Oh my, num num.
You know what I love? A cake batter that I can lick the spoon and a little more without concern of the instilled phobias passed onto me via mom, health class and the FDA. I know my chicken buddies don't have salmonella - that is rather a factory farm poor care issue. But the phobia lingers... I still lick the spoon of other cakes because I'm a pig... but still.
No guilt, no fears.
I looked and looked for an orange cardamom cake that sounded nice. Nothing. I got excited when I found a link to David Leibovitz' version and then it ended in a broken link. Cuter, because of his cursing in French error page. Alas, no recipe sounded good and Liebovitz couldn't throw me a bone.
I wanted to bring something into the office, yeah I'm on occasion in an office these days. It is a borrowed space and I like to leave treats in mortal fear that everyone there hates me. There are a few nut allergies and a few vegans so to please all I made a No nut, no animal product dish. Here is to hoping they like coffee, oranges and cardamom.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
What you'll need:
All in one bowl, the following:
2 Giant/Large oranges - zest into bowl and then juice well (To maximize the juice yield from your oranges roll them around on your counter or cutting board until they are squishy then halve and pulverize picking out seeds)
1/2 Cup Olive oil
1/2 -3/4 Cup applesauce
1 and 1/3 Cup vegan sugar
1 TBSP Orange liquor, liquer ( I used some young and not ready yet 44 which has cinnamon,orange and coffee in it )
Whip smooth and add to dry ingredients once they are mixed and complete.
***UPDATE***
If it isn't a smooth/gooey pourable mix, then add in a little extra applesauce, water, tea, or liquid coffee to get the consistency to pour. Since Orange sizes vary so wildly and juicers also do, then the amount of juice yield could be low one time and high the next.
All Dry ingredients in another larger bowl:
3 Cups flour total (Organic if you have it)
I did 2 Cups unbleached white and 1 Cup whole wheat
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 TBSP coffee ground finely and sieved into the flour
1 tsp cardamom seeds from their pods. I think about 12 pods? I forgot to count while cutting them open. It is a kind of joy to open the cardamom. I ground the seeds in my coffee grinder with some coffee so the cardamom doesn't dominate my grinder. If you have a dedicated grinder for spices then go for it. My spice grinder is used for hot peppers... that and cumin will flavor everything. So beware.
Nice color with flecks of coffee, and zest. Mmmm
The batter should run off the spoon easily and not have many significant chunks, but no need to beat too much. It also pulls together so nicely and quickly that it doesn't warrant getting a mixer dirty.
Pour this into an oiled and floured pan. I used a bundt pan and it took 35 minutes at 375.
Serve warm or the next day with coffee or tea. I like it warm with the perfume wafting through the room!
I member you guys telling me awhile back how you can't bake with citrus without creating the spice...What was the story with that again? And while I'm at it, I have 2 questions for the potlicker gods: is it possible to find ice cream in the store that does not contain MSG (cuz it seems like it ain't)? And 2) What's the dealy bob with nutritional yeast? Is it evil? I'm tryin to find a hard cheese substitute cause I member you saying that was spicy.....
ReplyDeleteOmg. I just wrote a novel. Blogger deleted it. FROWN
ReplyDeleteTake two.
ReplyDeleteYou can't. You can't make veggie stock without it happening either. There are some things that their very nature creates it.
The best you can do is minimize it. I did this by using fresh oranges and not concentrate or the store bought juice both are very acidic. Especially pasteurized juices and most are, since that creates the spice in an already acid body. It is better to use oranges than lemons which are much more acidic. Zest is Less acidic than the juice.
Other things that are acidic that we bake with and think not much of is applesauce and honey. It is always a balancing act. Like I removed the eggs that would normally appear in this cake and used applesauce instead to lessen any protein to acid - Egg yolks + orange juice/zest = the spice.
Flours that are higher in protein than wheat would also produce a higher "spice" quotient. Like Kamut and Buckwheat. While excellent in their own right coupled with something highly acidic they can result in the usual symptoms.
