Witchy Kitchen

Tag: cake

  • Bible Cake with Goat Cheese Eyes

    Bible Cake with Goat Cheese Eyes

    Drag Me to Hell (2009), co-written and directed by Sam Raimi, has a lot to say about shame. Though it’s a wacky, quick-paced supernatural film with just the right amount of camp, the subject matter is particularly heavy: you can try to outrun your shame, but sooner or later it’s going to catch up with you.

    Christine (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer, trying to shed both her southern accent and her sweet nature, in order to get a promotion. She denies an elderly Romani woman a loan, who curses her to be tormented for three days before being dragged to hell. But it’s not the denial of the loan that triggers the curse, it’s Christine calling security and embarrassing the proud woman who has knelt begging at her feet. “You shame me!” She exclaims.

    And over the course of the next three days, every insecurity Christine has been running from rears its ugly head. She struggles at her job, as she’s just not able to be as ruthless as her coworker, making those “tough decisions.” She fails to impress the family of her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long), who think she is too low class and not good enough for him.

    And there’s a lot of shame around food. There’s a reading of this movie that it’s about bulimia, and there is a lot to support that. Christine stares longingly into a bakery but denies herself, later to turn to ice cream in her distress. There are a couple of references for her growing up a “fat girl” whereas she is not anymore. So many of the gruesome events of the three days involve various disgusting things going into her mouth.

    And then there’s the cake. When Christine goes to meet Clay’s family for the first time, she’s eager to make a good impression and brings a humble dish to dinner. “It’s a harvest cake,” she explains, to Clay’s bemused upperclass parents, something she would make on the farm where she grew up. When they serve it, she envisions an eyeball staring at her, and she chokes when she tries to eat it.

    This cake is such a perfect summation of Christine’s insecurities, around food, around class, around judgement, around shame. I went looking for a cake to make in a small town cookbook I inherited from my grandmother, Our First Hundred Years of Cooking (1883-1983) from the Methodist Church of Mount Holly, North Carolina. It did not disappoint. Adapted from a recipe of Mrs. Hettie Clinton Nixon’s, this is a recipe for Bible Cake, made with ingredients from the good book, with all the fruits and nuts of Christine’s harvest cake and the added benefit of scripture (useful in seances!). A goat features in the film’s seance as well, so to decorate I made little goat cheese eyeballs, watching you from every which way.

    Bible Cake with Goat Cheese Eyes

    For the cake

    • 1/2 cup butter, Judges 5:25
    • 1 cup sugar, Jeremiah 6:20
    • 3 eggs, Isaiah 10:14
    • 1 3/4 cups flour, I Kings 4:22
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt, Leviticus 2:13
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder, I Corinthians, 5:6
    • spices (I used 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, and the seeds of 3 cardamom pods), I Kings 10:2
    • 1/2 cup water, Genesis 24:11
    • 1/2 tablespoon honey, Exodus 16:31
    • 1 cup each chopped raisins and dried figs, I Samuel 25:18
    • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, Genesis 43:11
    • powdered sugar to garnish

    Heat oven to 375, and grease a 9 inch round cake pan.

    Cream together butter and sugar. Add in the 3 eggs. Separately, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and spices.

    Mix together water and honey, add it to the wet mixture and mix well. Stir the dry mixture into the web mixture until just combined. Fold in raisins, figs, and nuts, and transfer to the cake pan.

    Bake for approximately 45 minutes until cooked through and golden. Turn out onto a cake plate. Allow to cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

    For the goat cheese eyes

    • 2 ounces goat cheese, room temperature.
    • 1 cup+ powdered sugar
    • pinch of salt
    • dried fruit for decorating (I used cranberries, blueberries, and raisins)

    Whip together goat cheese, powdered sugar and salt. Cool in the fridge for an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until set up and moldable. Add powdered sugar if necessary to get a firm texture. Powder your hands with powdered sugar (and again periodically) and form teaspoon-sized balls, rolling gently, and press a dried fruit into each one. Chill until ready to use, then adorn the cake.

    First published on Nightmare on Film Street.

  • Amaretto Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

    Amaretto Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

    Like many I fell into the seductive trap of HBO’s Sharp Objects (2018), the miniseries adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2006 novel. Created by Marti Noxon (who I would follow anywhere since Buffy) and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, the series perfectly captures a small town underbelly, mommy issues, rollerskating, addiction, and murder mysteries, and Amy Adams’s performance as Camille is painful and exquisite. 

    However, it’s Patricia Clarkson’s Adora that inspried this dish. She’s an elegant and cruel Southern Gothic anti-goddess, sipping amaretto sours and crushing souls out on the veranda. Like Adora, this Calhoun Day pineapple upside-down cake is classic and old-fashioned. It’s marinated and swirled with lovely amaretto, and dotted with luscious maraschinos – “Mama, couldn’t you just take a bite out of her?” “Like a plump, juicy cherry.” 

