When I was growing up my father used to speak in awe of old world cooks who were able to bake cakes without a recipe. That method of cookery was known in Yiddish as shit arayn, or put it in.
This is definitely more festive looking.
Aside from the grade school amusement my sisters and I had at the word shit so close to cake like my father I have always been intrigued by the idea that a cake could be created without carefully following a recipe.
A few summers ago I found an old cookbook in an antique mall that gave a series of proportions for cake making. it made me realize that the shit arayn method was indeed possible.
I have been attempting such cakes for a couple of years now. The disadvantage of such a cake is that the results of these wild and wooly methods are not always completely predictable. I call my efforts at these no recipe cakes, fake cakes.
A dear friend is coming for dinner. Her birthday was yesterday. I had thought I would make a citrusy cake to honor her birthplace in Florida. I made the cake with orange lime and lemon juice and rind. The batter tasted delicious.
The cake emerged from the pan.
It was really short. I baked it at 350 and should have baked it at 375. I didn't want to serve a cake that looked so underwhelming.
So made a thick citrus custard and filled and tipped the cake with the new custard.
I may add another something to pretty up the top of the cake. I guess I could have followed a recipe, but what's the fun in that?
Looks good enough to eat. (What my dad says)
ReplyDeleteI made a fake pumpkin cake/pie this week. I had tried out cooking down a pumpkin in my pressure cooker. I took the seeds out but haven't the hand strength to peel them raw. (I usually cook down in oven and then take peel off.) So, I left the peel on. and somehow, when I scraped the flesh out of the shells, it was fairly solid and dark - similar to tinned pumpkin, rather than what I usually get.
So, fast forward. This had been in the fridge and I really needed to use it before it started going off. I decided to do all of it together - 4-5 cups, so put together what would likely go in a pumpkin pie, but not trying to work out the Maths of equivalents. I did the spices, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup "gold" (actually maple syrup, but it costs way too much here and so is for special only.) some maple flavouring I had for sometime and then 3 beaten eggs. Cooked about 50 min on 180°C (can't remember what that is in °F.) in a buttered glass baking dish
And brilliant! It is like a thick pumpkin pie without the crust and you can just about hold it like a cake.
So, rather than come up with all that again from my head, I have tried to write it all down! Otherwise we will never ever have it again, and it was good. !
Sandy, it sounds delicious. Pies were my gateway faked bake goods. A good squash can be a mindblowing thing. earlier this fall I baked a butternut in the oven . After it was cooked I scraped out the flesh and flavored it with the usual suspect winter squash spices, cinnamon, allspice, ginger and nutmeg. It was so sweet that it didn't need a speck of sugar. There is nothing better than a good winter squash to make you feel warm in the cold of winter. It is just too hard and too dangerous to peel a hard shelled squash before cooking it. maple does taste heavenly but either a dark honey like a buckwheat or a date molasses can provide some of that lovely dark taste- you do miss out on that fragrant upper note of the maple with the substitutes but they are still really good flavors that work well with the squash.
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