Absinthe Cake

Recipe by David Lebovitz from 'The Sweet Life In Paris'

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!  And what a perfect occasion to bring something unique to your holiday party.  Because I want you to be the cool cat at the fiesta, I'm sharing David Lebovitz's absinthe cake.


Absinthe is a highly alcoholic anise-flavored spirit (not a liqueur) that originated in Switzerland, and was a popular drink in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th century among artists and writers, including Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  Many artists revered the drink, and used it as the subject of art and written works. Because it has been portrayed as an addictive, psychoactive drug due to the chemical Thujone found in the herbaceous perennial plant wormwood, by 1915, absinthe was banned in most of Europe, save for a few countries, and all of the United States.  It was said that when one imbibed absinthe, that one would be visited by the 'Green Fairy'.  So, who doesn't need a little Green Fairy to help ring in the holidays?  Especially with all the green goblin in-laws coming to town.  The good thing is, you don't have to smuggle a bottle of the bootlegged spirit out of Switzerland, you can now get absinthe right here in the United States, and the makers of Hangar One have begun producing a fine distillation. So, what you will get here is a lovely anise-flavored cake!  Oh, and I don't think it's a good choice for kids :)


( I would add toasted almonds or pistachios)


FOR THE CAKE
3/4 tsp anise seeds
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup pistachio or almond flour or 1/2 cup stone ground yellow cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder, preferably aluminum free
1/4 tsp salt
8 TB unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup absinthe
Grated zest from 1 orange, preferably unsprayed


FOR THE ABSINTHE GLAZE
3 TB sugar
1/4 cup absinthe

• Preheat the oven to 350º. Butter a 9" loaf pan, then line the bottom with parchment paper.
• Crush the anise seeds using a mortar and pestle, or in a freezer bag with a hammer, until relatively fine. Whisk together the white flour, nut flour or cornmeal, baking powder, salt and anise seeds. Set aside.
• In the bowl of a standing electric mixer or by hand, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, until completely incorporated.
• Combine the milk and absinthe with a bit of zest.
• Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, then add the milk and absinthe.
• By hand, stir in the other half of the dry ingredients until just smooth (do not overmix). Smooth the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
• Remove the cake from the oven and let cool 30 minutes.
• To glaze the cake with absinthe, use a toothpick and poke 50 holes into the cake. In a small bowl, gently stir the sugar and absinthe until just mixed, making sure the sugar doesn't dissolve. (You can add a bit of the orange zest here too if you like.
• Remove the cake from the pan, peel off the parchment paper, and set the cake on a cooling rack over a baking sheet.
• Baste the cake with the absinthe glaze over the top and sides. Continue until all the glaze is used up!

HAPPY EATING!
* you can buy David Lebovitz's book on Amazon. There is a link on the right side of this page. There is also a link for an awesome book on absinthe. I have a copy, and it's really swell!

Destination:

We arrived dead center a maelstrom.  Rainwater gushed from the sky in a frigid torrent as though someone had sliced open the belly of a cumulonimbus, sooty and low hanging, its entrails heavy with anger; and its guts emptied hard over the terra cotta rooftops and the dark courtyards of Algeciras in minerally rivulets.  The Spanish gods are evidently more passionate than those of the new world.  I’ve heard that this is so because of the banderillas, piquant and crisp, the callipygian women whose kisses are soft and hot and taste of bitter orange. And the boughs of the almond trees hung limp like umbrellas whose efforts were defeated by the storm.

The train station was foreboding. Its terrazzo platform lay slimed with boot tracks and the brackish mist that rolled from the shores of Tangier before threading the Strait of Gibraltar.  The perfumes of the sea saturated the tumultuous gales whose force blew the waters from fountain basins and left their bellies dry; they plucked the Manzanilla, heavy and oval as the bottle-green eyes of Moroccan girls, from their silver-skinned branches and flicked them into the crevices of the cobblestone alleyways.  Somewhere this night, a woman pounded her heels over floorboards brittled by the passions of Andalusia, the compás echoing out like the hollow canter of stallions.  They knew they were descendants of the equine gods that dragged flaming chariots across a sky burning red and orange and gold, bright as the sun that lolloped in the trail they left smoldering behind.

Travelers with destinations prearranged dove into the watery night while we leafed through our travel guides, their pages glued together in thick wads. Someone will meet us, I said confidently, the bill of my hat draining in a transparent curtain before my face.  Though I was not sure.  The guidebook promised that stations throughout all of Spain were veritably teeming with proprietors who hawked the comforts of their pensións, but on a night like this, perhaps even the most committed of them leant over tapas bars with thimbles of sherry and tiny plates of Papas Arrugadas, whose sauce was smoky with pimienton:  the Spanish are famous for intuiting when it is not prudent to tax themselves.

Out of the bleak emerged a man with a waxy countenance, hollow, dark eyes and sodden hair that slithered over his hunched shoulders like albino serpents en route back to the underworld. Hágale necesita un cuarto?  He asked.  When traveling through Spanish speaking countries I find it best to always answer si.  My assumption is that I’ll be fed or get laid, perhaps given directions to the nearest bar.

