Alex has been working on a Greek salad dessert. I'm not exactly sure where it came from, it began with a feta cheese sorbet. I'm a big fan of Greek salads though, so perhaps the inspiration is closer than I realized. Anyway, as one of the elements of this dessert he asked me to put together a tomato cake. I decided to do a spin on the old 1-2-3-4 cake adding lots of freshly ground black pepper and substitutuing tomato juice for the milk. The resulting batter was delicious but not tomato-y enough so I bumped the flavor with some tomato puree. The resulting cake was light and tender with an unusual fruity and spicy flavor. It tastes much better than the name would imply. If the Greek salad thing doesn't work out, I'm toying with some tangy cream cheese icing to balance out the buttery sweetnes of the cake. Stay tuned, who knows how this one will end up...
Tomato Cake
*All ingredients should be at room temperature.
1 cup butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Black pepper (30 turns of mill)
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup V-8
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 cups flour
Cream butter and sugar with salt, pepper, baking powder and baking soda until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time until thoroughly incorporated. Mix together V-8 and tomato paste. Add flour and V-8 alternately to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Spread evenly in two 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 350-degrees F. for 20-25 minutes until the center springs back when gently pressed with fingertips.
