Everybody Likes Sandwiches » st. patrick’s day

baking with booze: scotch whiskey oat cake

kickpleat — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:49:34 +0000

I’m no stranger to baking with booze. I’ve used a red dark ale in cake and some Jack Daniels in a batch of vegan chocolate cupcakes. But I’ve never poured a decent, peaty-tasting scotch into something I was going to throw into the oven. I’m sure some would cry heresy and a waste of good booze. Especially when in this hella-expensive booze province a bottle of mid-range scotch comes to a whopping $60.

But trust me, the scotch gives this cake a decided earthiness that helps to cut the sweetness (and next time I bake this, I’ll cut down the sugar a bit more to just a half cup). There’s steel cut oats in here too which add texture but doesn’t weigh this cake down. In fact, despite the oats and the whole wheat flour additions, this cake is light and springy and the perfect thing to eat with a spot of tea. This cake is also perfect for breakfast – it must be the oats that makes this highly suitable to early morning snacking.

This cake can be made in 2 loaf pans, but I wanted the cake to bake in a round pan. Unfortunately, I only have one 8″ pan and I still had batter left over, so the rest went into a prepped loaf tin. It worked out perfectly, so I suggest splitting the batter between 2 loaf tins to make things easier.

elsewhere: Pop on over to Poppytalk and take a peek at my latest garage sale find along with a recipe for a super simple frozen yogurt.

scotch whiskey oat cake
1 c steel cut oats
1 1/3 c buttermilk
1 c all-purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c or 3/4 c sugar, depending on your taste
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t nutmeg
1 t cardamom
3/4 c roasted walnut oil (or vegetable oil)
1 large egg
1 c dried cranberries
1/3 c scotch whiskey
2 T butter, melted
coarse sugar for sprinkling over top

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a medium sized bowl, pour the buttermilk over the steel cut oats and let them sit for 30 minutes. If you’ve got old oats, they may need to sit longer – try overnight! Prep 2 loaf pans, or 1 8″ cake pan plus 1 loaf pan, by buttering each pan and dusting with flour.

Meanwhile mix together the flours and sugar, along with the baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt. Beat the egg into the steel cut oat and buttermilk mixture and pour into the dry mix along with the oil. Stir to combine, and add in the cranberries and the whiskey. Pour into prepared pans, drizzle with melted butter and sprinkle with a handful of raw sugar. Bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester inserted comes out dry. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing pan – cool on a wire rack.

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irish soda bread with fennel & cinnamon

kickpleat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Heavy, dense, tasteless, dry. Often these are words used to describe the brick-of-a-loaf also known as Irish soda bread. Its bad rap had me wary but I overcame it when I saw Buff Chickpea’s lovely looking loaf. The fact that it looked like a perfect vehicle for butter had me sold.

This bread is a quick bread, meaning there’s no yeast to bother with. It’s a snap to put together…if you can make a biscuit or a scone, this is no different. Plus, there are no eggs, so if you sub in the required non-dairies, you’ve got a great vegan bread. Normally, Irish soda bread is made with caraway seeds, but I didn’t have any on hand and decided to try fennel seeds instead. Definitely, a great choice. Along with the cinnamon, it made the bread super flavourful and definitely not bland or boring.

It is a dense bread, but I didn’t mind that one bit, and I definitely did not find this bread too dry. It was great smeared with cold butter the same day and it was even more wonderful toasted the following day. A dab of blackberry jam and a strong cup of coffee, this bread made for a filling breakfast. I don’t think I’ll have to wait for next St. Patrick’s day to make this again.

irish soda bread with fennel & cinnamon

(adapted from Buff Chickpea)
1 c vanilla yogurt
1/3 c skim milk
1/3 c apple-cider vinegar
1 t vanilla
3 1/2 c all-purpose flour, plus more for surface and dusting
2 1/2 t kosher salt
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
4 T cold butter, cut into bits
1 c wheat bran
2 T fennel seeds, lightly crushed
2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 c raisins

1/2 c dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350F. In a small bowl, combine yogurt, milk, vanilla and apple cider and set aside to thicken. In a large bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add cold butter into the flour and use your hands to break it up until the mixture resembles coarse meal. With a wooden spoon, stir in wheat bran, fennel, cinnamon, and dried fruit.

