Whine Cake (Fall Equinox '11)

Dear Mouse,

There's almost nothing that makes me feel more at peace than the almost visible glow that pervades my home after people come over and allow me to feed them. I'm glad you could take a short break from seating charts to join the annual Fall Equinox dinner Chez Boo.

Of course, given everyone's wild schedules at the moment, there wasn't time for a big feast. This year's table sported black plums, chevre, hummus, crackers, and glasses of prosecco. But I still

wanted to make something particular to the occasion.

Wine Harvest Floor Picnic Setup, Urban Pagan Style.

Right up front I want to say that the cake was not my idea. This year, I chose to celebrate the Fall Equinox, also known as the Wine Harvest, by stealing a recipe from a food blog we love. I feel ok about it because the author admits to taking the recipe from a reader, and after all Pete Seeger called stealing the "Folk Process", and, whatever, this cake is really special.

At the wine harvest, we honor the notion of fermentation... the last stage before decay, before out with the old and in with the new. We drink in the lessons learned from the old year before the new is quite upon us, blah, blah, spiritual justification for booze in your dessert.

The truth is that Wine Cake has been on my mind since the summer, when our friend Titania (aka Mrs.Mighty Hunter) brought her sensational, signature "Aunt Marilyn's Wine Cake" to our waterfront picnic and I pretty much consumed the whole thing over the course of the afternoon.

Aunt Marilyn, you saucy minx. Trust me, there is no one who would not love this if you brought it over to their house; I dont care if they plant-sit for Michael Pollan.

Dangerously light AND moist AND crumby AND not too sweet AND kind of boozy but just a little, like maybe there was a glass of wine sitting near your cake. We're not talking tiramisu here. You're not going to get tipsy - - but it's there to lend an innocent, retro confection a kind of adult wink. It was everything I felt that summer day - sunshiny, casual, laid-back and just a little bit up to no good.

Although I had to respect Mrs. MH's wish to not betray Aunt Marilyn's recipe, I did pester her for some key ingredients and then googled recipes to match. (It's the FOLK PROCESS.) It seems that the traditional 'wine cake' involves yellow or white cake mix (MIX), instant vanilla pudding (INSTANT PUDDING), eggs, vegetable oil, and white wine. Delicious. Believe it. Resist the urge to fancy it up in any way as I believe it would ruin the charming, wonderfully unpretentious end result. I think this recipe would probably come close.

Fast-forward to this week, when I see this recipe online and find that I cannot get myself to the store fast enough for red wine and cocoa powder. Because if Aunt Marilyn totally nailed my summer afternoon, devil-may-care, I'm-0ff-to-the-O'Neill-conference mindset in July, only this deep, dark, For-Serious

Red Wine Chocolate Cake

-!!!! -

- could capture where I'm at now as we slide into Fall.

Sparing the details, it's been a rough week. Disappointment. Loss. Heartbreak. Chagrin. Nouns like that.

There are times when you really learn the meaning of powerlessness. As in, sometimes s*t really does just happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Bad things happen to good people. Bad news comes without warning. You can't always get what you want, and you can't always keep what you think you have. One minute everyone's basking in the beautiful summer; the next minute it's, well, over.

At times like this, it's possible to go to a really dark place.

If you're lucky, it'll look like this:

Fall Equinox Red Wine Chocolate Cake via Smitten Kitchen

This dark, refined (yet fluffy!) chocolate cake does not involve mix or pudding (remember, we're going for beautiful gothic melancholy here). However, it is still an EASY one-bowl affair that takes only 25 minutes in the oven. You have GOT to make this, heartbreak or no. (You'll see that Smitten Kitchen's version calls for a mascarpone cream topping; I prefer without. To each her own.)

6 tbsp butter

3/4 C packed dark brown sugar

1/4 C white sugar

1 egg + 1 yolk (I only had one egg and it was still delicious)

3/4 C red wine (I used Cupcake Vineyards' "Red Velvet"... pretty much because of the name)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 C + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour

1/2 C dutch cocoa powder (I went with Hershey's Unsweetened)

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp table salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon (I might actually have liked less)

Preheat to 325. Spray 9-in. round cake pan with baking spray (or line with parchment... ? I used Pam...) In a large bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugars and beat til fluffy. Add egg and yolk and beat well, then red wine and vanilla. Add all dry ingredients right in the same bowl (you can sift them if you're more patient than me, or have a sifter). Mix til 3/4 combined then fold the rest in gently. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 25-30 min or until a cake tester comes out clean. "The top of the cake should be shiny and smooth, like a puddle of chocolate."(SK). (If you're making the topping, do it while the cake is baking.) Let cool 10 min. Eat. It looks very pretty dusted with confectioner's sugar.

