Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood: Stories and Recipes to Share With Family and Friends (19 page)
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Authors: Trisha Yearwood
Tags: #food.cookbooks
Grandaddy Paulk helping me and Beth ice his birthday cake.
Don’t try this with a single-bladed mixer like KitchenAid; and don’t make it on a rainy day because humidity can make it impossible to achieve perfect divinity.
torte
Beth had never had a cake with this many layers before moving to South Georgia. Around there, it’s known as twelve-layer chocolate cake, or seventeen-layer—almost a point of pride to see how many thin little layers you can get out of the recipe! At first glance, this cake screams, “Don’t try this at home” because three layers is pretty much my limit. But Beth’s friend Gail, who is known in those parts for her delicious food, shared her mother’s recipe with us. Gail says that the older ladies in her community used to cook these layers one at a time on a cast-iron griddle. She’s made it “easy” for us with 9-inch cake pans, so with her directions even I can bake a multilayer (twelve? thirteen? fifteen?) chocolate torte!
SERVES 15
1¾ cups (3½ sticks) butter, 1 cup at room temperature
5 ounces (5 squares) unsweetened chocolate, melted
7 cups sugar
2¼ cups (18 ounces) evaporated milk
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon instant French roast coffee granules
6 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon milk
4 cups self-rising flour
Make the cake glaze before baking the cake layers. In a large saucepan, melt ¾ cup of the butter and mix it with the melted chocolate and 4½ cups of the sugar. Stir in the evaporated milk, 2 teaspoons of the vanilla, and the instant coffee. Cook the glaze over medium-high heat until it boils. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens, about 20 minutes. Remove the glaze from the heat. When cooled a bit, return to low heat as needed, as the glaze must be warm to spread on the cake layers.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour at least four 9-inch cake pans (
see Note
).
Cream the remaining 1 cup butter and remaining 2½ cups sugar until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition just until blended. Mix the remaining 1 teaspoon vanilla with the milk and add alternately with the flour, beginning and ending with flour. Put a very thin layer of batter—about 7 tablespoons—in each pan, shaking the pans to distribute the batter to the edges. Bake the layers for 11 to 13 minutes. Remove the layers from the pans and frost immediately with the warm icing. Bake all of the remaining batter in this manner, building layers. You should be able to get 12 layers from this recipe.
NOTE: Borrow pans from friends if you can in order to bake this special cake. You will be able to work quickly by having layers ready to bake while you frost the baked ones.
If the idea of all these layers is too much for you, divide the batter evenly into three cake pans. It tastes great, no matter how many layers you make.
FROM BETH:
Gail uses
Wilton Cake Release to grease the surfaces of nonstick pans. The thin layers pop right out!
roll
From Thanksgiving through Christmas, I’m in heaven because I get to make all of my signature dishes for my family and friends. It’s always special when a friend drops by to bring something he or she has made for you. It’s really one of the sweetest gifts someone can give you, because the person has put his or her love and time into it. Every year, my friend Kim makes the Pumpkin Roll for her Thanksgiving table, and she always bakes an extra one for me. It makes our family gathering all the more special.
SERVES 16
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
⅔ cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon lemon juice
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup pecans, finely chopped
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 3-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 17½ × 12½-inch jellyroll pan. (Jellyroll pan sizes may vary.)
With an electric mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, pumpkin, and lemon juice until smooth. Sift together the flour, ginger, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. Add to the mixer and blend until fully combined. Spread the batter in the jellyroll pan. Sprinkle the dough with the chopped pecans. Bake for 14 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes.
Invert the cake onto a wire rack lined with parchment paper and let it cool completely. Sprinkle some of the confectioners’ sugar on a large tea towel and transfer the cake to the towel. Roll the cake up in the towel and cool in the refrigerator thoroughly, about 45 minutes.
With an electric mixer, combine the 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla and beat until smooth. Unroll the cooled cake and spread the mixture on top of the cake. Gently roll the cake up and refrigerate it until you’re ready to slice and serve. Dust with confectioners’ sugar just before serving.
pie
This recipe comes from family friend
Mack Tillman. Mr. Mack was a tall drink of water, like my daddy. He was the Jasper County sheriff, and later he opened what I think is the best restaurant in Georgia, the Tillman House. After Mr. Mack passed away, the restaurant was kept in the family and run by his son and daughter, Ben and Sissy. We all lived on Eatonton Street in Monticello when I was a little girl, and Sissy and I were best buddies. Mr. Mack made the best fried chicken I have ever tasted (sorry, Mama!) and this amazing chocolate pie. Most people use a 9-inch prebaked pastry shell, but I make it with a graham cracker crust.
SERVES 8
Crust
1½ cups fine graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted
Filling
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons self-rising flour
3 large eggs, separated
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Meringue
3 large egg whites
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons sugar
In a mixing bowl, stir together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter until the crumbs are coated. Press the mixture firmly into the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate. Set aside.
In the top of a double boiler, mix the sugar, cocoa, and flour. Lightly beat the egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue) and stir in the milk. Slowly add the egg-milk mixture to the sugar mixture in the double boiler, creating a paste in the beginning; this will ensure that the chocolate and flour blend smoothly. Cook in the double boiler until very thick, 45 to 50 minutes. When the spoon is moved in the filling, it will leave a brief indention or trough. Remove the boiler from the heat and stir in the melted butter, the vanilla, and the salt. Stir well to mix in the butter.
Pour the filling into the crust. Allow the pie to cool in the refrigerator for 45 minutes before putting a meringue on top.
To prepare the meringue, preheat the oven to 325°F. With an electric mixer, beat the egg whites with the salt until stiff. Add the sugar gradually as you continue beating until the whites are smooth and glossy. Spread the meringue over the pie, all the way to touch and seal the edges of the crust. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until brown. Cool completely before serving.
Instead of using a meringue, you could sprinkle the top of the pie liberally with graham cracker crumbs.
My best pals!
From left to right:
Beth, me, Sissy, Paula Lane, Ben, and Sydney Lane. Sydney’s dog, Toby, is in the back row.
lemon meringue pie
I ate this pie a lot while I was growing up in Georgia, and I never knew who had the recipe. Turns out my mama had it all along!
Edward’s Pies makes a really good frozen lemon meringue pie, but I can’t find it out here in Oklahoma. Edward’s products date back to the 1950s, and if you ever have one, be sure to check the box for a Bible verse. They’re known for that, and I guess that makes me like them even more, because I always include a Bible verse on my CDs. I made this homemade version of the pie for the first time recently. When I realized that I could actually make this myself and enjoy it whenever I wanted, I was thrilled. Garth isn’t a big fan of meringue, so sometimes I double the filling for this pie and leave off the meringue. That’s double the magic! Thanks for the inspiration, Edward’s.
