cups King Arthur flour

2 t. baking soda

2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

4 1/2 t. cinnamon

4 1/2 t. ground ginger

1 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. ground cloves

1 1/2 cups chopped crystallized ginger

1 cup currants ( optional)

In mixer bowl, place pumpkin, sugar, and melted butter. Mix. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until smooth. Stir in the apple juice.

Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix well.

Fold in the chopped sugared ginger bits ( and currants, if you're using them).

Fill cake pan about halfway up with batter.

Using an ice cream scoop of regular size, place two scoops of batter in each muffin cup of the Texas sized muffin tin. You should have just enough batter for both.

Bake about 25 minutes for the muffins, or until tops of muffins are firm, and about 40 minutes for the cake - again- the middle, especially, should be firm before you take it out of the oven.

Remove muffins and then the cake to a cooling rack. Let the cake cool at least a half hour before you unmold it. The muffins need just a quick cool, then they'll pop out nicely from the muffin tin.

Serve with whipped cream or hard sauce. The cake serves eight.

Hard Sauce:

1 stick soft butter, salted or not

1 1/2 c. confectioners sugar

2 T. ( or "a good splash", as my stepmother always said) brandy or rum

OR 1 t. vanilla extract

Cream ingredients well and serve in a small bowl on the side.

Here come the holidays!

Featured in photograzing! And Tastespotting!

that's what friends are for

I just wanted to say thank you to my wonderful friend, Kelci Hedrick, for helping untangle the mysteries of blogging.

Kelci is a fantastic cook ( with a cookbook in the works), a gifted graphic designer, and now - a web consultant. She leaped in to help me decipher the puzzling world of Blogger, so that I could concentrate on my writing and photography - and a life that was becoming increasingly stressful.

In spite of a recent move to Vermont with her husband ( I know , she looks about 20), she's always full of energy, enthusiasm and good cheer - and a fast learner. I have no doubt we'll be hearing from her soon on the Blogger Channel. And, wonder of wonders, she was a friend that really came through for me.

She can be reached at kelci.hedrick@gmail.com . She'll also have her contact number on this blog, as Website Consultant. And here's a big smile and wave.......

chicken soup with pasta, carrots, and parsley dumplings

So, after I'd eaten the tarragon chicken, I still had lots left over. Instead of my usual chicken soup with rice, I decided to finally try a recipe from a very old NYTimes Cookbook for parsley dumplings, and a good strong chicken broth loaded with carrots, pasta ( a very cute pasta called Cellentani from Barilla which is curly) and herbs.

Take your leftover roasted chicken out of the fridge. Break up the chicken pieces and add the pieces to a stockpot. Add the bones, if you've saved them, from dinner. I added some leeks, parsley stems, unpeeled carrots,( cut up), onions. Add water to cover and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 20 minutes, then drain the broth into a bowl, straining out the solids.

For the soup:

about 2 cups bite size pieces of chicken

2 onions, coarsely chopped

a bag of small, peeled baby carrots

1 T. fresh rosemary, chopped or not

1 t. or more dried thyme

chicken bouillion cubes or strong chicken stock if needed

salt and freshly ground pepper

Bring soup to a simmer and cook for about 40 minutes. While it's cooking, make the parsley dumpling dough:

1 1/2 cups King Arthur flour

2 t. baking powder

salt and pepper

2 T. chopped parsley

1 T. fresh rosemary, chopped

3 T. cold unsalted butter, cut up

1/2 to 3/4 cup milk or chicken stock ( I used a little over 1/2 cup, the recipe called for 3/4 cup)

Place flour, baking powder, salt and pepper, and herbs in mixer bowl. Add the butter and mix until it resembles cornmeal. Start with adding 1/2 cup liquid to the flour mix - if it forms a good dough, you're fine. If it's too dry, add a little more liquid.

Form into a large ball. Pinch off pieces of dough about the size of a large marble, and roll into balls.

After your soup has simmered for 40 minutes, carefully place the parsley dumpling balls on top of the simmering soup in a layer. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Remove cover and, using a slotted spoon, remove parsley dumplings to a microwave-safe dish.

Add a few handfuls of pasta ( I used a curly one) to the soup and continue to simmer until the pasta is just tender. Taste the soup for a final seasonings check and add salt, pepper, more parsley, rosemary, or thyme as you wish.

Place parsley dumplings in a microwave and zap for 3 minutes. This firms them up a little.

Ladle soup into large bowls, and, very gently, add the parsley dumplings.

Enjoy!

