Tomato Soup Cake

Oh dear, I thought. Another novelty cake. I'm going to go hunt for some funky American ingredient and put it in a cake and then feel bad about all the other ingredients going to waste.

Tomato soup? I ask you, would you want to put it in a cake? But then I tried to convince myself: tomatoes are fruit, after all. Tomato soup mixes sweet, sour, and salty flavors, which in moderation can contribute to a decent cake. So maybe it wouldn't be too bad, if I could find canned tomato soup without basil or garlic.

And in fact I didn't even have to buy the Heinz tomato soup from the "exotic foods" aisle at the big supermarket: the local smaller store had little boxes of it that were just about the right amount: 10.3 oz. instead of 10.7. So I had no excuse but to dig in and make the cake.

Besides the tomato soup, this is just a date-nut spice cake. It's easy to make, and if you can ignore the funny color, it doesn't seem all that odd.

Let me take a detour into chocolate frosting land. See this giant block of chocolate? I went to a pastry supply shop in Paris and got 3 kilos of unsweetened chocolate. Also 3 kilos of semisweet and a kilo of milk--all the fancy Valrhona kind. I don't need to hoard my Baker's chocolate anymore.

But something went wrong--I think the Valrhona is more heat-sensitive than the Baker's stuff--and the frosting went all clumpy and funny. Nonetheless, it was delicious. So was the cake!

That's right: this is a delicious cake. It's moist and tender and spicy and nutty. The bittersweet frosting sets it off. I made this for my German host family, and they loved it. I neglected to tell them the ingredient list...

So, Maida, I take it all back. Sometimes putting weird stuff into a cake can make it better and not just weird. Of course I had to wait for the last (I think!) weird recipe to find this out.

Here's the recipe. Astound your friends and family--and yourself.

Tomato Soup Cake

1/2 c. (4 oz.) butter, room temperature (unsalted is best here because the soup is salty)

Pinch salt

1 t. baking soda

2 t. baking powder

1-1/2 t. cinnamon

3/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. cloves

1 T. cocoa powder

1 t. vanilla

1 c. (7 oz.) sugar

2 large eggs

2 c. (8 oz.) sifted flour (some whole-wheat is OK here)

1 can (10.75 oz. or however large they are these days) basic tomato soup

1/2 c. (4 oz.) chopped pitted dates

1 c. (4 oz.) walnut halves or pieces

Heat the oven to 375. Butter a 9-inch square pan and coat it with bread crumbs (I used wheat germ).

Cream together the butter, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and cocoa powder until fluffy. Add the vanilla and then gradually add the sugar, beating another few minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating until well incorporated after each. Gradually mix in half the flour, then the tomato soup, then the rest of the flour. Stir in the dates and walnuts.

Pour that into the prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool completely in the pan or just for 30 minutes, then unmold onto a serving plate. While the cake is cooling, make the icing:

1/2 c. (4 oz.) cream

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped

5 oz. milk chocolate, chopped

Heat the cream in a saucepan or microwave-safe bowl until it is steaming. Add the unsweetened chocolate and stir until melted. Remove from the heat and stir in the milk chocolate, which should melt from the residual heat. Then transfer the mixture to a bowl and beat it with an electric mixer for a minute or two: if you're smarter/luckier than me, the mixture should become "beautifully smooth/shiny/thick." Pour over the cake and frost the way you like to. Let cool to set, then dig in. Enjoy the Americana.

Banana Pudding

We have this poster in our "water closet" right now; I'm not sure why. But it's a great reminder of the 10 years we spent in the South. This poster contains a lot of what we loved about the South: the quirky culture and humor (Southern Culture on the Skids has to be seen to be believed), the folk art (Dad got us this poster at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, a reason for an annual pilgrimage to Tuscaloosa), and the food. My favorite Southern culinary invention: the vegetable plate. You get to choose four or five "vegetables", which might include macaroni and cheese, cottage cheese, or cobbler. Or banana pudding. (My favorite vegetable plate, for the record: collard greens, pinto beans, squash casserole, cobbler, cornbread. Mmmm...)

So I felt a bit nervous about recreating this Southern classic in my French kitchen. No worries, though--it's really just a kind of trifle, with vanilla wafers instead of cake.

About those vanilla wafers--strangely enough, they're not available here. So I used Petit Beurre biscuits, and they were perfect--they have that nice bland flavor and are sturdy enough to stand up to the pudding and bananas.

