Rosemary at Night

Dinner-ish, 2011

Chris is working late. I bought a roast chicken and made some beautiful homemade stuffing with fresh fennel and apples for dinner. It's all still in the kitchen. This cake I baked, actually it's more of a bread, outshined everything else. So here I sit, around 9:30pm, quite happily, with my glass of milk and my slice of Rosemary Olive Oil Cake. Actually, it's almost gone now. I know the photograph is a little homely, but trust me, it's really good. It's dinner-ish, if you believe in cake (or is it bread?) at 9:30pm equates to dinner. I originally saw this recipe in Kim Boyce's Good to Grain and was intrigued. I was reminded of it when I saw the Heidi Swanson at 101 Cookbooks version on Pinterest. Have you played around with Pinterest yet? It's kind of fun. I also saw a B&W photograph of Sawyer while I was there. Remember him? I miss Sawyer. If you are curious, there's a link to my 'pins' over there in my right margin. I made some changes to the recipe, of course. Here's my version.

Rosemary Olive Oil Cake (Bread)

2 1/4 cups unbleached white whole wheat flour (I used King Arthur)
3/4 cup raw sugar (plus 2 tablespoons for top crunch)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 eggs
1 cup olive oil (I used Greek)
3/4 cup skim milk
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped fine
3 ounces extra dark chocolate (I used one bar of Scharffen Berger 82% Cacao), chopped rough

Preheat oven to 350º
Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and set aside. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Whisk dry ingredients (this might seem a little strange, but I found it to work well). In a second medium bowl whisk eggs and add olive oil, milk, and rosemary. Whisk again. Add wet ingredient to dry and fold gently until all dry ingredients are moistened. Add 3/4 of the chocolate and fold until evenly incorporated. Pour batter evenly into pan and scatter remaining chocolate on top, pressing chocolate bits gently into the batter. Sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar on top of batter. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until lightly browned and skewer inserted in center comes out clean. I followed Heidi's suggestion and finished it beneath the broiler for a minute (just a minute, it goes fast) to caramelize the sugar.

Recipe adapted from 101 Cookbooks by Heidi Swanson, which was adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce.