Archive for the 'cake' Category
Or the lazy. Or those who aren’t at all lazy but would much prefer a nap.
In case you haven’t noticed, cake pops are the sweet of the moment, made popular by Bakerella, blogger extraordinaire, who has now published an entire book of them.
They are baked cakes, crumbled and mixed with icing, then rolled into balls, frozen, impaled on a stick and dipped in chocolate. I say this as a lover of frosting and one known to finish the leftover frosting on other peoples’ plates: the thought doesn’t appeal. (No offense Bakerella – I really think you’re great and the pops are adorable. They just make my teeth ache.)
It occurred to me that one could forgo the baking, crumbling, mixing, shaping and freezing (not that, as you know, I’m against spending time in the kitchen) and move straight to the aesthetic part of the cake pop by cheating with cake pop implants: Timbits.
1) Buy cake-doughnut Timbits.
2) Impale on sticks (lollipop sticks from Michael’s or another craft store, or wooden coffee stirrers).
3) Melt chocolate – any kind – and dip them in.
4) Let them sit on a plate or piece of waxed paper or foil until set. If you like, sprinkle with coconut, coarse sugar or sprinkles.
Admittedly, they are about as sweet as anything I’ve eaten. But the Timbits shave some time off the process – and aren’t cake pops mostly about cuteness?
If you do want to take the scenic route, there’s a full-on cake pop recipe over here.
Hey! I have a new plan for Free Stuff Fridays.
Since I’m not always on the ball on Fridays (surprising, I know), often not making the connection that it’s Friday or when I do, not having the gumption to come up with the free stuff I may have tucked away earlier in the week, I thought I’d remove the Fridays from the free stuff.
That’s right! It’s open season! I added a little tab up top – see it? free stuff? – and what I’ll do is put stuff there once in awhile – not necessarily on a Friday, just to throw y’all off. And because I even more often forget that it’s Tuesday and I’m supposed to be drawing a winner, I’ll put stuff up there and then take it down when I draw a winner, and that way there will be no missing of boats. If there’s something up there it will be up for grabs, and if not, you’ll know. Sound foolproof?
Let’s give it a try!
November 19 2010 | cake | 19 Comments »
Yesterday was day 1 of Birthday Week. This week holds 6 birthdays of Scorpios I Know including a sister, a nephew, Mike, and yes – myself. The week wraps up with a big one that ends with a zero.
I don’t want to talk about it.
I planned for about 6 months, since seeing it in this book, to make this cake for my sister for her birthday. One guess which coffee chain she’s addicted to.
To be honest, I wanted to mess with this recipe right off the bat. I didn’t (much) and I’m glad – it was a mighty spectacular cake. I didn’t have buttermilk so used plain yogurt thinned with milk – and I’m certain you could swap any cold coffee for the double double. (Use instant, stirred into water, if you’re not in the habit of keeping cold coffee around.)
I did ditch the icing recipe, figuring the frosting is as good a vehicle for more coffee than anything. I used 1/2 cup of soft butter and a 1 lb bag of icing sugar, and added enough cold double double to make a spreadable frosting. (About halfway through it became clear that it wouldn’t do enough to spike the frosting on its own, and so I stirred another spoonful of instant coffee into the cup before adding more to the bowl.)
To go with – double double ice cream: pick up a large double double and chill it. Pour it into the ice cream maker, fill the cup with whipping cream, pour it in, and turn the machine on. No need for more sweetness or flavourings or a custard base. It turned out icy-slushy, like an ice cap.
Double-Double Chocolate Cake
Double chocolate. Double layer. And a cupful of “double-double”: Canada’s most popular preparation of Tim Horton’s coffee, boasting double the cream, double the sugar. This recipe makes a fabulous cake that’s worthy of the double ribbons Moira won at the Harrow Fair. Reprinted with permission from The Harrow Fair Cookbook, by Moira Sanders, Lori Elstone and Beth Goslin Maloney (Whitecap).
