“Memory commits you to the nuance; the fog.
If you act on memory you commit yourself on the basis of echoes: unpredictable, faint, fading even as they were generated.
No basis on which to inch out across your life, and yet all you have.”
—M. John Harrison
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness.
Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
At cold solstice I cut
the night, take its long waist
to my quilted bed,
curl up the dark under
broideries of spring, to wait
a night spread out again for you.
—Hwang Jini, At Cold Solstice
“This place reminds me of Santa’s Workshop! Except it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me.”
—Buddy the Elf
“Here we are again!
Bless me, I believe I said that before—but after all you don’t want Christmas to be different each year, do you?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas
Christmas for my family was different this year.
One (1) of my three (3) brothers couldn’t come to the East coast for Xmas.
We’re celebrating in the city, rather than upstate, which means an apartment and a baby tree rather than a big house with a fireplace.
And we have the cutest, most adorable mini addition to our family with my baby niece, Emilia.
I honestly can’t believe how perfectly cute she is.
Cannot get enough of her chub!
So although we didn’t have some of our traditions this year, we still had a lovely time together.
Gifts were opened, brunch was had (I made Belgian waffles, my mom made a delicious polenta dish, we all drank mimosas and coffee), and much cooing over the baby was done.
Now that I’m not a kid anymore, I am reminded each year that what I love most about Christmas is being with my family.
This year, I am especially reminded that home is where your family is.
So, about this cute little pastel Christmas cake.
Technically, everything except the reindeer’s ribbon scarf is edible. (No toothpicks used here, just uncooked spaghetti lol.)
The decorations are made of (non-gelatin) fondant that I added tylose powder to to make it more like gumpaste (firm and quick setting/drying).
Sculpting the reindeer took days, as I did each piece in turn.
I painted it with gold food coloring and used pink luster dust to add the blush.
The gingerbread house is made of a new recipe of gingerbread that I created, which has no eggs or water so that it doesn’t bubble and maintains its shape. It’s much more building-friendly, and although it doesn’t taste quite as good, it is still far more delicious than “construction” gingerbread.
Let me know if you want the recipe!
I stuck the gingerbread house together with melted white chocolate, and I will never use anything else! It is far more dependable than royal icing, because it sets quickly and, importantly, is just a little bit pliable when it sets—you can avoid things cracking and falling all apart because of a little push or drop here and there. It even survived a subway ride where it was rattling around in a tupperware a little.
A simple royal icing made the piped decorations, the snow on the trees, and the icicles.
My inspiration was the endlessly creative and cute Juniper Cakery, a bakery in the UK.
I hadn’t worked with fondant in so SO long, and while it’s not the tastiest thing in the world, it’s not entirely inedible, either. It also makes sculpting work so enjoyable and smooth.
For making something like a gingerbread house or a figurine that is unlikely to be eaten and isn’t integral to the cake, I really recommend it. You might be surprised as I was!
The cake itself is a soft-crumbed, lightly fragranced orange spice cake, redolent with cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, and cloves, with orange and lemon zest.
It’s made using a reverse creaming method, meaning that you beat very soft butter into the dry ingredients, including the flour, before adding the wet.
Bittersweet orange marmalade is spread between the layers to add an extra hit of citrus.
Finally, salted chocolate buttercream, made with unsweetened chocolate and extra cocoa powder to really amp up the chocolate flavor, enrobes the cake.
Orange, chocolate, and spice is a warming, cozy combination that evokes winter and Christmastime to me. If you’d rather leave out the citrus, a chocolate spice cake would also be delicious.
Merry Christmas, everyone! And to those who don’t celebrate this holiday, a peaceful and happy day.
Tried and true recipes from Christmases past:
Cakes:
My pride and joy, the most elaborate cake on the blog: la souche de Noël.
A different, more whimsical take on a tree cake: this eggnog-filled, bauble-bedecked Christmas tree.
Golden and gleaming, an almond and orange spice cake.
A classic: red velvet with a winter woodland theme.
