RAISIN CAKE? Oh, heck yeah!

All the while you thought grapes were just for wine and Roman orgies.  Not so.  And don’t lie, you haven’t been to a Roman orgy is years, so how would you know?  Bet you don’t even know where your toga is. 

Wine, of course, is another matter.  I can tell by the little red wiggly veins that you have a nose for wine.

Let’s go past an adult view of grapes and wine, all the way back to raisins. I look at raisins as the transition between childhood and adultery adulthood.  Maybe your mommy even explained raisins as granddaddy grapes.  Let’s take a closer look and fumble through some history.

One question that always comes up is, “How do they get the seeds out of raisins?”  That’s an easy one.  According to ‘Today I Found Out’ (http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/04/raisins-made-seedless-grapes/) raisins from seedless grapes have been around since antiquity.  Dried fruit travels well and by the early 19^th Century the raisin trade led to a great boost in commerce, especially between Greece (an exporter) and England (an importer).  The Brits, then known only as The Engs, did a lot of baking with raisins.   Only kidding about The Engs. As any schoolchild knows, in 1707 with the Acts of Union, Scotland joined England and Wales to form Great Britain. By the time raisins were big boys in the world of commercial trade, Great Britain was already Great Britain and raisins were a big item in commercial baking.

 English baking, or is it Brit baking?  Anyway, the most famous and historic raisin bakery items were and are hot crossed buns. You still find them in bakeries all over The Commonwealth.  Remember the rhyme “One a penny, two a penny, hot crossed buns?”  Lots of symbolism and dark church history involving hot crossed buns.  Dictates about when you could sell them, punishments, etc. ‘Fraid you’ll have to do your own Googling.  I’m hungry!  We’ll streak on to making some Raisin Cake! As usual, this recipe is simple and simply delicious!

Raisin Cake

2 Cups raisins

2 Cups water

½ Cup vegetable oil

3 Tablespoons butter

1 Cup cold water

2 Cups white sugar

4 Cups flour

1 Teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and baking soda

½ Teaspoon Kosher or sea salt

Preheat oven to 350ºF (180ºC)

Grease and flour a 9 x 13 baking pan.  I used a glass pan, greased it with butter, then dusted it with flour.

Put raisins and two cups of water in a saucepan and boil for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.

Melt the butter and add it to the vegetable oil.  I heat butter and oil together in a microwave.  Add the mixture to the raisins, along with a cup of cold water.

In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.  Add the un-drained raisin mixture to the bowl and mix well.

Pour the batter into a greased and floured baking pan and slide it into the pre-heated oven.  Bake for 30 minutes to 1 hour (depending on your oven), or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

You’ve just make a sensational, flavorful amalgamation of childhood and adulthood, with some history tossed in!

I like to add a dollop of freshly whipped cream to each piece of cake.  Settle back, sip some coffee and calm your restless guests with a perfect after dinner treat. 

Ratatouille My Way

I’m on a tear, cooking something new and special everyday, as my devoted readers have no doubt noticed.  My usual modus operandi is to spice things up with a hop-skip-and-jump blend of travel, book reviews, food and the occasional short fiction.  But, travel won’t start in earnest for another week or so, and I’m between books.  But, still I sally forth to entertain.

You’ll notice my recipes of late have spanned the great divide between healthy low carb entrées and devil-may-care carb-gorging.  Well, today it’s back to low carb and for a couple of very special reasons.

When possible, I like to cook something on Sunday that will fill lunch pails for the rest of the week, which brings me to reason two.  Wives can be very demanding and one thing they demand is variety.  Did I really say ‘can be very demanding?'  I meant viciously demanding. And leave the can out.

What is so delicious that it satisfies a schizophrenic wife…whoops, now I’m being redundant… five days in a row? 

I’ve got a one-word answer:  Ratatouille.  The first thing to learn is how to pronounce it.  The A-mur-i-kin version sounds more like Rata-twooy, to rhyme with dewey.  The much more sophisticated French on the other hand…and after all they own the word… say Rata-tu-ee.  Purse your lips when you say the tu part, then soften and slightly lengthen the double e like a French mouse who just learned the disadvantage of being the first one to the cheese.

With a cooking time of four to five hours, this dish screams for a slow cooker, but since I don’t have one, I settled for a conventional oven set at 275ºF (135ºC)

Ratatouille My Way

There is no ONE recipe for ratatouille.  My guess is, every wife and scullery maid in Provence has a slightly different approach. So, rather than insisting on just one way to peel a potato, I humbly title this version Ratatouille My Way.

