The Good, The Bad, And The Very Ugly Steamed Pudding with Creamsicle Flavored Crème Fraîche

Did you know that May is my favorite month?

Yup, it sure is. Emerald is the birthstone, while Hawthorn and Lily of the Valley are the official flowers. The month of May is a good month in which to dedicate important events, every year, the 31 days of May are set aside for special events like: Bicycle Safety, Older Americans, Hepatitis Awareness, Teen Pregnancy Prevention, and Asian Pacific American Heritage.

In May there are a lot of well known and lesser known holidays worldwide, there is May Day, Cinco de Mayo, Nurse's Day, (I couldn't find any information about the origins of this day, what I did find was very commercial as in buy, buy buy commercial. So, on behalf of MH5, Thank You Nurses everywhere, for all your hard work and dedication ALL year round). In May there's Mother's Day, (here's some interesting facts from 2001), Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day and a whole slew of other "Days" worldwide.

Birthdays in May include: Reggie Jackson, Perry Como, Pope John Paul II, Buddha, Catherine the Great, Machiavelli, and Irving Berlin, just to name a few of the more famous folks. As you know, even the not so famous celebrate birthdays in May (like me), so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAY BABIES EVERYWHERE!

May is a "happening" month, it's the month the Empire State Building first opened in 1931, that Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross in 1881, that Minnesota was admitted to the Union in 1858, and that Mount St. Helens just couldn't take it anymore and erupted in 1980. It is the month my niece will graduate from medical school (OMG I have a niece old enough to be in medical school *cry* ) AND ... it is the month my reading group met to discuss the book "Industry of Souls" by Martin Booth and to chow down on ...The Cake That Almost Never Happened...

First let's talk about the Crème Fraîche. OMG! This was by far the best thing I've ever made. I hadn't planned on it tasting like a Creamsicle, but as I was "developing" the flavors it just sort of happened. I had taken the Crème Fraîche that I made on Tuesday out of the fridge and removed the vanilla bean that I had chucked in there. Slicing it open, I removed the seeds then added them back into the bowl. I then added some superfine sugar (cause it's superfine ), A tiny dash of fresh grated nutmeg, a capful of pure vanilla extract, a capful of orange flower water, some of this (which is also quite good mixed with scotch in a drink called a Rusty Nail, (NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW), a capful of this extract and a healthy grating of this. Now here's the cute part if I do say so myself. I needed a hands-free situation so that I could adjust the flavors while the mixer was still whipping the Crème Fraîche. I do not have a stand-up mixer, so my solution, a pot turned over with a tea towel thrown over the bottom to hide the stained and crusty copper to keep the hand mixer from sliding! Clever, eh?

The pudding is something I've made before and if you remember, I started it at a very late hour one night, it took a long time and I made a lot of noise, which freaked me out in a very big way being that I live in an apartment building with paper thin walls. The recipe is from my copy of Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery, a cookbook I REALLY like and admire for it's innovative and somewhat eclectic pastry recipes. I will not mislead you, this cake is labor intensive, and there are many steps you have to go through to achieve the yummy goodness as a result of your labor and dedication. This is a special occasion thing, and certainly not a practical cake for something quick you want to whip up. It is also not a cake you want to make if you set your goals too high and think it will come out perfect, or that you will have time to decorate before your reading group meeting. It IS a cake to try making at least once, if only just for fun and certainly if you want to try something a little different than what you're used to.

SO!

After a frantic run to the grocery store in which I tried not to freak out too much over the frizzed out fly-away state of my hair, or that I was even out in public at all with that look going on, I purchased the chocolate, the prunes and the buttermilk I needed for the recipe. I had this stuff but having never used it I was scared to try it out on a recipe I wanted other people ( friends even, imagine that) to eat. I mean what if I accidentally poisoned them or something? Back home, and with the oven pre-heating to 350 degrees I lightly coated my clay pot with a layer of butter. Using a method I recently learned, of putting your cocoa or powdered sugar into a tea infuser and shaking, I had the pot coated in no time.

The first part of the recipe calls for a "Fudge Swirl" and this time I thought I'd try something different by combining dark and light chocolate together to see what I would get in terms of taste and color. Nancy calls for 4 ounces of bittersweet and so I used 2 ounces of bittersweet and 2 ounces of white, can you believe that each of these bars is 4 ounces? They look so HUGE to me. In a medium saucepan I combined water, corn syrup, sugar, cocoa powder and this then brought everything to a boil. I then added the melted 4 ounces of bittersweet and white chocolate mix (I had pre-melted them earlier in a double boiler) and some cognac. I gave the whole thing one final turn of the whisk then took it off the stove and set it aside to cool.

