Easy Recipes

When I bake the Honey Ginger cake, it brings back memories visiting my grandfather as a child.  He would go to the local bakery and I buy me a slice of ginger cake.  Hope you enjoy this recipe.





Ingredients

• 2/3 cups of honey, liquid
• 5 ounces of butter
• 3/4 cup of brown sugar 
• 3 eggs 
• 2 cups of flour
• 2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground
• 1 teaspoon of ground ginger
• 1 to 2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground 
• 1/2 a cup of candied fruit cake mix, chopped
• 1/8 cup of candied ginger, chopped

Kitchen Utensils

• large bowl
• medium bowl
• electric or hand mixer
• wooden spoon
• measuring cup 
• toothpick or long skewer

Instructions:
1: In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter, honey and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

 
2:  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, ground cloves, ground ginger and cinnamon.
 
3: Add the flour mixture a little at a time into the egg mixture. Mix with an electric mixer.  Continue adding a little at a time of the flour mixture.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Then fold in the candied fruits.

4: Butter, or spray with a nonstick vegetable spray, a loaf pan. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan  Bake in the center of a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 50 to 60 minutes. 

5: Insert with a toothpick or a long skewer into the center of the cake comes out with just a few moist crumbs. If the toothpick comes out moist, then bake the cake a little longer. 

6: Remove the cake from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve with coffee, tea, milk or even hot chocolate! Enjoy!

Honey Ginger Cake Recipe - Honning Ingefær Kage Opskrift by Karen Grete & Heidi (mother/daughter team). 

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*Janssons Temptation A Swedish Christmas dish - Janssons Frestelse
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A few years ago, I read a great article attempting to parse the seemingly random trends in baby names. Sociologists weighed the evidence, and tried to figure out why there now seem to be a glut of Isabellas but nary a Lisa in sight. They pointed to numerous factors, but one that stuck out in my mind was the strong pull of the slight variation. Sometimes a name becomes so popular that it starts to feel a wee bit stale. But make the smallest of tweaks, and the name sounds fresh again. Exit Madeleine, enter Madison. My daily world is food (as opposed to baby names), but I know just what they mean. Sometimes I want the familiar flavors of tradition. But Im also a little bit bored with that, and crave a variation that satisfies off my childhood memories while appealing to my grownup tastes. Exit the honey cake, enter the rosemary honey apple galette.

This week brings Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year celebration. Apples and honey are traditionally eaten on the holiday, to give a sweetly auspicious start to the coming year. Many of my sticky childhood memories involve a bowl of MacIntoshes and a bear-shaped plastic squeeze bottle. I wanted to make a dessert featuring that familiar combination, but providing a more sophisticated riff on the season.

This galette does the job beautifully. The apples are a tart, firm variety, instead of the mealy Macs of my youth, and are featured front-and-center in the open-faced tart. Honey is used to flavor a thin layer of frangipane, a base of almond custard that keeps things from drying out, and also drizzled on top after the galette comes out of the oven. But even better, the frangipane and finishing honey are both infused with the piney scent of rosemary. Its subtle, providing just a bit of sharpness to play against the sweet round notes of apples and honey. I daresay it could start a new tradition of its own.


Rosemary Honey Apple Galette

Frangipane:
2 Tbsp butter, softened to room temperature
3 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp finely-chopped fresh rosemary
1/3 cup ground almonds
pinch salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 egg

To Finish:
1 unbaked pie crust
4-5 apples (~2 lbs), a tart variety like Granny Smith, peeled, halved and cored, and thinly sliced (I like to keep the slices together in the apple-half shape, and just fan them slightly onto the crust)
1 Tbsp butter, melted
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 sprig rosemary

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Mix together the frangipane ingredients (this is a snap in a food processor, but you can easily mix it by hand if you take care to finely mince the rosemary). Set aside.

Roll out the crust to a few circle with a diameter a few inches larger than your tart pan. Ease it gently into the pan, and spread the frangipane evenly over the base (just the base, not the overhang). Lay the apples on top, fanning the slices slightly and arranging them in whatever design you like. Take the overhanging crust, and fold it gently inwards to cover the edges of the apple slices, arranging it into folds as needed. Brush the exposed apples and crust with the melted butter, and sprinkle both lightly with the sugar. Bake until the apples brown at the edges and the crust is becoming lightly burnished, ~45 minutes.

Shortly before the galette has finished baking, take the remaining scant 1/4 cup honey and place it in a saucepan with the rosemary. Heat it gently, so that the honey becomes runny and infuses with the rosemary flavor (dont let it come to too much of a boil, or itll be reduced to an unpourable thickness). Fish the rosemary out with a fork, and drizzle the infused honey over the apples. Serve.

Twice this last week, after not seeing them in god-knows-how-many years, I happened upon katydids. Twice! One was slowly, methodically, walking across the window screen outside my office (or, as its also known, the kitchen). The other was, inexplicably, clinging to the ceiling outside the bathroom.

I know these bugs are fairly common, but I seem to have gone years without encountering one. I spent a few silent minutes transfixed by each discovery, staring at their weirdly leaf-like bodies, and the multi-jointed antennae that tap-tap-tap out a path like a blind mans cane. It all reminded me of how many hours I spent as a kid just wandering in my suburban backyard, making my own small fun and seemingly epic discoveries.

Next week brings the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the start of the new year. Like any milestone (or katydid discovery), it makes you think about where you are in life, and how things used to be so many years ago. If you tend towards the melancholic, it can be kind of a downer. But its also a wonderful opportunity to think of the sweetness of it all.

In Jewish tradition, this sweetness is commonly celebrated with apples and honey. And so, on this occasion of a new year, I bring out a collection of elegant versions of this combination. You can find all of the recipes at NPRs Kitchen Window. 

As you may suspect from the name, this cake has a lot going on. Its boozy, spicy, and very moist. This isnt a simple confection to cap off a meal -- its more like a light meal in itself. Especially with a cup of tea or coffee.

In Jewish homes, honey cakes are usually eaten on Rosh Hashanah, when the honey symbolizes the sweetness to come in the new year. Theyre also used to break the fast on Yom Kippur, when tea and sweets can ease you back into a break-fast meal.

But even if youre not Jewish, or its not the time of year for holidays, you should still make this cake. The honey and liquor and spices come together to give it a great depth of flavor and a tender texture. This cake improves as it ages, and is even better by the second day -- the spices soften, and the honeys ability to attract moisture from the air (its hygroscopic!) means that the cake gets softer instead of staler as it sits. The crumb becomes even more luscious, and the honey-dark edges turn into an almost syrupy glaze.

I talked earlier about the beauty of the bundt pan, and how it allows cakes that have too much fat and sugar to support their own weight to rise to new heights (and hides it when they dont). This honey cake is one that definitely needs a bundt pan, as well as a bit of special handling to ensure it rises properly. The dry ingredients need to be sifted, a move that doesnt just break up clumps, but also adds air (and, consequently, lightness). Eggs should be at room temperature to give maximum loft, and the final mix should be done with a light hand. Once the cake goes in the oven, try not to disturb it too much until it sets. Although this list sounds a bit fussy, its really just a few tiny steps to yield a light and moist cake. And even if it does fall, itll still be delicious.


Honey Cake

adapted from the wonderful Majestic and Moist Honey Cake recipe from Marcy Goldmans Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coffee or strong tea
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup rum, scotch or whiskey

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan.

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, honey, sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee or tea, orange juice, and booze until well-blended. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the wet ingredients. Stir or whisk until just combined -- do not over-mix. Pour into the prepared pan, and bake until a tester comes out clean, and cake springs back when touched (about 60-75 minutes). Let cake cool in pan at least 15 minutes, and turn out onto a serving plate.

