Baking with Flavor: Recipe for Semolina Spice Cake

The crumb structure in Semolina Spice Cake resembles tiny interlaced flowers. Zoom into the image and see if you can find a few cakey flower heads. The center of the these crumbs looks like a circle of air—just like the flowers on the dessert plate.

Semolina cake soaked in sweet syrup tastes divine, but an equally delicious and less sugary alternative exists. A pastry base that accommodates complementary spice mixtures, in combination with flavor extracts and citrus zest, gets the job done. Want to know a secret? You don't have to be a professional pastry chef to master baking with flavor.

The building blocks for the structure of a healthy and tasty semolina cake are: semolina flour, coconut sugar, lowfat yogurt, eggs, all-purpose flour, vegetable oil, baking soda, baking powder and sea salt. Extracts, citrus zest and warm spice mixtures shape flavor. This is where you can be fearlessly creative and try something new.

The more you bake the more you understand the character of ingredients separately and in combination. This builds confidence and an unquantifiable aspect—a baker's personal essence. Have you ever tasted a cookie baked by two different people using the same recipe and noticed they were similar yet distinct? You can taste the je ne sais quoi.

Baking with flavor happens when you immerse all of your senses in the process. Focus on what you see, smell, touch, hear and taste along the way. Semolina Spice Cake is delicious and inspiring to make. Be sure to share the recipe with friends and family so they can put their own spin on a healthy cake that quickly disappears after it's made.

Semolina Spice Cake
Recipe by Michelle Krell Kydd
Serves nine people

Ingredients

• 1 cup semolina flour 
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 
• ½ cup coconut sugar 
• 1½ cup of plain 1% fat yogurt (nonfat is fine)
• 1 medium organic lemon (zest only)
• ½ cup neutral vegetable with a high smoke point (avocado oil or canola)
• 3 large eggs at room temperature 
• 1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon Hashems Ka’ak Spice
• ½ teaspoon baking soda 
• 1 teaspoon baking powder 
• ½ teaspoon sea salt 

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
• Prep an 8x8 non-stick baking pan with vegetable oil and set aside. 
• Combine the lemon zest and yogurt in a bowl and let it rest for 15 minutes. 
• Measure and combine semolina flour, all-purpose flour, Ka’ak Spice, baking soda and sea salt into a large mixing bowl. Mix everything together using a silicone spatula. 
• Beat eggs and vanilla in a medium sized mixing bowl using a fork. Add coconut sugar and combine until the sugar is completely dissolved. 
• Add vegetable oil and lemon infused yogurt to the egg mixture and incorporate using a silicone spatula. 
• Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth (no lumps).
• Pour the batter into the pan and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Test for doneness by using a toothpick inserted in the center of the pan (it's done when the toothpick comes out clean). 
• Allow the cake to cool for 30 minutes. 
• Slice into nine pieces using two vertical and two horizontal cuts. 
• Serve with a side of maple syrup sweetened yogurt (the same yogurt you used to make the cake) or a pair of Medjool dates and fresh walnuts. 
• Store the cake in a sealed container in the refrigerator. This cake also freezes well.

Notes:

This recipe can be modified with your favorite warm spice blend. Chinese Five Spice, Gingerbread Spice, Apple Pie Spice, Pumpkin Pie Spice, etc. These require less than 1 tbsp+ 1 tsp of your spice blend of choice. Use 1 tbsp and refrigerate the cake for 24 hours. Citrus zest isn’t necessary, though a tablespoon of orange zest would be nice with Gingerbread Spice as this would resemble lebkuchen.

Ka’ak Spice Mix contains anise, cloves, cinnamon, mahlab, sesame seeds and black caraway. Grind the spice mix in a coffee grinder to ensure uniform texture and release flavor if the blend appears slightly coarse or has whole seeds in it.

The anise in Ka’ak Spice Mix has a sweet aftertaste so this spice mix is ideal for flavoring semolina cake that doesn't require the addition of sugar syrup. Extra vanilla extract in the recipe balances the anise so the overall effect is cakey. (The combination of anise, vanilla and lemon smells like bakeries I remember from childhood).

