Not a Fruitcake

I saw The Galloping Gourmet on PBS many years ago. It was truly bizarre. It was not long after my arrival to the US, and I was already culture-shell-shocked. (It took me a while to wrap my brain around MASH and The Beauty and the Beast being TV shows.) I have no idea why he popped into my head recently. Must have been the booze.

Back in the Old Country we used to bake a certain fruit and nut-studded loaf that had absolutely no relation or resemblance to fruitcake. I went on a hunt for a recipe, found several, in Hungarian and metric. From them I cobbled together my own version. It took several tries till I got everything right.

Fruit Loaf

8 oz butter

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup of flour

1 cup of brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup dried fruit, chopped

1/2 cup chopped nuts

2 tablespoon orange liquor

1 teaspoon vanilla

ca 1/4 cup crystallized brown sugar

Macerate the dried fruit with the liquor for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350º F

Butter a loaf pan and dust it with crystallized brown sugar. Shake out the excess.

Cream the butter with the brown sugar.

Mix in molasses.

Add eggs one by one.

Mix the flour and baking powder together, add to the egg mixture. Combine well.

Fold in the fruits and nuts, add vanilla.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan.

Bake for 50 minutes, or till toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Notes:

· Most recipes will tell you to butter your baking dish or coat it with those suspicious baking sprays. I also dust it with sugar when baking something sweet. It will stick even less. You pour some sugar into the buttered pan, shake it around to coat all sides and shake out the excess. I prefer using brown sugar because it's not as sweet as white, but it has to be the crystallized kind, as the regular one is too moist. Additional benefit is that your baked good will have a crunchy sweet outside.

· Molasses are optional, but they add a deep, rich tone.

· I use dried apricots, cherries, cranberries, mangoes, but anything goes. If you want to get fancy, you might try candied orange peel and candied ginger.

· Hungarian recipes all had rum in them, but I prefer orange liquor. I think Hungarian cuisine developed a reliance on the cheaper and more common rum as an economic necessity.

· I discovered a novel way to macerate the dried fruit: in a ziplock bag! It's perfect, alcohol and fruit are all sealed in together with nothing better to do then soak into each other. No messy tossing required—you just flip the bag over.

Tips and tricks:

Has your brown sugar ever turned into a dry brick? Do not despair, there's a way to fix it. Put the brick in a bowl and cover it with a clean, wet kitchen towel. Leave it like that overnight. By morning your brown sugar will be back to it's moist self.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

It is, from now, till the end of December, and even beyond, the season of pumpkin. Time to try some new twists on the old favorites. This recipe is loosely based on Paula Deen's Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake, that itself is a take on Gooey Butter Cake. Now, I've eaten Gooey Butter Cake before, and it's so sweet that it'll make your teeth fall out on the spot. A whole box (16 oz) of powdered sugar in the filling will do that. I've also seen Paula Deen and TV, and she's the kind of person who'd deep-fry a stick of butter and serve it with gravy. So I made some changes.

I used brown sugar, because it has nice flavor. To enhance it further I added some molasses. I believe that the dark, deep richness of molasses go exceptionally well with pumpkin. I also changed the crust (yellow cake mix, really?) to one made out of cinnamon graham crackers. It could, of course, be regular graham crackers with cinnamon added.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

Cake:
16 oz cinnamon graham crackers, ground (it can actually be slightly less)
8 tbs (4 oz) butter, melted

Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
15 oz can of pumpkin
8 tbs butter
3 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs nutmeg

Preaheat oven to 350ºF

Combine the ground graham cracker and butter. Pat the mix into the bottom of a lightly buttered 13x9" baking pan.

In a large bowl beat the cream cheese and the pumpkin till smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Add sugar, cinnamon, molasses, nutmeg, and mix well.

Spread the pumpkin mix over the cake and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. It should still be jiggly in the middle when you take it out of the oven.

Hungarian Cherry Tart (Cseresznyés Lepény)

I'm not even sure if it qualifies as a tart, but I don't know what the correct English terminology is. In Hungarian deserts of this type are called "lepény." It is simple to make and is delicious.

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 sticks (8 oz) butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 2 tbs rum (optional)
  
• 1-1.5 pund cherries pitted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat over to 325 degrees ºF.
With wooden spatula or food processor mix butter and sugar till smooth. (Starting with butter at room temperature makes it easier.) Mix in the yolks of the eggs one by one. Beat the egg whites till stiff. Alternating, little by little mix in the flour and the beaten egg whites. Gently fold them in so the egg white doesn't break completely and the mixture stays light. Finally add the vanilla and the rum. Rub butter on the inside of a baking pan. Coat it with granulated sugar (just as you would with flour). Pour in the batter. Sprinkle the cherries on top. Bake till top is golden brown and toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Let it cool for at room temperature. Dust it with powdered sugar before serving.

Other fleshy fruits like plums, peaches, apricots can be used as well.

The original recipe requires one package of vanilla sugar, but it is hard to find in the US, so I replaced it with vanilla.

Perfect Cheesecake

The problem with most cheesecakes is that they are heavy and dense. Not this one. This is a Tyler Florence recipe that I found on the Food Network website, which despite its recent Rachel Ray infestation is still a good source of recipes. I made slight changes only, my approach is a bit more hands on. In my opinion you shouldn't be afraid to get your hands dirty in the kitchen.

Crust

• 2 cups finely ground graham crackers
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Filling

• 1 poound cream cheese, 2 (8 oz) blocks, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 16 oz sourcream
• zest of one lemon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Crust first. Preheat oven to 325˚ F. Combine crust ingredients till evenly moist. Easiest to do by hand. Lightly coat the bottom and sides of an 8" springform pan (or pie pan - see bellow) nonstick cooking spray or butter. Pour the crumbs into the pan and by hand press them on the bottom and 1" up the sides. Refrigerate for 5 minutes.

Make the filling next. In a large bowl with a wooden spatula mix the cream cheese till it's smooth and creamy, for about a minute. Add the eggs one a time, switch to an electric mixer and beat slowly till combined. Gradually add sugar and beat again till smooth. Add sour cream, lemon zest, vanilla. Mix it well, but make sure it's not over-beaten. Do not forget to periodically scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Pour the filling into crust.

Set the pan on a large piece of aluminum foil and fold up the sides around it. The foil must be the extra large variety, regular size will lead to disaster. Place the pan in a large roasting pan and pour boiling water into the roasting pan untill the water is about half way up the sides of the cake pan, but bellow the foil edge. The foil must keep the water out. Alternately you can be lazy like me and skip all this trouble and use a regular pie pan. Bake for 45 minutes. When taking it out of the oven it will be still very jiggly. Resist the urge to cook it longer, it will solidify as it cools. Cool in the pan at room temperature for 30 minutes, then chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours.