Cake marbré au chocolat

I grew up eating a store-bought chocolate marble cake called Savane. Created in the sixties by a French manufacturer that was acquired by an American company shortly thereafter, it came as a whole loaf cake in an ocher and brown box. The bottom of the loaf was wrapped in a paper liner that you peeled off as you sliced your way through the cake, the crumb was fluffy as only factory-made cakes can be, and I loved it.

My parents did not buy it for us — I don’t remember why, since they did get various types of supermarket cookies on our request — so I only indulged when I was at my friend Emilie’s house, or when we raided the grocery store for sweet and/or salty things after an afternoon spent splashing about at the pool.

I hadn’t had it for years when I tried it again as an adult, and of course it was a letdown. Not only was the flavor a weak shadow of my recollection — the chocolate dull, the vanilla fake — but the list of ingredients had me shaking my head. (And this is marketed as a simple and healthful snack for your kids, you know, so you can make sure they get their daily recommended intake of hydrogenated palm oil.)

This recipe produces a delectable and very moist loaf, and the secret for that lies in the syrup that is brushed on the cake as it comes out of the oven.

The good news is that, unlike other store-bought treats from my younger days, like, say, ghost-shaped puffed potato chips, or strawberry-flavored shoestrings, this one is designed to emulate the kind of gâteau marbré you might bake from scratch, so it is fairly simple to recapture that particular taste memory.

And it is even simpler if a trusty friend of yours has included a recipe for it in one of her books*.

The basic idea behind the marble cake is that you pour alternating layers of contrasting batters in a cake pan, so that you get a nice visual effect in each cut slice (I must warn you it is possible to take the concept too far). Some recipes have you stir each layer delicately into the previous one, to create marble-like swirls, but the original Savane is striped a bit like a zebra (savanna, zebra, get it?) so it’s fine to leave the layers as is.

The chocolate and vanilla batters in this recipe are, in essence, identical, so you could make a single batter that you’d divide at the end before adding the vanilla or chocolate flavoring, but I think Pascale’s method is neater: she has you prepare the two batters side by side in separate bowls, a process that is especially easy if you’re using a digital scale and those handy, easy-to-divide weight measurements (hint hint).

Pascale’s recipe produces a delectable and very moist loaf, and I think the secret lies in the syrup that you brush on the cake as it comes out of the oven. I’ve made it multiple times now, and it is a real crowd-pleaser: French friends never miss the Savane reference, and I like that it feels homey but just a little elaborate, prompting at least one person to ask about the marbled technique, always.

I sometimes use whipping cream in the batter, as Pascale suggests, but most often yogurt or buttermilk: the substitution means the cake dries out a hair faster, but if you think it will be consumed within a couple of days in your house, that’s what I recommend.

Over time, I’ve also incorporated two other modifications: I like to add a sprinkle of cacao nibs between layers of batter, and spike the syrup with cacao liqueur**, which you can’t taste as such in the cake, but serves to deepen the overall chocolate flavor.

* The title of the book, Slunch, is a contraction of supper and lunch and, by symmetry with the brunch, it is an informal meal that you host for your friends (and optional kids) in late afternoon on a Sunday.

** This cacao liqueur is made by artisanal distillery Bertrand in Alsace, and I bought a bottle at Stéphane Gross’ chocolate shop in Paris, Déclinaison Chocolat.

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I have recently found myself with a bit of a potato glut, a rather unusual state of affairs for me. It being spring, all the potatoes wanted to do was sprout, however careful I was to keep them in a cool, dark place. Unable to temper their enthusiasm, I did what any responsible cook would do: I embraced the potato theme and cooked them in all sorts of different ways over a few weeks.

With the baking potatoes (the floury ones that fall apart when cooked), I made baked potatoes (creative, I know), potato skins (with the leftover baked potatoes), home fries, and Jo Jo potatoes; with the waxy ones (the yellow-fleshed variety that retains its shape when cooked) I made sautéed potatoes in my new/old cast-iron skillet; with a mix of both, I baked a very simple, very good gratin dauphinois that I must make again, photograph, and tell you about.