The fluffiest of cakes, a chocolate and peppermint cake with marshmallow frosting.
Oldie but a goodie: chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with peppermint buttercream.
Cookies:
Super intricate and crunchy maple and black pepper gingersnaps.
Luster-dust highlighted sugar cookie Christmas trees.
Very grown-up chocolate orange Linzer cookies.
Festive eggnog sugar cookies, decorated with royal icing and sprinkles.
Twists on the classic: honey spice and dark chocolate sugar cookies, perfect for cutting into shapes.
Pepparkakor with lemon royal icing, decorated with mehndi-inspired swirls.
Chocolate peppermint macarons… Finnicky little buggers.
Classic Linzer cookies with different fillings.
Maple, nutmeg, and rye sugar cookies, dressed all in winter white.
Chocolate, sour cherry, and coconut cookies; grapefruit butter cookies; and dark chocolate pecan snowcaps, all crammed into one post.
Cinnamon toast crunch marshmallow treats, chocolate peppermint shortbread, Russian teacakes, 5-spice snickerdoodles, another post bursting with recipes.
Whimsical peppermint marshmallow ropes; not cookies per se, but great for gifting.
Orange Spice and Chocolate Cake
makes 1 2×6-inch layer cake
ingredients:
for the orange spice cake:
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
150 grams (1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons) yogurt, sour cream, or buttermilk
180 grams (1 1/2 cups) flour
200 grams (1 cup) sugar
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground anise
113 grams (1 stick, 8 tablespoons) butter, extremely soft
for the chocolate frosting:
175 grams (1 1/2 sticks, 12 tablespoons) butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
50 grams unsweetened or bittersweet chocolate
340 grams (12 ounces, 2 1/2 cups) powdered sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1-2 tablespoons cream or milk, only if needed
to assemble:
orange marmalade, if desired
directions:
Make the cake: grease and flour 2 6-inch pans.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Whisk eggs, egg yolk, and buttermilk together.
Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, zest spices, and salt together.
Beat butter into the dry ingredients until it’s fully incorporated; mixture should be clumpy but there should be no large pieces of butter at all—aim for more of a paste, without overmixing.
Slowly stream in the wet ingredients while whisking.
Once fully incorporated, scrape the bowl and whisk another few times.
Portion evenly into the two prepared pans.
Bake for 18 minutes, or until a tester comes out with only a few moist crumbs.
Allow to cool completely.
Make the buttercream: whip butter on high until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Meanwhile, gently melt the chocolate over low heat with a bain-marie or in a microwave, going in small bursts.
Add the salt, half the powdered sugar, and cocoa powder to the butter; whip until incorporated.
With the mixer running, slowly stream in the melted chocolate.
Once fully incorporated, add the other half of the powdered sugar a spoonful at a time.
If the frosting is too thick, add a tablespoon or two of milk (I didn’t have to do this) and whip to incorporate.
Level the cakes if they have domed and spread 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade over the bottom cake.
Crumb coat the cakes with the frosting, and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes, and up to 2 hours.
Frost the rest of the cake thickly; I had about 2 tablespoons of frosting leftover, so if you want to add decorative piping, frost the cake a little more sparingly.
Decorate with fondant if desired!
We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away,
failed by our very complication,
so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves.
As we were.
As we are no longer.
As we will one day not be at all.
—Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Bienvenue, 2018. You came so quickly, and so slowly, all at once.
2017 was tumult, through and through.
In my mind, this past year really started in November 2016, which seems impossibly far away, though I remember Election Night with a clarity that haunts me.
Before our current President, I really tried hard to keep politics off the blog. Now, I find biting my tongue or deleting paragraphs overwhelmingly difficult.
The America I believe in and was raised in is not a idealistic utopia free from problems and conflict, but it is a place that strives towards truth and equality and justice for all.
I believed America could and would be a leader in the fight against climate change; in the fight against Nazism and terrorism; in the fight against racism and sexism and hunger and poverty. And yet how quickly it feels that the government has slid backwards in time to settle in embarrassingly ignoble positions.
