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

March 21: Sheath Cake

When I began my U.S. Secret Service career in 1996,  I was assigned to the Jackson, Mississippi, Resident Office.  Within ten minutes of meeting the Agent-in-Charge, he told me that I was the first female special agent ever assigned in the state of Mississippi.  Approximately an hour later, during a tour of the office, this same boss pointed-out the coffee maker and said "of course, you know, it's the female agents who make the coffee..."

I was scheduled to depart for training the very next day after that tour.  Fortunately for me, during the six months I was away for training, that supervisor was promoted to another office.  Special Agent Sam Mitchell in Jackson was assigned to be my on-the-job trainer/partner when I got back to the office.  Sam Mitchell is a Vietnam Veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart.  As with most veterans of the Vietnam conflict, he never discussed his experiences there. 

Sam knew everything about our job; other special agents joked that he "slept with the manual under his pillow."  He was fastidious, followed the rules, and was the repository of an unbelievable amount of agency history (plus, a fair amount of agency gossip).   But most importantly, he treated me with the patience and kindness of a father.

Sam was the firearms instructor for our office.  USSS minimum proficiency standards for firearm accuracy are even higher than other Federal agencies, due to the likelihood that we might need to use our weapons in close proximity to one of our protectees.  All gun-carrying personnel in the office had to qualify on all of our weapons (handgun, shotgun, UZI sub-machine gun) every quarter.  Sam was the best marksman in the office and ran the range with a constant eye for safety.  Following the rules of the range and the instructions of the range master is imperative.

After about a year, Sam asked me if I would like to go to Firearms Instructor Training in Washington.  FI school is a grueling two-week course and many people wash out.  I jumped at the chance, but was filled with apprehension.  When I arrived at FI school, an instructor told me that if I passed I would be one of only two female FI's in the agency.  No pressure.

I passed the school and Sam passed the FI responsibilities to me.

One day in the office, Sam was looking for some word processing documents on floppy disks from a box of  disks in his desk drawer.  He accessed each disk and scanned the menu, then ejected the disk when it didn't contain the file he needed.  After a while, he seemed to find something important and he selected the document then sent it to his printer.  He handed the printout to me saying "this is the best cake recipe in the world, I make it every time I have to take a dessert someplace."  It was a recipe for something called Sheath Cake.  "Sheath Cake?  Does it have to do with a knife sheath?  A sheath dress?  Why is it called a SHEATH cake?"  Sam replied to just trust him and make the recipe, that it would be the best cake I ever tried.

I was surprised to get a cake recipe from Sam.  I put the recipe in a protective plastic sleeve in my binder of trusted recipes, where it has resided for more than fifteen years.  I smile, thinking of Sam, whenever I see it in my recipe book.  But I have never made his cake; I would always have other chocolate cakes to make.  So, today I made the Sheath Cake.

Sam's recipe calls for using sticks of margarine instead of butter.  I never use margarine for anything!  But, who am I to defy my training agent and the range master?

Besides the margarine, there are other unusual instructions:  add the melted margarine to the dry ingredients already in the bowl, then add the eggs and liquid ingredients.  But, the most interesting part is the frosting.  While the cake bakes, make the frosting, then as soon as the cake comes out of the oven, pour the frosting on the hot cake and immediately cover the whole thing with aluminum foil.  Then, after it cools, put the cake in the refrigerator because "it slices better when cold."  It did slice well out of the refrigerator.  The texture is dense and very moist.  It has the slightly disappointing flavor of other chocolate cakes made with only cocoa.  The pecans in the fudgy icing give it nice dimension.  However, I prefer a chocolate cake with more depth of flavor.

I hate to disagree with my training agent, but this isn't the best cake I ever tried.  I hope he'll forgive me; but of course, you know it's the female agents who bake the cakes.

Next Saturday:  Carrot Bundt Cake

March 14: Boston Cream Pie

When Keith was in high school and college he had a summer job as a performer on the Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad.  He usually played a cowboy or Confederate soldier in a historical scene alongside the train's route; the train would slow down and stop so that the passengers could watch the action.  Sometimes, he was the announcer on the train, welcoming the passengers, providing trivia about the park or narrating the mini-plays.  One of his favorite jokes from his railroad announcer days was about a southern country bumpkin learning geometry:

When the bumpkin was instructed to find the area of a circle using...

, 

the redneck became outraged and insisted "Pie are ROUND, cornbread are square!"

In honor of Pi Day (3.1415... ), my Saturday Cake is Boston Cream Pie.  Its very name claims its New England Yankee heritage.  I had been in a quandary about how to celebrate Pi Day in this year of cakes.  My college friend, Laura Simard Regan,  suggested Boston Cream Pie as the best choice.  I met Laura my freshman year at Dartmouth and I know that I can trust her judgement on this because:  She was a math major and claimed to have graduated "Pseudo Cum Laude" and she is, herself, a Connecticut Yankee.  Plus, Laura has the good judgement to now reside south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Most of our gang at Molly's Balloon in Hanover for a birthday celebration.
That's me in the blue blazer with Laura, standing, right behind me.

When choosing the Boston Cream Pie recipe I knew that making a Yankee cake required a Yankee recipe.  I chose the recipe from The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook.  The King Arthur Flour Company is located in Norwich, Vermont, right across the Connecticut river from our Alma Mater.  King Arthur sells flour and baking specialty products at kingarthurflour.com.  KAF also offers baking classes and sells freshly-baked treats at their Norwich headquarters.  

In March of 2003, I took a vacation to attend a two-day French Baguette class at KAF.  I booked a long weekend at Breakfast On the Connecticut, a bed and breakfast inn in Lyme, New Hampshire (breakfastonthect.com) and drove up from my home in Washington, DC.  On the way up, I encountered snow storm that started in Connecticut and worsened the further north I drove.  Yet, I was determined!  My planned 8-hour trip became a 15-hour trip and I arrived in Lyme exhausted.  The next morning at the Baking Education Center I discovered that only three other students had been able to make it to class, so our two-day class was shortened to one day.  It was immensely enjoyable and I would love to take more classes there sometime.  Due to the storm, my hosts at the inn offered to share their dinner that night after the class so that I wouldn't have to get out on the roads.  Did they know I was a southerner and assumed that I couldn't drive in the snow?

My Boston Cream Pie

The recipe was located in the "Pies and Pastry"section of the cookbook, under a heading called "Pastry Mavericks."   It calls for topping the assemblage with "your choice of chocolate frosting."  I chose to chocolate ganache.  As you can tell, the cake layers are a little dark; the recipe instructed to bake for 30 minutes, but at 20 minutes, I checked and found the cake layers on the verge of burning!  The filling is pastry cream, made from flour, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla.  Keith likes the ganache and the pastry cream, but acknowledges that the cake was a little dry.

I've made a pie that is a cake.  

I make my cornbread round (as any self-respecting southerner does, unless they are in a punchline).  

I am a southerner who drives in the snow and bakes on vacation.  

So, call me a Pastry Maverick!

Next Saturday:  Sheath Cake