I took our 4-year-old to a playground on Houston and Sixth for a skateboarding lesson. To anyone unfamiliar with New York City playgrounds, I suggest rewatching Sesame Street where the biggest peril I’ve seen is a tiny thwarted fire in Mr. Hooper’s store. With all that jumping and dancing, how falling and bruising isn’t more of an issue I’ll never understand.
As I’ve been learning, the Sharks and the Jets are chumps. The true playground nightmare is its unforgiving floor. It’s cringe-inducing to watch a little kid wobble on a skateboard knowing that he’ll inevitable take a pounding from the cement below his short legs. And sure enough that’s what happened when our kid tumbled off the board onto his soft hands and, tears flowing, bolted my way for comfort.
If urban cement is a kid’s worst enemy, his best friend is a cup of hot chocolate. And so we wandered down Houston to Payard’s place for their excellent version, essentially super high quality chocolate melted, presumably with cream, and poured into a cup.
As he sipped I flipped through one of Payard’s books, Simply Sensational Desserts, a welcome throwback cookbook. The dishes are all classic French items you’d expect to see in the case at, well, Payard’s: Lemon Pound Cake, Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake, Pain d’Epices, Financiers, and so on. There are even dessert soups, which I gather used to be a big deal before they dropped out of fashion.
I appreciate the honesty of these desserts. They taste as advertised: dry and wet folded together along with some sort of zest and baked. And I like that in place of pie and cupcakes, there’s a cluster of loaf cake recipes. Thus, no apple pie but apple cake. Loaf cakes have a bit of sophistication about them. You can’t order a slice of cherry loaf cake at Bubby’s: pie is a rush of sugar and fruit, often warm and served with a scoop of more sugar in the form of ice cream.
Payard’s apple cake is an adult dessert or midday/midnight snack. Not too sweet, studded with a few sturdy bites of apple and raisins and glazed with apricot jam, it’s a subtle slice washed down with a cup of coffee. While dessert soups don’t appeal, the gingered berries he uses to garnish a mango soup, are quite delicious. Lightly soaking the apple cake with the berries and their syrup elevates the dish.
Hot chocolate soothes a 4-year-old who has just been crunched by the cement of a New York City playground. A slice of Payard’s apple cake soothes the soul of an adult who has just soothed said 4-year-old.
(NOTE: the cake is actually better cold the next day.)
Apple Cake w/ Gingered Berries (adapted from Simply Sensational Desserts, by Francois Payard)
Makes 1 loaf (10 servings, depending)
1/3 cup raisins
3 tablespoons dark rum (optional)
1 cup flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 eggs
2 apples, peeled and cored
Apricot Glaze
Gingered Berries
- Preheat oven to 325. Butter the sides and bottom of an 8 ½ * 4 ½ * 2 ½ loaf pan. Dust with flour and tap our excess.
- Bring a small pan of water to the boil. Add the raisins, turn off heat and let soften for 10 minutes. Drain, mix with rum and reserve.
- Sift together flour and baking powder
- In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream together sugar and butter on medium speed until light. Add eggs one at a time until incorporated. You’ll need to stop the mixer and scrape the butter from the bottom occasionally. Mix in raisins and rum. Add dry ingredients on low speed to mix. Spoon half of batter into the prepared pan and smooth out.
- Cut one apple into 12 wedges and arrange in the batter in a line, domed sides up. Spoon the remaining batter over and level off. Cut the other apple into 8 wedges, then half those wedges horizontally and scatter over the batter, pushing in lightly so that just the tops stick out.
- Bake cake 60-65 minutes until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cake on a wire for 15 minutes. Unmold and brush generously with the glaze. Cool completely before slicing (see note). Serve with the berries in their syrup.
Apricot Glaze
½ cup apricot preserves
½ cup water
- Bring preserves and water to a simmer in a pan, stir till smooth and turn off heat.
Gingered Berries
1 cup sugar
1 piece ginger, about 1-inch long, sliced thinly (1/8 inch), unpeeled
1 pint berries (mixed raspberries and blackberries if desired)
1. Simmer the ingredients in a saucepan, stir to dissolve sugar, turn off heat and cool to room temperature.
