December 26: Japanese Fruit Cake

Japanese Fruit Cake is the traditional Christmas cake for my mother's side of the family, though it is not a fruitcake.  Come to think of it, I am not even sure why it is claimed to be Japanese.  But I won't question tradition because it is absolutely one of my favorite cakes; spicy, buttery, fruity and rich.  I don't remember celebrating a Christmas without it.  I even have a Japanese Fruit Pie recipe, containing all of the same fruits and flavors, that is nearly as good.

The cake contains two layers of plain butter (1-2-3-4) cake alternated with two layers of spice cake containing allspice, cinnamon, cloves and raisins "chopped fine."  In between the layers is a lemon and coconut filling which requires natural coconut.

Alternating layers with filling

The recipe calls for "1 good-sized cocoanut, grated."  Natural coconut is perfect because it is not pre-sweetened like commercial, flaked coconut, so the filling is not overly sweet.  However, opening a coconut, peeling, then grating the meat is a chore.  There were a couple of years in the 1990s when Mom and I couldn't find nary a coconut in the grocery stores...

One year, we had to buy three coconuts in three different trips to three different stores.  First, we searched several stores, finding no coconuts.  Then, each time we found one that sounded good, i.e. heavy and sounding sloshy-full of coconut water, we took it home, cracked it, and found the meat moldy, smelly or both.  That year we gave up and bought flaked coconut and were able to finish the cake in time for Christmas.  The next year the same thing happened on our first attempt to find a suitable coconut, so we gave-in to the flaked stuff and cut our losses.  Ever since then, the prospect of buying a coconut at Christmas becomes a catalyst for much well-wishing, many prayers, and crossed fingers.

These days, I think that more people cook with natural coconut.  Plus, I live in an area of town with a large Asian community, so I was pretty confident in my ability to find a decent specimen.  I found one at my neighborhood grocery on my first attempt and it turned out to be a winner.  The way Mama Judy cracked a coconut was to drive an ice pick into two or three of the eyes of the coconut to poke holes to the center, and then turn it eyes-down on a glass and leave it to drain.  Keith had his drill in the house for another job, so with a clean drill bit we created the holes.   No stabbing required.  I then placed the drained coconut in a hot oven (about 400 degrees) and checked on it every few minutes.  The heat caused the cocoa-brown hard shell to crack.  After removing the shell, the thin brown inner shell could be removed with a vegetable peeler revealing the gorgeous white nut meat.

In most cases the nut meat cracks along with the outer casing, but this time, it came out whole like a big, sweet, oily pearl.  I stood back and looked at it for a few minutes; it seemed almost a shame to cut it up and grate it.  Although, maybe I was just dreading the grating.

There is nothing more dangerous to the skin on one's knuckles than having to grate coconut.  The grating was always one of my jobs during the cake baking when I was little.  This kid greased the pans with butter, cut the wax paper circles for the bottoms of the pans, dredged the raisins with flour, and grated the coconut.  I grew up with both a respect and a fear of the box grater.  If the cakes hadn't always been such a delicious reward for the dangerous work, I might have been terrified by the grater into adulthood.

It has been years since I have made a Japanese Fruit Cake on my own.  Mom usually makes it at her home and brings it over on Christmas day.  When my mom gave me a copy of Southern Cooking by Mrs. Dull for Christmas 1989, she had written helpful advice on page 231, the Japanese Fruit Cake recipe.  Her notations told me how long to bake the cakes, how much juice a lemon is expected to yield, and how to tell when the filling is the right consistency.  Mom always used the filling as the frosting on the outside of the cake.  I made the filling according to Mrs. Dull, but I ended up with only enough filling to go between the layers.  Mom had forgotten to note in my book that the recipe needed doubling.  I didn't have another coconut prepared to make more filling at the last minute.

Mrs. Dull's recipe instructed to cover the cake with white icing.  Seven minute frosting would be too sweet, and I knew that Autumn liked the spice cake layers with Universal White Frosting.  The Universal White Frosting recipe is from Stressed is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards by Sheryl Meddin and Bennett Frisch (see Myers's Rum Cake, November 7).  It is an amalgam of buttercream and cream cheese frostings and it goes very well with any spice cake.

So, my resulting cake was pretty and delicious, but not exactly the exotic, fruity traditional Christmas cake covered in fruit filling that we always have.  Maybe not a groundbreaking new tradition, but it was a festive Saturday Cake for Boxing Day.  I wrote a note in my cookbook to double the filling recipe and put the grater safely back in the cabinet without incident.

