Salty Honey Pie

I made this pie more than a week ago, but 'tis the season for hectic schedules, so you're only getting to see it now. The inspiration for Salty Honey Pie came from a conversation with some old friends whom I had the pleasure of catching up with over Thanksgiving weekend. My friend Kat told me about a(n apparently famous) pie shop in Brooklyn called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. She raved about their salty honey pie and piqued my interest in their pie recipe book which I immediately added to the top of my Amazon Wish List. Lucky for me, the shop owners had recently shared the recipe for this particular pie in an interview with the South Brooklyn Post (read the interview and get the original recipe).

So we begin. A couple of the ingredients were tricky to find. For some reason (perhaps the fact that it was right after Thanksgiving), my local grocery stores were all out of flake sea salt. And I'd never heard of vanilla paste before. If I'd thought ahead, I could have ordered some online, but this recipe was a spur of the moment kind of thing (typical), so I improvised with vanilla bean seeds and flake kosher salt.

This is what I like to call a “One Bowl” recipe – cousin to the one-pot meals you see all the time in Real Simple, but more generous in the sugar-fat-salt department.  When all the mixing was done, the batter looked pretty much like what you’d  expect a raw custard base to be: frothy and golden and very soupy. But after baking, my recipe (reprinted below) promised I’d see my pies “puff up like marshmallows” before setting. So at this point, my hopes are high. I pre-baked the crusts and then filled 'em up.

The recipe made enough batter for six 4 ounce pies in my mini-tart dishes and a bonus pie in the half-sized pie dish I bought at a craft show this fall (also featured in the Szarlotka post when I had extra apple pie filling that needed a home). All of these pies used a full crust recipe - top and bottom.

I stuck to the recipe and baked my 4 oz. pies for 20 minutes. This may have been a little long since they were so small, but I watched them carefully, and the centers seemed really wobbly until the very end, while the recipe said they'd be "just slightly" wobbly when they were done. The larger pie was still really wobbly after 20 minutes, so I left it in for another five. In retrospect, I may need to redefine my understanding of what 'wobbly' looks like, because these pies were definitely on the far side of done when they finally came out. In fact, the batter seems to have seeped through the holes in the crust (from piercing them with a fork while they pre-baked) and carmelized, making a sugary cement that made it extremely difficult to remove some of the little pies from their dishes. Or perhaps I was just over-eager to get to the taste-test stage of this recipe. Anyway, this happened...

In the end, I had a plate of scraps that tasted delicious but decidedly did not look like pie. Luckily, a couple of the pies held together through the removed process and ended up looking pretty handsome. 

And the half-pie stayed in his dish, which definitely helped. So let's just pretend they all came out looking like this one. 

This pie is extremely rich and sweet. The recipe recommends serving it with whipped cream, which I second. It would also pair nicely with a strong after-dinner coffee (or an early morning coffee if you're the type who likes to start the day with a caffeine/sugar one-two punch).

Salty Honey Pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Shop

Preheat oven to 350 F

Have pre-baked one 9-inch pie shell of your choice (I recommend Emily Hilliard's Nothing in the Hosue Pie Crust. Always).

For the Pie Filling: 

½ cup butter - melted

¾  cup white sugar

2 Tbsp white cornmeal

¼  tsp salt

¾  cup honey (lavender- or ginger-infused honey would be an excellent upgrade here)

3 eggs

½  cup heavy cream

2 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla paste (or 1 tsp vanilla extract, or seeds of 1 whole vanilla bean)

1 or 2 Tbsp flake sea salt for finishing (Maldon is a good choice)

Directions

All of the mixing can be done by hand or with an electric mixer.

Melt butter and combine with the sugar, salt and cornmeal to make a thick paste. 

Add the honey, vanilla and vinegar and mix together.

Fold in the eggs, add the cream and blend.

Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie shell and bake at 350 F for 45 to 60 minutes.

The filling will puff up like a marshmallow and the center will be just slightly wobbly (or very wobbly. Take it out anyway).

Once cooled at least one hour, finish with a sprinkling of flake sea salt. Slice and serve with freshly whipped cream. (Recipes for whipped cream: from Martha or Alton)

Spicy Chocolate Pie with Cinnamon Whipped Cream

We're in the middle of our first real snowfall of the winter here in Grand Rapids, so all I can think about is staying in and keeping warm. This chocolate pastry is an adaptation of the Chocolate Chess Pie recipe from Nothing in the House. I combined all the warmest flavors I could think of to transform the basic chocolate filling into a super nova of flavor. I also added a mildly sweet cinnamon-infused whipped cream to round out the finished product.