2 oz (60 g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups (310 mL) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) cocoa powder
2 tsp (10 mL) baking soda
1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
1 tsp (5 mL) fine sea salt
1 cup (250 mL) buttermilk
1/2 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp (5 mL) pure vanilla extract
1 cup (250 mL) double-double coffee
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a small saucepan set on low heat. Stir constantly until the mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.
Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Mix together the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients with the mixer on low speed. Add the melted chocolate and the double-double coffee and mix just until combined.
Pour the batter into the pans, spreading evenly. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean.
Cool the cakes in the pans until they are easy to handle. Invert onto a cake plate and spread with icing once completely cooled.
One Year Ago: Cranberry-Almond Linzer Hearts
October 24 2010 | cake | 31 Comments »
I love recipes named after people, especially when they have names like Floreine Hudspeth. It appeals to that part of me that craves connection not only with the source of our food, but with those who prepare it. (The same appeal that makes Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker such popular brands.)
Today was like Christmas and W’s birthday all rolled into one. October 15th has been talked about for at least a month around here, it being the release date of How to Train Your Dragon, only the very best thing that has ever happened to a certain 5 year old boy who lives here. And so since there’s no school on Friday afternoons we arranged an impromptu soiree with W’s cousins and a couple BFFs from kindergarten. He asked as he was leaving for school if there might be cupcakes, and I remembered at close to noon that I had yet to produce any.
Instead of flipping through the internet, I pulled The Fannie Farmer Baking Book off the shelf and in the chocolate cake section found Floreine’s recipe (which was actually for a cake, not cupcakes, but they worked swimmingly) – although I have no idea why it was called a hoosier cake, how could I not make it?
Of course I changed it – knocked down the sugar and swapped some canola oil for the butter, and although I am totally making her “Gravy Icing” someday, which oddly contains flour but which Marion Cunningham describes as “the fluffiest frosting imaginable”, I had exactly ten minutes to frost them before running out the door and leaving Mike with the little boy madhouse. You can see speed was the only important factor when ladling the batter into the paper cups.
So I made – seriously, don’t snicker – a quick ganache. Which I swear is infinitely faster than the beaten butter-sugar method – ganache is a word like deglazing, which only means to splash any kind of liquid into a hot pan after you’ve cooked something to get up the browned bits. A ganache is just warmed cream with chocolate stirred in – toss in a handful of chocolate chips and leave it – they’ll melt in the cream after a minute or so – then stir until smooth. I was trying to avoid the inch-thick swirl of buttercream that just gets eaten off the top of a cupcake anyway, and so didn’t even wait for the ganache to cool – I dipped the tops of each into the chocolate and then, wanting to appeal to a room of four to seven-year olds, sprinkled them with green sugar. (I didn’t have any sprinkles.)
The cakes themselves are nice and dense and moist, not too sweet and nicely domed on top. You make a paste out of cocoa and boiling water, which is cool, and as with most of my favourite chocolate cake recipes, there’s coffee – it won’t make them taste like coffee, I promise. If you’re worried about the caffeine, pick up a jar of instant decaf and keep it in your cupboard to use for baking, as you would a bottle of vanilla.
Floreine Hudspeth’s Hoosier Cupcakes
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup cold strong coffee
2 tsp. vanilla
Preheat the oven to 350F. In a large bowl, beat the butter, oil and sugars for a minute, until well blended. Add the eggs and beat for two minutes, until pale and creamy.
Meanwhile, stir together the cocoa and boiling water – it will make a thick paste. Beat it into the butter-sugar mixture. Add half the flour, the baking soda and salt, beating on low just until combined. Add the coffee and vanilla, then the rest of the flour, beating just until blended. Divide among paper-lined muffin tins and bake for 25 minutes, until the tops are springy to the touch. Tilt them on their sides to allow steam to escape and help them cool before frosting. Makes about 1 1/2 dozen cupcakes.
Quick Ganache or Glaze: to make ganache, you just need some cream and chocolate – heat the cream, add the chocolate, stir. For a glossier chocolate glaze, add corn syrup – heat 4 Tbsp. cream and 4 Tbsp. corn syrup, then stir in 4 oz. chopped chocolate or chocolate chips. Really – I’m never that precise with the ratio.
