In Good Taste #7: Sauerkraut Cake
No, really, it's a thing; casting clouts before May be out; local art for north Londoners
Well, hello there! How are you?
Good I hope. Thank you so much for being here.
I am well but still recovering from our bank holiday weekend walk on the New River Path, a 28 mile route along the 400-year-old aqueduct that brings water from Hertfordshire to London. I made poor sock choices and suffered the consequences.
The New River goes more or less past our house and back in 2018, my husband James and I walked home from it’s starting point on the river Lee between Hertford and Ware, staying overnight in Cheshunt. It was lovely but became progressively less picturesque over the second day as leafy Hertfordshire gave way to litter-strewn north London.
So this time round we thought we’d do it in reverse, starting at home and finishing in Hertford. It was a nice enough way to spend a couple of days but I can’t honestly recommend you try it at the moment. Several stretches are currently closed for maintenance works, necessitating detours down unlovely main roads. A huge development near Cheshunt meant we had to cross the M25 on foot (hair raising!) and the final stretch of the walk up to the River Lee is also closed after an accident on a Level Crossing in 2021 so we got to Hertford along the Lee itself.
There are some lovely sections, particularly through the Enfield Loop, Broxbourne and just south of Ware. And we saw lots of birds including yellow wagtails, cormorants and plenty of ducklings, goslings and little moorhen chicks. Plus some rabbits sitting a field of daisies. But the whole thing felt a little more built up and a little less bucolic than five years ago. We need to keep a close watch on our footpaths and access to green spaces and places. We met friends in Ware for the last bit of the walk who told us about SlowWays which sounds like a worthwhile project.
Incidentally, I only found out last year that the phrase “ne’er cast a clout ‘til May be out” has nothing to do with not punching people until summer. I was always puzzled as to why that would be OK, whatever the time of year. But it turns out that “May” is another name for hawthorn and a “clout” is clothing. So the saying has nothing to do with avoiding violence but is about not taking off your winter coat until the hawthorn blossom is out. It was, and very warm, so we merrily cast out clouts and enjoyed the sunshine.
More details of my June supper club menu! This is the pasta dish I’ll be serving.
Tortelloni filled with ricotta and preserved lemon, topped with pea shoots and pistachio pangrattato. Silky fresh pasta stuffed with mild, milky ricotta and zingy preserved lemons. Tossed in a butter sauce and topped with sweet pea shoots and crunchy, nutty toasted breadcrumbs. It's early summer on a plate.
The full menu is as follows:
SYCAMORE SMYTH @ LIZZY’S ON THE GREEN JUNE MENU
Elderflower “Champagne” cocktail
Freshly baked focaccia bread, confit garlic oil
Burrata, fermented cherry tomatoes
Tortelloni filled with ricotta & preserved lemon, pea shoots, pistachio pangrattato
Chicken polpette/Aubergine polpette (V)
Asparagus, griddled courgette, farro & summer herb salad
Roast beet & lentil salad, raspberry vinaigrette, fermented beet crisps, white bean pureé, watercress pesto
Summer berry ice cream profiteroles, dark chocolate sauce, cultured cream, fresh and fermented berries
I'll be serving this menu twice, 6-9pm on June 3rd and 17th before moving on to something new for the July and August dates. Tickets are £45 per person and include a welcome cocktail. This menu is a total labour of love. It’s all super seasonal and freshly made and I’m growing/fermenting a lot of the ingredients myself. I would really love to see you there.
So, what you’ve all been waiting for! The final instalment of our three-part “cooking with kraut” series is here and it’s an odd one. I first heard about sauerkraut cake from Gastro Obscura (a really great resource for anyone who likes unusual and obscure food facts).
It sounds like a novelty but makes sense when you think about it. Vegetables in cake is hardly a new idea. We’re all fine with carrot cake after all, and courgette and beetroot barely raise an eyebrow either. There’s sound science behind it too as baking soda (aka bicarb) needs an acidic ingredient to react with to make a cake rise. (Baking powder, on the other hand, is alkali baking soda mixed with acidic cream of tartar and needs only moisture for the two to react.)
Sandor Ellix Katz’s recipe featured on Gastro Obscura uses butter but I’ve adapted it as I always prefer oil-based chocolate cakes (my go-to is the Chocolate Midnight Cake from Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat).
You could just layer this up with slightly sweetened whipped cream or a simple 1:1 ratio cream and dark chocolate ganache. Or you could try my caramelised white chocolate and caraway sour cream ganache which is a bit fiddlier but really nice.
