Wonderland Hat Trick

Something simple to strive for: live a year where you never let a birthday slip by without a celebration. You already know I am not much of a cake person, but somehow I have become the birthday cake baker of my French family. It originates from a lack of what I used to call "real birthday cakes" in French bakeries. You know, a simple layered and frosted sponge cake. You can't find them here. I resorted to doing them at home for Loic's sisters at first, and then everyone wanted one.  This year, the opportunity came to make special cakes for my son's first birthday and his two cousins aged 2 and 4, all having birthdays in February. I took it as a chance to learn something new.

After ruling out the idea of a communal cake for the children, I decided that what I wanted for each child were the little cakes that Alice bumped into after being trapped by that magic potion in the long hallway.  The cake that injected magic into her world, the one she ate trying to get into the beautiful garden. Smooth looking, colorful, silky, simple cool cakes that call out: EAT ME, and promise adventure.

I have always loved the clean simple visual effect of fondant on a cake. I had no idea what kind of work it would entail. First you roll up your sleeves. Then do a little research. The more I saw, the less sure I was going to be capable of pulling it off. Fondant is sugar cooked without burning to certain candy stage, then cooled on marble, worked and stretched and kneaded to puff it up with air, stretch it, and form a kind of white paste, which is then deftly rolled out on a large greased work surface and applied with finesse (at least from what I could see in the videos addressing this technique) to a buttercream iced cake. Voila. For fondant making, you must have a slab of marble, know how not to get burned, possess all kinds of professional know how, a scraping raclette, and wear a large white toque, I think. While we do have my great grandmother’s marble top dresser, that is covered with books. And I don't have much work surface to speak of in my little city apartment. I like candymaking well enough, but I wasn’t sure I could rise to the task.

The sighs and oh-wells had begun to well up and I began shooting thoughts to other ideas when I ran across an ingenious recipe created and distributed widely by industrious American moms and used to scrap together homespun “whimsy cakes” across the country to varying degrees of success. It is called MM fondant. Sounds technical, doesn’t it? It is really a very simple and delicious idea, using microwave melted Marshmallows into which you simply knead flavors, colors, and sugar to get a this silky matte dough. You can cover cakes with it, sculpt figurines or flowers, just about anything. This video had me sure I would be able to do it, and this recipe had me on my way. Why not? I decided to give it a try without Crisco which we do not have in France, and if it turned out to be horrendous, I could just toss it and stick with the buttercream.

I have a special memory of my niece Awen sitting primly at the age of one and a half on a bench under the chateau’s rear portico near the kitchen door. She was in the shade from the summer sun. Her father presented her with a paper plate scattered with morsels of the summer’s best strawberries, her first taste ever. The moment engaged me quite firmly because her love for this berry was so sincere and innocent. For Awen, now that she is four, it would be a Fraise Tagada cake with vanilla Italian buttercream and strawberry scented fondant.

For Emilie, my God-daughter, not long ago, there was an incident where she was given some cubes of pineapple, and she loved it so much that she began to call out for it over and over, turning it into a song about more, more “ananas” (pineapple in French). If you have ever listened to a two year old child murmuring a three syllable word like a mantra and turning it into a song, you will understand that for her, the cake would have to be pineapple. To go with salted butter caramel buttercream and pineapple scented fondant.

For Ian's first birthday, he got Banana cake with chocolate buttercream. Mom's choice.

For the cake, I saw a simple looking recipe called "Sponge Cake" in David Lebovitz’ Room for Dessert. It contains no butter. This seemed strange to me, but in the end it was the perfect cake, so perfect that there was no hesitation to put it right into my kitchen notebook for frequent future use. It sliced cleanly and evenly, stayed moist, didn’t shed crumbs, took to the flavors I’d added, and had a beautiful soft texture. I was very happy with it and the way it was a good foil to the buttercream.

During the baby’s nap times during the week preceding the party, I took time to reflect and plan and dream about my fanciful cakes, confections that would seem to come from Wonderland. I made caramel syrup here, a batch of MM fondant with Haribo marshmallows there (which tasted pretty darn good). Two days before the party I prepared the buttercream flavors. The day before the party I rolled out the fondant and applied it to my iced cakes in very little time. When I finished the cakes, each to be sliced into twelve kid-sized dreamy cubes, I did feel like writing “EAT ME” on each one. I hid them away on a shelf in the linen closet and didn't bring them out until we sang the birthday song for each child. They were a great success with the children and adults alike.

