Your Best Recipe with Cardamom

Sarah's latest still-life: milk, flour, butter, cardamom, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, sugar, clementine and olive oil.  

Amanda cheerfully adds ingredients to the mixer.  

This pound cake calls for both white and brown sugar.  

And both olive oil and butter!  

We found that clementine zest is surprisingly -- and delightfully -- fragrant.  

Crush your own cardamom pods for this recipe -- you won't regret it. We didn't go too fine, but if you don't want crunchy bits in your smooth pound cake (some of us liked the texture), you may want to use a spice grinder.  

Look, four hands!  

3 eggs add richness to the cake.  

Alternating dry and wet ingredients towards the end makes for a nice, smooth batter.  

Like a traditional pound cake, this recipe includes a little vanilla.  

A truly gorgeous batter.  

Voila!  

The ingredient tableau: prunes, cinnamon stick, cardamom, orange flower water, pink peppercorns, sugar, red wine vinegar, coriander, and orange.  

We squeezed twice as much orange juice as we needed by mistake (see back right) -- it didn't go to waste.  

This is one of those great recipes where you just measure and dump -- we love those!  

A shower of sugar.  

Aren't the spices (and zest) beautiful, floating like a raft on the liquid?  

Pink peppercorns add welcome heat.  

What's the saying about a watched pot? This one boiled anyway.  

Be careful dropping the dates into the syrup -- no one likes scalded fingertips!  

The dates simmer gently for 20 minutes, absorbing all the great flavors.  

20 minutes later...