Cakes of Legend... Polenta and Fig Cake

I have cooked a lot of cakes lately, and I'm at that point of being sick of cream, chocolate, icing, butter etcc...  Not that there is anything wrong with my beautiful cheesecake recipe, montmorency cake or the orange yoghurt cake I made for Sliva's birthday last week. But today, I want something else... something simple, yet complex in other ways.  And so, I have had this cake on my mind for a few weeks.  I found this recipe online, when I was also heartily sick of the chestnut and rosemary cake I had become an expert on.

Polenta and Fig Cake is simple, and delicious and wonderful.  I don't think of it as a gluten free cake (it is), because it is a celebration not a substitution for the main ingredients of:  polenta, pine-nuts, dried figs, sultanas and fennel.  And it's simple, and don't omit the alcohol, it's essential.

I will give the link for the recipe rather than repeat it.  The only additional thing I do is to absolutely lather the cake tin with unsalted butter, then sprinkle a little butter and polenta on the top.

Enjoy!

Cakes of Legend: le Montmorency Chocolate Cake & Variations

 I have cooked this cake, and varied it several times, over the past 20+ years.  I first cooked it in 1989 and then not again till last year, when I replaced the cherries with quandongs (photo above and for this blog) and tripled it for my friend Bess' 50th birthday.  It was great!

Last week I cooked it for another friend, not my best effort and I would use more cherries or go back to quandongs.

I used a bigger cake tin than the recipe asks for for Donna's cake above...
 and possibly less cherries.  I was disappointed with the
 results and would suggest that the recipe is adhered to for best results.

I love this cake because it's a bit odd.. I love odd cakes. (Check out the polenta and fig cake).  And I have just been pondering the current fad in cakes for barbie dolls, or aeroplanes etc.. and I must admit I'm not a big fan.  For me a cake is a cake, and it's beauty is looking like what it is, not something else.  To get your chocolate glaze right... with just the right amount of shine and thickness, or have your strawberries sit perfectly in a champagne jelly on the top of a cheesecake... this is beauty.

Anyway, Montmorency cake.  I do use Kirsch, and buy it when interstate.  As a replacement you could use.... schnapps or grappa.

Lifted and adapted from the Time Life "Good Cook" series, Cakes and Pastries.

Ingredients

Cake

250 gm chocolate

1 shot espresso coffee

2 tablespoons kirsch

4 eggs, separated yolks from whites

175 gm unsalted butter

50gm flour

salt

125 sugar

2 X 450gm bottles morello cherries or more, or 500gms fresh cherries

Method

Butter and line a 22 cm cake tin with baking paper.

Heat oven to 190 degrees celcius.

Find a stainless steel bowl that sits over a saucepan with 4 cm of water, without touching the water.

Heat the water to boiling pint.

Place the chocolate and coffee in bowl, with half the alcohol for 2 minutes.  Turn off heat, and stir until chocolate is melted.  Remove from saucepan immediately.

Off the heat, stir in egg yolks one at a time, then return to heat and cook through until mixture has thickened slightly.

Off the heat, beat in the butter, a tablespoon at a time, then stir through the flour.

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form soft peaks.  

Gradually add 60gms of the sugar until the mixture forms soft peaks and is glossy.

Gently fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites and pour into prepared pan.

Bake for around 25 to 30 minutes until  cake has puffed and is cooked in middle after testing with cake tester or skewer. (Do not overcook)

Allow the cake to cool for 45 minutes before unmoulding.

If using morello cherries, drain them and roughly chop.  Heat through with kirsch and remaining sugar until pulpy.  Allow to cool.

If using fresh cherries, stone them and place in a saucepan with remaining sugar and kirsch.  Cook over a medium heat for 30 to 40 minutes with lid on.  Uncover pan for last 10 minutes until they reduce to pulp.  Allow to cook and roughly chop.

Scoop out the middle of the cake so there is around one centimetre left around the edge and the same on the bottom of the cake.  Add the scooped out cake to cherries and stir.  

Return the mixture to the cake and smooth the top and allow to rest for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight for flavours to set.

Glaze

Ingredients

300 gm dark cooking chocolate

1 cup cream

Method

Using the double boiler method described above, place chocolate and cream in bowl and melt.  Stir through.

Divide mixture into 2:1.  Chill the larger amount of mixture in fridge for at least a half hour.

