cookbook_challenge | Entries tagged with cake

It's getting to be that time of year when I'm remembering all the fancy desserts I bookmarked years ago with the intention of testing them in advance of holiday time. Here's one I tried today.

( Ginger and Date Cake with Toffee Rum Sauce )

Verdict: My parents loved it! I'll be adding it to the list of fancy things that I can make if I need to impress somebody. This cake isn't difficult, but it takes a bit of time due to preparing the dates and making the sauce. Fortunately, the sauce reheats very well, so (as the recipe suggests) this is a nice make-ahead cake.

Other info: This recipe calls for 125 ml whipping cream, but the smallest carton I could find was 237 ml. So, I whipped the extra cream and dolloped it on top of the warm cake and toffee sauce. EXCELLENT idea, will be doing that every time I make this!

spiralicious

Pear-Berry Breakfast Cake from The Adventurous Eaters Club by Misha & Vicki Collins
This cookbook is meant to be a “family friendly” cookbook to encourage involving your children in making meals, so I left the “Kids job!” note in.

Makes 6 individual cakes

1 can (15 ounces) pear halves or pear slices in unsweetened pear juice
4 tablespoons butter
4 eggs
½ cup all-purpose flour
pinch of sea salt
1 ½ cups fresh raspberries or blackberries

Preheat the oven to 375 F

Drain the pear halves or slices, reserving the juice. Roughly chop the pears and set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. When it is just melted, brush some of it on the insides of six 6-ounce ramekins. Reserve the remaining butter for the batter.

Combine the eggs, pear juice, flour, remaining melted butter, and salt in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth – a few seconds.

Kids job! Put some chopped pears in each of the buttered ramekins, then top each with a couple berries. Pour the batter over the fruit, distributing it evenly among the ramekins. Set the ramekins on a baking sheet.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Let cool for about 3 minutes, serve warm.

My notes:
While I have what feels like a billion ramekins, I don't have six of the same kind or size, so I ended up cooking three in the 6-ounce clear glass Pyrex ramekins and three in the 7-ounce Corningware. They cooked up the same.

My juice measurements may have been off because the only sized can of pears I could get was 30-ounces, so I just used half the juice from the can. (As well as half the pears.)

I used fresh chopped strawberries instead of blackberries or raspberries. They are in season and affordable here right now. The others are neither.

I melted the butter in the microwave.

I don't have a food processor and I just didn't want to try to clean raw egg out of our blender, so I used a whisk. It wasn't perfectly smooth, but it cooked up correctly. An electric hand mixer would have worked well.

The instructions make it sound like you might not be using all of the fruit, you are. It's the perfect fruit to batter ratio, if distributed evenly among the ramekins.

To evenly distribute the batter, I used a shallow gravy ladle.

It's hard to tell when they are done and I over cooked them just a touch, but they were still a huge hit. They are basically a thick, extra custardy, Dutch baby, if that helps.

yuuago

This is a rich, chocolatey, decadent cake. Everyone I served it to raved about it. ;) This one's a keeper.

It's from the 1992 Eagle Brand and Hershey's Dessert Collection recipe book.

( Chocolate Raspberry Pound Cake )

Other info:
- I do recommend using seedless jam if you have it available, because if you use jam with seeds, they show very clearly when you brush it onto the cake (oops...) Onnn the other hand, they don't affect the taste of course, it's just an aesthetic thing!
- This recipe freezes well. I cut the cake into quarters, wrapped the chunks in wax paper, and shoved them in a freezer bag. They thawed out no problem (and taste pretty good even when still frozen, to be honest).

tielan

russian honey cake by Smitten Kitchen

I've had this recipe in my to-do list for a couple of years now. But what kind of event would justify this kind of effort?

First bible study gathering for a new term + out of lockdown dinner party? Yeah, that'll do it.