~

The patio of the pensión was tiled from the floor to the open sky in a palette of blues, of eggshell, and sea foam green. A dense snarl of plants crept over the windows and walls so that it was difficult to distinguish the varieties or to trace the fronds to the proper pot, all of which wept in coppery streaks and were mottled with black mold.  Venus fly traps bit at the elephant ears whose new leaves were pressed tight into chartreuse horns.  The banana palms with their large, cleaved foliage, bore no fruit, but provided cover from the rain that now fell in gossamer wisps like webs spun by empyrean spiders.  The second floor cloister was lined with doors along one wall, and a railing inextricably woven with the tendrils of assiduous vines.  And our Walpurgisnacht escort took leave, the koi fish, grouped in threes, pushed their way through the thick soup of algae that bloomed in the still water of a center fountain whose tiles had half come undone.

The proprietor, his belly round and firm as a parturient mare on the verge of spilling her young, gnawed the end of a cigar as though it was a piece of jerky that he had taken to in the crepuscular hours, when the gypsy merchants piled high their fruits and salted fish, their squid as fat as rats, in the fetid alleyways that ran from the square to the port.  And the goat carcasses, stripped of their coats, gleamed bright and pink and raw.  Their blinkless, obsidian eyes were greasy thumbprints pressed into their bony skulls.  We handed him a pile of dirty peseta and he waved us toward a staircase whose colorful tiles shone bright as a fine cloisonné: su cuarto está arriba la escalera a la izquierda, he said. Si, we replied, hoping for neither sex nor food, and it was frankly too late for a bar.

Our room was arranged with three beds, a wash basin, and a painting of a headless woman that decorated most of one wall.  She sat in a rocking chair with upturned palms, her dress buttoned tight at the throat.  A rusted terrace jutted out over a garden crowded with pink pigweed and pomegranate trees whose heavy fruits dripped into the deep grasses and glimmered like colossal rubies in the mizzle.  And a large, cracked looking glass stood beside a set of French doors that were splintered and stained with moisture and which rattled erratically with the force of the stalwart wind.  I covered it with a bed sheet, for it was the kind of pensión whose chambers were peopled with specters who were not yet aware that they had passed, and I could think of nothing more alarming than an unfamiliar face staring back at mine, especially one whose body hung in gray tones on the wall above the beds where we were meant to find peaceful sleep.

The moon buoyed heavily in the eve as though it might tumble into the sea and light the way for the creatures that made their dinner in the kelp beds, their slippery blades abloom in tangled, green clouds, dark on the ocean floor.  Sam chose the bed beneath the ghastly painting, she was the least pusillanimous, while Christine and I took turns peeing in the sink: The creaks in the corridor were the footsteps of ghosts, and the wash closet was three units down.

~

Our night was sleepless, mostly, and the morning air was crisp and brined.  We strode along the docks and watched the sun rise over the dark waters that separated the heel of one continent from the head of another.  Our backpacks were pregnant with weeks of travel behind us; with trinkets and chocolates and memories of conversations and smells; with the sense of feeling so small in a great big world whose traverse within can alone put one's life into context like nothing else.

Destination: Morocco, where we could buy cheap gifts for our friends and haggle with rug merchants who would ply us with diminutive glasses of sugary tea, the water that steeped the fresh mint leaves swimming with organisms that would paint the town red in our virgin bowels. 

Doughnuts

I don't know about you, but I can eat doughnuts morning, noon, and night. Here is a recipe for Craft restaurant's doughnuts. They are super simple to make. Just remember, like anything, don't over mix the batter once the flour is in, or you will toughen the doughnuts. ENJOY!

Makes 24


For the cinnamon sugar:


1/2 cup superfine sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch ground cardamom
pinch kosher salt


For the doughnuts:


3 1/2 cups cake flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 cup butter milk
1/3 cup clarified butter
1 egg
3 egg yolks
peanut oil for deep frying


For the cinnamon sugar: combine the sugar, cinnamon, cardamom and salt in a bowl and mix well.


For the doughnuts: fit a mixer with a paddle attachment. Sift 1 1/2 cups of the cake flour with the sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg into the mixer bowl. With the mixer running, gradually add the buttermilk, butter, egg, and egg yolks. When the mixture is smooth fold in the remaining 2 cups of flour by hand, careful not to over mix which will toughen the doughnuts.


Divide the dough in half. Roll the first half out about 1/8 inch thick on a well-floured surface. Using a 2" cutter, cut out about 12 rounds. Then, using a 3/4" cutter, cut out the centers. Repeat with the remaining dough.


Place about 4 inches of oil in a deep saucepan and heat to 375° F. Fry the doughnuts and holes in batches without crowding. Turn the doughnuts so they are brown on all sides, 2 to 4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels. Roll the warm doughnuts in the cinnamon sugar and serve.