This cake, like the human spirit, is very resilient. Like, say, if you forget to add the chocolate, and have to stir it in at the last minute. Still good!

Welcome Fall.

Love,

The Boo

Turnover the Season

Dear Mouse,

Happy Fall!!!

This was quite the feasting weekend. Friday and Saturday I went to TWO separate Rosh Hashanah dinners at two very food-savvy homes (my friend EKT, who did a Persian-themed menu, and our family's.) Now, while I did eat like a Queen, I feel we have already rhapsodized at length in this blog about our family's seasonal showstoppers. It's beyond the reach of my pen to describe them further. So, I will just say this: leftover cold beef brisket on a toasted English muffin spread with Nervous Nellie's tomato chutney. You're welcome.

For this post, I will instead turn to the other holiday meal that rounded out a weekend of seasonal reflection and munching: the Fall Equinox dinner that I always host at my place. It usually involves a roast chicken and something with apples. I based the dinner on that idea and on what was at the local Sunnyside Farmer's Market*.

from left: kale w/chopped bacon* & red wine vinegar, chicken baked in a bag w/mushrooms & thyme, roasted new potatoes w/pesto*, cheddar & apple* turnovers w/walnuts & dried cranberries.

Let's just revisit that last one.
from the exciting, apple-centric Fall issue of Bon Appetit
(Thanks for the subscription, Mouse!)

I am not exaggerating when I say I HAD to make them, because I read the recipe and couldn't stop thinking about them for a week. Sharp cheddar and golden delicious apples? With dried cranberries & walnuts, encased in flaky puff pastry? Also, it started a lively FaceBook debate, a first:

The Boo, via iPhone: Is phyllo the same as puff pastry?
#1: yes :-)
#2: Yep. Just a fancy schmancy way of saying it! :)
#3: It's the Greek version.
#4:you can get some handmade premade phyllo in the freezer section of the greek bakery on 9th and 45th
#5: Actually, unfortunately that's not true. They are different recipes and different handling procedures. Puff pastry is infinitely easier and less temperamental. Phyllo dough is a nightmare to work with. But yes, you can get frozen versions of both at the supermarket.
#6: Yeah, they're actually not the same thing at all. You can sometimes substitute one for the other, but not automatically.Both are basically ways of producing multiple layers of dough with butter in between, but that effect is achieved differently. Phyllo comes in individual paper-thin sheets, and you assemble multiple layers of it, brushing each sheet with melted butter and stacking them. Puff pastry starts as a relatively thick layer of dough topped with a layer of softened butter. These are folded (usually in threes) and then rolled out; the process is repeated and you eventually end up with multiple layers of dough and softened butter. When you buy puff pastry at the store, it is thus essentially "pre-assembled," whereas with phyllo you generally must do the layering yourself....
#5 again: Yes, and also, Phyllo doesn't "puff", hence the naming distinction.

Thanks guys! I think we all learned something here. In the end, I spent like $11 on a fancy kind of PP at Whole Foods when I KNOW (because Ina Garten told me) that Pepperidge Farm makes it for like half that. But I had a turnover schedule to keep. It was golden delicious all right -- puffy, flaky, very, very rich. A Fall Equinox croissant in savory clothing. I'd like to try a phyllo version next and see how that goes. They are very easy and good. I will say that I like more filling than the recipe yields. It's supposedly enough for 8 turnovers, and I made four with almost all the filling. But to each his own.

The Fall Equinox is a harvest festival, known in some traditions as Second Harvest (first being Aug 1), also known as the Wine Harvest. After the 'grain harvest' of August (which is all about home-baked bread), the focus turns to the last of the fruit crops before the winter...ie, apple mania. We had some great dinner conversation about this, the idea of the Harvest in our lives. Looking back over the year, what did we gather, both good and bad? Can we be thankful for both, and use both? As a wise woman once put it, "Poo is also Fertilizer". Oh, right, that was you. :-)

I like to think we can take our, ahem, 'fertilizer' (our mistakes, our misfortunes) and from them draw richness of experience and new beginnings. Take, for example, the truly terrible quinoa salad I made last week. I didn't let it cool before mixing the black beans, corn, and lime juice dressing into it, and it was a soggy, bewildering mess. BUT it made great burrito filling!! One package of tortillas later, I had a week's lunch in my freezer.

Happy composting,

The Boo