Around My French Table (83 page)

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

SERVING
The cake can be served warm or at room temperature, with or without a little softly whipped barely sweetened heavy cream or a spoonful of ice cream. Marie-Hélène served her cake with cinnamon ice cream, and it was a terrific combination.

STORING
The cake will keep for about 2 days at room temperature and, according to my husband, gets more comforting with each passing day. However long you keep the cake, it's best not to cover it—it's too moist. Leave the cake on its plate and just press a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper against the cut surfaces.

T
HE DIRECT TRANSLATION OF QUATRE-QUARTS IS
four-fourths, or 4/4. Like our American pound cake, the
quatre-quarts
is based on equal measures of four ingredients: eggs, flour, sugar, and butter. In fact, many of the French recipes for this very basic cake have ingredient lists that read something like this: weigh the eggs, then measure out equal amounts of flour, sugar, and butter. Because of the differences between French and American flours, I've had to tweak the measurements a little, but what you'll get in the end will be just the same as what mothers across France get when they make this as an after-school treat for their kids: a cake with a lovely crumb, a light spring, the comforting flavor of basic ingredients, and a look so sweet and plain that you'd think the cake had the word
home
etched into its slightly domed top.

As with any recipe that's been made for as long as this one has, and is made by as many people as this one is, there are lots of opinions abroad about the way things should be done. I'm told there's a school of bakers that doesn't separate the eggs, but I don't hold with that. Whipping the whites is an extra step, but worth the extra effort. And I'm not sure there are many bakers who sprinkle the tops of their cakes with brown sugar, but it creates such a nice glaze and such a nice little bit of unexpected sweetness that I make it a standard practice.

Like many French cakes, this one is dry by our standards, but dry is just fine when you're serving it with tea or coffee and is absolutely perfect when you want to dress it up a little, as is often done, with saucy sugared berries, jam, any kind of fruit coulis, a dollop of whipped cream, a spoonful of crème fraîche, or ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-×-2-inch round cake pan or an 8-inch springform pan, dust the inside with flour, and tap out the excess. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, whip the egg whites until they hold firm peaks but are still glossy.

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together with a whisk until they are thick and pale. Pour in the melted butter and the vanilla or alcohol, if you're using it, and whisk gently until you have a satiny batter. Gently whisk in the flour mixture. Switch to a rubber spatula and stir one quarter of the egg whites into the batter—there's no need to be thorough—then lightly fold in the remainder of the whipped whites. Scrape the batter into the pan, put the pan on the lined baking sheet, and sprinkle the top of the cake with the brown sugar.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cake is golden and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan; a knife inserted into the center should come out clean. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let the cake rest for about 10 minutes.

If you used a regular cake pan, run a blunt knife around the edge of the pan and unmold the cake onto the cooling rack, turn the cake right side up, and let it cool to room temperature on the rack. If you used a springform pan, remove the sides of the pan and either leave the cake on the base or turn the cake over, remove the base, and turn the cake right side up to cool on the rack.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

SERVING
The cake is best when it is only ever so slightly warm or at room temperature. Serve it in wedges as a snack or top it with fruit, sauces, or ice cream and serve it for dessert.

STORING
Once cooled, the cake can be wrapped airtight and kept for up to 3 days at room temperature. Stale cake is delicious lightly toasted.

I
F MY FRIEND CLAUDINE MARTINA,
a teacher from Angers, had given me this recipe years ago, my baking career might have ended—I would have found away to use this recipe for just about everything. The
visitandine
is a simple, very white cake with an elegant small-grained crumb, a lovely springy sponge, and a pure butter-and-sugar flavor that makes it perfect plain or paired with jam, fruit, chocolate, citrus curds, cream, frosting, or glaze. In fact, even though it's totally French, it's outstanding as the base for an all-American strawberry shortcake.

