Stare into this swirling spiral vortex. That and a good hot cup of chamomile tea will make you very sleepy.
I love this bundt cake pan. It is a Nordic Ware pan from their Heritage Collection. I bought mine on Amazon here. (Full disclosure: Jeff Bezos and I are not close and Amazon doesn’t send me checks. Damn!)
When I was a little girl, I used to love the classic (and pretty benign) horror movies on TV. When I use this pan, it always reminds me of one of those films where the evil genius (maybe Karloff) urges the naive sweet young thing to stare deeply into the swirling vortex. It was the first time I had heard of hypnosis. I remember trying to stare into one of those little sticks with a swirling top (pinwheels) to see if I could be hypnotized. (I couldn’t but, believe me, I gave it a good try. Color me wild.)
Enough about the pan. This Cider and Five-Spice cake is very good and very unusual. It is a pungent spice cake. It is decidedly low on the sweetness meter. It has a good punch of ginger flavor and it incorporates a couple teaspoons of Chinese five-spice powder and one cup of cider. My French neighbor recommended a cider made with apples that is popular in Brittany and I used that for the cider in this recipe. Incidentally, I used a cider I bought at Trader Joe’s called Dan Armor. Served really cold, the cider also makes a refreshing and low-alcohol (5%) summer drink.
Here is the recipe.
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This recipe was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe. You can find the original recipe here.
