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!