My cake is not the most beautiful as really you want a non-springform tin here and I couldn’t find mine. Long story short, one layer leaked so is thinner than it ought to be and I didn’t want to lose any more height by trimming the dome. I never said I was a cake decorator… Anyway. It’s a good, dependable chocolate cake. Not too sweet. Good for for an afternoon treat with a cup of tea but works for dessert too (where I might be tempted to add a trickle of single cream).
Apologies to the reader who got in touch to ask for low-carb dishes! We’ll be back on the fermenting train next week, diving into the wonderful world of brine pickles. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
Recipe: Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
50g cocoa powder, plus extra for prepping tin
1 tbsp instant coffee
150ml neutral oil (I used rapeseed)
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
300g sugar
150g sauerkraut, very finely chopped
For the ganache
1 tbsp caraway seeds
150g butter
300g white chocolate
300g sour cream/crème fraîche/cream cheese
Method
Set oven to 180°C. Line the bottom of two 8”/20cm cake tins (ideally not springform as the batter is quite liquid) with greaseproof paper and lightly oil the sides. Put a tablespoon or so of cocoa powder in one tin and rotate it, tapping, so the cocoa powder is evenly distributed and sticks to the greased sides. Repeat with the other tin.
Put the cocoa and coffee in a heatproof bowl or jug and add 250ml boiling water. Let sit for a few minutes. This helps the chocolate flavour of the cocoa deepen.
Add the oil, eggs and vanilla to the cocoa mixture and whisk until even.
Put the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, sugar) in another bowl. Add the cocoa mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth and even. It will be quite a runny batter.
Add the sauerkraut, mix it in, and divide the batter between your two tins.
Bake until a skewer comes out clean - approximately 20 mins. Allow to cool completely.
If making the make the ganache, begin by putting the caraway seeds in a dry pan (preferably one with a shiny or pale coloured bottom) over a medium heat and toast for 30 seconds or so until fragrant.
Add the butter to the seeds and let it melt. Continue cooking the butter until the milk solids brown (this is where the pale bottomed pan comes in useful). Don’t be distracted by the caraway seeds. You should be able to look past them and see smaller specks of brown and smell a toasty, nutty smell when this happens. When it does, tip the butter into a bowl and put it in the fridge until it begins to solidify again.
To caramelise the white chocolate put it in a heat proof bowl and microwave in 1 minute blasts, stirring in between each. At first it will go grainy but just stir it back to smooth as best you can and persevere. After a few blasts the chocolate will begin to caramelise, taking on a golden brown colour. This happens in the centre so it’s important you stir it well. Keep going until the chocolate has reached the colour of strong tea then let it cool slightly.
Mix the cooled butter with the sour cream/crème fraîche/cream cheese and whisk to combine evenly. Add the caramelised white chocolate (which should still be molten, just not super hot) and stir to combine. Let the mixture cool, it will firm to spreadable consistency up as it is does. Use to layer up and top the cake.
Notes
You don’t taste the coffee in the finished cake but it really helps to deepen the chocolate flavour of the cocoa. I wouldn’t leave it out.
I used half caster sugar and half light brown sugar. Brown sugar holds onto more water than white so keeps a cake nice and moist.
Sour cream has a lower fat percentage than crème fraîche which, in turn, has less than cream cheese. I like the extra tang of sour cream which helps offset the sweetness of the white chocolate but cream cheese will make a firmer ganache. Crème fraîche is somewhere in between.
It’s really important that you chop the sauerkraut small so it can disappear into the batter. If you leave it in strands it retains enough texture and acid to make you go “what’s this?” and is a bit distracting. Although you could add some raisins too, in which case the sauerkraut’s texture and tanginess might register alongside them as dried apricots or similar. It depends how long you want to keep people guessing about your “secret ingredient”…
This reel shows the process of caramelising the white chocolate. It takes about 8 minutes and is delicious in all sorts of things.
Cultural Fun
If you’re anywhere near north London between now and the 21st of May, I recommend popping into Hornsey Library for the Crouch End Open Studios Group Show. Apparently there’s not going to be a “trail” between the various artist studios this year which is a shame but there’s a lot of local talent in the show. I’ve mentioned Lisa Price here before.
And last year I also particularly liked Miranda Watson’s work. I have a real thing for paintings of pears and she does lovely ones (among other things!).
All sorts of other interesting things too including sculpture and mosaics. Well worth a look.
Bye! See you next week!
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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal.
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