For the MM fondant, you can refer to this recipe (note I used my own flavorings instead of butter flavoring and used neutral cooking oil instead of Crisco to grease the equipment.)

For the Buttercream, I prepared this recipe (it's big for a KitchenAid Artisan, I suggest you halve it unless you have an industrial sized mixer).

To flavor the buttercream, I made a simple Caramel Syrup:

450g sugar

100g water

plus 120g water after cooking

- Pour sugar in a small saucepan and add the water without stirring (stirring will make it grainy). Cover and cook over high heat until sugar is boiling. (the steam will run down the sides of the pan to clean the spatters without causing graininess by covering it).

- Remove cover and cook over high heat to a dark caramel (in my kitchen it timed out to about 12 minutes)

- Turn off heat, and add 120g water just a little at a time an wait for the volcano action to subside after each addition. Stir and let cool, refrigerate until used.

For the sponge cake, I used David Lebovitz's recipe:

Sponge Cake

(as appropriated from the basics section of his Room for Dessert book)

5 eggs, room temp, separated

1/2 cup cold water

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or your flavoring of choice - L)

1 1/2 cups cake flour (I used French organic t65 which is closer to AP and it worked fine)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

*note this recipe contains no butter. It has a light and airy consistency and is a lovely cake for birthday cakes. It is easier to slice to size for icing layers if you bake it the day before and let it sit lightly covered at room temperature overnight.

- Preheat the oven to 350F/175C and position the rack to the center. Lightly butter the bottom of two 6"x9" pans. (you can bake this in one sheet if you like, or bake it in a 9" round pan too if you like). Dust the bottom of the pans with flour.

- Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

- In a rather large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed (I did this with the hand blender's whip), whip the egg yolks and water for 1 minute. Lower the mixer speed and add the sugar and vanilla (flavorings can wait if you are dividing this recipe for different cakes), then increase the mixer speed to high and continue beating for 5 minutes, until a ribbon forms when you lift the whip.

- Once the egg yolks form a ribbon, beat the eggwhites in the mixer bowl, until they form soft drooping peaks when you life the beater.

- Place the yolk mixture bowl over a damp towel on the counter to hold it in place. Incorporate the flour mixture by sifting the dry ingredients over the yolks with one hand and folding gently in with the other hand. When the flour is completely incorporated, use a rubber spatula to fold the beaten eggwhites into the flour yolk mixture.

- If you are dividing this recipe in two, remove 5 cups of batter to another bowl and carefully fold in your flavorings to each part. Transfer the batter to the pans and spread it into an even layer.

- Bake 15-18 minutes (for this sheet pan adaptation) or about 45 minutes if you are using a single layered 9", 3" deep cake pan.

Le Matafan: A French Savoyard Staple

Loic came back to the mountains from his trip to Italy. We’d just managed without him, keeping the house warm and the firewood stocked and the daily hot water rationed just so. I felt like a frontier woman, but we managed through it without major incident. The day he was supposed to be coming back, the anticipation, you know, the kind that you have when your lover is on his way, set in. By mid-afternoon, we were just dying to see him. Ennui hit us both. I made the mistake of telling the baby that when he woke up from his afternoon nap, he’d see his papa again. It was a trick to ply him and I didn’t think he would remember. When he woke up, he still had over an hour to wait. As we all know, to a baby, an hour is an eternity. He loves his papa so.

It had been snowing pretty heavily and I did not realize how much had fallen. Night fell. He was late. We can get a phone signal if we stand at one window. Indeed he had left a message, precisely four minutes before. “Lucy, I am stuck in the snow down by the Martinet house. I’ll be there when I can.” My first question was “which Martinet?” There are four families called Martinet in the village, and at first they claimed that they weren’t the least related. Then we found out that one young fellow is indeed somehow related to the woodsman who supplies us our firewood. Then we found out that he is also a some kind of cousin to one M. Martinet up in the neighboring hamlet who is trying to sell a barn near our house. We still haven’t figured out their ways in naming relations.

I deduced that where he might be stuck in the snow and bundled up the baby, put on a hat and gloves, grabbed the flashlight, and went out into a blizzard, headed in that direction. Imagine one of those films where a blizzard hits and the trail from the house to the barn is kept by pulling oneself through snowdrifts, along a knotted rope. Then know it wasn’t that bad. There was no way we could get lost. In fact, it was quite charming. I knew the car would be warm and that the baby would find this little journey a better distraction than anything else.

