Chapter 14

Dessert

Really?

This brief chapter provided a lot of entertainment in the Shockey household during recipe development. There were, without a doubt, more raised eyebrows and eye-rolls passed between the children than in any other section.

Northwest Gingered Carrot Cake

“Why would you put sauerkraut in a perfectly good cheesecake?” one of them asked Christopher, coming off the success of his sauerkraut macaroons, when he decided to reproduce Great-Grandma’s sacred New York cheesecake — laced with mint sauerkraut. We all agreed that it didn’t have a positive mouth-feel, and it may have been the first time in the history of our family that a cheesecake went unfinished.

You can be assured that the recipes we’ve decided to share are the successes — the critics were vigorous and extremely discerning.

Northwest Gingered Carrot Cake

serves 12

Vegetarian

One of our traditions is that the birthday person gets to pick the three meals on his or her birthday as well as the “cake,” which is in quotes because more than one person in our family is a fan of pie rather than cake. Still, among the cake side of our family, carrot cake rules. When we were brainstorming desserts for this book, we knew we needed to tackle carrot cake.

It wasn’t difficult to get to a ginger-carrot ferment (the main ingredient of this cake) since the fermented version enhances the regular version — it’s somehow lighter and richer than the original, which may come from the interaction of the baking soda and the ferment. The basic recipe is from a favorite baking book, Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking. It’s incredibly moist and spicy, so you don’t need much in the way of frosting. We sometimes frost with just a light spread of sour cream. Otherwise, use your favorite cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
  2. 2. Butter and lightly flour either two 10-inch round pans or one 9-by-13-inch rectangular pan.
  3. 3. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and mace into a medium bowl.
  4. 4. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, oil, and orange zest. Stir in the carrot kraut.
  5. 5. Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined.
  6. 6. Finally, add the nuts and dried fruit. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.
  7. 7. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, usually 30 to 40 minutes. As soon as the middle no longer looks different than the edges and begins to crack a bit, remove the pans from the oven to preserve the moistness of the cake.
Kirsten Writes

Discussion of the culinary virtues of sauer­kraut is not complete without the much-joked-about sauerkraut chocolate cake. So much so that according to the sauerkraut chocolate cake recipe in the book America’s Best Lost Recipes: 121 Recipes Too Good to Forget, the cake was a popular April Fool’s Day treat in the 1960s — as well as at my house growing up. My father, German and a professor, loves sauerkraut and chocolate, but not together. He likes his sauerkraut savory and his chocolate sweet. Every few years a student would think it was funny to bring him a sauerkraut chocolate cake.

Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake with Coconut Kefir Glaze

serves 12

Gluten-Free, Vegetarian

This cake has bounced around in various iterations from the immigrant cuisines of the Germans and Eastern European countries. The acidic ferment provides the moisture much in the way that baking with buttermilk does. Now Michaela Hayes has updated it as deliciously gluten-free. It has a complex nutty flavor from the addition of buckwheat flour. The sauerkraut keeps the cake from drying out and becoming crumbly, which can be a problem for gluten-free foods.

Michaela and Kirsten talked about which krauts, beyond Naked, would work. She originally used a turmeric-chile kraut; since we had a turmeric-­pepper kraut in the refrigerator, we used it, though with a bit of trepidation. It was great. The turmeric did not stand out. How about Chipotle Squash Kraut? We agreed there are many flavors that might pair well.

Ingredients

Glaze

Instructions

  1. 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
  2. 2. Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with the fat of your choice.
  3. 3. Combine the flours, cocoa, and baking soda and set aside. (Note: Feel free to substitute 2 cups all-purpose flour for the gluten-free mix.)
  4. 4. Mix together the hot water, melted shortening or butter, and vanilla and set aside.
  5. 5. In a large mixing bowl, beat the sugar with the egg until pale yellow and fluffy. Add to this the wet and dry mixtures, alternating and beginning and ending with wet ingredients.
  6. 6. Fold in the sauerkraut, and then pour the cake batter into the prepared pan.
  7. 7. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out and cool on a rack.
  8. 8. Mix the coconut kefir and the sugar together to make a glaze, and drizzle it over the cooled cake. You can change the consistency of this glaze by using more or less sugar. For a special touch, use a thinner glaze as a base layer, then top with a thicker layer of glaze. This is a trick to give your glaze more texture. Your cake will look festive, and you will enjoy the more complex quality as it melts in your mouth.

Note: You will probably eat this cake too quickly to notice, but the kefir icing is also a live food and will continue to ripen (in other words, get more sour) as it sits.

Sauerkraut Coconut Macaroons

yield: 1 dozen

Gluten-Free, Vegetarian

Rinsed and drained sauerkraut has the consistency of flaked coconut in baked goods, so it only seemed natural to give it a try in our favorite gluten-­free cookies. We suggest you wait to tell them about the sauerkraut until after they rave.

Sauerkraut Coconut Macaroons

These are moister than typical macaroons. You can use the same amount of shredded coconut in this recipe for a sturdier, denser macaroon. Baking on parchment paper helps with removal of the warm macaroons to a cooling rack or straight to mouth.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
  2. 2. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
  3. 3. Rinse and drain the sauerkraut in a colander. Squeeze to remove all the moisture you can. Chop the sauerkraut to roughly the same size as your coconut to aid in the visual deception.
  4. 4. In a large bowl, combine the egg whites, sugar, flour, and vanilla and almond extracts. Add the sauerkraut and coconut and mix until well combined.
  5. 5. Drop by rounded tablespoons, about 2 inches apart, on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake until lightly golden brown.
  6. 6. Let the macaroons cool for 1 minute, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, if you can leave them alone that long.

Variation: Chocolate-Beet Coconut Macaroons

Use Simple Beet Kraut in place of Naked Kraut, and add some chocolate chips — or better yet, chunks — to the mix before forming the macaroons. These will bake off a nice toasted pink with the chocolate soft and gooey.

Rhubarb Fool

serves 4 to 6

Gluten-Free, Vegetarian

Kirsten fermented rhubarb with cardamom specifically with a lacto-fermented variation of this iconic dessert in mind. Our daughter walked in the kitchen and saw the fresh strawberries and whipped cream on the counter next to where Kirsten was working. Her finger was headed for the cream when, mid-dip, she noticed the jar of fermented rhubarb. “Oh no, really?” she asked.

It turned out to be a hit and not nearly as heavy as its syrupy cooked counterpart.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1. In a food processor blend together the fermented rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, and lemon zest. Set aside.
  2. 2. Whip the cream until stiff. (Note: We don’t add any sugar, just a few drops of vanilla. Feel free to make the cream to your taste.)
  3. 3. To serve as a fool, fold the rhubarb-strawberry sauce into the whipped cream. Or, for more of a spectacle, layer the sauce and cream in tall parfait glasses.
Meet the Fermentista

Mary Alionis

The phone rings.

“Is this the fermentation hotline?”

“Hi, Mary.”

There are people, and you know who you are, who open the back of a book and read the ending first. If this is you, well, you will meet this fermentista throughout this book — only not as a fermentista, but as an organic vegetable farmer.

Mary Alionis

Mary Alionis was often behind the scenes of our Mellonia product’s originality by “pushing” vegetables that we would never have thought to ferment — okahijiki, for example. Her husband Vince stood by and often said, “The experiments must continue.”

Beyond just egging us on, they supported the experiments wholeheartedly, not only selling our krauts in their farm store, but also schlepping the sometimes-finicky jars to the local farmers’ markets.

When we stopped fermenting commercially, Mary decided to continue the experiments. Oregon’s Farm Direct Law went into effect in 2012, which meant Mary could ferment vegetables grown on the farm without jumping through all of the certification hoops, with the caveat that all of the vegetables had to be grown on-site — so Mary’s creativity was put to the test immediately. She began with recipes from our business, but about a month after she started, all the winter cabbages had been sold. Mary had an abundance of carrots, burdock, chicory, and other vegetables that didn’t seem to go together. Many of our conversations were like the call-in cooking shows where the caller tries to stump the chef with three incongruent ingredients from her pantry.

“So Vince just found a row of overwintered black Spanish radishes. He was going to till them in, but we tasted them first. They were super-spicy in the fall; now they are sweet and delicious. I wonder what I should do. I am thinking about cilantro and lime juice,” Mary informs me.

“Radishes are a great tonic in the spring and it sounds yummy. You should try that . . . ,” I respond.