The ingredients to this recipe are always delightfully basic. The point of chess pie (and most of the recipes from Nothing in the House, hence its moniker) is that it can be prepared without a lot of special purchases. To the lineup of usual suspects (flour, sugar, butter, &c.), I added cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and some almond extract I happened to have on hand. These flavors were meant to be reminiscent of Mexican chocolate, but the almond component could probably be omitted (or increased, if you feel adventurous), because I couldn't taste it in the finished product.

Since I'm always committed to honing my craft, I went ahead and made my own crust for this recipe. The Nothing in the House Pie Crust came together nicely, and I didn't even have to get out my food processor, though I did use the cheese grater to "slice" my cold butter (ever since that Szarlotka, I've been seeing this handy tool in a whole new light). The full recipe gave me enough crust for six miniature pies along with plenty of extra dough left over, and the filling batter divided between them perfectly. The kitchen gods seem to be smiling on me this time around...

After about 50 minutes in the oven, my spicy chocolate pies were filling the kitchen with delectable aromatics, and I'd almost forgotten that the snow was busy piling up outside. Then I opened my window to set the pies out to cool, and reality set in. Truth be told, I'm not dreading winter; after all, it's not hard to embrace a season that gives me both plentiful snow days AND a reason to keep my oven on full-blast for months and months on end. 

Sitting in the path of some snowy downdrafts for a few minutes did wonders to bring my pies down to a reasonable temperature, and after about 15 minutes, they were cool enough to handle some topping. I took this recipe for cinnamon whipped cream and cut it in half, plus I decreased the confectioner's sugar even more so it would add creaminess to the spicy flavor without being overpoweringly sweet. 

I finished off my spicy chocolate pies with a generous dollop of the home-made whipped cream and a light sprinkling of extra cinnamon, and of course, a taste test was necessary after that. I managed to stop myself after eating just half of one, but I could have easily kept going. The whipped cream balances out the cayenne for just the right amounts of heat and richness, and the cinnamon and chocolate are the perfect winter combination.

Spicy Chocolate Chess Pie 

adapted from Nothing in the House

For the Pie:

Nothing in the House pie crust (whole recipe for six 4-oz ramekins)

1/2 c. (one stick) butter

2 oz. (2 square) bittersweet chocolate

3/4 c. white sugar

1 Tblsp. yellow cornmeal

2 large eggs, beaten well

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. almond extract

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper  (or more, to taste)

1/4 tsp. salt

For the Cinnamon Whipped Cream:

1 c. heavy cream, cold

1/4 c. confectioner's sugar

1 heaping tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

For the Pie

Prepare the Nothing in the House pie crust and chill dough at least 1 hour before rolling out and fitting into six greased and floured 4-oz ramekins. Alternately, prepare half the recipe to fit one 9-inch pie pan.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Put rolled and fitted crusts back in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a small saucepan over med-low heat for 5 minutes until they make a smooth sauce. Remove from the heat and pour into a medium bowl.

Add the sugar and cornmeal to the chocolate mixture and stir until well combined. Then add the eggs, vanilla, almond, spices, and salt. Whisk until evenly mixed.

Place the ramekins on a cookie sheet and pour the filling into the pie crusts. Then place the cookie sheet on the bottom rack of the oven. Bake until the pie filling has puffed and formed a crusty top, and crust is golden brown, about 50 minutes  for ramekins, or 50-60 minutes for a normal-sized pie pan. 

Remove pie from oven and let cool until still slightly warm -- about 30 minutes -- while you make the whipped cream.

Serve pie warm or at room temperature with a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream and a dusting of ground cinnamon.

For the Whipped Cream

In a large bowl with a mixer set on med-high (or a hand-mixer using the whisk attachment), beat cream, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla until stiff peaks form, about 3-5 minutes. Do not over beat. 

Extra whipped cream can be stored in an airtight container for 2-3 days.

Serve pie warm or at room temperature with a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream.