There are lots of variations on banana pudding: a lot involve Jell-o pudding and Cool Whip. That's another side of the South. Some involve meringue on top.

This one was simple: cookies, bananas, homemade pudding. No topping, whether whipped cream or meringue. Although the pudding took a while to come to temperature and all, it was really easy: I'm pretty sure I had this made within half an hour or so.

It's day old and bold, baby! We found that after a day, the bananas do indeed get "extra funky", so this is something you should make in the morning and consume all of in the evening. Or the next morning.

Here's the recipe. Enjoy a taste of the South!

Banana Pudding

1/3 c. (1.3 oz.) cornstarch

1/2 c. (3.5 oz.) sugar

1/4 t. salt

4 c. (I used a 1-liter bottle) whole milk

2 large eggs

2 T. (1 oz.) butter, cut into small pieces

1 t. vanilla

8 oz. vanilla wafers (you know, the yellow box) or a 200 g. package Petit Beurre

4 bananas, not too ripe

Get out a casserole or other serving dish that is fairly flat and shallow and holds at least 8 cups. Put a layer of about a third of the vanilla wafers on the bottom.

Now it's time to make the pudding. In a medium-sized, heavy saucepan whisk together the cornstarch, sugar, and salt; slowly whisk in the milk to avoid lumps. Put the pan over medium-low heat and bring to a boil, stirring just about constantly. This will take quite a while. While the milk mixture is heating, break the eggs into a bowl or glass measuring cup; whisk until well mixed. When the milk mixture has finally come to a boil, slowly and carefully pour about half of it into the beaten eggs, whisking all along (it's often good to have a helper when you're doing this). Then pour the egg mixture back into the milk in the pan and whisk that well. Put back over the heat and cook for 2 more minutes. The mixture will be quite thick. Off the heat, stir in the butter; when that is melted, stir in the vanilla. If you are worried about egg lumps, strain the pudding back into the bowl (washed or well scraped out) you mixed the eggs in.

Don't wait too long now: slice 2 of the bananas and spread them over the cookies. Pour half of the pudding over the bananas. Then repeat with cookies, bananas, pudding, and more cookies.

Cover with waxed paper or plastic wrap, pressed down on any exposed pudding if you don't like pudding skin. Let cool on your (cold) balcony or in your refrigerator for 4-6 hours and try to serve the same day. Easy on the teeth and gums!

Kansas City Chocolate...Dream?

Before I get to the cake, I have a few more kitchen photos to share. Note that the kitchen is still rather a mess. This is partially due to moving, partially due to this being an "active" kitchen, and mostly due to my being, as my father so charmingly puts it, "one in a long line of bad housekeepers." Oh, well.

So you'll notice the fabulous cabinet Sami built (with the help of a certain Swedish superstore) to go over the island. I haven't optimized storage in the place yet, but it's better.

Another shot of the whole kitchen as it now looks. In about a week, I hope there will be a dishwasher under one of these cabinets! But right now there's a giant transformer under the cabinet that runs my appliances. The Cuisinart passed the test. Haven't hauled out the Kitchenaid just yet...

And another shot of my poor cookbook. I'm not sure it's going to make it out of this experience alive.

OK, on to the recipe, which we could subtitle "Kansas City Chocolate Nightmare, or Maida's Chocolate Cakes Kick Maria's Butt Once Again". (In other words, Alicia is going to love this recipe.) This is another "novelty" recipe--"Hey, cake with sauerkraut! What the hey?" "They used to make soggy pie with molasses--why not now?" and now "This fad of baking a weird liquidy cake so that it comes out with frosting on the bottom swept the nation--must be good, right?"

Let me back up and say that I took a huge risk on this recipe: I doubled it to bring to the two American Section cocktail parties we were invited to Friday night. Last year, I brought Barron's Brownies to such a gathering, and they were a huge hit. What could go wrong?

Lots of chocolate in cocoa form, but not much butter or other fat. Also, lots of water. And sugar. These are the syrup ingredients before the water went in.

You make a brownie-like batter, and then pour a hot mocha syrup over that. And then you bake it. Um, you might want to put something under that cake...

...because that syrup is going to boil over and make your kitchen/apartment smell dreadful.

And after all that, you have a rather funny-looking cake with spotty frosting. And you're going to get dressed up and bring that to some millionaire's house (actually, two separate millionaires' houses) without batting an eyelash.