I also took this potato manna as a sign that it was finally time to try my hand at potato gnocchi, an endeavor I had long itched to undertake: I had made ricotta gnocchi and speculoos gnocchi in the past, but had yet to attempt a potato-based version.

I used the basic proportions given in an article I’d clipped out of the British Olive magazine, and all went smoothly. At first, I feared I had not mashed the potatoes thoroughly enough, but I ignored the tiny lumps and forged ahead, experimenting with different shapes for the pillows of dough (ovals or corks, mostly), and trying to gain a semblance of dexterity through the process.

Most recipes I found have you roll the gnocchi against the tines of a fork to create the signature indentations that will help the sauce cling to them, but I’d read somewhere that you could also use the lower part of a wire whisk — where the wires all gather and throw themselves into the handle — and that method worked much better for me.

Maxence and I ate half of the batch that night — I froze the rest for another day — with white asparagus tips, lemon verbena butter, and a sprinkle of pecorino shavings. I was delighted with the outcome: the gnocchi turned out plump and tender, fluffy on the inside, with a hint of a blond crust from the pan-frying step.

The recipe produces plain potato gnocchi to dress with the sauce of your choice, but you can certainly play around with flavorings, incorporating herbs, dried or fresh, garlic, saffron, truffle juice… Any favorites to share?

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When Maxence and I were in San Francisco late last summer, we had bagels for breakfast every single day. There were a couple of bagel shops not far from where we were staying, so we alternated between the two, and on those mornings that we went for a run through the Golden Gate Park, bagels awaited at a busy coffee shop by the ocean.

I like mine dotted with poppy seeds or sesame seeds, and spread with cream cheese and a juicy slice of tomato. And thanks to a reader who recently suggested the pairing, I’ve also taken to topping my bagels with peanut butter and a juicy slice of tomato. (I know, I was skeptical too, but try it: I think you’ll be surprised.)

On our last day, sad that our vacation was coming to an end and sad to be leaving the city, I saw this one way of making myself feel better: I promised myself I’d bake bagels for us back in Paris. It would at least alleviate the withdrawal symptoms on that particular front.

If you’re unfamiliar with the way bagels are made, the most characteristic thing you should know is that they are cooked in two steps: first you poach them in a pot of water, then you bake them in the oven.

Oh, sure, I’ve found bagels in Paris in the past, and you can even buy them from the ubiquitous chain of frozen foods stores (they come with a bunch of emulsifiers and preservatives, if you’re into that sort of thing), but it’s never been quite the same.

So I turned to Peter Reinhart* and his Bread Baker’s Apprentice book for guidance, compulsively reviewed the posts of every single BBA challenger who had followed his bagel recipe, and, on an afternoon when it seemed I could not sit at the computer for a minute longer, I fled to the kitchen and started up a batch. (Evidently, procrastination is a rich soil for baking projects.)

If you’re unfamiliar with the way bagels are made, the most characteristic thing you should know is that they are cooked in two steps: first you poach them in a pot of water, then you bake them in the oven. And for some reason, the poaching step had always seemed daunting to me: what if I dropped them in and they fell apart, or dissolved, or sank to the bottom of the pot and never floated back up? Would I have to hire divers and send them on a recovery mission to salvage the sunken bagels? Reinhart didn’t seem to suggest that this might happen, so I forged ahead.

Before I got to that point, though, I’d had to overcome two procurement hurdles. First, bagels must be made with flour that has a high rate of gluten: in the US, you would make them with high-gluten flour or bread flour. Unfortunately, French flour is significantly lower in gluten than American flours — it has to do with the different types of wheat that we grow and mill — and as Jane had warned me from her past experience, it would not work. So, my mission was to find powdered wheat gluten that I could add to my flour to boost its gluten content.