    Amaretto Pineapple Upside-Down Cake


    For the topping

    • 1 cup amaretto
    • 9 pineapple slices
    • 4 ounces butter, melted
    • 1/2 cup brown sugar
    • maraschino cherries
    Marinate pineapple slices in amaretto for several hours, preferably overnight. Prepare a 9×9 square pan, and spread the bottom with melted butter and brown sugar. Arrange pineapple slices evenly, with maraschinos in all the spaces. Reserve remaining amaretto/pineapple juice mixture.

    For the cake

    • 8 tablespoons butter, softened
    • 1 cup sugar
    • 7 ounces almond paste
    • 3 eggs
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla
    • 1 3/4 cup flour
    • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
    • 1 teaspoon salt
    • Reserved amaretto/pineapple mixture, cooked and reduced to a thick syrup
    Preheat oven to 350° Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Crumble in the almond paste (try to get it as fine as possible) and mix in well. Mix in eggs, and vanilla. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt, and add to the wet mixture with a spatula. Combine, being careful not to overmix. Gently spread the batter over the pineapples and cherries in the baking pan. Gently swirl in the amaretto/pineapple syrup (I don’t know if this made much of a difference but I was feeling like Adora and being a little extra). Bake for 30 minutes, then cover with foil and bake 15 minutes more, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Cool slightly, loosen with a knife, and use a large plate or tray to invert. Cool a bit more before serving.

    (I referenced several recipes that all look delicious, including this, this and this to come up with this almondy, boozy, and gorgeously caramelized mishmash).  

    Recipe for Fiction Kitchen Episode 65: Nightbooks & Sharp Objects in which Carrie and Diana discuss the JA White middle grade novel and the HBO miniseries. Spooky modern Sheherazade and midwest gothic folktale with pumpkin pie, oatmeal cookies, kousa mahshi, pineapple upside down cake, ham after ham, all washed down with vodka and amaretto sours.

  • Halloween Birthday Cake Milkshakes

    Halloween Birthday Cake Milkshakes

    This is a collaboration with Geeks Who Eat. Check out all their geeky recipes, including many inspired by horror!

    The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, based on the 2014 Archie Comics series of the same name, is coming to Netflix in just a few days and it looks positively spooktacular! It’s a darker, scarier Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but also seems to be keeping a lot of the same humor. Kiernan Shipka (who I adored in Mad Men) seems like the perfect pick for Sabrina Spellman, the half-witch half-mortal who has some choices to make on her sixteenth birthday, and I’m excited for Miranda Otto and Lucy Davis as Aunts Zelda and Hilda as well. It’s set in the 60s and has a very cool retro vibe (look at those dresses!), and takes place in the fictional town of Greendale, “where it always feels like Halloween.”

    Zoeya is pretty damn witchy.

    So here’s something chilling…Halloween Birthday Cake Milkshakes! The undercurrent of the show is pure soda shop, so a milkshake version of her birthday cake seemed fitting. But not just any birthday cake – this one is pumpkin spiced up so feels like Halloween. Now just imagine Sabrina and Harvey sipping one milkshake through two straws.

    Side note, I snobbishly thought I’d never buy a box cake mix ever again, but something this retro, fun and kitschy screams for it.

    Halloween Birthday Cake Milkshakes

    • 2 cups ice cream
    • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
    • 1/2 cup milk
    • 1/2 cup yellow cake mix
    • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
    • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
    • Hot fudge and Halloween sprinkles

    Combine ice cream, pumpkin puree, milk, cake mix, cinnamon and nutmeg in a blender. Drizzle hot fudge down the sides of two glasses (5 points for a nice pentagram), pour milkshakes and top with Halloween sprinkles.

  • Prune Kouign Amann

    Prune Kouign Amann

    This month’s Fandom Foodies theme, hosted by The Hungry Bookworm, is Magical Realism, one of my favorite genres of fiction – and let’s be honest, the one I wish I was living in. Find lots of magical realism dishes using #MagicalRealFood.

    Amélie is an adorably quirky film, one of my favorites of all time. Romantic and twee, and even a bit dark at times, it’s a movie for dreamers – and times are hard for dreamers.

    In a sweetly heartbreaking scene, Amélie does what a lot of us do when miserable which is sad-baking. For her that means her famous plum cake. I never really knew what her plum cake was supposed to be, only that it was a yeast cake which seemed interesting and unusual. On latest viewing I dug into it a little and was introduced to kouign amann, a cake from Brittany, that is made with a yeast dough, and then folded and rolled into layers of butter and sugar, then baked until it is nice caramelized. With all the folding and layering, there’s opportunity for fillings, such as chocolate, cinnamon, jam, or fresh fruit.

