Blackberry Upside Down Cake

Yes, another upside down cake!  I'm on a roll.  I got the blackberries from a vacant lot next door to where I used to live up in North Surrey.  They're a bit seedy and they are not the greatest tasting blackberries ever despite how beautiful they were on the bush, but they just need a little extra help with some sugar and they're fine.  I made this cake two nights ago, once again using Betty Crackpot's Dinette Cake recipe.

A Pair of Upside Down Cakes/Cooking with Betty Crackpot

I am currently facilitating a baking group at my local mental health clubhouse, which is part of my volunteer requirements for the peer support training program I'm in.  Once a week, we bake something simple that can be accomplished in 2 hours, and recently I was asked if I could use up a pineapple that the clubhouse had on had that had gone overripe.  It was a pretty pathetic looking specimen, but once I cut into I thought it would be OK for a pineapple upside down cake.  I sliced up the pineapple and went ahead with the project.

It turned out superbly!  The recipe for the cake is Betty Crackpot's Dinette Cake, and you can find that recipe here.  For the upside down part of the cake, i.e. the bottom, mix together 1/4 cup melted butter and 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar. Spread evenly over the bottom of the cake pan. Arrange pineapple slices on top, make the cake batter, then spread it evenly over the pineapple.  I know this is supposed to have maraschino cherries in it, but honestly, it didn't need them (and they're not in my budget).  Here is the cake!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Also, very recently, I went over to some friends' place and divested them of all their rhubarb.  Two of these friends had never had rhubarb before, and one didn't like it, so the rhubarb plant was basically going to waste.  After the success of my pineapple upside down cake, I decided to make a rhubarb version.  And this is it:

Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

 Same deal with the bottom, except rhubarb needs a bit of help.  I used about a cup and a half of finely chopped rhubarb, and combined it with about 1/4 cup of sugar, and some cinnamon & ground ginger.

This was TO.DIE.FOR.  In fact, it's one of the best things I think I've ever baked!

I loved it!  And I ate 3/4 of it in four days, I'm slightly sheepish to admit.  I gave the other quarter to a friend.

I have in the freezer a bag of wild blackberries.  I think I'll make a blackberry upside down cake next!

Cooking with Betty Crackpot: Kitty Cat Cake!

Growing up with my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook from 1969 was a key element in creating my love for baking and cooking, and I've mentioned before on this blog how, as a kid, I just used to love to curl up with the book and look at the cake pictures. To a child, they looked marvelous. To me as a woman pushing 40, they look quite amateurish, but they still have a lot of charm to them. The cat cake (instructions on page 116) always tickled my fancy, and my mom and I did make it together. I don't have any photos of it, but I remember my mom using yellow smarties for the eyes and snipping lengths of black licorice for the whiskers. I did find a picture of the Betty Crocker version of the cake online, so that's what you see to the right.

Last weekend, while at Jodi's, Jodi decided it was high time to indulge in her own cat cake dreams and make the the cake herself, which she didn't have the joy of making as a child. She used the Silver White Cake recipe from page 94, and the recipe for that is HERE. The cake came out great; it's indeed very white and just like the Dinette Cake, it was fluffy and moist and plain awesome.

And now, let me present to you, Jodi's Kitty Cat Cake! She used Dots candy for the eyes and paws and piped on the whiskers with melted chocolate.

Cute, eh? The frosting is Betty's Chocolate Butter Frosting from page 125.

Betty Crocker's Chocolate Butter Frosting (page 125 of the 1969 edition)

⅓ cup soft butter or margarine
2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate (cool)
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
About 2 tablespoons milk

Mix thoroughly butter and cooled chocolate. Blend in sugar. Stir in vanilla and milk; beat until frosting is smooth and of spreading consistency.

Fills and frosts two 8- or 9-inch layers or frosts a 13x9-inch cake.

There was just enough frosting for the cat cake.

There you go! Another Betty Crackpot success!

New Series: Cooking with Betty Crackpot

I was having a bad day today, but it wasn't a complete write-off because I came up with a new idea, a series for this blog based on recipes from my mom's 1969 copy of Betty Crocker's Cookbook. I've mentioned several times here that I grew up with this book and that it was partially responsible for my wanting to become a baker. Last fall, I was on holiday in PEI, where my mom lives, and I asked her if she still had the book, and she did! It's a little worse for wear - the spine is missing and the binding is falling apart, and it's stained and dog-eared and definitely "well-loved" - and after not very much convincing at all, Mom let me take the book home with me.

