Category: Desserts

Liz Waters Poppy Seed Cake and Filling

As I have mentioned before, when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, university administrators still believed that students deserved good cooks as well as good teachers. Talented chefs worked with dietitians to design menus that were nutritious and interesting, and teams of skilled cooks turned the plans into gourmet dinners.

But teachers and cooks are human beings, so some were better than others and occasionally even the finest chef stumbles. As an English major, I was taught very early that “Even Homer nods.” However, the chef at Elizabeth Waters, where Jerri was Assistant Head Resident, didn’t nod very often. He created a lot of wonderful dishes that I was privileged to enjoy as Jerri’s guest.

liz-specials-cover-1This is one of them, a dessert that the residents chose for their Liz Specials cookbook in 1965. As you can see from the picture, our copy has been well used, but it still has an honored place on the bookshelf.

The cake is dense but not chewy, and the poppy seeds give it a lot of flavor. The pudding provides a nice contrast.

You have to remember to soak the poppy seed overnight before making the cake, but otherwise, it is simplicity itself to make.

INGREDIENTS:
For the cake:
1 cup poppy seeds
1 1/4 cups milk, divided
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
3 egg whites

For the filling:
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 tsp. salt
2 1/2 T cornstarch
1 T flour
2 cups milk
3 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
1 T butter
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 T powdered sugar

PROCEDURE:

For the cake:

Soak the poppy seeds in three-quarters of a cup of milk overnight in a cool room or the refrigerator.

The next day preheat the oven to 390º and cream the butter and sugar thoroughly. Grease two eight-inch round layer cake pans.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder gradually into the creamed sugar. Using a wooden spoon, blend the flour into the sugar. The dry ingredients will resemble biscuit mix. Stir in the milk,vanilla and poppy seeds and beat until smooth. The batter will be very stiff.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold the egg whites into the batter. Spread the batter evenly into the cake pans and bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Test for doneness at twenty-five minutes by inserting a toothpick near the center of a cake. If it comes out clean, the cakes are done.

Take the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool for an hour. Remove the cakes from the pans, set one upside down on a cake plate and the other right side up on waxed paper.

For the filling:
It is easiest to make the filling in a double boiler. Put water in the bottom of the double boiler, put the milk into the upper pan and warm the milk until it is lukewarm. Mix together the sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt and whisk it into the warm milk. Continue heating the milk, stirring often, until it begins to thicken. Cover and cook another three minutes.

Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl until they are lemon yellow, then whisk a half cup of the hot mixture very gradually into the beaten yolks and whisk the yolks back into the pudding. Cover, return the double boiler to the heat and cook for three minutes.

Remove the pudding from the heat and stir in the butter, vanilla and chopped nuts.

Let the pudding cool completely, then spread a layer of the pudding on the cake you had put on a plate. Top the pudding with the second cake and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Slice and serve.

NOTES: You can omit the nuts from the pudding, but the crunchiness is pleasant. If the pudding is too warm or you put too thick a layer of it on the cake, pudding will run down the sides. The cake will still be delicious and look like a work of freeform art.

You may have some pudding left over after you put a nice layer on the cake. As Jerri says, “It must be hard cutting a recipe down to something for a family from enough to serve three hundred people.” The leftover pudding is delicious. Take it from one who knows.

Incidentally, if you don’t have any cake flour, the standard substitute is one cup less two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Works every time.

This is the third recipe from Liz Specials that I have shared on Courage in the Kitchen. You might want to try the Thousand Island Dressing and the Manhattan Meat Rolls too.

Didi found that the Liz Specials cookbook has been digitized and is available here
Have fun with some more great recipes!

Mom’s Dough Gods

When we kids were at home, Mom made dough gods almost every time she made bread. We devoured them hot from the pan coated with sugar and cinnamon. We thought they were better than doughnuts.

Some people call them dough gobs, but they were dough gods to us. I don’t know how they got that name, but they deserve it. They truly are a heavenly treat, despite the fact that they are one of the simplest foods you can make. Stir up some bread dough, let it rise an hour or so and fry it in any kind of cooking oil you have available. Mom used lard, shortening or vegetable oil, and her dough gods always turned out golden and tasty.

You don’t need a special dough. The recipe below makes a standard nine by five inch loaf of old-fashioned white bread or a batch of dough gods. Double the recipe and you can bake a loaf of bread along with the dough gods. There’s really no extra work to make both at the same time, so you get the loaf of bread as a bonus.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup milk
1 heaping tsp. active dry yeast (1/2 package)
1/2 cup water
1 T sugar
1 T butter
3/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 – 3 cups all-purpose flour
Oil to fry dough gods in
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

PROCEDURE:

As with all bread baking, start by scrubbing your hands well.

Put one-half cup warm water (90º to 110º) in a cup with a quarter teaspoon of sugar and stir in the yeast. While the yeast is proofing, warm the milk to about 110º and pour it into a large bowl. Stir in the salt and sugar. Melt the butter and add it to the milk.

Stir in the flour one cup at a time, beating thoroughly between additions. After you have stirred in the first cup, mix in the yeast. Continue adding flour one cup at a time until the dough becomes stiff and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Let the dough rest in the bowl for five minutes, then scrape it out onto a well-floured work surface with a spatula and use the spatula to turn the dough to coat it with flour before starting to knead it. Powder your hands with flour, and knead the dough until it is smooth and satiny, about four to five minutes.

If you have never kneaded dough, you should check out Wikihow.com for an excellent lesson on kneading or go to Thekitchn.com for a good video showing you how to do it. Actually, doing both is a good idea. Just go to the sites and use the search for “knead dough.”

Return the dough to a greased bowl, roll it to cover the surface lightly with grease, and cover the bowl with a damp towel. Put the bowl in a warm spot in the kitchen (I use the top of the refrigerator) and let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk, usually an hour or a little more. Punch it down and knead it on a lightly floured work surface five or six strokes. Pat it down to about an inch thick and use a knife or baker’s scraper to divide the dough into twelve or fourteen pieces. Roll the pieces into balls about the size of walnuts and cover them with a damp towel.

Put the sugar into a shallow bowl or pie tin and mix in the cinnamon. Put some paper towels in a baking pan or on a plate to absorb any oil from the dough gods after they are fried.

Heat a quarter to half-inch of vegetable oil in a ten or twelve inch skillet over medium high heat. While the oil is heating pat some of the dough balls into circles about a quarter inch thick, then stretch them out even thinner.

Test to determine if the oil is hot enough by dropping a small piece of dough torn off from one of the bigger balls into the oil. It should brown on one side in about thirty seconds and finish in another thirty seconds on the other side.

Put two dough gods into the oil, let them fry for about a minute, then using tongs or a slotted spoon, turn them over to finish cooking. If the first one is not golden brown when you turn it, just turn it back for a few more seconds and raise the heat a little.

When both sides are golden brown, take the dough gods from the oil and let them drain while you put the next pair into the pan. Dredge the two you just cooked in the cinnamon sugar and put them on a plate.

Enjoy!

NOTES: Dough gods are best eaten warm, and a couple of kids can keep up with the pan, at least for the first four or five dough gods. You can omit the cinnamon and even the sugar if you want.

I think that Mom used tongs to handle the dough gods, but I have a faint recollection of her using a cooking fork. Just be careful not to splash any hot oil on eager hands snatching dough gods from the plate.

And finally, I found a couple of recipes on the Web that called for frozen bread dough (thawed and allowed to rise of course). I would never use it, but perhaps I am a Luddite in the kitchen.