Pour in milk/yogurt mixture and stir until the mixture starts to hold together into a ball. Dump the dough onto a floured surface and knead a few times. Pat into a dome-shaped lump and place onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or silpat. Sprinkle some flour on top and cut a cross into the loaf. Bake for about 1 hour or so, or until a cake tester inserted comes out clean. This is best eaten the same day…or toasted the next day.

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hide under a blanket of this: colcannon with leeks

kickpleat — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:48:00 +0000

Today kind of sucks. It’s grey outside and I feel sluggish. Spending the rest of the day under a heavy wool blanket pulled over my head is pretty tempting right now. Instead, I’ll write about this dish I made a couple of weeks ago. Just looking at it is almost enough to pull me out of the doldrums….almost.

Colcannon also known as bubble n’ squeak is pure comfort food…potatoes and cabbage and a nice amount of butter to make the lumps go down easy. I decided to play with the good ol’ Irish standby of Colcannon and its close relative Champ (which is potatoes mixed with chives or green onions) which have the onion-y bite that I love. For the onion-y bits, I used leeks instead seeing that it’s a good, solid winter vegetable and can be found cheap and plentiful this time of year in local markets. I also never peel potatoes because I love that extra texture (and nutrients!) from the skin. Plus, since I used red potatoes, the jackets make the dish extra pretty.

Now, this should be a side dish served alongside of some sausages or roast chicken. But not for me. I like a mound of this served in a bowl, no other supplements needed. Like I said before, this is comfort food and for me, eating this along while watching some trashy television (like ANTM, for instance) is like being huddled under a giant woolen blanket. It’s good company for the blahs.

colcannon with leeks
4 red skinned potatoes, cut into quarters
1/2 head of green cabbage, sliced
1 leek, (white and pale green parts only), cut into slices
1 c whole milk
4 T butter
salt & pepper

In a medium pot, boil up the potatoes. Meanwhile, combine milk, cabbage, leeks, half the butter, salt and pepper into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Cook until the cabbage is soft, about 15 minutes. When the potatoes are fork tender, drain well and add to the cabbage mixture. Mash with a potato masher, adding in remaining butter and more salt & pepper if necessary. Dim the lights, turn on the television and hunker down with a ol’ big bowl full.

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peasant fare: braised red cabbage

kickpleat — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:03:00 +0000

St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone and normally I don’t do much for the holiday. I’m not Irish nor do I fancy to drink gut-rot green beer. However, I am a fan of cabbage and hey, isn’t that something that ties my own Eastern European peasant roots with the Irish? Usually I stick with eating cabbage raw or lightly stir-fried but since it’s March and still a bit rainy, I decided that braising some cabbage would be the way to go.

My dad was always a big cheerleader for cabbage. There were only a few things he would cook and everything was always based on his Lithuanian ancestry: potato pancakes, kugelis (a potato style baked pudding) and cabbage. When my dad would be at the stove, inside the huge stock pot was a mess of shredded cabbage, bacon, chopped apples and some top secret liquids that made everything tangy and sweet and pretty damn tasty. This isn’t my dad’s recipe, but it’s pretty close, I think. I didn’t add any apples, but I know from experience that they’d go well in this dish. It’s great to eat immediately (and I’ve been known to drink the tangy cabbage liquids with a spoon right from the cooking pot) but it also gets better with age. If you want to make this vegetarian, substitute vegetable broth and add in some smoked paprika to replicate the smoky taste from the bacon.

braised red cabbage
1 head red cabbage, shredded
5 slices of bacon, diced
1 onion, sliced thin
3 T brown sugar
3 T dijon mustard
1/3 c apple cider vinegar
2 c chicken broth

1. In a large dutch oven, fry bacon until crispy. Add in onion and fry until wilted and soft. Add in shredded cabbage and toss the mixture around so that the cabbage picks up all those good bacony juices.

2. Add in the brown sugar and mustard and stir well. Add in the cider vinegar to help deglaze the pot and then add in the chicken broth and cover the dish. Simmer for about 1 hour.

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