December 13: Sunday Night Cake

My Sunday Night Cake on my newly-acquired, antique Dutch Kitchen (Hoosier)

During the summer, I found Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook (1961) at an antique mall near Concord, North Carolina.  Keith and I had driven Colin to Davidson college for a three-week Duke TIP program.  Duke TIP is a summer program for high-achieving youth in seventh grade and up.  It is essentially a "nerd camp," as any alumnus (including our Ian or Autumn) will proudly tell you.  This was Colin's first year at Duke TIP and he selected a course in architecture.  He had a fantastic time and made friends  with whom he shares common interests.

One of those friends is having her Bat Mitzvah on this Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina and has invited Colin to the big bash.  Keith's parents live in Columbia, so it will be a great chance to visit them for the holidays while giving Colin a chance to party with his TIP-ster chums.  Since we have been watching all of the James Bond films lately Colin is pretty fascinated with how debonair Bond can be.  Colin has elected to strike a James Bond image and will be wearing a white dinner jacket ensemble to the party.

Amy Vanderbilt is best known for her Complete Book of Etiquette (1952).  This cookbook was a great find for a myriad of reasons, not the least being the illustrations by Andy Warhol.  Warhol started out as a commercial illustrator and lived by selling his pen-and-ink illustrations before his first gallery show.  He was well-known for his illustrations, some in ink, some colored, of shoes in advertisements.  He was also known for similar illustrations of cats and there is an urban-art-history legend that he and his mother owned more than forty cats and that every one was named Sam.


In the 1980's, Mom and I visited my grandfather, Blaine, in Cherokee North Carolina. We stayed at one of the classic, kitschy motels on the reservation, The Pink Motel.  In the coffee shop of the lobby hung an original Andy Warhol painting of Mick Jagger.  What was THAT doing THERE?  It is an absolute mystery.  I will never forget the day that Mom and I first saw it just hanging there in a roadside tourist motel.  Blaine made some inquiries to try to satisfy our curiosity and the only explanation he could divine was a story about the owner of the motel being given the painting in payment of a debt.

Less mystifying to me, yet still curious is the name, Sunday Night Cake.  I Googled the term and found that virtually any cake - chocolate, cinnamon, etc. - could bear the label.

Amy Vanderbilt's Sunday Night Cake is two layers of cake flavored with almond extract and sprinkled with cognac after baking.  Between the layers is an almond custard and the frosting is made from almond paste and egg whites.  I suspect that in the style of The Art of Cooking and Serving (see October 10, Molasses Cake), a cake on Sunday night would be for an "informal" dinner, possibly planned and prepared by the man of the house, for the purposes of entertaining drop-in guests.  In Ms.Vanderbilt's recipe for Chicken a la King she even specifies such a gathering.

These time-tested recipes fit into almost any menu from brunch to midnight supper.  I like them especially for Sunday-night supper or for an unplanned Sunday luncheon when I suddenly decide it would be fun to have guests. (pg. 179)

Is this delicious but complicated and time-consuming recipe what constitutes "informal ease" in the Vanderbilt home?  Perhaps it is just rude of me to ask.  I suppose that should consult and etiquette guide to find out.

I think it is a touch of irony that in Warhol's work of the 1960's and 70's that he is best known for elevating the familiar products (Coca-Cola, Campbell's Soup) found in every American home to the status of art.

Perhaps the Vanderbilts did eat canned soup and drink Cokes, too.  But judging from this cake, their Sunday nights were a lot more complicated and elegant than ours.

Next Weekend:  My Gluten-Free Pound Cake

December 5 (well, 7th): The Chocoholic

I have a completely legitimate excuse for postponing my Saturday cake to Monday.

Wednesday, the 9th, was my son, Colin's fourteenth birthday and he chose this cake as his official birthday cake.

The Chocoholic as been on my list of cakes since early in the year.  The recipe is from Let Them Eat Cake: Classic, Decadent Desserts with Vegan, Gluten-Free and Healthy Variations by Gesine Bullock-Prado.  The cookbook was a Christmas present from my mom last year, and it is full of appealing recipes and beautiful photos of the desserts featured.  The best attribute of the book is that it provides a gluten-free version for each recipe; not just ingredient substitutions, but advice and tips to make a GF version turn out the same as the traditional.  I made Colin's Chocoholic using the basic recipe to try it out.  So that if it had turned out to be a disappointment, I could pinpoint the recipe as the problem, not the adjustments to make it GF.