( recipe is LONG, and there are PICTURES )

highlyeccentric

Hi folks,

this was actually my recipe for March, but apparently I was having a weird time for most of March and April, wherein I mostly... did things, but didn't follow up on them. Weird. And while I did cook some new stuff in April, none of it was from pre-2021 recipes. Oh well. Onward to May!

Chocolate Espresso Cake
From Smitten Kitchen Every Day, gluten-free-ified and caffeinated by me.

85 grams butter, softened
145 grams dark brown sugar
25 grams granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
about 125 ml buttermilk
about 50ml espresso, warm, mixed with at least a tablespoon of cocoa powder and stirred
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
40 g cocoa, additional
About 130 grams of flour - if baking gluten-free, it's worth cutting your basic cake flour mix with about 30 g of almond meal. (The abouts here are because flour weights don't transfer - I'd cook in cups if I had three different measuring systems worth of cup measures, but all I've got is scales and a jug marked at 50ml increments. Aim for 1 US cup of assorted flours)

Heat oven to 180 C. Coat and line an 8-inch square tin or a single loaf tin.

Beat butter and sugars in a large bowl until fluffy; beat in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Scrape down, then add baking powder and soda, and beat thoroughly. Add the wet ingredients and mix. Add flours, and fold in by hand until flour has just combined.

Scrape into pan; bake for 20-30 min.

Frosting: go with your preference, but I strongly recommend adding warm espresso to whatever liquid is involved. (I use this basic recipe.) Photographic evidence here

glinda

I thought I was going to have to cheat and use the veggie lasagne I made from a recipe a colleague gave me last month and I've been meaning to try ever since. (I had all the ingredients, I just kept not getting round to making it.) But as I had the oven on anyway I decided to bake while I was at it and made this beetroot chocolate loaf cake that I'd been meaning to make since I got this book a couple of years ago. (The book is Cooking on a Bootstrap by Jack Monroe, I supported the kickstarter for it so I have the self-published version which means I've been meaning to make this recipe since about 2015? You can find the recipe here.)

I made a couple of substitutions based on what I had in the cupboard - cooked beetroot instead of raw, coconut milk instead of coconut cream - which felt in the spirit of the book, the batter consistency came out right and it tasted good - both the raw batter and the finished cake - so I have no complaints. It's a quick and straight-forward cake to make up, all the wet ingredients go in the blender and then get added to the dry ingredients, while everything comes together in about ten minutes? (Long enough that my resting lasagne had stopped bubbling but was still hot when I chucked the loaf tin in the oven and served it up.) The loaf's baked consistency/texture wasn't quite right - likely better if you don't substitute! - but no worse than many a commercial vegan cake I've eaten and in fact better than many of those. More of a pudding cake to be eaten with custard affair than a slice with a cup of tea, but while I won't be hurrying to make it again, I'll have no difficulty eating my way through this loaf.

Current Mood: accomplished

stellar_dust

March was A Lot and I fell behind on both cooking and posting about it. Here are some catching-up recipes, ( three desserts and two veggie dishes )

And with that, I got a bingo! I'm going to try for a blackout.

turlough

I've tried yet another Nigella Lawson recipe, a cake from Forever Summer. It's not online at her website so ( here's a scan of it... )

Verdict: We all agreed it was nice but nothing special. I'll probably not make it again.

Current Mood: blank

highlyeccentric

This is on my 'fine, but probably won't make again' list - at least, not using bananas. It's a bit fiddlier than the last couple of banana cake recipes I've used, to no discernible benefit. I might try one of the other flavour variants, though.

Also since my last post I've made Jack Monroe's 'Tomato and Olive Scuffins', which purported to be vegan scones, which Jack says taste better with a looser batter so the recipe uses muffin cups. Great, thought I: this will be easier to gluten-free-ify, because no kneading! Well, maybe vegan scone-muffins taste okay, but they definitely do not when gluten-free-ified. (Part of the problem was a common one I've had with savoury GF muffins: leathery, indelibly stuck to the muffin paper. Sweet muffins mostly evade this.)