Oil-based semolina cakes are moist and have a spongier quality of density than cakes made with unbleached all-purpose flour (you can see it in the structure and separation of the crumb). The way semolina cake melts in the mouth increases retronasal olfaction (the intersection of smell and taste that produces flavor at the back of the mouth). Pour a tablespoon of warm maple syrup over a freshly baked slice and take a bite. Notice the mouthfeel (texture) and how this shapes flavor perception.

Feel free to try other warm spice mixtures (e.g. gingerbread, pumpkin pie, apple pie) and experimenting with complementary citrus flavors and extracts. Floral waters like rosewater and orange blossom water can be used like extracts. The possibilities are endless.

Glass Petal Smoke developed a cookie recipe using Hashems Ka'ak Spice. You can find it here. 

Using Food Grade Essential Oils in Baking

When it comes to baking with food grade essential oils there is little in the way of guidance for the uninitiated. Food grade essential oils are highly concentrated. Though used sparingly they are capable of producing deeply nuanced effects that are as memorable as they are delicious. Food grade absolutes are also available to bakers, but these are even more concentrated than food grade essential oils. Confused? Glass Petal Smoke will clear things up so you can expand your flavor horizons in time for the holidays.

Food grade essential oils are not new to the market. Boyajian and LorAnn meet traditional flavor needs, which include nature-identical flavors. Williams Sonoma offers a curated selection of Mandy Aftel's "Chef's Essences" which include; nutmeg, basil, black pepper, ginger, and yuzu food grade essential oils. Aftel, who single-handedly started the trend in natural perfumery, was selling food grade essential oils to chefs before flavor materials were available for purchase on Aftelier.com. Once she added these flavor materials to her palette of offerings molecular gastronomists and mixologists couldn't resist using them. The effect on consumers familiar with these types of flavorants was no different.

Food grade essential oils and absolutes are highly concentrated. If they aren't properly diluted they can erode the lining of the esophagus and damage tooth enamel. Understanding how to use them in a recipe is both an exercise in flavor creation and safety. How can something safely used in dilution be problematic at full strength? Concentrated essential oils are capable of behaving as solvents—which is why perfume and flavor extracts are diluted in alcohol or food grade glycerin. Want a more tangible example? Consider orange oil cleaners sold in supermarkets and health food stores. They don't cut through grease because they are "natural"; concentrated essential oil of orange cuts through grease because solvents break things down. This is not meant to engender fear of using food grade essential oils; it is meant to inform a common sense approach to proper dosing of flavorants while instilling a healthy respect for chemistry. 

If you are going to add "food grade" essential oils to your recipes use them in the same dilution as store bought flavor extracts, which are dosed between one and three percent. A one percent dilution is one drop of "food grade" essential oil to 100 drops of grain alcohol. A three percent dilution is three drops of "food grade" essential oil to 100 drops of grain alcohol. Once you prepare a diluted form of the food grade essential oil you can use it in your recipe as you would any store bought extract; by the teaspoonful. Be patient with yourself and your recipes as you will be learning to add flavor in a whole new way.

Food grade essential oils can also be directly added to fats in a recipe. This method can be applied once you have a handle on working with food grade essential oils diluted in alcohol. Butter is an ideal medium for food grade essential oils as creaming butter allows for the even distribution of flavor. A good range for adding food grade essential oils to butter is 1-3 drops of food grade essential oil to recipes calling for one quarter to one cup of butter (4 tablespoons - 2 sticks). Some essential oils, like lime and bergamot, can be used with a heavier hand (4 - 8 drops) because they are more volatile, (which is why they are categorized as top notes in perfumery). Anything more than these prescribed amounts and you might wind up with pastry that tastes like air freshener.

Notice the repeated specification of "food grade" essential oils in this post? Essential oils that are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the FDA (section 582.20 of the FDA code) are not essential oils sold in health food stores for aromatherapy and scenting the skin, (even if they are labeled as "natural"). If you are going to use "food grade" essential oils check the FDA list regularly and make sure that the food grade essential oil you plan on purchasing is on the GRAS list. Organic "food grade" essential oils are highly recommended. Concentrated absolutes (stronger than essential oils) sold as essences for flavor application may contain trace amounts of hexane, a solvent used in the aroma extraction process that is a known neurotoxin. CO₂ extracted absolutes (made using Supercritical carbon dioxide) are a better choice for flavor application as the extraction process allows the character of the raw material to come though in all its subtleties. Supercritical carbon dioxide is safe and kind to the environment so your purchasing choice respects the planet and palates of those who eat your pastry.

Feel like expanding your flavor horizons using food grade essential oils? Glass Petal Smoke has three cookie recipes that are perfect for the holiday season; Frankincense Shortbread, Orange Blossom Crumiri, and Bergamot Crumiri. The dough base in all of these cookie recipes can be tweaked to accommodate flavors that inspire your imagination. All you have to do is make adjustments where existing citrus zest, extracts and food grade essential oils are used. P.S. If you prefer to go gluten-free you can use the pastry base in Glass Petal Smoke's Persian Shortbread recipe and tweak for flavor.

Notes:
When you work with food grade essential oils make sure to purchase disposable plastic pipettes. Bottles with built-in droppers can get clogged and don't allow you to measure with precision. Some food grade essential oils don't come in dropper bottles so you'll need disposable pipettes. Glass droppers can be used if they are dedicated to a single flavor material only and are cleaned thoroughly after use. 

Visit Aftelier.com for exclusive Chef's Essences that aren't available on the Williams Sonoma website. 

Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils, a cookbook by Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson, is out of print. The book contains sweet and savory recipes that include food grade essential oils. Glass Petal Smoke recommends buying a used copy for reference as it is co-authored by a perfumer and a chef.

Painting of Laboratorio by Remedios Varo. 

Creating tinctures is another way to add flavor to food. Herbalists have used this type of essence creation for centuries as alcohol extracts the aromatic and medicinal aspects of tinctured material. If you've made vanilla extract you have dabbled in tincturing. Want to know more about tincturing? Stay tuned. That's a future flavor post on Glass Petal Smoke. 

The Savor of Memory: Butter Tarts

 
Butter tart; the sound of the two words strung together are pure poetry. Say the name once and the alliterative “r”s wrapped at their ends make the lips purse slightly, revealing a mouth that looks like a child’s begging for a morsel. Say the name twice and the appetite instantly registers the delectable thought of taste buds taking a bath in sweet butter with a flourish of perfectly flaked crust.

I first encountered butter tarts on a trip to Parry Sound in Ontario, Canada. My husband and I were staying at a family cottage on Crane Lake when our hostess, Kathy Fenwick, pulled out a tray of 24 miniature butter tarts she purchased at a local Walmart. Her eyes twinkled with excitement as she broke the seal, “They don’t have these stateside. I can only get them when we’re in Canada because they're a local kind of thing. You really ought to try one.”

The petite butter tarts were arranged in six rows of four and resembled a collection of defective pecan tarts that didn’t get the proper smattering of crushed nuts somewhere along the Walmart conveyor belt line. A caramel-colored filling gave each pastry a generic and less than seemly appearance. Something in my mind could not reconcile the words “Walmart” and “local”, so I did not partake. That changed the next day and was prompted by a Crane Lake remembrance ceremony for Tom Horsman, a family friend who died in 2010.

The water was particularly placid on the day four boats gathered at Mr. Horsman’s favorite Crane Lake fishing spot. Many in attendance had recently lost loved ones (all fishing enthusiasts) and as a family friend eulogized, created an “overlap of souls” in our presence. Tom's daughter Cynthia cast her father's fishing rod with his favorite lure into the lake and drew it back as memories and tears were shared. We were in the boat with Aunt Kathy when she sent a miniature butter tart sailing on the surface of the lake adorned with a few yellow mums

Aunt Kathy’s thoughtful gesture was inspired by the fact that Tom Horsman loved butter tarts and couldn’t wait to eat them when he and his family arrived at their lakeside cottage. The poignancy stuck, as did a curiosity for butter tarts. I tried Walmart’s version when we got back to the cottage. It was good, but the thought of finding the real thing and uncovering its history was even better.