 It was not, even remotely, a disappointment...

Although, the name of the cake has caused some chagrin in our family.  Keith and I have our own (some would say extensive) sets of grammatical pet peeves.  Please don't get me started on less-versus-fewer and why I won't shop at a grocery that has a "10 Items or Less" check-out line.  One of the burrs in Keith's language saddle is the attachment of "-aholic" to any word in a desire to note addiction or obsession.  "There is no such thing as shopahol or chocohol!" he rails. He feels the same way about "-gate" to denote a political scandal.  I love him so much!

Keith had a hard time finding fault with anything else on this cake.  And Colin has practically eaten the whole thing and it is only one day after his birthday.

The cake had three layers of delicious, dark chocolate cake, two layers of perfect chocolate mousse filling and it is covered all over with whipped chocolate ganache.  I am thrilled about how luxurious this cake is, how straightforward the directions in the recipe were and the fabulous potential for all of the gluten-free recipes in the book.

Colin has begged me to make The Chocoholic every week as my Saturday Cake in 2016.  I will take this under advisement, only if I can make the GF version.  The mousse and ganache tasted great, so I can't wait to try the whole thing.

This week, I am in serious-consideration-mode about what to write for Cake on Saturday in the new year; while a GF chocolate cake every week seems like a good idea now, I am afraid that I will become both bored and chubby in the process.


 Next Saturday (actually Sunday):  Sunday Night Cake

September 7: Five-Flavor Cake

It has been Calendar Girls tech week for me so my Saturday Cake has spilled over to a Monday Cake instead.  Although, it IS a three-day weekend, so I think I can get away with it on a "tech-nicality."

Tech week is the final week in the production period of a play when all of the elements come together on stage for the first time.  For weeks, the actors have been working in rehearsals, the scenic crew has been building the set in the shop, lighting and sound crews were plotting instruments and running cable, the properties designer has been shopping for the perfect thingamajig to sit on the perfect table in that one scene, etc...  The costume designer has been shopping for the perfect costume pieces, altering them to fit, building them when an (insert name, color, texture of piece here) doesn't already exist and has finally had a short break from dress rehearsals to bake a cake.

Sign at gelateria, Greenville

A time of bringing together different elements to make a cohesive whole seemed like the right time to try the Five-Flavor Cake.  In April, I took Autumn on a college visit to Furman University and afterward, she wanted to investigate downtown Greenville.  Greenville has a charming downtown with a nice variety of shops and restaurants.  We took a break for gelato and coffee before hitting the road back to Atlanta, and that is how I first laid eyes on a Five-Flavor Cake.  I thought it was so unusual that I took a picture of the sign to keep for future reference.

About a week after the Greenville trip, Keith and I attended a sale at the estate of Mary Nell and Dante Santacroce.  Mary Nell Santacroce was an award-winning, Atlanta actress best remembered for her portrayal of Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy by Atlanta playwright, Alfred Uhry.  Mary Nell Santacroce taught theatre and speech at Georgia Tech and was a longtime leader and mentor for DramaTech theatre there.  Uhry is an alumnus of Druid Hills High School where our Autumn is a senior, taking theatre class in the Alfred Uhry Theatre.  This tech week has been especially busy for our family, because Keith has begun rehearsals for Othello, which he is directing at Dramatech.

At the estate sale, along with some drama books and vintage buttons, we bought Ramblin' Chefs from Georgia Tech a recipe book published by the Georgia Tech Women's Forum in 1985.  Lo, and behold, what recipe did I find, but one for a Five-Flavor Cake!  The recipe calls for one teaspoon each of coconut, vanilla, butter, rum and lemon extracts.  It seems the Greenville cake used almond instead of butter flavoring, but I decided to follow the recipe in the Tech cookbook.  There is also a glaze added after baking that requires another teaspoon of each flavor.

The cake went together easily and the batter was very fluffy and "frosting-like" according to Keith.  That fluffiness is probably due to the use of both butter and vegetable shortening in the cake.  There was a light, cookie-like crust around the edges of the top of the pan (I was tired and slightly over-filled the bundt pan).  Those little crunchy bits were scarfed-up in a hurry by Keith and Colin.   After taking a bite of the cake, Keith said "WOW."  It tastes like pound cake with a little something extra and it is superbly moist from the glaze.

