Chupacabra Soup

This isn't quite a non-recipe, in the sense that you can pretty much substitute anything you want in any quantity and it'll still turn out basically the same.

But it is a highly negotiable one, with a lot of options in the meat vs vegan, bean, and chile departments.

Chupacabra might be a bit hard to find in your local grocer's meat department, since one has never actually been caught, at least as far as the USDA and FDA know. But I think the combination of shredded chicken with two cups of Dynamite chile peppers tastes about the same.

(Truth in lending here: I have no idea what a Dynamite chile pepper is. That's all they had left at this little mom and pop farmer's market I just found. Looks like an Anaheim, but I'm assuming from the name it's a wee bit hotter. Yeah, I know ... I was born at night, but not last night ... didn't just fall off the tuna truck, ya know.)

The basic recipe goes like this: shredded chicken plus beans plus a veggie combo of onions and chiles with or without tomatoes plus broth equals soup.

Hints:

• Rotisserie chicken works great here, assuming you can't round up a chupacabra.
  
• Made the last batch with half boiled chicken, half ground Jennie-O turkey. Mixing in a little ground meat was something I tried when I was short on pork loin and I wanted to make a double batch of green chile stew, and I think it adds a little depth to the dish. Same idea works here.
• If you boil the chicken, then you'll already have a pot of brothy-water to make the chicken broth later. I've been hooked on Better Than Bouillon chicken base lately, for it's convenience, price, and most importantly taste. Bon Appetit loved it, and it's ridiculously cheap at the base commissary — about nine quarts of chicken broth for around three bucks, with no cans or cartons taking up space.
• If you're going to add ground turkey or chicken, then brown the meat first and then cook the veggies in the same pot, so that the meat juices work into the onions and peppers.
• Chiles: all I can say is, play around with them. It's always easier to start mild and work your way up. Kinda like unringing a bell, if you over-do the peppers, there's only so much diluting you can do later. This last batch, I used about two cups of Dynamites. I loved it, but it was too hot for M., and she had to cut the soup with sour cream. (Which is so odd, because she nearly always out-hots me under the table.)

Chupacabra Soup

Chicken: One rotisserie chicken, or a smallish over-roasted bird, or a pound or so of grilled chicken (shredded), or a pound or so of boiled chicken (again, then shredded) with maybe a pound of ground turkey, browned.
Olive oil as needed
Two small-to-medium onions, yellow or sweet (I like sweet mixed with chiles, but that's just me), medium to fine dice
3-4 garlic cloves, finely diced or minced
½ to 2 cups chile peppers (depending on your own personal taste and constitution), roasted, peeled, and diced (or, about 14-15 ounces of canned Hatch chiles)
2 cans black beans or 1 can black, 1 can pinto, rinsed
1 Tbs quality chile powder (Savory Spices is a great place to start, or grind your own.)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp to 1 Tbs Mexican oregano
3 cups chicken broth plus more water if needed

Optional:
1-2 cups of diced tomatoes or 14-28 ounces of canned tomatoes
1 cup corn

Garnish:
Cilantro
Lime
Green onions
Strips of fresh tortillas

First, get your meat ready, either from a rotisserie chicken or by grilling or boiling chicken breasts. If you boil the chicken, then save the water for your chicken broth.

If you're using ground turkey or chicken, brown it in a large stock pot or Dutch oven. If you want, spice the meat with a little chile powder and cumin. Remove and set aside, then sauté the onions in the same pot, using the remaining fat from the meat plus as much olive oil as you need to keep the onions for sticking. Go with about medium heat for 6-7 minutes, and then add the garlic and chiles. Stir gently but frequently. If you have burnt bits on the bottom of your pot, lightly deglaze with a few Tbs of chicken broth (or a splash of wine or beer, if you happen to have some open).

Add the beans and gently stir. Add the spices and gently stir. Add the tomatoes and corn and gently stir (optional items). Then add your broth, and gently stir again before bringing the pot to a boil. Immediately turn it back down to a simmer, giving it 15-20 minutes. Then add your chicken (or chupacabra, if you found one) back to the pot.

