Apricot Cake

Dear Devon,

Summer, is perhaps my favorite season, not because of its relaxed balmy nights or the promise of vacations, but because of the sweet, ripe fruits. Every summer, I look forward to filling my fridge with apricots, peaches, watermelons, pears, and strawberries. Unfortunately, the fruits of recent summers resemble only in name and shape the fabulous fruits of years past. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have been disappointed by hard peaches, mealy pears, and green apricots. It always broke my heart to walk past those perfect looking but tasteless summer fruits. And, I am sure it’s going to be harder once I return from Barcelona. The fruit here is how I remember fruit from my childhood to taste, feel, and smell.

Juicy, sweet, and gently blushed, apricots are again my favorite summer fruit. Apricots come in two sizes, big and small. It is not the most sophisticated of classification systems, but it’s the best that I can get out of my fruit vendor. I’m partial to the smaller ones, which have a more intense honey-like flavor and are a bit more delicate. Alas, the season is already over for these gems; I will have to make it through with their larger counterparts.

The apricots are so tasty that I debated whether to bake with them. In the end, the temptation to experiment was too strong. I pieced together two of Dorie Greenspan’s recipes and invented an olive oil based cake flavored with lemon infused sugars and a splash of hazelnut oil. The cake turned out nicely, but it also turned me out of the apartment. Barcelona has been experiencing a mild summer, but August brought an inescapable wave of humidity, blinding sun, and scorching heat. (Every tourist wears a sunburn like a badge of honor. I am hidden under dark sunglasses, hat, and an impenetrable layer of spf 75 sunscreen). My tiny apartment is a death trap, especially with the oven on. But when perfectly ripe, juicy, fat apricots are in season, I can set aside temporary discomfort for a delicious slice of cake (or so I thought).


Apricot Cake
(makes one 9 inch round cake)

1 pound apricots, halved
¼ cup white sugar
2 lengths of lemon peel
½ cup brown sugar
9 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
1 tsp hazelnut oil
1 ½ cup flour
½ cup cornmeal
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a springform pan and set aside until ready to use.

Pick over and wash apricots, cleaning off any dirt and removing any bruised portions. Using a sharp knife, halve apricots and remove the stone. Continue until all the apricots are halved and pitted. Set aside until ready to use.

Put white sugar and lemon peel in a large mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, crush the lemon peel into the sugar, infusing the white sugar with the fragrant citrus oils. Discard peel and add brown sugar. Add olive oil and mix until a thick soupy consistency. Beat in one egg at a time, followed by hazelnut oil.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt. Measure out milk. Alternating between flour mixture and milk, add to the sugar-oil batter, beginning and ending with flour.

Pour batter into prepared cake form. Nestle halved apricots into the batter, creating a roughly circular pattern.

Bake in the oven 55 to 65 minutes, until golden brown and fragrant. The cake test works well. Allow to cool on a wire rack before serving.

It is best eaten the day it is made, but will keep well in an airtight container for 2 days after baking.

Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

Dear Devon,

Last year on Valentine’s Day, slightly blue scones— made with blood oranges— appeared on your kitchen table. I thought I’d pick up where you left off. This morning, I threw together a blood orange and olive oil cake. Blood oranges are in season. And the fiery skinned fruits are all over the market stands.

These oranges were bursting with juice and color. The smell was completely intoxicating. I felt a bit wasteful using the juice to flavor my cake. It seemed much more appropriate to drink the sweet and slightly acidic juice. I called the still groggy eyed boy into the kitchen to share in the sweet flowery smell of freshly squeezed juice.

I have tried to keep kitchen equipment and utensils to the bare minimum. Not an easy task, given my love of smooth ceramic mixing bowls, enamel coated Dutch ovens, and silicon molds. I am now forced to be a bit more resourceful. This is how I ended up using my terracotta cazuela as a baking dish.

A traditional cooking vessel, the cazuela is used for just about everything: roasting, boiling water, stewing…the list continues. Baking a cake seemed a natural extension. The thick clay walls would act almost like an oven within the oven, insulating the cake nicely and providing even heat. I suspected that these same properties would result in a beautiful crunchy crust. (I was not disappointed).

In general, it is good practice to measure the capacity of the baking vessel before filling it with batter. I only wish I had thought to measure the capacity of my mixing bowl too! Half way through the recipe, I realized that it was not possible to mix the liquids and the flour in my medium sized bowl. A bit frantic, I had to press my aluminum pot into service.


