Brown Butter-Buttermilk Cake by Alison Roman

Growing up as the daughter of a pastor, I spent the majority of my Sunday’s at church. When I wasn’t attending the service, I could be found running around the property playing hide-and-seek with my siblings and other pastors’ kids, volunteering in the nursery, or scoping out the visitor’s table where a pink box of donuts sat. Every Sunday morning, my dad picked up a box of donuts from the local shop, Donut Star, and brought them to the visitor’s table. After the final service ended and congregants had gone home, my siblings and I had first dibs on the leftover donuts. Our great reward. 

Emily always picked the apple fritters larger than her face, Scotty liked Long Johns, preferably covered with chocolate, and I had eyes for old fashioneds. Their dense cakiness with only a touch of sugary glaze are the stuff dreams are made of. Not to mention their shape – I loved to break off each petal of the flower, taking my time, before finally enjoying the inner ring. 

Why am I telling you about church donuts? Because this cake recipe is the closest thing I’ve ever made to an old-fashioned donut. Alison makes this comparison in her recipe notes and she couldn’t be more spot on. 

blurry, but you get the idea. the cake really holds its structure

This recipe alone tells me that Alison used to work at Milk Bar in New York. If you’ve ever had a Milk Bar Birthday Truffle, you know how rich, compact, (and addictive) their cakes are. This browned butter-buttermilk cake is also incredibly rich and dense. It relies on the frosting glaze to provide most of the sweetness. The cake itself is like eating a doughy version of butter. Heavenly, but also taxing on the stomach if you know what I mean. One piece of cake is all I can handle in a day. 

The baking process is rather simple, and doesn’t require a mixer. It’s a simple whisk dry ingredients, then wet ingredients, then combine them without overmixing. The wet ingredients list includes a melted and browned stick of butter, in addition to a full cup of buttermilk. The frosting also contains buttermilk and more browned butter, mixed with a cup of powdered sugar. All in all, there’s just a lot of butter. 

see what I mean??

A few quick notes about my cake. For some reason, the texture of my cake looked kind of lumpy. I noticed as I poured the batter into the cake pan that it didn’t ooze and spread like a normal batter. I had to push it out to fill the pan with a spatula. I hoped that the lumps would melt and soften in the oven, but they maintained their structure. I can’t quite tell why this happened. Did I not mix the batter enough? I thought I did? I’m not an experienced baker, so I don’t have many ideas beyond that. Regardless of the lumps, they didn’t seem to negatively affect the cake’s flavor and soft, dense texture. Also note that the frosting comes together, and hardens, very quickly, so be ready to pour it over the cake as soon as it forms. And don’t forget to sprinkle flaky sea salt over the top! 

194 recipes cooked, 31 to go.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts

“A Working Woman Makes Sides”

This is the story of a working woman who also has a slowly budding social life in a new city. Said woman has been invited with her husband to dinner at a friend's house. She was asked to bring one side dish, so naturally she opted to bring two of them. She chose Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts by Alison Roman. 

Of course, this presents complications. With the dinner on a Friday in the city and her work out in the suburbs, she knew she’d have but 20 minutes to assemble the sides when she got home before travelling to dinner. The commute would take its toll once again. So she had to get creative. 

She chose to roast her beets in vinegar the night before. She let the little guys ooze their juices and soften while spending an hour in the oven. This, she thought, would put her in a good position for the next evening. 

The next evening arrived in the blink of an eye. Earlier that day, she asked her husband to put the sweet potatoes in the oven so they would be piping hot when she got home. He did this, kind man, but just as the working woman suspected, the oven turned into a big hot mess. This is no fault of the husband. He followed instructions to a tee. The issue stems from the woman not trusting her instincts. You see, the woman read a recipe that told her to put the sweet potatoes, poked by a fork all over, directly on the oven rack to roast. But in her heart she knew that the sugars from the potatoes would ooze out and burn, sticking to the oven with gusto. And she was right, and the oven became one hot mess, and it created many smoky problems for her the next day… but that’s another story for another time. 

The clock was now ticking to get things ready and whisked off to her friend's house. In a matter of minutes, she frantically completed the following tasks (though she’d like you to think she did this calmly and coolly with an heir of sophistication): 

• Toast walnuts on a baking sheet for ten minutes 

• Peel and slice the beets

• Measure buttermilk, yogurt and lemon juice in a bowl, stir and add salt and pepper

• Thinly slice a red onion and lightly pickle the slices in lemon juice and sumac 

• Melt butter and spices, adding vinegar and honey too

• Scrape out the meats of very hot sweet potatoes into a bowl, practically burning her fingertips in the process

• Place the beets in the bowl with buttermilk and sprinkle the onions over them

• Chop the toasted walnuts and sprinkle them over the beets too 

• Drizzle the butter mixture over the sweet potatoes and give them a good stir

• Add cumin seeds to the top of the bowl of beets and cover with saran wrap

• Cover the bowl of potatoes with foil and pack a half a lemon in a bag, along with flaky salt

• Decide she’ll worry about cleaning the oven later 

• Tell husband it’s time to go 

All these things she did in mere minutes. She feels some loss at the fact that these tasks bring her real joy and life, but she couldn’t find that joy because of the need to rush. She needed to rush because she works far away. And she wonders how to balance that work and that joy. Can the two meet, coexist? All this, she knew, would be figured out over time. For now, she chose to focus on the six friends in front of her and enjoy those slightly spicy, salty, sweet potatoes. She savored the night she had left. 

