Almond Apricot Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, or, “Possibly the best cake I have ever had the privilege to consume…”

…at least that’s what my friend Adam says!

I’d baked it, along with a Carrot Cake, for a baby shower thrown for Adam and his wife Andrea last weekend. The Carrot Cake was a must as it had been requested by the mother-to-be, but I wanted to bring something else as well that would taste a little of winter and a little of spring and be appropriate for a Sunday at 2 p.m. kind of affair.
Recently I picked up a copy of Bundt Cake Bliss: Delicious Desserts from Midwest Kitchens by Susanna Short. I’ve always loved a good bundt cake: they’re easy to make, travel well, and tend to please many palettes.

History break*:
The Bundt Cake is a relatively new to the cake-scene. Along with her husband, Dotty Dalquist (who wrote the foreword to Bundt Cake Bliss), developed the Bundt pan for their NordicWare company at the request of two fundraising women looking for a pan similar to that used to bake the German coffeecake “bundkuchen.” With the help of an engineer, they designed the bundt pan we know and love. But, it wasn’t until Ella Helfrich and her 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off winning recipe for the Tunnel of Fudge cake that the Bundt pan found it’s place in the kitchens of bakers across the country.

Browsing through the book I found a recipe for Apricot Almond Pound Cake that sounded really good but, I imagined, would be even better with some slight tweaking.
My adaptation...

Almond Apricot Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

Oven: 350 degrees
Butter and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan

Combine
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
and set aside

Cream
1 c. softened butter
with
1 c. loosely packed light brown sugar
until smooth then beat in
3 eggs, 1 at a time
and
1 1/4 tsp. pure almond extract

Mix well, then grab a wooden spoon and do the same with the dry ingredients a cup or so at a time (I find that a wooden spoon and strong hands works best for thoroughly incorporating the drys).

Gently stir in
1 c. full-fat sour cream until you do not see any white sour cream streaks
followed by
3/4 c. apricot preserves, preferably all-fruit and filled with large pieces of apricot

Bake for 45 minutes or so until it's a lovely, deep nutty brown and the toothpick test comes out clean.

While you wait
toast 1 cup slivered almonds until golden and fragrant. Let cool

Once the cake it done, let it cool for about 5 minutes in the pan while you mix together
1/2 c. apricot preserves
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 cup water
in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil and whisk until it's all combined. You should have a nice glaze of medium consistency. If it's too thick, add a little more water or lemon juice. If it's too thin, cook a bit longer.

Invert the warm cake onto a rack that's been placed on top of a baking sheet. With a thin knife or skewer, poke holes into the cake. Pour, brush or drip half of the glaze on to that cake. Sprinkle the toasted almonds onto the top of the cake, then seal it all with the rest of the glaze. Let cool completely, slice and serve.



It really was a wonderful cake, very moist and fragrant. The combination of textures between the dense cake, odd pieces of soft apricot and toothsome almonds was very pleasing. Not too sweet, it would work perfectly as a breakfast cake, but I could imagine it warmed up and served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream as an after-dinner treat.

So that's the Bundt Cake. As for the Carrot Cake, I used the recipe in the More from Magnolia cookbook and got a nice, not-really-noteworthy but never-the-less pleasing cake.



I used the Cream Cheese frosting recipe also in the Magnolia book and it made far more icing than I needed to frost two 9 inch layers. What to do with the leftovers? I'll show you what I did next week...

On a final, fun note, this was a decorated onesie that shower-goer Mary made:




Baby cakes indeed.

*Summarized from Bundt Cake Bliss

I've Got a Golden Twinkie

I've been a fan from afar of Sarah Magid's cakes for ages now, so I was especially excited to read on Serious Eats last week that a new shop in my neighborhood would be selling a few of her creations. I'd been curious about the store, but hadn't found the time to visit.

Somehow I always find time for cake....

This past Saturday I popped over to Jan and Äya. It's a spare store of whitewashed walls and floors, a high ceiling and lots of weathered wood. Specializing in handcrafted wares, their stock is carefully thought out and lovely. But I was not in the market for a t-shirt or homemade bath oil, oh no. It was the Golden Twinkie I was after.



