Breakfast Serial #23: A cake that lets you hear trees; our walkabout continues

The Breakfast Serial is the fictitious food blog of interplanetary colonist Harper Luna. While the events and people are all made up, the recipes are quite real (and delicious!), I assure you. The Breakfast Serial is written by Mia V. Moss.

Good morning, Earth. At least, it's morning here in the Wardenswood as I'm composing this transmission. There's fog today, which is a new development. Cold fog, that creeps in violet-hued and brings with it the scent of sweetly decaying leaves and milky resins. Is this the beginning of a new season in this corner of Ocasta, I wonder, or have we merely stumbled into another one of the Wardenswood's myriad microclimates?

This forest seems to fill the space of an ocean. After we broke camp and parted ways with Vee, Sam and I quickly fell into a new daily rhythm, part search party and part research expedition. Our pace has not been hurried but it has been what you might call relentless. We hike sixteen hours a cycle, but those hours are broken up by not infrequent stops to catalog a newly observed plant, creature or fungus.

From time to time, a natural phenomenon will make itself known to us. Nocturnal lights, wind that sounds almost like a string quartet, birds that grow from grass-seed pods, purple fog.

The trees that Pele found are increasing in number the further we venture. Their leaves still do not talk to either myself or Sam, but I collect them all the same from time to time, for study. It was during one such collection that we discovered that these trees also produce a sweet sap similar to that of maple trees.

I collected a small bucket of the substance and studied it raw, where I uncovered the sugar-like crystalline structure under a microscope. I applied some to my inner elbow for a skin contact test and after some time when that did nothing, intrigued (but not interested in falling into a coma like Vee), I cooked some down until I produced a thin syrup. Sam watched cautiously as I put exactly one drop of the syrup on my tongue to taste it (I sat down on a cot in case the coma-inducing effects of the leaves were present in the sap) and reader: it was delicious.

It was quite like maple syrup, but wilder and more intense, with a hint of smoke at the end. Sam and I waited for any adverse reaction from the drop. After an hour and feeling no effects, I drank a teaspoon of it. That, too, did nothing other than taste good. Finally, I drank two ounces of it, diluted in plain black tea from Earth, and we waited two hours. Then we repeated the same tests with Sam. When, after a full night of waiting, we both awoke completely fine with no noticeable effects, we decided to collect more of the sap and add this syrup to our little stock of local foods. While I waited, I worked on how I might use this new murmurtree syrup into a baked good and I think I hit upon something you're going to love: miso murmur loaf cake.

The combination of miso and syrup is not quite like anything else, resulting in a light, distinctive cake that's equally good for a breakfast in the fog or an afternoon walk in the autumn woods. We're finishing up the last of the loaf today, and it may just be my imagination, but I swear when the wind hits the murmur trees' leaves, I can hear a soft, relentless chorus of voices as if from far, far away.

You readers on Earth following the recipe at home will have to make do with plain old maple, but the results should be just as delicious as mine, if a little quieter.

Miso-Maple Loaf (makes 1 loaf)

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups (238 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup (150 grams) white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• Finely grated zest of 1 orange, tangerine, or lemon
• 1 stick (4 ounces/8 tablespoons) room temperature unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup (70 grams) white miso
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) maple syrup
• 2 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup (80 ml) buttermilk (shake well before measuring)
• For the glaze: About 1/4 cup (80 grams) Trader Joe's green tea & yuzu spread (or orange marmalade or apricot jam if you cannot get the green tea/yuzu spread) + 1 tablespoon water

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F
2. Butter an 8 1/2 inch loaf pan and dust with flour
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda
4. Put the sugar, salt, and zest in the bowl of a stand mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) or a large bowl that you can use with a hand mixer. Rub the ingredients together until the sugar is moist and fragrant.
5. Add the butter, miso, and maple syrup to the sugar/salt/zest mix. Beat on medium speed about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl and beater(s) as needed until you have a smooth, creamy paste.
6. One by one, add the eggs, beating for a minute after each addition.
7. Beat in the vanilla. The mix might curdle at thsi stage, but that's temporary and fine. Don't freak out!
8. Turn off the mixer and dump in all the dry ingredients at once, then pulse to begin blending.
9. Beat on low speed until the dry ingredients are almost fully incorporated. Then, with the mixer still on low, pour in the buttermilk and blend well.
10. Scrape the batter into your prepared loaf pan and smooth the top.
11. Bake cake for 50-55 minutes, checking the loaf after 40 minutes and covering top loosely with a foil or parchment tent if it's browning too fast. The loaf is fully baked when the edges pull away from the sides of the pan and a tester in the center comes out clean. The top will be flat and almost definitely cracked along the middle.
12. Transfer your cake to a rack and let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edges of the loaf to unmold onto the rack, right side up.
13. Meanwhile, make the glaze: Stir the yuzu/green tea spread (or marmalade) together with the water and heat in the microwave or in a very small pot over low heat until it comes to just a boil.
14. Use a pastry brush to cover the top of the warm loaf with the glaze.
15. Allow loaf to come fully to room temperature before slicing.

Recipe reproduced, with some tweaks, from Baking With Dorie: Sweet, Salty, & Simple by Dorie Greenspan