The Hard Times Cookbook Club: Clementine Cake, Fake Starbucks, and Joan's Candy Jar
It's Little Treat season
This month, I’ve been all about sugar. I always line up a Little Treat to get through the day (or maybe a few) but I’ve gone full sweet tooth lately. Instead of wanting to snack on chips or crackers or cheese, suddenly all I want are gummy bears and chocolate bars, things filled with caramel or rolled in sour sugar.
I've always loved sweets and found sweetness comforting. I think my “have a treat as a reward” habit means I've accidentally subjected myself to Pavlovian conditioning. Years of working around the corner from a Starbucks accidentally gave me a nearly infallible cure for writers block; one extremely syrupy sweet latte and I can crank out an article or grant proposal or whatever like that. (No guarantee of quality, but anyway.)
I no longer work at Yonge and Bloor, where I was within walking distance of (my count at the time) 6 different Starbucks-es. Which is definitely a net positive. Especially because Starbucks is, you know, not great 😬, and their coffees are now the price my whole lunch used to cost when I worked there. But I’ve been making my own version of the sugar-bomb I always used to get around the holidays: a chestnut praline latte, nutty and warm and caramel-candied.
Last week I shared a link to a story in New York Times Magazine about a writer who experimented with taking a weird, ascetic German wellness program as a way to quit sugar. The writer, Caity Weaver, wrote about the surliness that took over her personality when she attempted to stopper her usual sweetness intake. One moment in the piece, when she experiences her entire mood and worldview shift upon giving in to the intention to buy a treat, really resonated with me:
The second I began scrutinizing the bakery cases with intent to buy, the day commenced reshaping itself. Here was the soft-edged time I was used to, with fresh good news around every bend.
She ends the piece thinking about how she relates to sweetness “as even more than a sensory pleasure, as a means of outsourcing optimism.”
Sugar gets a pretty bad rap. People's responses often range from infantilizing to downright puritanical about it—like that whole weird “sugar is worse than cocaine” thing that was going around a few years ago based on some rat studies or something. Imagining my lab-rat equivalent has never really put me off my love for sweets, but other subtle judgements do cause me to hide my candy predilection, to turn down an offer of a second cookie or order an americano when I really want pumpkin spice. Or even (gasp) stay quiet when I hear others talking about how white chocolate is disgusting and simply too sweet (I hereby admit that I love white chocolate).
Sweetness gets painted as saccharine, cloying, feminine (big scare quotes here, as in, used in the way people use it when you can tell it's meant to be a bad thing). Sugar is for babies. Sweetness for those with unrefined palettes. Sugar is simple but somehow also overbearing. Sugar is unhealthy, and being healthy is morally righteous, and unhealthy morally reprehensible.
So this is my rebellion. Damn it, I’m eating sugar.
All of that aside, I suppose I’d never paid such close attention to what changes for me when I get that sugary treat in my hand, when I tear the lightly resistant plastic of a bag of Fuzzy Peaches or scan my eyes over the doughnut case or take the first sip of a syrup-laden latte, the hot liquid rushing through the cold melt of a whipped-cream topping. There it is, that “soft-edged time,” a moment of expansion. A feeling like, Oh look, the sun has come out. The rest of my day glittering optimistically before me.
So why not lean into the sweetness a little?
In honour of my current cravings, it being Valentine’s Day (a sugar-lover’s holiday), and world events continuing to be definitively un-sweet, here are my recipes of the week! Two for the comforting breakfast items I’ve been eating on my long train ride into work lately, and the third is the first contributed recipe I’m sharing, from someone with an extremely refined palette: my niece, Joan.
I’d still love to read your recipes and hear what you’re eating these days! Send along a favourite recipe, link, or candy recommendation by replying to this newsletter or emailing me at joellekidd@gmail.com.
🍭🍬🍫🍬🍭
Clementine Cake
This cake feels magical to me because it contains several whole clementine oranges—pith, peel, and all—that just sort of whizz away into nothing and melt into the spongy centre of the cake. You can replace the almonds with more AP flour and swap the olive oil for neutral oil if you don’t like the savoury note. Ground cardamom, almond extract, or some orange blossom water would be a nice addition, too. Makes 1 9” cake.
Ingredients
4 clementines
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups (350 g) sugar
4 large eggs
1-3 tsp vanilla extract or paste
2 cups (300 g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (25 g) ground almonds/almond flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp kosher salt
Butter or oil for greasing cake tin
Icing sugar for topping
Method
Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Grease or butter a 9” cake tin.
Throw the clementines, oil, and milk into a food processor and blitz to break down the oranges. Puree until you have a smooth mixture (you should see little flecks of orange, the size you get when you zest citrus peel, but no big chunks). Add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla, pulsing until just combined.
If your food processor is big enough, add the flour, almond flour, baking soda, and salt. (If not, scoop the mixture into a bowl first.) Pulse or stir with a rubber spatula until just combined.
Pour the batter into the cake tin and tap the pan on the counter to remove air bubbles. Bake until golden brown and pulling away from the sides of the pan, or until a cake tester comes out clean, about 50 minutes to an hour.
Let cool completely on a wire rack before removing the cake from the tin. Dust with icing sugar if desired, or top with whipped cream.
Chestnut Praline Syrup
Add 0.5 oz of this syrup to 1 oz espresso and top with steamed milk/oat milk/what have you. (If you don’t have an espresso machine or one of those frother things, you can put warm milk in a clean French press and pump the press part up and down really fast to froth it up. Hot tip from being a poor 20 year old white girl trying to make her own Starbucks in 2012.) Makes one bottle, about 350 ml.
Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup hot water
2 Tbsp chestnut cream or puree
Method
Pour the sugar into a dry saucepan with high sides and have the hot water ready nearby. (You want to keep the water hot so that the caramel won’t seize up, so it might be handy to keep it over low heat or in a kettle or Thermos until ready to use.)
Heat the sugar over medium heat. You can stir with a heat proof spatula, but only until it melts into liquid; after that point stirring can crystalize the sugar. Let it bubble until it darkens to an amber caramel colour (this will happen quickly). Once it does, immediately remove from heat and carefully poor in the hot water. (Watch out for angry splashing.)
You should now have the world’s most boiling hot caramel syrup. Put the pot on a trivet in a cool area or pour the syrup into a heatproof vessel (like a Pyrex measuring cup) and let cool for a few minutes.
Stir in the chestnut cream.
Joan’s Candy Jar
This recipe comes from my amazing seven-year-old niece, and I think it’s a perfect level of effort and sweetness to be making at this particular moment in time. She says, “That’s Valentine’s Day for ya!” and you know what, it is! Serves you and/or however many Valentines you want to share it with.
Ingredients
Rockets
Sour punch kids (sic)
Mini eggs
Method
Throw all ingredients into a little container.
Put the lid on.
Give it to someone you love.