Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Icebox Cake (The Beast)

Yo, you know I love a good icebox cake. They are one of the best ways to celebrate: leave whipped cream sandwiched between cake or cookie layers in the fridge for long enough, and it becomes a thick buttery frosting (without the butter!). This meringue cake, nicknamed “The Beast” by its creator for the challenge of cutting it, is definitely better off from some refrigerator timeout. After an overnight stint in the icebox, the meringue and cream meld and stabilize, but there is no loss of crunch, texture, or flavor like you might expect; plus, it’s really not that tough to cut after a proper cooling. Better said: take this baby for a spin!

But don’t get the wrong idea about me and Valentine’s Day. This cake, while surely befitting a sweetheart, did not come about in an homage to today. There ain’t a single thing that’s disagreeable about romance (give me more romance!), but I relish the blogging community much for its commitment to creativity, and that all seems to disappear in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. All of my favorite DIY sites are suddenly posting links to mass-produced “him and her” gifts to purchase, and whether it’s an effort to monetize or a need to keep up with What The People Want, the buy-it-now attitude behind Valentine’s Day is counter to these sites’ everyday goals. Maybe we can all find some relief and inspiration in food blogs today instead: they often emphasize creativity and taking risks—both elements of a real romantic gesture, no?

Getting back to what’s really important here: this cake is totally delicious and totally nuts. You will love it, and it will love you right back without asking for a single thing.

Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Icebox Cake
Adapted from Daniel Jasso for Food & Wine

A few notes: if you're short on space or nervous about cutting into this cake, consider making a bunch of two-inch cookies instead of eight-inch layers. You could stack two cookies with cream in the middle and on top, and they'd be single-serving. Either way, this is definitely a dessert to make the day before you intend to eat it. The meringue takes several hours to bake and cool, and then the whole thing goes into the fridge. The recipe counsels us to cut with a serrated knife, but I found the nicest slices came about after I stabbed straight through the top of the cake with a butcher knife.

I didn't change much here: just reduced the amounts of sugar and chocolate ever so slightly. Is that sacrilege? The original calls for six ounces of each chocolate, but that seemed just a bit too rich for my family. The final product certainly didn't suffer!

7 ounces hazelnuts (about 1 1/2 cups)
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar (original calls for 1 1/2)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
5 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped fine
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
3 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
Chocolate shavings for garnish

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line two very large or three regular baking sheets with parchment paper. Trace three eight-inch circles across the parchment. (I had to use three medium sheets, so one circle on each sheet.)

2.  Spread the hazelnuts on a baking sheet or in a pie pan and toast for 12 to 14 minutes, until browned. Close hot hazelnuts into a non-terry-cloth towel, allow to steam for five or so minutes, then rub to remove the skins; don’t worry if some of the skins are still on. Chop the nuts fairly small, but don’t powder them.. Lower the oven temperature to 225 degrees F.

3.  In the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the egg whites with the salt at medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the granulated sugar at high speed until stiff and glossy. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Fold in the hazelnuts and chocolate chips. Pour the melted chocolate down the side of the bowl and gently fold in until the meringue is lightly marbled.

4.  Divide the meringue evenly between the three drawn circles; spread evenly. Bake for two hours and 30 minutes, until crisp; rotate the pans halfway through baking. Turn off the oven, prop oven door open, and let the meringues cool completely. (I propped a wooden spoon against the “light-on” switch to keep it off and the door open.)

5.  In the bowl of the standing mixer, beat the cream with the confectioners' sugar until firm. Remove the cooled meringues from the parchment paper. Spread the whipped cream between the layers and stack them. Refrigerate or freeze the cake overnight. Cut into wedges and serve at room temperature. Garnish with chocolate shavings before serving.

Chocolate Buckwheat Strawberry Cake

Y’all Internet friends have been so deep into the strawberries and rhubarb. Cardamom rhubarb fool. Sour cherry rhubarb jam. And some babes in California are already breaking out the apricot recipes? Put ‘em away, jerks! Your carefree riches are making my produce-impoverished life feel awfully drab. But, after weeks of wondering when my turn would come, I’m finally here with my pride intact to rejoin the springtime Internet with...this chocolate cake...that doesn’t really have a lot of strawberries in it. That’s cool though, don’t worry, it is totally worth your time and minimal efforts and will not disappoint you at all, especially if you bake by mood and it’s the least bit rainy or cool where you are. Or if in general you are a fan of things that taste good.

Last Saturday evening, Joey (Hume), Roomrunner, and the Dope Buddies (check it) played an inaugural show at the Coward Shoe building in Baltimore, Hume's new home and place of many good things to come. So out-of-town have been we though, and so missing every single Sunday farmers market and thus the spring fruits, that we drove an hour home at 4:30 a.m. after an intense and amazing night filled with broken glass and punches so that we could be lined up for berries and rhubarb when the farmers market rang its opening bell. “We” mostly means “I,” but Joey is a great sport and got a strawberry rhubarb pie and this chocolate cake out of it.