Smitten Kitchen's Spice Cake
From Smitten Kitchen Everyday; I'm only giving metric measurements here

( What you need and what you do with it )

turlough

I have several of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks and I love to read them but I almost never get around to actually cook anything from them. This challenge will hopefully give me the impetus I need to change that.

The first recipe I tried is from her first book, How To Eat, and as it's not online at her website I ( did a rough scan... )

Changes: I used readymade glutenfree flaky pastry dough for the shell and instead of ordinary flour I used rice flour. It hadn't set properly after the stated time so I let it stay in the oven for another ten minutes. It still didn't set in the middle until it had cooled down however.

Verdict: We all agreed it was very tasty, if a little too sweet. Since it was very simple and quick to make (particularly if you have an apple slicer like this one) I'm probably going to make it again, but with less sugar.

Current Mood: busy

colls

My mother lives 2 hr away from me, but since last year we've been in a quasi-bubble and see each other every month or so. For her birthday, I wanted to visit and bring her a homemade cake. She asked for a sweet potato cake like the one found in The Victory Garden Cookbook (which is one of her favorite cookbooks).

( Sweet Potato-Bourbon Cake )

The result was a very dense and flavorful cake, which both my mom and I liked. I would definitely make again. I would add a bit more whisky and fiddle with the spices a bit (but the flavor was very good as is) and would like to try the frosting from the linked recipe at some point.
I don't have a picture because I forgot to take one once I'd gotten it to her house and assembled/frosted it. My frosting skills aren't all that artistic anyway ~~and my mom is worse!~~ but it tasted good - and that's what counted! :)

hudebnik

For my birthday we decided to try this recipe, which

shalmestere had bookmarked a few months ago. Several other commenters had suggested decreasing the sugar and increasing the apples, so I did that, and I replaced the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat (since we seem to be aiming towards a brown, moist aesthetic). And I had no 9"x9" square pan, so I used an 8"x8", which I figured would only make it a little moister and puddingier. The resulting ingredient list is

Batter:
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup milk

Syrup [which is boiled together and poured over the batter in the baking pan]:
7/8 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons butter

Toppings:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1-1/2 cup apple - peeled, cored, and chopped [I used a single largish Granny Smith]

Notes: The "batter", which the recipe tells one to "pour" into the greased square pan, was more nearly a dough which I spread into the greased square pan; perhaps the whole-wheat flour sucked up the moisture more thoroughly than all-purpose would have, or perhaps I mis-measured it. Anyway, I mixed half of the apple chunks into the dough first, and sprinkled the other half and all the nuts on top. The recipe doesn't say how finely to "chop" the apple: I got it to chunks 1/2"-1" on a side, and a bit smaller might be better. After 35 minutes at 350F, a toothpick inserted in the center was still quite moist; at 40 minutes it was mostly clean and we declared it done, serving it warm with ice cream (Hagen-Dazs vanilla-bean, keeping the cake in the starring role).

Results: The syrup, as advertised, formed a nice gooey caramely sauce, distributed between the top and bottom of the cake. I had halved the quantity of syrup, and it was plenty from a flavor perspective, but some bites of cake were on the dry side, like bites of a bread pudding to which the custard hasn't penetrated sufficiently. Perhaps it would have been moister with all-purpose flour, or with the full cup of white sugar, but I doubt it; perhaps a bit more milk or less flour? The 3 tsp. of cinnamon was detectable, but not strong; one could increase it a bit without being overwhelmed. Mostly a success, for those times when you want a dessert that doesn't contain chocolate :-)

[EDIT: Since we both thought it was a bit dry, the next day we mixed up some custard sauce to pour over reheated leftovers. I halved the sauce recipe, and I think it'll be more than enough for all the remaining cake. Yum!]

musesfool

I've had this Homemade Double Crumb Cake on my list of things to bake for a while now, because it does the ingenious thing of making the cake smaller than a 9x13" sized coffee cake, while keeping the amount of crumb topping the same, so the ratio of crumb to cake is much higher.

