Espresso Cardamom Crumb Cakes

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the big bake sale that was being planned to raise funds for recovery efforts in West, Texas. I’m thrilled to report that it was a huge success, and we’re all so thankful to everyone who came out for the sale and made donations online. The total raised was over $19,000! As planned, I baked more of the Chocolate Chip and Cherry Scones, and I wanted to bring a second option to the sale as well. I was in a crumb cake kind of mood, and really, I’m always in the mood for a crumb topping. I found a great recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours for a Cardamom Crumb Cake that has orange zest and espresso powder in the cake itself and in the crumb topping. I had to try it. Since I was baking for a bake sale, I made individual, small cakes in paper molds that are actually made for crumb cakes or so says the label. The little cakes were easy to slip into cellophane bags. I doubled the recipe in the book, lined up the paper cups on a baking sheet, and started filling them until the batter was gone. I ended up with ten little cakes. These paper molds are sturdier than a regular cupcake liner, but they didn’t hold their shape perfectly. What was perfect was the aroma of cardamom, espresso, and orange zest as the cakes baked. 

You start with the most important part—the crumbs. Flour, chopped toasted walnuts, sugar, orange zest, instant espresso powder and I always add a little extra, and cardamom were combined in a bowl. Butter was then worked into the flour mixture but not overworked. Big pieces of crumb topping are always a good thing. For the cake, flour, baking powder, and salt were combined with more cardamom and espresso powder. More orange zest was mixed with sugar, and Dorie suggests rubbing the sugar and orange zest together with your hands. It releases the oil from the zest and ensures the zest will be well-distributed in the batter. The wet ingredients included melted and cooled butter, eggs, whole milk, brewed coffee, and vanilla extract, and they were whisked together and then stirred into the dry ingredients. I scooped the batter into the crumb cake cups and topped each cup with crumb mixture. My little cakes baked for about 20 minutes. 

I only kept one cake at home to taste and soon wished I kept at least two. But, luckily, it’ll be quick and easy to mix up the batter and crumbs again. In the book, Dorie includes a tip about baking extra crumbs on a baking sheet and using them to top pots de creme or ice cream. That’s one more reason I’ll be making this again soon. 

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Harissa and Yogurt Chicken with Persian-spiced Pilaf

Sometimes you’re in the mood for Indian food or Italian food or Chinese food. The other day, I was in the mood for Donna Hay food. I’m not sure that even makes sense to me, but I’ll attempt to explain it. Donna Hay recipes are always full of interesting flavors, and the preparations are never too fussy. That was the kind of meal I wanted to make for dinner. In her book, Off the Shelf, there’s a dish called Persian-spiced pilaf with harissa-seared beef, and there’s another one called harissa and yogurt baked chicken. I swapped the chicken for the beef, and that was my dinner plan. You can buy harissa in a jar, but I almost always seem to have some that I’ve made in the refrigerator. I started making it a couple of years ago and figured out it’s a perfect condiment for baked sweet potato fries which is why I usually have some on hand. I make the version from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, and it’s smoky and just spicy enough. So, the chicken was marinated in a mixture of yogurt, harissa, cumin, and mint, and that was sure to be a good thing. The Persian-spiced pilaf brought cinnamon, cardamom, and saffron to the meal, and the spice aromas filled the kitchen and lingered through the house.

Although this recipe doesn’t require the chicken to be marinated in advance, I always feel like chicken for any dish should be seasoned several hours or the day before cooking. But, I forgot this time. I mixed the marinade as suggested with cornstarch, yogurt, harissa, shredded mint, and cumin, and spread it over the chicken pieces. It sat while the oven pre-heated. There was no need to worry since these were big flavors, and they found their way into the chicken without any problems. As the chicken roasted, the pilaf was made with basmati rice steamed in vegetable stock with a cinnamon stick, three green cardamom pods, and a pinch of saffron. You know you’re in for a good meal when it smells as good as this one did as it cooked.

This delivered exactly what I was craving both in terms of preparing it and eating it. The yogurt kept the chicken tender, the spices worked their magic, and my work in making the meal mostly involved sitting down with a book while the chicken roasted and the rice steamed. And, when are you not in the mood for a meal like that?