There were a few displayed in the window, but just one resting on a wooden board. After the requisite stroll around the shop, I bought it* and, once outside, did not hesitate to take a bite. This, my friends, is not your childhood Twinkie.



There was a shock of chocolate from a thick thick thick layer of frosting and a feather-light cake surrounding vanilla buttercream. It was quite lovely. The frosting overwhelmed the cake a bit, but not in bad way—rather in a Twinkie meets a Ding Dong only extraordinary kind of way. It took care of my cake craving for the day and, as an extra treat, I had gold-dusted lips for the next few hours.

*$4.50! Cheaper than the $6.00 Serious Eats quoted so I knew what I was going to be spending on my addiction, but still...that's a costly little sweet-treat.

Leftovers of Two of the Best Cakes in Manhattan Photographed Just Before I Devoured Them

A few days ago I met with a friend at Amy's Bread on Bleecker Street. He'd wanted to know where to get a good slice of cake, and I answered without hesitation, "Amy's makes my favorite in Manhattan." He was a little surprised since it is known, as the shop name suggests, for the wonderful bread. Still, as the cake fanatic I am, he knew I wouldn't lead him astray.

He bought a huge slice of the Black and White Cake which is, in a word, amazing. Bittersweet, rich and almost fudgy, it's frosted with a perfect buttercream and is the chocolate cake I most long to bake. I've quietly inquired for the recipe, but they won't let go of her secrets. That said, I've made it a personal mission to crack the code.

But back to the beauty of that day's cakes...I tried the Coconut Cream this time and was not disappointed. The frosting was swooningly creamy, resonant with a slight tang and packed with flakes of sweet coconut. The cake itself was moist and tender, yet had a pleasant heftiness. 

Other standouts are the Red Velvet Cake and the Lemon Mousseline Cake. Next on my list to try is the Monkey Cake, which is described as "a monkey's delight, with fresh bananas, pineapple, and toasted pecans...wrapped in cream cheese icing." Enough said.

The slices are huge, as evidenced that even I had leftovers, and many of their cakes are available as cupcakes for those who prefer a smaller bit of wonderful. Still, I say go for the slice every time. Even if you can't finish it in one sitting, there's nothing like knowing you can come home at the end of a long day to that kind of leftover.

Amy's Bread

Three stores in Manhattan: Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea Market, 

and the Village

A picture of cake sent to me from Toro in Japan

Ice Cream Jazz~Sweets in Japan~

Do I think about cake too much?

I had to ask myself that question when, for the first project in an Illustrator basics class I just took, I designed a map of memorable cakes I've eaten. 

Blueberry Crumb Cake

I had never baked this particular recipe before, but found it to be a wonderful, tender cake topped with a thinner than usual, but no less flavorful, roof of buttery crumbs. The amount of blueberries was perfect, though I may up the lemon zest and cinnamon next time.

Blueberry Crumb Cake
Adapted from the recipe in Dorrie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

Create the crumbs: Dump 5 tbsp. unsalted butter at room temperature, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar, 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, and 1/4 tsp. salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the mixture clumps and holds together when pressed. Dump into a small bowl, gently mix in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, then press plastic wrap against the surface of the crumb mixture and pop in the refridgerator until the batter is ready.
Note: If you do not have a food processor, you can use a pastry blender or two knifes to cut the butter into the rest of the ingredients.

And now, the cake: Measure out 2 cups all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp. nutmeg. You can dump all the dry ingredients into another small bowl and whisk, or, (what I prefer) dump all onto a large piece of parchment paper and mix with your hands—it's fun and makes adding the dry ingredients in parts a snap.

Next, grab a large bowl and rub the zest of 1/2 a lemon into 2/3 cup sugar until the sugar is moist and fragrant. With an electric mixer or strong forearms, beat 6 tbsp. unsalted room temperature butter with the sugar until light (a few minutes). Add 2 room temperature eggs, one at a time, beating for a minute after each egg, then beat in 1 tsp. vanilla extract.