Update: I love this technique of thickening the soup with a corn starch slurry at Edible Mosaic.

The key to this soup is managing your chiles. Too many of a too hot variety and you have jet fuel. Too few of a too mild, and you have nursing home cafeteria soup.

Food Trucks

Used to call the AAFES vendor the Roach Coach. Sold nothing but reheated burgers and cold coffee.

Times have changed.

Food Trucks Taking Sidewalks By Storm, from NPR.

Bookmarking a few for later

Gotta save these before I forget them:

World's Greatest Mac-n-Cheese, from Denver's Rackhouse Pub

I need some green in my mac and cheese, so I added some roasted broccoli and chile peppers, the broccoli from the grocery store and the peppers from M's mom's CSA.

Tips on how to spice seeds and nuts, from Sur la Table

Candied Walnuts, from One Perfect Bite

Bourbon Pumpkin Pie, from Gourmet

Curried Chicken Salad with Garam Masala Biscuits, from Food and Wine

Butternut Squash Cake with Walnut Icing, from the Gastronomer's Guide

Roasted Apple and Squash Soup, from Chef Louise

Mango Chutney

We have this combo that never fails to come out perfect. I'm thinking they all originally came from the Colorado Collage cookbook, from the Denver Junior League, or maybe just two out of the three did. But they work together both on the plate and during preparation.

(Left: mango chutney chicken with rice pilaf and grilled eggplant)


The combo is a mango chutney chicken, with a rice pilaf and oven-roasted tomatoes on the side. You prep the chicken, bake it for a while, cover it with chutney and finish baking it. While it's baking the first time, you prep the rice and tomatoes. You put the rice on the stove and the tomatoes in the oven during the chicken intermission. And there's no hands-on for the last ten minutes or so, so you can get everything cleaned up. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency.

But here's the one thing I don't like about the ensemble: the mango chutney. Now, I love mango chutney, or just about any type, for that matter. But come on, five or six bucks for the tiniest jar. And those jars. They typically have a tiny mouth that keeps you from sticking a spoon in there, but also a curve in the bottle that keeps a knife from getting the last ounce out of the jar. If I'm going to pay five bucks for a jar of something, I'm going to get every drop onto my plate.

I just assumed chutney was some terribly difficult thing to concoct. It's sort of like jelly, so there had to be boiling of jars and canning and vacuum seals, right? If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have realized that it's more like cranberry dressing, and our cranberry chutney takes all of about five minutes to whip up.

So I took the time to actually read the instructions for a mango chutney that's in The Dutch Oven Cookbook, by Sharon Kramis and Julie Kramis Hearne. Super simple, it turns out ... but ... for whatever reason, this recipe, like nearly every other one out there, calls for a metric ton of mangoes and a few dozen onions, and makes enough to feed the Royal British Air Force. Not sure what the thought process is there ... maybe because it freezes well, so you can jar 9/10ths of it and pull it out as you need it.

Next time I may try the Dutch oven version that makes six cups, but there wasn't room in the freezer thanks to chili and stew, so we whittled it down to about six servings.

Mango Chutney

2 Tbs olive oil
1 medium yellow onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 mangoes, chopped into 1 inch cubes
(or 2 cups frozen mango)
1/2 cup red bell pepper, finely diced
1/4 cup dried currants or golden raisins
1 Tbs ginger, finely chopped
dash red pepper flakes
dash ground turmeric or curry powder (or, both)
dash cinnamon
1 Tbs lime juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Like all good non-recipes, the details aren't important and nearly all of the ingredients are negotiable. Heck, leave out the mangoes, for crying outside, and make it with apples or whatever. Go heavy on the red chili flakes, or leave 'em out. Add nuts, like pecans or macadamias. Add cardamom to the curry powder, or try it with green or red curry pastes. Lots of ways to play around with this one.

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and then add the onion, garlic, mango, red pepper, currants, and ginger. Sauté for 4-5 minutes, then add everything else. Continue to sauté on medium heat for about ten minutes, stirring frequently. Then lower the heat and simmer on low for about an hour. Cool and serve. Will store for about a week in the fridge or longer in the freezer.

