Baking

Meme called this “lemon cheese cake,” which is somewhat confusing since people more often use that name for a New York–style cheesecake. This is one of the recipes that “got away.” Meme often recorded a recipe on a card or on the previously mentioned interior of her cabinets. Trouble is, she only wrote down the ingredients and rarely included instructions. She used to actually cover her version of the cake in lemon curd. Normally, lemon curd is soft and not firm enough to frost a cake. I have tried to make the curd with her ingredients list every way but Sunday with no success. I’m afraid now I will never know. Instead, I fill between the layers with curd and flavor the frosting with it as well. The cake itself is an excellent rich, moist, cake that would also be delicious with chocolate frosting or served with strawberries and cream.

When I was older, Meme and Dede would travel to Florida in the winter and stay near a citrus farm. They would return with bulging sacks of oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. I know Dede enjoyed the trip, but I sometimes wondered about Meme. She must have been in her eighties when she derisively commented, “There’s nothing but old people in Florida.” Citrus fruit has a strong presence in Southern cooking. Lemons and other citrus from Florida and the Caribbean were used in Southern cooking as early as the Colonial period. A recipe for lemon pudding appeared in Mary Randolph’s 1824 cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, the first regional cookbook published in America. Lemon meringue pie holds a special place in people’s memories, as do lemon curd and lemon squares like these. Store these bars tightly wrapped in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

This cake has been a constant in my life and it has been my birthday cake many times. Our family holidays would not be complete without it. The best part is the crispy, dark-brown sugary edges. Much to my mother’s consternation, more than once, little pesky elves raided the opaque Tupperware cake container and nibbled away those tasty bits.

Red velvet cake has inspired as many theories about its provenance as there are recipes in a Junior League cookbook. The question cannot be definitively answered. We do at least know why the cake is red: most red velvet cakes use acidic ingredients—buttermilk and vinegar—and cocoa, which contains a reddish pigment called anthocyanin. The acidic buttermilk reacts with the cocoa and actually makes this red pigment appear even redder. Somewhere along the line, someone decided the cake needed a little more rouge and added red food coloring. Some chefs try to gussy it up using beet juice or deconstruct it into something it’s not. My friend Angie Mosier, who is an incredible baker in her own right, once very aptly described red velvet cake as “the Dolly Parton of cakes—she’s a little bit tacky, but you love her.”

Even though peaches are considered the quintessential Southern fruit, the phrase “as American as apple pie” applies to the South, too. Apples grow in the cooler mountainous regions from Georgia to Virginia. There is no longer an issue with refrigeration, but apples were an important fruit for people in the country who lived off the land. When held in a cool cellar, apples lasted for months, providing much needed vitamins and nutrition in the winter. Many factors affect an apple’s juiciness: the age of the apple, the weather and climate where it was grown, and how it has been stored. In a pie, there’s sometimes a fine line between juicy and sopping wet. Flour is one ingredient that will help absorb some of the cooking juices. This is my sister’s favorite dessert and she always requests it on special occasions.

When Mama makes this, it’s all she can do to get it to the baking sheet. While it’s refrigerated, my sister and I sneak nibbles of the sweet, raw dough. One summer years ago, my cousin ate so much of the dough that he got a stomachache. Even now, every time Mama makes these cookies, we laugh about him groaning. Shortly thereafter, she started successfully doubling the recipe to take our nibbling into account. These cookies are somewhat similar to sablés, the real French butter cookie. The vegetable shortening also makes them softer than true French sablés, which are larger in size and have a fine, crumbly texture that resembles sand (their name means sand in French).

Cousin Michele makes this pie for her family each and every holiday. She learned it from Aunt Dolores and has taught her daughter, Nina, and son, Walker, to make it, too. The passing of recipes from one generation to the next is a thread of continuity, of family roots and place. Sweet memories in every bite, it’s a small but amazing bit of history. Let me just say I have never had “French” coconut pie in France. This pie is more along the lines of winning a blue ribbon at a country fair, not Le Cordon Bleu.

Too many pecan pies are mostly goo without enough pecans, making them far too sweet. The secret to the success of this pie is that its pecan-to-goo ratio is just right. As a child, I helped Mama make this pie. It was my job to help her coarsely grind the nuts. She still uses a hand-held grinder; it has a crank that forces the nuts through two opposing forklike blades and a glass jar to catch the nut pieces. The metal top that screws into the glass jar is bent and dinged, but the tool still coarsely cuts the nuts just right.

It is necessary to sift the flour before measuring it for this cake. This is an anomaly; if flour is sifted at all these days (not that common anymore), most baking recipes call for sifting after it is measured. Here, the flour is sifted once before measuring, then an additional four times with the sugar to prepare this batter. It may seem like overkill, but it is completely necessary to achieve the traditional light-as-air texture of angel food cake. There is an unusual implement for cutting these delicate cakes found in many silver chests throughout the South. These old-fashioned rakelike cutters typically have a long, slightly offset handle with 3- to 4-inch-long tines that actually split, rather than cut, the cake. They can still be found online and in gourmet catalogs.

Forget fancy gènoise or sponge cake; in the South, a shortcake is really just a sweet biscuit. Granted, this recipe is a step above, flavored with orange zest and sprinkled with raw sugar that sparkles like amber on the golden tops. At Martha Stewart Living Television, we served miniature versions of these buttery brown sugar shortcakes filled with peaches, strawberries, and blueberries at a luncheon attended by President Clinton.

Whole wheat flour may seem to be the choice of health nuts or diet-conscious shoppers looking for whole grains, neither of which suggests typical Southern bread. This is true for more modern breads, but Antebellum and Colonial grains were not as processed as modern flour is and were closer to what we now consider whole wheat flour. This homey bread also uses honey, a natural sweetener, instead of refined white sugar. I do, however, suggest using a modern fat, canola oil, over bacon fat (but now that I think of it, bacon fat sure sounds good!).

The wealthy and powerful Dukes of Burgundy controlled the spice trade in the Middle Ages. The windows of the shops and bakeries of Dijon are filed with tightly wrapped loaves of pain d’épice, the traditional honey spice bread of the region. It’s similar to American-style gingerbread only in that they both contain a variety of spices. The texture of the French bread, however, is denser, as it is traditionally baked at a low temperature for several hours, and the spice combination is slightly different. I’ve adapted this version to cook in less time at a higher temperature. The texture is not as traditional, but the flavor is still incredible. Ground fennel seed is not widely available; to order it, see Sources (page 301), or simply grind your own in a spice grinder. While at La Varenne, we served this bread for breakfast for special guests. It’s also wonderful with a hot cup of tea on a chilly fall afternoon.

Other than sharing the quickbread gene, this beer batter bread doesn’t have much of a Southern heritage. For minimum effort and maximum results, it’s hard to beat. This takes the phrase “dump and stir” to a whole new level. Different beers produce breads with different flavors and textures. This recipe calls for stout, producing a bread somewhat dark in color with a slightly heavy flavor. It goes well with a hearty stew such as Boeuf Bourguignonne (page 91) or Old-fashioned Pot Roast (page 89). Lighter ale produces a lighter loaf and would be more appropriate with milder dishes such as Potato and Cheddar Soup (page 241).

A long hot summer with just the right amount of rain will create a situation of disastrous consequences—too much zucchini in the garden. Zucchini is prolific. You and your family can eat it every night. You can leave bags of zucchini at the front doors of all your neighbors. You can give it away to strangers. But the plants relentlessly continue to produce more and more. At a certain point in midsummer, you will notice your neighbors crossing to the other side of the street when they see you, and the postman conspicuously looking the other way as he deposits your mail. So, when you have too much zucchini in your garden, make a few loaves of this homestyle quickbread. No one can turn away from freshly baked bread.