Except for the fact that Claudine beats her egg whites (there are no yolks in the recipe), something that not everyone does with the
visitandine,
the recipe is very similar to the one for Coconut Friands (
[>]
) and not that dissimilar from the one for Financiers (
[>]
), a centuries-old recipe in which the whites are heated.
Visitandine
is in all likelihood as old as, or older than, these recipes. Named for a Catholic religious order founded in France, the cake was probably baked by the nuns as a means of supporting themselves when they were a cloistered contemplative community.

If you find
visitandines
in pastry shops in France, you might find them baked in madeleine molds, financier pans, tins that turn out little mini-muffin cakes, or small fluted tartlet pans. Claudine bakes hers as a cake in a large porcelain tart pan. Following her lead, I use a 10-inch glass pie plate. About using her
plat à tarte,
Claudine says, "I like it because I get a nice flat
galette
," which is exactly what I like about using the pie plate.

About the butter: If you'd like, you can brown it, turning it into
beurre noisette,
which gives it hints of caramel and hazelnuts
(noisettes),
a nice flavor addition to this cake. Turn the heat up under the melted butter so that it boils gently and, never taking your eyes off the pan, continue to simmer the butter until it turns a golden brown. As soon as you get the color you want, remove the pan from the heat and pour the butter into a heatproof bowl to stop the cooking and cool it down.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Choose a pan: I often use a 10-inch Pyrex pie plate, but you can use a springform, layer cake, or fluted porcelain or glass quiche pan of similar size. (If your pan is a little smaller, you'll have to bake the
visitandine
a little longer; if it's larger, bake it a little less.) Whatever you choose, butter the pan well and line it with a circle of parchment paper cut to fit the base of the pan; butter the parchment.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, whip the egg whites until they hold firm peaks but are still glossy.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Pour in the melted butter, followed by the vanilla, and, using the whisk, stir until the ingredients are fully blended. The mixture will clump together and look slightly hopeless, but press on, stirring it gently to mix. Staying with the whisk, slide about one quarter of the beaten whites out of their bowl and onto the batter (it looks more like a dough now) and use the whisk to stir them in. Be gentle, but don't be concerned about knocking the air out of the whites—it's inevitable. With this portion of the whites in, the batter will be loose enough that you can use the whisk to fold in the remaining whites. Scrape the batter into the pan and jiggle the pan to even the top.

Bake the cake for 33 to 38 minutes (remember to check earlier if your pan is larger than 10 inches), or until it's beautifully browned and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan; a knife inserted into the center should come out clean. As soon as the cake comes from the oven, run a blunt knife around the edge. Let the cake cool on a cooling rack for about 3 minutes, then invert it, pull off the parchment, and let it cool to room temperature on the rack.

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

SERVING
Cut in wedges, the cake makes a good finger sweet at teatime. Make two cakes, and you can layer them with jam and top with whipped cream and maybe some berries. The cake just about defines versatility, so have fun with it.

STORING
Covered, the cake will keep at room temperature for at least 3 days. The
visitandine
is still good when it goes a little stale, particularly if you dunk it into tea or milky coffee.

I
T WAS SUMMER AND SUNNY,
and my husband, Michael, and I were having lunch outdoors at a tiny bistro off the picturesque and often-pictured Place Dauphine in Paris. Someone had told me that Yves Montand lived in one of the stone buildings surrounding the square, and I was secretly hoping that he'd stroll past us at any moment. What I wasn't expecting was that we'd finish our meal with a dessert that was completely new to me: it was a simple puddingish cake, almost like fine-grained polenta, dotted with raisins and coated in caramel, like a flan.

Although my French friends had childhood memories of the cake and loved it, no one could tell me what was in it, because the only way they'd ever seen it made—or made it themselves—was from a supermarket mix.

It took me a while to find out that the semolina that gives the cake its name is farina, best known in our country under the brand name Cream of Wheat, the breakfast cereal. Now that I know, I make the cake often, usually to serve after a light meal. The traditional addition is golden raisins—they're even included in the boxed mix—but bits of any dried fruit are fine, as are diced apple or pear sauteed in a little butter beforehand, or even small pieces of mango.

By the way, I tried the cake from the mix—it doesn't hold a candle to this homemade version.