Growing up, my mom always wittily referred to Betty Crocker as Betty Crackpot, and it stuck with me (why wouldn't it?), so that's why I'm going with it for the title of the new series. This book has everything under the sun in it, and the food styling is absolutely horrendous by contemporary standards. My aim is to reacquaint myself with some childhood favourites for nostalgia purposes, as well as try out some new old funky stuff that might be good - or not. I also aim to entertain! I'll try to stay as true as possible to the original recipes, except I will not be using any vegetable shortening and I'll probably cut down on the fat a bit because, man, some of these recipes are decidedly not healthy. Then there will be things I can't find because maybe they don't make them anymore. I should be interesting, and it should be fun.

First up, something not very unusual or unattractive Dinette Cake, found on page 97. I believe this is the batter we made when I first used my Easy Bake Oven when I was very young. It's a very simple recipe, but the method of beating the crap out of the batter seemed counter-intuitive to me. But nonetheless, I beat the batter as the directions stated.

Dinette Cake, Betty Crocker's Cookbook, page 97

1 ½ cups cake flour or 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
⅓ cup shortening
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour square pan, 8x8x2 or 9x9x2 inches. Measure all ingredients into large mixer bowl. Blend ½ minute on low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 minutes high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pan.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool.

The original recipe suggests Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting or Coconut Broiled Topping.

I chose no topping because I have homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream on hand!

As you can see there are some darker brown spots on the surface of the cake; this is because there were a lot of air bubbles in it as it baked. I used an 8x8" pan.

And the finished product:


The verdict: OMG, so awesome! I could have eaten the whole thing on my own. The texture was amazing, the flavour was amazing...The beating of the batter didn't seem to harm the texture of the cake, which was good. Such a simple recipe with such a super result. And the scent of it really brought back memories...Yum!

Crumb Cake Heaven

Yes, another post about baking Jodi did while I was visiting her recently! This time, a heavenly crumb cake with tons of crumb topping that was probably my favourite thing she made while I was there.


Jodi found the recipe here. Funnily enough, it originated from a Cook's Illustrated issue from 2007, which we found ironic after this post & video, but Jodi assured me there weren't 80 ingredients in it and the recipe was easy to follow. :)

Yes, the amount of crumb topping on this cake was very impressive. Usually, crumb cakes don't have enough crumbs on them for my liking, but this cake was not lacking in that department at all. Also the texture of the cake was blissfully velvety, probably due to the fact that it was made with cake flour. The recipe states that one should not substitute the cake flour with regular all purpose flour; I'd concur with that after eating the cake - it would not have been the same.


We ate quite a bit of the cake in one day, but Jodi did pack me with two slabs to take home with me on the train, for which I am very grateful. I'm definitely going to have to try this one out myself, soon.

Magazine Monday #82: Pumpkin Coconut Pound Cake

In addition to having a lot of frozen rhubarb on hand to use up before I move at the end of September when I move to the coast, I also have a ton of pumpkin in the freezer I really don't want to go to waste, either. I have a lot of pumkin recipes kicking around, and this one I have had in my binder for a few years; it's from Cooking Pleasures Magazine, which I used to get with my membership in the Cooking Club of America. I let my membership to this lapse a few years ago because it was getting too expensive with all my other various subscriptions (which have also gone by the wayside by now, too) but I still have quite a few recipes I've saved I want to try.

I made this last week and gave it to some family members to eat; I certainly didn't need an entire cake hanging around my house, especially as it was my birthday and I knew I was going to have lots of leftovers from my celebration (more about that later). I did take one slice, however, just to taste. I'll give you my critique after the recipe! Originally, this recipe is accompanied by a creamy vanilla sauce, but I didn't do that. I also didn't add the pecans as I had just used mine up in another project.

Pumpkin-Coconut-Pecan Pound Cake, from Cooking Pleasures Magazine

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree (I used 2 cups of my own pumpkin puree)
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut (I used unsweetened)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease & flour a 12-cup bundt pan. In a large bowl, beat the butter until light & fluffy. Beat in the sugar until light & fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in pumpkin & vanilla until well combined. Mixture will look curdled.

2. In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. At low speed, slowly add them to the wet ingredients. Fold in coconut & pecans.