Almond & Earl Grey Teacup Cakes

When I was in college, a little branch of the Espresso Royale coffee shop operated in the Michigan Union across the street from my dorm (the lovely dorm, where Emily-of-the-Harvey-Wallbanger-Glaze-Show-Down and I lived with lots of other awesome people when we were just kids). Anyway, back in those days Espresso Royale sold a drink called the Dharma Bums. It consisted of equal parts Earl Grey tea and steamed milk flavored with almond extract, and it was my favorite drink for most of sophomore year. Since graduating, I’ve tried to recreate the Dharma Bums myself many, many times, but something is always missing. Kind of like when I’ve tried to read the book The Dharma Bums expecting to find the same feeling I got from On the Road (that’s right, leave it to an Ann Arbor café to adopt a lesser known Kerouac title as an eponym. Hail!). Yet somehow, today's mini-cakes have found a way to hit just the spot of the real Dharma Bums drink on my pallet. They burn, burn, burn like fabulous, sugary, roman candles on the tongue. They’re decadent but delicate, intense yet complex. And they’ll drive you mad. I promise. 

I found the recipe for Almond and Earl Grey Teacup Cakes in the book trEATs by April Carter.  The original recipe is meant to be prepared in actual tea cups to produce a final result that is Pinterest-caliber adorable, I'm sure. However, creature of habit that I am (and due to the fact that I don't have eight visually appealing tea cups on hand), I oped to use my trusty 4oz jars in my version of this recipe. The directions assured me that any 4oz vessel would serve, and I found this to be true to a point. I ended up with ten jars-ful of cake, two of which were precariously overfull. So really, in down-scaling this recipe from tea cups to jam jars, I would've been able to increase the yield to a comfortable, round dozen little cakes. 

Besides the redistribution of portions, I prepared the recipe as it was written and, like I mentioned earlier, I was exceedingly pleased with the results. In fact, I received trEATs as a birthday gift this summer, and since then, though  I’ve paged through lots of times, I haven’t taken the initiative to actually prepare anything from this collection until today. And now I wonder what other crazy awesome desserts I’ve been missing out on over the past five months. Sheesh.

These cakes combine the light flavor of almond with classic Earl Grey tea to create a depth of flavor that belies the simple baking process. Read: tastes fancy, bakes easy. FANTASTIC.

The recipe starts out asking the baker to gather some basic ingredients. TrEATs does a nice job of listing ingredients by weight and volume, and for specialized items it offers options or equivalents. For instance, it told me that caster sugar - something isn't as common in American baking as it is in England - could be replaced with superfine sugar, which I already had in my pantry.

The tea steeped in a milk and vanilla for about 15 minutes while I prepared the other ingredients. I used Earl Greyer from The Republic of Tea for my tea bags, and the flavor came through very distinctly, which I think improved the final product. 

While the tea was brewing, I combined the butter, sugar, and eggs, and then prepared the dry ingredients. The recipe called for ground almonds, which I made myself by running some slivered almonds through my mini-food processor. I think starting with slivered almonds instead of whole was better since the skins from whole almonds may have affected the consistency of the batter in the end. As it was, some larger chunks of almond still made it into my finished cakes, but I didn't mind the extra texture. If I'd used the full-size food processor, I would have probably ended up with a finer grind on the almonds (a coffee grinder would work well here too, if you have one...fancy pants), but that seemed like a lot of set-up and clean-up for one ingredient. #LazyKitchen.

I finished the batter by combining the milk/tea mixture, dry ingredients, and butter/sugar/egg mixture in alternating portions, then I filled my jars. Like I said before, the recipe claims that if I'd used real tea cups, I'd've ended up with eight servings. I filled 10 of my 4oz jars, and two ended up overflowing, so I really feel like a dozen would have worked out best.

 

Out of the oven after about 20 minutes, I left the mini-cakes to cool on my window sill while some cold, wet, November night air blew over them. At this point, they already tasted amazing (a discovery I made while nibbling on one of the edges that overflowed and thus offered itself up as a sacrifice to the culinary deities of this kitchen), but they weren't much to look at. Thankfully, the toppings went a long way to enhance their visual appeal.



While the cakes sat in the window, I kept the oven on and toasted the remaining almond slices for 12-15 minutes. I stirred them half way through, and as soon as they became aromatic and I knew they were almost ready. I toasted more than the recipe called for, because I planned to use the extra on salads or for a garnish when I make soups (which happens quite a lot this time of year...definitely more often than the salad thing, if we're being honest).

Once the cakes were totally cool, I made the powdered sugar glaze, drizzled it over the cakes, then sprinkled some of the toasted almond slices on top of that. The final step was to dust the cakes with a little more powdered sugar. 

Confession: I ate one almost immediately after I'd finished decorating them. My intention was to try a bite or two so I could accurately report on the flavor for this post, but once I dug in, I found it extremely difficult to put down my fork.

The things I bake don’t surprise me very often... (bad surprises arising from ill-planned experiments notwithstanding -- see the Maple Banana Whoopie Pie post from this past August. Hrmph). Don’t get me wrong, cakes and pies are tasty, and making them is really fun…but as far as sweets go, I’ve been around the proverbial block quite a few times, so there’s not a lot that genuinely catches me off guard anymore. However, this recipe was one of those rare instances that left me legitimately impressed. I wonder if Sal Paradise would approve. Something tells me he's more of an apple pie man, so I'm not entirely sure. 

Almond and Earl Grey Teacup Cakes
from trEATs by April Carter

For the Cakes:
120 ml (4 fl oz) milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Earl Grey tea bags [I used Earl Greyer from Republic of Tea]
120g (4 oz or 8 Tbsp) unsalted butter
225 g (8 oz/1 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
2 large (US extra large) eggs
100 g (3 1/2 oz/4/5 cup) all-purpose flour
75g (2 1/2 oz) ground almonds (a generous 1/2 cup)
1 tsp baking powder

For the Topping:
50g (2oz) slivered almonds
125g (4oz / 1 cup) confectioner's sugar plus extra for dusting
4-5 tsp warm water

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 170°C (340°F – I used 350° because I’m a rebel). Butter 8 teacups or ramekins with 120 ml (4 fl oz) capacity, and place them on a baking tray. [Again, if you're not using real tea cups, I recommend 12 4oz jam jars. I put them in a muffin tin instead of a baking sheet so the jars don't slide around.]

Warm the milk, vanilla and tea bags in a small saucepan over a medium heat until the liquid is just bubbling. Set aside to cool.

Using a food processor with the beater attachment [I used a regular mixer and was content with the results], beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and creamy. Add the eggs to the butter mixture one at a time, beating after each addition until they are well incorporated.

In a clean bowl, sift the flour, ground almonds, and baking powder, and stir to combine. Then, remove the tea bags from the cooled milk, making sure you squeeze them first to extract all of the flavour. Still using the food processor [or hand mixer...fancy pants], beat in half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and then beat in half of the milk mixture. Repeat with the rest of each mixture and scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl to make sure that all of the ingredients are well incorporated.

Divide the mixture between the teacups or ramekins [or lovely, traditional 4 oz jars #NoBias], filling each one until it is two-thirds full. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the cakes are golden brown and springy to the touch [and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean].

Set them aside to cool.

Leave the oven on at 170°C (340°...or350°F). While your teacup cakes are cooling, you can toast the almonds: place them on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes [stirring half way and watching them carefully toward then end so they don't over bake], or until they're golden brown.

Next, it's time to make the glaze, which is as easy as combining the icing sugar with the warm water in a bowl [and whisking until it's completely smooth].

Once your teacup cakes are completely cooled, you can decorate them with the topping: drizzle the glaze over the top of each cake, then finish with a sprinkle of toasted almonds and a dusting of icing sugar. Store in a tin or an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Szarlotka!

Remind me…what’s that character trait associated with people of Polish descent? Wit? Ingenuity? Wisdom? Whatever other stereotypes my people have acquired over the centuries, after this week’s project, I’ve no doubt that Baking Geniuses must be (or deserves to be) on the list somewhere near the top. This week I’m making Szarlotka, a traditional Polish apple cake, and along with recipe elements that always excite me, like using lots of butter and being pretty straightforward, Szarlotka comes with an added bonus. For now I’m going to keep it a secret, but if you read all the way through, you’ll see what I mean.

I found the recipe here, and the most challenging aspect of this process by far was converting all of the metric units into their corresponding Imperial lengths and volumes. It is paradoxically incredibly logical and confoundingly annoying to me when European recipes measure their dry ingredients by weight instead of by volume. I’ve heard this approach does great things for consistency in baking iterations and recipe replication, so I bit the bullet and got out my trusty food scale to make sure I remained loyal to this recipe’s instructions. ( I’ve also included approximate conversion to the ‘Murican system for my more patriotic and/or xenophobic readers.)