The wind wasn’t blowing at all. The snow was crisp, powdery and deep, reminding me of my winters as a child. My boots were crunching delightfully into every step, snow falling in a lacy shroud around us, illuminated by the flashlight. The baby’s hat was covered with a thick layer of snow by the time we saw the headlights shining in the forest. Loic had just succeeded in getting the chains on the front tires of the car. There we enjoyed the perfect climax to our little journey: Running through the snow filled forest (remembered in slow motion), calling out, Loic opening his arms wide and swinging the baby in a big circle through the snow which swirled around them both. The baby was enchanted. It was the biggest adventure he’s ever had.

He saw how things looked down in the valley, and my husband being the smart one he is stopped off and picked up some of the kind of provisions we like to keep when we’re snowed in. Raclette, Savoyard ham, bacon, a slab of Tomme, a big loaf of that delicious local bread, plus lettuce, endives and frozen green beans to keep us virtuous. I put on the potatoes while Loic got reacquainted with his baby boy, and we enjoyed a lovely raclette supper just the two of us that evening. The next morning, we woke up full of the anticipation that comes when you’ve just been granted the gift of two feet of fresh white snow, a wood stove, and the man you love after a week apart. There were two potatoes left, and we had nothing to do but stoke the fire up hot. I decided to prepare potato matafans.

I have been collecting recipes for matafans for some time now, because they’re emblematic of le Pays de Savoie, my respite from the city. There are a whole lot of recipes, because everyone does them differently. Families all through this stretch of the French Alps do their own variations on the pancake but different, some serving them with toppings to be eaten with knife and fork, some slapping local cheese between two of them to make a delicious fluffy warm sandwich to eat with your hands. These are great prepared in advance of a good uphill hike and taken out of the sack to serve as a fortifying lunch. Indeed, for what’s in them, you can estimate that a couple of matafans will be the equivalent of a small 2 egg breakfast with hash browns and bacon, so plan some extra activity to burn them off.

Savoyard is its own language, and in Savoyard, the word Matafan means to calm hunger. A directly translated French name for these cakes are matefaims, and you’ll see the two names interchanged throughout the Savoie region. Traditionally, they were consumed hot in the morning by mountain peasants before embarking on their daily work. Before I ever prepared these in my own Savoyard kitchen, I imagined that they would be heavy things that would sit like rocks in our stomachs. Indeed historically they were made purely with potatoes. They certainly are caloric, but the best thing about them is that the best ones are so light and fluffy they don’t slow us down a bit. A little like savory genoise if you can imagine such a thing, and a little like soufflé, but they don’t deflate and they don’t lose their fluffiness. They are better than pancakes by far.

This particular recipe comes from Madeleine Kamman, in her treatise on the Savoie, which is so chock full of historical and ethnographic detail in addition to her childhood memories of summers here that I never get tired of reading it. I use bacon fat when I have it instead of butter, but for the most part it is true to her ratio and method.

Potato Matafans

½ cup AP flour (I use bio type 65 in my kitchen here which is a rough equivalent to American AP)

2 cold potatoes which have been steamed or boiled in their skins

6 eggs, separated

½ tsp. salt

2 Tbs. bacon fat or melted butter

½ cup warm water

Mme Kamman’s recipe calls for a half-cup of leftover mashed potatoes but since I usually don’t prepare mashed potatoes up here in the mountains, I just start with the plain boiled potato. I usually throw a sprig of rosemary into the pressure cooker when steaming potatoes for raclette, so this is also the treatment my potatoes have for my matafans. I think it adds a little something.

About the warm water: Mme Kamman says that the use of warm water is a Savoyard grandmother’s trick to make the matafans fluffier. I take her word for it since these do come out luxuriously fluffy. There’s never been any need for me to even test how this comes out with cold water.

Put your flour in a rather large mixing bowl and peel the skins off of the potatoes. Mash the potatoes roughly with a fork, turn them into the bowl with the flour, and work the chunks of potatoes into the flour with your fingers. Don’t worry if you leave a few potato lumps here and there.

Dissolve the salt into the warm water. Add the salted water, the 6 egg yolks, and the bacon fat to the flour potato mixture. Mix it well into a batter with a spoon or a whisk.

Beat the 6 egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the initial batter, lightly turning it together just until incorporated, don’t stir too much or the egg whites will deflate and you will defeat the purpose of having whipped them.

Put a cast iron crepe pan or griddle onto a hot stove and melt a couple of teaspoons of butter on it. Cook the matafans on the stovetop as you would a pancake, flipping them over with a spatula once the underside turns brown. Transfer them onto a plate which you keep in the cool corner of the oven (oh I’d say about 300F or 180C) and one by one, add to the stack, sort of baking them along the way. This treatment makes the edges take on a delightful crisp texture.

