Blueberry Surprise Cake

So this was the last cake in the book, and it's a good one. We had it for Saturday breakfast, but it would make a really nice afternoon tea kind of cake as well.

As you can perhaps see, the "blueberry surprise" element here comes from the fact that you put in a layer of buttery sour cream cake, then a layer of spiced berries, and then more cake (now with nuts added). You don't see the berries until you cut into the cake.

 The cake is perhaps a bit time-consuming for a Saturday morning: the batter and all come together fairly quickly (though it involves turning on the mixer, which I don't love doing so early in the morning), but it needs about an hour in the oven. But then again, given that the rest of the family isn't up until at least an hour after me, that's probably fine.

 The cake then gets a lemon-y glaze. I considered leaving it off, since the cake was breakfast and all, but I think I made the right decision to go for it: the tart sweetness adds a nice extra dimension.

When I cut into the cake, I thought, "wow, that kind of looks like a Pop-Tart!" Given that I don't much like Pop-Tarts, I'm glad that it doesn't actually taste like one. It's a nice mix of buttery richness and fruity sweetness. It was a great cake to finish off a long succession of great cakes.

Here's the recipe.

Blueberry Surprise Cake

1 c. (4 oz.) fresh (I used frozen) blueberries

3 T. (I used 2) sugar

1 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1 t. lemon juice (attention: zest the lemon before you squeeze it; you're going to want that zest for the cake batter)

Mix all these ingredients in a smallish bowl and set aside.

1 c. (8 oz.) butter

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

Grated zest of 1 lemon

1 t. vanilla

1-1/3 c. (9.3 oz.) sugar

2 large eggs

1 c. (8 oz.) sour cream

2 c. (8 oz.) sifted flour (yes, I used some whole wheat here)

1/3 c. (1.3 oz.) toasted chopped pecans

Heat the oven to 350. Butter a 9-inch springform and dust with breadcrumbs, wheat germ, or ground nuts (I used ground almonds). Cream the butter with the baking powder, salt, lemon zest, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and beat a couple more minutes until even more light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in the sour cream and then mix in the flour at low speed. Carefully spoon half the batter all around the bottom of the prepared springform pan and spread it out as best you can--I had trouble getting the batter all the way out to the edges and it wanted to come up off the bottom of the pan. Then sprinkle on the berries, leaving a 1-inch margin at the edges. Add the pecans to the batter, stir them in, and then spoon the batter onto the berries, again gingerly spreading the batter as evenly as possible. Bake for 1 hour 20 minutes (check after 45 minutes) or until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed. The toothpick won't work because of the berries in the middle.

Let the cake stand in the pan while you make the glaze:

1 c. (4 oz.) powdered (icing) sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

boiling water as needed

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and lemon juice. If the glaze isn't thin enough to barely pour, add a few drops of boiling water. 

Cut around the sides of the cake if necessary and remove the sides of the springform pan. Turn the cake over onto a rack and remove the bottom. Then reverse again onto a plate so that the cake is right-side up. Drizzle the glaze over the warm cake and spread it to cover the top--let it drip down the sides if you have enough. Obviously I didn't use the full cup of sugar here.

Enjoy the cake warm or room temperature. If you're not having it for breakfast, whipped cream or ice cream would be nice, but they're definitely not necessary.

East Blue Hill Blueberry Coffee Cake

Last weekend was a three-day weekend (Armistice Day), and a well-deserved one at that: since I would be missing my four classes on Friday, my school's administration in all its wisdom spread the courses out over three days, two of which I normally have off. So I was ready for the holiday to roll around. 

The Saturday morning of a three-day weekend is awesome because it feels like it's already Sunday, but it's not! It's that feeling you get when your alarm goes off but you don't actually have to get up. And so getting up and making coffee cake was not a chore (well, it never is) but a pleasure.

And this is a good one: a simple butter cake topped with blueberries and sugar. Julia wondered what had happened to "the crunchy stuff" (I guess I like to put streusel on my coffee cake), but really, the cake was good without it.