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Sri Lankan Sweet Potatoes with Cardamom and Chiles

Sweet potatoes keep coming in our CSA bushels, and they are a welcome site. My favorite use of them is making oven fries seasoned with various chile powders. I’ve taken to dipping those oven fries into harissa instead of ketchup which brings another layer of smoky, spiciness. It’s not that I’ve gotten tired of that routine. In fact, I’ll probably roast some wedges and serve them exactly like that later this evening, but with last week’s sweet potatoes, I felt the need to try something new. I found this Sri Lankan dish in Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. It’s made with an aromatic and spicy mix of ingredients that accommodates sweet potatoes like it was meant to be.


First, peeled and chunked sweet potatoes were boiled with ground turmeric added to the water. Next, oil was heated in a large frying pan, and dried red chiles were added followed by whole cardamom pods and a cinnamon stick. Then, I ran into an issue with needing curry leaves. I can never find curry leaves, and I’ve considered growing my own plant, but a suggested substitution was holy basil or any basil. I do have Thai basil and opal basil and Genovese basil plants and they're all still doing well, so I used Thai basil here. About 20 leaves were added to the frying pan with the spices, and the amazing smell of those ingredients cooking together was a happy moment in the kitchen. It got even better when a big pile of sliced onions was added. After the onion slices browned, the drained sweet potato chunks were added and cooked for five minutes or so until tender but still holding their shape. Last, crushed red chiles, salt, and lime juice were added just before serving.

The alluring cooking smells translated into a very flavorful dish. The sweetness of the potatoes and the sweet savoriness of the browned onions were met with chile heat and warm spices. Of course I’ll continue to make my regular oven fries from time to time, but now there’s a new sweet potato dish to add to the rotation.

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Brown Sugar and Spiced Banana Ice Cream

I like experimenting with bold and interesting flavor combinations in all kinds of food, and doing so with ice cream sounded great to me. I received a review copy of Spice Dreams which is the second book from Sara Engram and Katie Luber about making good use of your spice rack. This book is devoted to ice creams, sorbets, and frozen yogurts made with sometimes adventurous flavor combinations. There are options like honey-mint ice cream with thyme and basil, chile-lemongrass ice cream, white chocolate-allspice ice cream, and chocolate ice cream with cumin and fennel. In the sorbet chapter, pink grapefruit-tarragon sorbet and chile-orange-chocolate sorbet both grabbed my attention. There are also suggestions for frozen sandwiches and sundaes like cardamom snickerdoodle ice cream sandwiches and peach waffle sundaes with cinnamon syrup. Last, there’s a chapter for sauces, syrups, and toppings to further gild the lily. Whipped cream with dried lemon zest is one I'll have to try. I flipped through the ice cream pages calling out options, and Kurt’s pick was brown sugar and spiced banana. I thought it was a great choice, and I readied the ice cream maker.

All of the ice cream and sorbet recipes in this book are written to make one to one and a half quarts. This one made one and a half. For that amount, only one banana was needed, and I thought there would have been at least two for some reason. The one banana was pureed with some milk, and then that mixture was added to more milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and salt in a saucepan. That was scalded and then used to temper four egg yolks. Eggs and the milk mixture went back into the saucepan and were heated until the custard was thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I always strain custards just in case there’s any unappetizing cooked egg in there, and then it was chilled in an ice water bath. Once cool, it was refrigerated for a few hours before being churned into rich and nicely flavored ice cream.

My first instinct was to caramelize some sugar on top of banana slices and serve the ice cream on top. Or, I thought a drizzle of caramel sauce might be nice over a big scoop. Wrong and wrong. This ice cream brings plenty to the palate just as it is. The one banana in the custard gave it lovely fruity flavor, and the warm flavors of the spices would have been muddied by caramel. I did slice a fresh banana and sat pieces in the cups as garnish, but anything more heavy-handed than that would have been out of place here. This is one to enjoy just as is or maybe in a cone, and now I wish I had some cones and more of this ice cream.

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