Living
Email
Print
Let Them Eat Cake: Festival will celebrate Southern baking
Photo Courtesy of Nancie McDermott
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: November 11, 2009
Next week, amid the concerts, plays and gallery showings during Six Days in November, there will be some edible artistry and craftsmanship.
Six Days in November is a downtown arts festival that is built around the Piedmont Crafts Fair. It will begin Tuesday. In conjunction is "Let Them Eat Cake," a series of discussions, demonstrations and sweet samplings of Southern cakes.
Tomi Melson, the coordinator of Six Days in November, said that the festival is incorporating more than the usual arts and crafts.
"We wanted to build other things into this festival besides the expected things like dance and music," Melson said. "One of the great crafts in our county and in humankind in general is cooking -- culinary craft."
Melson said that several people around town suggested a food component to Six Days in November, but that dessert lovers can thank Carroll Leggett for putting the focus on cakes.
Leggett is a public-relations consultant who is helping to organize the festival. He is also a foodie, and a big fan of all things Southern. "He knew all these people and had all these ideas, so he designed the program," Melson said.
But Leggett doesn't want to take credit. "Actually, I have been a matchmaker of sorts," he said.
He called on his friend Nancie McDermott, a cookbook author in Chapel Hill who published Southern Cakes in 2007. He called friends Joe and Heidi Trull about cooking a special Sunday brunch with interesting cakes for dessert. They operate a restaurant in South Carolina.
He tracked down the "cake ladies" who sell baked goods at local farmers markets. He asked them to get together to talk about their cake-baking traditions.
And after seeing some impressive wedding and birthday cakes in the window at Dewey's Bakery, he lined up two of Dewey's pastry chefs to demonstrate how to decorate cakes.
Leggett said he hopes that the presentations will appeal to anyone who enjoys good food. But he also hopes that people will get even more.
"I want them to understand that cooking is art and craft, and that people who do it are artisans," he said. "It's passed down from generation to generation. It's precious. And we ought to celebrate it."
Here are two of the cakes that will be featured during Let Them Eat Cake.
Cornmeal Apple Cake
Recipe courtesy of Joe Trull of Grits and Groceries.
Cake:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups yellow cornmeal
1½ teaspoons baking soda
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
1½ cups vegetable oil
2¼ cups sugar
4 eggs
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1½ cups whole buttermilk
1½ cups Cider-Cooked Apples (recipe below)
Cinnamon Whipped cream (recipe below)
Glaze:
1½ cups sugar
⅓ cup whole buttermilk
⅓ cup fresh apple cider
⅓ cup molasses
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-inch tube-cake pan and set aside. Sift flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt together. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the oil and sugar and beat until combined and smooth, add the eggs and beat until the eggs are completely incorporated into the mixture. Fold in the dry ingredients alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour.
2. Add the vanilla and the cooked apples and mix until well-combined. Pour cake batter into prepared pan, and place in the middle of preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes.
3. Turn the cake (back to front) and bake an additional 15 to 20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. While the cake is baking, prepare the glaze. Mix all ingredients for the glaze together in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes and remove from heat. Pour over hot cake when it comes out of the oven. Cool cake on a wire rack in the pan. Serve with a dollop of freshly whipped cinnamon whipped cream.
Cider-Cooked Apples
6 cups ¼-inch thick sliced apples,
¾ teaspoon lemon zest
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cane syrup
2 tablespoons butter
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup fresh apple cider
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ cup bourbon
In a large saucepan, combine all the ingredients except the bourbon and cornstarch, and cook over medium heat stirring occasionally until apples become tender, but not mushy. Dissolve the cornstarch with the bourbon and stir into apples and cook until mixture thickens slightly. Remove from heat and let cool. These are good served over pancakes and waffles or baked in a pie as well as used in making cornmeal apple cake and apple fritters.
Cinnamon Whipped Cream
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl and whip until stiff.
Classic Coconut Cake
From Southern Cakes (Chronicle Books, 2007) by Nancie McDermott.
1-2-3-4 cake:
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk, or juice from a fresh coconut plus milk to make 1 cup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Coconut and icing:
3 to 4 cups shredded or grated coconut, fresh or store-bought
Seven-Minute Icing (recipe below)
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans and set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, or use a fork to stir and mix them together well.
2. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter until creamy. Add the sugar gradually, stopping to scrape down the sides, until the mixture is fluffy and fairly smooth. Add the eggs, one by one, beating well each time until you have a thick, smooth batter.
