TASTEBOOK PIECE ON EMILY DICKINSON & BAKING

I managed to miss this when it was posted, but how lovely is the illustration that goes with it? It's by Ariella Elovic. My piece on Emily Dickinson and baking here at Tastebook.

(Cross-posted with my writing blog, Women Rule Writer).

EMILY DICKINSON’S BLACK CAKE

Black Cake - with a chunk taken out :)

This cake features in my forthcoming novel Miss Emily (out July in USA and Canada, August in UK and Ireland) so it was about time I actually made it. In the book Emily makes it for her December birthday and shares it with her Irish maid Ada.

Juno beating the eggs and sugar

Emily's version of this calls for 19 eggs and 5 lbs of currants!! I made a quarter sized version. The finished cake certainly looks black and it tastes more like a plum pudding than cake to me. It's rich and very fruity. I have no clue how Emily baked hers at 120°C in three hours. My much-reduced cake took three hours and forty minutes and still looked a bit moist around the middle.

Treacle marbling the batter - Emily used molasses in her version

I had a lump of it hot from the oven last night - I am looking forward to having a piece today with soya custard or that lovely Alpro Lemon and Lime 'yogurt'.

INGREDIENTS

•           225g self-raising flour

•           225g butter

•           225g sugar

•           half teaspoon baking soda (bread soda in Ireland)

•           quarter teaspoon ground nutmeg

•           1.25 teaspoons total: cloves, mace, cinnamon (or mixed spice)

•           5 eggs

•           550g raisins

•           150g citron (candied peel)

•           150g currants

•           60ml brandy (or whiskey)

•           60ml treacle

METHOD

•           Preheat oven to 120°C

•           Grease and line the bottom of a round baking tin (8”)

•           Sift together flour, bread soda and spices

•           In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar

•           Add eggs one at a time and beating after each one

•           Add brandy (or whiskey), mix well

•           Add flour mixture, mix well.

•           Add treacle and sprinkle in fruit as you stir

•           Pour into greased tin

•           Bake for 2 hours at 120°C

•           Bake for a further 1 hour 30 mins at 160°C then remove cake from tin to cool

•           Store in an air-tight container. Douse with whiskey/brandy once a week.

MAKING BUTTER

Juno churning

In my novel due out next year, Emily Dickinson's Irish maid makes butter. Since writing it I have been obsessed with mini butter churns, particularly the glass table-top ones with wooden paddles. I bought one on eBay after drooling over similar ones in Nairn Museum in Scotland and The Butter Museum in Cork.

I finally got around to making butter with it today and it was fun! I used a 500ml tub of double cream and put in two pinches of salt (not enough salt for my tastes, as it turns out).

Mr Vegan has a go

We all had a turn of the handle and I guess it took about ten minutes worth of churning, which is not long at all.

After the butter came together I drained it in a sieve, then pressed it more with my hands to remove the buttermilk. (If you leave it inside, the buttermilk sours). I then put it into a bowl of cold water, squeezed it again (with cold hands) and patted it into shape.

Butter!

A little video to hear the sound of the churn and Joe Duffy chirruping in the background. (Oh, the sound has not come over with the video for some reason - I will try to fix this but, for the mo, it's just a jerky visual.)

EMILY DICKINSON'S GINGERBREAD

 

My novel about Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, Miss Emily, comes out next year in the USA and Canada with Penguin. My interest in the poet stems from school, then more recently from baking* too. So here is Emily Dickinson's recipe for gingerbread which I made last week for my ex-husband's birthday 'do'. This recipe was adapted by people who work in the Dickinson Homestead Museum and I have further adapted it for Irish measurements and to make a smaller cake.

This is not a sweet cake - the lack of sugar and the dark treacle make it a little tart. But the dusting of icing sugar and the cream were a perfect addition to it. A sweet yogurt would do the same work. I used a round 8" tin.

INGREDIENTS

60g butter

55ml cream

280g flour

½ teaspoon bread soda
½ tablespoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (125ml) treacle

METHOD

·         Preheat the oven to 180ºC ( 350ºF)

·         Grease and line a baking tin

·         Cream the butter and mix with lightly whipped cream.

·         Mix through the treacle

·         Sift dry ingredients together and combine with other ingredients.

·         The dough is stiff and needs to be pressed into the tin

·         Bake for 20 minutes.

·         Dust with icing sugar

 

*(See here for Emily's coconut cake.) 

RAISIN SODA BREAD - Great Irish Bake 2

Kneaded dough

This is our second Great Irish Bake for Temple Street baking session. Lately I've been craving my mother's soda bread with raisins but as she lives 90 miles away, I've had to resort to making it myself. In my novel out next year, Miss Emily, Emily Dickinson's maid, Ada, shows her how to make soda bread. Dickinson was a good baker in her own right. (Which may be where my craving stems from - I am editing the book at the moment.)

The Odlums Baking site calls soda bread with raisins in it 'Station Bread'. I haven't heard this before - is this something to do with the stations of the cross, I wonder? Where is Regina Sexton when you need her?! I shall go and consult her history of Irish food and see if it mentions Station Bread.

This bread has about 99 calories per serving. (Adding butter means extra kcals!)

Cutting the cross - to keep the devil out of the bread

Ingredients

450g plain flour
1 level tsp bread soda
2 level tsps cream of tartar
big pinch of salt
1 tblsp white sugar
25g margarine
half pint milk 
a handful of raisins

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 400°F/200°C/Gas 6
2. Sprinkle flour onto a round baking tray
3. Sieve flour, bread soda, cream of tartar and salt into a bowl. Add sugar after sieving and mix through
4. Rub in the margarine until it's like breadcrumbs
5. Add milk and mix to make a soft dough.
6. Turn onto a lightly floured board and knead a little
7. Turn over and shape into a round. Place the dough on a floured tin
8. Cut a deepish cross into the loaf
9. Bake for 45 minutes
10. Tap underneath, if there's a hollow sound, the loaf is done
11. Cool on a wire tray, covering with a tea towel to give a softer crust 
12. Slather with butter and eat. Yum!

The finished bread

EMILY DICKINSON'S COCONUT CAKE

Emily Dickinson by Nicole DeClerck

I have a poem coming out in the spring in the American journal Prairie Schooner. It's called 'Miss Emily Dickinson's Coconut Cake' and is based on Dickinson's recipe and a little on her life. I've been a fan since I was very young. When I workshopped the poem at my writing group, I made the cake for our tea break. I've made it again today, so here is the recipe.

Emily Dickinson's Coconut Cake

This makes a lovely, simple, light cake. The recipe was adapted by some ED fans to suit modern weights/measures etc. I decided to use the American measurements as I own a set of measuring cups and am leaving them that way here. If you don't have measuring cups, be careful with the weights/volume. There's a conversion chart here.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup dessicated coconut

2 cups flour (I used half self-raising, half wholemeal spelt)

1 cup sugar (I used light brown muscovado)

½ cup butter (I used Pure marg)

½ cup milk

2 eggs

½ tsp bread soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180C

Line an 8" square cake tin on the bottom, grease the sides

Mix butter and sugar

Add beaten eggs and milk

Sieve the flour, bread soda and cream of tartar and mix

Add the coconut and mix

Bake for 30 minutes

Cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning out

OPTIONAL

I have also made this cake with raspberries. If you want to do this add in 150g of frozen raspberries with the coconut.

Coconut Cake with Raspberries