And because it’s World Food Day, I should quickly fill you in on dinner. I spent my Friday evening in a room full of food producers, educators, growers and eaters at Dine & Dialogue – a 150 km supper and chat with like-minded people. We sat at long tables and ate bison, locally grown carrots, beets and lettuces with local pear dressing, elk salami and apple crisp (all for $10!). Wade was there, and Eliese, and Rod and Chad, and Andrew, and almost a hundred others, and my heart actually raced over the conversation about sustainability, security and other food issues.
Backtrack: One day last week after a string of particularly hard days, I emailed to ask my sister how her day at work was going. Her answer – “I got to teach math this morning, which was incredibly relaxing and satisfying.”
I know. How could we possibly be related? It would seem she got all the math genes and I got none. She comes home from her evenings back at University, where she’s taking her masters degree, and compares it to having just had a massage. I repeat: wow. Also? Wow.
But then I went and got all flushed talking about urban gardening and bees and SPIN farming and permaculture and production and affordability and accessibility issues surrounding local food, which I think tends to be the biggest issue and was the best part – people tend to get hung up on farmers’ markets, but there are more direct ways to support local growers, like CSA farms and co-ops. And my wheels wouldn’t stop spinning.
Tomorrow they’re continuing the event with a Harvest Food Fair. Here are the deets:
HARVEST FOOD FAIR
Show off your bounty and enter one of the fair contests! Entries will be accepted in the following categories: Jams, Preserves, Pies, Flower Arrangements, and Photography.
Bring your entries on the day of the fair with a second helping to offer to the Food Bank.
Presentations will be given by local experts on a variety of topics such as permiculture, backyard farming, urban bees and much more. An abundance of opportunities to network and ask lots of questions! Refreshments featuring local apple juice, coffee and tea will be served.
When: Saturday, October 16, 1:00 – 4:00 PM
Where: Unitarian Church, 1703-1st Street NW (free parking at Balmoral School and complimentary Bike Valet service).
If you have any thoughts on any of the above – or would like to share a story, idea or arrangement that works well for you or where you like – I would love to continue the discussion here! Or what you had for dinner on this World Food Day, or really anything else on your mind. I do love reading your comments – I have a bunch of your ideas posted on my fridge to make one of these days. My friend Nik donated a trio of her premium loose leaf teas (creamy Earl Grey – my favourite – white Swiss truffle roiboos and jasmine green tea with flowers) to pass on – not exactly local, but imported using the Ethical Tea Partnership, and all packaging and other business goes down in her living room just a couple blocks away from me. And they take Canadian Tire dollars. For real. (We all live in hundred-year-old houses and do a lot of renos.) She has wonderful tea – I thought of tea as not much more as floor sweepings that produced dingy water until I met her.
And congrats to Cathy and Merry, who won fancy new Crock Pots! Yes, I decided to give away two instead of one. Thanks for playing!
October 16 2010 | cake | 23 Comments »
Well, hello. Does this not scream come jump into bed with me in a completely unsexual but rather cozy Grandma’s cottage or quaint B&B on a long weekend sort of way?
I’ve wanted to make something with cornmeal and berries all summer, and the stray cob of corn on my countertop seemed as good an excuse as any… my sister’s raspberry bush had just been harvested, so it’s a little stingy in the berry dept. But the real kernels of corn, scraped off the cob, make up for it. It would do just as well with blueberries or blackberries, I think.
Cornmeal Cake with Fresh Corn and Raspberries
adapted from Farmers’ Market Desserts, via Food52
1 cup fresh raspberries
1 ear corn, kernels scraped off
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup fine yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup canola oil
Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a small bowl, toss the corn and raspberries with a spoonful of the flour; set aside. In a medium bowl stir together the remaining flour, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, and oil. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture with a spatula until almost blended; gently stir in the corn and berries, stirring just until combined.
Spread the batter evenly into a 9-inch cake pan that has been buttered or sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Serve warm, topped perhaps with sweetened sour cream or raspberry ice cream.