You want to avoid anything that has decomposed a bit too much. Use spotty bananas instead of blackened bananas. That would be amines which is the broken down protein. Anything touting enzymatic properties is merely stating it has macerated the existing proteins.
Nutritional yeast is simply Glutamic acid, MSG. Along with Bragg's amino acids, tvp, tsp, and any other hydrolyzed protein. (The vinegar that made us sick was also made by Bragg's.) They can get around saying what it is by renaming it. That energy boost you get from it is friggin excitotoxin. Not a real sustained thing like sugar, carbs or proteins do for you.
ReplyDeleteThe more concentrated a protein the more it is resembling MSG.
So a 1 inch cube of steak boiled is going to give you a certain amount of it, but if you dissolved that 1 inch cube of steak in acid then the amount of the "spice" in radically increased.
(for vegetarians replace the word steak with protein, same idea)
A bouillon cube, is MSG because you cannot remove protein in its natural form and concentrate it, mold it and make it have a completely new form without breaking it down.
Gelatin - is the same thing.
The wiki on nutritional yeast is actually truthful... unlike some other industrial food entries on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_yeast
Simply skip the bs and go to the sub-heading Glutamic acid and then it reads more plainly.
On cheese... somethings you simply can't substitute. Cheese is one of those things. It has casomorphins - they get you high, baby! But that isn't the worst of it -- hard cheeses are higher in "the spice" simply because it is a form of edible decomp. It is better to go ahead and treat yourself to it than replace it with all the nastiness out there.
To lessen the cheese "spice" get whole milk cheeses, raw is the best. Often goat milk cheeses tend to be less adulterated and often less policed by our government. Biased towards cows I suppose.
The reason for whole milk and raw milk cheeses is that the process to make cheese is spice creating. The milk is heated and then "split" using an acid to produce the curds and whey. So you don't want it being processed before that stage or processed further after that stage.
Whole milk mozzarella and whole milk cheddars, ricotta are usually pretty decent. Parmesan, pecorino, asiago and the like are only high in the spice due to their aging. Those are also harder to overdo for a reasonable person though since their flavor is usually intense.
You'll know you've over done your cheese intake when you have "cheese dreams" that is your brain in overdrive and for whatever reason (myself not being a neurologist) the casomorphins have this specific affect on people. And I believe mammals as well since my dog has more kicky dreams when I treat her to cheese anything.
So I'd recommend going for the good stuff and using it in small amounts.
On Ice cream. One word, MISERABLE.
ReplyDeleteYou can make a cheater ice cream by blending together nearly any ice cream recipe you find and then freezing it. The consistency will depend on the amount of fat in it and the freezer setting. Fluffier ice creams are generally higher fat content. Whole milk and up (1/2 and 1/2, cream, whipping cream and heavy cream) for ice creams... The higher the fat and the quicker your ice cream will set as well.
There are also sorbettos/sorbets/sherberts which operate the same way.
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/pear-sorbet-sorbetto-di-pere
The fat doesn't have to be cream fat either. You can make avocado ice creams.
Avocado, sugar, lime, and alcohol. Blend and freeze.
You can blend a little salted butter with a TBSP of brandy or rum and add that to your cream base. Like my favorite fat ladies do...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBSTzfL2D_0
I certainly don't recommend all the fat ladies recipes since they use soy sauce, anchovy essence, tobasco, gelatin and worchestershire sauce. But all their recipes can be made without those for the most part.
I'm doing an entry on replacements, and I'm doing an entry on things the food industry has made for vegetarians which is mainly cheap by-product of their crappy crap they make for meat eaters. Hopefully soonish. PHEW!
OH, and caffeine along with good red wine will help rid yourself of the effects of "the spice." Of course not with a ton of cream, but since I know you and you drink it like a Colombian circa 1890. It is a good recommend for this lemon poppy replacement cake. ;)
ReplyDelete