Watermelon, Feta, and Mint Salad

I've made this salad twice already this week. They serve it at Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle alongside a pulled pork sandwich, but it's good with everything. Seriously. Everything.

When the Human Vacuum and I hit Costco last weekend, they were hawking seedless watermelon two-packs. What kind of gluttons manage to consume two watermelons in less that 5 days? People who know about this delicious salad.

It's a refreshing breakfast. It's a marvelous side salad. It's a fruit and cheese dessert course. It truly can be all things to all people.

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Watermelon, Feta, and Mint Salad

In a large bowl, whisk together:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Juice of one lemon (or other acid, such as rice wine or fruit vinegar)

Cut into small dice and add to dressing:
1/4 of a red onion

Cut into 1 inch dice and add to bowl:
1 seedless watermelon (or buy precut, I don't mind)

Crumble in:
1 chunk feta cheese, approximately the size of a deck of cards

Roughly chop and sprinkle on:
5-6 fresh mint leaves

Stir and begin to consume immediately, standing in the kitchen, before summer is gone.

NOTE: Delicious variations include adding toasted pine nuts, replacing feta with olives, replacing watermelon with honeydew. But the original is the best.

Hummingbird Cake

I've been hesitating over whether to post this cake for months. Because it's sort of delicious and sort of disgusting at the same time.

When the holiday season descends, some people rewatch It's a Wonderful Life, some people read The Night Before Christmas aloud en famille. And some of us--a very special sorority, to be sure--flip through the recipe boxes of their ancestors.

For some reason, I was struck this year by the fact that my granny's recipe box, a flimsy tin number painted with orange flowers, contains about a million recipes involving a can of crushed pineapple. There must have been a craze for the stuff that coincided with my granny's most prolific young-wifely recipe clipping phase.

This mad assemblage of spice cake, banana, and canned pineapple under a blanket (really more like a duvet, actually) of cream cheese frosting could not be ignored. It was ridiculously fun for the ToastWomen to make. Truly, you have not lived until you have poured one and a half cups of "salad oil" into a bowl of cake batter. Even now, an image of the Pyrex measuring cup, overflowing with oil, looms golden and horrifying in my mind's eye.

The result was headachingly sweet. One thin slice could send the vulnerable into diabetic coma. To my mind, it actually tasted retro. This one is, I think, for dedicated nostalgic cooks only. And yet...the taste sticks with you. It's "different," with all that the use of the term implies, good and bad. In fact, I wouldn't mind having a slice right now.


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Hummingbird Cake
from my granny's recipe box, with granny-style directions preserved

For the cake:
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups salad oil
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 can 8 oz crushed pineapple, unstrained
2 cups chopped pecans, divided
2 cups chopped bananas

Combine dry ingredients in large mixing bow, add eggs and oil, stir
until moistened. DO NOT BEAT. Stir in vanilla, pineapple, 1 cup nuts and
bananas. Spoon batter into 3 9" greased pans/ Bake at 350 degrees for
25-30 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes.

For the frosting:
2 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 cups butter, softened
2 package 16 oz each of powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Combine cream cheese and butter until smooth, add powdered sugar slowly
and beat until fluffy. Stir in vanilla, put nuts on top (I didn't, as you can see, because I'm not a fan of nuts in dessert).

[ToastPoint notes: Obviously, you should frost the cake, using the usual layer cake method, before putting the nuts on top. Serve on a vintage-y cake plate. Store in refrigerator, or the bananas continue to ripen in a scary way.]

Retro Angel Food Cake

Nobody ever bakes a cake for their neighbors anymore. Why is that? Cakes are just as easy--easier, if you count box cake (and I do)--to make today as in 1950. I'm sure there are many complex sociological reasons having to do with the increased presence of women in the workforce, commute time, the falling price of prepared foods, the fact that no one uses their kitchens anymore, and that we bowl alone. But all of that social science added up to my enormous delight when Mr. and Mrs. ToastFriend came over for dinner recently with a cake in tow. And not just any cake: a genuine, homemade coconut angel food cake on a polka-dotted cake stand. Did you get that? It was on an actual cake stand, people!

The recipe, as emailed from Mrs. ToastFriend below, seems seductively easy with the help of an electric mixer. But I recommend my method: Wait until someone shows up at your door with one.

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Angel Food Cake: Many Possible Variations
From page 705 in the 75th anniversary edition of the Joy of Cooking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Use an UNgreased 10-inch tube pan (this cake is BIG, a smaller pan won't cut it; I'd wash the pan right before use, there can be no grease or oily residue otherwise the cake will collapse b/c it is so light and airy it needs to "stick" to the sides of the pan for support. The first time I made this cake I didn't pay attention to this instruction and it was about half as tall as the cake I brought to your house. And lopsided. Tube pan is clutch for the same reason.)

Sift together:
1 cup cake flour (if you don't use cake flour, sift the all purpose flour a few extra times to try to simulate cake flour for the fluff factor)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine in large bowl and beat on low speed for 1 minute:
1 1/2 cups egg whites (about 11 or 12 large whites)
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional, be careful b/c it is very easy to overdose on the almond extract, a tiny bit goes a really long way) for coconut flavor: add 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Increase speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture increases to 5 times in volume and resembles a bowl of soft foam (3-5 minutes). On medium-high speed, beat in another 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 tbsp at a time, taking 2-3 minutes

When all the sugar has been added, the foam will be creamy white and hold soft, moist, glossy peaks that bend over at the points; do not beat until stiff.

Sift a fine layer of the flour mixture (about 1/4 cup) evenly over the batter and fold gently with a rubber spatula only until the flour is almost incorporated. Do not stir or mix. Repeat 7-8 more times until flour mixture is used.

If you're going for coconut cake, fold 1/2 cup of shredded coconut in with the last addition of flour (the sweetened dried kind works the best I think, of course!)

Pour batter into UNgreased pan. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes (I actually only baked it for about 28 minutes last time.)

Quick icing
Just beat 4 cups (1 lb, usually one box) of confectioners' sugar with 1/2 cup of butter (softened). Then add in 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and 5 tbsp of a liquid--not water but milk, sherry or schnapps, or even coffee works (coffee aesthetically makes the cake look a little dumpy unless you cover the outside with shredded coconut for a brown and white ensemble.)

Note: I bet you could do a really tasty orange or lemon version of this, too. I'd fold in the zest of one or two lemons or oranges instead of the coconut in that final stage. And substitute a tbsp of freshly squeezed oj for the lemon juice.