The next day my husband, Kathy and Sally Lake (the aforementioned eulogist and serious butter tart enthusiast) powered up the boat, arrived at the dock and made a beeline for the car. We drove into town and parked a few steps away from the Country Gourmet Deli, Bakery and Café on James Street. There was a giant wooden moose at the front door and from a distance it didn't seem like there was anything particularly compelling about their offerings. When you stepped inside and arrived at the dessert case everything changed.

Gone was the commercial precision of bakery chains where each category of pastry looks so perfect the notion of human hands being involved simply never crosses the mind. Each offering at the Gourmet Deli, Bakery and Café had a designated shape that was noticeably handmade. The tarts and cookies were marked by a familiar sandy hue that typifies all-purpose flour used by home bakers. The names of each pastry were handwritten in black script on white rectangles of paper; some were legible, some were a little hard to read because the black ink bled through the paper. This was no Walmart.

Gourmet Deli, Bakery and Café offers a variety butter tarts including regular, raisin, pecan and chocolate pecan. Each tart is hand-crimped and resembles a flower. The center has a slightly hardened glaze that conceals the mark of butter tart excellence; a buttery sweet syrup filling that rushes out to meet an eagerly held spoon (or mouth when there is a native Canadian on the other end; some children and adults have mastered the art of eating a butter tart this way despite the fact that the ambrosial goodness in the center has a tendency to run down one's chin). Canadian writer and etymologist Bill Casselman refers to Canadian butter tarts as the "northern nectar of the oven" which is the best description I've come across.

Butter tarts are unique to Canadian foodways, but one cannot discount the influence of immigrants to the country; particularly the Scottish and their Ecclefechan butter tart. According to Sheldon Posen, curator for Canadian Folklife, Ethnology, Cultural Studies at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, "No one else has a butter tart. There are several relatives (or some would say, ancestors) usually cited, such as treacle tart (England), pecan pie (Southern U.S.), black bottom pie (Mennonite), sugar pie (French Canada). But all of these use sweet syrupy bases (molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup) or rely for their identity on additions (pecans). Granted, most have butter in them, but that is not their defining feature. The classic Canadian butter tart uses creamed butter and sugar as its base."

The annual Brampton Fall Fair has run a butter tart competition for decades and competition is fierce. So are the politics regarding what a "true" butter tart is. (The one I ate from Gourmet Deli, Bakery and Café included a touch of maple syrup in the center that may be scoffed at by purists.) The Sweet Oven Inc. in Barrie, Ontario offers 20 varieties of butter tarts, and they reside in the area where the original recipe for butter tarts was published in The Women’s Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital Cookbook in 1900.)  

Toronto Star food writer Marion Kane, writer Max Burns and artist Charles Pachter were interviewed in 1991 by CBC radio and shared their opinions regarding the pedigree and history of butter tarts. All agreed that the mark of a great butter tart is a slightly runny center. I side with all of them. My only regret is that it will be at least a year until I'm in cottage country again. I'll have to dream about butter tarts for now. Thanks Tom Horsman.

Notes:

Tom Kydd (my father-in-law) and Tom Horsman were best buddies on Crane Lake and knew each other since childhood. Both passed away within months of each other in 2010. My father, Paul Krell, died a year before Tom Kydd did and was an avid fisherman himself. Tom Kydd and my father both served in the U.S. army during the Korean conflict. Dad was in the first division and was stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany. Coincidentally, my father-in-law was in the tenth division which replaced the first division after they had left. Whether she knew it or not, Sally Lake's comment regarding the overlapping of souls was a part of the earthly spectrum of life for both.

