Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Aunt's Day party

frowning dakki

We finally had a day when everyone was free--with no work or choir obligations--to celebrate Aunt's Day with Dakki, the cutest, best aunt ever. Here's what we ate:

spring salad

A spring salad of endive, radish, fava beans, and tangelo with creamy orange dressing; carrot soup (which I forgot to take a picture of, but which looked just like you'd expect);

couscous and tempeh

Israeli couscous with asparagus and sugar snaps, and charmoula-braised tempeh (Dakki's freshly intrigued whenever I serve her either couscous or tempeh, asking lots of questions about their history and how they're made, so I picked this menu item with her amusement in mind);

cake and ice cream

and blueberry cake and ice cream. As Annie rudely pointed out, the ice cream turned out grey, but it still tasted nice. I think it would have been more blue if I'd cooked the blueberries instead of just grinding them up raw in the blender.

The cake was an adaptation of the raspberry cake I made for Lillian: I made it bigger, plus added some cornflour (the kind that's finely ground cornmeal, not cornstarch) because I like corn and blueberries together.

Blueberry Cake

1 1/2T each tapioca starch and golden flax meal
75ml + 150ml soy yogurt, divided
120g margarine
200g + 1T sugar, divided
1t vanilla extract
zest and juice of a lemon
150g all-purpose flour
50g corn flour
3/4t baking powder
1/2t baking soda
1/4t salt
200g blueberries

Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour a suitable cake pan (I used a 7.5" tube pan, but an 9" round pan would work too).

Whisk the flax and tapioca together with the 75ml soy yogurt, and let rest and thicken while you beat the margarine and 200g of sugar together till fluffy. Add the flax mixture to the margarine, and beat some more. Add the rest of the yogurt along with the vanilla, zest, and lemon juice. Whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together, then beat in till it's nicely amalgamated. Spread half of the batter into your prepared cake pan, then scatter a third of the berries evenly around. Spread the rest of the batter over the berries, then sprinkle with the remaining berries. Poke them down into the batter till they're halfway submerged, then sprinkle with your remaining tablespoon of sugar.

Bake till the cake's coming away from the sides of the pan and a tester comes out clean, 45-50 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to finish cooling.

blueberry cake i

2 comments:

joannamauselina said...

That Annie! What a monster! Dakki looks kind of grumpy. She tells me she is not, however. Ice cream yummy although gray.

L said...

That all looks so good. Especially that tempeh thing. The salad looked tasty, too. I'm not a fan of endive, but your salad made it look good to me.