So...how does one say

"No, Darling. I make lemon cake from scratch," without sounding like a snobbish, self-aggrandising foodish twit?

I suppose I could drop the "Darling."

Did I actually say the above? Ummm...I think so.

A wonderful and delightful friend of mine and new blogger called me up last week looking for a recipe for lemon pound cake that used lemon-flavoured gelatine powder...and I believe the above was my answer.

May I please hide behind my laptop now?

Gosh...I know certain people in my life think I'm a bit of a food snob--which I vehemently deny--but gee...the above, while not damning evidence, doesn't look very good.

Truthfully, I've only made lemon loaves with real lemons. I'd never even thought of using flavoured gelatine in a cake. I Googled it and sent her this recipe--which I think suited her needs. Heh...you learn something new every day.

But now I have a bit of a palate-worm going...lemon loaf...actually, a lemon poppyseed loaf, to be specific. To be even more specific, a lemon poppyseed loaf with cream cheese icing.

The problem with plalate-worms is they are never satisfied until they are satsified. And they can't be fooled with substitutes. In other words, a lemon drop after a sandwich won't send mine on its merry way. If anything, these pallid substitutes only anger it and make the craving even more specific.

Early on, it could disappear by virtue of getting the specific foodstuff, premade from the grocer's, made from a pouchmix or tumbled out of a gas station vending machine. But palate-worms have incredible stamina...and they seem to get stronger with each passing day...hour...minute.

Mmm....lemon poppyseed loaf. Whereas lemon-flavoured powdered gelatine is not in my pantry, lemons, poppyseeds, flour, eggs, butter and yoghurt are....well, the dry goods are in my pantry--the rest live in the refrigerator.

I have several lemon poppyseed cake recipes--some are like a light, slightly lemony angelfood, studded with seeds, while others have a heavier crumb. I settled on a slight modification of Nigella's Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake. The result was a sunshiney crumb, soaked in glisteny, extra lemony goodness. I also decided to forego the cream cheese icing--the syrup glimmered so nicely, I didn't want to cover it up.

The palate-worm, I'm happy to say, has been sated and is off to find its next victim...

Oh...and for those of you who are wondering...yes, I made this during the craptastic weekend, between the serrated knife incident and the fire. Yes, I wore one of those thin, surgical glove-like things, to protect my booboo from the lemon juice. Which really didn't help at all, as I clipped the end of the finger (I have small hands and even the size small gloves have too much room) and the juice worked its way in...

Lemon Poppyseed Loaf
adapted from Nigella Lawson's Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake, from How To Be A Domestic Goddess, p13.

125g unsalted butter
175g sugar
2 eggs
1 lemon, zested and juiced
170g cake flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 dspn poppyseeds
60ml plain yoghurt
75g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/375F; butter and line a 23cm/9" loaf tin with parchment and set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir in the poppyseeds and set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs and zest. Mix in the yoghurt and then fold in the flour mixture. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes.

About 20 minutes in, start making the lemon syrup by melting sugar into the lemon juice over medium-low heat.

When an inserted cake tester comes out cleanly, take the loaf out of the oven and prodigiously perforate it with your weapon of choice. Pour the syrup overtop and let it all soak in. Let the cake cool in the tin before removing it otherwise you run the risk of the cake falling apart.


cheers!
jasmine

Milk Calendar Mondays: Sweet potato bake with crispy garlic topping

So...have you yet recovered from last month's MCM guest blogger's post?

Yeah...it was pretty...wretched... the food, not the post.

Fearless, yet fatigued, with this project...okay..., that's not quite right. I am afraid of this project. I'm afraid of lost time and ingredients which I'll never regain nor resuscitate. I'm afraid of what horrid little prank will be played upon me, my sometimes guest and everyone else who innocently tries one of the recipes. It really is quite hit-or-miss as to whether I'll be able to stomach the results.

Anyway...where was I...

Fearless, yet fatigued, with this project I spied the October recipe: Sweet potato bake with crispy garlic topping and thought...hmmm...it looks okay...and it reads okay...but is it really okay? The answer: Yes. It was okay.

In the grand scheme of things, this was an okay recipe. In the grand scheme of the Milk Calendar recipes, it was a phenomenol recipe. It was easy. It was garlickly. It had textures that varied from soft to crunchy. There was even a bit of tang. The only thing I would probably change is to use roughly half the amount of topping. Just too much breadcrumbs. And maybe lower the milk to about one cup's worth.

But that's not the story I'm going to tell you....I'm going to tell you about my craptastic kitchen weekend.

Yes. It's a word. Look it up.

It's also proof that things happen in threes.

Craptastical event 1:
I awoke at 5am (yes, 5am) for no apparent reason. Couldn't get back to sleep, and read a chunk of the fabulous book that lay by my bed. After a while I decided to do something useful with my time and decided to bake yet another banana bread (three breads in one week). Everything was going well until I put my sugar jar back on the shelf.

And it broke.

A 128 fluid ounce jar.....shards of glass...grains of sugar...everywhere...in my pantry, on the floor.

I loved that jar. I really did. It was big and had a big mouth so I could scoop or pour. But now it's in the bin...along with about 2kgs of sugar.

Wah.

