Cake
My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and we planned a small celebration in our friend’s backyard. The day before the party multiple people had to enter quarantine for exposure to COVID and so we cancelled the party. Still…
My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and we planned a small celebration in our friend’s backyard. The day before the party multiple people had to enter quarantine for exposure to COVID and so we cancelled the party. Still such weird and unreliable times! But I had already planned on baking myself a birthday cake and so went ahead with it and then spent my birthday dropping slices of cake off to friends, which it turns out was a nice way to spend the day.
I have admired Bronwyn Wyatt’s work from afar for years, and was very happy that she has had a couple of cake recipes published recently. I tried the Apple/Rye/Hazelnut number she wrote about over at Bon Appetit and it is SO GOOD. I recommend you try it too, it might even make a nice Thanksgiving dessert if you have pie-averse friends (and you are not reevaluating those friendships). For my birthday I made the cornmeal/vanilla/sour cream cake (I think of her cakes as slash/ cakes) with OLIVE OIL buttercream that she wrote about at Food and Wine. It’s so good. Like, just the best simple vanilla goodness—what you always want a wedding cake to be but it never is. And the olive oil buttercream is a real revelation. A couple of notes: I used a finely ground cornmeal, which I was glad for. I don’t like the grit that can sometimes come as a result of using the more coarsely ground stuff. Use a really assertive extra-virgin olive oil for the buttercream. You’re only using 2 tablespoons as flavoring and so it needs to be punchy. Bronwyn says the citric acid is optional, but I think it should be required. It adds some zing without any citrus flavor, which is ideal. It can often be found in the pickling/canning section of the grocery store, or ordered online.
Bronwyn is also serving as my guide (spiritual mentor?) as I attempt to develop a fruitcake recipe I am happy with. More on that later. You can find Bronwyn on Instagram here.