Trumpian America is not an America that believe in; it’s not one where I want to live. I am ashamed and frustrated.
My faith, however, endures. I pray we all have the strength to keep speaking up and acting against racism, sexism, and lies. I pray that we carry every lie, every injustice, every slight, and every hurt with us to the voting booths in 2018. I’m tired of racist, sexist, self-protecting old men, guys. Really, really tired of it.
This weekend was the anniversary of the (very small) inauguration and the (very large and powerful) Women’s March.
Let’s not forget it. Or actually, let’s not let The Man forget it.
Lots of other things changed in 2017, often coming in rapid, nauseous bursts.
In January, I took my MCAT and aced it. Shortly afterwards, in February, cracks began to form in my love life: deep, unfamiliar tremors that terrified me.
In April, my brother and my sister in law got married in Portugal. The weekend was undeniably one of the best of my life and certainly of 2017. My heart fills to bursting thinking about it even now.
Come June, I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from my beloved alma mater, the University of Chicago. It was utterly surreal; it came and went so quickly, as did my entire college experience, I now realize.
The day after, my then-boyfriend left me, ending a three and a half year chapter. That same day, I moved across the country, leaving Chicago behind. Leaving a lot more than just the city behind.
Then, in all truth, the rest of the year sloshed by in waves of sadness and progress. I spent many hours at work. I spent many hours at the gym. I spent many hours relearning how to be myself. How to be alone and functional and whole.
I haven’t written about this much here on the blog because although this is—in theory—an online diary, it is—in practice—more a place of pretty pictures and delicious food. But 2017 is closed. It’s done. The ink has dried, and time enough has passed.
The end of a happy relationship is a very special kind of torment.
The absence of a constant companion is a confusing and complicated mix of grief and mourning.
Their absence is not nothing, per se, but rather an emptiness too uncomfortable to probe at the raw beginnings. Like when you lost a tooth and the resulting hole was tender and seemingly vast and tasted faintly of metallic, bitter blood.
I made the mistake of thinking my relationship was a chrysalis. From the inside, to me, it was radiant and comfortable and safe. When it broke wide open, I was left less as a fully formed being, ready for flight, and more of a fragile, wet, sad little thing.
I made the mistake of being young and foolish and believing wholeheartedly in the future, which is really not a mistake at all.
After the break up, I gave myself time markers, milestones I expected myself to achieve. They more or less came and went and I felt more or less the same, mostly because healing happens gradually, not all at once.
I don’t think I’m strictly happier now, but life isn’t a competition with previous selves for perfection. Life is love, and loss, and growth, organic and slow and complicated and messy.
I regret nothing. I am grateful.
I am, and that’s enough.
Now, 2018 as a mix ungrammatical musings, so far:
An elderly man crying in the subway.
The mailman at 31st and 2nd stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to scratch off a lottery ticket.
Christmas trees, left piled up on the sidewalk, fragrant of pine two weeks ago and now just fragrant of dog pee. Some New Yorkers throw out their lights and ornaments with the tree. Baby with the bathwater.
Looking uptown on 7th avenue in the wee hours of the morning is to be transported straight into a cyberpunk world.
The woman hawking TimeOut magazines in Union Square who looked and sounded just like Kristin Wiig as the tiny-handed Maharelle sister on SNL (Is that unkind? I didn’t say these musings were profound).
7AM sunrises streaking through Manhattan’s grid.
Family.
This raw cake is a wonder, and the perfect compliment to the raw emotional spluttering in this post.
It’s raw, refined sugar-free, gluten-free, and vegan.
Blood oranges and cranberries provide a tart contrast, while maple syrup provides earthy sweetness. It’s an easy but stunning dessert, and piling it high with pistachios and dried blood oranges and stevia sweetened chocolate makes it even better.
It’s the perfect light start to a new year, and it fits in many resolute new lifestyles.