The bagels were fantastic, and just what I was hoping for: great flavor and just the right density and chewiness, the perfect carriers for the all-natural, chunky peanut butter I brought back from California.

Second, part of what gives bagels their distinctive flavor is that the dough is lightly sweetened with barley malt, in powder or syrup form. In France, this goes by the names of sirop d’orge, malt d’orge or sirop d’orge malté. I had to try a few organic food stores, but I ended up finding both of these ingredients at the same one**; I almost hugged the cashier.

I mostly stuck to Peter Reinhart’s method, except for a few things: I modified the recipe to use some of my sourdough starter in the sponge (enough to produce a final 1-to-3 ratio between starter and flour) and reduced the amount of commercial yeast. I also halved the recipe (his produces 12 large bagels; I made 8 medium).

I took some liberty with the order of the steps, too: Peter Reinhart’s recipe has you make the dough, shape the bagels, lay them out on baking sheets, and then leave them overnight in the refrigerator (a step called retarding), before you poach and bake them the next day. The thing is, I have a Paris-sized fridge that is stuffed to the gills with, well, food, and the notion that I should just free up two (of the four) shelves to place baking sheets for the night is heroic fantasy.

So, instead of shaping the bagels pre-retarding, I simply placed the ball of dough in the fridge (it was a challenge just to make room for the bowl) and shaped it the next day. I was not struck by the wrath of the bagel gods during the night, so I assume it wasn’t too big of a commandment to break.

The whole process was a lot of fun, and much less involved than I thought: the dough is rather stiff, which makes it easy to handle once kneaded (though I hear it’s quite a workout to knead it by hand), and the poaching step went surprisingly smoothly.

As for the bagels themselves, they were fantastic, and just what I was hoping for: great flavor and just the right density and chewiness, the perfect carriers for the all-natural, chunky peanut butter I brought back from California. Now, if only I could persuade my neighborhood grocery store to carry cream cheese, I’d be all set.

* I just stumbled upon this video of a talk Peter Reinhart gave on bread, via Nicole’s blog. I can’t imagine anyone watching it and not wanting to bake bread right this minute.

** I found malt syrup and wheat gluten at the Biocoop store at 73 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière in the 9th (map it!), 01 44 79 06 44, open Mon-Sat 9:30am-8pm.

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Maxence and I like to spend a weekend in Amsterdam every once in a while: we love the atmosphere of the city in any season, and we usually stay in a neighborhood called Nieuwmarkt that is both lively (plenty of shops and restaurants) and residential (real people live there), the ideal mix if you want to pretend you’re an Amsterdammer (only with terrible language skills) for a few days.

It doesn’t hurt that it is also the neighborhood where Pâtisserie Kuyt is located. This award-winning pastry shop and tea room is home to an irresistible apple confection called appelschnitte: sold in rectangular servings, this “apple slice” starts with a layer of dough that is halfway between a cake, moist and tender, and a cookie crust, sturdy enough to be handheld. Gently spiced chunks of apple sit atop that crust, with raisins and sliced almonds in their lap, and the whole thing is dusted — or rather, sandstormed — with confectioner’s sugar.

I’ve never had anything quite like it, and if you visit Amsterdam you should absolutely have a taste and send me a piece as my commission. Until then, here is my humble attempt to recreate it, on a slightly leavened pâte sablée made with ground almonds, and using cooking apples that soften when baked, for a tender mouth feel. It is very easy to make and the result is close enough, to my recollection at least, though I suspect the original involves a more substantial amount of butter and, without a doubt, a lot more icing sugar.

I served this autumnal dessert with a scoop of the easiest ice cream you can possibly make: it is simply sweetened sheep’s milk yogurt, to which I’ve added the egg white and liquor leftover from the apple slices, because it seemed like a clever thing to do. Chill, churn, and there you have it: a whiter than white, subtly tangy frozen yogurt to accessorize the still warm, apple-topped squares.

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