3. Spoon into prepared pan & bake...about an hour or so, or until done.

4. Cool & serve!

Now I really liked the combination of pumpkin & coconut. I love both flavours and they work well together. But this cake wasn't super pumpkin-y, which was disappointing. The colour was a bit pale. I also over-baked this slightly, so it was a bit dry. My bad for sure. The taste was good and I would try this again, just perhaps with a bit more pumpkin in it and I'd be a little more careful with the baking time.

If you make it, let me know how it goes!

Cookbook Review: Best Recipes Ever

My regular readers should probably know right now that I am a huge fan of Canadian Living, as evidenced by the sheer number of Magazine Monday recipes I post here that come from their magazine. They publish a lot of cookbooks, and I was lucky to receive a review copy of one of their recent releases, Best Recipes Ever. It's a co-release between Canadian Living and CBC, which airs the show Best Recipes Ever, hosted by Kary Osmond. I have seen the show, and it's fairly basic and a tad boring, but they do have great ideas. In fact, it was after seeing an episode on cabbage rolls that I was inspired to email my friend Mr. Anchovy and ask for his mom's cabbage roll recipe, which resulted in my epic cabbage roll day.

The book is very much what fans of Canadian Living have come to expect over the years: reliable, easy, consistent recipes that have mass appeal. I found it refreshing that the book didn't get divided into the predictable chapters of "appetizers", "mains", "desserts" etc., but rather it was organized into categories like "Party Fare", "Meat-lover Mains", "Eggs and Brunch" and "Beat the Clock." It's different, and it's more specific, and it makes sense.

I recognized many of these recipes from the magazine and some of them I'd even made and showcased here as part of Magazine Mondays. For instance, the Curried Pork Burgers on page 105 - which has become a favourite among my extended family - is something I've made and posted here, as is the Blueberry Oatmeals Squares recipe on page 167. There are others I recognize, too.

There are plenty of recipes I am dying to try, as well. The Halibut & Spinach Curry on page 165 look amazing and is right up my alley - halibut is my fave fish! - and the Sublime Mac & Cheese on page 303 looks like it lives up to its name. And it probably will; the beauty of these recipes is that they are Canadian Living tried & tested, and I know from years of making them that they're going to turn out.

One new recipe I tried out was the Rhubarb Coffee Cake on page 281. I have a bunch of rhubarb I need to use up before I move and this was a good opportunity to bake with some. The cake was excellent, and everyone I shared it with loved it. Perfect texture, great flavour - just another tried and true Canadian Living Recipe.

This is definitely a keeper cookbook for me, and if your a Canadian Living fan, or want to be converted into one, this is a great investment and worth some space on your bookshelves.

The Loaf Failure

Something must be in the air in this God-forsaken place! Spring is soooooooo slow in arriving, I'm cranky as hell, and today I had a very frustrating kitchen failure that didn't do anything to help my mood.

I was inspired to make lemon loaf today after seeing my friend Pierce's success with this recipe this morning. I have a thing to go to tomorrow afternoon, and I thought I'd pack a dessert with me, and since lemons were on sale this week at LOGS, I thought a lemon loaf would be perfect. Plus, it's spring-like! And God knows, I need more springlike things in my life right now!

Tina had great success with her loaf. But mine was a disaster. Granted, I didn't use the food processor as directed in the original recipe, but I don't think that's the explanation for this loaf that A) overflowed from the side of the pan during baking (luckily, I baked it on a baking sheet), B) had a texture that was a bizarre mixture of coarse sponginess with a bit of rubber thrown in, C) didn't rise, and D) it seemed like all the butter sunk to the bottom of the loaf during baking because the bottom was full of grease, and E) it wasn't very lemony. Perhaps my lemons were lemons.

BY NO MEANS AM I DISSING TINA'S RECIPE OR TINA! Tina's looks lovely and according to her, tasted great, too. I obviously messed up big time somewhere along the line, I just don't where. Sometimes things just don't work out. Like I said, there is something in the air up here... I will freeze the loaf and use it for trifle down the line somewhere. I certainly am not letting it go to waste.

Dad's Birthday & Black Forest Cake

Steak & Kidney Pie and Black Forest Cake: probably two food items better not seen in the same sentence, but...

My dad has his birthday on Dec. 24, and though many people assume he gets stiffed with his day occurring in the midst of the biggest holiday of the year, the guy is actually spoiled freakin' rotten! We always have a great meal and I always make a special cake as per his request. The traditional meal for Dad's birthday is his favourite dish ever, Steak & Kidney Pie. Can we all say "yuck"? Yeah. We all detest it, but Dad's very British and this is our family tradition. I always associate raw kidneys with Christmas, because growing up when my parents were still married, my mom would buy a kidney from the butcher and soak it in the dishpan in the kitchen. It would ooze..."fluids." It was disgusting.