Top photo featured in TasteSpotting!

roast chicken with tarragon sauce (creme a l'estragon)

I was amazed last week when my son asked for this recipe. It's always been one of those quick quasi-fancy classic dishes - but I had no idea he loved it that much.

It's gloomy , rainy, and foggy outside - the perfect day to roast a chicken, don't you think? The sauce takes about three minutes to make, so it isn't difficult - as long as you remember to buy heavy cream and tarragon.

To roast the chicken:

Preheat oven to 400F.

Take any size chicken ( this one was 3 lbs), and rinse it off. Pat it dry with a paper towel. Place it in a roasting pan and squeeze a half a lemon over it, then place the lemon inside the cavity of the chicken. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken, and a few tiny pieces of unsalted butter. Sprinkle the inside of the chicken with a teaspoon of dried tarragon.

Place in oven and reduce oven temperature to 350F.

Roast about an hour, or until chicken is browned and the juices run clear when you tip the pan. Jiggle the leg - if it jiggles freely, it is done. If it seems stiff, roast it another 20 minutes and try again.

To make the sauce:

Pour the juices from the chicken into a skillet. Using a spoon, remove as much of the fat as you can. A little is fine, but too much makes for an oily sauce.

Heat the juices until they're simmering, then add several tablespoons of heavy cream, whisking the juices and the cream together. Add another teaspoon of dried tarragon, whisk again, and taste carefully. Add salt, pepper, and more tarragon if wished.

Either serve pieces of chicken, or slices of chicken bathed in the sauce.

Obviously, the amount of sauce depends on the amount of juices - so if you have a larger chicken, it will take longer to cook, and require more cream and tarragon.

So there you go - a classic French sauce creme a l'estragon!

photo featured in photograzing : http://photograzing.seriouseats.com/2008/11/roast-chicken-with-tarragon-sauce-sauce-creme.html

And featured on Saveur online 9 November, 2009!

comfort food on an epic day : creamy rice pudding with a twist

Just when I thought I was done with tears of joy, I see a picture, or hear another speech by President-elect Obama, and the tears come rolling down my cheeks again. It is a glorious and wonderful day for America, and I'm so proud - proud to all those people who waited so patiently to vote, proud of the 18 year olds who voted for the first time, relieved there were no voting glitches, relieved it's over, because now we can get rolling again.

Who could eat given the sort of emotional rollercoaster we've been on? The only thing I wanted was comfort food - and this coconut milk rice pudding filled the bill.

To make:

4 T. unsalted butter

pinch of salt

1/2 cup coconut milk (NOT coconut cream)

2 cups milk ( I used 2%)

1/3 cup Uncle Ben's long-grain rice ( the normal Uncle Ben's)

1/2 cup sugar or less

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 t. ground nutmeg

2 t. microplaned lemon peel or grated zest

Slowly heat ingredients in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Simmer for about 1/2 hour, stirring often.

After a half an hour, increase heat a tiny bit, and stir constantly until rice pudding is creamy and thickened, which usually takes about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Hope

9pm 4 November: I'm happy to announce the great state of New Hampshire has gone blue, supporting the Obama-Biden ticket.

And by 10:15 pm, we had our new president - Barack Obama.

where'd these gougeres come from?

I swear, I didn't really mean to make these today, even though there was a chunk of asiago cheese staring at me everytime I opened the fridge.

But in my frustrations with staring at paint chips, I drifted into the kitchen and - just like that, here were these heavenly cheesy puffs, still warm from the oven, being popped into my mouth.

Somewhere between the Balboa Mist and the Olivetint I went straight into the kitchen to mix up some gougeres to stave off the chill in the air today.

This recipe makes about 2 dozen small gougeres .

To make:

Preheat oven to 400F.

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1 stick or 1/2 cup unsalted butter

pinch cayenne pepper

a few twists of black pepper

1/4 t. salt

1 cup King Arthur flour

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups grated Asiago cheese

2 baking sheets, lined with parchment or foil

In saucepan, heat milk, water, and butter until simmering. On medium heat, add the flour, salt , and peppers all at once and stir until it clumps together. Remove from heat and scrape dough into a mixer bowl.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each egg in completely before adding the next one. Add the grated cheese and mix in well.

Spoon dough into a medium-large pastry bag with a star or plain tip ( or just use two spoons to mold dough).

Make two quick circles, one on top of the other, for each puff. Space them about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.

Place into hot oven and bake for 20 minutes. The tops will be a little browned.

Let cool on pans, then remove to a cooling rack.

Great with everything, from soup to snack - or simply alone.

(These go beautifully with hot mushroom soup)