parsnip cake v. #2.5

[rushthatspeaks]

Some time ago I made up a parsnip cake. Since it's one of the best cakes I make, I've made it several times, most recently this week, and I have a few notes to add to the recipe.

Changes to the Basic Cake Recipe:

The cake will taste a lot more of parsnips if, after you squeeze the liquid out of the shredded parsnips, you beat oh let's say 1/2 to 1 cup of that liquid back into the cake batter when you are putting in the rest of the liquid ingredients. If you are doing this, decrease the blackstrap molasses to 1 tablespoon, so the cake won't be too wet, and add an additional tablespoon of light brown sugar to help make up for the missing molasses. (No, you cannot just take out an egg. Tried. Wrong consistency. Yes, you do need some molasses for flavor reasons.)

A Substitution:

So sovay and I were making this cake, at my usual baking hour of probably not yet midnight (so glad sovay lives close enough now for that to work), and I could not find the star anise. I don't use it that often, fond as I am of it, because I don't like it in most savory applications and most other people don't like as much of it as I do in sweet ones. Eventually I concluded I must have used the last of it in five-spice powder the last time I made char siu bao, so we made a grocery store run, and they didn't have any either.

What they had was aniseed. I had never had any personal experience with aniseed, but we knew it was meant to be Also Licorice-y and got some.

This is not quite one of those cases like cassia for cinnamon where I open a jar and inhale and go oh, somebody is selling me something on this one, but aniseed and star anise are not remotely similar to one another. It turns out they are not even related species. I cook by smell, so I think of spices by scent, and I think of scent as something similar to a musical scale. Star anise, using the musical analogy, is verging sharp but still in tune and hits a chord in the Dorian mode right in the middle of the audible range, loudly. Aniseed is in tune, certainly, but is very soft and wavery about it, unassertive. And the notes it's hitting are the fifth and seventh of the chord and the second below the tonic, and the tonic and the third are just... not appearing in this smell. Oh dear, I just lost all the non-music-theory people. A distressing gap in the scent, is what I am saying here. Giant obvious SOMETHING MISSING IN THIS TASTE.

So a one-for-one substitution was out of the question because it would taste not only different but bad without some other futzing around. The internet suggested that aniseed + cinnamon = star anise, but this turns out not to be true of cinnamomum verum and I don't like cassia so don't have any in the house. It needed something in the middle ranges. We proceeded to snort some of pretty much everything in the spice cupboard by way of consideration. Cloves? Oh god no. Turmeric? Ouch. More nutmeg? OUCH. Cumin? I am not ruling it out but it would have pushed the spice balance into savory. Tarragon? Ah ha ha ha ha no. Five-spice powder? Didn't have any homemade and the jarred kind was terrible. Coriander? Same issue as cumin. Garam masala? MY SINUSES. By this point I was starting to wonder if I had any chai teabags I could just deconstruct for the fricking star anise.

Then I found the right thing in the back. Amchur! Amchur is powdered dried mango and you can use it for everything and I do. It is sweet and savory and sharp and bright and you can eat it out of the bag, which I try not to. Toasted some of the mixed spices a little after grinding the aniseed, to give it a darker edge, and we had a viable substitution.

To substitute aniseed for star anise in my parsnip cake, add to previously described spices:

1 tsp. aniseed + 1 additional tsp. cinnamon + 1/2 tsp. amchur

and grind together until everything is powder. This will take a while because aniseed is tough. Then in a small dry pan over low heat toast 1/2 tsp. of the mixed spice powder for thirty seconds or just until you smell it, and mix back into the rest of the powder. Proceed as usual.

Sadly this does not do the thing star anise does of strengthening with every day the cake sits, so the cake will not be better on the fourth day than on the first, but it does make a good stable approximation of the first-day cake-with-star-anise.

Changes to the Basic Icing Recipe:

oh just use creme fraiche, I don't even know what I was thinking when I tried sour cream, silly me.

