Let me eat cake

Note: The posts in the blog originally appeared in my bi-weekly column Amuse-bouche in the Napa Valley Register

April 2007

 

     I have a birthday this week, but I’m not getting a year older.

     “Oh come on,” I can hear you saying. “Here’s another delusional baby boomer who doesn’t want to face facts.”

     But you’re wrong. This isn’t about vanity or feeling old or lying about my age. It’s a simple matter of human rights.

     As an over-privileged and over-fed American, I feel that a proper celebration is my birthright. Therefore, on principle, I refuse to acknowledge any birthday that doesn’t come accompanied by cake. Specifically, banana cake with Hungarian chocolate frosting. And there’ll be no cake on my birthday again this year.

     Growing up, that banana cake – my mother’s specialty – made an appearance six times a year, on everyone’s birthday.

     Everyone’s birthday except, sometimes, mine.

     Actually, the cake did make an appearance even on those skipped birthdays. My mother would bake it ahead of time, filling the house with delicious aromas. She’d slather on the frosting, and proudly display the tempting cake to me. Then she’d stick it in the freezer for a week.

     Was this some kind of bizarre child abuse? Was my mother a sadistic witch who liked to torture young girls? Was I being severely punished for bratty behavior?

No, none of the above. It was religious martyrdom, of a particularly Jewish kind..

Those years of deprivation came when my birthday fell, as it does this year, during Passover –  the feast of the unleavened bread, when cake, bread and anything that uses yeast, baking soda or baking powder is forbidden for eight days.

     If it weren’t for the dessert problem, Passover would be, hands down, my favorite holiday. The Seder is like having a second, even more delicious, Thanksgiving every year. It’s a springtime holiday celebrated entirely around a groaning table filled with delicious traditional dishes. We’re required (required!) to wash everything down with four glasses of wine.

Like Thanksgiving, Passover has a whole range of traditional foods, variations on a theme repeated at Seders across the country. Our family menu invariably included gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, haroses (a chopped apple, raisin and nut mixture), roast capon with matzoh stuffing, cucumber salad, homemade applesauce, asparagus and stewed prunes (a necessity when consuming quantities of matzoh).

Unfortunately, the dinner always ended with a thud. Every year my mother made dad’s favorite dessert from his side of the family, “Matzo Charlotte.” It’s specific to the Tellers – I’ve never seen it at anyone else’s Seder. It’s a dense, brown, egg-y, matzoh-based bread pudding made edible largely by the brandy-laced hard sauce served with it. (Even then, you spend every bite fantasizing about how good the hard sauce would be on some other, less impenetrable substance.)

On my birthday, it came to the table with candles stuck in it. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Fortunately, Jewish holidays are set on a lunar calendar, and move around. So I suffered this ignoble fate only every few years. Recently it has been happening a lot, though – this is the third time in the past six years. It’s starting to get to me.

But I keep it in perspective. Compared with the real hunger in the world – or even with friends who have stoically given up chocolate, alcohol, French fries or other favorite treats for all of Lent – waiting one week to eat your birthday cake isn’t a major sacrifice.

At most, I could mope and feel a bit sorry for myself. But instead, this year I baked mom’s recipe for banana cake and stuck it in the freezer, in her memory. When I finally get to eat it next week, I’ll think with gratitude of the effort she always made so I wouldn’t feel my day had been overlooked – as well as for the years her frozen cakes have shaved off my age.

But there’s still tonight’s Seder to plan. Forget the Matzoh Charlotte. I’m serving individual chocolate soufflés. I think they’ll be especially good paired with hard sauce …

 

——–

 

You’ll have to wait for the soufflé recipe. Today I’m going down memory lane with the cake and frosting. I can’t claim originality – mom’s recipes usually came from a cookbook or magazine – though I’ve made my usual tweaks. In deference to my waistline (and to make psychic room for gobs of frosting), I adjusted the cake to lighten it up, substituting thick yogurt for the sour cream.

 

Banana Cake

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1 cup very ripe mashed bananas (about 3-4)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 cups cake flour, or substitute 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour plus 1/4 cup corn starch

1 cup Greek-style yogurt*

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Grease and flour a 9” round cake pan.

Sift together the flour, cornstarch (if using), baking soda and salt. Set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream the butter with the sugar, then the eggs, mixing thoroughly. Add in the bananas. Then add the flour and yogurt, alternating between the two, until everything is incorporated.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 45 minutes or until done. Cool on a rack, removing cake from the pan after about 10 minutes.

*Greek yogurt is available in grocery stores these days, as well as at Trader Joe’s. You can substitute sour cream (which was what my mother used). I don’t recommend regular yogurt, which has a lot more water.

 

Hungarian Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

5 oz. (5 squares) unsweetened chocolate

2 1/4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar

1/4 cup very hot water

2 egg yolks

6 Tbsp. butter at room temperature

 

Directions

Gently melt chocolate in a double boiler, then transfer it to the bowl of an electric mixer. Add sugar and very hot (just below the boil) water all at once to the chocolate and beat together well. With the mixer running, add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each. Then, with the mixer still running, add the butter one tablespoon at a time, beating until completely incorporated.

 

To assemble:

Once the cake has cooled, cut it horizontally into two layers, using a sharp knife or dental floss. Place one layer on a plate cut side down, apply a coat of frosting, then place the second layer cut side down, and frost the top and sides. Chill slightly to set the frosting, then apply candles.

For a really decadent cake, double the cake recipe and make it a four layer cake (you’ll have plenty of frosting). To serve, cut thin slices – it is very dense, almost like a pound cake.