French Fridays With Dorie - Quatre-Quarts

Sometimes I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I've just had the most incredible dream.

I've just dreamt my life.

~ Richard Branson 

Helleww......I'm back! After several weeks of wedding-related shenanigans, I'm glad to be wiping the mounting dust off my copy of Dorie's Around My French Table cookbook in order to partake in this week's recipe, a classic French pound cake, or Quatre-Quarts. It's a simple recipe with only four main ingredients, flour, butter, eggs and sugar - used in equal amounts (hence "four-fourths") - and flavored only with a hint of vanilla.

This cake is a great one to bake if you're a rookie in the baking department, it's so easy and quite literally is "a piece of cake", if you'll forgive the pun! The eggs are separated and the whipped egg-whites are then folded into the batter, giving a light and airy-textured cake. By Dorie's reckoning, this is a dry cake compared to American pound cakes, but I thought it was just fine. Or I just may have a propensity for dry, crumbly cakes from having lived in Europe for a bit.

I chose not to dress up the cake and instead sprinkled the top with a mixture of black sesame powder and brown sugar prior to baking it. This gave the resulting cake a slight, pleasant crust from the caramelized sugar and a nutty flavor from the sesame. I loved biting through the crisp top layer into the tender inside of the cake, such an understated but elegant cake. So very French!

Instead of using a round cake pan, I used a heart-shaped mold to bake the batter in. Speaking of hearts, I'd like to share with you some images from my sister's wedding last weekend. Nothing to do with a food blog, of course...but there was a lot of food and feasting involved, I assure you!

The groom saying his wedding vows - just one take and he's part of our clan :).

After the wedding vows, or nikah ceremony

My sister's husband hails from Kosovo, a country only independent in 2008. He was one of the millions of displaced individuals resulting from the war in Kosovo in 1999. At the insistence of his ageing father, he escaped through the mountains, leaving all his family members behind and two weeks later arrived in Switzerland, where he has lived and worked since. And that's where he met my sister. It's hugely ironic that someone who'd come from a war-torn region has ended up with someone who comes from one of the most peaceful countries on earth (Brunei a.k.a. Abode of Peace). Maybe they were brought together for a good reason - to show us that Hope, well it's not just a myth, after all. :)

 Bride and groom getting ready for the wedding reception

Have a blessed marriage, Fidah & Ardian!

Back to the quatre-quarts! See how my online cooking group buddies fared with this recipe here. Better still, get yourself a copy of the book and join us, won't you?

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!

Gaga Over Grapefruit (Cake)

Looking at these luscious pink grapefruits sitting pretty on the kitchen counter, I couldn't help but get carried away with the thought of turning these lovelies into something - something more delicious than they already are. I mean, there I was, munching my breakfast while quietly brainstorming on how to get one over Mother Nature. Then I remembered the the distant taste of the Orange Syrup Cake that I used to make frequently one time, a long, long time ago. But wait! Is the world really ready for Grapefruit Syrup Cake? 

Juicy!

First, we needed to squeeze the bejuices out of these grapefruits. For a 2 lb cake loaf, I used the juice of slightly more than half a grapefruit. These things are HUGE, so can you imagine just how much juice they contained?? You can of course strain the juice to eliminate the tiny pips, but I kinda liked the pulp so no straining (subtext: had to fish the pips out manually one by one. Haha)

All squeezed out. But worth every drop!

The juice was gradually added to a mixture of butter, sugar, eggs and self-raising flour and folded into a rather cute 2 lb loaf baking tin. I lined mine with greaseproof paper (above). The whole thing then went into a pre-heated oven and baked for about 40 mins. In the meantime, I prepared the syrup mixture to pour over the cake once it was cooked. Sooooo, more squeezing!

For the syrup, it was a mixture of half a grapefruit juice and rind, plus sugar. Boiled for a couple of minutes until mixture became slightly syrupy. Left the pips in there, for goodness sake! A few pips never killed anyone. Well, noone that I've heard of so far.

Poked the cake all over as soon as it came out of the oven, and then spooned the grapefruit juice syrup on top of the cake.

That's the grapefruitiest cake you'll ever taste!

The rind gave the cake its the sharper, tangier taste.

An aerial view. Lovely from all angles.