Rainy Day Golden Apple Cake

On Sunday I was itching to bake a cake for a late evening treat. Ever since I'd purchased my long-coveted set of 5" cake pans, I've been constantly thinking of little cakes that I can bake: cakes appropriate for two, cakes that take advantage of what I have laying around the house, or bending-the-rules experimental cakes.

I figure if it's really bad, throwing away a small cake is a much easier sadness to confront.

Though I do my best to avoid baking things that people choke down politely, discreetly dispose of in a napkin or simply spit out in revulsion, this was my first true attempt at making a cake from scratch-scratch, my first attempt at using my head instead of a recipe to bake exactly the cake I wanted at that moment.

And the cake I wanted was an apple cake. One that would be
1) Not too sweet
2) Moist
3) Simple

Bowl at the ready, butter softened on the counter, measuring cups eager for the flour jar, I forged ahead...

Rainy Day Golden Apple Cake
From the head of yours truly*

Butter a single 5" round cake pan and press in a circle of parchment paper
Oven: 350 degrees

Thinly slice one medium-sized Golden Delicious apple and lay the slices in the bottom of the pan, overlapping in a circular pattern.
Dot with 1 tbsp. diced unsalted butter and 1/2 tsp. light brown sugar.
Cream 3 tbsp. softened unsalted butter with 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp. packed light brown sugar until smooth.
In a separate bowl thoroughly fork or whisk 2 eggs, 1/8 c. heavy cream, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla.
Gently stir most of it into the butter-sugar mixture. Why most of it? At the last second it seemed that much liquid would be too much, so I left off a little. That said, add it all if you'd like. I doubt it will cause much, if any, difference.
Once incorporated, stir in the zest of 1 medium lemon.
Sift 1/2 c. + 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour with 1/4 tsp. baking powder and a pinch of salt. Stir into the wet ingredients until you no longer see any of the dry.
Pour the batter on top of the apple layer and bake for 30 minutes or until the toothpick test comes back clean.
Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then gently slide a knife between the cake and the pan. Turn the cake out onto a rack to cool completely.

Later that night, enlisting the taste buds of my courageous boyfriend, we each took a small wedge, placed them in ramekins and drizzled heavy cream over the top and sides, letting it pool in the bottom of the dish.



I took a bite.
It was
1) Not too sweet
2) Moist
3) Simple
4) Really really good

The cream added a perfectly rich silkiness and brought out the vanilla. Too much vanilla, in the words of my boyfriend, and that night I was in agreement.

But, now I'm not so sure.

Even though it was a small cake, we still had a little less than half of it left last night. It had been a bad day, a cake-needing kind of day (though I could make a strong argument that everyday is a good day to have cake), so when I got home I cut a wedge and ate it right there, standing over the table.

The vanilla flavor had developed into an almost boozy intensity and it was brilliant. Still moist, not quite as simple, but my if it was not comfort in cake form.
Later on we finished it off politely, in a dish and drizzled with cream.

As to why I decided to call it the Rainy Day Golden Apple Cake? I'm not really sure. Sunday it rained and yesterday it rained and on both days the cake was there, bite after bite, reminding me that even the smallest successes can feel (and taste!) incredible.

*Any resemblance to recipes by those living or dead is coincidental, though most likely unavoidable. There's only so much you can do with butter, sugar, flour, and eggs if you want to be able to eat the finished product.

A Damn Good Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

from Market Table in Greenwich Village.



It arrived with a scoop of dark chocolate Gelato...



...and made for a rather an amazing end to an already amazing meal.

Pictures of Cake: The Beginning

(click on photo to enlarge)

Though we'd been searching for years with no luck ("You have it!" "No, you do!" No, I'm certain I gave it to you!"...), my mom finally found my baby book packed securely in a box labeled "ABSOLUTELY DO NOT THROW AWAY" hidden in the far depths of her basement. 

It arrived in the mail this week and, for the first time in well over a decade, I walked down the overwhelmingly orange, brown, yellow and red memory lane of my first year of life. On the last few pages are photos of my 1st birthday party; the guests, the decorations, the other fat babies, and the cake. 

Oh, the cake. A classic sheet-style covered in sugary frosting. I, unsurprisingly, have no memory of what the cake tasted like, if it was too dry or too sweet, but what I do know, without a doubt, is on that day the seeds of an addiction were planted. The minutest particles of sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and baking soda (maybe baking powder, maybe both) began their slow convergence, growing over time as I grew, until one day the addiction took over. 

Pictures of Cake was born.

One Thing You Can Do with Gobs of Left-Over Cream Cheese Frosting...

...is to bake a cake for the icing instead of choosing an icing for the cake.

In last Thursday's post I mentioned that the cream cheese icing recipe in More from Magnolia had left me with plenty of  glorious  cream cheese-butter-sugar-vanilla left over. Thinking that chocolate would be a wonderful companion, I went to my cooking library (aka, a shelf in my kitchen) looking for the perfect recipe to experiment with. 

Printed up ages ago from Apartment Therapy's The Kitchen blog, the recipe I chose had been in the back of my mind as something I really wanted to try for a while. Of particular interest to me was 1 1/2 cups pureed beets used in the recipe. Though they had used the beets in an attempt to make a Red Velvet cake the old-fashioned way, what they took out of the oven was a "stunningly light, moist" chocolate cake. My mind started to wander...I love stunningly light, moist chocolate cakes. And beets. And creaminess is good with beets and chocolate. So are walnuts, so why not mix in some chopped walnuts to the icing. 

Perfect.

Well, almost. I wanted a smaller cake than the recipe allotted for (two 9" layers), but know enough from many mistakes not to mess with the ingredients until I've baked the virgin version at least once. That said, I grabbed two 5" pans as well as assorted ramekins and a coffee mug with in which to bake the overflow. Sure, I could have used a cupcake tin, but what's the fun in that?

Velvety Beet and Cocoa Cake

From thekitchn.com 

Oven: 350 degrees

Prepare two 9" cake pans or, in my case, two 5" cake pans and a variety of oven safe items

Cream:

3/4 c. butter

2 c. white sugar

Beat in:

3 eggs

until all is light, pale and fluffy.

Add:

1 tsp. vanilla

Sift together:

2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

and add in alternating amounts with

1 c. milk

Then stir in:

1 1/2 c. pureed canned beets, drained

1/2 c. reserved beet juice

Mix for a few minutes until the batter is very smooth. Pour into the pans and bake for 25 min. or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let rest five min. in the pans, then remove to cool completely on a rack.

As you can see, perfect cakes mine were not:

But the cup cake was pretty fun:

And the final cake?

I sliced each cooled layer in two then spread the cream cheese frosting (into which I mixed about 1/2c. chopped walnuts) between them. Though it came out looking more like something a drunk woman would bake when faced with a late-night sugar craving, it tasted wonderful. Though I could smell the beets very faintly, I did not detect them taste-wise. 

The next day, I brought the leftovers to work and passed out slices, asking everyone to see if they could name the special ingredient. No one came close to guessing beets, and most were excited to eat "healthy cake" (I kept my lips zipped about the 2 cups of sugar). The only annoyed taster: a woman who hates beets. Of course, she only found out what was in the cake after having polished it off quicker than anyone. Classic.

Chocolate Cake with Espresso Caramel Frosting

Made by Lisa who writes the Pittsburgh Needs Eated. blog which I check in with constantly. She bakes a variety of beautiful looking (and wonderful sounding) things and posts lovely photographs. If you've never visited, I highly recommend taking a look.

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.