Blue Cayenne

This Lemon Raspberry Cornmeal Cake is a sweet little dessert.

It’s easy to prepare and I can personally attest to the fact that it is delicious any time of the day.  It’s pretty, too, with tart jewel-red raspberries suspended in the pale yellow cake.

It’s raspberry season here in California (May-November) and raspberries are reasonably priced in your market. So, this little cake is an economical dessert, too. 

Raspberries, by the way, are an aggregate fruit. Each berry is actually made up of about 100 little fruits. (Interesting, right?)

Here’s a bit of history. Raspberries, native to North America and Asia Minor, have been consumed for a very long time. Europeans were enjoying raspberries as early as the 4th Century according to historians and, here in North America, Native Americans were consuming the berries when the colonists arrived.  Interestingly, in addition to being a food, raspberries have had wide usage over the ages– as a color in Medieval illuminated manuscripts, as a vinegar to alleviate fevers and coughs, as a potion to tame bewitched horses. They even made their way into ancient mythology where Zeus’ nursemaid, Ida, pricked her fingers on an (originally white) raspberry bush and the raspberries were stained red for eternity. 

This Lemon Raspberry Cornmeal Cake is a Yossy Arefi recipe from The New York Times.  You can find the original recipe here.  Arefi is also the author of two inspired cookbooks, Sweeter Off The Vine and Snacking Cakes. Both books are available at your local bookstore and through Amazon. Both cookbooks have a special place in my cookbook collection and I bake from them often. 

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Joyce.

She’s smart, kind, talented, elegant–all the things I want to be if I ever grow up.

Joyce and I used to work together. Serendipitously, her daughter was a student in one of my classes: Smart. Kind. Talented. Elegant. (It runs in the family.)

Now, in our respective retirements, our friendship has grown stronger. We’ve gotten each other through some great moments and some tough times.

To my delight, Joyce often shows up at my door bearing gifts–a delicate bouquet of sweet peas, a pitcher of fresh lemonade, special tiny socks to protect the tender (bee sting-prone) toes of Blue Cayenne’s Chief Quality Officer, Sweet Juliet.

Last week, it was a bounty from her garden. There on my doorstep was a Japanese eggplant, a bucket of perfect amber-colored (and red) grape tomatoes, and French breakfast radishes.

French breakfast radishes!

Damn.

Those have been on my bucket list forever.  (Cue in foodie bliss.)

But, then came the dilemma. What recipe was worthy of the delicate beauty and gentle bite of these home-grown treasures?

In the end, I decided to go with the classic French take on this type of radish: raw, fine fine butter, coarse-flaked Maldon salt.

The verdict? Delicieux.

Now, if I can just get Juliet to wear those sweet little socks.

What ever happened to those wonderful Swedish smorgasbord restaurants? 

They were having a moment when I was a younger cook. I remember the beautiful buffets of delicious delicacies. I still crave the savory breads.

So it was with great anticipation and a good bit of nostalgia that I took my first taste of this Buttermilk-Molasses Quick Bread from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking With Dorie cookbook. (Available at your local bookstore and on Amazon here.)  This particular recipe is a Greenspan adaptation of a recipe she enjoyed at the Ett Hem Guesthouse in Stockholm.

Perfect!

The bread was absolutely superb with caraway, anise and fennel spices all competing for my taste buds’ attention and only the barest hint of molasses-driven sweetness. 

You can enjoy using this bread to make a buffet of beautiful little open-faced sandwiches or serving it as a breakfast bread. 

For my petite sandwiches, I used butter or cream cheese as the spread on my bread. As you can see from the photograph, I decorated the sandwiches with everything from marmalade to strawberries to thin slices of avocado dusted with cayenne pepper.  Use whatever catches your fancy. Food scientists have long told us that we “eat with our eyes.” These beautiful little sandwiches certainly bear that out. No wonder that Swedish smorgasbords are hours-long affairs!

Valsmakande (tasty!), as the Swedes would say.