THE HAVE IT ALL CAKE- I can never decide which cake is my favorite, lemon, coconut, fruit cake or almond marzipan, so, as those particular flavors combine really well! I have all FOUR COMBINED and it’s a knock out invention.
INGREDIENTS:
3 cups whole grain or unbleached flour, sifting bran out, no-aluminum baking
powder, salt.
2
cups Succanet sugar or real sugar, 2 cubes room temp butter, or 1 cup cold
clarified butter which is called ghee, 4 or 5 eggs depending on size, a can of
coconut milk, extracts, spices, nuts, dried fruit.
SEPARATELY,
beforehand, SOAK your dried fruit (dates, cherries, not maraschino, the dried
holistic cherries,) in lemon juice to fluff them up, reconstitute them.
TO
START ANY CAKE batter, we cream a lot of butter and sugar, then add egg yolks.
For a big cake, cream 2 cubes butter, four yolks, (reserve whites to make a
meringue to help ‘lift’ the cake when batter is nearly assembled.)
USE
Succanet to taste (actually, this IS real sugar with all the vitamins), add
MULTIPLE extracts: coconut, almond and vanilla flavoring, plus plenty of orange
& lemon zest, beat until creamy.
Find
your liquids. To make a birthday type cake, I use canned or real coconut milk
as liquid in the cake. Throw some coconut extract into it to get the right amt
of coco flavor! Or, use orange juice or regular milk as liquids.
You've
got that big bowl of buttery stuff? Now SIFT the DRY INGREDIENTS into it 3/4
cup at a time.
We
are going to slowly add the dry stuff to the butter, ALTERNATING with the
liquid. You need 2-3 cups sifted whole grain flour (throw away the bran) or
Kamut flour (one of those wheat-free jobs) but mix first with 3 tsp aluminum
free baking powder. WHEN YOU put flour in, add a dose of flour stir gently,
followed by a dose of the liquids. You will now take the LIQUID THAT the DRIED
FRUIT WAS Re-CONSTITUTED IN, and add orange juice or milk or coconut milk
straight out of coconut or can. 99c store has coconut juice 45c a can! You will
keep going until there is no liquid or flour left. That's right. Dry first,
then wet. Add liquid, stir a little bit, never beating, always gently, then
another 3/4 cup dry ingred, then another dose of the juice/lemon/coconut milk
liquids, stirring until batter feels right. For a light cake, the minimum of
flour is used. If you feel it’s OK at 3 cups dry ingred, quit there. END on the
dry. Don't end on the wet. Last thing you add is the dry ingredients.
SEPARATELY,
BEAT EGGWHITES to peaks. Fold stiff whites into the cake batter, folding is a
very special motion done with a paddle, a rubber paddle, going next to the bowl
to lift the batter, turn it on top of the egg white, respectfully.
Then
put a lot of pecans in batter using a dusting of flour on them. THEN ADD DRIED
FRUIT/NUTS. Add all dried fruit that you soaked in lemon juice several hours
before but to do this, pat fruit dry, flour lightly) and fold into the batter.
We will have already used the juice they were soaked in, in the LIQUID section
of the cake.
BAKE:
Turn into buttered, floured or paper lined pans, put in very hot oven for the
initial 4 minutes. It solidifies from the heat. But this is too fast an oven to
cook the thing through so then you open door lightly, turn oven down to 325,
finish to deep golden brown color, turn off oven, remove gently. COOL.
FROST-
with a cube soft butter beaten with a lot of lemon rind, then a whole box of
powdered sugar added 1/3 at a time with lemon juice and lemon rind after each
dry addition. As we want several different but clear flavors, we will put real
almond paste between the layers, either the imported kind or homemade.
PRIMARY
FLAVOR WHEN YOU EAT THIS CAKE is LEMON. It’s the frosting, made of the REAL
THING. A box of powdered sugar, a cube of soft butter. Then add 1 tbsp lemon zest and all the nice, fresh
sour lemon juice you need to bring it to the right consistency. Set aside.
SECOND
FLAVOR is this chewy ALMOND PASTE between the layers: grind a ½ lb of blanched
almonds (cover wi. boiling water, one minute later peel) with some boiled sugar
syrup and almond extract. Make it several weeks before hand & let it sit in
pantry to ripen. This is used between the layers when you assemble it. The
third, LAST clear flavor is coconut. You will note lots of cocomilk in cake
itself, and coco extract, but you can’t make a dough really taste CLEARLY
coconutty So go crazy. Cover the entire exterior frosted cake with
shredded sweetened coconut.
GARNISH-
Soak dried pineapple in lemon juice, decorate outside of cake with these
pieces. Put garden flowers on top. In LA We have tropical Hawaiian flowers like
Ginger, Frangipani or gardenias are nice, make edible leaves of honey dipped
kiwi slices or use scented geranium leaves.
At
Xmas fill the same cake batter with unsulphured dried fruit, and these can be
the heavier customers, like dates, figs, raisins, or sweet ones like dried,
rum-soaked pineapple, real or candied or dried cherries, cranberries, apricots,
pecans, walnuts. I bake it in loaf shape, no frosting. I’m betting you could
wrap it in cheesecloth soaked in brandy and mail them to China, and when the
fruitcake gets given away to several thousand people who mail it to another
friend, it will come back in a thousand years and it would still be edible!
BACK TO THE PARTY INDEX
BACK TO THE FOOD INDEX PAGE