2 Medium unpeeled eggplants cut in a medium to small dice

3 Medium zucchini, halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced

2 Medium onions, halved and thinly sliced

8 Cloves of garlic, peeled, thinly sliced, then roughly chopped

1 Large red bell pepper, medium dice

1 28oz can tomatoes (I use whole tomatoes and crush them by hand)

1/3 Cup olive oil

¼ Cup Balsamic vinegar

2 Tablespoons dried oregano

1 Tablespoon dried coriander

A fist full of fresh basil leaves, removed from the stalks and roughly chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil on medium to low. Add the onion and garlic.  Cook and stir until they are limp and barely golden.  Careful not to burn them!

Add the diced eggplant, bell pepper, and sliced zucchini and mix well.  Stir frequently.

When the vegetables have cooked down a bit and are looking limp, add the hand-crushed, undrained tomatoes, Balsamic vinegar and herbs.  Stir well.

At this point there will be a lot of liquid in the bottom of the pot.  Bring to a boil.

Cover and put the pot in the pre-heated oven.  Cook for four to five hours.  The vegetables should be very soft, but there will still be a lot of liquid.

Put the pot back on the stovetop and bring to a boil.  Stir occasionally and cook until the liquid is greatly reduced.  You’re not making soup!  This is a hearty, filling blend of sumptuous vegetables that can stand up to a hearty meat dish, and demanding wife.

Voilà!  C’est magnifique!  But, don’t forget the wine!  And tell your wife, of course I didn’t mean her!

Simple Cake, Simple Icing – Elegantly Simple

 

Finished Peach Cake with icing

My faithful readers should know by now, I like to keep things simple.  I’m a simple man of simple tastes.  A quiet, tableside martini, mixed by a thin man in a white dinner jacket, in the elegant bar of a five star hotel and you’ll find me serenely happy. 

While “Simple wife, simple life” may be a complete fiction, in the kitchen, there’s no need for complexities that drift beyond the male mind’s comprehension or attention span, especially when it comes to baking a superb cake for the ravenous, but unworthy multitudes.

I settle for the masculine outlook:  Huummmm, cake good, me want more! Next time me use fork.

This culinary delight is not the usual cake because this one uses pie filling.  Pie filling in a cake?  Yes, those who are faint of heart, release your inhibitions. Cast aside those dark, spurious doubts. This cake is so simple and delicious you’ll never buy another box of cake mix!  You’ll be able to smile benevolently at the admiring throngs and brag “Naturally it’s made from scratch!  I grow my own heirloom wheat, fertilized by free-range bovines who graze on sustainable native shrubs.”

Snobby, organic eating friends, who often avoid you, will lower their upturned noses and invite you over for a glass or two of wheatgrass flavored champagne.  But, before you accept their invitation, get your wife to teach you about forks.

Simple Cake, Simple Icing – Elegantly Simple

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 350ºF (180ºC)

Butter an 8 X 13 inch (21 x 33 cm) baking dish.  I prefer glass or ceramic.

2 Cups white sugar

1 Cup butter (2 sticks)

4 Eggs

4 Teaspoons vanilla extract

3 Cups flour

3 Generous teaspoons baking powder

1 Cup milk

21oz can of fruit pie filling (Sometimes I use peach and sometimes cherry)

1.    Cream together the sugar and butter and set aside

2.    Crack the eggs into a small bowl

3.    In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder

4.    Alternately beat in an egg and some flour mixture into the creamed butter and sugar, until everything is combined.

5.    Add the milk and mix until the batter is smooth

6.    Mix in the fruit pie filling.

7.    Put the batter in the prepared baking dish and slide it in the oven.

Bake for 80 minutes. Every 20 minutes, test with a knife to insure it’s done. ALL OVENS BAKE DIFFERENTLY.  The first time I tested, all I had to do was shake the baking dish to see the center jiggle.  I cooked it another 20 minutes, then another 20 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center came out clean.

VERY IMPORTANT:  Let the cake cool completely before putting on the icing.

Make the simple Icing:

2 ¾  Cups confectioner’s sugar

4 Tablespoons butter, softened

½ Cup sour cream

¼ Teaspoon salt

1 Teaspoons vanilla extract

1.    Cream the sugar and butter. (Simple man that I am, I use an electric handheld mixer)

2.    Add the remaining ingredients and beat until the icing is smooth

3.    Spread the icing on the cooled cake and decorate (For the cherry cake version, I used cheery pie filling for the cake, but  maraschino cherries as decoration.)

Now it’s time to pop the cork on some bubbly, slice the masterpiece, and show your guests the real reason they’ll love your cake as much as they love trousers with an elastic waist!