You may recall last week I set out to make strawberry rhubarb cobbler, but alas was thwarted in the quest for rhubarb, and so we made a scrumptious blackberry cobbler instead. Well, what do you know, but I go to do my weekly grocery shopping and lo and behold, bright red stalks of rhubarb sit innocently in the produce section like I hadn’t just spent hours scrounging around for them just the week before. Punk rhubarb.
Well, I couldn’t just let them sit there being all punk like that. So I bought a bunch. And by a bunch, I might mean 4 pounds. And 2 pounds of fresh strawberries.
I foresee a lot of strawberry-rhubarb dishes in the near future.
But the whole cobbler idea seemed a bit stale, seeing as how I’d just made a fat dish of it last week. So what could I do with all these strawberries and rhubarb?
I took a vote, and me, myself, and I made a unanimous decision to go for cake. I had visions of chocolate cake with a strawberry rhubarb filling, slathered in butter cream frosting. Something that looks like this:
If you’re gonna’ dream, might as well dream big, right?
Right. So here’s what you need:
For the cake: 2 cups sugar, 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup butter, 8 tablespoons cocoa (I know Nesquick is pictured, but use Hershey’s cocoa if you can. I did…but didn’t keep the box for the photo.), 1 cup water, 1/2 cup milk, juice of 1 small lemon, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 eggs beaten, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
For the filling: 3 cups strawberries cut in quarters, 1 1/2 cups rhubarb cut in 1/2-inch pieces (about 3/4 of a large stalk), 1/2 cup sugar, and about 1/4-1/2 cup of water.
For the frosting: 1 pound powdered sugar, 1/2 stick of butter, 8 oz. cream cheese, and 2 tablespoons of pure vanilla extract.
(Note: If you buy a pound of strawberries, you’ll have extra for garnish.)
Did you notice? At least this time, I included the berries in the photos!
Of course, I’m still missing cream cheese, the Hershey’s cocoa, and a lemon.
Forethought and planning. I don’t have it.
Anyway, here’s what you do:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Start with the cake batter. Mix the sugar, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl and set aside. Combine the butter, cocoa, and water in a saucepan; bring almost to a boil, but do not boil. Pour over sugar mixture and mix well. Add milk, vanilla, eggs, salt, and 1 tablespoon of the fresh squeezed lemon juice and mix well. Grease two 8-inch cake pans, and split the batter evenly between the two pans. Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
2. While the cake is baking, prepare the fruit filling. In a saucepan, put the strawberries, rhubarb and sugar. Add a little bit of water, just enough to keep the fruit from burning as you heat the fruit on medium heat. Add more water as necessary, but no more than 1/2 a cup. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer, stirring continuously, until you have a thick liquid and the fruit has all dissolved. Take off heat and let cool.
3. When the cakes have cooled completely, slice the rounded top off of one of the cakes and discard (Or eat, covered with jam. Not saying I would do such a thing. But then, I’m pretty sure throwing good cake away into the trash is bad for the environment). And here is my little secret: sprinkle or squeeze the remaining lemon juice delicately around the open top of the cake you just beheaded lopped off you just cut. Then spread the strawberry rhubarb filling on it. This adds a little hint of citrus and helps make the cake nice and moist. Then what I did was sliced about 4 strawberries nice and thin and littered the slices on top of the filling. Then I put the second cake on top, rounded side up.
4. Mix the frosting ingredients until they’re all smooth. Then with a butter knife, slather it all over the cake. You’ll most likely end up with a wee bit too much frosting, so feel free to go to town as much as you like. I suppose you could calculate 3/4 of the recipe and that’d probably be about perfect. Or you could just have extra frosting that you could use on something else (like dolloped on strawberry rhubarb waffles…). It’s really good frosting.
5. Garnish with the rest of your strawberries. A sprig of mint would look nice too, if you have it.
And this is what the final product looks like:
See right there, all that chocolatey-goodness with that yum-yum strawberry rhubarb filling just oozing out?
Ohhh yeahhh. That’s what I was dreaming about.
Though I should warn you, that filling is slippery, so serve with care. I suppose I might have added some gelatin or something to make it less slippery. But all that pure flavor was just too good to mess with.
You might be wondering why it’s called Scarlet Letter cake. The hubby suggested when I make up my own recipes I should give them a name. I decided to let literature be my inspiration. And all that dark chocolate brown, luscious red, trimmed in stark white called to mind The Scarlet Letter.
And the taste… the chocolate and strawberries call to mind passion; a passion simultaneously sinful in nature, yet innocent at first blush. Not too sweet and rich, or heady like a ganache…just light, moist and fleeting, with the hint of citrus to add an element of surprise. An element of je ne sais quoi, like the draw of a sexy man just at the edge of your reach.