The only downside to this cake was that I found it to have a bitter aftertaste. I had just read David Lebovitz's article about baking powder and saw that he buys aluminum-free baking powder to avoid that bitterness. I'm pretty sure my Target-brand baking powder has aluminum, but I'm just as sure that the Wal-mart baking powder I had before (can you tell I'm a cheapskate?) also contained aluminum. So I'm guessing the problem may be either that I just opened a fresh, new can or that this recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of baking powder for 1-1/2 cups (sifted) flour. I'm pretty sure that you're not supposed to exceed 1 teaspoon baking powder per cup of flour, and Maida likes you to use light (4 ounces, rather than the standard unsifted 5) cups of flour, so that may be the problem. If I were making this again, I'd use 1-1/2 t. baking powder at most. 

But otherwise, this is a fruity, buttery, not-too-sweet cake that tastes great warm from the oven on a lazy Saturday morning. Give it a try!

Here's the recipe.

East Blue Hill Blueberry Coffee Cake

1/4 c. (2 oz.) butter, room temperature

2 t. baking powder (see note above)

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

Grated zest of 1 (organic) lemon

3/4 c. (5.25 oz.) sugar (I used a little less than 5 oz.)

1 egg

1-1/2 c. (6 oz.) sifted flour (I used 2 oz. whole wheat)

2/3 c. (5.3 oz.) milk

1-1/2 c. (6 oz.) fresh or frozen blueberries

Additional sugar (raw or crystal sugar is nice here)

Heat the oven to 350. Butter an 8-inch square pan and dust it with wheat germ or bread crumbs. Beat the butter with the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, vanilla, and lemon zest until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat 2-3 minutes longer. Scrape down and add the egg, beating until well mixed. Stir (or beat at low speed) in half the flour, then the milk, then the rest of the flour. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. If your blueberries tend to be on the tart side, toss them with a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and then spread them over the batter (I didn't add any sugar to mine, and I thought the sweetness level was perfect). Sprinkle another tablespoonful of sugar over the berries and put the cake in the oven for 45-50 minutes (check after 30 minutes or so). Maida wants you to put the cake under the broiler for a minute to caramelize the berries and sugar, but I thought the cake was fine without that step. Serve warm with coffee for breakfast or with ice cream for dinner.

Date-Nut Extra

There is something so American about this cake. It has that down-home, sensible-shoe aesthetic that makes French people recoil in horror. It wants to be all that it can be: it's a banana bread! It's an applesauce cake! It's a date-nut bread! It's pretending to be healthy while sneaking in a stick of butter.

Of course, I was pondering the over-the-top Americanness of this cake as I was baking mini corn muffins for a party. The muffins included bacon, hot peppers, onions, corn, and cheese. Do I cook for attention? Oh yes, I do.  I guess I'm a proud American when it comes to my baked goods.

And you know what? I like banana bread, and applesauce cake, and date-nut bread. And as I've mentioned before with another recipe suspiciously like this one, I love making cakes with a ton of different ingredients. So I was very happy with this cake.

I brought a hunk of this cake to tea with some French friends (who did not, in fact, recoil in horror!) and sent some with my in-laws to fortify them on an anniversary trip to Tunisia. And the rest just kind of...melted away. Probably went to someone pretending to be healthy.

Here's the recipe.

Date-Nut Extra

2 c. (7 oz.) walnuts

1/2 c. (4 oz.) butter, room temperature

1 t. baking powder

3/4 t. baking soda

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. ginger

1/4 t. allspice

1/4 t. cloves

1/4 t. mace (note on the spices: I just used about 2 t. of "quatre épices", a mix of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. I love measuring out lots of spices, but the blend was there, so I used it.)

1/4 t. salt

1 c. (7 oz.) brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 c. (8 oz.) unsweetened applesauce

3/4 c. (6 oz.) mashed bananas (this was about 1-1/2 bananas for me)

1 c. (4 oz.) sifted flour

1 c. (4.5 oz.) sifted whole-wheat flour

1 packed cup (8 oz.) pitted dates, cut into quarters (I weighed mine before pitting, and there was still plenty)

Heat the oven to 350. Get out a loaf pan or other pan that holds about 10 cups (if you're not sure, measure out 10 cups of water and see if it fits in the pan.). Butter the pan. Take about 1/2 cup (1.25 oz.) of the walnuts and chop them finely by hand or with a food processor. Use the walnuts to coat the pan, leaving any that don't stick to the sides on the bottom of the pan. Chop the remaining walnuts coarsely.

Cream the butter with the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, mace, and salt until fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar and beat another 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, beat in the applesauce and the banana. Add the flour, also on low speed or by hand. Take the bowl off the mixer and stir in the dates and remaining walnuts by hand.

Pour into the prepared pan and use a spoon to make a 1-inch trough in the center of the batter. Bake for 1-1/4 hours or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, and then unmold onto a rack to cool. As Maida writes, the cake slices best when it's completely cooled, but it tastes really good when it's still warm, so we both recommend very carefully slicing off a bit while it's warm.

Banana Black Cake

One of my favorite things about baking is using lots of ingredients. This probably goes back to my childhood baking experiences, but there's nothing I love more than putting half my spice drawer and a bunch of other stuff in a cake or a batch of cookies. Therefore, this recipe was right up my alley. See how all the ingredients barely fit into the picture?

I suppose it's also an American trait to have a lot of different flavors going on in one dessert. French desserts tend to go in for one or two dominant flavors, but American desserts tend to either have one over-the-top flavor (chocolate-chocolate-chocolate) or many mixed.

 But for this cake, almost all the flavors totally worked. The banana shone through, but so did all the dried fruits and nuts. The spices and cocoa held their own in the background. The only thing that I wasn't so sure of was the blackberry jam. I didn't really taste it, and the seeds were somewhat annoyingly crunchy (because I had overlooked the "seedless" part in the recipe and bought very seedy jam from a lady at the market). I recommend buying seedless blackberry jam for this. I'm sure it adds a nice moisture and obviously some sweetness.

 Since this is a big, dense cake with a lot going on, I made half the recipe, which filled a loaf pan plus two mini-loaf pans (with no dried fruit or nuts for Claire). The recipe below is the half recipe, which I think is the perfect amount unless you have a ton of people to bake for or want to eat cake for weeks.

Our friend Bob was visiting us when I made this cake. He got to try the lemon cheesecake and this, and he seemed to prefer this cake because of the big flavors and all the fruit and nuts. It's a tough comparison because they're such different dessert items, but this is just to say that this cake is really delicious and worth making.

Here's the recipe. Empty out your cabinets and get to it!

Banana Black Cake

1-1/2 c. (5 oz.) walnuts

1/2 c. (4 oz.) butter, room temperature

2 T. cocoa powder

1/2 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. allspice

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

1/4 t. cloves

1/4 t. ground ginger

1 t. baking soda

1 t. vanilla

1/2 c. (3.5 oz.) sugar

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

2 large eggs

3/4 c. (8 oz.) seedless blackberry jam

2-1/2 bananas (8 oz., peeled), mashed with a fork

2-1/2 T. (1.3 oz.) buttermilk or plain yogurt

1 cup +2 T. (4.5 oz.) sifted flour

1/2 c. (2.75 oz.) whole wheat flour

3/4 c. (5 oz.) pitted dates, cut into quarters

1/2 c. (2.5 oz.) raisins

Heat the oven to 300. Butter a large loaf pan (you may need some extra muffin tins or such). You'll also want a shallow pan to put water in (a broiler or 9x13 pan). Grind 1/3 c. (about 1 oz.) of the walnuts in a food processor; use those to coat the pan. If there are extra, let them stay at the bottom of the pan. Chop the remaining walnuts into medium-sized pieces and set aside for later.

Cream the butter with the cocoa, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, salt, cloves, ginger, baking soda, and vanilla in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the sugars and beat for another minute or two. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well incorporated. Beat in the jam and then the banana. Isn't this fun? Beat in the buttermilk or yogurt, and then on low speed, beat in the flours. Take the bowl off the mixer stand and stir in the dates, raisins, and walnuts. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and cover with foil. Put about an inch of hot water in the shallow pan and put it on the bottom shelf of the oven. Put the covered cake on a rack above the hot water pan and bake for about 45 minutes. Take off the foil (some cake batter may have stuck to it) and bake another 45 minutes or so, or until a toothpick comes out clean (these were the times that worked for me: Maida recommends 1 hour covered and 1-1/2 uncovered). Let cool about 20 minutes and then unmold onto a rack to cool completely. Maida recommends chilling this and serving it cold with ice cream, but I kind of like it at room temperature, just plain--but not really plain.

Johnny Appleseed Squares

Ah, la rentrée. Because everyone in France takes a summer vacation, returning from vacation and going back to school/work is as much of a ritual as is going on vacation. There's the ritual traffic jams, the stores opening up, the asking about the other's vacation, the buying of school supplies.  And there are back-to-school events.

 Since I like to feel involved and all, I volunteered to help with a back-to-school event, answering questions from new parents. I also recruited volunteers to help out, and to say thank you, I of course baked cookies.

This is a great back-to-school kind of recipe. It feels healthy because of all the oats. It's got apples "for the teacher." It's soft and cinnamon-y and comforting.

It's also a very American dessert, because of the heartiness and the cinnamon. The French people at the event distinguished themselves very quickly from the foreigners in reacting to being offered a cookie: my Spanish and Portuguese and American friends (and French friends who had just come back from the States) gobbled them up; the French looked askance and went back to their store-bought madeleines. À chacun son gout (to each his own), I suppose.

I had made this recipe before (I'm pretty sure it's when I lived in Germany, because I had scribbled gram measurements in the margins) and had noted to myself that it was "more like a cake than a cookie." Maybe more like a granola bar than a cookie. But I really recommend it if you want to reward yourself and/or others for making the transition back into the real world--of for having stayed there.

Here's the recipe.

Johnny Appleseed Squares

1 c. (4 oz.) sifted flour (some whole wheat would work well here, I'm sure)

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1-1/2 c. (4.5 oz.) rolled or quick-cooking oats

2/3 c. (4.6 oz.) brown sugar

1/2 c. (4 oz.) melted butter

1 large egg

1 t. vanilla

2-3 tart apples that will hold their shape, like Granny Smith or Pink Lady

1/2 c. (2 oz.) chopped toasted pecans

Let me tell you now that I'm giving you my simplified technique for making this, which does not involve rolling the top crust between two pieces of waxed paper and chilling that. My less elegant technique worked for me in the 80s, and it worked for me this weekend.

OK, heat the oven to 350. Line a 9-inch square pan with foil or parchment and butter it (put the butter in the pan, put the pan in the oven for a minute, and then brush the butter around). 

In a medium-large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Whisk in the brown sugar (you may want to smooth out the lumps with your fingers) and oats. Then stir in the melted butter, egg, and vanilla. Drop half the dough by spoonfuls onto the lined, buttered pan and use your fingers to press it in a more or less even layer. Peel, core, and slice the apples and layer them on top. Sprinkle the pecans over the apples. Then drop the rest of the dough on top of the apples and again carefully smooth the dough over the apples with your fingers or the back of a spoon.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in the pan. Remove from the pan and peel off the foil/paper before cutting into 16-24 squares (Maida suggests these are easier to cut if chilled). Put in a Tupperware and share with your friends who like cinnamon.

The Farmer's Daughter's Cake

Now that I'm back home but school hasn't started (and the weather is cold and gloomy), I could bake any time I wanted to, but I usually feel I need an excuse--or at the very least, no other baked goods lying around.

This weekend I didn't really have an excuse but wanted to bake, so I was in the kitchen whipping up cake batter when my friend Gabrielle called, fresh from her holiday in southern France. "So what are you doing?" she asked me. I told her, and she laughed, "for a change..." I immediately invited her to come for tea. Now I had an excuse to bake and to clean house--a much bigger task!

This cake is another in a series of cakes whose frosting is twice as complicated to make as the cake. But then again, the cake takes maybe five minutes to put together, so who am I to complain? The frosting is not difficult, but takes time.

I read too late that you could/should make the frosting while the cake bakes because the frosting needs to cool before you can beat and spread it. I imagine that the cake and frosting would come out at the right temperature at the same time if you did it that way. As it is, we had to wait what was for the girls an eternity.

The cake is light and delicate--of course, it lacks some buttery richness (since it contains no butter), but we all liked it. The frosting compliments it really well, being dark and thick and rich. All together, this made a teatime treat that had disappeared completely by the time our guests had left. I guess I'm going to need to bake again soon!

Here's the recipe. Make it for friends, "for a change".