If you haven’t tried raw cheesecakes yet, I really recommend it. They are absolutely delicious, and so easy to make!
Back soon, with lots of butter and refined sugar. Duh.
Raw Blood Orange and Cranberry Cheesecake
makes 1 6-inch cheesecake
ingredients:
for the crust:
150 – 200 grams (1.5 heaping cups) whole almonds
12 dates (or as needed)
big pinch sea salt
for the filling:
500 grams cashews, soaked overnight
big pinch sea salt
100 grams (7 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon) coconut oil
400 grams (1 2/3 cup) full-fat coconut milk
100 – 160 grams (1/3 – 1/2 cup) maple syrup
juice of 2 blood oranges
300 grams (3 cups) cranberries
for the decorations:
1 blood orange
1 tablespoon maple sugar
chopped pistachios
sugar-free chocolate, if desired
directions:
Dehydrate/dry the blood orange for decoration: slice orange extremely thinly and place on a parchment lined baking rack, placed on top of a baking sheet (to allow air flow).
Preheat oven to 200 degrees F (or prepare dehydrator, if you want a truly raw product).
Sprinkle orange slices with maple sugar and bake until crisp and dry, about 1 hour.
Make the crust: pulse almonds with dates and salt until the mixture forms clumps and can be rolled into a cohesive mass.
Press 2/3 of the crust mixture into the bottom of a 6-inch springform pan; use the remaining 1/3 to roll into energy balls/cubes/pyramids for decoration and snacking.
Place pan in fridge while you prepare the filling.
Place all ingredients for the filling except the blood oranges and cranberries in a large blender; start with the smaller amount of maple syrup.
Blend on high speed until smooth and creamy with no lumps remaining, about 5-10 minutes.
Take out half of the filling.
Save approximately 2-3 tablespoons of the white filling and place into a piping bag fitted with a small round tip; pour the remaining amount over the chilled, prepared crust and place in freezer.
Meanwhile, blend the blood orange juice and half of the cranberries into the remaining half of filling; taste and add more maple syrup as necessary.
Adjust the color by blending in more cranberries, being sure to taste and add syrup as you need to balance their tartness.
Fill a piping bag fitted with a star tip with the pink filling; place in fridge.
Once the white filling has completely set, pour the pink filling over.
Using the piping bag filled with the white filling, pipe lines over the top of the pink filling.
Use a knife or toothpick to drag the white filling, creating a combed pattern.
Freeze until fully set.
Decorate with piped stars and swirls of the pink filling; arrange dried oranges, sugar-free chocolate, and pistachios over top as desired.
“When I’m worried
and cannot sleep
I count my blessings
instead of sheep.”
Bing Crosby
We had our first snow here in New York City this past Saturday.
I was out traipsing around with my girlfriends, dressed as a reindeer, painted-on nose and all.
Yes, I tried valiantly to rally for Santacon, a (somewhat perverse) day before Christmas when millennials around Manhattan put on Santa costumes and drink during the few December daylight hours. It’s only a little embarrassing when everyone else is doing it, but it is hugely disruptive and not quite family-friendly.
Let’s just say it didn’t exactly suit my vibe. But at least I tried! I ended the day tucked into bed in my pajamas with pumpkin sushi, tipsily facetiming my best friend. I guess I can chalk that up to a win.
(By the way: pumpkin tempura sushi is SO much better than sweet potato tempura sushi. Don’t @ me.)
P.S. If you have a few moments, please consider voting for my cookies in the Bob’s Red Mill x FeedFeed contest going on here!
Today, I’m sharing the first of multiple Christmas/holiday posts.
These chocolate orange linzer cookies are the perfect addition to your cookie boxes!
To make these, fluted rounds of dark chocolate almond dough, fragrant and buttery, are dusted with powdered sugar and sandwiched together with tart, slightly bitter orange marmalade. It’s one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations, with a perfect balance of complex flavors (and none too sweet).
If you’re at all a fan of orangettes, which are candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate, you will love these cookies! They are a fun take on traditional Linzer cookies.
