A Homemade Life (7 page)

I
t wouldn't be right for me not to tell you about the fresh ginger cake. For one thing, it's wonderful: pale brown and spiced, sauced with warm, caramelly pears. It's a recipe I found in one of my mother's issues of
Gourmet
during my junior year of high school, and in the years since, I must have made it two dozen times, if not more. The first time I made it, it inspired a late night in the kitchen with my parents, all three of us stirring and tasting, working on different recipes. It was the beginning of something, I think. Coming from a family of avid cooks, the kitchen had always been a comfortable place. But it wasn't really
my
place until this cake came along.

I was seventeen then and writing a lot of poetry, wearing pink false eyelashes and vintage polyester shirts festooned with tiny flowers. My mother told me that my father's mother Dora used to wear shirts like that, and though I don't think she intended it as a compliment, it made me feel all the more sure of my choice. When I wrote the essay that follows, the story of the night in the kitchen with the ginger cake, I'd been pickling myself for quite some time in a potent mix of Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Armistead Maupin's
Tales of the City.
(Don't say I didn't warn you.) I wrote it for English class, for my teacher Perry Oldham, whose name always made me think of Old Hollywood, black-and-white movies, and marcelled waves. It was the first
piece of writing I ever did that wasn't about a thwarted crush or the fact that I had yet to be kissed. I suppose I could retell the story today with the added wisdom of a decade or so, but I like it better the old way, the way I told it back then.

This is the story of how it all began, how one wordy teenager found her way to the kitchen. It comes straight from the sun-bleached yellow sketchbook that holds all my teenage writings—or the parts, at least, that aren't hidden in my parents' freezer. (I used to put all my poems in there, sealed in gallon-sized freezer bags, because I'd heard that was the only way to secure them against fire and vandalism.) It explains a lot.

FRESH GINGER CAKE WITH CARAMELIZED PEARS

t
his cake is lighter in flavor and less spicy than a typical gingerbread, with a subtle kick of warmth from the fresh ginger. Be sure to use a standard unsulfured molasses like Brer Rabbit Mild Flavor or Grand-ma's Original. Do not use blackstrap molasses. I happened to use it once, because I grabbed the wrong bottle in the pantry, and it made for a sad, sub-par cake, too dark tasting and dense.

FOR THE CAKE

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ cup unsulfured molasses

¼ cup sour cream (not low fat or nonfat)

4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

¼ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger

½ teaspoon grated lemon zest

FOR THE CARAMELIZED PEARS

2 medium firm-ripe pears

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter

¼ cup sugar

3 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1½ teaspoons brandy or bourbon Salt

 

Set an oven rack to the middle position, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch round baking pan with butter or cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In another medium bowl, combine the molasses, sour cream, butter, brown sugar, egg, ginger, and lemon zest and whisk until smooth. Add the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, and spread it evenly with a rubber spatula.

Bake until a tester comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool the cake
in its pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then turn it out onto the rack. Cool to room temperature.

When you're ready to serve the cake, prepare the caramelized pears. Carefully peel the pears, and cut each lengthwise into 8 wedges, discarding the cores. Place them in a medium bowl, and toss them with the lemon juice.

In a heavy skillet just large enough to hold the pears in one layer—a 10-inch is about right—melt the butter over medium heat. Add the pears and cook, shaking the skillet occasionally, for 3 minutes. Sprinkle them with sugar and continue to cook, shaking the skillet and gently turning the pears, until the sugar is melted and the pears are tender. (I like to keep mine on the firm side, so that they don't lose their shape or start to fall apart, but if you'd like them more meltingly soft, go right ahead.) Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pears back to their bowl. It's okay if there's still lemon juice in there—leave it.

Still over medium heat, boil the sugar-butter mixture remaining in the skillet, stirring occasionally, until it begins to turn a deep shade of caramel. While the mixture cooks, combine the water and cream in a small bowl or cup. When the caramel is the right color, remove the skillet from the heat and carefully—it could splatter—add the cream mixture. Then add the brandy and a pinch of salt. Return the skillet to the heat and simmer, stirring, until thickened slightly. (If your caramel seized when you added the liquids, don't worry; whisk briskly until it is smooth again.) Return the pears to the skillet, and cook until heated through.

Serve the cake in wedges, with a few pieces of pear alongside and caramel drizzled over the top.

 

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

I
t has a musical that bears its name and wheat that famously waves, but what you might not know about Oklahoma is this: that one of the best things it has produced is, or rather was, my mother's holiday cookies. I say that as a loyal daughter and a native Oklahoman, and I mean it as a compliment to both. Those cookies were spectacular.