More on Chiles

While you're making Pork and Green Chile Stew, listen to the folks from Spilled Milk tell you everything you always wanted to know about chiles but were afraid to ask.

Episode 22: Chiles

Non-Recipe of the Day: Pork and Green Chile Stew

Pete's Kitchen was the first place I ever had really good green chile stew. Their breakfast burrito is a rolled up tortilla stuffed with eggs, sausage, potatoes, and cheese, as big as your head, smothered in a spicy green chile sauce. The flavors were so well developed, I assumed it was one of those recipes where everything has to simmer for five or six days, leaping from a stock pot to a Dutch oven to a pressure cooker and back, constantly stirred, with a precise mixture of half a dozen different chiles.

Maybe green chile stew in its purest form has a non-negotiable recipe, but the best I can tell, you can screw this up a handful of ways and you'll still do fine. You can leave out half the ingredients, double up the rest, miss-measure (mismeasure?) everything, and forget to time anything, but it's going to turn out okay, as long as you pay attention to one very important step: quality chiles.

Even using standard grocery store canned chiles isn't a deal breaker. There are some recipes that are just plain bomb-proof. Pour cereal into bowl, add milk, for instance. Do you need to measure the cereal, and does it matter whether it's whole or 2%? Well, along those lines, you got your browned pork, then sautéed onions in a bit of the pork fat, followed by chicken stock and chiles. Like I said, bomb-proof.

I'm no expert, but I have to think that the version at the Santa Fe School of Cooking has to be a consensus fave. But if you use The Google to search the InterTubes, you'll find that there are zillions of recipes 90% similar except that they switch around one of the steps. Some brown the pork in oil, some don't. Some add flour to the pork, some add it to the onions, some leave it out. Some season the pork first with cumin or chili powder, some wait until you add the chicken stock, and some use the green chiles as the only spice . Potatoes are optional, as are tomatoes. Green chile quantities vary from half a cup to five pounds. Chicken stock varies from one cup to six. And some simmer for 15 minutes while others take four hours in the crock pot.

My personal recommendations:

• If you want to fire and forget, the crock pot works like a charm, but then you need a second pan to brown the pork and maybe the onions. But the beauty of the Dutch oven is that you can do it all in one contraption. Browns the pork, sautés the onions, and because it retains heat so well it does the same job as a slow cooker.
• Most purists will say this can only be made with Hatch chiles, but life's too short to limit yourself to just one kind of anything. Find peppers that you like and mix 'em up. M's mom sent us a gallon of assorted peppers from her CSA, Ricky and Lucy's Country Greenhouse, just outside Sidney, NE. Mostly mild and medium, but all delicious, and the blend of flavors made for a remarkable stew.
  

If you want to experiment, check out the Santa Fe School of Cooking's version, Denver Green Chile's version here, and Gourmet's New Mexico version here.

Pork and Green Chile Stew

1-2 Tbs vegetable oil (optional)
1-2 pounds pork butt, country style ribs, or other boneless pork, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3-4 garlic gloves, minced (about a tablespoon)
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup diced potatoes
1-2 cups diced green chiles (roasted, peeled, and chopped)
cilantro for serving

Optional items:
— 1-2 Tbs chili powder (Ancho or New Mexico) + salt and pepper to season the pork before browning
— 1 cup diced tomatoes

Brown the pork in batches in a Dutch oven or non-stick pan. Set aside.

Remove any excess pork drippings, saving enough to sauté the onions. Sauté the onions until golden, then add the garlic and cook for one more minute.

If anything has stuck to the pan, deglaze with a quarter cup of the chicken stock, scraping up the bits. If you're using a Dutch oven, add the pork back to onions. If you're using a non-stick pan, then switch everything over to a large stock pot.

Add the chicken stock and potatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Add the chiles (and optional tomatoes) and simmer for 15 more minutes.

Depending on how much pork you use, how big your onion was, and how much chile you use, you might need to add more chicken broth to this the stew; conversely, maybe add a few Tbs of flour to thicken it.

Stir in some cilantro and serve by itself in a bowl, over rice, or in and on a breakfast burrito.