This recipe makes 16 cookies; I tend to scale recipes to fit the number of cookie boxes I intend on preparing; I would likely double this recipe and save any leftovers for my family.
Top tip for gifting sweets: make like Sesame Street and count!
Count while choosing your recipes; count while buying your boxes; count while cutting/portioning your dough; count when they come out of the oven and count when they are decorated.
It really helps, especially when you’re making many types of cookies.
Tried and true recipes from Christmases past:
Cakes:
My pride and joy, the most elaborate cake on the blog: la souche de Noël.
Golden and gleaming, an almond and orange spice cake.
A classic: red velvet with a winter woodland theme.
The fluffiest of cakes, a chocolate and peppermint cake with marshmallow frosting.
Oldie but a goodie: chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with peppermint buttercream.
Cookies:
Super intricate and crunchy maple and black pepper gingersnaps.
Luster-dust highlighted sugar cookie Christmas trees.
Festive eggnog sugar cookies, decorated with royal icing and sprinkles.
Twists on the classic: honey spice and dark chocolate sugar cookies, perfect for cutting into shapes.
Pepparkakor with lemon royal icing, decorated with mehndi-inspired swirls.
Chocolate peppermint macarons… Finnicky little buggers.
Classic Linzer cookies with different fillings.
Maple, nutmeg, and rye sugar cookies, dressed all in winter white.
Chocolate, sour cherry, and coconut cookies; grapefruit butter cookies; and dark chocolate pecan snowcaps, all crammed into one post.
Cinnamon toast crunch marshmallow treats, chocolate peppermint shortbread, Russian teacakes, 5-spice snickerdoodles, another post bursting with recipes.
Whimsical peppermint marshmallow ropes; not cookies per se, but great for gifting.
Chocolate Orange Linzer Cookies
makes 16 cookies
ingredients:
for the chocolate cookies:
170 grams (3/4 cup, 1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
¼ teaspoon (or to taste) kosher salt
100 grams (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
1 egg
80 grams (3/4 cup) almond flour or almond meal
90 grams (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
30 grams (1/4 cup) cocoa powder
to assemble:
orange marmalade
powdered sugar
directions:
Make the cookies: beat butter on high speed with the kosher salt and granulated sugar for a full 5 minutes.
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add in the egg; beat for another full 4 minutes.
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add in the almond flour, flour, and cocoa powder.
Gently stir the dough together until homogeneous.
Gather into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes and up to one night.
If the dough is fully chilled, allow it to warm up until pliable.
Roll out to ¼ inch thickness on a well-floured surface.
Cut out 32 circles; cut smaller circles in the center of 16 of the cookies.
You can gather the scraps and re-roll as necessary.
Place onto parchment lined baking sheets and freeze until solid, at least 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Bake cookies (straight from the freezer) for 10 minutes, or until fragrant and the edges are crisping up.
Allow to cool completely.
Place the cookies with holes aside and dust them with powdered sugar.
Place a half-teaspoon of marmalade onto the bottom halves and then sandwich together.
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If an intelligence, at a given instant, knew all the forces that animate nature and the position of each constituent being;
if, moreover, this intelligence were sufficiently great to submit these data to analysis, it could embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the smallest atoms:
to this intelligence nothing would be uncertain, and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.
—Laplace
I took a class this past quarter called History of Statistics.
It was taught by a professor who knew my grandfather well. Additionally, in an amazing twist of small-world fate, his father taught MY father in a class called History of Economics, when my dad was getting his PhD at UChicago. It was an excellent class to cap off my stat minor, and I recommend it to anyone who can get in off the competitive waitlist.
At the beginning of the quarter, we had a question on a homework that stumped (I think) everyone in the class. The question that was posed was: what was the sweet that Pierre-Simon invented?
Don’t even try to google it, guys. Been there, done that. It is thoroughly un-googleable.