Mixing the blood orange juice into the batter, I issued a silent prayer that my cake would not turn out that light blue color of your scones. I reread your post before starting for some advice. To try to avoid the blue effect, I mixed in tangy yogurt instead of lowfat milk. I hoped the acid from the yogurt would help balance the pH of the batter.

As I poured my gooey batter into my lightly oiled cazuela, I admitted my doubts aloud. My remarks were answered with an eager request to lick the sides of “mixing bowl.” The largest spoon in the house was plopped into the mixing bowl and handed over.

The cake emerged from the oven golden on top with a wonderful crusty edge. It was moist and light with the subtle orange flavoring. The cazuela baked the cake evenly and a bit surprisingly, released the cake easily and in one piece. I cut two generous slices and served the cake with a cup of strong dark coffee. My slice wasn’t quite generous enough and as I rose to cut myself another piece, a bright voice asked for a second slice even though there was still half a slice remaining on the plate!


Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake
Makes one 10 inch round cake or one 12-cup bundt cake

2 ¼ cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp blood orange zest and lemon zest
2/3 cup blood orange juice (roughly 3 oranges)
3 eggs, beaten
8 oz olive oil
1 cup yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil the baking round. I used a 12-cup capacity baking dish. The recipe is styled for a 12-cup bundt pan or equivalent round cake pan.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.

Zest one blood orange and half a lemon. Juice three blood oranges. In a second mixing bowl, mix citrus zest and sugar. Whisk in three beaten eggs, olive oil, orange juice, and yogurt.

Pour wet ingredients into the flour mixture. The mixture will look a bit curdled but it will be fine. Gently whisk until combined. Transfer batter to the prepared baking dish. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Bake 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes.

Note: my baking time may vary from the standard metal baking dishes. Clay cazuelas generally take longer to heat up and probably take a bit longer when baking. I advise checking the cake at the 45-minute mark.

Mini Chocolate Walnut Cakes

Dear Devon,

I am not usually drawn to chocolate cakes. Sure, I enjoy the occasional bite of chocolate, and will never turn down an opened bag of peanut M&Ms, but in the end, I tend to prefer desserts without chocolate. So, it is a bit surprising that I falling into the world of chocolate obsessions.

The discovery of bricks of 70% chocolate has changed my world. Technically, the Catalans do not use this type of chocolate for baking but rather for their rich afternoon hot chocolate, usually taken with churros or melindros. Initially ignorant of this differentiation, I grabbed a bar for random snacking and occasional baking. It was a lucky mistake. Now I am embarking on a new adventure: chocolate desserts.

The chocolate is so rich that it needs something more to balance the heady chocolate flavor. I tried making this cake in a larger, traditional cake form with port-infused prunes. Delicious, but the prunes were lost in the smooth, rich chocolate flavor. Next, I tried adding grated ginger, but even 1 ½ tbsp of ginger could not stand up to this intense chocolate flavor. Perhaps the best alternative is nuts: walnuts, pistachios, or my personal favorite, hazelnuts. I set out this morning to try my theory. Will the addition of nuts bring my chocolate cake to a new level?


I was a bit too caught up in my lofty goal to make adequate preparations to ensure optimum success and low levels of stress. The truth is, no matter how large your kitchen, there is never enough counter space, the sink is full of dishes, or you need two whisks and can only find one. I was a bit frantic in the kitchen trying to pull this one together. But now, seated in front of my glowing laptop screen, chocolate cake by my side, I have almost forgotten that I splashed melted chocolate on my blue sweater and that I forgot to turn on the oven.

And even with my organizational challenges, I plan to add this recipe to my rotation. It is not a difficult recipe. It does not require an entire battery of bowls, knives, or whisks. But it does call for a bit of planning. In the end, the rich moist cake studded with creamy buttery walnuts, cloaked in the intense flavor of chocolate, will make the chore of scrubbing bowls seem insignificant.

Next on the list: Flourless Chocolate Cake



Mini Chocolate Walnut Cakes
Makes 6 small cakes or one large 9 inch cake

6 oz butter
4 oz chocolate (70% cacao)
2 eggs
1 tsp red port
¼ cup walnuts, chopped
½ tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
½ cup flour
¾ tsp baking soda
2 pinches of salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Butter and lightly flour muffin tin or cake pan. Set aside on a large baking sheet until ready to use.

