The Sisterhood of the Traveling Grapefruit Cake - No. 78

Pucker up!

Brown Sugar Grapefruit Cake from my book, A New Take on Cake, is baked in little 6-inch pans (There is also a yummy grapefruit curd recipe in the book.) It’s gorgeous and a good way to use January grapefruit, but it’s not the cake I’m writing about today. Photo: Danielle Atkins

I WATCHED MY PARENTS FORK INTO SALADS of avocado and grapefruit, hers dressed with Catalina French and his with mayonnaise. It reeked of sophistication.

Although my sisters and I were content with crushed pineapple suspended in red Jell-O, we were curious about the fare at the other end of the table. Judging from the parental oohs and aahs, you clearly had to be over 21 to enjoy it.

I do recall my mother saying we’d appreciate avocado and grapefruit once we were older. She’d eat just about any grapefruit she could get her hands on, dousing it with sugar if it was too tart, but when the sweeter Indian River grapefruit with its blushing pink rind and vibrantly deep-pink flesh came into season, her world stopped and grapefruit-avocado salad was on the menu.

Now, falling in love with avocado didn’t take long thanks to my living in Atlanta post-college and the DeKalb Farmer’s Market bringing all the foods of the world to my shopping cart. Having a steady supply of avocados meant I could dive into Diana Kennedy recipes and learn the visual and taste differences of the larger, sweeter, greener Florida avocados and the smaller, richer, darker Haas from California.

But grapefruit? It took a while to break the ice.

Indian River has been a Florida citrus area of distinction for a long time. It’s situated along the Atlantic coast and is warm and humid with beneficial limestone deep in the sandy soil, perfect for citrus.

Today, I will spoon into an Indian River or Ruby Red or other pink grapefruit on winter mornings. And I love baking with it, too. But to be completely honest, grapefruit reminds me of dieting.

Grapefruit from the backyard tree in Jacksonville. And my grandmother’s grapefruit spoon.

Grapefruit cake and back when grapefruit was a diet aid

Today we’re practically tripping over grapefruit cake recipes online. The inspiration for the loaf cake I share came from my daughter Kathleen who lives in Jacksonville and has a backyard tree bursting with fat grapefruit. Eager to put them to use, she added poppyseeds to a Molly Baz grapefruit loaf cake recipe and sent the photo to me.

I was intrigued, but I didn’t have any poppyseeds in my pantry and as it was snowing outside, I wasn’t heading to the store. Within seconds, Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen January grapefruit yogurt cake appeared on my Instagram feed. Had artificial intelligence tapped into my brain? Or is January simply the month to bake a grapefruit cake?

So I studied the recipe and learned that Deb had tweaked Ina Garten’s yogurt pound cake. And I decided to riff on the Smitten Kitchen cake, using brown sugar and light olive oil. So at last count, the recipe has loosely traveled from Molly, to Kathleen, to Ina, to Deb, to me, to you.

Brown Sugar and Grapefruit Pound Cake with Kathleen’s home-grown grapefruit and recipe inspiration from the ‘’sisters.’’

Grapefruit cakes are nothing new.

In Hollywood in the 1920s, the Brown Derby Restaurant was where movie stars, producers, directors, and the people who wrote about them mingled with their colleagues and where star-struck tourists came to catch a glimpse of someone famous.

In my book American Cake, I write about the most famous cake on the Brown Derby menu, the grapefruit chiffon, first baked by Harry Baker, who would later sell his chiffon cake formula to General Mills. Baker created the cake because one of the regulars - gossip columnist Louella Parsons - was on a diet. She insisted that the owner Robert (Bob) Cobb come up with a less fattening cake for her, so Cobb asked Baker to "put grapefruit on something," or that’s how the story goes.

Interestingly, the grapefruit diet was all the rage in Hollywood at the time, what with movie stars needing to lose a few pounds to look good on screen. And it had to have helped the citrus industries, too. A Florida doctor proclaimed grapefruit had healing powers and could help you lower blood sugar and lose weight. But in 1929, the Great Depression, America became less worried about losing weight than the roof over its head. You didn’t hear much about the grapefruit diet again until the 1970s.

I remember that diet. I foolishly tried to follow it. And it’s taken me years not to look at grapefruit and run.

Irresistible.

Backyard grapefruit in Jacksonville

My daughter and her husband Hugh bought their home in Jacksonville a couple years ago in preparation for the birth of their daughter. It needed fixing up, and in spite of some pretty extensive remodeling, which can wreak havoc on landscaping, the grapefruit tree survived. And while the first year or two after construction it languished, this year it is thick with fruit. We’re not sure what variety it is, but slice inside and it’s gorgeously deep-pink, like the Indian River fruit my mother loved.