3. Add about one-third of the flour mixture to the batter and beat well. Stir the vanilla into the milk, and then add about half of the milk to the batter, beating well. Continue beating as you add another third of the flour mixture to the batter, followed by the rest of the milk and then the remaining flour mixture, beating well each time until the batter is thick and smooth.
4. Quickly scrape the batter into the prepared cake pans, dividing it evenly, and place them in the oven. Bake 25 to 30 minutes until cakes are golden and until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a layer comes out clean. Remove from the oven, cool for 10 minutes, and then turn cakes out onto wire racks or plates. Turn layers top side up and let them cool completely on wire racks or plates. You could also split the layers horizontally to make four thin layers of cake. (Make the icing when the cake is nearly cooled.)
5. Place one cooled cake layer topside down on a cake stand or serving plate and cover it generously with icing. Sprinkle it generously with coconut. Place the other layer on top of the iced layer. Ice the sides to help keep the cake steady, and then spread icing generously over the top, completely covering the cake. Place the cake on a cookie sheet to catch any loose coconut as you cover the cake. Sprinkle coconut all over the cake, and then gently pat handfuls of coconut onto the sides and top of the cake to cover any bare spots and get a thick, even coating. Brush away loose coconut from the plate edges with your hands. Wipe down the rim of the plate gently. Transfer any leftover coconut to a jar or a resealable plastic bag, and store it in the freezer.
Seven-Minute Icing
The ideal piece of equipment for this icing is a double-boiler. If you don't have one, carefully balance a stainless-steel mixing bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Use an oven mitt or potholders to handle the bowl, and watch out for escaping steam. Use an egg beater, whisk or a portable electric mixer. Despite the "seven" in the name, the icing may take as long as 15 minutes to reach its proper shiny and voluptuous state.
1 cup sugar
¼ cup light corn syrup
¼ cup water
2 egg whites
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. In the top of a double boiler or in a heat-proof medium bowl, combine the sugar, corn syrup, water, egg whites, salt and cream of tartar. Beat with an electric mixer for 1 minute until the mixture is pale yellow and foamy. Place the pan or bowl of icing over a saucepan of actively simmering water. Beat at medium speed until mixture is pale yellow and foamy, 1 to 2 minutes.
2. Increase the speed to medium high and beat for 7 minutes or more, until the icing becomes white, thick, shiny and triples in volume. Continue beating until the frosting forms firm peaks and loses some of its shine. (The whole process could take 15 to 20 minutes.) Remove the icing from the heat, add the vanilla and continue beating for 2 more minutes. Quickly spread frosting on cake layers.
Let Them Eat Cake
Cake-decorating demonstration: noon Tuesday, Blackhorse Studios, 310 E. Third St.
Alison Turner and Katy Hites, executive pastry chefs at Dewey's Bakery, will demonstrate how to decorate a holiday cake and will give decorating tips. The demonstration will include a sampling of Dewey's desserts.
The cost is $20 a person. Seating is limited. To make a reservation contact Katy Hites at 397-5587 or kate@deweys.com.
Panel discussion of cake-baking traditions: noon next Wednesday, Patina, 217 W. Sixth St.
Jackie Crawford, Gloria Jean Mitchell, Lisa Leonard, Gwen Leonard and Shirley Phillips -- all local cake bakers -- will talk about Southern cake traditions and offer samples and cakes for sale. Cookbook author Nancie McDermott will lead the panel. Cakes will include raw apple cake, caramel cake and five-flavor pound cake. Admission is free.
Southern cake demonstration and book-signing: 1 p.m. Nov. 20, Chelsee's Coffee Shop and More, 533 N. Trade St. Nancie McDermott of Chapel Hill, the author of Southern Cakes (Chronicle Books, 2007), will demonstrate how to assemble a fresh coconut cake. There will be a tasting of Sybil Pressly's buttermilk cake with old-time fudge icing, Ocracoke Island fig cake with buttermilk glaze, and Alleghany County molasses stack cake with molasses whipped cream. Admission is free. Call 703-1503 for more information.
Sunday brunch, featuring cakes by Joe Trull: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 22, W-S Prime, inside the Marriott Hotel at 425. N Cherry St. The brunch will feature the food of Joe and Heidi Trull, who own Grits and Groceries in Belton, S.C. Joe Trull will be making a chocolate-covered coconut-cream cake, cornmeal apple cake, pumpkin spice cake with molasses icing, and a holiday trifle that includes cake, cream, cooked cranberries and orange curd. Heidi Trull will make shrimp and grits. Larry McFadden, W-S Prime's chef de cuisine, will round out the menu with such entrees as beef tenderloin, maple-glazed ham, omelets and waffles. The cost is $29 a person. Reservations recommended. Call 722-5232.
Email
Print