    For my first try, this wasn’t bad. Lessons to take away:

    • It was a little dense, so next time I might try my pizza dough method, which is to add the flour gradually until it juuuuuust makes a dough, rather than add it all at once.
    • Also, as you can see, caramelization is good, but there’s always too much of a good thing – I’ve complained before about my oven running hot (and yet, forgot to check how things were going along the way), so my cake got veeeery caramelized, and even a little burnt in spots. Next time I’ll lower the heat a bit and babysit it a little better.
    • Finally, as plums are not in season I used plum preserves, which was definitely tasty, but a little messy as it leaked out of the dough, onto my counters, and into the oven as well (I had to slide a sheet pan underneath to catch the drips). While this is still a legit version, I’m excited to try it with fresh fruit, so that’s the plan come July or August.

    Amelie’s Famous Plum Cake (Prune Kouign Amann)

    Rather than transcribe the entire recipe, I’m just going to link to David Leibovitz’s as I pretty much did that exactly, and he has very detailed instructions as well as pictures along the way (the folding pattern can get a little confusing without a visual).

    The only thing I did differently was replacing one of the 1/4 cups of sugar with several tablespoons of plum preserves. Again, just a note, that you may have to adjust temperature and cooking time to your oven.

    Recipe for Kouign Amann

    This dish was first posted for Fiction Kitchen Episode 38: AMELIE in which Carrie and Diana discuss the 2001 French film in which times are hard for dreamers, but things work out ok. Plus, cherry earrings, cracking crème brûlée, plum cake, endives, and scribbles for nibbles.

  • Princess Peach Cakes

    Princess Peach Cakes

    This month’s Fandom Foodies theme is #MarioMonth, hosted by Lvl.1 Chef. There are so many cute and creative recipes this month inspired by our favorite brick-busting, turtle-tossing, tanooki-suited Italian plumber!

    I had an idea to remix Swedish princess cakes (prinsesstårta) into something a little peachier. Full-size and layered felt a little daunting, so I took a cue from My Name is Yeh and made mini ones – very cute and much less fussy! I made a vanilla cake spread with a lovely peachy compote, then topped with vanilla whipped cream and marzipan – little cakes fit for a princess!

    I also used this as an opportunity to try making marzipan; The Daring Gourmet has a detailed recipe, and as promised, it was really easy to make. Mine did crack a little as I lay it over the cakes – I read some tricks afterwards about how to avoid this, such as not over-kneading and drying out the marzipan, rolling it thin enough so it doesn’t pull, greasing your work surface with Crisco instead of powdered sugar. Regardless, I think they came out super adorable if not super profesh – hey, I can bring the competence, but if you’re looking for expertise, sorry, that princess is in another castle!

    Princess Peach Cakes

    For the cake

    Recipe from Martha Stewart, I chose this spongy one because it has no butter so stays soft when chilled

    • 1 cup flour
    • pinch of salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
    • 4 eggs, separated
    • 1 cup sugar
    • 3 tablespoons boiling water
    • 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

    Line a 9×13 pan with parchment. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Beat together egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in water and vanilla bean scrapings. Add dry ingredients and mix in with a spatula until just combined. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter. Pour into pan and bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes. Cool, remove from pan and wrap in plastic and freeze for at least an hour and up to overnight.

    For the cardamom peach compote

    • 10 ounces frozen peach slices (you can use fresh if in season
    • 4 tablespoons sugar
    • seeds of 3 cardamom pods

    Combine peaches, sugar, and cardamom in a sauce pan and heat on medium heat, stirring occasionally and smashing gently with a wooden spoon, until peaches are thick and mostly broken down (leave some intact for texture). Chill in the fridge.

    For the vanilla whipped cream

    • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
    • 4 tablespoons powdered sugar
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

    Whip together until stiff peaks form

    For the marzipan

    • 1 3/4 cups almond meal
    • 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
    • 2 teaspoons almond extract
    • 1 teaspoon rose water
    • 1 egg white

    In a food processor, pulse together almon meal and powdered sugar. Add almond extract, rose water, and egg white and combine until a dough forms. Turn it out onto a surface dusted with powdered sugar and knead just a bit until it balls together. You can add food coloring to decorate.

    To assemble the cakes

    Cut six 3-inch circles from the sheet cake (save the scraps to dunk in coffee). Spread each with peach compote, and pipe whipped cream on top. Roll out the marzipan to a thin, even layer (I did mine in two batches), and cut 5 inch circles (I used a bowl). Form over the tops of the cakes. Decorate with artsy craftsy marzipan crowns.