"mrs. child's famous sticky fruitcake"

As Julia Child notes, "[t]his cake isn't sticky at all, but it started out that way during my first experiements, and the name has remained, as a family joke."¹ And thus began my first experiment with fruitcake. I've made panforte and convinced my fruitcakephobic family to relish that, and Child's fruitcake seemed like good introduction to fruitcake (she has yet to fail me, from pastry to roast chicken).

 The fruitcake began with me making mixed peel: I blanched lemon and orange peel in water and then cooked them in syrup (I wasn't about to buy the overly processed peel at a grocery store, and I've never seen the higher quality stuff of which British pastry chefs talk).

The base is four pounds of peel and fruit: I used the aforementioned candied orange and lemon peel plus raisins, sultanas, zante currants, figs, candied ginger, sour cherries preserved in alcohol, unsulfured apricots, and prunes. This sits overnight with a pound of nuts (I used pecans and walnuts), a pound of mincemeat (I used some from Dan Lepard's recipe: I should have made it a month ago, but this'll be fine — and now I'll have mince for a Christmas pie), ⅔ c. rum, ⅓ c. bourbon, 1 tbsp. espresso, ¼ c. molasses, and a mix of 1 tsp. cardamom, ½ tsp. each cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace, and 1½ tsp. salt.

Above left is what that looks like after 24 hours of maceration, above left is tossed with 3½ c. flour with 1 tbsp. baking powder.

To that mixture is added ½ lb. butter that was creamed with 2 c. sugar, ⅓ c. brown sugar, 2 tbsp. vanilla and six eggs. This is then spooned into buttered and floured tins lined with parchement. I ended up with four loaves a little under a pound each, one toping two pounds and a sixth weighing in at almost three-and-a-half pounds (the smaller caked baked for 80 minutes, the larger for 120-130).

These smell lovely. I sprinkled more bourbon and rum atop, wrapped them up, and we'll see how they are in a month (if I can wait)!


¹Julia Child, From Julia Child's Kitchen (New York: Grammercy, 1975), 583.

duck + chestnuts

Duck breast, dry rubbed with thyme, salt, and pepper, seared and finished with a wine-duck-cherry sauce (reduced wine, duck stock, sour cherries that have been soaking in grain alcohol with hibiscus and orange peel, and the faux-demi-glace that you get when making duck confit). This, with Julia Child's purée of chestnuts, which has left me with fingers numbed from peeling hot chestnuts but nevertheless sated, thinking it was well worth it.

sour cherry, apple, and pear pie

A blend of sour cherries (frozen from July), pears, and apples — with cinnamon, cloves and a bit of sugar and tapioca flour — made for a delightful fall pie.

birthday 2013

As often goes, documentation of birthdays easily is swept away with the flurry of food and libations, seen above before with my cat resting before an evening of him asserting his rôle as master of ceremonies and lead entertainer. in the foreground is anise seed and orange flower water shortbread, a delicious recipe from Deborah Madison's latest book.
  

 

Autumn approaches and I wanted to do something with my florishing sage plant: here we have asiago and mascarpone blended with fresh sage as well as salt and pepper, spread on a toasted slice of baguette and topped with fried sage leaves, a delicious finish.

I adore génoise, and have made them in the past, but I recently discovered a cake by Deborah Madison (from an earlier book): a hazelnut cake that is basically a génoise with most of the flour replaced with ground toasted hazelnuts (or hickory nuts, but those are not easy to come by). I split the cake into three, spashed the layers with kirsch, and layered them with Julia Child's chocolate mousse (with kirsch in place of the orange liqueur). Finished with kirsch-flavored whipped cream and sour cherries that have been soaking in grain alcohol with hibiscus and orange peel. Fantastic.

boozy sour cherry and chocolate mousse cake

Melt some bittersweet chocolate with espresso and beat eggs with sugar over a double boiler.

Beat the egg mixture and chocolate mixture; bring some egg whites to soft peaks, add sugar and bring to stiff peaks: fold into chocolate mixture. This fabulous mousse — from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking — will form the second layer of the following cake:

One layer of chocolate chiffon (with a splash of kirsch), a layer of Julia's mousse (with kirsch in lieu of orange liqueur), another layer of chiffon, a layer of sour cherries (stewed, set with tapioca starch and finished with—you guessed it—kirsch), more chiffon. I finished this with a crumb coat (it sets the top) of mousse followed by a generous glaze of chcocolate ganache.

Serve with boozy (read: kirsch-laden) whipped cream. Add candles (and sour cherries soaked in Everclear, orange and hibiscus) and it's the cake for a fabulous friend's birthday!

crisp

As we approach the end of sour cherry season, here's a cherry-almond-apricot crisp.

pickled sour cherries — cerises à l'aigre-doux

Both Elizabeth David (in French Provincial Cooking) and  Jane Grigson (in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book) have recipes for pickled cherries — cerises à l'aigre-doux. I was tempted, and did, and they are a fabulous hors-d'œuvre, here with radishes waiting to be devoured with salt and refreshing cornichons.

I boiled 6 oz of sugar with 12 oz of red wine vinegar, a half dozen each cloves and crushed juniper berries, a bit of true cinnamon (the stuff from Sri Lanka that looks more like actual bark and is more subtle), and some lemon peel. I let this simmer for ten minutes, then cooled and strained it. I used enough cherries (a little less than a quart) to use up the vinegar mixture, and let them sit in a cabinet for two weeks (perhaps longer if it's cooler than hot Chicago summer where you are). After this, they tasted ready and went into the fridge.

They are really quite marvelous, and my guests loved them. Tart, savory, surprising.

sour cherry pie

One of my favorite things about living in Chicago in the summer is being so close to Michigan, one of the few places that produces sour cherries, which, I would argue, are more complex and have more flavor than sweet cherries. They are also better for baking.

I was over-zealous with the cherries, so they bubbled up over the lattice. Nonetheless, this was an incredible cherry pie. Just 1½ quarts cherries, a cup of sugar, 3 tablespoons of tapioca, some vanilla and almond liqueur, and a bit of salt. Sour cherries are complex, never cloying, and this was remarkably well-balanced, especially with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.

clafoutis aux pêches

This is Julia Child's basic recipe for clafoutis (from Mastering the Art..., but I subsituted amaretto for vanilla and brandy) with sliced peaches and sour cherries that have been soaking in rum for the last year. The sour cherries, being on top, caramelized and had wonderful flavor. The peaches needed no peeling or preparation: simply sliced, they were great. This is probably my favorite clafoutis of those that I have made.

sour cherries!

Sour cherries were something I had only heard about — I assumed you needed to live in France, Hungary or California to even imagine finding them local. I was wrong.


I found these local sour cherries with a "try me" sign at a family market in town. They are, hands down, the most delicious cherries I have ever eaten. In a perfect world, I'd have had a duck to roast and would have made Canneton Montmorecy.

What I did make was a cherry shortcake of sorts. I made biscuits from Jennifer McLagan's Fat cookbook — I baked her suet biscuits for cobbler on a sheet pan and they turned out amazing! I soaked pitted cherries in Luxardo Maraschino Originale (which, as far as I know, is the only true maraschino liqueur produced) and some sugar, split the biscuits, placed the mascerated cherries and juice on the biscuits and topped with cream whipped with more Luxardo (no additional sugar needed).

The biscuits hold up to the tartness of the cherries while having a savory lightness that only comes with suet (I figured I needed a no-hold-barred biscuits for the cherries and maraschino) and the combination is truly stellar. We didn't even pause for a photo.