Yogurt Cake

For Christmas dinner, I made myself the traditional fare of turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing.  I decided to try something new for dessert, though, and found a recipe in a one of my favorite books about cooking (OK, so it's the only book I've ever actually read about cooking), On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis.  It has some great recipes mingled with the wonderful story, one of which is a simple yogurt cake.  It turned out wonderfully moist and delicious, topped with a light layer of confectioner's sugar, though I didn't master the marble pattern. 

Yogurt Cake
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
Pinch of sea salt
3 large eggs
1 c sugar
1/2 c plain, full-fat yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
8 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 oz bitter chocolate, melted and cooked
Confectioners sugar

Butter & flour 9 1/2 in round cake pan.  Preheat oven to 375F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Whisk together eggs and sugar until light and pale yellow.  Sprinkle dry ingredients over eggs and sugar, whisking continuously.  Fold in yogurt and vanilla, then butter.

Pour half of batter into pan.  Fold melted chocolate into remaining batter until thoroughly combined.  Pour chocolate batter on top of plain batter.  Run spatula through batter to make marble pattern.

Bake about 35 minutes.

Remove and cool about 15 minutes.  Turn out and cook completely.  Dust with confectioners sugar.

Serves 8

Beef Wellington and Welsh Potato Cake

For dinner last weekend, I made Beef Wellington, and as a side, Welsh Onion Cake (Teisen Nionod).  I used the recipes from Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret, by Jane Garmey.  I've made the onion cake before, but it fell apart then.  This time, I actually followed the directions and dried the potato slices before using them, and it stayed together for the most part.

The beef wellington was another story, however.  The recipes in the cookbook have been converted to American measurements and temperatures, but apparently they missed a recipe or two.  One of those recipes, unfortunately, was the beef wellington.  I'm not much of a cook, so when it said bake at 200 for 15 minutes, I thought, "Huh, maybe it's supposed to be fairly rare."  Yeah, not so much.  After a bit of searching (I love Google), I realized my error and bumped the temperature up.  I also cooked it a bit longer, though I think that might have been a mistake.  The crust became hard and brittle and broke when I cut into it.  I will definitely try beef wellington again, but using a different recipe/cookbook. I will also try a better cut of beef.  I used a chuck roast, and I think it might have been entirely too tough. But it still tasted good!

Welsh Onion Cake
7 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced in thin rounds
3 medium onions, finely chopped
4 oz butter
Salt/pepper

Preheat oven to 300F.

Dry potato slices on a towel.  Grease cake pan and lay potatoes and onions in layers, beginning and ending with a layer of potatoes.  Dot each layer with butter and salt/pepper.  Dot top layer with 1 oz of butter.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours.  Remove foil for last half hour so cake has a chance to brown.

Turn the cake out onto an oven-proof serving dish and place under broiler for a couple minutes before serving.

Serves 6

*Update: I realized why I had so much trouble with the Beef Wellington. The piece of meat I used was way too large.*

Beans on Toast

For my first chronicled culinary exploration, I chose something simple, but tasty.  I'm a huge fan of British film, music, and television, and on many occasions, there are references to beans and toast.  As I'm sure most Americans do, I pictured something along the lines of Busch's Baked Beans on a slice of bread.  After doing a bit of research, I found that the beans in Beans on Toast are actually in tomato sauce and not sweet like the baked beans we normally think of.

I started my search for the recommended beans for Beans on Toast and stumbled across them at Publix.  I picked up a couple cans of Heinz Vegetarian Beans. When I got home from work, I was famished and didn't have time to make something too involved.  I opened the cupboard to get a can of soup, and lo and behold, there sat the beans.  So I popped them in a pan and got them nice and toasty.  Then I toasted some bread and fried up an egg.  I didn't know what to expect, but it was darn good.  Beans on Toast has officially made it into my culinary repertoire.