And the strawberry rhubarb pie was, in many ways, more impressive and appealing than this buckwheat chocolate cake, but I’m stuck on this. It’s a terrific low-key dessert, the strawberry flavor really shines, and buckwheat and fruit is such a natural and delicious pairing. There aren’t a lot of whole grains on this blog either, and I’m pumped to share something slightly new here. Plus it’s gluten-free! This might not be a rhubarb flambe or whatever, but check it out. I promise it’ll answer some of your fruity spring wanderings. 

Chocolate Buckwheat Strawberry Cake

Adapted significantly from Tartine Gourmande, via Smitten Kitchen

The original calls for bittersweet chocolate, more sugar, no berries, and a 9-inch pan (for a thinner cake), but take a gamble with me and try it this way. Even if bittersweet chocolate is like your religion, you might still enjoy this. Oh, and it's gluten-free!

Makes one eight-inch cake

7 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus extra for buttering pan
3 ½ ounces semisweet chocolate
4 large eggs at room temperature
5 tablespoons + 1 tablespoon granulated or blond cane sugar (so, divided)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup (or 1 ounce) almond meal
6 ounces small strawberries, hulled and halved

Powdered sugar or whipped cream to serve (optional

1.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-inch cake round and line the bottom with parchment paper; butter the parchment round as well. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a double-boiler or a heatproof bowl resting on a pot of lightly simmering water, and set aside to cool.

2.  In the bowl of a stand mixer (thanks Emily’s mom!), beat the eggs and sugar with salt on medium until light and pale and doubled in volume, five to ten minutes. This took me ten. Your eggs will airy; this is the key to giving this cake its lift and crumb.

3.  Fold in the vanilla and melted chocolate mixture with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle the buckwheat and almond flours over the batter and fold gently to combine. Arrange strawberry halves bottomside-down evenly over cake. Sprinkle remaining tablespoon of sugar over the top; this will give the top a nice crackled texture. Bake cake in the center of the oven, and start checking for doneness at 20 minutes. Mine was finished at 30, but overbaking cake is obviously the worst, so get down with your cautious self. Cake is finished when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

4.  Cool cake for five minutes on a rack, invert onto rack, remove parchment paper, and put cake rightside up to serve. Top slices with powdered sugar or whipped cream or berries or all of it, if you want. Cake will keep covered at room temperature for about two days before getting soft around the berries; it also tastes great cold outta the fridge.

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

The book from whence these and those cookies came is property of the DC Public Library (and therefore you!). I should have disclosed in my previous post that I am—with the help of my amazing librarian friend Bobbie—quickly assuming acquaintance with a multitude of cookbooks (and young adult fiction), but this one from Alice Medrich is by far my most favorite. Had Bobbie not brought it to our charming yet slovenly home, I almost certainly never would have used it. And were it also not for Bobbie and DCPL, I would not have seen Twin Peaks, read Just Kids, heard that infernal Alban Berg opera that Joey has been playing, or figured out this whole graphic novel thing so easily. Bobbie and I met three years ago on Craigslist when I was just a DC naïf looking for a home, and since then it has been a totally edifying friendship involving lots of rad shit from water snakes, bicycles, and dancing to a shameless love of cultural pulp and romcoms (but also Pride and Prejudice! Which I guess is sort of a romcom too.).

I wouldn’t be here or nearly as happy without Bobbie, and these cookies wouldn’t be here or nearly as tasty without the DC Public Library. This is the first wheat-free cookie recipe using alternative flours that I have ever totally adored; they were also loved by my great pal Tory who is gluten-free, and they were deemed tolerably delightful by my dear housemate Susan who has professed a strong unhappiness with wheat-free goods. They are thin and crispy—fast becoming my favorite cookie qualities—and the crumb tastes sweet and buttery, not powdery and Play-Doh-esque, which I sometimes equate with gluten-free desserts. I think that you could love them, and so will the beautiful Bobbies your life. 

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Alice Medrich's Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy

I used a scoop slightly smaller than that called for by Medrich and still came out with the 60 cookies predicted by this recipe. She adds one cup of coarsely chopped pecans as well, but I'm not so into that, so I upped the chocolate from 12 to 15 ounces. These are wheat-free, and will be considered gluten-free by your strictest eaters as long as you buy flours that have not come into contact with any wheat. Bob's Red Mill is always a reliable brand, and check your local co-op or farmers' market to see what's in stock.

1 cup + 3 tablespoons oat flour
1 cup brown rice flour, superfine if you have it
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons potato starch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
15 ounces hand-chopped chocolate chunks or large chips (semi-sweet will not overpower the delicate flours; use bittersweet if you want to get thwacked in the face with chocolate flavor)

1.  Combine the flours, potato starch, salt, baking soda and xanthan gum in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly with a whisk. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, sugars and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs. Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture. With a rubber spatula, mix the batter briskly for about 45 seconds to activate the xanthan gum, but don't overbeat or you risk gummy cookies (blech). Stir in the chocolate. If possible, let the dough stand for one to two hours at room temperature, or cover and refrigerate overnight.

2.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper or foil dull side up. Using a 1 1/2-tablespoon cookie scoop (Medrich calls for 2 tablespoons), place mounds of cookie dough at least two inches apart on the sheets. Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes until they are golden brown, rotating pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through. Cookies will be soft when you remove pans from oven, so leave them on the sheet for about two minutes before moving them to wire racks to cool all the way. Ours kept well in a sealed container for the two days it took us to eat them all.