I got up the courage to try this once I could build up plausible deniability. It was OK, but to me it tasted flat. It has the right texture (chewy cake and gooey frosting), but I found the frosting tasted more of flour than of chocolate. To summarize, there's not enough FAT in this cake. I found a Cook's Country recipe (from the February 2007 issue; you have to pay to see the recipe online) with twice the amount of butter, an egg yolk, and a half cup of chocolate chips. That would most likely taste better.

But here's the recipe. Don't expect to make your reputation as a baker with it.

Kansas City Chocolate Dream

1 c. (4 oz.) sifted flour

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

2 T. (0.4 oz.) cocoa powder

2/3 c. (4.5 oz.) sugar

3/4 c. (6 oz.) milk--I recommend whole milk here

1 t. vanilla

2 T. (1 oz.) melted butter

1/2 c. (2 oz.) chopped walnuts

Heat the oven to 350. Butter an 8-inch square pan. Consider putting it on a foil-lined baking sheet--just saying. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa powder, and sugar into a mixing bowl (I recommend actually sifting here because both cocoa powder and baking powder tend to make unappetizing lumps). Add the milk, vanilla, and melted butter and beat, by hand or with a mixer, until light and smooth. Stir in the walnuts and then turn into the prepared pan. Don't put it in the oven yet--make the syrup first:

1/3 c. (2.3 oz.) sugar

6 T. (1.1 oz.) cocoa powder

1/2 c. (3.5 oz.) brown sugar

2 t. instant coffee or espresso

1 c. water

Put all of these in a saucepan and bring them to a boil, whisking to dissolve the sugars and cocoa. No reason you couldn't also do this in a large Pyrex container in the microwave. While this is still boiling, carefully pour it over the cake batter. You'll have a nasty-looking mess. Carefully put that in the oven (preferably on a foil-lined cookie sheet) and bake for 40 minutes (although my kitchen was smoking and the cake was very done after just 25--and yes, I have an oven thermometer that read exactly 350) until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pan. Then put a plate on top of the cake pan and flip it upside down. The cake won't come out, and you'll tap on the pan a whole bunch. Finally, you'll use a rubber scraper to dislodge the cake and frosting. Do your best to swirl the frosting around and make this pretty. Serve anonymously.

Peach Pandowdy

We've been in France for a week now, and life is still somewhat chaotic. I type this at the dining table that we just found room for two days ago, Sami is in the kitchen building me an island (love that!!), and the girls are a bit shell-shocked at being back to school and inundated with the standard amount of homework. And we can't find stuff. Julia has lost her phone. Sami lost his keys today. I'm sure we've all lost our patience at one point or another. All this to say that I can't find my card reader, so I can't post pictures of the peach pandowdy, the last recipe of the Livermore series. (New card reader purchased! Enjoy the show!)

A pandowdy is kind of like an upside-down buckle: it's fruit on the bottom and a kind of cake-like layer on top. This is a very simple recipe, and it's pretty good, but I believe I prefer a cobbler or a crisp--the dough was just a bit doughy, and it was kind of bland. Maida says this is a "very old American recipe," which to me often means not very interesting. I made this for a small dinner party, and while it was praised, we had plenty left over--which no-one then ate. That to me is the sign of a good but not great dessert.

Still, I'm going to give you the recipe and let you decide for yourself. I believe an American cook should make a pandowdy at least once to say she/he has done it.

Peach Pandowdy

3 lbs. peaches, peeled and sliced (you could probably use frozen here--thaw them at least partially)

1/3 c. (2.3 oz.) brown sugar

1 T. lemon juice

1 t. cinnamon

1/3 c. raisins (I think these are totally optional, though they add to the Early America vibe)

Heat the oven to 400 and butter a shallow 2-quart baking dish. Throw in the peaches, brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and raisins, toss them together, smooth it out, and let the mixture sit while you make the topping.

1-1/4 c. (5 oz.) sifted flour

1 t. baking powder

3 T. (1.3 oz.) sugar

1/4 t. salt

2 eggs

1/3 c. (2.7 oz.) milk

2 oz. (1/2 stick) melted butter

1 t. vanilla

a few drops (pour it into a 1/4 t. measure and drip it out of that) almond extract

Sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a small bowl. In a larger bowl or perhaps a 4-cup glass measuring cup, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter, and vanilla and almond extracts. Pour this mixture slowly and carefully over the fruit to make as even a layer as possible. It may not completely cover the fruit, and that's OK. Bake for 28-30 minutes, until the peach juices are bubbly and the top has browned a bit (mine didn't brown much). Serve warm with ice cream and reflect on simpler times.

