Berry and Cream cake.

Here is a very special cake. I did this for a big lunch with teenagers and twenty somethings at my neighbor's house last year. Let me get this out of the way right now. I OVER DO. If a recipe of frosting is perfect, I make a double or one and a half batch recipe. If a recipe asks for whipped cream, there will be mountains of it! It can be excessive, so be careful not to fall over the edge as I do.

I do not include a cake recipe here. Try one in the other posts on the sight, your favorite white cake recipe, or even the almond cake in the Amaretto Cake recipe posted here.

Split two standard round layer cakes horizontally so you end up with four layers. You can either saw around a few inches deep with a serrated knife, then go deeper on the second pass, or put a thread all the way around the cake, making a simple un-tightened knot, then pulling the ends to cut through the cake as you tighten the knot. Is that at all clear?

Place the first bottom layer on a nice cake plate or pedestal. Place a few small sheets of waxed paper on the plate under the edge of the cake to protect the plate.

Whip three pints(I do four, but that is my tendency to excess speaking) of whipping cream with powdered sugar and vanilla.

Toast one cup of slivered almonds on a cookie sheet or in a dry frying pan, just till golden.

Wash small containers of Blueberries, Raspberries, Blackberries and Strawberries, dry them and set aside. Do not sugar them.

OPTIONAL: Make a simple syrup flavored with an extract that goes well with berries like Almond, or flavor the syrup with a liqueur of your choice.

Soak the bottom layer with the simple syrup if desired. and frost it thinly with cream. cover the cream with a carpet of one of the berries and frost again to even the layer.

Add the second layer, cut side up. Repeat the process with different berries.

Do the same with the third layer.

Place the fourth layer on top with the cut side up again.(Or you can sprinkle the cake with syrup while in your hand, then invert on top of the cake with the baked surface up.) Sprinkle with syrup and frost the entire cake heavily with whipped cream, reserving a cup or two for decoration.

Top with the last variety of berries, and perhaps a mix of berries if any are left from the lower layers. Place them in a very decorative pattern, but keep them a bit away from the edge. Look your berries over before you begin. Use the smallest number of berries for the top, then you can mix the left over berries with them.

Pipe the rest of the cream decoratively around the cake at the plate edge, the rim of the cake and in rosettes or stars among the berries. Place any berries left over in the cream rosettes. You could do all of this with a knife if you do not have a pastry bag, or cut a hole in the corner of a plastic storage bag to make a makeshift pastry bag.

Sprinkle with almonds, which you could also do on every layer if you like.

Chill well till ready to serve.

This would work well with an angel cake cut into layers with mounds of berries and cream in the middle.

Use your own discretion on the berries. Just one variety will not be a betrayal, just make sure you have lots of them or the white cake with whipped cream will be rather BLAH!

Grammie Boutelier's Cake as remembered by my stepfather Paul McLaughlin

Lowell Paul McLaughlin


















No relation to this story, excpt dairy references. This is Elsie the cow in Littleton. Just being picturesque in an Andrew Wyeth sort of way.


Paul was a mix of Maine cultures. The name Boutelier in his grandparents suggests French. But McLaughlin was on the other side. His research led him to a succession of names that suggested the British Isles. I think he liked the idea of Welsh as his heritage.
Grammie and Grampie Boutelier(Paul's Mother's parents) lived on a dairy farm in Dyer Brook, near Smyrna Mills in North central Maine. You know...near Sherman...Perhaps Houlton would help. Lets just say it was not close to anything.
It was a pleasant 45 minute ride from home, down country lanes that had 60 mile an hour speed limits(I loved that when I got my licence). You passed little towns, lakes and fields with distant views of Glacial Eskers in long ridges covered with pine, spruce and maple forest. It was also along that road that we stopped at a little cottage(A kind word)and got Queenie, who was the first dog I remember. She became my brother Dick's dog really, but I remember her entire life well. It was very idyllic there, and I miss that.
The house was a little "end" temple Greek Revival style house, that was left simple instead of having its nice trim work. It was a strong red with white trim. It would have looked grand despite its size if it had been dressed a bit. There was a little pump in the yard that I was sent out to once or twice for water. I do not remember the occasion, as I think they had running water as well. It was a Dairy farm with rolling pastures in dense green grass. And there was a fish pond back in the fields that I loved to haunt when the visiting did not interest me. Humble people, wonderful people, working people. Very Lucy Maud Montgomery...Lets see if you get THAT reference.

