Aunt Sassy (Pistachio) Cake with Honey Vanilla Buttercream

Sometimes it feels irrelevant to write a baking blog. I always wonder whether this is not the totally wrong forum for me to write about being distraught with the government, or forlorn that Joey is moving to Vermont, or sad about my job, which forever bites the big one. Those things are all true, but then there is this glorious, delicious cake and the trouble of connecting it to Jon Kyl’s fake facts, Obama’s squirmy backbone, or the utter weirdness of an impending long-distance relationship; it’s so much smoother to connect baked goods to weekends and perpetual good times. Maybe I ought to thank my luck for the latitude afforded by the jokey truism that a blog-writer’s biggest audience is herself.

Joey's hand action shot! They can't all be winners.

So the government stinks tremendously, Joey is leaving, and my job is an endless bummer, but this cake is like eating airy, pistachio angel food cake swathed in magic frosting that rights ills and boosts moods! I made it for Ruben and Joaquin’s full-of-love engagement party, and initially I felt ill-equipped to describe how super good it is (the recipe gets all the credit!), and then my Alice Medrich cookie rampage clouded my cake-blogging motivations. But this cake—every bit as delicious as the ingredients tell you—is much, much easier to make than it seems and totally relevant to whatever is going on in your life, be it wishing some smarts into the government of celebrating the wonderful folks in your life.

Aunt Sassy Cake with Honey Buttercream

Adapted (barely) from Baked Explorations

I don't own any 8-inch cake pans so I attempted to proportion this recipe to fit my 6-inch cake pans instead. Using this awesome website, I learned I'd have to make 60% of the original recipe to do so, but I can't do that kind of math so I stuck to the original proportions but used my small pans and made six cupcakes with the leftover batter. It actually turned out great because the layers were towering and there were cupcakes for sampling. Also, this is a long recipe, but it's uncomplicated and totally worth the labor.

Pistachio Cake

1 cup shelled, unsalted pistachios (plus more for garnish, below)

2 1/2 cups cake flour

3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt 

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable shortening (I used Spectrum brand)

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups ice water

3 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Honey Vanilla Buttercream

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, soft but not warm, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 tablespoons honey

Garnish

1/2 cup pistachios

1 tablespoon sugar

Make the Cake Layers

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter three 8-inch (I used 6-inch) round cake pans, line them with parchment, butter the parchment, flour it too, and tap out the excess flour. (F'real. My layers did not stick at all, so I'm not about to tell you that this step is overkill.)

2.  In the bowl of a food processor, process just one cup of the pistachios until they are coarsely chopped. Transfer two tablespoons of the nuts to a large bowl, and then process the rest into a powder, but not a dust. Stir the pistachio powder into the large bowl with the coarse nuts. Sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in the large bowl. Dump anything left in the sifter into the bowl; stir.

3.  In a large bowl, beat the butter and shortening on medium until creamy, three to four minutes. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat about three more minutes until fluffy. Add the egg and beat until just combined. Turn your egg beater or mixer on low, and add the flour mixture to the bowl in three parts, alternating with the ice water, and beginning and ending with the flour. The mixer should be on low for each addition, and flip it to medium for a few seconds until ingredients are incorporated; scrape bowl before each new addition.

4.  In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on low until soft peaks form, but don't overwhip; gently fold whites into the batter using a rubber spatula. Divide the batter among the prepared pans and smooth the tops. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes (my six-inch pans still took 40) until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cakes cool in their pans for 20 minutes before removing them; allow to cool completely and then remove the parchment paper. At this point, I triple-wrapped my layers in plastic wrap for froze them for two days, which I've been led to believe makes frosting delicate cake layers terrifically easy. 

Make the Frosting

1.  In a medium saucepan, whisk the sugar and flour together. Add the milk and cream and cook over medium heat (I cooked on low because I have a gas range), whisking occasionally until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens, ten to 15 minutes.

2.  Transfer the mixture to a cold bowl and beat with a mixer on high speed until cool, about seven to nine minutes. Press some bags of frozen berries to the sides of the bowl to speed up the process. Reduce the speed to low and add the butter, mixing all the way. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until frosting is light and fluffy, about two minutes.

3.  Add the vanilla and honey and continue mixing to combine. If the frosting is too soft, put the bowl in the fridge to chill, then beat it again until it's the right consistency. (I had to put mine in the fridge for 20 minutes.)

Assemble the Cake

1.  Crush the remaining 1/2 cup pistachios with 1 tablespoon of sugar in your food processor; don't go too fine.

2.  Level the tops of your cake layers (easier if they're frozen). Place on on your plate, and smooth 1 1/4 cups frosting on top. Add the next leveled layer and the same amount of frosting, then the third layer. Spread a very thin layer over the top and sides and put in the fridge for 15 minutes if you can (this is the crumb coat and helps tamp down loose crumbs), then spread the rest of the frosting on. Garnish the cake with the crushed pistachios, and refrigerate for 15 minutes to firm up. The cookbook recommends letting the cake come to room temperature for two hours before serving; I think we did incidentally, but it's not so fussy of a cake that you have to. Keeps for three days in a cake saver at room temperature.

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.

Crunchy Seed Cookies

Spring, you devious bastard. First you’re gettin’ weirdly toasty and inviting ice cream sandwiches and porch-sitting, and now you’re all snowin’ on us again; a retreat indoors feels totally unnatural this time of year. So, Bobbie and I rode bikes home in the spittle-snow last Saturday after an evening spent eating dinner with best friends and then dancing artfully inside a ring of non–best friends wearing togas. Super food and slippery floors made it an evening impervious to dumb ol’ snow, but my nerves are starting to rankle anyway.

The flipside, at least, is that indoor activities translates to lots of kitchen time, and last weekend’s windy, wet jerkdom prompted an all-day baking session that led to these—possibly the most adorable cookies known to humankind. If anime could bake itself into a pastry, it might come out looking like these li’l baby butter cookies covered in seeds (on both sides!). They are also super tasty and addictive, and I whole-heartedly recommend them no matter what the weather outside your window portends, which, for me, is a snow-wet weekend filled with yard sales, karaoke, beer, crafts, and clothing swappin’. Take that, fake spring.

Crunchy Seed Cookies

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

This recipe makes about 60 li'l cookies. They are really the most adorable cookies of all time. And even though I'm wary of fennel, I loved it here and will certainly use it every time. I'm planning to add poppy and sunflower seeds next time though, maybe in place of the white sesames. Customizing is love.

2 teaspoons black sesame seeds

2 teaspoons white sesame seeds

2 teaspoons flax seeds

2 teaspoons fennel seeds (I used 1 1/2)

1/4 cup coarse raw sugar

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, very soft

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons bourbon (I used brandy)

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large shallow bowl or plate, mix seeds and coarse sugar and set aside. In a different medium bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt, and mix together thoroughly with a fork.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and granulated sugar. With a large spoon or electric mixer on medium-low, mix the butter and sugar until smooth and well-blended, but not fluffy. Add the egg and bourbon/brandy and mix until smooth. Add the flour mixture, half at a time, and mix by hand until completely incorporated.

3. Roll heaping teaspoons of dough into one-inch balls. Press each ball into the seed mixture on both sides (genius!), flattening the ball to a half-inch thick round. Place the cookies two whole inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets, and bake for 14 to 16 minutes until cookies are slightly browned on the edges, rotating pans halfway through. Set the liners on racks to cool. Medrich says cookies will keep for up to two weeks in an airtight container, but we ate them all in three days.