Shoofly pie--why?

"Hey, Maria, it's the Sunday after Thanksgiving. You've just had 3 straight days of cooking and eating. You're leaving for a 7-month stay in France in two weeks: you have closets to clean and piles of laundry waiting for you. What are you going to do today?"
"Why, bake pie, of course. What a silly question!"
Yes, this is how my mind works. In my defense, I packed a couple of boxes and got all the laundry done today, but I just couldn't let the day go by without baking. Fortunately for my waistline, the process was much better than the product.
Sometimes I have the feeling that Maida puts in recipes just as Americana: "Look, some people actually baked and ate this stuff! So here's a recipe for it so that you can see what some people used to eat!" To me, Shoofly Pie falls into that category. So do the chocolate vegetable cakes and, to a certain extent, the Indian Pudding. I suppose you need recipes like this in an American dessert book, but they're a chore to actually consume and all.

So here are the components of the pie: a lovely flakey pie shell, completely wasted because of the gooey molasses filling, topped off with a streusel-like crumb crust. Note all the dirty dishes involved.



Here's the pie before it baked. Doesn't that look yummy?

If you bake this, remember to put it on a baking sheet. I'm glad I did!
So, soggy crust, pudding-like molasses goo, crunchy streusel. Let me quote Sami on this: "If I got this at a restaurant, I'd send it back. It's got that generic flavorless taste and odd texture...but once you overcome the gag reflex, it's actually edible." He ate the whole piece. I'm not sure why. I ate my whole piece as well, trying to find something redeeming about the pie. Here it is: I got to spend some quality time in my kitchen puttering around, but I'm in no danger of actually eating any more of what I baked.
Redeeming quality for Alicia: no raisins. And since I hated it, she'll probably love it. We'll see...

Here's the recipe, if you're a glutton for punishment:

Shoofly Pie

1-1/3 c. (5.2 oz.) sifted flour
1/2 t. salt
1 T. sugar
4 oz. (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small dice and chilled
1 t. lemon juice or cider vinegar
3-4 T. ice water

Put the flour, salt, and sugar in a medium mixing bowl; mix and then cut in the butter with a pastry blender. Sprinkle on the lemon/vinegar, and then add 3 T. water. Mix with a fork until it holds together, adding additional water if necessary. Press into a ball and refrigerate for at least an hour. (Don't bother washing the bowl you just used; you can use it for the filling) When it's chilled enough, roll out to fit a deep 9-inch pie pan (Maida says 10-inch, but who has a 10-inch pie plate??). Freeze for at least 30 minutes.

Now make the filling:
1 c. (5 oz.) unsifted flour
2/3 c. (4 oz.) brown sugar
2 oz. (1/2 stick) butter
1 egg
1 c. (11.5 oz.) molasses or cane syrup

(optional but recommended: 1 t. vanilla and/or 2 T. rum or brandy)
3/4 c. very hot water
1 t. baking soda

Heat the oven to 450; get out a baking sheet and possibly line it with foil. You'll also need two mixing bowls (one of them could be your pie crust mixing bowl) and a 1-cup glass measuring cup. Put the flour and brown sugar (and maybe a pinch of salt) in the mixing bowl you used for the pie crust; mix that together and cut in the butter. This will be a powdery, crumbly mixture. Set that aside. Now, in another bowl, whisk the egg until blended and then add the molasses and beat for a bit. I recommend adding a bit of vanilla and a bit of bourbon or rum or something--I used some quite awful Uzbeck brandy that a friend gave us. In the glass measuring cup, pour in the hot water (you could microwave it in the cup) and add the baking soda, which will fizz most satisfyingly. Now add the hot water to the molasses mixture, and then add half of the crumb mixture. Pour that into your crust. Then top it with the rest of the crumb mixture. Put the pie on the baking sheet and put all that in the oven. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the filling is set and doesn't quiver when you give the baking sheet a shake. Mine took about 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature. Maida suggests serving this at room temp with whipped cream. Good luck with that. I'm just glad that butter is $1.50 a pound at Wal-Mart...

Freaky sheet cake: Red Beet Cake

Hey, does anyone remember the original book Freaky Friday? Before Jodi Foster and Lindsay Lohan? I don't remember much about the book except that the neighbor, Boris, seems to have a crush on the mom and offers to bring her "beet loaf." Except that he has a cold and his name is Morris. But the beet loaf is not, in fact, meat loaf. That always killed me.
Well, my name is Baria, and I'm baking you a beet cake. Aren't you glad it's not meat cake?
There was a lot of freaky stuff about this cake. First of all was, in fact, the beets. As Claire asked me, "What's the point of putting beets in a cake?" Indeed--what's the point? It's not like it's any healthier, what with the 1 cup of salad oil and all. I guess you could call it sneaking in vegetables, but after the buttery frosting and all, that's not exactly healthy living. I'm guessing that this recipe, like the sauerkraut one, was a response to the Beet Advisory Council's call for Creative Use of Beets. Personally, I'll eat mine roasted with blue cheese and walnuts and maybe a little mâche. Now that is a good use of beets.
On the plus side, this recipe was super easy to make. Since I had already puréed the beets in the food processor and noted that there was no incorporation of air called for, I decided to mix the whole shebang in the food processor. So in went the sugar, the eggs, the vanilla, the melted chocolate/melted butter, the oil...and so on. Quick and painless. As you'd notice if you'd read the recipe, it doesn't call for butter, but I subbed half of the oil for butter.

So here's the lovely batter in the pan. Claire took the time to smooth it out and make it look all nice and perfect.
I have to say, it rose evenly and high, thanks to baking soda and Claire's careful swirling.
The frosting was the next freaky thing. What's up with cooked flour and milk in a buttercream frosting? And I beat the butter and sugar for a long time, but the sugar never dissolved, so it was kind of grainy. C+ for the frosting for sure. But didn't Claire do a nice job with her swirls?

Here's a blurry piece of cake. Note the thick layer of grainy, buttery frosting. The texture and taste of this reminded me of Wacky Cake--you know, the kind with the vinegar where you make a well in the flour and dump in all your ingredients? Kind of one-dimensional, but very moist. When Sami first tried it, he was sure that Claire had made it from a mix because it has "a texture only chemicals can create." Chemicals and beets!
So the verdict? If you want to eat beets, eat beets. If you want to eat chocolate cake, try this one or this one. This is strictly a novelty recipe in my book. But I sure hope those students I palmed this off on enjoyed it!!

OK, much later, here's the recipe. Bake it for your next Beet Council event.

Red Beet Cake

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate

8-10 oz. cooked beets (canned or fresh; you decide)

1-1/2 c. (10 oz.) sugar

1 c. (8 oz.) salad oil

1 t. vanilla

3 large eggs

1-3/4 c. (7 oz.) flour

1-1/2 t. baking soda

1/4 t. salt

Heat the oven to 350. Butter and flour (or coat with bread crumbs) a 9 by 13-inch pan. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a saucepan over low heat.

In a food processor, purée the beets. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla, and process for about 20 seconds. Add the eggs and give it another 30 seconds. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and pulse that until it's just incorporated. Pour into the prepared pan and swirl it smooth, if you like.

Bake for 35 minutes or until the top springs back when pressed. You can let it cool in the pan to serve it like a sheet cake, or you can unmold it after 20 minutes. Either way, it's time to make the frosting:

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate

3/4 c. (6 oz.) butter, room temperature

1 c. (7 oz.) sugar

1 t. vanilla

Pinch salt

1/4 c. (1 oz.) flour

1 c. (8 oz.) milk

Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a small saucepan over low heat. Beat the butter with an electric mixer until soft. Gradually add the sugar and beat on high speed for 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla and salt.

Meanwhile (assuming you have a stand mixer), whisk the flour and about 1/4 c. of the milk in a small saucepan until smooth. Gradually whisk in the remaining milk. Put over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly with the whisk or a rubber spatula, until the mixture comes to a low boil. Reduce the heat and cook for 2 more minutes, stirring and scraping the mixture constantly. Remove from the heat, place the bottom of the pan in a bowl of ice and water you just happen to have handy, and continue to stir and scrape until the mixture has cooled.

Add the chocolate to the butter and sugar mixture, and then gradually beat in the flour/milk mixture. Beat just enough to incorporate.

Pour the icing over the cake and spread it over the top. You can swirl it or make it smooth.

Refrigerate the cake to set the icing--this cake can and perhaps should be served cold. And remember you're getting a serving of vegetables.

Indian Pudding: Maybe I'm a Yankee after all...