Encore!  Encore!

Next week:  Lady Fingers for Tiramisu

August 8: Orange Cake

I am glad that I chose a simple, straightforward cake this weekend.  Autumn and Colin start back to school on Monday and there were end-of-summer haircuts and supply-shopping trips to accomplish.  In addition, I had production meetings about the play for which I am designing costumes, Calendar Girls at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.  The show opens on September 10th and this weekend I made my costume presentations for approval of my renderings.  Now, I can hit the ground running on my designs.  It is set at the turn of the millennium, so I will be able to shop-and-alter rather than build most of the costumes.

This recipe is from my folder of magazine clippings; it was published in the January 2004 issue of Gourmet in a feature about sour cream, Culture Club.  The cake is a single-layer, square cake without frosting.  It is flavored with fresh-squeezed orange juice and orange zest.

The texture is absolutely perfect, due to the sour cream, no doubt.  It is moist and not "crumby."  It's a delicious cake, but its delicate orange flavor almost cries out for a glaze or frosting.  The family was unanimous is wishing it was, to quote Colin, "oranigier."  I am not sure if it was the fact that oranges are off-season and had come from South America or if the cake is supposed to have a very subtle taste.  I will try the recipe again, adding more orange zest and maybe I'll cheat a little by adding a spoonful of concentrated orange juice to the fresh juice.

Next Saturday:  Seven Layer Cake

June 6: Spice Islands (?) Cake

Last week, while shopping for vintage books at a thrift store, our son, Colin, found a treat for me.  He found a set of activity books from the American Girls Collection for their character named Samantha who lived at the turn of the twentieth century.  Apparently, American Girls' Samantha also enjoys cooking, making crafts, trying-on new outfits and producing plays.  Sadly, there was only one cake recipe in the cook book from the set.  The recipe is for gingerbread, which reminded me of my Spice Islands Cake.

The Spice Islands Cake is one of my signature cakes.  I developed the recipe in order to replicate the delicious taste of the Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with whipped cream on top.  It was one of the recipes I created and tested when I was living in Washington, DC.  Whenever I had a difficult day (or week) at work, I would cook to relax.  I would take the resulting cookies, cakes, etc. to my office the next day.  I made many versions of this cake trying to get the spices, texture and appearance right.  I was a regular reader of Southern Living magazine and in 2004, I decided I was ready to submit this recipe to their annual recipe contest.

At that time, I called this "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake."  I obsessed over getting the written instructions simple and foolproof.  I even gave the recipe to a tester or two to see if they could follow the instructions I had written and arrive at an appropriate result.

The recipe uses three different types of sugar (brown, light brown and confectioners) and that year the contest was sponsored by Domino Sugar.  I figured that by specifying "Domino" sugars in my recipe, I would be a shoe-in for a brand-sponsored prize, if not a grand prize.

I did not win.

After I moved back home to Atlanta, I submitted this recipe again to the Southern Living contest.  But this was after my trip to Indonesia, my diagnosis of gluten intolerance, and a couple of years of sour grapes reading the "winning" recipes in issues of the magazine.  I decided that "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake"  was a boring name and that the name had cost me dearly in the judges' assessment.  For my second submission, in an attempt to take back some power from Indonesia, I named the cake Spice Islands.  I thought that it was clever.

Layers showing filling

I still did not win.

Everyone loves the cake, so the name must be my impediment to recipe contest glory.  Keith believes that my mistake in renaming the cake was two-fold; I named it after a place where I suffered terribly, and it could be confused with the Spice Island brand of herbs and spices.  I am now thinking of calling it Equator Cake since pineapples, cinnamon, ginger and cloves originated and a principally grown there.

Close-up of frosting

This (insert name here) cake consists of three layers of cake, with pineapple filling that is like a pineapple curd.  It is covered with a thick layer of stabilized whipped cream that contains even more pineapple.

Whether I submit this recipe to a contest again, or not, it is absolutely a winner.  The cake is moist and tender.  The filling is tangy with loads of pineapple flavor.  The whipped cream frosting has the creaminess to balance the spice and fruity tang of the cake and filling.  I wish all of my "pastimes" worked out this well.

Next Saturday:  Basil Pound Cake