[Parsnip and Chorizo Cake]

Yes, another gâteau! But it’s a savory one this time, that combines grated parsnips, little chunks of chorizo and chopped parsley, baked into a warm golden cake, frittata-like and satifying. The parsnips meld into the egg batter to produce a smooth, almost moussy texture, and the chorizo adds a really nice kick to their earthy sweetness. Chorizo is one of my favorite things at the moment, and I’m still looking for something that does not benefit from its addition.

I particularly like the taste of parsnips, but you could substitute other root vegetables (carrots, turnips, celery-root) or better yet, use a mix of several. The recipe as written below serves two to three guests, but you can easily double the recipe — just use a larger dish accordingly and leave it in the oven a tad longer. The gâteau also works well cold or at room-temperature and would make a delightful winter picnic item.

What do you mean, you don’t do picnics in the winter? How sad! Why do you think the phrase eaten with mittens sounds so good?

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Sometimes I come upon a recipe and I just can’t seem to get it out of my head. Case in point: the Buttercrunch Almond Tea Cake, as baked by Zarah Maria in Copenhagen. The original recipe comes from Lisa Yockelson’s book Baking by Flavor and is a tea cake studded with chunks of Heath bar. Now, I’ve never had a Heath bars as they’re not sold here in Paris, but Zarah Maria had the brilliance of using Daims instead. Daims? That I will do.

Daims are a Swedish bite-size confection of milk-chocolate-covered crunchy caramel with specks of almonds. Originally made by a company called Freia Marabou, they have been a popular treat in Scandinavia since 1952. The French discovered them by way of IKEA, who was the sole importer for quite a while. Purchasing a bag of those red-wrapped candies was an efficient way to ease the stress and tension of building whatever piece of furniture you had also acquired, and it is harder to snap at your spouse — or whoever your assistant builder is — for misplacing the screwdriver when your jaw is stuck together by caramel.

It is harder to snap at your spouse for misplacing the screwdriver when your jaw is stuck together by caramel.

Kraft Foods acquired Freia Marabou in 1993 and started distributing Daims more widely on the French market, selling them at regular grocery stores, introducing them as a larger-sized bar, and even working with le MacDo to produce a Daim McFlurry (vanilla ice-cream mixed with Daim crush-ins). I myself enjoy them very much (caramel, chocolate, and almonds: what could go wrong?), although with a little more restraint than the average consumer who, according to a study conducted by Kraft Foods France, usually eats nine (nine!) Daims in a row.

Anyway. Zarah Maria had tempted me in an inescapable way, so I hunted for the original cake recipe (Amazon’s “search inside” feature? very convenient) and made it, in addition to the gingersnaps, when my cousins came over for tea and cakes last week. In addition to the Daim substitution I changed a few other things, using almond flour instead of slivered almonds, all-purpose flour and baking powder instead of cake flour, omitting the almond extract and allspice, lowering the sugar content, and using yogurts instead of milk and cream.

The resulting cake was simply wonderful, fine-crumbed and moist, and it reminded me a lot of the coffee cakes I love to make. The Daim chunks had mostly fallen to the bottom (admittedly, I neglected to toss them with a little flour as Lisa recommended) but this formed a stupendous ground layer of caramel goldness, encouraging the eater, as I was able to observe on my enthusiastic guinea pigs, to enjoy the cake from top to bottom and keep the best for last.

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Gin·ger·snap (noun) :
1. a thin brittle cookie, round or rectangular, sweetened with molasses and flavored with ginger (and optionally other spices). Close cousin: the speculoos from Flanders.
2. one of these viral recipes that occasionally spread like magic through our little world of food blogs!

And we have Renee [2010 update: she was the author of the now defunct blog “Feeding Dexygus Seconds”] to thank for this one. Renee had applied for a pastry cook position at the renowned Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. At the end of the tryout and interview, sensing she wouldn’t get the job, she decided to cut her losses and asked if she could have the recipe for the gingersnaps she had been served at the end of staff lunch. The interviewer (possibly Alice Waters herself?) obliged.

I love that story. It’s a great illustration that there is something to be gained from any situation, and it also goes to show that there is never any harm in asking for a recipe, however prestigious the owner. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to be touched by the story and tempted by the cookie: a dozen food bloggers subsequently baked these gingersnaps and posted about their success — each of their reports only heightening my desire to join the ranks of CPG fans.

The occasion finally arose last week, when a few of my cousins came over for a Sunday afternoon goûter. This was my first time baking with molasses, despite my having bought a jar of organic mélasse over six months ago — one of these purchases I sometimes make with the dim notion that some exciting recipe calls for it, then promptly forget about. Molasses is a byproduct of the sugar refining process, it is the thick syrup you get when you boil down the sugar cane juices to extract sugar. When carefully produced, molasses retain most of the sugar cane’s nutritional elements: minerals, iron, magnesium and calcium.

And since I seem to have so much interest in sugar and its healthy versions lately, allow me to share with you my favorite word for today: mellifluous, which my good friend Merriam-Webster defines as “having a smooth rich flow (a mellifluous voice)” or “filled with something (as honey) that sweetens”. End of vocable interlude, thank you for your attention.

This was also my first time baking gingersnaps (or eating homebaked ones for that matter), and I was suitably wowed. They had a deep and complex taste I attribute mostly to the use of molasses, a pleasant hint of petrolousness (Merriam-Webster has yet to learn about that one) wonderfully ignited by the spices’ heat. As for the texture it was just perfect, offering crispness to the bite, then tenderness to the chew.

Sadly, this texture didn’t survive a night in my lousy non-hermetic tin box and they had gone soft the next day. They still tasted great of course, but they had definitely lost the “snap” in gingersnap, and looked somewhat disconsolate and droopy. But the good people on the C&Z forums were able to offer advice and I trust this won’t happen again — in the meantime I froze the leftovers and plan on giving them a glorious new life sometime soon, possibly reincarnating them into a cheesecake crust.

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Le chou-rave — in English kohlrabi or cabbage turnip — is my greatest vegetable discovery for this winter. Although its name would indicate that it is a root vegetable (“rave” means “root”, as in betterave [beetroot] or celeri-rave [celeryroot]) it is in fact a surface vegetable that belongs to the cabbage family. It is also exceptionally rich in vitamins and nutrients.

I first spotted it in the display of my favorite produce stall at the market, and was initially drawn to it because of its interesting look — a plump pastel green body with graceful little arms shooting up from all sides and twirling around, ending in large green leaves. I asked the stall keeper about them, the one who’s so pretty and has a smile so fresh you would swear she just hopped right out of the salad crates, the one who’s always glad to advise about cooking methods and recipes (I usually pretend I’m not quite ready until she’s available to take my order).

She explained that the greens are edible and can be used like parsley, while the best use for the body is to peel it, slice it thinly, and eat the slices raw with a little fleur de sel sprinkled on top. This came as a surprise, it sounded like such a summery use for what I had imagined to be a root vegetable, destined for boiling and stewing and roasting (all methods you could also apply to our friend the chou-rave).

I promptly tried this at home and from then on became a die-hard fan of raw chou-rave. The flesh is crunchy like a radish but it has none of the radish’s peppery bite, and its flavor is sweet and subtly nutty. The slices are moist enough that you can press them gently onto a little pile of salt so a few flakes will stick, a beautifully complement in terms of taste and texture.

But my personal preference, for a tasty and healthy appetizer, is to match it with spirulina gomasio — my greatest condiment discovery for this winter.