Dice butter and coarsely chop chocolate. Set a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Add butter and chocolate to the bowl and gently melt, stirring occasionally to encourage even melting. Stir in port. When the mixture appears smooth and glossy, remove and set aside to cool.

Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside until ready to use.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs for about 30 seconds, just to break them up. Gradually begin adding sugar, whisking vigorously until all the sugar has been incorporated. Whisk until the egg-sugar mixture is about double in volume, thick and a bit frothy. It should be a light lemon yellow color. Add flour in two additions, mixing just until the flour is incorporated. Fold in melted chocolate-butter mixture and 2/3 of the chopped walnuts.

Spoon batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with remaining chopped nuts. Bake in pre-heated oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack before serving.

Gateau Breton

Dearest Michelle,

I love, love, love The Country Cooking of France. For weeks after you gave it to me, I've been itching to sit down and read it through, but had been thwarted by life until this week. Finally, a couple of days ago, I was able to deposit myself on the couch with a cup of tea and minimal procrastinatory guilt to read it cover to cover. It is a gorgeous book, one of those that would be equally appropriate on a coffee table or on a bookshelf devoted to serious cookbooks. The photos are lovely, and the blurbs about different regions and ingredients make entertaining reading. And then, there are so many recipes in there that I want to make! I was bookmarking those that I liked particularly, but that soon became redundant.

A few recipes jumped out at me immediately, among them that for gateau Breton. I was waffling between baking that or a lemon tart (a long-time favorite), but the gateau was a little easier to make, and required fewer ingredients. There is no image to go with the recipe in the book, but the description grabbed me,

"A cross between pound cake and shortbread, Gateau Breton seems to me richer and more luscious than either."

Who could resist that? I'm sure glad I didn't; this is something I will make again. It is buttery like a shortbread, but rich with the egg yolks and therefore more tender to the bite, with barely a touch of crunch in the top due to the glaze. Eaten immediately (and, no, we didn't wait till it had cooled completely, though you are supposed to), it seems a touch sweet, but the next day the flavors were perfectly balanced. Supposedly, it gets even better with age, and can be kept for up to two weeks, but this one barely made it three days. Someday I'd like to see how the flavors further develop. Maybe the trick is to hide it somewhere.


While this gateau is perfect on its own, I couldn't help but think of pairings for it. I ate it for breakfast yesterday with strawberry jam (delicious) and a cup of maccha green tea, and I bet it would be equally as good with lemon curd. One of my friends suggested incorporating almond paste, which would also be tasty. Almond flour, substituted in for some of the all-purpose, would be interesting too. Mostly, I'd like to use this dough as tart crust, which it's not far from. I don't know that I'll mess with the gateau itself, as much as incorporate the recipe into something new; any additions would make it other than what it is, so perfect in its purity.


Gateau Breton

from The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan, pg 293

Note: This is incredibly easy to make, and well worth it. I loved how the book has the weight of ingredients marked; if you don't have a kitchen scale I'd highly recommend getting one. It takes all of the guesswork out of measuring flour. That is, of course, if the recipe notes the weight. I imagine that the butter, egg yolks, and sugar could be mixed most of the way in a separate bowl for ease and incorporated with the flour afterward, but I made it in the method detailed below which was not difficult. The author notes that if you do not use salted butter, 1/2 t salt should be added to the flour.



1 c /225g salted butter, soft but not VERY soft
6 egg yolks, room temp, beaten to mix but not beyond
2 c / 250 g flour
1 c / 200g sugar
1 T Calvados or rum ( optional- I omitted due to convenience)

8 inch tart pan with fluted rim and removable base



Butter tart pan ( I use a brush, which is easy and consistent) and set aside 1 t egg yolk for the glaze. Sift flour onto work surface and sweep a large well in the surface with your hand (larger than you'd think). Cube butter and add to center with sugar, yolks, and booze, if using. Work these together with fingers into a paste. Using fingers and heels of your hands, work in flour and work dough gently 'til smooth. It should be sticky at this point and should be mixed with the use of a pastry scraper.






Transfer dough to the pan and smooth the top with your hand, dipped in water so it does not stick. Brush the surface with the reserved egg yolk and mark a lattice in the glaze with the tines of a fork. Chill until firm, at least 20 m. Meanwhile, heat oven to 375F/ 190C.