Whisk the larger mixture and spread over cake and sides, trying to make it as smooth as possible.

Chill for another half hour.

Warm the remaining mixture slightly so it is liquid.

Place cake on cake rack and pour over liquid chocolate glaze.

Decorate with cherries and chocolate leaves.

Variations

Replace cherries with fresh quandongs, remembering to leave the most choice quandongs for decorating.  You may need to add a bit more sugar to get the balance right.

Cheesecake - Triple layered

This one's my own, with some rather unique suggestions from my lovely niece Sarah for her 21st Birthday Cheesecake.

Ingredients:

2 packets of Oreo biscuits (classic)

1 tablespoon melted butter

2 packets Philadelphia cream cheese

2 eggs

1 vanilla bean

grated rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange

3/4-1 cup castor sugar

2 tubs creme fraiche

2 tbsp fresh cream

3 gelatin leaves

1 cup white wine or champagne

squeeze of lemon juice

3 tubs strawberries

2 tbs castor sugar

Method:

1. Butter an 18cm-20cm spring form pan, and line the bottom with baking paper.
2. Put oven on low heat, around 100 degrees (Celsius).
3. Using  a food processor, grind up the oreos. (If you don't have a food processor, place the biscuits in a large clean plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin until fine.)
4. Place crushed biscuits in a bowl and add melted butter.
5. Pour crushed oreos onto pan and press down to make a base. (Don't go up the side.) Place in refridgerator.
6. Place cream cheese, eggs, vanilla bean, citrus rind and around a half cup of castor sugar into food processor and blend until smooth.  (You can add a tablespoon of fresh cream and more sugar to taste.)
7. Pour into cake tin and bake for around 40 minutes.
8. In the meantime, blend cream fraiche and 2 tablepoons of castor sugar.
9. Pour onto cream cheese mixture and continue to make for another 20-25 minutes.
10. Cool cheesecake.
11. Place gelatin leaves in cold water.
12. Place wine or champagne into small saucepan and heat until sugar dissolves.  Allow to get to room temperature and add squeezed gelatine leaves.
13. In the meantime, hull and slice strawberries and arrange on top of cheesecake.
14. Gently pour the wine mixture over the top of the cheesecake and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.  You may need to put a tray underneath cheesecake to catch any of the jelly.
15. When the jelly is set, remove cake.
16. Carefully run a sharp knife around the outside of the cake and loosen the  ring. 
17. (Optional: Serve with strawberry coulis, made with a punnet of strawberries, pureed up with champagne and sugar to taste.)

Checkout the cake in action:

A very special cheesecake...

In keeping with my current trend of giving gifts of food, I offered to make my niece's 21st birthday cake. (I had offered to make my father's 80th birthday cake but my sisters sadly rejected the offer on the grounds of distant memories of messy kitchens).  However, she wanted a cheesecake.  Not a Sicilian ricotta cheesecake, but a baked philadelphia cheese-cake and a biscuit (oreo!!) base.  Now, I love gourmet foods and I'm not a snob about food.  I love the peppermint chocolate slices my neighbour gives me,  home-made stew and dumplings, and I'll even go a meat pie (once a year).  But this was a challenge, to make something special from the mundane, and this was the result:

One layer of oreo biscuit crust , a layer of baked cheesecake, a layer of baked creme fraiche topping, a layer of strawberries set in a wine jelly, and a strawberry coulis. And all without a recipe.  But I do remember what I did, and will post it soon.

The Rise of the Super Butcher

I have discovered something new in life - it's called a Super Butcher - and it lives in an outer Brisbane suburb called Waterford West, but I don't imagine it's a solitary creature.  I suspect there are a whole family of Super Butchers out there.  So, what makes a Super Butcher, different to a Butcher?

Meat is meat??? But no, there's more... there's so much more ... meat! Piles of Wagyu blade, special packages of porterhouse (at $28.99/kg, it's not what I'd call a bargain)  pre-packaged in large quantities, a half or quarter of a beast, and a special frozen section, where you'd have to bring your uggies if you spent more than 10 minutes perusing the flesh.  I'm a bit taken by the whole experience, and it's not a pretty one either.  Not being a meat lover myself, I have assumed the world is moving toward a more healthy, organic, semi-vegetarian approach to food.. but I suspect this is just my world.  And somewhere out there is a whole bunch of meat lovers that I just don't know.