TWD: Caramel pumpkin pie

This week's recipe came a week after Canadian Thanksgiving so the smart and efficient thing to do would have been to make it a week in advance and serve it at the family dinner. I didn't do that, not only because I rarely choose the efficient way, but because I was worried that it wouldn't be as good as my regular recipe. I make a good pumpkin pie, if I do say so myself (I guess I just did). Anyway, I didn't even get my own pie made this year for the holiday, as it was a busy weekend. Instead, I melted my pumpkin ice cream down and used that as pie filling the next day. It was amazing--custardy and bright orange, just the way I like it! So good, that my mother called to see if I had told my sister-in-law I had also left some behind for her. She wanted to keep it all to herself. Luckily I hadn't said anything and my mother got 2 her pieces of pie. If you want to use that recipe you don't need to freeze it first, obviously. I'm all about efficiency, you know.

What does all that have to do with this week's recipe? Not much. I decided to make this pie in ramekins rather than in a crust for a change. I also decided to switch up the flavouring, as I find pumpkin pie sometimes just tastes of the spices rather than of the pumpkin. So, out came my favourite homemade essence: extrait antillais. I know I have mentioned it a number of times, but it's vanilla beans, tonka beans, sapote and mace marinated in rum. I sometimes use this to replace rum and vanilla and that's what I did here. Forgetting that I wanted to go light on spice, I added small amounts of fresh mace, nutmeg, sapote and tonka bean. Unfortunately, the spices completely overpowered the pumpkin and I found it inedible. I ate 2 to be sure. I guess the extrait has been sitting long enough that it's really powerful. Anyway, they looked pretty enough, but this recipe won't be replacing my regular one, as the texture wasn't as nice. And the colour! The caramel was delicious, but it darkened the filling enough that it looked like canned. Eeek! I know I ranted about this when I made the ice cream, so I won't do it again, but just look at this:

This week's recipe was chosen by Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs. Great pick, and sorry I screwed up! As always, head on over to the TWD site to see what everyone else baked up. Should be good--lots of positive comments this week. Some pumpkin-haters may even have become pumpkin eaters. :)

Update: Hmm, just had a friend over for dinner and I let her try the reject pumpkin pie. She took them all home, so maybe they're not as bad as I thought. She's going to mix them with ice cream to tone down the spice a bit.
Another entry for Torview's Orange recipe month!

Multilayered spice cake

I got the book Warm Bread and Honey Cake out of the library a month or so ago and immediately bookmarked a dozen recipes. I had to return it before I even got the chance to make anything, but I immediately ordered it from the bookstore and made this cake today. Today was actually a really busy day for me, as I supply taught, volunteered, did laundry and went to a book club meeting. That's more than I usually do in a whole week! Of course, I hadn't finished the book, so I spent the afternoon frantically reading, but a book is always better with a cup of tea and a piece of cake, isn't it?

I'm not sure why I chose this cake, because in the notes that accompany the recipe, the author, Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra, says that the layering can take up to 45 minutes. I made a half recipe in a 6" pan, and it was very rich, but delicious. The recipe calls for cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg, but I replaced these with mace, tonka beans and sapote. These are the spices, along with vanilla, that make up the extrait antillais I wrote about earlier. Antilles extract just doesn't sound as good, does it? Here's a photo of the spices in the extract, which I used, along with freshly grated/ground spice:

Here's the recipe, but you really should get your hands on this book. It's got recipes for breads, cakes, cookies, pastry and savoury items from a variety of places such as Guyana, The Netherlands, Chile, Turkey and China.

9 oz/2¼ sticks butter, softened

7 oz/1 cup sugar (in 2 equal portions)

5 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla extract

4½ oz/scant 1 cup all-purpose flour

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon 

½ tsp ground cardamom 

⅛ tsp ground cloves

⅛ tsp freshly grated nutmeg 

1¾ oz/scant ½ stick melted butter, for brushing

Grease an 8" pan and preheat the broiler. Move the oven rack to the top beforehand. It's much easier when it's not hot!

Sift the flour with the salt and set aside.

Beat the butter until smooth. Add half the sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat well to incorporate. 

In a clean bowl with clean beaters, whisk the egg whites till foamy, then add the other half of the sugar gradually, beating until stiff peaks form. Add a spoonful to the butter mixture and mix well to lighten. Gently fold in the rest of the egg whites in 3 additions, alternating with the flour. Do not overmix.
Transfer half the batter to another bowl (the egg white one is already dirty...just saying) and fold in the spices. Spread a quarter of the contents of one bowl over the bottom of the greased pan and level it with a spoon or an offset spatula. It doesn't matter which batter you start with.
Place the pan under the hot broiler and broil until the top is puffy and the batter cooked through. The first layer always seems to take a little longer, about 5 minutes, depending how close it is to the heat source. Remove the pan from the broiler, brush with the melted butter and then add a layer consisting of ¼ of the other batter. Repeat the layering, broiling and buttering until all the batter is used up. Each subsequent layer will take about 3 minutes. FYI: you do not have time to check your email while broiling this cake. Just a bit of kitchen wisdom from me to you, learned the hard way.  You will end up with 8 layers. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I only have 6.* Be careful about spreading the layers evenly and wiping any spills from the edges.
When you are finished broiling all the layers, gently loosen the edges with a knife and turn it out onto a cooling rack. Serve in small slices.

*Make sure your layers are fully cooked, as my second layer wasn't, and so the first and second layers separated from the rest of the cake when I removed it from the pan. Sad, but a nice snack! Next time I make this I am going to try it without the butter brushed between layers, as it's already very rich, and some layers had oozing butter. I'm also going to try this again with different spices, as I think the cardamom's in a snit now--I haven't used it in a week.

Oh, and what was the book club book? It was Speak Ill of the Dead by Mary Jane Maffini. It's a mystery set in my hometown, and I loved reading about many familiar places in Ottawa. Mary Jane was there and told some great stories about her inspiration for the book. As an added bonus, I won the door prize, which was a copy of next month's book: Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel.