R EC I P E
Anika Rucker’s Strawberries and Cream Pound Cake AS PASTRY CHEF at Little Mama’s, Anika Rucker makes classic desserts like cannoli and tiramisu and a steady rotation of seasonal treats like her Strawberries and Cream Pound Cake. Here’s her recipe for the sweetheart-themed dessert, available at Little Mama’s this Valentine’s Day. —Taylor Bowler INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
BUTTERMILK ICING
3 cups sugar
1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
½ cup buttermilk
12 ounces softened butter
2. Grease a Bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray.
Splash of vanilla extract
6 eggs
3. Cream sugar and butter together until light.
⅛ cup lemon juice
3 teaspoons baking powder
4. Incorporate eggs one at a time, scraping the sides.
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
5. Sift baking powder, flour, and salt together.
5 cups powdered sugar
6. Add half of the dry ingredients to butter mixture, mix well, add buttermilk and vanilla, mix well, add remaining dry ingredients, mix well.
1 teaspoon salt ¾ cup buttermilk 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
7. Fold in strawberries and pour batter into Bundt pan. 8. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour.
2.5 ounces freeze-dried strawberries
9. Let cake cool slightly before flipping onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
Buttermilk icing (see sidebar)
10. Once cool, drizzle buttermilk icing on top.
1. Whisk buttermilk, vanilla, and lemon juice together in a bowl. 2. Sift salt and powdered sugar over wet ingredients. 3. Whisk until smooth.
T H E STO RY B E H I N D. . .
COURTESY; PETER TAYLOR
YAFO Kitchen’s Israeli Hot Chicken Sandwich YAFO KITCHEN’S EXECUTIVE CHEF, Shai Fargian, serves fast-casual Mediterranean street food, like chicken shawarma, falafel, and cauliflower with tahini, all day. One afternoon about five years ago, when the Israeli-born chef was working at the FS Food Group chain’s Central Avenue location, he got hungry. “I was sick of everything on the menu,” he says, “so I walked over to Midwood (Smokehouse) and grabbed a bun and made myself a sandwich with our chicken schnitzel and some red schug (a Yemeni hot sauce).” It was good, so he offered a taste to Remy Thurston, FS Food Group’s marketing director. “(Remy) said it was like an Israeli hot chicken sandwich,” Fargian says. “As soon as we finished it, I went and made two more.” Farigan made just a few tweaks: He slathered the panko-crusted chicken in spicy red schug and topped it with tzatziki and purple cabbage slaw. Once he found a vendor for the buns, he added the Israeli Hot Chicken Sandwich to the menu. “This was at the start of the Nashville hot chicken frenzy,” he says. “It became so popular, we never took it off the menu.” —Taylor Bowler FEBRUARY 2022 // CHARLOTTE
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