Long Pepper Pound Cake

Long Peppercorns in their jar

After tasting a cupcake or something, one of my colleagues once commented, "I like that your desserts sometimes burn." He wasn't referring to heat from the oven, but to my love for mixing spicy and sweet. Desserts aren't often that spicy, but their general fattiness/creaminess actually makes them a great way to deliver a subtle punch. I've talked about some of those recipes here, and there have been others. This is another post in the spicy dessert vein.

Completed pound cake.

Some of you may recall my brief fixation on the Long Pepper, which I described in this post a couple years ago. That bag of long peppers is, well, long gone; but I found some more in a spice market on my recent trip to Yogyakarta, Indonesia. To recap, long peppers are much more like black peppercorns than they are chile or bell peppers. They're spicy and taste like a rough cross between black pepper and star anise, with maybe a hint of smokiness.  Since that last blog post, I've also made a really tasty (trust me) ice cream with them too.

This time, however,  the goal was a spicy but sweet poundcake. I started with Pichet Ong's delicious sweetened condensed milk poundcake. He suggests using vanilla as the main flavor. I've made it with pandan leaves as well. This time I used long pepper, and it was ridiculously simple.

Before blending with sugar

I took a handful of long peppercorns and put them in the food processor with 1/2 cup of sugar. I spun it for a few minutes until the peppercorns had broken up substantially. Opening the food processor released a sweet/spicy haze of sugar/pepper dust that caused a minor coughing fit (I closed the food processor during said coughing, don't worry). Then I strained the sugar and put it back in the food processor. I tasted the sugar and it packed some serious bite. Perfect, as it would be diluted by all of the other ingredients.

I added 1/2 pound of soft butter and spun until they were well combined, followed by a bit less than a can of sweetened condensed milk (he calls for 3/4 cup; i accidentally poured more in), and then 3 eggs. After processing in quick pulses until well blended, I added 1.5 cups of flour mixed with 3/4 tsp baking powder and pulsed a few more times.

After blending with sugar.

Finally I poured this batter into an 8.5 x 4.5 loaf pan and baked at 325 F for a bit over an hour.

I tested this on colleagues and got lots of good feedback. People liked the sweetness followed by a little bit of heat. The spice was subtle, but had a definite presence. A win, I'd say.

If one wanted to make this without long peppers, I'd say you could use a combination of black peppercorns and star anise (maybe 2/3 pepper to 1/3 anise?). If you try it, let me know how it works!

Indian Brunch plus Lemon, Ginger & Cumin Scones

After venturing to Syracuse last week to procure curry leaves, mangoes and other delights, I made brunch for some friends this morning with an Indian theme. I've mentioned before that one of my favorite brunch dishes is eggs made with some curry leaves, onions, ginger and a Thai chile. I supplemented that with a richly spiced potato curry in tomato sauce and some fresh pineapple (thanks, Sahara!).

I believe brunch to be  incomplete without baked goods, however, so I wanted to make an appropriate scone. I decided to start with Joanne Chang's fabulous recipe for lemon-ginger scones, as both of these are plausibly Indian flavors. Plus, it's a great recipe into which she squeezes fresh lemon zest, fresh ginger, dried ginger and candied ginger. It's topped with a sweet lemon glaze made with just fresh lemon juice and powdered sugar.

To make them more 'Indian,' I added a few (1/2 tsp or so) cumin seeds to the batter. These were very subtle, though, so I wanted to add more punch. To do that, I added some ground cumin (1/2 tsp) and a bit of ground cayenne (1/4 tsp) to the glaze, mixing the spices with the sugar before adding the lemon juice. The result was a powerfully tasty glaze when eaten on its own, but gave a nice subtle accent to the scones when spread thinly on top. A win, I think. And friends seemed to agree.

Mango & Szechuan Pepper Sorbet

I hesitate to admit this broadly, but students who have taken my undergraduate courses know that I always include at least one exam question that features "Larry the Mango Lover," a fictional aficionado of mangoes. Larry often finds himself without access to the mangoes he loves, and the questions (which do tie directly back to course concepts, just for the record) are about how he resolves this situation. In a course about online social support, Larry turns to the Mango Aficionados Networking Group Online (yes, MANGO) for help.  When we discuss common ground in communication, Larry helps his friend pick out the right mango to bring home from the Asian grocery ("Is it yellow?" "Ok, but is the end more pointy or round?"). You get the idea.

More than one student has figured out that Larry is a thinly veiled and somewhat exaggerated version of yours truly. I haven't turned to online support groups for mango lovers, but I certainly do miss good mangos when I'm in Ithaca. And that's why, on a recent trip to an Indian grocery in Syracuse, I didn't blink at the idea of bringing home a box of 20 or so small Ataulfo mangos from Mexico.

Schezuan Peppercorns

I've got plans for these mangos. Of course, I'll eat one every morning with some plain yogurt for breakfast. But they won't all last that long. I'm also planning a mango gazpacho. Maybe some mango salsa (which are both actually pretty similar). And the topic of today's post: mango sorbet.

Not just any mango sorbet, though. I added Szechuan peppercorns just to make it interesting. For those who don't know them, Szechuan peppercorns are a dried berry that is both spicy and (literally) mouth-numbing. Spice goes nicely with mango, so I figured this would be worth trying.

Steeping syrup

To get the peppercorn flavor into the sorbet, I steeped a few tablespoons of them in the simple syrup that would sweeten the sorbet. I brought these to a boil and let steep for about 5 hours. Then I sliced up a few mangos (about 2 pounds worth, or 5 small ones) and put these in the blender with the syrup (1 cup, peppercorns strained out), juice from one lime, a tablespoon of clear rum (to prevent ice crystals) and a bit of sorbet stabilizer (to prevent more ice crystals). This was then frozen in the ice cream maker.

Finished Sorbet

The result is tasty. It's sweet like mango and has a very slight hint of the peppercorns, with a very slight bite. It's interesting and I like it, but I wonder if there's a way to punch up the spice a bit. Maybe a tiny bit of salt, or leaving some cracked peppercorns in the mix next time.