For the "Pudding" part of the cake, I needed to melt 3 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, but PLEASE! Don’t tell Nancy I used 4 ounces, because really, what the hell was I going to do with this? I know, I know, the obvious answer would be to run into the closet and crouch down in the corner cramming the peice of chocolate into my mouth but... that's NOT LADYLIKE! In a small saucepan, I combined water, buttermilk, cocoa powder, and espresso powder and brought that up to a boil then taking it off the heat I whisked in the bittersweet chocolate and sour cream and set it aside to cool next to the fudge swirl, lovely. Moving right along, and really feeling quite pleased with myself I combined 1 stick of unsalted butter that I had been instructed to chill and cut into 1 inch cubes with baking soda that had been dissolved in 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Did I miss this step last time? Because I don't remember it! Using the mixer on low speed I creamed them together then added lightly packed brown sugar. (I use brownulated brown sugar, which pours like regular white, because I am a Prima Donna when it comes to having to deal with the hardened mess that brown sugar becomes after one freaking use). I continued creaming the mixture until it was light and fluffy. Then, I needed to add 6 tablespoons of almond paste- 1 tablespoon at a time. Now here's the thing, as much as I like Nancy and respect her knowledge and instruction, I don't see why I have to use 6 ounces of almond paste when the stuff comes in THIS SIZE! what am I supposed to do with that last ounce? It's not like I can use it in another recipe, and I really despise wasting food if at all possible. So, I did what any girl like me would do...I added it to the recipe...sorry Nancy. Once the almond paste was incorporated into the batter, a task that is easier said than done because that stuff refuses to break up easily, I needed to add 5 egg yolks one yolk at a time. The recipe calls for 4 extra-large yolks but I only use large eggs so I compensate by adding a fifth yolk. I am a spazz when it comes to separating eggs and while Nancy may be able to add her eggs one yolk at a time mine always end up like this, and so I did my best to approximate a "one yolk at a time thing" but I soon tired of that game and dumped it all in at once. Once the yolks were incorporated, I added a cup of chopped prunes, the chocolate "pudding" mixture I made earlier, and a cup + extra of flour that I had sifted as per Nancy's instructions because I did not have cake flour. I mixed the flour into the batter in three stages turning the mixer off and scraping the sides after each addition. Now comes the fun part. I needed to take the 5 whites from the five yolks I separated earlier and whip them into light fluffy whites. I did this part by hand! I discovered something about myself recently that may seem weird to you but... well... I LIKE whipping egg whites by hand. I know, I'm SICK.

In a clean bowl, I whipped the egg whites from the 5 eggs whose yolks I used earlier, into a froth, then added a little dash of cream of tarter for stabilization(don't tell Nancy) and then beat the HELL out of the egg whites, rested, switched hands and beat them some more until soft peaks formed. (I am really proud of those soft peaks)! To the soft peaks I added granulated sugar and once again beat the living hell out of them until they became stiff shiny peaks. I don't recommend whipping egg whites by hand, it is tiresome work. I like to imagine that I'm like my great- great-grandmothers who would have never had the luxury of an electric mixer with which to beat their egg whites. So, like those that came before me I was doing that same thing, and that, has a way of making all the extra work seem more satisfying to me. (I told you I was sick)! I then poured half of the egg whites into the pudding batter and combined well. I added the rest of the whites and folded them gently (as best as I could) into the batter. I poured the "fudge swirl" mixture into this and mixed just barely enough to let the batter get a marbled effect. I poured the whole mixture into the cocoa dusted mold, placed the lid securely on top, put the clay pot into the larger clay pot, poured water in the gap and put the whole thing into the oven for 90 minutes. I managed to leave it well enough alone and not obsessively open and close the oven door to see if I could see anything.

I should have checked at least once.

When the 90 minutes were up I took the pot out of the oven and was quite pleased with the results. I let it cool for the EXACT 20 minutes of time Nancy told me to let it cool, then I set about un-molding it. I inverted the whole thing onto a small platter, turned it gently over, holding my breath and hoping the whole thing would come off easily. The pudding had other ideas. After several not so successful attempts at loosening the cake, when it did finally release, it did so in a very unglamorous and messy way, revealing a pretty raw center and a very ruined cake. Now I COULD have freaked out at this point and thrown a really good tantrum, and who could blame me? But that's not really like me. I was disappointed, yes, after all, I really wanted to decorate the damn thing and make it all pretty and sparkly for my friends, THIS was not in the program. I had to decide what I was going to do because time was quickly running out. Do I throw the damn thing out and just go buy a cake, or do I NOT let this discourage me and just move on?

After about 10 minutes of totally blocking it all out, a gap of time I have no idea what I was doing or can even account for, I finally chose to press on. I scooped up the still remarkably intact top of the cake and threw the whole thing back into the clay pot, placed THAT back into it's bath and then back into the oven for another hour. This second time worked like a charm. When I did finally serve the cake at the reading group meeting, I spooned it out onto plates, let everyone serve up their own crème fraîche and apologized for the very un-fab looking mess. The dessert was still warm and pudding like, but also very much like cake too. It was dense and moist, rich but not overly sweet; it went well with the sweet orange of the crème fraîche. It was a really big hit with the reading group and even though I did not get to have my "Martha Stewart Moment", I think I still made a few folks happy. I would have liked everything to come together in a better way, but you know, it may not have been pretty, and it certainly didn't turn out the way I had hoped, but I pooled my resources and turned it around, making the best out of a not so perfect situation. I’ll admit I was trying for the Martha Stewart thing and not the Wendy O. Williams type destruction I ended up with (another May baby by the way- 5/28/49), but you know what, things don't always have to be perfect to be good. (Rock on Wendy O. wherever you are).

Now go on with your BAD selves and have a nice weekend.

Written by Deb on May 2, 2003 05:32 AM