Craptastical event 2.
Sunday morning I had a craving for a toasted Montréal-style bagel schmeared with cream cheese. Mmmmm....One of the local bakeries pays homage to the infamous M-style bagel and I happened to have picked some up.

I don't have a bagel slicer...but I do have a very sharp serrated knife.

At some point my knife mistook my left hand's middle finger for the bagel.

10 minutes of profuse exsanguination and who knows how many litres of water later I decided against stitches...at the very least, the blood loss left me a bit woozy so driving myself to hospital may not have been a wise idea.

Do you see how many Es, Ds and Cs there are in this post? I hope you appreciate how much pain I'm enduring to type this. I will say I'm a ridiculously fast healer when it comes to things like this--34 hours later and you can just barely see the gash...but I can really, really feel it.

Owie owie owie owie.

Craptastical event 3:
Needless to say, I was pretty useless in the kitchen, so the exbf had to prepare much of it. Kind of like another cooking by proxy exercise. No big worries. This was a pretty easy recipe (the rest of the meal was slightly more complicated). Everything was going well until I decided to follow the recipe and turn on Beelzebub's broiler.

I'd never used it before.

And what follows is entirely my fault. Not his...either one (exbf or the stove).

It didn't take long to put out the fire. It was pretty small and the universal lid pretty much smothered it. The house was filled with smoke and I had to run around and open windows and turn on the bathroom and kitchen fans (owieowieowieowie). The exbf took care of the smoke alarm...and scraping the charred crust off the gratin.

I suppose that much breadrcumb topping was necesary...otherwise the entire dish would have been ... well ... charcoal. See the little black specs in the photo? Not all the charred bits were removed.

The taste, although barbecuey, wasn't bad...but it would be better without the carbon...both in the air and in the dish.

Oh well...today was a much better day....

cheers!
jasmine

Tuesday is eDay

To all my Canadian readers of voting age,

Tomorrow is the federal election.

Go. Vote.

I don't care for which party you vote (actually I do, but that's beside the point). Just go out there and cast your ballot.

If you don't, and you complain about the outcome, I will find you. I will bring you over here. I will feed you something from the $1.39 menu from the fastfoodarama minimall. And then I will make you clean out the kittybox...not sure if you'll get the scooper.

If you don't know who your candidates are, where to vote or have any other votey-type questions, go to the Elections Canada web site...they have all the answers...I'm sure of it.

I treat political events (elections, budgets, crises etc) in the same way others feel about the Stanley Cup Playoffs or the Superbowl. I absorb as many of the stats that come my way, read as many articles and listen to the interviews. I follow the polls and make note of whose lawns are studded with signs and if they are the same signs as the last federal or provincial run. I practically live at Barry Kay's web site. This year I've been in double euphoria since I'm also following the American race (and yes, I chose to watch the VP debate as opposed to the Canadian party leaders' round table).

Tomorrow night I'm camping out in the TV temple, in front of the great illuminated altar, with CBC:Newsworld as my celebrant. Granted, the nature of our electoral process means that we (ahem) generally know who won (ahem) by the end of the evening. But still I watch the returns, note the belleweather ridings along with those of interest for other reasons. I hide behind the cushion when the wrong party wins and I try and physically move the televised vote ticker towards one colour over another. Heck...I've been known to gasp, squeal and ...um...yell very unladylike words...at the updates. The next morning I read all the analysis and then partake in various conversations about what happened and why.

People who've never watched an election with me are quite shocked as to how involved I am when it comes to merely watching the results. Some people find it amusing...others wonder which alien race has shapeshifted one of their own to replace me.

Since I treat election night results as a big sporting or awards night, I eat the same way. This election, I'm having the October DB selection...which I'm not allowed to tell you about. Well...that's not fair is it? Well, those are the rules. Other foods that have graced the centre table include natchos, chips and dip, stuffed jalepenos, chicken wings, cake, ice cream...

This year apart from the DB selection there will be chips and dip, and sweet potato pie. Yup. The leftovers from Thanksgiving lunch will be snarfled up in anxious moments between returns.

Normally we have apple pie or even pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but this year I decided to go for a sweet potato pie after seeing and reading about them. I didn't tell my parents what I'd bring, only that I'd bring something. They looked and automatically assumed it was pumpkin. Then they tasted it...they still thought it was pumpkinny but a little different. Boy, were they shocked when they found out it wasn't.

I made a double batch of filling--half went into a 9"/23cm pie and the other half filled nine tartlettes. It's quite easy and quite delicious.

Sweet Potato Pie
makes one 9"/23 cm pie or nine tartlettes
675g sweet potatoes
125ml half and half
30g softened butter
30g brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp cinamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 ginger powder
ground seeds from one cardamom pod
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp vanilla salt
shortcrust pastry made of one part (by weight) butter and two parts plain flour
egg wash

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and line a baking tray with tin foil. Slice the sweet potatoes into wedges and bake until fork-piercingly soft. Let cool to room temperature. Scoop out the flesh and stir in the half and half and set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar and beat in the egg. Stir into the potatoes and mix in the spices, vanilla and salt.

Pour into th pie shell (tart shells), brust the pastry with the egg wash and bake until the filling is lightly browned and slightly poofy (pie--about an hour, tarts--about 35 minutes).

Let cool thoroughly before serving with sweetened whipped cream or ice cream.

cheers!
jasmine