Genius Recipes
The One Recipe Alice Waters Can't Live Without
Niloufer Ichaporia King’s unforgettable, easy-fancy cake is this week’s Genius Recipe.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Founding Editor and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
Picture yourself at a backyard wedding celebration in Berkeley in 1987. (Feels good, right? Wait—come back.)
It’s a potluck, naturally. A simple loaf cake is passed around. “I took one mouthful and my jaw dropped,” Niloufer Ichaporia King told me. “It was one of those extraordinary moments in my tasting life.”
A textile artist named Ragnhild Langlet had baked the cake to share. (Since tasting it, King no longer bothers remembering what she brought.) Each slice was golden fluff, with a warm floral lilt occasionally interrupted by the coy pop of a whole cardamom seed. Langlet generously shared the recipe—“her modular cake,” as she called it, since it was easily multiplied in thirds—and King has found herself rarely able to make another for birthdays and dinner parties since.
“I must say, that cake was a life-changer—it’s become everyone’s favorite,” King told me. But in spite of the cake’s vaunted reputation, it’s as simple as any to make, and perhaps simpler, since the butter can be pulled from the fridge and melted, rather than waiting for it to be just soft enough—but not too soft—to cream. Without leaveners like baking powder or soda, an electric mixer will help fluff the eggs and sugar to ultimate glory, but a strong whisking arm (or four) can get you nearly as far.
The whole cardamom seeds in particular were a revelation to me, like hitting the jackpot in a pint of chocolate chip or chasing every pomegranate seed to the bottom of the salad bowl. Other places you might encounter them close to their natural form: Indian sweets like the flaky confection soan papdi and creamy gajar halwa, and the knotted Swedish buns kardemummabullar. (Let us know if you’ve seen others!)
In the decades since, King has taken the texture extremes further, morphing the cake from a sturdy loaf into a more festive 9-inch round, and added a crackly almond topping, simply by shaking sugar and sliced almonds into the bottom of the pan before smoothing in the airy batter. It can no longer pass for unassuming.
Although Langlet's cake was Swedish in origin, King now considers it honorary Parsi, both because of the cardamom and perhaps how deeply linked it is to her own life. This is the version she included in her cookbook My Bombay Kitchen in 2007, and the one that her friend Alice Waters fell in love with.
In fact, when The Guardian asked Waters what one recipe she couldn’t live without, it wasn’t tender baby lettuces or nectarines just-plucked from a tree—it was this one. “To me, a cake has to be moist and it has to be interesting—Niloufer’s cake is both,” she wrote. “There is magic to it.”
Correction 4/25/21: Niloufer's book My Bombay Kitchen was the first Parsi cookbook by a Parsi author published in the United States. (In the video, Kristen failed to say "published in the United States.") To learn even more on Parsi cooking from authors worldwide, check out Niloufer's bibliography in My Bombay Kitchen.
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Written by: Kristen Miglore
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105 Comments
I opened about 8 green cardamom pods, and gently bruised them with my chef's knife. In addition, I added a 1/4 tsp of ground cardamom. The result was very enjoyable and aligned with my Saturday night baking patience levels, I am sure full pod-age patience would have worked well.
I did make modifications as I am a Celiac. I used Bob Red Mills 1 to 1 flour replacement for 1 cup, then almond flour for 1/3 cup residual.
Also added cacao nibs and a sprinkling of almond flour instead of slivered almonds. The cacao nibs added a great nuttiness and texture variation. After flip-age, I noticed great caramelization!
I also used 1/2 cup swerve sugar replacement and 1/2 cup cane sugar total (nixed 1/3 cup total "sugar").
Thank you for sharing this recipe! We all bow humbly to Alice Waters...
Second, I made the rookie mistake of using a volume measurement for the cardamon seeds, instead of weighing them. It was too pungent for myself and two other tasters. I will try this again today, with half the weight of cardamon, crushed a little more to distribute through the batter.
BTW, I tested a half quantity recipe in an 8 x 4 loaf pan. Perfect amount of batter. Same amount of bake time.
thx so very much, loved watching your little girl with anything sweet.lol :): kelli
I don’t see the need for a springform pan that can leak. The whole idea is to have the butter and sugar and nuts caramelize. Wouldn’t a 9” cake pan with 2” sides, with the bottom lined with parchment, do a better job?
It’s a nice cake. Once I get over my PTSD, I’ll try again with a regular 9” cake pan.
I'm more concerned that you said "butter leaked out", though. When you mix all the ingredients together, you form a homogeneous mixture. If you think butter is leaking out of your broken pan, then that suggests you didn't mix the ingredients together properly in the first place…
I also had some butter that did not fully incorporate, but was able to mix it in while in the pan. The texture was perfect. I would have preferred the cake less sweet, thus would decrease, at least the amount of sugar in the pan.
It is a lovely cake.
Personally I always dislike springform pans, just cause they seem to deform themselves as soon as your place them in the cabinet and turn your back on them.
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