Now the pie is generally made by my SIL Shan and Dad gets the kidney. Here is a post from a couple of years ago about the making of the pie, including some detailed shots of Shan chopping the kidney up. This year, she couldn't do it. She just didn't have it in her, she told me. So she had my brother Jem do the chopping, and because kidney stinks like nothing you've ever smelled before, the filling for the pie was cooked entirely outside of the house: the kidneys were grilled on the BBQ and then combined with the other filling ingredients in a slow cooker that was placed in the far reaches of their garage.

Shan makes a great meat pie. This year, she did steak & kidney Guinness Pie for Dad and just a Steak & Guinness Pie for the rest of us. Our pie was great; Dad loved his version, too, and had plenty of leftovers to enjoy, too.

Here is Dad's pie, complete with his initials so there is absolutely no confusion about which pie is which!

And here is our pie, followed by a shot of the interior, and it was delicious. Shan knows how to make a mean meat pie, I can tell you that!

Now onto a more pleasant topic, Dad's cake! He requested a Black Forest Cake, and that's what he got. I made the cherry filling from scratch and it was absolutely amazing! I had wanted to get frozen cherries from the States, but bringing stone fruits, including cherries, across the border isn't allowed, and although I didn't know if that meant only fresh cherries and not frozen, I wasn't willing to take the chance, so I instead used a 720mL jar of sour cherries in juice purchased from LOGS (local overpriced grocery store).

Here is what I did. I didn't measure anything - sorry! Also, I had wanted to use kirsch as is traditional, however it's way too expensive for my modest budget and there weren't any minis available. So I used rum and it worked great.

Sour Cherry Filling

• 1 jar (720mL) sour cherries, strained, juice reserved
• a bit of sugar until I felt the sweetness was right, but not too sweet
• some cornstarch mixed with the reserved juice
• generous amount of amber rum, again to taste

- boil cherries & half of the reserved juice & add sugar to taste. With remaining cherry juice, add some corn starch & mix to dissolve. Add slurry to boiling cherries until desired consistency. You don't want it too liquidy but not too solid either as it will thicken as it cools. When desired consistency is reached, throw in some rum and combine. Let cool.

For the cake, I used my go-to cake recipe and baked it in a bundt pan. Because the dinner was being held in another town, I assembled the cake there for easy travel.

I cut the bundt in half lengthwise and spread in the filling, and then I put the top half back on. At this point, I kept things simple: I sliced & served with generous dollops of whipped cream.

It was a hit!

Magazine Monday # 72: Bobby Flay's Toasted Coconut Cake

On Dec. 21 I had my annual Solstice feast and for dessert I had a really hard time choosing what to make. There were so many great magazine recipes to choose from, but eventually I settled on this little number by Bobby Flay, which appeared in the holiday issue of Food Network Magazine.

There were a lot of steps to this cake, but it was overall quite simple despite the lengthy recipe. And I have to say it was quite possibly the most ridiculously amazing cake I've ever made. I'm not kidding - I've made a lot of great cakes, but this one took the...er cake. There were no leftovers at all.

I will definitely be keeping this in my repertoire, but I did one thing different: I didn't make a coconut simple syrup. The cake was so moist that I didn't feel it needed to be brushed with anything. I was also far more liberal with the Malibu I went to the liquor store specifically to purchase (I only go in there when looking for baking & cooking ingredients and I don't know my way around at all, so luckily the staff is quite helpful there even though I get funny looks from time to time). Also, the buttercream was way too buttery. I would probably use half a cup less the next time, and I had a lot leftover, too. The coconut custard was divine; there was some of that leftover too, which I just spooned from the bowl.

The recipe is here. I was so impressed with this recipe that with an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas courtesy my good friend Charlie, I ordered the new Bobby Flay's Throwdown cookbook. I'm very much looking forward to receiving it because I enjoy the show a lot.

Some Calgary Hot Spots

On my recent travels to Calgary for my friend Barb's beta version of BlogCon, I went to a couple of other foodie places in addition to the sushi restaurant I mentioned here.

The first one was a Lebanese restaurant on Steven Avenue, right in the heart of downtown Cowtown. I haven't had any Lebanese food since I left Ottawa 5 years ago, and let me tell you, if I miss anything about that fracking city, it's Shawarma King - the Bank St. location. Holy crap was that place amazing. As my fellow bloggers were enjoying a WordFest event held on Steven Avenue, I went off to have a mall experience and walked by this falafel place called Falafel King. When we all met up again, peckish, we decided to go to Falafel King for lunch.