Next Saturday: A Review of a Year of Saturday Cakes

November 28: Granna's Nut Cake

My grandmother's Nut Cake recipe is one of the treasures I found as I sorted through her cookbooks and clippings.  I found slips of paper with notes, sometimes written by a stranger's hand, about family tree birth dates, maiden names and death dates.  Granna made lists of flowers she needed to use to make an arrangement for horticulture club.  She made lists of dishes to serve for certain birthdays.  I found lists she made of her planned menus for Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving lunches.

Her neat, tight, level handwriting spelled out her plan of action for entertaining the whole family for the holiday.  Occasionally, her notes featured prices of the items she planned to make, or whether she had a coupon, or notes on which market had the best sale.  On the nut cake recipe, in addition to lots of stains and smudges, were written the price-per-pound for all of the expensive ingredients: Butter $1.67, Candied Cherries 1.29, Pecans $3.75 (now three times the price).

Pricey Ingredients

Did I remember one of those specific Thanksgiving menus on slips of paper used as bookmarks in a recipe book?   Sometimes she dated the notes "Thanksgiving 1985" and I sat, wishing I could remember any specific holiday at her house.  But, they were unremarkable because they all pretty much featured the same menu.  Each planned item was a favorite of one of her children or grandchildren; there was her cornbread dressing, her sweet potato casserole, turkey (sometimes cooked by my grandfather on the grill until it was as dry as sawdust), asparagus casserole, cylindrical cranberry sauce with rings of indentations left by the can, her homemade potato rolls, and her nut cake.

Granna's nut cake was the perfect lovechild of fruitcake and poundcake.  I have never seen another recipe for this cake.  It has a golden crust showing just the slightest nut-shaped hints of the treasures inside.  Candied cherries, candied pineapple and chopped pecans are packed into the buttery cake with none of the crazy cloying citron or bizarrely-colored fruit of fruitcake infamy.  Granna always made the nut cake in advance (it bakes for three hours and has to cool in the pan) and wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil to store in the freezer until the night before we arrived at her house.

Keith likes to take us all out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner so that I don't have to "spend all day in the kitchen" instead of watching the Macy's parade on the couch with him.  But, I always make pies for dessert at home after the feast.  I always make pumpkin pie by Chief Wilma Mankiller's recipe.  Chief Mankiller was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma for many years and she was an honoree at my college commencement.  Her recipe calls for baking pumpkin from scratch and it is Keith's favorite pie.

Everyone loves Mama Judy's pecan pie recipe, so I made a gluten-free version and a gluten-"full" version.  I also made a coconut custard pie on a gluten-free crust.  Mama Judy used to make a coconut custard pie (probably from Mrs. Dull's cookbook) but I found an appealing recipe clipped from a newspaper stashed in one of Granna's cookbooks.  It turned our very well.  I used frozen, prepared pie crust this year to save time.  The pies turned out just fine albeit with soggy bottom crusts, so I won't take the easy way out on pastry next year.

We've been rolling in pie and then cake for days.  It was a great weekend.

Granna's notes were her way to plan, organize and even savor the excitement of our visits.  She probably sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee reviewing the list multiple times in preparation for a holiday.  When I look at the lists, I can see her working on them and her nut cake tastes like thanksgiving to me.

On Saturday:  The Chocoholic

July 19: Lane Cake

The Lane Cake is a classic, southern cake.  I decided to make a Lane Cake back in January when I undertook this Cake on Saturday resolution.  I had never made one before and like the Caramel Cake, it seems like a good regional specialty to know.

A couple of weeks ago, Keith sent me a link to a PBS.org article about American Cakes Through History, written by Tori Avey.  In it she writes about her research into the Lane Cake.  She included a quote from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in which Scout commented "Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight."  The "shinny" refers to alcohol.   Since Ms. Lee's new book Go Set A Watchman was released this week, what better time to try a Lane Cake?

Ms. Avey's article traces the history of the cake created by Alabama-native, Emma Rylander Lane. Ms. Lane had named it "Prize Cake" since it won first prize at a county fair in Columbus, Georgia.
When I originally picked the Lane Cake, I had chosen Nathalie Dupree's recipe from her book, New Southern Cooking.  However, after reading Ms. Avey's article, I decided that there was a much better choice of recipe.  Dupree's recipe did not call for any alcohol at all, instead using orange or white grape juice in the filling.  A later Dupree cookbook, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking gave the option of using bourbon or orange juice.  There were several changes between the two versions of the Dupree recipes. I chose to stick more closely to the source material...

Ms. Avey references the 1921 Atlanta Woman's Club Cookbook version as it cites Mrs. Lane as the source of its recipe.  Since that cookbook is a prized part of my collection, I made my "prize" cake from Mrs. Lane's recipe.  It is even labeled as the "original" recipe.  Ms. Avey also refers to Mrs. Dull's Southern Cooking:  in the 1928 edition of the book there is no Lane Cake, but it is in the 1941 edition.  I have a reprint of the 1928 edition and I have Mama Judy's 1941 edition.

The recipes from 1941 Dull and AWC cookbook call for wine in the filling.  Mrs. Lane's recipe in the AWC specified using English walnuts, not pecans.  Mrs. Dull's lists pecans.  Since almost all later versions use bourbon and we like the bourbon/pecan combination, I decided to use bourbon.  The AWC version does not mention icing at all.  The 1941 Dull says "cover the cake with white icing."  No recipe for this icing was specified, but I chose a Seven Minute Icing since that was Mama Judy's go-to icing.  I used the recipe from Mrs. Dull since that was the one and only cookbook Judy ever owned.

Seven Minutes later...

Layers with filling

 Ms. Avey gave the option of baking the cake in three or four layers.  Mrs. Dull specifies three.  Mrs. Lane does not specify a number.  I chose to make three and included filling on the top layer as in Ms. Avey's article.  I made the cake and filling, and assembled the cake on Thursday because Ms. Avey recommended letting the flavors mingle for a few days before icing the cake.


Overall, I would say that this cake is a rich, boozy success.  The same could be said of some people I've known, but that is another story entirely.

This cake has a great visual impact and is much better than any fruitcake I have ever tasted so I can see why it is a favorite holiday cake in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  I will certainly bake this cake again.  Several recipes for Lane cake require adding coconut or chopped dried cherries to the filling.  Keith thinks that anything more than pecans, bourbon and raisins would be excessive - but he votes for more filling and more layers. I concur that coconut and cherries are unnecessary.  In the future I will make it in four layers, while keeping the extra filling on the top.  This will require multiplying the filling recipe.  Perhaps I will give it a try using wine instead of bourbon.  More Lane Cake loaded with shinny in our future...

Next Saturday: Mocha Loaf Cake

February 7: Caramel Cake, Take Two

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

- Oscar Wilde

And my second attempt at caramel cake, was quite the EXPERIENCE.  

I started with an admirable plan.  I had all of the requisite equipment.  I was in a good mood when I started baking.  Yet, I have created a monstrosity of a cake.  It is, in all honesty, the worst-looking  thing I have ever baked in my life.

After my first attempt at a caramel cake turned out poorly, I decided to approach my second attempt in a traditional way.  The only cookbook my great-grandmother, Mama Judy, ever used was Southern Cooking by Mrs. S.R. Dull, originally published in 1928.  Mama Judy's copy of the book had lost both of its covers before I was born.  She still used it and I suppose it worked better as a paperback anyway.  Mama Judy passed away during my gap year between high school and college.  When I left for college my mom tied up Judy's cookbook and its loose pages with a ribbon and gave it to me with a note saying "don't leave home without it."  I can flip through the book even now and see a bit of my Mama Judy on those pages that were baptized with flecks of extract or favored pages stained with greasy fingerprints.

Since my great-grandmother on my dad's side was famous for her caramel cakes, I figured that Mrs. Dull would be the place to find a contemporary recipe to the one that she used.  Nathalie Dupree's cake recipe that I used in January turned out smooth and firm enough to stand up to the heavy caramel, so I decided to use that again.  I made three layers instead of four this time.

The problem with my first caramel cake was the caramel filling.  So, I used Mrs. Dull's recipe for that today.  Her first step is to burn 1/4 cup of sugar in a cast iron skillet.  Cast iron is traditionally used for this task because it can take the high temperatures needed to melt dry sugar.  I learned today that sugar burns very quickly in a cast iron pan.  My first two attempts at carmel turned from lovely, light-brown caramel to bitter tar in a split second!  My third attempt was delicious.  I added the caramel syrup to the butter, milk and sugar and brought the whole thing to a rolling boil.  This time I had an operational candy thermometer, plus a spare, just in case.

Mrs. Dull says to get the caramel mixture up to 238 degrees; which is what I believed I had done.  Then I immediately took the pot off of the heat and set the pot in cold water to stop the cooking.  I started beating the caramel with a whisk to get it to the right consistency to spread on the beautiful cake layers.  I thought I had it right.  It looked good and tasted terrific.  It was so much better than my last caramel filling!

Then, I tried to spread it on the cake.

It immediately clumped up and became impossible to spread without tearing the cake.  I tried warming the knife to help it spread.  I tried gently warming the caramel (as recommended by Nathalie Dupree) to improve the viscosity.  Not one thing I tried worked.  I pushed. I pulled. I drizzled. I poured.

I ended up with the worst looking cake I have ever seen (and that is counting all those mud pies I made in the yard when I was five).  Now, for the sake of artistic integrity, I have posted the Franken-cake here for anyone to see.

The caramel cake has beaten me this time, but I resolve to get it right.  I just need some time off from caramel.

Next Saturday:  A Birthday Cake for Granna