I always thought of bread dough as a fairly forgiving creature. Who needs to check measurements? Just toss flour in until it feels right! Why follow recipes? Just pour in some leftover oatmeal from breakfast! Want to be healthier? Just substitute whole wheat flour! Unsurprisingly, this approach wasnt always met with success. I created loaves that were too dense, that crumbled under the bread knife, or that just didnt taste that awesome. As it turns out, I was only partially wrong in my approach.

Bread is, to some extent, forgiving. But there are rules to be followed. Youll find that professional bread bakers talk about a whole lot more math than youd expect. In bread, its all about percentages: the amount of water used to hydrate flour, and the proportions of salt and yeast. Knowing these formulas, and how they create the ideal bread, give you a template for successful tinkering. Of course, you can always forgo the math and follow a good recipe. Like this one.

When I bake bread, its usually a crusty hearth loaf, like Jim Laheys no-knead recipe. But when we need a sandwich loaf, this is our current favorite. Its healthy from the whole wheat, oats and flax, but has a light crumb and a slightly sweet taste. The addition of just a bit of gluten helps compensate for the whole wheat flour, which is high in bran and fiber at the expense of structurally-helpful gluten. If you do want to engage your inner math geek, Ive provided the weights as well, which will keep you in line with the ideal percentages, yielding a more consistent result.


Honey Oatmeal Flax Bread
adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum
yields 1 loaf

This loaf also makes great burger buns--cut into 9 pieces (3.5-4 ounces each, if youre feeling mathy), shape into rolls, and let rise for a slightly shorter time. If desired, brush with an egg wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds before baking. I also leave out the milk powder, to no ill effect, but adding it creates a more tender crumb.

1 1/4 cups + 2 Tbsp (11.5 oz) warm water
1/2 (1.3 oz) cups rolled oats
1/4 cup (1.3 oz) cracked flax seeds (you can buy a packaged flaxseed meal like this, or else take whole flax seeds and blitz them in a coffee or spice grinder)
2 cups (11.3 oz) bread flour
3/4 cup (4 oz) whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp vital wheat gluten
1 Tbsp powdered milk (optional)
1 1/8 tsp instant yeast (or a scant 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast)
2 Tbsp (1.5 oz) honey
2 1/2 Tbsp (1.2 oz) neutral oil, like canola
2 tsp salt

Place the water, oatmeal and flax seeds in your mixing bowl, and let soak at least 15 minutes to hydrate. Sift together the flours, gluten, and milk powder (if using), and set aside.

After 15 minutes, sprinkle in the yeast (if using active dry yeast, let soften for a minute or two, but if using instant proceed to next step). Stir in the honey and oil, and then add the flour mixture. Knead for 3 minutes, then let rest for 20 minutes. Sprinkle on the salt, and knead an additional 4 minutes. The dough will be quite moist and sticky, but will clear the sides of the bowl.

Scrape the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, swish around to distribute the oil on the bottom of the dough, then flip it over so the oiled portion is on top. Cover your container, and let rise until doubled (this will take about 1 1/4 hours in a warm setting (like a turned-off oven or microwave with a bowl of hot water), longer in cooler settings.

When the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, shape into a rectangle, and let rest, covered, for 15-20 minutes to let the gluten relax. Shape into a loaf (theres a nice pictorial here),and place into an oiled loaf pan. It will be a little under an inch shy of the top of the pan. Cover the loaf (I place it inside a plastic bag), and let rise again in a warm spot until the dough is over an inch higher than the top of the pan, ~1 1/4 hours.

When the dough is about 40 minutes away from being fully risen, preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and place a baking pan on the rack under where the bread will be. Slash the top of the loaf if you like that look, or leave plain. Mist the loaf with water, place in the oven, and toss a few ice cubes in your preheated pan to create steam (Im sometimes lazy and just toss a glassful of water on the floor of the oven, but the former creates a more sustained moist cooking environment). Shut the oven door (quickly!), and lower the heat to 375. Bake for 20 minutes, rotate the loaf, and bake another 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

Remove the loaf from the oven, and tip out of the pan onto a rack to cool. The bread will continue to cook internally, so resist cutting it open until it is fairly cool.