Awesomeness! Everyone but me had a falafel wrap; I had to have a chicken shawarma plate, which is what I always had at Shawarma King in Ottawa. Similar deal: shawarma chicken, pitas, rice pilaf, garlic sauce, hummus, and veggies. While not as completely awesome as the Ottawa eatery, this Calgary place was pretty damned good and it hit the spot. The guy who served us even gave me a bonus falafel, which was delicious. It was a huge plate of food, it was satisfying, and I left there a happy camper. We were even offered a sample of baklava for dessert, and it was fab! Great find; glad we went!

The other place of interest was Cookie Mama in Inglewood. Fellow BlogCon attendee, Sean, and I were looking for a cake place to purchase some cake for a belated birthday celebration for Barb. We eventually stumbled upon Cookie Mama after a fascinating trip to a second hand CD store in the same area. For specialty cakes, you need to give the bakers there about 48 hours notice, but they did have a wide selection of cupcakes to choose from, so we ordered a dozen of those. We chose flavours like Super Freak (lemon), Rocket Man (cookies & cream), Love Shack (chocolate & peppermint), Smooth Operator (red velvet), and Bohemian Rhapsody (ginger cupcake with cream cheese icing), amongst some others I cannot recall right now. They were excellent! Check out their menu on their web site, because if you are in Calgary, this is a good place to go if you want some really great cake action!

Magazine Monday (on Tuesday, not to mention a record!) #68: Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake

Of course, just as I start getting back into the swing of things, I go away for a few days, but there will be lots to post here when I get back.

Anyway, I managed another magazine recipe for the week, which is a record: two in seven days is not the norm, as we all know. In fact, it's two in four days to be precise. Well, it was Canadian Thanksgiving here on the weekend so I made a nice dessert to take to a friend's for dinner on Sunday night, and since I have a ton of pumpkin in my freezer, and there was a special pumpkin section in the Oct. 2010 issue of Canadian Living, I just had to take advantage of all these planets aligning for me.

The recipe for the Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake I made is here.

OMG - this was so fantastic I barely have words. It was a huge hit, and I even had enough left over from Sunday night's dinner to serve my dad for dessert at our own little Thanksgiving celebration last night. He doesn't like pumpkin that much and even he loved it! This cake was really moist and flavourful, and the crunch of the pecans was wonderful. It was perfectly spiced. I didn't make the rum glaze, but instead served this with some sweetened whipped cream and some caramel sauce I've had hanging out in my fridge for ages. It was perfect!

Definitely a keeper!

Magazine Monday #66: Brown Sugar & Chocolate Chip Pound Cake with Maple Espresso Glaze

So, I was invited to a friend's for dinner last week, and I offered to bring dessert. I have a ton of rhubarb in the freezer, but my friend's husband is not a fan. Plan B involved blueberries, but that was a no-no, too. Plan C kinda fell into my lap during a ransacking of my recipe binder. I just happened upon this recipe from the October 2007 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine, and I had all the ingredients on hand.

This is one frakking fantastic cake, people! It was a huge hit at dinner, and I had some left over to munch on when the urge arose. And arise it did. This makes one awesome midnight snack, I can tell you for sure.

The recipe is here.

I used dark brown sugar, not the golden kind. I actually prefer the darker sugar because it has more flavour and it's a little richer. I really think it makes a difference in the taste & texture of my baking.

When I made the glaze, at my friend's house, I added too much liquid, and it came out more as a sauce. I was totally OK with that and so was everyone else!

Definitely a keeper recipe that I think I'll go back to time & again!

Wedding Feasts, Part 1

As promised, some pictures & rundowns of food I experienced & ate during my brother's wedding celebrations at the tail end of July (better late than never, right?). It was a food fest and half, let me tell you! My SIL's family always celebrates events big & small with copious amounts of food - and awesome food at that! So, here we go.