( ingredients )

( Instructions )

I made it as written (I used real buttermilk, because I usually have some on hand) and it is really easy - I didn't even need to use the mixer - and it's delicious. I would recommend it if you like a little less cake and a lot more crumb in your crumb cake.

mama_kestrel

I have a new food processor, which I needed to test while I could still return it if necessary. I also have a bunch of granny smith apples which I need to use up. (I asked my husband to get me 4 large apples. He came home with a 5 pound bag of small ones. End result: extra 3/4 bag of apples.) Solution? Memory said there was a recipe for fresh apple cake in the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, published in 1984. And lo and behold, there it was.

So, recipe, with my modifications in paranthses.

Fresh Apple Cake
Adapted from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, by Marion Cunningham
Cake
• 6 T. butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar (I used 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. clove (I used 1 tsp ground ginger. I don't have clove, and we like ginger.)
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. allspice
• 2 cups chopped unpeeled cooking apples
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional (I had more like 2/3 cup once the food processor was done with them. I threw it all in.)
• 1/2 cup raisins (I used a full cup.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour (or cooking spray) an 8″x 8″ cake pan.

Chop the apples, and walnuts if using. (If you want to measure and combine them in one prep bowl, that's fine. You'll be adding them and the raisins at the same time anyway.)

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating continuously until batter is smooth. Add vanilla extract.

In another small bowl, add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Whisk to combine.

Stir flour mixture into wet ingredients until just moistened. Fold in apples, nuts, and raisins.

Pour into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Be careful where you put the toothpick; if it hits nuts or raisins, it will come out clean no matter what the batter is doing. Look for shiny spots or slight depressions on the surface, and stick your toothpick in there. If there aren't any shiny spots, then it's probably done. It will also be pulling away slightly from the sides of the pan.

Serve warm, with tea or coffee. This makes a lovely breakfast cake. It's also good with cream cheese frosting.

Next experiment: substituting oatmeal for part of the flour.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Home

mama_kestrel

Yes, really. Apparently it's a Depression/ WWII era recipe. My daughter in law posted it on faceplant in July, asking me if I was willing to try it. I promptly bookmarked the video here. So tonight I pulled up the video, copied the ingredient list, and had at it.

The original recipe, which the demonstrator showed a brief image of, was a list of ingredients. No temperature, no mixing method, no nothing. That's pretty typical for older recipes, which assume one knows how to cook.

I did not do it the way the woman on the video (there has to be a less awkward construction for that) did. She piled everything in a bowl and took a mixer to it. I sifted the flower, leavening agents and spices together and set them aside. Then I creamed the butter and sugar, beat in the tomato soup, and stirred in the flour. The raisins were stirred in last. I baked it in a tube pan at 350 F (175 C) for 30 minutes. It rose more than I expected, and smells wonderful. You can't taste the tomato soup at all, though it has a definite reddish tint; for all intents and purposes, it's a spice cake. Next time I'll add an egg.

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice (substitution for clove, which I didn't have)
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar (I used half brown and half white)
1 can tomato soup
1 cup raisins

ETA: Family consensus is that this would be better with a cream cheese frosting. I think it could also be baked in a loaf pan, and simply spread with cream cheese like banana bread.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Home

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Cookbook challenge

Make new recipes you already own!

Entries tagged with cake

Ginger and Date Cake with Toffee Rum Sauce

Pear-Berry Breakfast Cake

Chocolate Raspberry Pound Cake

Russian Honey Cake

Smitten Kitchen's Fudgy Chocolate Cake, now with espresso

Beetroot Chocolate Loaf Cake

Beet risotto; Spiced potatoes; Lemon tart; Caramel corn; and Cranberry-pumpkin bars

White Chocolate Almond Cake

Smitten Kitchen's (Banana) Spice Cake

Apple Butterscotch Tart

Sweet Potato Bourbon Cake

Cinnamon pudding cake

Homemade Double Crumb Cake

Fresh Apple Cake

Tomato Soup Cake