Sharon’s Pumpkin Spice Cake
One 8-Inch 3-Layer Cake

We served this for friends at a lovely autumn dinner party at our home in 2003. It is perhaps a more sophisticated alternative to traditional pumpkin pie. Sharon ices the entire cake, but you can also simply ice between the layers and on top.

Pumpkin Cake Batter
¾ cup unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks)
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup pumpkin purée
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon fresh-ground nutmeg

Pumpkin Cream-Cheese Frosting
(Double this if you intend to frost the entire cake)
1 8-ounce package cream cheese (do not use fat free)
¼ cup pumpkin purée
¼ cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick), softened
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Preparation: 1. Heat your oven to 350?F. 2. Prepare cake pans: lightly coat three 8-inch cake pans with softened butter. Cut three 8-inch circles out of parchment paper and fit them into the bottoms of the cake pans. Lightly coat the paper with butter and set aside. 3. Make the batter: Cream butter until smooth in a large bowl with your electric mixer set at medium speed. Add the sugars and mix smoothly. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until the mixture is smooth and light. Set aside. Combine the pumpkin purée, buttermilk and vanilla in a medium bowl and set aside. Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and nutmeg in a large bowl and set aside. In thirds, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture to the butter mixture, blending well after each addition until smooth. 4. Bake the cake: Pour batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of each cake comes out clean; about 35 to 40 minutes. Cool the cake in the pan on wire racks for 30 minutes. Remove cakes from the pans and return to the racks until completely cool. 5. Assemble the cake: Place one layer on a cake plate and top with one-third of the pumpkin cream-cheese frosting mixture. Repeat with the second and third layers.

Sharon & Richard WOTTRICH

Fennel, Apple and Almond Soup
Serves 6

This subtle summer soup is served at Peter Dixon’s White Moss House, in Grasmere, Cumbria, UK. William Wordsworth once owned the White Moss House. It is always served as a first course and is apparently based upon an ancient recipe.

As a variation, I serve the soup with a separate shot glass of Cream Sherry. The richness of the cream sherry plays off wonderfully against this unusual fruit-based soup.

2 tablespoons walnut or olive oil
1 8-ounce fennel bulb, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tart green apples, peeled, cored, chopped
1 6-ounce celery root, peeled, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
½ cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons ground toasted almonds
pinch of ground nutmeg or cloves, as you wish
sliced almonds for garnish
fennel fronds for garnish

Preparation: 1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. 2. Add fennel and onion and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. 3. Mix in the apple, celery root and chicken stock. Bring to simmer, cover and cook about 30 minutes. 4. Working in batches, transfer the mixture to a blender. Puree until smooth. 5. Add whipping cream, ground almonds and nutmeg or cloves. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Up to this point the soup may be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover tightly and refrigerate.)

Presentation: Reheat soup. Ladle into bowls and garnish with sliced almonds and fennel fronds. Serve with a shot glass of cream sherry, to be poured in by your dinner guest.

History of Fennel: Fennel has been known for centuries and was cultivated by the Romans for its aromatic fruits and succulent, edible shoots. Pliny the Elder had faith in its medicinal properties, recording no less than twenty-two fenne;-based remedies, observing also that serpents eat it “when they cast their old skins, and they sharpen their sight with the juice by rubbing against the plant.”

In mediaeval times Fennel was employed, together with St. John's Wort and other herbs, as a preventative against witchcraft and other evil influences. It was hung over doors on Midsummer's Eve to warn off evil spirits. Fennel was also eaten as a condiment with seafood and eaten by our forefathers during Lent.

Though the Romans valued the young shoots as a vegetable, it is not certain whether it was cultivated in northern Europe at that time, but it is frequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon cookery and medical recipes prior to the Norman Conquest. Fennel shoots, Fennel water and Fennel seeds are all mentioned in an ancient record of Spanish agriculture dating AD 961. Charlemagne, who ordered its cultivation on his imperial farms, stimulated the diffusion of the plant in Central Europe. It is mentioned in Gerard (1597), and Parkinson (Theatricum Botanicum, 1640) tells us that its culinary use was derived from Italy, for he says:

“The leaves, seede and rootes are both for meate and medicine; the Italians especially doe much delight in the use thereof, and therefore transplant and whiten it, to make it more tender to please the taste, which being sweete and somewhat hot helpeth to digest the crude qualitie of fish and other viscous meats. We use it to lay upon fish or to boyle it therewith and with divers other things, as also the seeds in bread and other things.”

There are many references to Fennel in poetry. Milton, in Paradise Lost alludes to the aroma of the plant:

“A savoury odour blown, Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense, Than smell of sweetest Fennel.”

Richard Wottrich