Small Victories is the name of a cookbook I own and love. It’s written by Julia Turshen who is a boss lady (check her out!). Every recipe in her book provides the reader with several “small victories” or opportunities to master a cooking technique or hack. This can look like how to make your own lasagna noodles, how to turn leftovers into a different meal, or letting your chicken come to room temp before roasting. Her book has encouraged me to pay more attention to small victories in my day to day. As someone who tends to put unnecessary pressure on herself to be impressive, I benefit from feeling accomplished in smaller tasks and letting that delight fuel me. For me, that can look like pushing myself 0.10 miles further on a run or remembering to take out the trash before it gets smelly. Little wins, folks.
The lemony turmeric tea cake afforded me two small victories.
Small Victory #1: I’ve said before that I don’t like turmeric. After trying this cake, I’d like to make an amendment to that claim: I don’t like turmeric when its taste overpowers my food. I can get behind turmeric if it helps complexify (is that a word) a dish without wrestling the other spices to the ground and claiming victory. A dessert is an odd way to learn this about my own pallet, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Small Victory #2: I turned this glutenous recipe into a Gluten Free one! With the help of my pal Margaret pointing me to this King Arthur article, I made several small adjustments that really paid off. When I tried converting Alison’s Cocoa Banana Bread to gluten free, I simply swapped the AP flour for GF flour, 1:1. The result was a drier, thicker cake. But this lemon cake turned out light n’ fluffy as heck!
Here are the alterations I made:
Swapped regular All-Purpose flour with Gluten-free All-Purpose flour, using a 1:1 ratio
Added a little less than 1 tsp. of Xanthum gum
Used an additional egg: 3 eggs instead of just 2 eggs
Beyond flour, sugar, turmeric, and the typical baking dried ingredients, this recipe utilizes 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of zest. The first step is incorporating the sugar and the zest by rubbing it together with your fingers, thereby turning the sugar a light yellow and releasing the lemony aroma. The sugar is then whisked into the eggs, lemon juice and greek yogurt/sour cream. A stick of melted butter and other dry ingredients get folded into the batter just before pouring it into the cake pan. Thinly sliced lemons and sugar top the cake. The lemons looked really nice, but I had to be careful not to let them burn.
Alison mentions in the recipe description that she often makes this cake to bring to an occasion or gathering, and then ends up eating all of it herself. I can relate. It’s only because Jordan begged me to bring half of it to a bonfire that I gave some away.
43 recipes cooked, 182 to go.