For nearly twenty years, December was no ordinary month on my mother's calendar. It was a series of afternoons spent in the kitchen, churning out cookies, candies, bars, balls, and toffees by the dozen. Her partner in this onerous work was a woman by the name of Barbara Fretwell, whom my mother met in an art class and whose name strikes me now, suddenly, after all these years of saying it, as lovely and quaint, the sort of name you might see in a child's storybook, the tale of an overprotective British governess and her mischievous charges. Barbara is a wonderful baker. Together, she and my mother were like a well-oiled machine.

When the holiday baking tradition began, I had a pacifier and played on a padded blanket by the sink. When it ended, I had earned most of a college degree. Along the way, I had a sequence of fickle love affairs with nearly every confection in the cookie tin. Some people mea
sure maturity in birthdays, but I plot my personal chronology in Christmas cookies.

As is often the case, mine was a humble beginning. My mother's cookie tin was a gorgeous, glamorous thing, lined with colored cellophane that shimmered like a disco ball, but in the early days, I only had eyes for a modest, paper-bag brown candy called Aunt Bill's. No one seems to know the origin of its name, but it's an old tradition in the South and the Great Plains, all those places where pecan trees like to grow. It tastes like a praline but has a texture like fudge, and it's made from pecans, butter, browned sugar, half-and-half, and large amounts of muscular stirring. Barbara and my mother used to designate a special night for making Aunt Bill's, because they needed their husbands to help stir the pots. We'd get carryout Chinese from the place in Casady Square, where the maître d' wore deeply pleated khaki pants and greeted us by name, and then we'd retreat to the Fretwells' house to eat. Then the adults would roll up their sleeves and make candy. Meanwhile, their daughter Leslie and I would play hide-and-seek in the hallway closets or watch movies on Betamax. I loved it when our parents made Aunt Bill's. Especially because at the end of the night, we would go home with an entire pan of chewy, caramel-colored candy, just the thing for my preadolescent sweet tooth.

Then, of course, I tasted a Linzer cookie, classic and classy in its frilly powdered sugar coat, with raspberry jam for filling. It was the cookie that would accompany me into puberty. But before another holiday season had passed, I had already begun a slow turn toward the chocolate “rad,” a cookie that climbed to previously unseen heights where chocolate was concerned. A single batch calls for a pound of bittersweet chocolate and two cups of chocolate chips, and it bakes up into something reminiscent of brownies, only tidier and round, with light, crackly shells. But then, at age eighteen, I found what I believed to be the final frontier: my mother's espresso-walnut toffee. It is absolutely stunning, its deep caramel flavor tinged with coffee, its topcoat marbled with white and dark chocolates. Candy lovers on coasts east and west, as well as in my own skillet-shaped home state, gush over it. My moth
er's friend Amalia, a gorgeous Spaniard who is also our eye doctor and makes a very fine toffee herself, can't resist it.

“I'm just going to have a l
eee
ttle sl
eee
ver,” she says with a wink, reaching for the tin.

But I was mistaken about it being the final frontier. I had not yet tasted a chocolate-capped fruit-nut ball.

My mother has been making them since the late 1980s, but due to childhood prejudices and a phobia of all things bearing even a faint resemblance to fruitcake, the fruit-nut ball did not cross my lips until I was nineteen. And in the end, that first bite only took place because I was stuck in an airport somewhere between Oklahoma and California, in transit back to college after Christmas and cursed with a long lay-over. I was hungry, and I had a tin of my mother's cookies in my bag. They were intended for my adviser, a kind South Indian scientist who'd invited me into her home for countless dals and curries and was long overdue for a proper thank-you gift. But with a little rearranging of the tin's contents, I told myself, she might never know that something was missing. I studied the tin, deciding reluctantly that the fruit ball might be my best bet. It seemed at least sort of healthy (possibly more so than airport pizza) and since it was obviously the dud of the bunch, I wouldn't be depriving my friend of anything particularly tasty. So, taking care not to disturb its neighbors, I removed one from its ruffly paper cup and took a bite. The crisp chocolate cap buckled under my teeth, giving way to a rush of powdered sugar and, beneath it, a soft, dark, winey chew. The dried fruits and their accompanying walnuts, finely chopped and held together by a splash of liqueur, had morphed together into a third something, a flavor both floral and musky, familiar and complex, the sort of thing only an adult would like.

I stared at the empty wrapper. Then I reached for another.
This is delicious,
I said aloud, reaching for the third and fourth balls, which I handily tucked away shortly before boarding.

Needless to say, the tin never found its way out of my dorm room. I bought my adviser a book on cookie baking instead.

FRUIT-NUT BALLS

f
or several years now, I've made an array of cookies and candies to give away at Christmastime, like my mother used to. The assortment changes a bit every year, but these fruit-nut balls are always on the list. They're ridiculously easy to prepare (you don't even need an oven) and they actually improve with age, which comes in handy. I try to make them at least a couple of days before I want to give them away, but they'll keep in the refrigerator for two to three weeks, easy.