The answer: in 1826 there was a landmark two volume book about gastronomy published by Brillat-Savarin (as in the Savarin cake). In it, a dessert was attributed to the statistician.
Strawberries ********* **** ****** *****.
Literally, that’s the whole of it.
Anyways, the other day I found myself with a bunch of spring strawberries and some aging oranges that needed to be used or eaten. I thought back to Laplace’s dessert, and how I could modify it and make it… more, um, interesting.
These dairy free strawberry shortcakes are what I came up with, because I’ve been eating dairy free a lot lately and want to challenge myself to bake dairy free as well.
The cake itself is a dairy free pound cake, made with vegan butter, cashew yogurt (I like Forager), and a hint of orange zest; it is moist and dense and bakes up perfectly golden.
I brushed the cut cakes with an orange simple syrup to infuse them with stronger flavor.
The strawberries are treated as Laplace would have demanded: sprinkled with the juice of an orange (and a little hit of sugar), but then I roasted them in the oven to bring out a toasty, caramelized flavor that is absolutely divine.
The cakes are layered with the roasted strawberries, topped with lightly sweetened coconut cream, confectioner’s sugar, and more orange zest.
Overall, they’re not too sweet and preserve a true strawberry and orange flavor; they store very well as the syrup helps retain their moisture. The serving size is just right for one person, although I know for a fact that some of my testers ate two…
They would be perfect for any summer event, from a BBQ to a tea party.
Note that you can substitute dairy items and still have very happy results: butter for the vegan butter, sour cream or full-fat yogurt for the cashew yogurt, and whipped cream or ice cream for the coconut cream.
Happy summer, friends! Here’s to strawberry season.
Dairy Free Strawberry Orange Shortcakes
makes 6 large, 12 small shortcakes
ingredients:
for the cakes:
113 grams (1 stick, 8 tablespoons) vegan/dairy free butter, softened (can substitute regular butter)
250 grams (1 1/4 cup) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
120 grams (1/2 cup) cashew yogurt (can substitute sour cream or yogurt)
180 grams (1 1/2 cups) AP flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
zest of 1/2 an orange
for the strawberries:
15-20 large strawberries, sliced thinly (about 2-3 cups)
juice of 1 large orange
1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
to assemble:
45 grams (3 tablespoons) water
15 grams (1 tablespoon) orange juice
50 grams (4 tablespoons) sugar
zest of 1/2 an orange
coconut cream (see here for a tutorial) (can substitute whipped cream or ice cream)
zest of 1/2 an orange
confectioner’s sugar
directions:
Make the cakes: preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease and flour 6 extra-large muffin tins, or 12 regular sized muffin tins.
Whip vegan butter on high speed for 3 full minutes, until light and fluffy.
Add in the sugar and salt and beat for another full 2 minutes.
Scrape the bowl and add the eggs; beat for another 3-4 minutes until fluffy and not gritty.
Stir in the cashew yogurt.
Add the flour, baking soda, and orange zest.
Scoop the batter into the prepared pans.
Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean (small cakes will likely need shorter baking, check them around 15 minutes).
Allow to cool completely before cutting in half.
To make the strawberries, lay the slices on a parchment lined baking sheet and sprinkle with the orange juice and sugar.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, or until softened, juicy, and fragrant.
Allow to cool completely.
Make the orange syrup: stir water, sugar, orange juice, and orange zest together and bring to a boil.
To assemble, brush the cut halves of the cakes with the orange syrup.
Sandwich a few strawberries with the cakes.
Dust with confectioner’s sugar, orange zest, and serve with coconut cream or ice cream on the side.
“For it is in giving that we receive.”
Prayer of Saint Francis
Merry Christmas Eve and a very happy first night of Hanukkah!
I have not yet wrapped my gifts nor done all the productive things I needed to do, but OH WELL that is just about how I expect 2016 to come to a close.
All my brothers are in town (though we are all staying apart since none of the four apartments where various fractions of us permanently live in NYC are big enough to fit the whole family), and tonight we’re heading to Brooklyn for Christmas Eve dinner at my grandma’s.