Just walking their neighborhood on a recent visit made me hungry for citrus as I eyed trees heavy with fruit in most every yard. Is there a law preventing picking other people’s citrus in Florida? I wondered about that. It’s so tempting…

So my granddaughter and I picked one grapefruit that had fallen to the ground and another couple from the tree in her yard. I sliced into one with its thick rind and pith and found peeling it was like whittling down deep to the earth’s core. Once I got there, I found an iridescent pink center. I sliced into each one of the sections like I was making Ambrosia, and we popped the pieces in our mouths!

My granddaughter spit hers right back out. But mine was delicious.

This grapefruit I had questioned all my life was bright and bold, and I was already thinking of what flavors like honey and brown sugar or mint and chilies and maple syrup I could pair with it.

Grapefruit salads have endless possibilities. For starters, arrange the segments with avocado and something interesting like pomegranate seeds or mango slices. Drizzle over a sesame vinaigrette or old-fashioned boiled dressing.

Grapefruit can pull its weight in recipes if you let it

Salads are undoubtedly one of the best ways to showcase grapefruit. My friend Libby shared her mother’s recipe for boiled salad dressing years back. It is a Mobile, AL, recipe and so easy to make and stash in a jar in the fridge. Whisk together 1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, and 3/4 cup vegetable oil, with the option of adding a peeled, halved clove of garlic to the jar. I always do.

Or there’s Leah Koenig’s yummy Sugared Grapefruit Salad with Fennel and Mint over on Food52. And Bon Appetit’s grapefruit-studded Roast Salmon with Citrus and Coconut-Chile Crunch. If you are in Nashville, be sure to check out Dozen Bakery’s grapefruit tartines, toasted sourdough slices topped with crème fraîche, thyme honey, grapefruit segments, and crunchy granola.

And to drink? Shake up a Paloma - equal parts grapefruit juice, sparkling water, and tequila, plus a little agave nectar or simple syrup to sweeten things up, and coarse salt around the rim of the glass. Or just a grapefruit juice and cava cocktail - one part grapefruit juice to two parts cava, which is Spanish sparkling wine.

Plus, and this is a big plus… grapefruit is so good for us, full of vitamin C and antioxidants!

Yet it interferes with many medications older people must take - statins to lower cholesterol, high blood pressure meds, anti-anxiety and organ transplant drugs, as well as medicines to treat Crohn’s, abnormal heart rhythms and antihistamines.

So there seems to be this grapefruit window, that time in your life after you develop a taste for grapefruit and before you can’t eat it anymore. So, until then, cut them and savor, sprinkle with brown sugar and run under the broiler, and bake cakes with them, because grapefruit forever will be the sophisticated fruit you must learn to love.

How do you grapefruit?

---

Here’s how to follow the other ‘’sisters’’ and bake their Grapefruit Cakes:

A slice of Molly Baz’s grapefruit cake, with poppyseeds added. Photo: Kathleen Osteen.

Molly Baz

Kathleen Osteen

Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa)

Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen)

And me!

---

Brown Sugar and Grapefruit Pound Cake

I adapted this cake from the Smitten Kitchen (Deb Perelman) who adapted it from the Barefoot Contessa’s yogurt cake, and all of this wouldn’t have started unless my daughter Kathleen hadn’t baked Molly Baz’s grapefruit cake and added poppyseeds to it. What I love about a grapefruit cake like this one is the dense crumb and how the syrup soaks deep into the cake and makes it really moist. Plus, it’s just so easy to stir together - you don’t need to plug in a mixer! And definitely add a tablespoon of poppyseeds if you have them!

Makes one 9-inch loaf

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tablespoon grated grapefruit zest, or more (from a medium-to-large grapefruit)

1 cup plain whole milk yogurt or sour cream

3 large eggs

1/2 cup light olive oil or vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur unbleached)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Grapefruit Glaze:

1/3 cup fresh grapefruit juice

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and lightly flour a 9-inch loaf pan.

2. Place the brown sugar and grapefruit zest in a large bowl, and stir to combine. Add the yogurt, eggs, and oil, and stir to combine. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir this into the wet ingredients until just smooth, no more than 1 minute. Pour the batter into the pan, and place the pan in the oven.

3. Bake until the loaf is golden brown, firm to the touch, and tests done, about 50 to 55 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes.

4. Run a knife around the edges of the pan, invert right-side up onto a rack, and let cool while you make the glaze.

5. For the glaze, pour the juice into a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the sugar and heat several minutes until it is syrupy. It will be still runny. Poke some holes in the top of the cake with a wooden skewer or sharp knife. Spoon the glaze over the top of the cake slowly so it can seep in. Let the cake cool, about 20 minutes, then slice and serve.

This Thursday for Subscribers:

Chicken Pot Pie! 5 Ways to Make it Faster and Better. We’re wintering this month, if you haven’t noticed. Let’s savor the season from citrus right into pot pies. Many of you have asked, what do you get on Thursday as a subscriber that you don’t get on Tuesday? This week is a good example. You get some of my favorites, like pot pie.

Have a great week!

Anne