I serve my matafans with an array of savory things to tuck into them, folded over, for brunch on mountain Sundays we plan to go out walking. Today it was bacon and some of the dent du chat Swiss gruyere, cut in wedges. You can do what you like, they’d even be good with jelly or maple syrup if that floats your boat.

Sustenance Through Winter: Clementines Confites

Twelve years ago, when being in love had just set in, everything at the time seemed to have taken on a more colorful rich hue. Perhaps it was the rain in Paris where we were both studying or the vibrant colors of the south that emerged when at around this time of year we went to see his parents for a visit. The trip had been a success, and we were getting ready to return to Paris. I decided to prepare the picnic lunch for the train.

Brigitte, my future mother-in-law, told me that there were some clementines confites in the kitchen, that I should take some since Loic loved them. I got the impression that even though she said "take some", that she meant "take them all". I don't really know how it happened.

There we were on the train. I brought out all of the delicious things I had gathered. We'd enjoyed brined olives as only they can do them in Provence, country pâté on crusty bread, a kind of slaw I made with things I found around Brigitte's kitchen, chunks of sheep's cheese I'd found at a market there, and then, finally, I brought out two of the clementines.

Oh my, they were rich and sweet beyond my wildest imagination. I was lost in the haze of sweet love for them, and for Loic. I asked him if he would like another, and he said yes. We ate the second two staring deeply into each other's eyes. He stopped eating them after that. But I had to have a third. You could suck the juice right out of their centers, where their pulp had completely turned to a fabulously intense thick clementine flavored goo, sectioned vaguely into cells... absolute divinity. It was like admiring a master's work and then remembering that indeed these were natural fruits, taking you that much closer to the great master himself. Definitely a glimpse of the divine. I think I ate a few more but I can't tell you how many.

I came back from my clementine haze feeling slightly ill and found that he was staring at me. I had brought out the box. "Did you take them all?" he asked. "But of course!" I retorted... "She said you liked them!" But my face turned bright red. He looked annoyed, maybe even a little angry. He'd never been angry with me before.

I had stepped over an invisible line. My lover was going to scorn me for gourmandise.

We spent some time silently riding next to each other on the train. I bounced between shame and defensiveness, which eventually just melted to sadness. The rain was streaming down the window of the train. I actually quietly began to cry. What was Brigitte going to think? How were they going to take this? The culture was new to me so I could not fathom the damage I might have done. Would I be able to face his parents again? A tear ran down my cheek while I gazed out onto the gloomy countryside.

The shock of that uncomfortable ride in the train in which I thought I was going to lose my lover, coupled with the intensity of my first brush with clementines confites had me sworn off them for several years. I just kind of felt sad every time I had one.

He forgave me, and so did Brigitte. There was really no need to worry. I explained to her that I just wanted to please him (I did not mention my own enthusiasm, but I suspect Loic passed the word). Now, after 10 years of marriage to Loic, every year, Brigitte still gives me a big jar of clementines confites every winter. Since she gives them to me, now Loic must ask me if he wants one.

Choose a pound of firm, ripe clementines, in season this time of year.  Scrub them clean, and pierce them deeply with a thin needle, everywhere.  Put them into a saucepan, and cover the pierced fruits by 2 cms (an inch) with water.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove the fruit with a pair of tongs or slotted spoon to a deep sided non-reactive bowl or a jar.  Add 500 grams sugar, and 200 grams glucose syrup or honey (which will alter the flavor somewhat but still achieve the goal of avoiding the sugar going grainy) to the cooking juice.  Bring the syrup to a boil and remove from heat promptly when it reaches a good rolling boil.  Pour the syrup over the clementines, weigh the top down with a plate to avoid the fruits from floating to the top, and let it sit loosely covered with a clean dishcloth for 2 days.  After 2 days have passed, remove the fruit from the bowl, transfer the juice to a saucepan, and add 100 grams of sugar to the juice.  Bring the juice and sugar to a rolling boil, remove from heat, then pour over the clementines and let sit for another 2 days.  Follow this process every 2 days, every 2 days adding 100 grams of sugar to the mix, until you reach the 14th day.  At this time, transfer them to a jar, and keep, covered in their syrup, in a cool dry place.  They will keep for as long as a year, getting better with age, but at 2 weeks they're still pretty darn good.