One Year Ago: Bacon and Tomato Sandwich
At the Family Kitchen: Lower-fat Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
August 26 2010 | cake | 2 Comments »
The power of suggestion is strong with me. Plant an idea and it sits there, taking up space that could very well be used for something far more useful, until I do something with it. Case in point: the St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake.
All the cool kids are making it. It was, in fact, on my decades-old to-make list, but the version I had utilized a sugary, buttery goo poured over a particular brand of (stale) packaged coffee cakes that aren’t available in Canada. Which is why it sat there for eons on my to-make list. Now most of the versions making the rounds are made entirely from scratch, with either a cake or sweet yeasted bread base, but the crazy high butter-sugar content kept me from making it. Mostly out of fear for my thighs.
But the large-batch amalgamation of butter, sugar and flour (exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to reorganize my life so that I can be a professional athlete or mountain climber or someone who needs to pack as many calories into a day as possible in order to keep up with my high calorie output) is a perfectly suitable thing to make when you have 9 people under one roof, including teenagers and ravenous boys who have spent the bulk of their day surfing, running, kayaking and jumping in the waves. Also – there is sufficient competition to keep me from eating the lion’s share of it myself.
Still – it seemed too plain – too straight-up – on its own, like something was missing between the butter-sugar-egg-flour base and (altogether different) butter-sugar-egg-flour topping. I figured it would make the perfect ballast to tart, juicy fruit like plums, which cut nicely through the richness of butter and sugar. (Of which, by the way, I cut the quantities down a bit.)
As I puttered around making it, everyone asked what it was going to be. To tell them it was a coffee cake seemed too meh – and in fact it isn’t really a cake at all, with a yeasted, sweetbreadlike base, but then again it can’t really be labeled bread, as it’s cut into wedges and eaten much more like a cake than any sort of loaf. I suppose it should retain its rightful name – St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake – but with the streamlining and the layer of tart fruit that transformed it into something far more summery, the barefooted sandy-haired kids helping me arrange wedges of plum on the base before it went into the oven, who then ate it warm, straight from the pan, before heading out to fish from the rowboat, it didn’t seem right to be named for a city in Missouri. This cake belongs in Tofino.
I imagine it would go just as well with juicy apricots or sour cherries, and as she stood at the counter eating a wedge, my mom said, “this seems like it needs to have rhubarb in it.”
Tofino Gooey Plum Butter Cake
adapted from a few sources (with thanks)
Cake:
3 Tbsp. milk
1 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Topping:
3-6 plums, thickly sliced
3 Tbsp. honey, light corn syrup or maple syrup
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Make the cake dough: In a small bowl, mix milk with 2 tablespoons hot water (this will make the lot lukewarm – easier, I think, than bringing your milk to room temperature); stir in the yeast and let it sit until it foams a bit.
Beat together the butter, sugar and salt, then beat in the egg. Add flour and milk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir until you have a sticky dough, then turn it out onto the countertop (resist the urge to add more flour) and knead for a few minutes, until soft and smooth.
Pat, press, stretch and nudge the dough into a buttered baking dish that is around 9″x13″ and at least 2 inches deep. Cover with plastic wrap or a tea towel, and let it rise while you go to the beach – 2-3 hours.
Preheat oven to 350F. Lay the slices of plum in rows over the surface of the dough, which really won’t have risen that much. In a small bowl, stir the honey, 2 tablespoons water and the vanilla together with a fork. In a larger bowl beat the butter, sugar and salt until smooth and light, then beat in the egg. Add half the flour, then the honey mixture, then the rest of the flour, scraping down sides of bowl between each addition and stirring just until blended.
Spoon the topping in large dollops over the plums and gently spread overtop with a spatula. Bake for about an hour, until golden; it will still be slightly soft (gooey) in the middle. Cool completely before serving – really, do – plums hold onto their heat and you won’t be able to taste it properly until it’s cooled. Serves 10-12.
July 26 2010 | breakfast and cake | 9 Comments »
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