Paul did not say anything much about his childhood, but on one occasion he told me that he especially loved a cake that his grandmother made. She would do a white cake. I guess, like my mother, there were plenty of eggs so you could waste the yolks, or she had some other use for them. Sorry, no recipe. She would do the layers filled with Cranberry preserves(There just happens to be a cranberry jelly recipe here.) made at home.(Probably high bush as there were not any cranberry bogs there.) I think that she may have split the layers to put the filling in, but this is not clear in my memory of what he said. Then she would frost the cake with fresh sweetened whipped cream(Vanilla would be necessary if you had it.) and serve.
You would have to eat this cake almost instantly, especially before the refrigerator came along. I do not think however, that anyone would complain about that. I can just see this with mounds of cream on top and sitting on a pedestal stand surrounded with silver, tea service, cups and saucers and dessert plates.
The country people are not ostentatious, but they knew how to put on a meal and to show the church ladies or birthday boy a beautiful time.
You could, of course, use any preserves you had on hand. I love black cherry reserves. Though I was not particularly fond of cranberry at the time, this somehow captured my imagination. Perhaps it was the way he described it with such nostalgia.
Mom had many times used jelly as a filling in cakes and I had not really taken to it. I have very narrow likes in the preserve world, and she never hit my preferences I guess. Besides, I loved frosting and lots of it. She did the most beautiful cakes. She just had a knack with a palette knife I guess. Swirls and peaks all over. These cake decorators with their thin smooth coatings do not know what they missed.
a good substitute might be Currant jelly. The thing that interested me about this was the possibility of the freshness that a tart fruit would bring to the sweet cake.
See my post for berry filled whipped cream cake.

Alberta's Angel Ginger Cake

This is one of those little mysteries. There was another from my grandmother's recipes where the ingredient in the name of the recipe was not even mentioned in the text of the recipe. This sounds like a good recipe, but there appear to be some omissions. It does not have a method attached to it, so you are on your own for the pan choice and the method. And, despite the fact that it is Angel Ginger cake, there is no mention of any Ginger in it. I suppose you just have to do it this way and try some ginger when you are up for a little experimentation.

1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons of shortening
1/4 cup of molasses
1 egg well beaten
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 teaspoon of soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
A "little" salt
1/2 cup boiling water

Bake in a moderate oven.

There are two methods you might try here.

One
You may try melting the shortening, molasses and sugar in the boiling water.
Mix the dry ingredients.
add the rest of the ingredients as the water mixture cools.

Two
You cream the sugar and shortening.
Add the egg and molasses.
Mix the dry ingredients.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the first mix.

The first seems more logical to me.

Try with the cinnamon and/or the ginger instead...Perhaps both?

Wood Cake. and nut brittles

I was fascinated by a recipe I once saw for a Baum Kuchen. This was a cake that was cooked in such a way as to make striations in the cake that looked like you had cut through a piece of wood. Before the time of Internet, there was no way I would be able to find a recipe for that. I was too lazy to go from library cookbook to library cookbook. I did remember the basics of how it was done however, so I simply made it up myself out of stock recipes found here and there and adapted for my own use. I will not publish it here, as it would not be nice to steal some one's recipe. I found a yellow cake recipe in Fanny Farmer, though any yellow cake would certainly do. It would work nicely with a good boxed yellow or gold cake. I also could not remember how it was frosted in the original, so I had to improvise that as well. I had a birthday party coming up for one of my friends in Wiscasset, Maine. I thought that this was a good thing to try as a novelty cake for his birthday.