So. First step was to assemble the ingredients and get all of my measurements straight. Here are the figures I was able to convert: Oven Temp = 350 F, Flour = 2 ¼ cups, Butter = 14Tbsp(!), Sugar = 1 cup, Pan Size = 8x11.5 inches (but we’re using 4oz containers so this one's irrelevant).

As the years pass,I've noticed that the more I practice my knife skills, the faster apple preparation becomes. Acquiring the right tools also helps a ton. Here I have my corer, peeler, and slicing knife.

Doing her 4oz Kitchen mascot duties, Daisy takes advantage of a moment when my back is turned to hop up onto the counter and investigate. Apparently cats do not like apples. Huh.

Once they're peeled and sliced, the apples get a healthy dose of cinnamon and brown sugar, along with water and lemon juice, and then go into the oven for a lil' minute to start the softening process. My kitchen smelled awesome for the remainder of the night.

Witness: The Dough Ball - heart of this recipe. Once all the dough-related ingredients were combined in the food processor and then unceremoniously dumped out onto a floured surface and equally-unceremoniously balled up, this was the result. Now we're getting close to the Bonus Surprise -- the next step of the recipe told me to chop this baby in half and freeze one part for later...

Then the un-frozen half was rolled out, cut, and fit into the baking dishes. The recipe originally called for what converted to a 8.5x11 inch pan, which doesn't commonly exist in American cooking, but since I was improvising anyway, this didn't matter. In retrospect, I do think I could have rolled the dough quite a bit thinner in order to fill more dishes and leave more room for fruit fillings and toppings. Next time, it will undoubtedly be better. (But this time was still pretty okay). 

Hrmm...At this point, we're not sure how this is going to turn out and getting a little warm under the collar – not in the angry sense but more in the “oh crap, filling is going to spill out all over the bottom of my oven and set off the smoke alarm…again” kind of way. I didn’t think very carefully about the height requirements of my baking dishes when I opted for tart dishes over jars for this recipe. 

Actually, that’s not true. I was thinking Szarlotka would behave more like a pie (despite the fact that “cake” is in the recipe title and I’m an English major, so you’d think I’d have the hang of the ol’ "close reading" thing by now), so I deliberately chose the wider, shallower vessels. This may have been a  grave error. But we’re committed at this point, so it’s straight on til morning with The Plan. I commence to fill the dishes with the apple cinnamon mixture and hope for the best.

Sidebar: I ended up with lots more filling than dish space, so I was finally able to utilize both the half-sized pie dish I bought at an art fair a few weeks ago AND the extra store-bought pie dough left over from Hoosier pie that’s been creepin’ in my refrigerator for the last three weeks.  Here is a Bonus Pastry spontaneously spawned (gross) out of this recipe – apple pie with star cut-out crust (because we’re fancy here in the 4oz Kitchen) waiting for his turn in the oven.

Okay, back on track. 

Once the bottom layer is baked and the apple filling is in place, it's time for the special secret surprise twist...are you ready? So, we go back to the freezer and get that other ball of dough we wrapped up earlier, remember? Then...brace yourself...go find your cheese grater and go to town on that frozen pastry! 

That's right, we get to grate the dough into shreds, and then sprinkle the delicate, sweet, buttery dough morsels over the waiting apple filling like delicious, fluffy, edible snow. 

Look like hash browns, right? But this is so much better. Dziękuję, Poland, for introducing me to this revolutionary new technique. 

The shaved dough is sprinkled on top of the apple filling layer before the whole pastry is placed back into the oven for another 45 minutes for the filling to soften and the topping to brown.

When they come out of the oven, the szarlotka are golden brown and crispy on top, and sweet and gooey in the middle -- this is pretty close to the perfect fall dessert, and after tasting one, I'm decidedly jealous of Polish natives who get to eat this on a regular basis. The tart dishes ended up working out after all, though I imagine a 9x13 pan would also do just fine to contain these puppies. And don't forget the final steps listed in the recipe (not pictured here because they're best when done just before serving): dusting the szarlotka with powdered sugar and then topping the pastries with fresh made cinnamon-infused whipped cream. 

And my ad-lib apple pie didn't turn out too bad either. He's small and cute...and he made his own caramel, so who's complaining? Nie Mnie!

Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

Last weekend, my long lost friend Jess came to visit, and this week’s pie was the last good idea we had after a day and night full of good ideas. We saw some art, enjoyed some barrel-aged craft beer, and celebrated our Polish heritage by squeezing in a visit to Jackson Hall to listen to Yakity Sax and eat a pierogi at Pulaski Days (Spoiler Alert #1: 4oz Polish pastry coming soon). 

By the end of the night, we were feeling inspired, so obviously it was time to make a pie. Somehow, we landed on the Hoosier Sugar Cream variety, even though I had almost none of the necessary ingredients on hand. Thankfully, the local grocery store hadn’t quite closed yet, so we were able to raid their dairy section, and we were off.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when a dessert with 'cream' in its name calls for half and half, whole milk, AND heavy whipping cream, but it still felt a little strange dumping all of that dairy into a bowl. Maybe this was because the other ingredients were so minimal - sugar, spices, and a little flour.

This picture features our bowl of dry ingredients (that's a big ol' pile of sugar you're looking at), the sweet t-shirt each of us got at Jackson Hall, and my boney-witchy spider hands. Happy Halloween (and you're welcome). 

All the dairy! All the sugar!! When all of our ingredients were incorporated, this mixture went into the waiting pie shell (which was also purchased at the grocery store...we decided since we were making pie at midnight, it was okay to cheat a little on the complicated steps) and then it all went into the oven. Since we were working with such a wet batter, it took a little over an hour to bake and set properly. The final product reminded me very much of a flan in both flavor and texture, which was a fun discovery. 

Jess was in charge of photography for this project, and she managed to catch this sweet action shot. I can't believe you guys haven't met Daisy yet. Here is the 4oz Kitchen mascot in all of her cranky-old-cat glory. She's waiting patiently for our pie to bake and hoping to scam a free drink from the faucet.

After coming out of the oven and cooling overnight, we finished our masterpiece with a dusting of cinnamon and sugar, and then promptly cut into it for a little pre-brunch snack -- undoubtedly our first good idea of the morning. The filling is pretty intense in terms of sweetness and richness, so make sure you have a friend or two (or twenty) to share it with, and it's best served with something to balance out the flavor like coffee or a big glass of milk (because more dairy is always welcome). 

This recipe was a perfect way to cap off a night of riotous fun with something sweet, warm, and extremely easy to make. This was literally one of those “dump, mix, and bake” recipes. I mean, it’s not cake in a box, but it took about as much fineness, which was good for two people who may have been more focused on catching up on many months of news and planning their morning schedule around an 11am Pulaski Days Polka Mass (Spoiler Alert #2: We didn’t make it).

Tomato Soup Cake

With a name like Tomato Soup Cake, today’s project sounds like it belongs in the same club as the chocolate beet concoction I made a few weeks ago – that is, the club for sophisticated, progressive savory/sweet combinations that have only recently emerged on the trendy edge of the modern dessert scene. But it’s not. Not at all. Tomato Soup Cake became popular during The Great Depression when supplies were scarce and therefor precious. This recipe capitalizes on the attitude of improvising  with whatever is cheap and available to make do in the kitchen, and the finished product doesn’t carry any tomato flavor at all; instead it’s a traditional spice cake, which is perfect for the sudden onset of fall weather we’ve had this weekend.  

The recipe I used came from the Heirloom Recipes section of Food52, and the only variations I had to implement were to reduce the baking time to 25 minutes and ditch the raisins. Cutting the raisins was only because they hover near the top of the very, very short list of Foods I Don’t Care to Eat (beets are up there too, obvi). The Food52 recipe asks you to provide your own cream cheese frosting, and since bakers in the Depression didn’t have Pilsbury frosting in a can, I opted to make my own using this easy recipe from food.com.

Coincidentally, there have very recently been a few other developments in my kitchen that have made me feel a particular empathy for Depression-Era conditions.  For instance, I was mightily dismayed to discover weevils in my flour jar last week (don’t worry, I sifted them out before making that peach pie crust…and if I missed any, well, extra protein can’t hurt…). I’ve also been engaged in a battle of wits with a mouse family trying to colonize my pantry since August. Once I went on the offensive in earnest, they cleared out pretty quickly, and instead of freaking out about the idea of those little turds getting near my food supplies (grossgrossgross), I remembered to be tough like Eleanor Roosevelt (…or some other 1930’s female  icon. Can you think of any? That’s all I got at the moment). The final, less graphic but no less disheartening Depression-esque thing to happen to me was learning that there is a hole somewhere in the right sole of one of my oldest and favorite pairs of shoes. Of course I didn’t realize this until I tried to wear them out in the rain, so not only was I bummed about their gradual yet inevitable demise, I also had wet socks for the next few hours. DOUBLE BUMMED. Oh, and I own and recently used a candle made out of a tin can. This is merely a faux-Depression-Era detail because said candle came from Anthropologie so it’s designed to be ‘vintage chic’ and it probably cost the equivalent of more than a dozen cans of tomato soup (it was a gift, okay? And it smells awesome #noshame #wellnotthatmuchanyway).

I share these details not to be off-putting (my pantry has since been sanitized top to bottom and there’s brand new, weevil-free flour ready to go for today), but because I want to show my unwavering solidarity with the first generation to make and enjoy this cake. So imagine me wearing a pickle barrel with straps instead of an apron today as I put this recipe together.

Quick sidebar before we go any further, the universe was further pandering to my Great Depression focus this week when I was procrastinating on facebook and stumbled across a collection of photos taken in Washington state in the early 1930’s. The albums feature employees of a lumber mill in Grays Harbor County and fruit pickers in Yakima along with some shots from the Boeing plant in Seattle. I could look at this kind of thing for hours, so if you’re similarly inclined to surrender your imagination to The Past for a little while, go have a look – besides the pictures chosen for the page, there’s a searchable database. I’ll bet some of these people knew what tomato soup cake tasted like.

All right, back to the kitchen. The first thing I did was prepare my little jars and assemble the ingredients in all of their low-budget glory. The jars were prepped the same way as for the beet cakes – I cut parchment paper discs to fit in the bottoms (does somebody want to start mass producing those? I’d pay at least a moderate amount for some uniform, pre-cut rounds of parchment) and covered the jars in a thin layer of Crisco. For the beet cakes, I used a similar technique which made removal very easy, and I planned on doing the same two-layer technique with these cakelets. 

As for the ingredients, you can see for yourself how they would fit very easily into a 1930's pantry. I ended up finding some shortening in my cupboard, so even though you’re seeing butter, I actually used Crisco in the cake. Initially I was surprised that salt wasn’t one of the ingredients…until I remembered tomato soup has just a little bit of salt in it.

Like most vintage recipes, this one was pretty light on the details. I’m sure our grandmothers all knew the baking order of operations by heart, so specifics like what to sift and what to soften didn’t need to be written down.  I tried to follow the standard rules I’ve seen in typical cake recipes, so I sifted together the dry ingredients first, then creamed the shortening and sugar, added the other wet ingredients to the mixing bowl, and finally added the dry ingredients a little at a time.

When it was done everything looked pretty ok, so I must have done all right with my ingredient assembly ad lib.

I hustled the batter into my jars and popped them in the oven for 25 minutes. The spices became very aromatic as they were baking, and my kitchen smelled great by the time they came out. They sat in their jars for about 10 minutes, and then I transferred them onto wire racks to cool completely. This is also the point where I cleaned the jars and prepared the frosting. I ended up getting 19 little cakes, but after see how much they rose, I could have filled the jars less and squeezed an even two dozen out of the batter, I'll bet.

Cream cheese frosting assembly. So simple but so good.

Like the beet cakes, this original recipe was for a two-layer cake, so I cut each of mine in half to create the same effect. Plus there’s room for more frosting this way. 

There were a few anomalies in terms of the proportions of layers to frosting. Here you can see the Goldilocks Effect as I figure out how to best slice each piece. 

Too tall. 

Too short (and a little ugly).

Just right. As soon as I got the hang of it, there were lots of these.

In trying to stay true to a Depression-Era mentality throughout this whole recipe, I felt a little guilty about all of the cake tops that were unused when I trimmed down and sliced the cakes. I ended up with quite a pile of extra, and it seemed like Eleanor Roosevelt would be very disappointed to see these go to waste. So, channeling the WPA, I found some ingenuity and decided to make cake sandwiches with the left-over cake bits and frosting. 

The result was not disappointing AND much easier to eat on the go than a cake in a jar. These happy little accidents may be breakfast for the next week or so. As I drive to work, perhaps I'll munch my tomato soup cake sandwich and pretend I'm driving to California to start a new life just like the Okies  who probably also had to get on the road before sunrise. I hope they had cake for breakfast once in a while, too.