Out of New Nova Scotia Kitchens
This isn’t meant to be a baking blog, or all about sweet treats. So, please excuse me yet another post about a cake so early on as I offer explanation for all of this.
The idea for this whole blog started one day as I noticed a copy of Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens by Marie Nightingale while waiting in line at Chapters. Someone had obviously had second thoughts about it and left it in the bins of all the, ‘Oh, look at this really, really pink and sparkly thing that I really, really need because I don’t have enough plastic junk Mommy,’ stuff that is placed as you line up for the checkout.
This book was a fixture in our kitchen while I was growing up. My mom's bread recipe comes from here and her baked beans . My grandmother used to bake the Pictou County Oatcakes with me after school. I remember being completely disgusted by the Fish Chowder which someone, who will remain nameless (no, it wasn't me or my mother or my grandmother), made to the letter which meant that it was full of pork scrunchin floaties.
Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens reminds me of the first cake I baked independent of parental assistance and using a heat source other than that of the Easy Bake Oven’s light bulb. It was also my first attempt at a cake from scratch. The recipe was from this book but I could not, no matter how much I read and re-read the cake section, remember which one.
I vaguely remember concern, on the part of my mother, at the potential waste of ingredients which has led me to think it may have been the French Cream Cake – no costly butter in the recipe. I do remember a dry and crumbly brick of a thing - a sickly sweet and slightly taupe coloured cake with a similarly coloured drizzle of icing which I am not even sure was a recipe from Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens or any book for that matter, maybe just some early culinary improv necessitated by the butter ration.
And so, I determined to give French Cream Cake a more experienced go here, convinced that it couldn’t be as bad as I remember.
French Cream Cake from Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens by Marie Nightingale
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons water
Beat the eggs until light and foamy. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Combine flour and baking powder and sift into batter. Lastly add the water. Pour batter into 2 well-greased 9" layer pans and bake for 25-30 minutes in a 350° oven. Cool.
It is a very simple recipe and, because I have a tendency to stray from the written recipe, I couldn’t resist switching it up a bit. Likely, because of my memories of the dismal failure of 23 or so years ago and, I like to think because I know quite a bit more about cooking and baking now, so I feel a little more liberated to do this.
I whipped the eggs and sugar until they were very pale and thick. This is the basic method for most sponge like cakes and by doing it you are incorporating air into the mix, ideally creating a lighter cake. I also added some vanilla and, in hindsight, I think that lemon or orange zest would have been better. The vanilla emphasized the sweetness and, I think, some citrus would play off it. Instead of mixing in the dry ingredients, I folded them in, trying to keep as much of that air as possible in the batter.
The cake was really so quick and so easy to make. And, although I wasn’t blown away by it, I can see when it would be a great basic last minute cake -with strawberries and cream or as a low fat alternative. It is not a beautiful sponge, still a little grey in colour and too plainly sweet for me. It is pretty similar in taste to Angel Food Cake, but not nearly as light and airy and it is a little chewy.That being said, it is a vast improvement on my first attempt which is hardly surprising some may say.
I didn't use the filling recipe that Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens gives to go with it, but it is probably my bias against pastry cream that made me do that. Instead, Poppy helped me fill it with apricot jam and buttercream and we used buttercream on the top and sides as well. This was, for me, too sweet, but Poppy had no problem with it.
This is not about trying to undermine what, I think, is a great compilation of recipes that is responsible for quite a few of my earlier food memories. It is about, from time to time, looking at how our tastes and the way we cook has and will continue to change based on our experience, in the kitchen and out. We travel, we read cooking magazines and books and we can watch cooking shows 24 hours a day. This affects how we think about food, how we imagine things will and should taste and how we want them to taste. So, that is what this is about – new flavours and stepping outside the recipe box. It is about how the food we eat can influence our memories for better or worse and it is about relaxing and enjoying what we and our families eat.
It won't always be about cooking. Sometimes, it will be about eating or picnicking or shopping. And, for a few posts anyway, it won't be about sweet things. I promise.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Reader Comments (4)
Ummm, I think I know of the cake you're referring to . Some sort of Church supper raffle ticket concoction that sits there like a guilt brick alongside fentex Barbie doll toliet paper roll covers . These cakes are made by retired old ladies that smell like rose water and should stick to pies and molasses cookies ... oh and war cake which is not to be taken lightly or as a slight. Your take breathes life in to this saliva sucking ornament that deceives more often than it pleases, good work and nice writing to boot.
Aww shucks. Thanks there big buddy (my trucker lingo is rusty). You make me laugh.
Noooo! More Cake please. We really like cake!
I owned a copy of "Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens" for twenty-years, or so. Some of the recipes, such as baking powder biscuits and apple crisp, were common fare in my own kitchen, and were enjoyed by my growing children. That "French Cream Cake" I remember well -- in print only, as I never had the courage to bake it! Your brillantly written, and formated, article -- with pictures to boot, has given me a renewed courage to get out my wooden spoon and mixing bowl and pursue the long awaited vision of a "French Cream Cake"! To the writer of the last commentary, I believe that Phentex is the correct spelling, not Fentex, of that noxious stuff that was knitted and crocheted into toilet roll covers. I do not see, however, how one could draw a parallel between Phentex and French Cream Cake. Perhaps you were having a bad dream.