One word of caution: be sure to check your prunes for pits, even if you bought them already pitted. One single pit in the food processor turns into billions of tiny, rock-hard shards. I know from experience.

 

1 cup walnuts

½ pound pitted dried cherries

½ pound dried figs

½ pound pitted dried apricots

½ pound pitted prunes

1 to 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier, brandy, or apple cider

½ cup powdered sugar

10 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

 

Put the walnuts in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, and pulse to chop finely. Transfer to a large bowl.

Return the food processor bowl to its base (there's no need to wash it) and add half of the dried fruits. Pulse to chop finely. You don't want to turn the fruit into a gummy paste, but you want it to be chopped finely enough that there are no pieces larger than a pea. Add to the bowl with the walnuts. Repeat with the remaining dried fruit. When all the fruit is finely chopped, stir the fruit-nut mixture well. Add 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier and stir to incorporate. Pinch off a small wad of the mixture and squeeze it in your palm: does it hold together in a tight ball? If not, add another tablespoon of Grand Marnier.

Put the powdered sugar in a small, wide bowl or pie plate. Pinch off bits of the fruit-nut mixture and, squeezing and rolling them gently in
your hands, shape them into 1-to 1½-inch balls. Roll each ball in powdered sugar to coat, shaking off any excess, and place them on a rimmed baking sheet. Set aside at room temperature, uncovered, for 24 hours.

To finish, line a second baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner, and keep it close at hand. In a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally, until smooth and loose. Remove it from the heat.

Working with one ball at a time, use a small spoon to dollop a bit of chocolate on top. Shake the ball lightly to coax the chocolate down its sides. (You may want to do this over the sink, rather than over the bowl of chocolate; otherwise, your chocolate will be contaminated by sprinkles of powdered sugar.) The chocolate will not coat it completely—only the top half or so, as though the ball were wearing a chocolate hat. Place the ball carefully, chocolate side up, on the lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining balls.

Slide the baking sheet, uncovered, into the refrigerator and chill until the chocolate has hardened, about 2 hours. Tuck each ball into a small paper candy cup. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks.

 

Yield: 45 to 50 balls

ESPRESSO-WALNUT TOFFEE

a
nything that requires a candy thermometer can seem daunting, but don't let it get to you. This toffee, a riff on a recipe that my mother once found in
Bon Appétit
, is really very straightforward. Just be sure to have your ingredients measured and ready before you begin: once the process has started, you won't have time to stop and prepare them.

Also, on a precautionary note, do not double this recipe. Candy recipes do not tend to double well.

 

2 cups walnuts

1 cup sugar

¹
/
₃
cup packed light brown sugar

2 teaspoons instant espresso powder

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

¹
/
₃
cup water

1 tablespoon unsulfured molasses

4½ ounces bittersweet chocolate, very finely chopped

4½ ounces white chocolate, very finely chopped

2½ sticks (10 ounces) unsalted butter

 

Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Put the walnuts on a baking sheet, arranging them in a single layer, and bake until they are fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Do not allow them to burn. Set them aside to cool, about 10 minutes, then coarsely chop them. Transfer 1½ cups to a small bowl. Then finely chop the remaining ½ cup, and put it in a separate bowl.

Prepare your ingredients and equipment. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugars, espresso powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the water and molasses. Put the chopped chocolates in their own separate bowls. Grease a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray or butter.

In a heavy, 2-to 3-quart saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the sugars, espresso powder, cinnamon, salt, water, and molasses and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Attach a candy thermometer to
the side of the pan. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the mixture registers 290°F (and no less), stirring frequently at first, and then slowly and constantly scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula, about 20 minutes.

When the mixture is up to temperature, remove the pan from the heat. Immediately stir in 1½ cups coarsely chopped walnuts. Quickly pour the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet; do not scrape the saucepan. Tilt and gently shake the baking sheet so that the toffee spreads to a ¼-inch thickness. Sprinkle the chocolates by generous tablespoonfuls onto the hot toffee, alternating rows of bittersweet and white. Allow them to melt for 1 minute. Using the back of a spoon, spread the melted chocolates, taking care not to mix them. Then drag the tip of a small knife or the tines of a fork across the chocolates, swirling them to create a marbled look. Sprinkle with ½ cup finely chopped walnuts. Slide the pan into the refrigerator, and chill until the toffee is firm, about 1 hour. Break it into pieces of whatever size you like.

 

NOTE:
Stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, toffee will keep for up to 2 weeks. Serve it cold or at room temperature.

 

Yield: about 2 pounds