Recipe

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:

3 cups sugar 12 ounces softened butter 6 eggs 3 teaspoons baking powder 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt ¾ cup buttermilk 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 2.5 ounces freeze-dried strawberries Buttermilk icing (see sidebar)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. 2. Grease a Bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray. 3. Cream sugar and butter together until light. 4. Incorporate eggs one at a time, scraping the sides. 5. Si baking powder, our, and salt together. 6. Add half of the dry ingredients to butter mixture, mix well, add buttermilk and vanilla, mix well, add remaining dry ingredients, mix well. 7. Fold in strawberries and pour batter into Bundt pan. 8. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour. 9. Let cake cool slightly before ipping onto a wire rack to nish cooling. 10. Once cool, drizzle buttermilk icing on top.

BUTTERMILK ICING

½ cup buttermilk Splash of vanilla extract ⅛ cup lemon juice ½ teaspoon salt 5 cups powdered sugar

1. Whisk buttermilk, vanilla, and lemon juice together in a bowl. 2. Sift salt and powdered sugar over wet ingredients. 3. Whisk until smooth.

THE STORY BEHIND...

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 cauli ower with tahini, all day. One a ernoon about ve 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 o ered 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 nished 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 o the menu.” —Taylor Bowler