Measure out 1/2 cup sour cream (or buttermilk, as the original recipe calls for) and alternate adding the flour mixture and the sour cream to the sugar-butter-egg mixture beginning and ending with the dry.

Take one pint (aprox. 2 cups) fresh or frozen (not thawed) blueberries and toss with 2 tbsp. flour, then fold the coated berries into the thick batter. Spoon into the prepared pan.

Remove the crumb mixture from the fridge and separate into small pieces that you'll scatter on top of the cake batter, pressing in gently.

Bake for 55-65 (Mine was in the oven almost 70 min.) until everything is golden and lovely and a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let it cool until you can't stand it anymore, than cut yourself a big slice and enjoy.

Bourbon Apple Cake

From Mark Bittman's March 19th The Minimalist column in 

The New York Times

This weekend I baked a...

...in celebration of my sister's 30th birthday. I am a devotee of butter-sugar-eggs-flour, but her diet restricts her from eating refined grains and sugars. Agave Nectar and Spelt flour it would be! Never having baked with substitutes before, I was a little wary of how the final cake would taste, but eager to experiment.

After trolling the Internet for a recipe with can't-really-go-wrong ingredients as well as those that would be healthy for her, I found one at epicurious.com for Chocolate Espresso Spelt Cake that included dates soaked in a fragrant blend of vanilla and espresso meant to lend an "unbelievable unctuous texture." Though unctuous was never a word I would want said about one of my cakes—look up the definition if you don't know it and you'll see what I mean—I decided to give it a shot.

And I am so glad that I did. The cake was moist yet light and richly chocolaty, but not overly sweet thanks in part to the spelt flour. The taste of espresso was notably absent, but not really missed. We served it with fresh whipped cream and a raspberry sauce (both made faintly sweet with Agave) to a dinner table of other butter-sugar-eggs-flour devotees, all of whom were truly amazed at how good the cake was. Most importantly my sister, who usually has to pass on birthday desserts, finally got to have a big, luscious, chocolaty piece of cake—and eat it too.

Chocolate Espresso Spelt Cake

Adapted from epicurious.com

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened (plus additional for pan)

3/4 c. unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (plus additional for dusting pan and cake)

1 c. boiling water

1 1/2 tbsp. instant-espresso powder

1 1/2 tsp. good vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 lb. Medjool dates (12 to 14), pitted and coarsely chopped

2 c. spelt flour (spoon into the measuring cup and level off to avoid packing down)

2 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. salt

2/3 c. Agave Nectar

2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper, then butter and dust the whole lot with cocoa, tapping out excess. 

In a small bowl, stir together the boiling water, espresso powder, vanilla and baking soda. Add the chopped dates, mash them up a bit with the back of a fork, and let them soak until the mixture cools to room temperature.

While that's cooling, grab another small bowl and whisk together the cocoa, spelt flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Realize that this is a not a dishwasher-friendly recipe and grab yet another bowl, but a larger one this time as it will all come together here...but first you must beat together the butter and the sugar. Agave Nectar is a liquid sweetener, so the nice, fluffy, creamy concoction that you're used to won't really happen. If you're like me you may be thinking of what else you've got to cook and end up with a curdled looking mess from over-mixing. But as I was running out of time, I decided to anger the baking gods and keep going. Honestly, it came out fine, but let's just pretend it didn't for recipe-sake. 

Right, so make sure the butter is at that really good soft-but-not-too-soft stage. Mix in the Agave Nectar like you would wash your delicates—gently, but thoroughly. Once you have something that looks nice and smooth, add the eggs one at a time until just combined, then add the date mixture (here's where you can expect it to look a little curdled). Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Your batter will be thick and smell wonderful. Spoon it into the cocoa-buttered pan, smooth the top, and pop it in the oven for 40-50 minutes (time adjusted from the original recipe due to the Agave Nectar), or until your tester comes out clean but not dry. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove the ring and let cool completely. 

Indulge. Share if you so desire. 

Chocolate Cake with Buttercream Filling

At NYC's Westville

From My Oven: Mini Banana Cake

Recipe courtsey Dorie Greenspan via seriouseats.com