Last night, we all went bowling/drinking/for dinner at Brooklyn Bowl, which was fun. Although I was very salty at how bad at bowling I am, especially after a margarita. Ugh.
Tomorrow, we will exchange a few small gifts, eat some french toast (I kind of want to try making french toast with panettone. Is that frowned upon?!), and probably see a movie.
The past few years, I’ve made cinnamon rolls for Christmas day, but that’s not happening in our current kitchen. I’ve seen them all over Instagram this year though, and I think it’s a sweet tradition. Do you make anything traditional for breakfast? I try to keep it low-key and no-fuss since my family likes to just chill together.
This layer cake recipe is one of my new go-tos. It’s more unique than just another vanilla or chocolate cake, and it doesn’t fall prey to the gingerbread trope, either.
It’s an almond and orange spice cake, and it’s really soft and moist from the almond meal. It’s fragrant with spices and orange zest without being overpowering. Between the layers, there is alternating apricot jam and orange marmalade, which are just a match made in heaven. Sweet and fruity, with a hint of bitterness that complements the orange zest in the cake. The icing is a simple cream cheese frosting with a tiny touch of maple syrup to round out the tanginess.
I decorated my cake with a mound of fruits painted with luster dust and bourbon because I am now officially way too obsessed with this technique. Someone stop me.
It would be just as yum with a few rosemary “trees” or a simple piped border and a dusting of powdered sugar.
More Christmas cakes!
Last year’s cute Red Velvet Woodland cake.
Also last year: Chocolate Peppermint Cloud Cake
The year before: the insane and super fun Souche de Noël.
Almond and Orange Spice Cake
makes 1 4×6-inch layer cake
ingredients:
for the cake:
4 tablespoons (55 grams) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
zest of 1 orange
2 eggs
1 cup (120 grams) flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup (32 grams) almond flour or finely ground almonds
1/2 cup (120 grams) milk
for the frosting:
12 tablespoons (175 grams) unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces (112 grams) cream cheese
12 ounces (330 grams) powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon (5 mL) maple syrup
3-4 tablespoons (45-60 mL) milk or cream
to assemble:
1/4 cup apricot jam
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
strawberries, raspberries, pomegranate arils, kumquats
luster dust, if desired
directions:
Make the cake: preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease and flour 2 6-inch pans.
Place butter, sugar, spices, and zest into a bowl and cream on high speed for 3 full minutes, or until light and fluffy.
Add in the eggs and beat for another 3 minutes.
Scrape the sides of the bowl.
Add the flour, baking powder, salt, and almond flour and stir gently until half mixed in.
Add the milk and beat until the batter is homogeneous, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Portion out the batter into prepared pans and bake for 14-16 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs.
Allow to cool completely; meanwhile, make the frosting.
Beat butter and cream cheese on high speed for 3 minutes, or until doubled in volume and very pale in color.
Add in roughly half of the powdered sugar, the salt, the maple syrup, and 1 tablespoon of milk.
Beat on high speed until the frosting is very fluffy, about 3 more minutes.
Add in the rest of the powdered sugar to taste, along with 2-3 more tablespoons of milk, if needed to make the frosting more spreadable, and whip on high speed until fully incorporated.
The frosting should be spreadable but not loose; add more milk or powdered sugar to thin or thicken as needed.
To assemble, cut each of the layers in half.
Pipe a border of cream cheese frosting around the first layer, then spread 2 tablespoons of apricot jam in the center.
Spread frosting on top of the layer to cover the jam.
Add the second layer and repeat, except use orange marmalade instead of apricot jam.
Repeat with the third layer, using apricot jam again.
Top with the fourth layer and add a thin crumb coat of frosting on the outside of the cake.
Refrigerate the cake for at least 15 minutes to set the crumb coat.
Spread frosting thick on the top layer but thin on the sides to create a semi-naked finish.
Top with fruits dusted with luster dust or other decorations as desired.