Some Southerners have an irritating habit of calling anyone "not from 'round here" a Yankee. To me, a Yankee is someone from the Northeast, so I don't believe I qualify. But if enjoying Indian Pudding makes me a Yankee, all righty then. Or should I say "yup."?
Alicia described the process of making this stuff so well that I don't need to add much. One thing that possibly made my Indian Pudding a bit better than average is that I used this fancy stone-ground corn meal. Upscale corn products--only in the South.
I had Julia photograph me pouring the milk over the porridge. That was kind of fun. And I baked sweet potatoes at the same time as the pudding. But you could also do some chicken broth or stew or chili or Julia Child's Boeuf Bourgignon if you felt like it, I believe. Three hours is a long time--in that time I wrote a blog entry, made dinner, ate dinner, cleaned up after dinner, had a long phone conversation, and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. Fortunately we're having a spell of cool weather, so I didn't feel too guilty about leaving the oven on. Still, this would be much better as a cold-weather dessert.
Changes: I put a piece of vanilla bean in when I was cooking the cornmeal, because that's how I roll. Otherwise, by the book. And my cornmeal didn't stick to the pan. Maybe I didn't cook it long enough...
Verdict: I tried this the first time shortly after I had read Alicia's blog post, so that might have colored my reaction. I had it hot with hard sauce and vanilla ice cream, and I was ambivalent about it. I'm not so big on the milk crust, and the pudding had separated and suffered in its creaminess. Claire had a taste and asked if she could have some for breakfast the next day.
That's when the pudding really shone--straight from the fridge. The hard sauce wasn't all melty like it was with hot pudding, but the texture was nice and it tasted (tastes) good. The girls both had big bowls after school today. They hate raisins, true, but I found that the long cooking kind of melted the raisins and made them hard to really distinguish. Are you using golden raisins, Alicia? We all felt it tasted like something familiar. Claire said rice pudding and Julia said pumpkin pie. I think they're both right. Nothing wrong with either of those desserts!
I'm not so sure about the hard sauce. It's not as good as Granny's, or at least the consistency is different from the one I remember. The girls love it because "it tastes like frosting."
So anyway, if you're looking for a dessert that eats like breakfast but you can put brandy butter and vanilla ice cream on it, this is the dessert for you!

Here's what I made.
Indian Pudding

2 T. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ginger
1/4 t. nutmeg--freshly grated, of course
1/4 t. salt
5 c. milk (I used whole. I wonder if you could go 2% or lower)
1/2 c. (2.5 oz.) cornmeal
1/4 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)
2 oz. (1/2 stick) butter
1 c. maple syrup (this is when it pays off to buy in bulk!)
1/2 c. (2.5 oz.) golden raisins

Mix together the sugar and spices in a little cup and set them aside. Microwave 3 cups of the milk until it's hot, about 3 minutes on medium-high power. In a large saucepan, mix together the cornmeal and 3/4 cups (cold) milk. You should have 1-1/4 c. cold milk lurking around still. Gradually add the hot milk to the cornmeal mixture, throw in the vanilla bean if you're so inclined, then put that over medium heat and stir it for a long time until it's somewhat thickened. Maida says 20 minutes, Alicia says 10, and I didn't keep track. Probably closer to 10. While that's cooking, preheat the oven to 350, grease a baking dish, and find a big pan you can put the baking dish in (for that water bath thing). I went ahead and put water in the big pan, even though that's technically cheating. I hate pouring boiling water into a dish in the hot oven. Go figure. But I digress. Take out the vanilla bean and throw your sugar mixture, butter, maple syrup, and raisins into the cornmeal mush. Mmmm...mush! Pour that into the greased baking dish. Then get out a big spoon and pour the milk over the spoon, as you move the spoon around, into the dish. You're basically trying to float the milk here. Then very carefully put the whole shebang into the oven and set a timer for 30 minutes. When that goes off, turn the oven down to 300 and go about your business for another 2-1/2 hours. During that time, take the other half stick of butter out of the fridge, because you'll want to make hard sauce:

Hard sauce
1/2 stick (2 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
Pinch salt
1 c. (4 oz.) powdered sugar
1/2 t. vanilla
1 T. cream
1-2 t. rum, bourbon, or brandy (I used Courvoisier. Don't tell Sami.)

Dump all this into a bowl and whip it with the electric mixer until it's fluffy and frosting-like. Try to restrain yourself from eating it.

OK, when the pudding comes out of the oven, I recommend waiting a long time before consumption. Maybe put it in the fridge overnight and have it for breakfast. After all, it's whole grain, dairy, and fruit!
Serves about 8, I think.