This is a cake for dessert in bed. For weekend getaways and summer flings.
(Fleeting, cuz that’s how fast you’ll eat it.)
And we served ours warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Because, you know, such things should be done right proper.
Usually when I have guests over for dinner, I cook Thai food, which requires about 10-20 minutes of preparation, 10 minutes of a flurry of arm-flailing effort, and then voila! it’s served, and you have to eat it right away. But I’m starting to discover the glory of baking food, which requires you start a little earlier perhaps, but then for the hour or so the food is baking, you can do other things. Like hide the socks, jackets, books, and other bits of evidence that your home is not quite a Martha Stewart home. And light candles. And freshen up your makeup. And have a glass of wine. So you don’t look like a sweaty, disgruntled host who can’t even greet the guests as they walk in the door because you’re busy producing four different dishes at once.
Ahem. Actually, the cookbook says the first step is to preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then take a vegetable peeler and remove a 2-inch strip of zest from the orange, cut the orange in half, squeeze juice out of one half and cute the remaining half into 4 wedges. Place two tablespoons of juice and the strip of zest in a medium saucepan for Step 4. Tuck an orange wedge into the cavity of each game hen. Sprinkle the remaining orange juice over the hens and place each breast side up in a large roasting pan, leaving space between them. (Although I cut the recipe in half for there were only 4 of us at dinner, I did use the whole orange and just put two wedges in each bird. Figured it couldn’t hurt. And actually I think it helped keep them extra moist.)
Reduce heat to low and simmer gently until the cranberries are tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Just before serving, remove orange zest. (I had a little left over orange juice, which I reserved until it was time to serve the chutney. By the time the hens had roasted the chutney had gotten a little dry, so I stirred in a little bit of orange juice just to liven it up a bit upon serving.)
I put mine on a bed of lettuce and served the chutney with a sprig of mint to decorate.
The crazy work madness is over (allowing me to settle into routine work load) so I’m celebrating with a drink! Actually, this post originated as a Facebook discussion, but this eggnog is just so good, I had to share it with the masses. You know you’re in good hands when it’s a grandpappy’s recipe. Unfortunately, it’s not my grandpappy’s recipe (Something makes me suspect neither of my grandfathers – one Thai and the other, a Christian missionary – were too much into eggnog. But you never know.), it’s someone else’s grandpappy’s recipe that I just happened to Google when my parents asked for eggnog after Thanksgiving dinner. (And by asked, I mean they suggested in wistful tones that it would be lovely to have eggnog and wasn’t it a shame we hadn’t picked some up at the store, and I volunteered to make it with what we had to save us from such despair.) This recipe, which you can find 
Wait, don’t go! Are you still here? I promise this is worth it! I’m not a fan of tomato soup, and my husband likes it even less. I’ll at least eat cioppino and bouillabaisse. He’ll only eat the mussels out of the bouillabaisse. But this tomato soup is fantastic! I think the trick is in the creamy bit and the basil bit. Are you also frightened of the homemade breadsticks bit? Don’t be. I don’t make my own bread from scratch either, but this is totally doable.
But they are soft, hot and delicious.
I’d been getting some complaints that I haven’t been doing any taste tests lately. So this week, you’ll not get just one…you’ll get THREE new taste tests. Starting with this baby. Pumpkin pie brownies.
FAIL. See that splooge? My brownies ain’t pos’d to have no splooge. They tasted alright…but they were gooey. And messy. And I was grumpy.
And basically, I just followed the recipes on the brownie box for the brownie layer and the pumpkin can for the pumpkin pie layer. So even if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s, you can get these items from just about any grocery store and do the same thing. Just keep those principles I mentioned in mind!
Can you see up in there? If you run your finger along the edge of the mixture (and taste it), you’ll get a nice clean edge. If you pull out the whisk, you’ll form some super soft peaks. Thinner than custard. But not super liquidy. So principle #1: Don’t let the pumpkin mixture get too runny.
I did not use all the pumpkin mixture. I only used about half. I think if I had used a larger, rectangular pan, I probably would have used just about all of the mixture. That’s probably a good idea if you want them to end up half-brownie, half-pumpkin pie. These end up more like 3/4 brownie, 1/4 pumpkin pie.
TA DA! Look! No splooge. Just moist, rich yummy goodness. When you’ve finished consuming them (with milk, in the bathroom, in the dark, hiding your gluttony from your husband), hop on over to the stair-master because when I say rich, I mean RICH. If only these were currency on Wall Street….
Are you not already hooked on this pie? Because if you aren’t, then you should be. Unless you’re allergic to nuts and dairy. And even then, you still might be good friends with this pie (perhaps served with Benadryl because it is that worth it).
