Last year for my mom’s birthday I made a cranberry-lemon pound cake with lemon curd filling and Italian meringue lemon buttercream frosting. I wanted to do something lighter and fruitier this year.. something that wouldn’t make us feel like 500 lbs. after we finished eating it.
Edwin tells me that I talk about Sur La Table’s Art and Soul of Baking book entirely too much. I tell him that because he doesn’t own it, he just can’t even begin to understand how it would blow his mind. We’re at a stalemate… too bad his birthday isn’t until late summer.
But you guessed it, this recipe is from The Art and Soul of Baking, and it was everything I ever wanted. As I was making it there were actually a lot of firsts for me – I’d never worked with kumquat before (I actually wasn’t even entirely sure of what they were before setting foot in the grocery store), I’d never cut up a whole pineapple before (I’m not sure how I’d escaped this for so long… luckily this youtube video guided me through the process, which was much easier than I feared it would be), and I’d never worked with candied ginger (usually I leave it out of recipes because I’m not a big ginger fan, but it was wonderful and essential here. You can find it in the spice aisle in one of those tiny spice bottles).
A few notes from the recipe – I baked this is a cute pie dish instead of a casserole dish and it worked out great. Also, I combined the topping ingredients in a stand mixer on low for a few seconds, but the pieces never got pea-sized… and I’m not sure they ever would have. It really formed the consistency of pie dough. So instead of sprinkling it over the fruit mixture, I really sort of laid it evenly on top (again, almost like a pie dough top). It turned out extremely well, so I don’t see it as a problem – just something to be aware of!
If you don’t have the book yet (why.. WHY), you can find the recipe over at Steamy Kitchen.