whole wheat pear torte

In light of the previous post I decided to share this one to highlight that inventing or even modifying recipes is not always a straightforward process.

My friend Teresa generously gave me a bag of home grown pears the other day. They looked delicious. "Eat them right away" she said, "you want to eat them while they are still firm."

Pears are a great fruit. They are very high in fiber, a good source of vitamin C, they also provide dietary copper. Copper is an antioxidant that is required by the body for good health and it helps the body to process iron. Fairly low in calories, a medium sized pear has around 70 calories making them a great snack choice.

I had initially thought that I would can them because firm pears hold up the best to the heat of canning. Or perhaps pear butter. But in the end I wound up making a torte for dessert. It was delicious with a nice balance of flavor and sweetness; the pears turned out just right, firm and not too mushy. But the torte was too dense and a little dry. It definitely could have used a sauce of some kind to help out. My husband's response was "it needs some ice cream."

I may try to make this again with regular pears; if I do I would make a few changes. Possibly adding some applesauce to moisten it up a bit, perhaps soaking the flour in a small measure of apple juice to help soften the fiber, maybe adding a little more fat. I'm not sure but I do know that, as I said before, it's not easy to always get it just the way you want it on the first go. But keep playing with it and enjoy the process and the results.

Whole Wheat Pear Torte

2 eggs

1/4 C. milk

1/2 t. salt

1 C. evaporated cane juice crystals

1 1/2 C. whole wheat flour

1 t. vanilla

1/2 t. cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 deg F

Peel, core, and slice pears

Mix together eggs, milk, salt, vanilla, cinnamon, and evaporated cane juice crystals

Add flour and mix well

gently mix in pears

Grease a 9" cake pan

Coat the pan with sucanat

Pour torte mixture into pan

Bake 30-35 minutes or until done

Enjoy!

cake questions

My friend Claire recently learned about using carob as a substitute for chocolate and decided that she wanted to try it. She felt that it was best to start with a recipe that already used carob and try to change the sugar/fat ratios so she picked this recipe.

Here are her notes, "Instead of using 2/3 cup I substituted with 1/2 cup brown sugar plus 4 tbsp's milk. It turned out looking & tasting just like a chocolate cake; just not as sweet as the ones you normally get from the store, because I didn't use as much sweetener. I shared it with a friend and she liked it and thought it was a chocolate cake. The texture of the cake is dense and more like that of a banana bread. I think if I use 100% all purpose flour or cake flour it will make a difference. I baked for 30 minutes and it turned out a little dry, so I would probably bake less than 30 minutes next time. Also adding icing might help with the dryness but I didn't use it."

My reply: "This certainly looks great and your picture looks wonderful!! I would make one small change. Instead of brown sugar (which these days is nothing more than white sugar stained with molasses) I would try demerara sugar which is a lower process than white sugar and has a fairly good moisture content mimicking the effect of brown sugar.

In case you are wondering why manufacturers pull the molasses out of sugar to make white sugar and then add it back to make brown, it's so that they can get a consistent color palette in the product. Silly but that's why they do it.

As to the moisture...the cake probably came out a little drier because you used less sweetener. You can try to modify that by either adding a little more fat (oil or butter) or by adding something like sour cream (just a little) to help which would also give a subtle richness to the cake or applesauce which would help add moisture. The applesauce typically doesn't add anything to the flavor profile, just moisture.

Since I personally encourage people to eat more whole grains I would leave the whole wheat the way it is is the recipe, switching back to 100% enriched flour is nutritionally less desirable and will also significantly change the properties of the cake."

As a general note, when you are modifying recipes it's sometimes difficult to remember all the different pieces that make up the whole. Changing one ingredient can have a major effect on the overall result. When working with baked goods the most important things to think about are if your change will impact the loft (whole grains are more dense requiring possibly more moisture or more leavening), the moisture, or the flavor. But most importantly, like Claire, have fun and experiment with your food.

Photo: Courtesy of Claire Wang

green tomatoes

I was recently visiting family in the Northeast where they have been hit badly by the tomato blight. All over the area farmers and home growers are ripping out plants and throwing them away because of the blight. Although cherry tomatoes and plum tomatoes seem to hold up better they are certainly not immune.

When I went with my sister-in-law to her beautiful community garden plot everything appeared to be growing well. The garden was lush, greenly fragrant and productive, even the tomatoes looked good at first glance. But the blight had obviously damaged the plants and the fruit. As she began to pull out the plants I realized that many of the fruits were still unscathed. Remembering the years we lived in Vermont (which Shep Ogden, owner of Cook's Garden, jokingly says should be referred to as the Green Tomato State) I knew that there was a lot we could do with the fruit. My sister-in-law agreed to give it a whirl and we began to hunt for all of the un-blighted fruit we could find.

After the patch was cleared and we headed back to the house with bags full of green tomatoes we began to search for recipes. There are so many things you can make with green tomatoes; more than just the familiar fried green tomatoes. We usually don't use them because we are so conditioned to eating them when they are fully ripe. According to the USDA the nutritional profile of green and red tomatoes is almost the same. Green tomatoes have twice the vitamin C, more vitamin K, and more calcium. Red tomatoes have more vitamin A, E, and potassium. Apparently they have the same amount of lycopene and it is believed that the chlorophyll in the green tomatoes hides the red pigment which indicates a lycopene-rich food.

Our cooking and canning foray took two days (in part because we also canned zucchini, but that's another story) and we made green tomato cake, green tomato pickles, green tomato salsa, and some really fabulous green tomato relish. Now when their family sits down in the middle of those cold New England winters they'll still be able to have a jar of summer goodness on the table to enjoy.

Green tomatoes are versatile and can be made into pie (it's delicious, trust me), pasta sauce, and all manner of preserved goods. While I'm not sure if the farmers in those states affected by the blight will be able to harvest and sell their green tomatoes I sure hope they do. And I hope that people realize just how tasty green tomatoes are. Who knows, it might start a new demand for green tomatoes.

photo courtesy of wikimedia.commons.org