What impresses me the most about all the types of cornbread is how quickly they can be brought to the table. Warm bread for supper makes everything taste better. My version of pantry cooking is to pull a bag of butter beans or black-eyed peas frozen last summer out of the freezer and cook a pot of rice. While the rice is cooking, I can throw together a batch of corn muffins. It’s a simple, quick supper ready in less than thirty minutes. The fallacy that you need to open a can or use a mix is just that—a lie. I find that shortcuts and prepared products actually do not often make things easier, and usually take as long as doing things “right” in the first place.

Quickbreads use baking powder or baking soda or both as leavening agents and therefore require no kneading or rising, as do traditional yeast breads. This quickbread recipe comes from my cousin-in-law Lisa, whose mama passed it on to her. It was originally baked in a loaf pan, as it is here, but I also like to bake it in a 9-inch cake pan. The temperature stays the same, but the cooking time will reduce to 30 to 45 minutes. It’s great for breakfast, an afternoon snack, or topped with ice cream for a delicious dessert.

Cornmeal gives this bread a subtle crispy crunch. For the best results, use the best-quality extra-virgin olive oil possible. If you really want to “gild the lily,” top the warm bread with a few curls of freshly shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

One of my favorite possessions is my grandmother’s cast-iron skillet. It’s more precious to me than the antique bone china that I also inherited. To think of all the fried chicken and cornbread it has held is amazing. Several years ago, I returned home to Georgia after living in New York City, and I carried my treasured skillet in a blanket on my lap practically the whole trip. It is almost like my sacred talisman. No one will dare touch it when we are cleaning up from dinner. If I leave the room, I return to a spotless kitchen with a dirty cast-iron skillet on the stovetop. No one wants the responsibility. It sounds severe, but a little fear is fine with me. When properly seasoned over time, cast iron develops a virtually nonstick surface that only improves with use. To clean cast-iron cookware, wash with a nonabrasive sponge and warm soapy water. Rinse it well. To prevent rust, make sure the piece is completely dry before you store it. As insurance, I usually place mine in a warm oven for a little while to fully dry out. Cast iron is great for baking cornbread, pan-frying, and sauteing. It is a little slow to heat up, but once it does, it heats evenly and stays hotter longer. Cast iron is inexpensive and can be found at hardware and cookware stores.

I could make a meal out of just buttered cornbread. Except perhaps for barbecue, cornbread is as close to religion in the South as any particular food gets. At the top of the list of cornbread sins is adding sugar. You will notice a complete lack of sugar in this cornbread recipe. Sugar is more often found in what is referred to derisively as “Yankee cornbread.” Adherents of white versus yellow cornmeal are like Methodists and Baptists: some think you’re going to hell if you follow one path and not the other. I am of the white cornmeal sect. The theory is that white corn was less hybridized and closer to the original grain than yellow. Plain white cornmeal can be surprisingly tricky to find, even in Atlanta; most of what lines the grocery store shelves is a mix or self-rising, which already contains the leavener that makes the cornmeal rise. Although yellow and white cornmeal are interchangeable, plain and self-rising cornmeal are not. Warming the skillet and bacon grease or butter in the oven prepares the skillet for baking and melts the fat. Most often, I use butter. I like to let it get just barely nutty brown on the edges. The brown flecks give the cornbread extra color and flavor.

Meme most often made rolled biscuits. For large biscuits, she had a special aluminum cutter with a small wooden handle that fit in the palm of her hand. She cut out small biscuits with an empty apple juice can open at both ends. Some purists use lard instead of butter. Although I like biscuits made with lard and understand the tradition and history, Meme and Mama had started using butter by the time I was born. The perfect biscuit should be golden brown and slightly crisp on the outside, with a light, airy interior. For a flaky, tender biscuit, don’t overwork the dough: gently combine the ingredients until just blended. A very hot oven is essential. The steam interacts with the baking powder to create the biscuit’s ideal textures inside and out.