All posts tagged milk

Hot (!) Spiced Milk

02.12.12 // Comments:20

I started making this milk within the last few weeks, inspired by the tumeric milk posted over at the beautiful Journey Kitchen. Similar to a hot chocolate my friend Carrie makes (milk + cocoa powder + sweetener + heat = bam!), it’s nothing complicated or confusing. It’s hot and soothing—pure comfort when paired with a big down comforter and some online TV, especially when it’s as cold as it has been around here lately. And, because of the powerful spices, spiced milk is actually really beneficial for your health, too:

First, there’s tumeric, the bright yellow spice that colors mustard and flavors curry. Commonly used in both Chinese and Indian ancient systems of medicine, tumeric is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory spices out there, the same ingredient I heard physicians wax eloquent about at a CCFA symposium I attended with my friend Alicia a few years ago. Because inflammation is connected to so many physical ailments, from Crohn’s to eczema to heart disease, foods that work against inflammation are like nutritional powerhouses, ingredients I want to work into my diet as much as possible.

There are also ginger and cardamom, long considered beneficial for digestion; cinnamon, which helps regulate blood sugar; cayenne, aid to the circulatory system, among other things; and cloves, another anti-inflammatory and also anti-bacterial spice. I add raw honey for taste, but I could just as easily be adding that for the nutritional benefits as well, as raw honey has anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties.

But all that aside, trust me when I say the health benefits are just icing on the cake for this drink, which is at once soothing and stimulating, spicy and sweet. Going down your throat, it burns just slightly (and of course, you could adjust the spices to your liking if you’re less tolerant of the kick of cayenne) and feels like a kicked-up version of chai tea or some really amazing steamed milk.

More than anything though, to me, it’s been one of a hundred comforts I’ve been tasting over the last few days, I really believe brought to me by the Great Comforter, the one to whom I could barely hang on at the beginning of this month. There have been long talks with Tim, encouraging Bible studies with friends, peaceful nights of sleep, random free tickets to the symphony, the ability to think clearly enough to remember how many blessings I’ve been given. My friend Joanna, in a recent email, told me that the darkest times in our lives are also times covered by God’s love and grace to pull us out of them, and she’s right. I’m tasting that these days, and it is good.

You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. (Job 10:12 NIV)
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Comments:20 Click here to comment! Categories: beverages

Satsuma Layer Cake

12.06.11 // Comments:22

So listen, should you ever find yourself in possession of 15 pounds of satsumas, say because of a killer sale last Friday at Whole Foods, a sale you’d been anticipating for days, Googling recipes and wondering about things like satsuma ice cream or satsuma salad or satsuma marmalade or jam, and you’d teamed up with your brother-in-law’s one box in order to bring your combined total up to three, knowing the store gives a fourth box free, and so you’d wandered out Friday night, box and box and box of tiny oranges in your cart, here is what you should do:

To start, give some away. After all, it’s Christmastime, the season of celebrating what is the Greatest Gift, so why not extend the December 25 presents all month long? It will make you feel happy and joyful, in the same way that celebrating your first Christmas with your new husband tends to do, and, combined with your every-other-day Advent calendar and newly purchased Fraser fir and bright red pillows on the sofa, this small act of giving unexpected gifts, even little ones like boxes of oranges, will feel like this special tradition, this special Christmas memory between the two of you.

Then, with the box you have leftover, come home, set your oranges on the counter, and eat them, remembering how much you love their easy peels and sweet, sweet mandarin flavor. Have a satsuma when you get up in the morning or before bed at night. Take some in the car or in your lunch each day.

But before they’re all gone, and trust me, you’ll be glad you did this, save three or four and bake.

Bake this satsuma layer cake.

The idea for this cake came from a picture I saw on Flickr, one I cannot find today, of a tall cake, made up of three or four layers of white or yellow cake, sandwiched around thick, white frosting, with round rows of orange pieces all over the top. There was no recipe and no link for more info, but the image stuck with me: before we left for Whole Foods Friday night, I told Tim, I want to make a satsuma layer cake!

So Saturday afternoon, while Tim was building a buffet for our living room, using that mental image of the satsuma cake I’d seen, I set to work: I took round layers of moist yellow cake, made for my first time with a blend of unusual ingredients like white spelt flour and olive oil and yogurt, and I layered them with a simple, thinned-out cream cheese frosting infused with satsuma zest. Individual pieces of satsumas decorated the middle layer, and neat, round rows of them piled up on top.

When the cake was first finished, the layer with oranges looked like it had space between it, as if the fat slices of satsumas were holding up the cake. But within a few hours, everything cemented together, beautifully, perfectly, like a fancy bakery cake that was just the right sweetness and texture, with bursts of juicy orange in every bite.

We ate some Saturday night, after celebrating this Christmas month with a free showing of It’s a Wonderful Life put on by Nashville’s Wonderful Life Foundation, and Tim looked at me, and I kid you not, told me this was the best thing I’d made him in a while.

So if you don’t take my word on it, take his.

And then prepare to wish satsumas were on sale every week.

Satsuma Layer Cake
Makes one (3-layered, 9″) round cake

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup Sucanat (alternate: brown sugar), ground in a food processor
3/4 cup palm sugar (alternate: white sugar), ground in a food processor
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups white spelt flour (alternate: all-purpose flour)
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup yogurt
1/4 cup water

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 9″ round cake pans. (Confession: I still have my cake pans in Illinois, so I used two glass baking dishes that were round, and I sliced one cake in half horizontally to create three layers. Three cake pans would be ideal.)

In a large bowl, cream the butter, olive oil and sugars (i.e., Sucanat and palm sugar) together. Note that I ground my unprocessed sugars in a food processor ahead of time, just to get them a little more fine for the sake of the cake texture. Beat in the four eggs and vanilla.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

In a small bowl, combine milk, yogurt and water.

Add the flour mixture and the milk mixture alternately to the butter-sugar mix. Mix well. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake cakes for 30 to 40 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool before slicing.

When ready, spread cream cheese frosting between layers, adding satsuma pieces to the second layer. Top the cake with satsumas all the way around.

Cream Cheese Frosting
I was eyballing the sugar, flour and milk here, so my amounts aren’t exact–however, that may still be helpful as you can adjust to your tastes. Oh, and don’t panic if the mixture starts to look a little like cottage cheese, by the way. Mine did, but it was delicious.

Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
The zest of one satsuma orange
Organic powdered sugar, to taste
Milk, to desired consistency

Directions:
Combine ingredients in a bowl, adjusting sugar and milk until frosting is desired taste and consistency. You may also add a little water if you want to thin it out more.

Comments:22 Click here to comment! Categories: cake, desserts

The Best Pumpkin Bread You’ll Ever Have

10.26.10 // Comments:35

Remember what I said before about pumpkin being the kind of fall you could eat? Well, it’s still true—only, OK, listen: this hasn’t just been any fall.

This year in Chicago, fall’s gone above and beyond. Literally. Yesterday was the third day in a row where temps soared into the 70s. Yes, you read that right: 70s! In late October! While the trees are already ten shades of orange and red! I went somewhere last night and had to take my sweater off, that’s how warm I was. It’s the kind of thing people talk about wherever you go—church, the grocery store, chatting on the phone—as if, no matter what your feelings or indifference about this crazy gorgeous season that transitions from the long daylight of summer into the snow and frost of winter, one thing remains, at least this year, at least where I live: autumn’s got your attention.

loaf of the BEST pumpkin bread

I guess the same could be said of many things, from football to TV shows to the pleasure of reading a good book: the die-hard lovers will take the good and bad alike. They’ll cheer for their losing team. They’ll watch when no one else is. That’s like me and fall: rain or sun, cold or warm, thick and thin, I’m already sold. It’s many of us and pumpkin, especially this time of year, when we can have the pancakes and the muffins and the carving and the Jack O’ Lanterns. But just like it’s more fun to watch a winning team and just like some Octobers are easier to love than others, some pumpkin recipes are more impressive, more endearing, more oh-my-gosh good.

Like the best pumpkin bread you’ll ever have for example.

pumpkin squash bread

I am so excited about this pumpkin bread. To put it another way, if pumpkin is fall, this pumpkin bread is these last few days of October. It is weather warm enough to mean no jacket. It is driving home with the windows open. It is comfort and daylight and the best of summer with the best of the months after, where the lawns are covered with crunchy leaves and you just step outside and feel the sun on your face.

It doesn’t last long, despite yielding two loaves, but that’s only because it tastes so good and maybe because that’s how the best things go. And over the next few days, as the weather returns to low 40s (or lower! did someone say snow?), I’m going to hold onto the last few slices, savor them the way I do October, and enjoy every bite.