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Recipe: chocolate cassata cake

It’s cake season. This means that it is cool enough for me to want to turn my oven on. It means that it is cool enough that I am willing to work with chocolate. Even so, making a cake can fill me with dread and be downright frustrating at times – mostly because of elevation issues. I’m always keen to try new recipes, but hate the idea of wasting time, energy, money, and good wholesome ingredients on cakes that fail. A recipe tester, I am not. But this cake has been bouncing in my head since October.

let’s make some candied orange and lemon peels (lemons, orange, sugar)

slice the peel off

combine sugar and water to make a syrup

simmered peels (2 hours)

I have never had an authentic Italian cassata before. The only reason I knew anything about cassata was that I had made an adaptation from Marcel Desaulnier’s Death by Chocolate which involves yellow spongecake soaked in rum and layered with a shaved chocolate pastry cream rather than the traditional ricotta cheese filling. I read that Italian cassatas are commonly served around Easter. But when I had lunch at Pizzeria Locale last month, I saw cassata on the dessert menu and impulsively ordered it.

chocolate chiffon cake: oil, eggs, confectioners sugar, milk, flour, cocoa, sugar, almond extract

mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients (except egg whites and granulated sugar)

folding whipped egg whites into the chocolate batter

pour the batter in buttered pans lined with parchment paper

What arrived was a slice of chocolate cassata: chocolate spongecake with a creamy, almost buttery ricotta filling studded with pistachios, and all topped with a nice dark chocolate glaze. Brilliant. I had to attempt this at home – it was so lovely! I did a little research and decided to make a layer cake… because I am partial to layers. There would be four components: chocolate spongecake, ricotta cheese filling with candied orange peel, chopped pistachios, and shaved chocolate, a boozy simple syrup to soak the cake layers, and a dark chocolate glaze.

ricotta cheese, vanilla extract, grated chocolate, chopped candied citrus peel, pistachios, cinnamon, powdered sugar

adding vanilla

stirring in the pistachios, candied peels, and chocolate

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: spinach artichoke cream cheese

They said it was going to snow this weekend, and it did. But between the sun and the 60 mph winds, we’ve got nada on the ground here. We are headed for single digits tonight (in °F) and the wind chill is well below zero. That would explain Kaweah’s lack of the usual dawdling when we turn around to go back home during her walk (but she still loves her walks). It also means that I have been a baking fool for the past few days, filling the house with the warm scent of fall spices, roasted vegetables, and hot soups. I’m still waiting for proper winter (read: snow), but in the meantime…

we have had a string of brilliant sunrises and sunsets the past week

lunch with jeremy at pica’s (wet burritos: carne asada and pork adobado)

hoarding the best duck prosciutto

That last shot is of four duck breast prosciutto from Il Mondo Vecchio in Denver, which is closing its doors at the end of this month (November 30, 2012). I’m heartbroken and upset about the closure because I love this small local business and their quality products. I’ve ventured down to their Denver loading dock before, but then Cured (in Boulder) began to carry Il Mondo Vecchio’s salumi such that I could gift duck breast prosciutto to a deserving hostess from time to time.

I don’t get to Denver very often (this is voluntary) and I know I am missing out on some great eats and treats in the city, but I do hear about great places from my local pals. Back in the spring, when my friend Kathya came to visit with me, she brought me bagels and cream cheese from Hi*Rise in Denver. The bagels were good, but the cream cheese was absolutely lovely – spinach and artichoke. When I had polished off the last of the spinach and artichoke cream cheese, I thought to myself, “I need to get in on that action.”

spinach, artichoke hearts, lemon, salt, cream cheese

chop the artichokes

You can use frozen spinach if you don’t want to deal with fresh spinach. I had fresh spinach on hand and rather like the idea of knowing exactly what is in it. It’s a quick blanch in boiling water, then drain it and squeeze it out just like you would frozen spinach. Chop it up and you are good to go.

blanch

drain

chop

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: seven layer cookies

Our neighbors are absent in summer because they run a camp in the wilds of Canada. It’s really too bad because we quite like these neighbors and their giant walking carpet of a dog (she’s such a lover). The kids return in late August when school starts, and then the mother comes back in September and finally, the father wraps everything up and returns in October. We see glimpses of one another in the driveways as summer transitions into autumn. It’s a busy time for us too with travel and work such that I make a point of going over to welcome them home. I can’t really walk over empty-handed, because… I can’t.

graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, coconut, butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, macadamia nuts

buttering the pan and lining with parchment paper (and buttering again)

So I’m flipping through my old notebook with my earliest recipes, looking for a certain cookie when these seven layer cookies caught my eye. This was a recipe from my days growing up in Virginia, something the ladies would bring to potlucks. It is sweet beyond all get out and is filed with the rest of my favorite “white trash” recipes. I hadn’t made these in over 20 years. I know this because Jeremy had neither heard of them nor tasted them before. Time to whip up a batch, no?

mix the melted butter and graham cracker crumbs

press into the bottom of the pan

These are the kind of treats that rot your insides, but are surprisingly snacky. That’s why I 1) haven’t made them in 20 years and 2) gave most all of these away. It’s foolproof too. I really don’t think anyone can mess this recipe up. If you do manage to mess it up, don’t tell me.

pour the sweetened condensed milk over the crust

layer the butterscotch and chocolate chips

**Jump for more butter**