Bean Butter Cake

This cake is my food version of the LBD (little black dress)—always appropriate to bake and easy to dress up. Fresh-scraped vanilla seeds give the cake a vanilla favor that the extractalone can tmatch. My mom baked this cake for all our birthdays, andlcontinue to bake it for my kids, too. (It makes fabulous mini cupcakes for kids parties.) It s also a perfect complement to ripe summer jhiit, as it is sweet, buttery, and quick to make on a hot day. 

13/4 cups organic cane sugar 4 organic eggs 1 cup organic whole milk 1 tablespoon organic vanilla extract 

V 2 organic vanilla bean, seeds scraped out and reserved (see Note) 

2 3/4 cups organic all-purpose flour 1 V 2 teaspoons baking powder V 2 teaspoon salt 

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans, or place liners in muffin pans for 24 cupcakes. Set aside. 

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The Codex Committee on Cocoa and Chocolate Products defines cocoa butter as the fat produced from one or more of the following cocoa beans, cocoa nibs, cocoa mass (chocolate Hquor), cocoa cake, expeUer cake, or cocoa dust (fines) by a mechanical process and/or with the aid of permissible solvents (10). It further states that cocoa butter shall not contain sheU fat or germ fat ia excess of the proportion ia which they occur ia the whole bean. 

Codex has also defined the various types of cocoa butter ia commercial trade (10). Press cocoa butter is defined as fat obtained by pressure from cocoa nib or chocolate Hquor. In the United States, this is often referred to as prime pure cocoa butter. ExpeUer cocoa butter is defined as the fat prepared by the expeUer process. In this process, cocoa butter is obtained direcdy from whole beans by pressing ia a cage press. ExpeUer butter usuaUy has a stronger flavor and darker color than prime cocoa butter and is filtered with carbon or otherwise treated prior to use. Solvent extracted cocoa butter is cocoa butter obtained from beans, nibs, Hquor, cake, or fines by solvent extraction (qv), usuaUy with hexane. Refined cocoa butter is any of the above cocoa butters that has been treated to remove impurities or undesirable odors and flavors. 

Cocoa beans are roasted, ground and pressed. From this step two principal materials are obtained for the manufacture of cocoa based products cocoa butter and cocoa liquor (the press-cake, which is used to make cocoa powder) ... 

Apart from the products mentioned, there are many other foods that contain palm oil and palm kernel oil products. These include soup mixes, cake and dessert mixes, rendang or curry mixes, sardines, baked beans, breakfast cereals, shrimp-paste powder, bouillon, peanut butter, and beverages. Palm oil products have also been used as a spray oil on biscuits. 

Stuffed mushrooms were rich and, well, meaty - mushroom caps stuffed with a mixture of soy, scallions, carrots and black mushroom in a spicy, black mushroom sauce. Also excellent were the black bean quesadillas - an unusual mix of feta cheese, black beans, brown rice, corn and sun-dried tomatoes in a flour tortilla. A tangy, house-made salsa makes the dish. The sesame noodles salad is also a crowd-pleaser - chilled lo mein noodles mixed with sesame and peanut butter. Save room, though. The biggest hit at Cafe Sunflower is the vegan carrot cake - a killer dessert with a tofu cream cheese frosting that will fool even the most die-hard sweet tooth. 

In 1665, Friar Domingo Navarette described tofii as a common and cheap food of China. They drew the milk out of the Kidney-Beans and turning it, make great Cakes of it like Cheeses... All the Mass is as white as the very Snow... Alone it is insipid, but very good dress d as I say and excellent fry d in Butter. It is incredible what vast quantities of it are consum d in China, and very hard to conceive there should be such abundance of Kidney-Beans. That Chinese who has Teu Fu tofu) herbs and rice, need no other sustenance to work... (Cummins, 1962). 

The fermented beans are dried under carefully controlled conditions, and are then bagged and transported for processing to produce cocoa liquor. This is a dark brown substance which is liquid above 36 C. It contains approximately 55% fat and 45% non-fat cocoa solids. Cocoa butter is the fat obtained by pressing hot cocoa liquor. The residue, known as cocoa press cake, is ground up to produce cocoa powder... 

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