Fall Minestrone

Autumn Day

Lord: It is time. The summer days were grand.

Now set your shadows out across the sun-dials

And set the winds loose on the meadowland.

Bid the last fruits grow full upon the vine,

do them the good of two more southern days

then thrust them on to their fulfillment, chase

the final sweetness into bodied wine.

Whoever has no house yet will build none,

Whoever is alone will stay alone

And stay up, write long letters out, and go

Through avenues to wander on his own

Uneasily when leaves begin to blow.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by A.Z. Foreman)

And to go with the poem I love so much, here is a autumnal minestrone, to enjoy on one of those short and somewhat dreary fall days we happen to have here. (Though the temperatures are supposed to go up for the weekend, yay!)

Fall Minestrone
Adapted from the minestrone alla romagnola by Marcella Hazan, and this minestrone I found on the Dinner: a Love Story blog.

120g dry cannelini beans (or 400g of the canned variety)
1 bay leave
salt

8 tbsp olive oil30g butter
3 onions, sliced
4 carrots, diced
2 stick celery, diced
2 large fennel bulb, diced
200g potatoes, peeled, cut into small squares
150g shredded Savoy cabbage
150g Swiss chard, chopped into small pieces
1,5l vegetable broth, or bean cooking water (but do not use the liquid that is in the cans, if using canned)
160g canned, whole Italian tomatoes
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (optional, if you don't already have it at home)
parmesan crust (optional)
parmigiano-reggiano to serve

If using dried cannelini beans: Cover the beans with 3cm of water and let soak over night.  In the morning, or before starting your soup, cook them, adding a bay leave, salt and some smoked paprika, until done, for about an hour. Set aside the cooking liquid to use as the broth for this soup.
In a large saucepan, put the olive oil, butter and onion on low-medium heat. Let the onion cook, uncovered, until it becomes soft and fragrant and starts to colour slightly.
Add the carrots, and cook for 2-3 minutes, making sure to cover it with the oil. Then add the celery, fennel and potatoes one ingredients at a time, stirring a few minutes before adding the next. Cook for another few minutes after adding the potatoes, add the cabbage, let cook for 5 minutes, then add the broth, the tomatoes, the parmesan crust if using and a little salt. Give the soup a good stir, then cover the pot, turn the heat to low and let the soup cook for as long as you can manage. Marcella Hazan says 2 1/2 hours, I'd say 1 hour should be more than enough to get a least a decent pot of soup. Add the cannelini beans and stir and cook for another 30 minutes.
Just before serving, remove the cheese crust and add freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano, about 3 tbsp. Only then taste for salt and add more if necessary. Let the soup cool down a bit before serving.

Serves 6-8 (According to Marcella, but for us two it made just enough to serve for dinner twice)

Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumbcake

It is Michael's birthday today, and this is the cake he always request for a birthday cake. Not this particular recipe, but this type of cake. A rather flat sheet cake, topped with fresh fruit and a crunchy crumb topping. They always do not look like much, a little unassuming for a birthday cake. And if he did not have an opinion himself, I would make him a fancier cake, like the Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake in Deb's cookbook. Or her recent cake, this Bienenstich cake. But who am I to argue with the birthday boy?

Truth is, I like those cakes, too. They are a lot easier to eat. All you need is a napkin. You could actually eat a slice of this cake standing in front of the fridge, in the middle of the night.
The recipe I used here is great. It makes a wonderful coconut pineapple crumbcake, or a great orange crumbcake with this orange marmalade between the cake layer and the crumb topping. Here I doubled the cake recipe, layered some rhubarb and strawberries on top and finished it off with a simple crumb topping. But you can take this anywhere you want.
And I am off, pizza and beer await me.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumbcake
Note: If you use darker sugar in the topping than I did, the cake will look less pale. Also working some agave into the topping would result in a crumb that turns more golden. If you don't care for the cake to be vegan, you can subsitute regular milk for the soy milk.
cake layer:
1 1/3 cup soy milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 cup canola oil (or another mild tasting oil)
2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon

~2 stalks rhubarb
~1/3 pound strawberries

crumb topping:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.
Slice the rhubarb and strawberries into 1/2 cm thick slices (~1/4 of an inch). Add a tablespoon of sugar to draw out some of the water before baking.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients for the cake layer. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until smooth.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pour the cake batter on top. Spread out a bit until it is between 1 and 2 cm thick. Top with rhubarb and strawberries.
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the ingredients for the topping, until crumbs form. Sprinkle over the fruit layer and pat down a bit using your hands.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Mississippi Chocolate Cake

I have no idea why this cake was named Mississippi cake, but it is a cake I often come back to. Back in school I used to make it whenever we had a cake sale to raise money for something.
Now that I cook more I often like to try new recipes, make fancier cakes than this chocolate cake. But today I came back to the recipe from my childhood because I needed a simple quick but chocolaty and delicious cake for a friend's birthday. You see, this is the ideal procrastination cake.
I should be working on a seminar paper right now. And I am. But I also want to make a birthday cake for this friend, because everyone should have a birthday cake on their birthday. This is where this cake comes in. As you will see in the directions, it is a add-and-stir cake. One bowl, add, then stir. Repeat. Simple like that. And then you leave it in the oven for quite some time, and end up with a great, portable chocolaty cake. And while the cake bakes you have more than an hour to work on your seminar paper.

Coconut Pineapple Swirl Crumbcake

Can we talk kitchen failures?
Just last week I wanted to bring a cake to a get together with friends. I was a bit short on time, but everything went well and I baked the cake, removed it from the oven, let it cool down for a few minutes and then put it in a bag and took it with me. And somehow, the cake liquified on the way to my friend. The tester that I inserted came out clean, but when I tried to cut it into slices, the center pour out like in a molten chocolate cake. Exept, it wasnt. We ate some of the crust and had to throw the rest away. And I still don't know why and how on earth this happend. Any ideas?

What is the last thing that went wrong in your kitchen? Please share your stories with me.

But this weeks cake turned out like I imagined it to be. I adapted a recipe I found on the Post Punk Kitchen, Raspberry Jam Swirl Crumbcake. I brought pineapple jam home from my holidays in Spain, and wanted to used it in this cake. I added some coconut to it, made it non-vegan (oops, always happens to me) with the addition of butter in the crumbs, and oh they are good. They are not too sweet, the top is crumbly and crunchy and the tropical flavour just make me feel relaxed, like during a holiday. And they were really easy to make, too. No failures here.

Red Wine and Brown Butter Chocolate Cake

This happens when you take a great recipe and make it even better:
Red wine in a cake already sounded fantastic. However, I made this cake for my flatmates birthday, and she really loves chocolatey chocolate cakes. And the red wine chocolate cake I found over at smittenkitchen struck my fancy, but really did not contain enough chocolate.

There are not many things I consider to be true without exception, but more chocolate is always better. So I added chocolate chips to the batter. Then I made a chocolate ganache to top the cake. More chocolate. After that, I really did not know how to add more chocolate.
I cant help but make easy recipe more complicated. Where the original recipe used regular butter, I decided to brown mine. I couldn't really taste the brown butter after the cake was baked, but I want to believe that it added another layer of flavour to the already amazing cake.

Well, the birthday cake was eaten way too quickly, and I was looking through my facebook friends to find someone who lives close I could bake this cake for. We're invited to a party tomorrow, and since I could not find someone to bake for, I decided to make the cake again to bring with me. Only this time I changed it up again and made cupcakes out of the cake. I also changed a few things up again, since the batter for the cake was rather liquid and I thought that this might make it difficult to fill the cupcake liners. I think this recipe should also work in cake form, since I did not change that much.