The Farmer's Daughter's Cake

2 large eggs

1 t. vanilla

1/4 t. almond extract

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1 c. (7 oz.) sugar--I used about 6.5 oz.

1 c. (8 oz.) heavy whipping cream

2 c. (8 oz.) sifted flour (I used a bit of whole wheat and it was, surprisingly enough, fine)

Heat the oven to 350. Grease an 8-inch square pan and coat it with breadcrumbs, wheat germ (that's what I did), or even finely ground almonds.

In a medium bowl with a mixer or hand mixer or even just a whisk, beat the eggs to mix, then beat in the vanilla, almond extract, baking powder, and salt to mix. Beat in the sugar and then the cream--each time you don't have to beat it much, just until everything is well mixed. On low speed beat in the flour just until smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake starts to come away from the sides and a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes, cut around the sides, let cool another 5 minutes, and unmold onto a rack.

While the cake is baking and/or cooling, make the frosting:

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate (it will melt faster if you chop it)

1/2 c. (4 oz.) milk

1-1/3 c. (9.3 oz.) sugar

2 egg yolks

1 T. + 1 t. (0.7 oz.) butter

1 t. vanilla

In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the chocolate with the milk and sugar. Remove from the heat and let stand for a minute. Beat the egg yolks a bit and add some of the warm chocolate mixture to it to temper it. Add the egg yolk-chocolate mixture back to the chocolate in the pot; return to low heat and cook, stirring, for one minute. Pour into a small bowl and add the butter and vanilla. Let cool to room temperature.

When you're just about ready to frost the cake, get out your hand mixer and beat the frosting for a good long time--Maida says 10-15 minutes. The girls did this, so I can't verify how long it actually took. The mixture should become smooth and shiny and a bit paler and have the consistency of thick syrup. Pour half of it over the cake, smooth, wait a few minutes for it to set, and then pour the rest over. It makes a rather thick layer. Julia recommends then sprinkling the frosting with coconut. It's really up to you. Let the cake sit for a few hours to fully set the frosting, then dig in.

Prune and Apricot Pound Cake

It was just about a week ago that Sami told me, "OK, you'll need to close the kitchen on Monday for the move. Maybe you'll want to make something to help fuel the move?"

Once again, Maida had just the right answer: fruits and nuts and butter and (cream) cheese. How much much more energy-laden can you get? So, delighted to have an excuse to use my kitchen one more time, I chopped and stirred and scraped...

...and I made a big loaf for us and little loaves to share. Except the girls took them over as soon as they got home. Even Claire, who's not a huge fruit and nut lover, really enjoyed this cake.

Indeed, this cake was excellent moving fuel. It took us from one apartment to another and gave us energy to pack/unpack just one more box. It also tasted really great.

The next recipe will come from my new kitchen in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. But in the meantime, try this one out, especially if you have heavy lifting in your future. (If there's not so much, you can halve the recipe and just make one loaf.)

Prune and Apricot Pound Cake

1/2 c. (2 oz.) blanched almonds, chopped (I used sliced, crushed a bit)

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1 c. (8 oz.) butter, room temperature

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

Finely grated rind of 1 large (organic) lemon

Finely grated rind of 1 large (organic) orange

1-1/4 c. (8.75 oz.) brown sugar

4 large eggs

2 c. (8 oz.) sifted flour (I used some whole wheat)

1 c. (8 oz.) pitted prunes, snipped into thin strips

2/3 c. (6 oz.) dried apricots, snipped into thin strips

1 c. (3.5 oz.) walnut halves or large pieces

Heat the oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans and coat them with the chopped almonds. You'll probably have too many almonds--save them to sprinkle them over the top of the cake.

Cream together the cream cheese, butter, baking powder, and salt until fluffy. Beat in the grated orange and lemon rinds and then gradually beat in the brown sugar. Beat a minute or two until the color lightens. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually stir in the flour at low speed. Take the bowl off the mixer and stir in the prunes, apricots, and walnuts. Pour the batter into the two loaf pans and sprinkle them with the remaining almonds.

Bake for 1 hour, check, then if the loaves still need more time, cover them with aluminum foil before baking another 20-30 minutes (mine was done well before 1 hour). Cool the loaves in the pan for 20 minutes, then unmold and cool. This keeps really well--it was still good 4 days later.

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.