Sugar!

[resonant]

Anybody want to give me your most wonderful recipe for a Valentine's day dessert?

Ideally one that doesn't make huge quantities, so that the three of us can eat it all on the day itself and not have leftovers sitting around tempting us later?

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Hmm-- I'm not sure it's Valentine-y, but I made the Best Cake Evar for sanj's birthday last weekend, a variation on Lady Baltimore cake that I'm calling Lucky Bastard cake.

It's New Joy of Cooking's Sour Cream Coffeecake recipe, with plain lowfat yogurt in place of sour cream, baked in two round pans and flavored with 2 Tbsp each brandy and spiced rum, 1/2 tsp cardamon seeds (crushed), 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp allspice. Make a brandy buttercream-- basic quick powdered-sugar made icing with as much butter as you can beat into it, and brandy for the liquid (plus 1 tsp vanilla). Take about 1/4 cup-- or less; make sure you have enough remaining for the top and sides of the cake-- and fold it into 1 pint very good homemade mincemeat. Spread mincemeat filling between the cake layers, all the way out to the edges; frost top and sides of cake with remaining buttercream.

Unfortunately, the cake requires that you have a pint of very good homemade mincemeat on hand, so it's not really a short-notice dessert. It was, however, spectacular.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Mmm, cardamom. I'm curious as to why crushing them rather than soaking them in the liquid and then removing them; is it merely a function of the time needed to soak, or is there a difference in flavor?

Me, I don't do fruity mincemeat, but I have been known to use blackberry jam in between two layers of a cake. Especially when the cake is chocolate. For an allspice/nutmeg-flavored cake, maybe apple butter or marmalade or even Nutella would be a good choice.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, that was unclear-- the cardamom was crushed and then thrown right into the batter, along with the rum and brandy. (And it was seeds specifically, not pods, which one usually does soak.)

The spice flavor is not terribly intense with those quantities; I wanted the cake to be fairly mild, so as not to overwhelm the filling. If I were making it without mincemeat, which was heavily spiced, I'd probably double all the spices. I bet it would be good with apple butter, though.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It sounds lovely, but not so much with the homemade mincemeat here. Nor, for that matter, with the brandy and the spiced rum.

[tevere.livejournal.com]

I was reading this recipe and had a horrible moment of cognitive dissonance when I saw the word 'mincemeat'. In this context it's not so much a MEAT-FILLED CAKE (as in my first thought) as it is a chopped fruit filled cake, right? Right???

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

*g* Yes. While Elizabethan mincemeat was, in fact, chopped beef mixed with fruit and spices (and while modern mincemeat does sometimes include suet for richness), mine was just finely chopped dried fruit and orange rind, soaked in apple cider and brandy with spices.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Somewhere, quite recently, I was in a discussion of the early usage of the word 'meat' and the way it changed from meaning 'things that can be eaten' to meaning 'specifically food made of animal flesh,' with a detour through Genesis (He giveth them their meat in due season) and Robert Burns (Some hae meat and canna eat, etc.) -- but now I can't remember whether this conversation happened online or in real life.