Freezes great.

Let's Move Challenge: Recipes for Healthy Kids

I'll write more about this later ... but wanted to through out one question first.

Let's Move Challenge: Recipes for Healthy Kids

Let's Move!, in association with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is challenging school nutrition professionals, chefs, students, parents and interested community members to create tasty, healthy, exciting new recipes for inclusion on school lunch menus across the country.
Participants will form teams, develop, document, and prepare at least one healthy recipe in one of three categories (Whole Grains, Dark Green and Orange vegetables, or Dry Beans and Peas). Their creations will be served in the school's cafeteria, and rated by students. Fifteen semi-finalist teams will have their recipe evaluated by our judging panel during events held at their school, and the top three teams will compete in a national cook-off to determine the grand prize winner! Semi-finalists' recipes will also be posted for online voting by the public to determine a Popular Choice Winner. Winning teams will be invited to prepare their nutrition-packed meals alongside White House chefs.

Here's my thought: I've always been amazed that kids will eat the worst hamburgers or pizza, frozen and microwaved garbage with no flavor but a familiar look to it, but won't try tasty dishes that look different. While I fully support the First Lady's initiative here, I wonder if we're missing a crucial element: preparation and presentation, not just ingredients and recipes. I wonder if we don't need to also address the food preparation equipment in your typical public school cafeteria.

Check out your school's cafeteria. What do you see? A couple of deep fryers, a large griddle or fry top surface of some sort, and a huge oven. So your menu options are limited to those things that can be mass produced on or in this equipment.

Maybe we need to invent some new large volume cooking equipment?

How do they currently cook veggies? Typically, they're frozen, then boiled to death in a 10-20 gallon pot. We all know that microwaving veggies preserves the vitamins more efficiently, but a commercial microwave won't get the job done. So how about a large volume design that would let the cooks whip up fifty servings at a time? Or maybe a high speed convection-hybrid TurboChefs like Starbucks is using for their sandwiches?

I think there's also potential for a variation of sous vide style cooking in our schools. Prepared meals, vacuum sealed, then reheated quickly as the kids go through the line.

Last thought: I have noticed that kids are more receptive to meals when they either participate or see the preparation. When the cooks do their work in the back, then walk out with a tray of who knows what, the kids are unreceptive. Granted, letting them roll up their sleeves every day might be too much of a stretch, but think about a P.F. Chang's style kitchen, right behind the counter, no walls, where the kids can see exactly what's going on, see the flames and smoke and cool stuff that will get their interest.

I haven't put too much thought into this ... just heard the discussion on Science Friday, and the first thing that jumped into my head was, modern cafeterias look exactly like they did when I was in school some forty years ago. And with all of our technological advances, surely there are some kitchen equipment redesigns that could help get the kids away from burgers and chicken nuggets.

More to follow ...

Zucchini Cornbread

My mom would make cake-like cornbread back in the day. For the life of me I can't remember with what main dish she would serve it. We were Euro-mutts of a definite haole/gringo variety, so it definitely wasn't anything southwestern, as any spice hotter than grocery store brand pre-ground black pepper would make my Celtic druid hide burst into flames. And we didn't do a lot of traditional southern cooking, despite growing up mostly south of the Mason-Dixon line. I didn't have a standard against which to judge it, but I thought my mom's cornbread was the best in the world. It didn't have the heavy creaminess from a gallon of sour cream, or the authenticity of freshly roasted corn. But it was perfectly uniform like a slice of pound cake, didn't have that unripe-banana mouth-feel that some cornbreads have, and was oh-so-sweet. I'd have two or three slices with dinner, then sneak a square out of the room folded up in a napkin to enjoy in my room or on the porch.

Found out later, all she did was take a basic Betty Crocker recipe and up the sugar and add some vanilla extract.

Been on a bit of a summer squash kick lately, and nine times out of ten, when I get into a rut, it's because I just can't think of anything else to do, out of a lack of inspiration. But this time, it's simply because the Mexican greys and gourmet globes and all of the rest have been so dang good all summer long.