I have not yet solved the flavoring issue with the icing, which is that lemon juice structurally destabilizes it, and lemon essence keeps it stable but has to be added in ludicrous quantities and even then isn't either complex or strong-tasting. With lemon essence and creme fraiche the icing is good and it is stable and can be gotten smoothly onto a cake. I would prefer spectacular. Next time I am going to try lemon essence and a small quantity of lemon juice and the zest of a damn lemon and if that doesn't do it I am not sure where to go from there.

Will let you know how that turns out.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

I really loved reading this because I want to understand spices better and this was an excellent thinking process description!

[sovay]

(Comment possibly duplicated over at LJ, which just choked and showed me a sad goat instead of the sentences I had hoped to post. Please ignore whichever one is less relevant.)

Aniseed is in tune, certainly, but is very soft and wavery about it, unassertive. And the notes it's hitting are the fifth and seventh of the chord and the second below the tonic, and the tonic and the third are just... not appearing in this smell.

I would have said that aniseed is thinner and colder and the difference between the two reminded me of absinthe straight and absinthe after it's louched, the latter being far preferable, more warming and complex, although star anise does not actually taste like any of the herbs in absinthe (because the most identifiable components of absinthe after the wormwood are green anise and fennel and I think this analogy is beginning to bend back on itself). The people who say they are interchangeable with one another are probably the people who put cassia in everything.

Next time I am going to try lemon essence and a small quantity of lemon juice and the zest of a damn lemon and if that doesn't do it I am not sure where to go from there.

I can't imagine that wouldn't work for us unless it does something batshit to the texture, which I have to admit at this point I'm not ruling out.

I am glad we did not have to deconstruct teabags; that would have been sad.

[akycha]

There are two possible solutions to your lemon problem: one is dry lemon juice (King Arthur Flour sells this, if you are interested: it comes in powder form). The other is lemon oil, which is, I think, more concentrated than essence. At least, you're not supposed to use plastic spoons because it eats them (it's essential oil of the peel and Boylan -- I think? -- is a reputable maker of this and other citrus oils).

I don't recommend dry lemon peel to anyone because it doesn't retain enough of the flavor and also it's crunchy, which isn't always desirable, ESPECIALLY in frosting.

[sovay]

Aniseed is in tune, certainly, but is very soft and wavery about it, unassertive. And the notes it's hitting are the fifth and seventh of the chord and the second below the tonic, and the tonic and the third are just... not appearing in this smell.

I would have said that aniseed is thinner and colder and the difference between the two reminded me of absinthe straight and absinthe after it's louched, the latter being far preferable, more warming and complex, although star anise does not actually taste like any of the herbs in absinthe (because the most identifiable components of absinthe after the wormwood are green anise and fennel and I think this analogy is beginning to bend back on itself). The people who say they are interchangeable with one another are probably the people who put cassia in everything.

Next time I am going to try lemon essence and a small quantity of lemon juice and the zest of a damn lemon and if that doesn't do it I am not sure where to go from there.

I can't imagine that wouldn't work for us unless it does something batshit to the texture, which I have to admit at this point I'm not ruling out.

I am glad we did not have to deconstruct teabags; that would have been sad.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Next time I am going to try lemon essence and a small quantity of lemon juice and the zest of a damn lemon and if that doesn't do it I am not sure where to go from there.

Have you as yet tried boiling lemon leaves for their flavor and reducing that? It's less acidic but gives you a fairly strong lemony flavor, though it does depend on the freshness of the leaves. Citron leaves will also work (and I have those should you need some).

[coraline]

I love both rushthatspeaks's metaphor, and this continuation.

I don't know what lemon essence you were using, but my bottle of boyajian lemon oil is EXTREMLY powerful, and seems a reasonable substitute for lemon zest nature, and might be more potent than what you're trying to use? (though my palate is not as refined as you folks, and I confess to liking cassia and true cinnamon equally :}

[sovay]

I don't know what lemon essence you were using, but my bottle of boyajian lemon oil is EXTREMLY powerful, and seems a reasonable substitute for lemon zest nature, and might be more potent than what you're trying to use?

Fair point! We used lemon essence in the sense of extract, not straight-up lemon oil. Anything that equates to lemon rind is very promising.

We might still want the zest in the icing for the sharp of it, though.

and I confess to liking cassia and true cinnamon equally

Cassia is a totally legitimate spice! It's almost certainly in a whole bunch of dishes I eat on a regular basis, assuming Chinese and Vietnamese cooking. It just doesn't taste that much like cinnamon to me.

