Notes from the stove

Tuesday: Maida Heatter's East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, from Saveur magazine
Boy, has it been a looooong time since I've made a cake from scratch ... you know, butter, eggs, sifted flour, all that. For the most part, they don't seem to be worth it. But this one is, well, pretty close to being worth it. For one thing, with the exception of having to double-sift the flour and remember to soften the butter, it's not a difficult cake. Harder than a box mix, but not by much. For another, the texture ends up being different from a box mix (well, duh), but not in a heavy-as-a-brick-and-about-as-moist way that some scratch cakes do. This one was dense and moist, almost like a buttery cross between sponge cake and pound cake. And the glaze was REALLY nice. I let my cake get a little too done despite pulling it 15 minutes before the minimum time in the recipe (stupid nonstick Nordicware bundt pan burns every time), and the glaze totally saved it. It soaks into the surface, then it crystallizes as the cake cools, so there is this crunchy lemon sugar coating on the whole surface. Verrrrry good.
Verdict: I'm keeping the recipe, but for everyday use I'll probably still use the doctored mix recipe from the Cake Mix Doctor book. I know, I suck, but that's what I grew up on.

Friday: Mocha Truffle Cookies, originally from Better Homes and Gardens magazine
I printed this recipe years ago from the Fine Cooking discussion board, where it received good reviews. I made some this morning to take to my trunk show at Birds of a Feather tomorrow ... because quilters love chocolate, and I'm all about kissing up to potential customers. Anything that has three kinds of chocolate in it and isn't burnt can't be too bad - but I wouldn't say they're my favorite cookies of all time or anything. You can't really taste the coffee - the Fine Cooking poster said she uses instant espresso powder instead of coffee, and I think that would help bump it up a little. And I wasn't too fond of how the cookies didn't really melt or spread at all - you're supposed to drop them by teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheets, which usually means that they'll spread and round out a little. These stayed where they were, so the finished cookies look a little shaggy around the edges. I think next time I might try chilling the (already pretty stiff) dough and rolling them into flattened balls or something. I also think I'll cook them for less time, since only a few ended up with the "soft trufflelike center" the original post described.
Verdict: I'm keeping the recipe, and will try monkeying around with espresso powder and/or different cocoa (I used the ultra-black Dutch processed cocoa from King Arthur, which has a different flavor from standard cocoa, and I generally don't like it as much as regular).

Friday: Curried Lentil Soup, photocopied from some cookbook a couple years ago
A few years ago, Jason and I had a not-so-great meal at an Indian restaurant. The next morning we woke up to find we still had it on our breath; Jason remarked that it tasted "like an Indian shat in my mouth." Well, after forgetting to take out the trash full of raw chicken trimmings last night, and making this soup today, my kitchen smells like the Indian not only shat there, but died there, too. Note to self: take out the raw-chicken trash, no matter how little else is in the bag.
If you don't mind your house smelling like curry for a few days, though, this stuff was surprisingly good. I'm not a huge lentil fan - I'll eat an occasional bowl of lentil soup when we're out, particularly with lots of extra lemon juice squeezed over it, but I don't make it at home. This is probably enough to change my mind, though. Absolutely nothing tricky, few weird ingredients, not overly spicy, it was done in about an hour, and it was really tasty. Jason and I agreed that it probably would benefit from having some meat thrown in at the end - I've got some spicy pot roast leftovers I'm eyeing for when we reheat this later on for dinner when I'm too lazy, er, busy to cook. And it needs some sort of bread to go with it - naan would be great, but even a nice homemade yeast bread would go well with it.
Verdict: We both really liked it, at least for the original meal. We'll see how well it reheats and whether we get sick of it as quickly as we did the cabbage soup back in January (gack ... I still have trouble considering eating more of that, even though it was good the first time around). I'm definitely keeping the recipe - this would be good to serve to a crowd, maybe with a salad and some homemade bread, for an impressive meal. Plus, it makes your house smell like curry :)

If anyone wants the curried lentil soup recipe, let me know and I'll send it to you. I couldn't find it after a reasonable amount of searching online, and I don't feel like being Ms. Copyright Infringer today.