The shredded or chopped zucchini gives the bread some moistness without adding sour cream or extra butter, and seems to be a natural fit for either straight-up corn or corn and jalapeño bread.

And like all good non-recipes, you can play with a couple of the numbers. You can go with as little as half a cup or as much as two cups of zucchini, which can be either shredded or finely chopped. Add an ear's worth of freshly roasted corn, a half cup of frozen, or none of the above. Cut the sweeteners in half or double them. And go a little crazy with the chiles.

Goes great with yesterday's Hot and Spicy Buffalo Chili.

High Plains Zucchini Cornbread, adapted from The Baking Sheet.

½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup corn meal (white or yellow)
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
(or one cup whole milk, one Tbs lemon juice or cider vinegar, left to stand for 10 minutes)
2 eggs *
2 Tbs molasses
3 Tbs melted butter
Shredded zucchini: 1-2 large or 2-4 small.** (If all you have are mediums, you're on your own!)
Optional: ¼ cup each of corn and/or diced chili peppers

* The Baking Sheet called one egg + one egg white, but I hate discarding half an egg. If anyone tries it with the one egg white, let me know what you think.
** Several recipes called for squeezing out the water from the zucchini. I skipped that part and thought it was fine, and not sure what squeezing out the water would get me.


Heat your oven to 400º and grease an 8 inch square baking pan.

In the good old large bowl, whisk your flours and cornmeal, then baking powder and baking, then salt and brown sugar.

In a separate bowl, whisk your buttermilk, eggs, molasses and butter until smooth and uniform.

Slowly pour the wet into the dry, and stir gently until just combined. Then add the zucchini (and corn and/or chiles, if you're so inclined) and just barely stir again until it looks all even. Pour the batter into your pan, spreading if needed to even everything out.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until it looks like it's just about to brown on top. Cool for a few minutes before slicing.

Freezes quite nicely if you wrap it tightly in a zip-lock or plastic wrap. Wrap in foil and warm in a 200º oven before serving.

Serve on the side of a big bowl of chili.

Beans and Rice

The packages were mailed with impeccable timing so as to arrive the day before the holiday, birthday, or special event, or, in the case of a weekend shindig, on the Friday before. The boxes were cut down and refolded so as to require minimal packing materials, to scalpel away every unnecessary ounce — no sense paying Uncle Sugar and the US Postal folks a penny more than he needed to.

Inside the box were presents for the grandkids, something special for each one, but it also unfailingly included something practical. Maybe a few pounds of pecans from the nearby orchards, or something that my mom had mentioned, off-handedly, something she needed to get from the store.

And there was always an envelope. A blank envelope, no writing or return address or "To:" on the front or back. Unsealed, with the flap tucked in, so the card wouldn't fall out but so the envelope could be used again. Inside the envelope was a card, also blank, with a handwritten note on a separate piece of paper. A blank card and a blank envelope, so I could reuse it, maybe give it to my mom or dad on their birthday, saving me a trip to the store and a dollar-fifty.

The note always started with a reference to whatever we had spoken about last: "Thank you for the baseball pictures" or "It's so good to hear how you're doing in school." Then it congratulated us on our birthday, wished us a happy Thanksgiving, or explained how proud he was of whatever it was we did most recently.

And he signed off the same way every time: "Beans and rice." From my earliest years, I knew what it meant, shorthand for those things that will get you through the hard times. My grandparents had lived through the depression, had seen tough times, not tough as in your stock portfolio took a hit over the last quarter or the Apple Store was out of the 3G iPad, but real tough, missing meals tough, darning socks tough, and waking up seeing your breath it's so cold inside tough.

We weren't much of a bean family, but we had our share of rice. Whatever it was Mom was cooking, rice would make it go further. Add a cup of cooked rice to the meatloaf to make it look like two pounds of ground beef, that kind of thing. Wasn't hardly anything you couldn't add rice to. I half expected to see the grains floating in my Kool-ade.