[coraline]

the oil is sharper than you might think! and i find it very useful for all sorts of purposes (both culinary, and also it's a fantastic solvent especially for leftover adhesive on a surface. non-toxic AND pleasantly scented!)

having tasted them side by side, i can taste the difference (and think your description is fairly accurate even though i'm not as synaesthetic as all that) but don't prefer cinnamon to cassia, and find the cassia is easier to come by and goes somewhat further for the same quantity, so i usually don't bother stocking the true stuff.

[eub.livejournal.com]

(A map of all the various anise-y things: a person could collect perceptions of the amount of difference between each pair, and then see if the shape this defines will embed into two dimensions without too much forcing.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't adore star anise, but I like it reasonably well, and I nearly missed it because people said, "Oh, it's like aniseed," and I said, "NOOOOOO DO NOT WANT."

People, I tell you what.

Also I have never known lemon zest to destabilize anything, and I'm not sure I've ever known lemon zest to make anything less awesome. I mean, I'm sure there are things it would, but mostly one is not tempted in those cases.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Lemon zest seems like an excellent way to add more lemonyness to the icing without destabilizing it.

I am so looking forward to trying this.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Also now I'm very curious about amchur.

[sovay]

Also now I'm very curious about amchur.

You will like amchur. We used it in November to substitute for tamarind in the twice-cooked coriander tofu and it came through there, too. It's just wonderful stuff.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ooh, and Sovay, I made the tofu-in-banana leaves last night, only our local Asian food store didn't have banana leaves, so I used bamboo leaves, which had the same wonderful tea fragrance, and mmm, it was delicious! I'm loving the cookbook.

(And I'm only on the computer because I was doing an email--must get back to work--but looking forward to your perhaps-Vengeance [what was her name again]-inspired poem when I resurface.)

[sovay]

only our local Asian food store didn't have banana leaves, so I used bamboo leaves, which had the same wonderful tea fragrance, and mmm, it was delicious!

Awesome.

(I wonder what we can try wrapping in bamboo leaves. Other than, like, everything.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Other than, like, everything.

That was basically what our family decided.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I see what you are doing with that Feferi userpic because I remember the "adorable" thing she does next, and I love you.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

OMG your description of aniseed v. star anise with music theory OMG YES THAT IS IT EXACTLY. And major kudos on figuring out a substitute that involves mango.

Question: have you ever smelled whole black peppercorns and boggled at the resemblance to mango?

I have not yet solved the flavoring issue with the icing, which is that lemon juice structurally destabilizes it, and lemon essence keeps it stable but has to be added in ludicrous quantities and even then isn't either complex or strong-tasting.

I am 98% positive that if you use only lemon zest this problem will be solved. I'm always amazed by how lemony-ness -- in terms of fragrance and flavour rather than sharp/sour/tart -- is conveyed almost exclusively by the zest.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I remember wanting freesias in my wedding bouquet because of their scent, and then the ones my then-sister-in-law-the-flower-expert got were lovely but smelled exactly like black pepper.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Huh - to me, all actual freesias smell exactly like white pepper (and I had them in my wedding bouquet for exactly that reason). What do they ordinarily smell like to you?

-Nameseeker

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

What I think of as the standard freesia smell is the essence of flowery -- something like daphne or honeysuckle. But I can't at the moment call it to mind well enough to be very exact.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I've used lemon zest for that icing and it was lemony enough. For me. Seemed to work, anyway.

(I'm pretty sure I took the extra squeezed parsnip juice, put it in seltzer, and drank it while saying "*I cannot possibly be the person to invent parsnip soda*, it's too obvious." Disregarding the equally obvious fact that I'd never thought of the idea either until I was facing a quarter-cup of parsnip juice.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I think you may have invented parsnip soda! Which I now have to try. Next time I make the cake. Or possibly sooner.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

There's parsnip wine, right?

[sovay]

Which I now have to try. Next time I make the cake. Or possibly sooner.

Dude. That will be like Cel-Ray. Only better. Yes, please.