Laurie Colwin’s Special Spice Cake

This is as much a tribute to Laurie Colwin as a recipe posting. She is the author of 5 novels and two “Home Cooking” collections based on columns she wrote for Gourmet magazine. I’ve read all of them and came away each time wishing she was my friend.  She has an intimate and humorous writing style that makes you feel she is speaking just to you. In her intro to Home Cooking she writes “Unlike some people who love to go out, I love to stay home.”  Chapter titles such as  “Kitchen Horrors”,  and “Repulsive Dinners : a Memior” will endear her to you .

In her first novel, a collection of short stories called “Passion and Affect” (1974), she wrote about a Mrs. Parker who died tragically and suddenly in October. “She and Mr. Parker were in the middle of their middle age, and neither of them had ever been seriously ill.  It was heart failure, and unexpected.”

Sadly and strangely, that is exactly what happened to Laurie 18 years later.  She was 48 years old when she went to bed on Oct. 23, 1992 in the Soho apartment she shared with her husband and young daughter, and never woke up – heart failure, and totally unexpected.

In a wonderful culinary blog called TheFoodMaven.com by New York food expert Arthur Schwartz, I came across a story that her friend Janice Bracken came forward with the week after she died.  She said it bothered Laurie that Janice couldn’t bake a cake, or even a cookie for children.

“One day Laurie came over with this cake and said this is going to be your cake. It’s easy. You can do it. And it will be your specialty.  You don’t have to tell anyone where you got the recipe.  You can say it is an old family recipe if you want. And I won’t ever publish it.”

And, Brittany and I  are forever grateful to Laurie for the perfect quote we used when we sent out a call for recipes to start Heronearth….

“When life is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion – something that makes one feel, if even for only a minute, that one is safe.”

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar

4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

1 egg

1 cup yogurt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Butter the sides only of a 10-inch springform pan.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, cut into 6 or 8 pieces, with the flour and dark brown sugar.  Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour and sugar until the mixture resembles fine meal.

Measure out 2 1/2 cups of this mixture and spread it evenly in the bottom of the prepared pan.  With your hand flat, firmly compress the mixture evenly into the bottom of the pan.

Add the spices to the remaining dry ingredients. Mix well.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir the egg and yogurt together to mix well.  With a wooden spoon, stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture.  Finally, sprinkle the baking soda over the surface of the batter and gently but thoroughly stir it in.

Spread this batter over the mixture that was pressed into the bottom of the pan, and with a rubber spatula, smooth the top of the batter.  Scatter the chopped walnuts on top.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 50 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean from the center of the cake, and the sides of the cake have shrunk slightly away from the pan.  Cool in the pan, on a rack, for 5 minutes.  Then slide a thin bladed knife around the circumference of the cake to make sure there areno spots still attached to the sides of the springform pan.  Remove the sides of the pan and cool completely.

For presentation, the cake can be fairly easily removed from the bottom of the springform.  When serving, cut down hard through the shortbread bottom.

Note: If Laurie were writing this recipe today, I’m sure she would suggest pulsing the butter, flour and sugar together in a food processor, which blends it perfectly in seconds. The recipe is unusual in that there are two steps to the mixing, but it comes together easily and quickly.  It is tender and buttery with a crisp bottom layer of brown sugar shortbread, and lasts for several days wrapped in plastic. It is lovely alone with a cup of coffee and  would be great topped with whipped cream or served with the carmel sauce in the apple cake recipe on this site.