Put tart pan on baking sheet before setting in oven. Bake 20 m. Reduce heat to 350F/180C and bake until cake is firm and golden brown, and the edges shrink from the sides of the pan, 20-25m longer. Let cool till tepid, then free it from the pan to a rack to finish cooling. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if you are so inclined.

It's as good freshly baked as it is saved in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, when the texture softens and the butter flavor deepens.

I Call It Brownie Cake

Dear Devon,

A lukewarm response to my much praised and loved brownies encouraged me to rethink this American dessert. Some people can't get excited about brownies. I won't name names, but they exist, and I know such a person. They feel that there are so many wonderful desserts out there, why make brownies? I suppose, some of us are too spoiled by on-demand sweet potato pies and regular batches of biscotti to take much notice of a freshly baked, chocolate laden brownie.

Making the perfect brownie has been something of an obsession for me. In high school, I once made the mistake of making a batch of dry and tasteless bronwies. I have never been able to live this down. In certain circles, the story still haunts me. But, taking this critique in stride, I have, ten years later, developed an amazingly fudgy, dense, and absolutely sensational brownie recipe. Unfortunately, there are some who, while admitting admiration for my brownies, feel that it can be difficult to get excited about them.

Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours has several fantastic brownie recipes. I absolutely love this cookbook and will probably make everything in the book within my lifetime, if not in the next two years. My favorite brownie is the first recipe listed. The brownies are unusual in their thickness. These are not the 2 inch behemoths you find in gourmet bakeries. But at 3/4 of an inch in thickness, my brownies pack an intense chocolate flavor. I played with the recipe adding a bit more chocolate and a tablespoon of espresso to boost the flavors. The brownies come out dark and moist with a crisp and crackled surface.

While wrestling with the challenge to make a more exciting brownie, I decided to bake my way through Dorie's brownie recipes. The result was an amazing range of brownie production. The proportions of ingredients, that is, fat to flour and chocolate, varied noticeably, as did the final brownie. In the end, I was inspired by these recipes to produce a brownie that combined the bold chocolate flavor of a brownie with the light, airy texture of a moist cake.

I liked the idea of making a flourless chocolate cake with a touch of flour. I often think of flourless chocolate cakes as brownies on steroids. To maintain the intense chocolatiness of brownies, I opted for 10 oz of chocolate, combining semi-sweet and bittersweet. I like the complexity of flavor produced by mixing the two chocolates. To ensure richness and moistness, I upped the butter by half and increased the flour two-fold. I added the zest from the clementine and half a vanilla bean. The zest did not have a huge effect. The fruit wasn't ripe, but I imagine orange zest would work very nicely. The last piece of seasoning was salt. I used big crystals of kosher salt, liberally sprinkled into the flour. It makes for an unexpected bit of savory in an otherwise sweet dessert.

What came out of the oven was lovely. My brownie cake embodied the essence and flavor of brownie: the intense chocolate, the wonderful crackly crust, and the moistness and texture of a cake. Gone was the dense and powerful fudge brownie. Instead a lovely chocolate cake emerged with the spirit of a brownie.


Brownie Cake

6 oz of butter

6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

4 oz bitter sweet chocolate
1 tbsp espresso

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1/2 vanilla bean
1 tbsp citrus zest (orange probably works best)

3/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 13 x 9 inch pan.

Melt butter and chocolate in the top bowl of a double boiler. Add espresso. Watch the melting chocolate and butter vigilantly, occasionally stirring the contents to promote even melting and prevent the butter and chocolate from scorching. In a large work bowl, measure out the sugar and scrape the seeds from half a vanilla bean. Add zest. Whisk together to mix. Add the melted chocolate and butter mixture directly to the sugar, whisking vigorously. Add the eggs, one at a time, thoroughly mixing in each egg. Don't be alarmed if the mixture looks curdled, just keep blending. The chocolate mixture will get thick and dense. Mix in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Pour batter into the buttered pan. Bake in the oven for approximately 45 minutes, until the center is set. I use the toothpick test. Cool slightly before serving. Brownie cake is nice with a big scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, a tall glass of milk, or as a midnight snack.

P.S. Happy New Year! Been spending the holiday traveling up and down the California coast. I have lots of pictures to share.

xxx