Mexican Wedding Cake with Spiced Buttercream, Part 1

OK, let me explain. Bruce and I work together on our recipe concepts. And I tend to think outside the box. I'm not trained for the kitchen, as he is, so I come to food with a Lego mentality: let's smack things together, this with that, and see what happens.

When we were writing THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK, our 900-recipe tome (which you can find here), I said to him, "You know those Mexican wedding cookies? Those little walnut cookies with lots of spices and dusted with powdered sugar? Can you reinvent those flavors into a layer cake?"

This is his answer. And it's a keeper. I took this baby to book group last week and I'm not sure anyone paid much attention to the book. (Another keeper, too: Daniel Defoe's ROXANA.)

We're going to do this in two posts--first the cake, then the buttercream (which is here). And we're doing in old-school. Real, French-patisserie buttercream, not just sugar beaten into butter. For now, let's do the cake.

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Apple Crisp

Well, there it is, ready to go into the oven. Pretty fine, eh?

I promised some recipes that use the sugars I discussed in the last post. So here's one, a perfect dessert for a fall evening--or really anytime.

It's also made with walnut oil--which got used in the Apple Cake here. But any nut oil would work for the topping. You could even use melted butter. Wow.

This recipe has also been adapted from THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK. There's a mix-and-match cobbler/crisp section in that book: seventeen fillings and ten toppings. Here's the apple version with an oaty, maply, nutty, crunchy topping--and with a less-refined sugar, to boot. (That said, I'll give you some "standard" substitutions as we go through the recipe.)

Honestly, I have to hold myself back from picking off that topping, leaving the fruit behind--and I love apples! You won't need any whipped cream or ice cream with this one--although I wouldn't stop you from putting a dollop or a scoop on mine if I come to dinner at your house.

Let's get to it.

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Walnut Genoise

Big statements need big foundations. Did you see this week in the NYTimes when the fancy classical music guru James R. Oestreich basically declared Mozart a hack? (Perhaps I overstate a tad for drama.) Now that's a big statement--which certainly wouldn't have had the same punch if your cousin Melvin had said it. "But Melvin, you watch Friday Night Wrestling." Call me crazy, but it doesn't have the same impact.

Which is why a layer cake is all about the genoise (French, from Genoa [for some obscure reason], jenn-WAHZ). Big statements, big foundations. These layers are sturdy but delicate, delicious on their own, but even better frosted. Other types of cake layers can be wishy-washy, too easily smooshed or too chewy, almost elastic. Blech. Even Melvin wouldn't approve.

Traditionally, genoise layers are made with butter. But Bruce has gotten into making them with walnut oil for a slightly nutty taste, just a little heft to meet the thick, rich frosting halfway.

Here's how to do the layers up right, a recipe from our Ultimate Cook Book.

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Haroset

When I met Bruce, I attended a church, sang in the choir, did the whole nine yards. I even wrote the Lenten and Advent lectionaries every year.

It was a liberal Presbyterian church in Austin. And frankly, it was a bad time in my life: a nasty divorce, coming out, career upheavals (years and years of a Ph D program and then finally a job teaching at a liberal arts university all led to the whole "I got to get out of academia" mess).

So liberals took me in.

Now, years later, up in liberal New England, I'm still the one goading us on to religion. Left on his own, Bruce probably wouldn't celebrate any religious holiday. So every year, I write the haggadah for Passover. And it's sort of crazy, with people acting out the parts of Moses, Pharaoh, and the rest. I even have plastic bugs and sunglasses and other things to act out each of the plagues.

Thus, I find myself making the haroset today. For the uninitiated, haroset is supposed to represent the mortar with which the Israelite slaves were to build Pharaoh's temples. It's pretty sweet stuff, perhaps to symbolize how God can turn bitter slavery into sweet redemption.

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