I still have a lot of my grandfather in me. When I travel and want to send home little gifts, I'm a lot more likely to send them a pound of coffee from wherever I am, than an ornamental plate or spoon or a T-shirt — something practical and consumable that won't sit on a shelf taking up space forever. And I have trouble looking at any recipe without wondering how you could double the servings by adding some rice or potatoes or stuffing it into a tortilla. Mu shu pork burrito? Why not?

Chili always looks naked to me when it's not served over rice. Even Cincinnati-style chili can go a little further if you put a scoop of rice in the bottom of the bowl, then add the spaghetti, then the chili.

Okay, maybe that's getting carried away ... rice and spaghetti sounds like you're just asking Primo to call you a criminal and refuse to serve you. But it's still in the back of my mind nearly every time I step into the kitchen.

Not sure what Papa Joe would think about this chili. The man knew his produce and his steaks, but our family wasn't much for spices that made you sweat. But I do know that after tasting it, he would say that we should double the beans and serve it over a huge bowl of rice. Just because, you never know ... and you should never forget the tough times.

Our go to chili recipe: Hot and Spicy Buffalo Chili (The starting point)

1 pound ground bison
1 pound hot and spicy Italian sausage (casings removed)
1 large red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 4-ounce can fire-roasted diced green chiles
1 15-ounce can black beans
1 15-ounce can pinto beans
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Shredded Mexican cheese, sour cream, and chopped cilantro for serving


In a large skillet, cook bison and sausage over medium heat until
browned. Drain.

Mix meat and remaining ingredients in 6-quart crock pot. Cover and
cook on low heat setting 6–8 hours (or high heat setting 3–4 hours) or until
onion is tender.

Serve with shredded cheese and sour cream.

Variations:

• Grind your own chili powder using dried peppers

• There are lots of chili powders to try, and we'll occasionally go up to 4 Tbs if they're not super hot. Savory Spices has a huge selection if your grocery store can't help you out. Mexican oregano is a nice addition, maybe a Tbs sprinkled in with the chili powder.
  

• Experiment with cinnamon, cloves, all-spice, and even chocolate.

• I'm guessing you can get canned chili peppers just about anywhere these days. If you're lucky, you live in a place where folks roast Hatch chili peppers on the side of the road, so you can pick up a bag on your way home. In these parts, you can buy them frozen as well. Or, roast your own. The conventional wisdom is to roast them on a grill or in the oven, then place in a paper bag and let them steam. You can then peel off the skins and use immediately or slice and freeze. But I've never quite gotten the part about peeling off the skins. I just slice them up, roast them on the grill or oven, then store in zip lock bags in individual servings. Keep enough in the fridge for the rest of the week and freeze the rest.

• Canned tomatoes work in pinch, but try roasting a pound or so, slicing them in half and oven-roasting them for 30-45 minutes. Then coarsely chop them before adding them to the mix.
  

• When we've made the chili on the hot side, it always seems to mellow out the next day. So the first time, serve it plain or over white rice. The next day, make the rice with a little cumin, Mexican oregano, and lime juice, and it won't seem like leftovers at all.
  

Tomorrow: Zucchini Cornbread, if you really don't feel like rice in your chili

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cake

Can't miss fall dessert.


3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 ounces bittersweet or semisweet
chocolate chips
1 15-ounce can pumpkin
3/4 cup butter (melted)
6 eggs, slightly beaten

Molasses Glaze:
1/4 cup butter
1∕3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup or dark-color
corn syrup
2 tablespoons molasses

Heat oven to 350° F. With nonstick spray, generously coat a 10-inch Bundt pan and set aside.
Measure 1/2 cup of the flour into a small bowl, and add the chocolate chips. Toss to coat.
In a large bowl, combine the remaining flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves), baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In a medium bowl combine the pumpkin, melted butter, and eggs. Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture, and stir until combined. Then add the chocolate / flour mixture and stir until combined. Pour the batter into the Bundt pan.
Bake for 60–70 minutes. It is ready when a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean, but you already knew that, didn’t you? Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and cool for 30 minutes.
Prepare the molasses glaze by melting, in a small saucepan, the butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, and molasses. Bring to a simmer, then cook uncovered for three minutes or until slightly thickened. Cool for five minutes, then spoon over the cooled cake.