Traditionally this cake is made of:

One part flour by weight.
One part butter by weight and
Two parts eggs by weight.

If you are up on pastry cookery, you should be able to use this to come up with a respectable batter using common cake methods. Of course you could also look up a recipe on line. I think, however, that it is just as easy to use a white or yellow cake recipe of your choice. This cake would often be coated in melted chocolate among other things because it is common all over the world in different forms. In fact, it is often made by broiling it on a spit!


This post is what I came up with:

One problem with recreating this is the near impossibility of coming up with a Brittle(like peanut brittle) with mixed nuts in it. I was trying to make a topping that furthered the idea of "wood". I found a product at a local gourmet store called Rain forest Crunch. It was mixed tropical nuts in a brittle. Great stuff, very expensive, and probably not available anymore. You could make your own brittle, which is pretty simple, or use toffee pieces and a can of unsalted or lightly salted mixed nuts.(No peanuts please) I updated this recipe after a few days with simple brittle recipes. I do not like the idea of using peanut brittle, as a peanut is more of a bean, and the taste is so specifically PEANUT that it spoils the whole idea.

This method will give you a very dense and moist cake, about half the size of the expected two layer cake recipe you will use.

Make a simple gold cake batter. Fanny Farmer is always a good source.

Grease and flour a round cake pan.

Use a large serving spoon to pour a thin layer of batter on the bottom of the pan.

If a lot of dark color is desired, you might sprinkle a layer of sugar on the surface of the batter.

Spread the batter, or if thin enough, tilt the pan to allow it to cover the surface.

Run the pan under a preheated broiler. Watch it carefully and allow it to brown all over.

Remove the pan and spread another thin film over the first. The layers may vary in thickness.

Run it under the broiler again and remove once browned.

Continue till all the batter is used up and the pan is nearly full. This is a little time consuming and tedious if you think about it, but it is a lot of fun to do. This does not have to be perfect. A little uneven makes it look more realistic when you are done.

Check the cake with a toothpick to see if all the layers have cooked through. If not, heat the oven to the temperature recommended for the original cake and bake for a few minutes till it is completely cooked. This should not be necessary if the layers were all thin. (It will be moister than regular baked cake.)

Using about 8 ounces of rain forest crunch, save some of the medium sized pieces for decoration at the end. Use more if you like.

Divide the remainder in half.

Grind one half of the brittle in a food processor to nearly a powder.

Grind the other half into small chunks about the size of a pea to a chick pea.

Beat a pint of heavy whipping cream to stiff peaks with 1/4 cup of sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla.

Fold in the powdered brittle completely. Then fold the chunks into it fairly unevenly, so you see the texture of the lumps in the cream.

Frost the entire cake with the whipped cream mixture, and decorate the top with a little forest of broken brittle pieces.

When you cut through the cake, there will be a pattern in the cake similar to a chunk of wood. The topping will be sweet, but with a pronounced nutty flavor.

Not a Baum Kuchen, but more of a Wood Cake...
This is great fun to do with a kid, telling them what it will look like in advance, and having it come true when they cut into it. Lots of fun.

You could pour melted chocolate over the cake or make a ganache to pour over it(Just chocolate and cream). Another very good glaze is made by beating water into melted chocolate(This is very counter intuitive as water and chocolate are generally enemies). The whipped cream and brittle topping is my own, though toffees are also commonly used in connection with this cake, sometimes mixed into the batter.




Number one Brittle recipe:

Mix two cups of sugar with 1/4 cup of cider vinegar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cook till dark yellow brown and add flavorings as desired, a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt and a cup of nuts. Spread on a greased sheet of parchment and allow to cool and break up.



Crocante recipe from a neighbor.

1 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons of water
2 Tablespoons of butter unsalted is best especially if you are using nuts with salt on them
2 Tablespoons of light corn syrup
1 tsp salt less if using salted butter
1 cup nuts
I teaspoon of baking soda (optional)



Line a large a cookie sheet with parchment or a silicone mat. Grease the parchment.

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the sugar, water, butter, corn syrup, and salt. Cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves, then raise the heat to high and boil without stirring. Brush down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush as you would in any candy making, until the mixture turns deep golden brown in color and the thermometer reads 350 degrees F. Remove from the heat and stir in the nuts and baking soda if using, with a wooden spoon. It should coat all the nuts. Pour it out onto the pan and, spread it till the nuts are in a single layer. Cool completely. Break it up. Keep the brittle in a sealed container in a cool, dry place for up to 2 weeks.

For use with the wood cake, use a mix of nuts like cashews, almonds, Brazil nuts, Pine nuts...but avoid peanuts for that recipe. strangely enough, you can eat brittles with other things in them. Mix in spices like cumin, Pepperoncini, garlic and things like bacon and crisped Prosciutto.

Ricotta Sfingi from Antoinette Carbone

Sorry Toni, I do not have a picture of the harbor at Santa Marina without me in it! the top three images are of Lipari from the citadel.

I wish I had a good picture of Toni Mirenda Carbone. We cannot really trace a close relationship between our families, but lets face it....Everyone in the islands can pretty much trace their ancestry to Lipari before any of the other islands. We all branched out to the other islands from there, taking our common names with us. When the populations are small on these islands, there is eventually no one to marry except close or distant relatives. If nothing else, we have to at least be related by marriage. Toni and Maria Salvi spent some time in Santa Marina last year. We tried to meet up, but it just did not work out.
I had met Toni a couple of years ago. John and I went to stay over night at her house there so we could all attend a seminar on Long Island.(Her condo was lovely and set in a town that was virtually surrounded with vinyards.) So much like the islands in that way at least.
The seminar was a series of lectures and slide shows about the 100th anniversary of the devastating earthquakes in Messina and Calabria.
Toni is a interesting person to talk to, a gracious hostess, and nearly as nuts about genealogy as I am. Plus, she is a cute little thing! Since she is obviously a distant relative, I am happy to post her recipe for Ricotta Sfingi.



Beat together:

3 eggs
1 cup Ricotta
1 tsp. Vanilla


Premix and add:

1 cup flour

1 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp sugar

pinch of salt

Blend well.

Heat oil in deep pot or fryer. With a tablespoon, drop batter into the heated oil. They will roll around naturally. Remove when golden brown with a slotted spoon. Drain on paper towel or brown paper.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar when done.

Eat when warm.

Alberta's Hot Fudge Sauce

Melt together:

1/4 cup of butter
1 1/2 squares of chocolate
1/2 cup of cocoa
1 teaspoon of vanilla
3/4 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Very Slowly add 1/2 cup of thin cream.
Bring just to the boiling point and remove from the heat.
Serve the sauce hot,
It may be reheated

Alberta's Chocolate Cake and the Slowing Oven

More Chocolate from Alberta...Imagine that. I guess she had a chocolate recipe for every occasion.

Mix together and melt:

1/8 pound of butter
2 squares of chocolate(easier if grated or chopped)

Mix separately:
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of sour milk
2 eggs
1 cup of flour
2 heaping teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Beat in the chocolate mixture.

Pour into a greased and floured pan and bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees F, then 40 minutes at 335 degrees F. Bake till a pick comes out clean.

The concept of a slowing oven.

Back when ovens were a wood fire in a chamber of masonry, you built up the fire till the chamber was very hot, perhaps 450 degrees or more. The fire would be removed from the oven or was raked to the side of the chamber. Once you started baking, it was no longer possible to feed the fire. The chamber began to cool as the fire died or the walls cooled off. You get a nice head start on browning that way, and as it cooled off the baking would continue without burning from the intense heat. They used to start with high temperature baking then move on to bread and later to pastries and cookies. Biscotti would bake at a good temperature then once sliced they would toast at a lower temperature. the last thing in the oven was the old bread, sliced to dry at the very lowest temperature when the regular baking was done. This was the Pani Caliatu. You always see these recipes like in some cakes and in apple pie that use the slowing oven, starting high and lowering later.