The Country Gourmet Bakery Cafe is located at 65 James Street, Parry Sound ON P2A 1T6. Phone: (705) 746-5907.

The New York Times published a recipe for Butter Tarts a few years after this article was published. It's worth making. 

The photograph of Cynthia's hands with father Tom Horsman's favorite fishing lure taken by Ted Steeble. All rights reserved.

The photograph of  "The Two Toms" taken by A.J. Kydd. All rights reserved.

Additional photographs taken by Michelle Krell Kydd. All rights reserved.

A Taste of Winter: Blue Corn Maiden Bread

The Hopi myth of The Blue Corn Maiden parallels that of the Greek tale of Persephone. In both traditions a woman is loved by a male figure who represents the transformational power of darkness. Fall and winter seasons transpire when the women are in the exclusive company of their lovers. Spring and summer return when the women are reunited with family and friends. Glass Petal Smoke developed the recipe for Blue Corn Maiden Bread to honor the period of creative hibernation that winter represents.  Keep your belly full and your hearth warm; soon the first crocus will bloom and you'll be counting spring flowers.

Blue Corn Maiden Bread

Recipe by Michelle Krell Kydd

Serves 9-12

Ingredients:

·        1 cup blue cornmeal

·        1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

·        ½ cup coconut sugar

·        1 tbsp. baking powder

·        ½ tsp. non-iodized sea salt

·        ½ cup extra virgin olive oil (the fruitier, the better)

·        ⅔ cup low-fat, sodium-free buttermilk

·        2 omega-3 eggs

Instructions:

·        Preheat oven to 400°.

·        Combine cornmeal, pastry flour, palm sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl.

·        In another bowl whisk buttermilk and olive oil.

·        In a separate bowl beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are thoroughly combined.

·        Add eggs to the buttermilk and olive oil mixture and mix well.

·        Gently combine wet ingredients to dry ingredients.

·        Spray an 8x8 baking pan with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the dish, and move slightly from side to side to ensure even distribution of the batter.

·        Bake for 20 minutes. Before removing from the oven, test with a toothpick in the center of the pan. The toothpick will come out clean when it is done.

·        Allow to cool before cutting and refrigerate what doesn't disappear (which this cornbread has a habit of doing).

 Flavor Notes:

·        Blue cornmeal contains less starch and more protein than yellow cornmeal. It also has a sweeter and nuttier flavor than yellow or white cornmeal.

·        Pastry flour contributes to the lighter density of this healthy cornbread. If you don’t have access to it you may substitute unbleached all-purpose flour.

·        Evaporated palm sugar is less sweet than table sugar and has natural caramel notes. It is outstanding when used to sweeten coffee or oatmeal as the flavor profiles complement each other. The brand recommended is also sulfite-free, unlike traditional palm sugars on the market.

·        Extra virgin olive oil combined with buttermilk creates a moist and addictive crumb in this recipe (translation: you won't miss the butter). The short baking time also preserves the flavor of the olive oil. Feel free to experiment with high quality extra virgin olive oils that are pressed with citrus peel or infused with a touch of hot pepper.

·        There is less saturated fat in this recipe than there is in traditional cornbread. To turn it into cake, just add one or two teaspoons of vanilla and a warm spice like cinnamon. Serve with a dollop of plain, non-fat Greek-style yogurt.

Notes: 
Glass Petal Smoke's recipe for Blue Corn Maiden Bread is a healthier, re-jiggered version of  Hungry Mouse's "Buttermilk Cornbread". The flavor notes in this post illustrate the how these changes affect taste.

You don't have to be a child to appreciate "How Many Days Until Spring," a home school game designed by blogger Cindy Giron.

Helen Hardin is the Taos artist who painted the image of the Blue Corn Maiden used to accompany this post. Though she is no longer living, her vibrant paintings can be found for sale here. Her story, though somewhat tragic and heartbreaking (she struggled spiritually with a mixed Anglo-American Indian heritage and suffered from breast cancer) is thoroughly human.