168 and 169 recipes cooked, 56 to go.

Casual Apple Tart with Caramelized Buttermilk by Alison Roman

I grew up feeling rather ambivalent about apples. Apples and peanut butter, apples and caramel, or even just a plain apple - I wasn’t jazzed about apples. I did love to sing about them, though. My sweet grandmother who is now 92 years old, used to write original songs for her grandchildren to teach us important things. For example, she wrote a song about my home address and phone number so I could remember where I lived. She wrote a song about tomatoes and how delicious they are, which I credit as the main reason I’ve loved all things tomato from a very early age. She also wrote a song about how “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and yeah, I believed it. So I ate my apples, despite my lack of desire for them. 

When I came to college in the Midwest, I was exposed to the wonder that is the Honeycrisp apple. Which changed everything. Sophomore year, I started dating a boy (who is now a man and also my husband) from Minnesota. He wanted me to know that scientists at the University of Minnesota actually created the first Honeycrisp apple. He raved about them, like all proud Minnesotans do, and convinced me to not only eat apples, but to enjoy them. You see, a Honeycrisp is the perfect, and I mean perfect, balance of tart and sweet. It’s the juiciest of all the apples. It has the prettiest color. It is, no doubt, the most superior apple. 

Honeycrisps are the reason I was so excited to make this tart. Finally, an Alison dessert that could feature this most excellent fruit. Not to mention, it was another opportunity to try my hand at pie crust. Making pie crust is a true art form, and I find that I get better at it every time I do it. While I’m sure Alison’s “The Only Pie Crust” adds an even butterier element to this lovely tart, I chose to stick with King Arthur’s gluten-free pie crust recipe for personal reasons. I must also note that this was by far my most successful time making pie crust. The butter was the right amount of cold when I rolled the dough out, and none of it stuck to my rolling pin. A true win. 

A few more notes on the tart… This apple dessert - drizzled with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and ground ginger - was like an apple pie, but differently shaped and less fussy. I left it in the oven a touch too long, so the apples were nicely softened but the crust got a little too browned. I think the buttermilk coating on the crust added a nice touch (but it didn’t make or break the dessert). I sliced two pounds of apples, per Alison’s instructions, but could only fit 1 pound on the dough. I squeezed lemon juice over the unused slices, and ate them at work throughout the rest of the week. Finally, when Alison instructs you to sprinkle the tart with flaky salt and pepper, just do it. I hesitated, particularly over the pepper, but I admit it added a subtle, smoky nuance that only enhanced the final flavor. 

165 recipes cooked, 60 to go.

Buttermilk-Brined Chicken with Fresh Za'atar by Alison Roman

A buttermilk brined chicken is the first kind of whole chicken I ever cooked. Samin Nosrat’s famous buttermilk-brined chicken to be exact. Alison’s chicken asks you to be slightly more extra and throw some smashed garlic and shallots into the brine, but other than that, the recipes are nearly the same in concept. 

Brining a chicken requires no skill, only forethought. The effort is always worth it. Salty brines create a tenderized, juicier meat that stands squarely in opposition to every dry chicken breast I ate in the past. It’s because of buttermilk brined chicken that I’ve committed to always brining birds that I plan to roast, even if the recipe doesn’t suggest it. 

This chicken was pleasant, a good chicken. The flavor is subtle and nothing extraordinary, which means it’s versatile. Throw it on a salad, a sandwich, on noodles! Or eat it with some fresh Za’atar. I discovered early on in this project the magic of Za’atar, when I first made Alison’s butter-tossed radishes. Fresh Za’atar gives a delightful, salty-sour attitude to this bird, helping it really sing. I served this chicken with Caramelized Winter Squash, which I’ll write about soon. 

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A personal anecdote about buttermilk. For a long time, the very idea of buttermilk made me squeamish. My mother used to tell stories of being forced to eat unappetizing foods as a child. Her parents grew up in the Netherlands during World War II, a time when food was very scarce. So I understand why, out of principle, they made their children clean their plates. But I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of my mother, freckled with a bright blonde bob, sobbing at the table as she tried to swallow another brussel sprout. For this reason, my siblings and I were never fed the foods that so traumatized her. These included brussel sprouts, cabbage, lentils, and warm buttermilk. Yes, my mom was told to drink warm buttermilk. Apparently to my grandparents, this was a delicacy, and they couldn’t imagine anyone not craving it. But it made my mom’s stomach turn. For this reason, I shuttered at the very idea of buttermilk until I was 26--the age when I first made buttermilk-brined chicken. 

23 recipes cooked, 202 to go.