We'll start off with the rehearsal dinner. It was supposed to be pulled pork, but a tragic freezer breakdown just before the wedding put the kybosh on that because the pork butts were ruined! Instead, we had a huge spaghetti dinner!
But the highlight of the evening for me as a foodie was the peeling & steaming of the Vancouver Island spot prawns fished by Shan's uncle, frozen, and brought to the wedding celebration as a gift (more seafood gifts would be on the way, but that is another post!). The spot prawns were so delicious I can't even tell you. I am used to bland frozen shrimp from the grocery store, and so these spot prawns tasted like candy to me! I participated in some of the peeling, but as I had just had my nails done, I bailed early because I didn't want to ruin my lovely manicure. But here are some photos!
The prawns were served at the wedding reception with a homemade cocktail sauce, and they were amazing! We also had them at the family reunion on the day after the wedding.

As for the wedding feast itself, it was fantabulous. I don't have a lot of pictures because it was a buffet setting, which is hard to photograph if you're in a line-up, and I was busy drinking & socializing. The catering was done by a Nelson outfit called Alligator Pie Catering, and Shan made an excellent choice because the food was superb. In fact, everyone was so impressed with it that Shan's sister, who is getting married next summer, is, I believe, planning on using Alligator Pie, too.

The Menu:

Hors d'Oeuvres

Crostini with Green Olive Tapenade, Goats Cheese and Caramelized Onions
Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Bruschetta with Goat Cheese and Basil Drizzle
Pita triangles baked with brie, roast chicken, and green apple (not on their online menu, for some reason, but my absolute fave of the three!)

Sides

Roasted New Potatoes with Dill Butter
Balsamic Marinated Grilled Vegetables
2 Salads

Mains

Baked Chicken with a Garlic Pesto Crust
Grilled Salmon with Hazelnut Lime Butter (totally awesome)

Here is my plate:
Dessert was wedding cake, made by Shan's mom, C. It was vanilla cake with chocolate ganache in the middle, and it was delish! They kept the design of the cake simple and used a fresh flower topper in keeping with the wedding colours.
Part two will follow...sometime!

Magazine Monday #64: Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

This recipe comes from the latest issue of Canadian Living Magazine. I made it the other day because I was in a serious PMS state and I needed cake NOW! I had the ingredients on hand, except the 3oz of dark chocolate, but I saw that there was a handy variation at the bottom of the recipe using chocolate chunks instead of chocolate, and since I had some chocolate chips on hand, I used those in addition to a small amount of Skor bits I had hanging around my freezer! This cake totally hit the spot!

Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
3oz bittersweet chocolate, melted (or 1/3 cup chocolate chunks or chips)

Topping:

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter, melted & warm
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup ground almonds

1. For the topping, in a bowl stir together sugars, cinnamon, salt; stir in butter. Stir in four and ground almonds, using hands to press the mixture together.

2. For the cake, in a large bowl beat butter & sugar until combined. Beat in egg & egg yolk. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Stir into butter mixture alternately with sour cream, making 3 additions of flour mixture and 2 of sour cream. Stir in chocolate (or chips/chunks).

3. Spread in parchment-lined 8" square cake pan. Crumble topping evenly over batter. Bake at 350F until done. Cool & serve.

This was delicious, but two caveats I found for you: one is that I needed a 9" pan for this as 8" was not going to be big enough. Second, there was a lot of crumble topping - almost too much. But it was crunchy & tasty & I'd definitely make this recipe again!

Magazine Monday #62: Roasted Lemon Cake

I rarely go to the liquor store, but other people I know go regularly, and one of those someones brought back a recent copy of Taste Magazine, which is put out by the BC Liquor Stores. This is the first time I've made a recipe from the magazine, and the occasion was Father's Day. Lemons, as it happened, were on sale at the time! The original recipe involved a lavender syrup, but as I didn't have any access to lavender, I skipped it altogether.

Roasted Lemon Cake, adapted Taste Magazine Spring 2010, page 129

4 large lemons, washed well & dried
6 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup ground almonds
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
4 eggs, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375C. Grease sides of a 9" round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment.

2. Slice lemons thinly & remove seeds. Place them in a layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper & sprinkle with the 6tbsp of sugar. Roast for about 15 minutes or until lightly caramelized on the edges. Let cool.

3. Arrange 3/4 of the lemon slices on the bottom of the cake pan. Chop the remaining lemons & set aside. Sift flour & baking powder into a bowl & stir in almonds. In a separate bowl, beat butter & sugar together until light & fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well mixed. Fold in flour mixture, and add chopped lemons & accumulated juices. Spread batter over roasted lemons. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until done in the centre. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes at least before turning out of the pan. Serve with whipped cream.


This was a hit with my family. The cake was so moist it was pretty much pudding-like. The lemony flavour was over the top. Unfortunately, the cake was so moist that it was hard to serve nicely because it kept breaking up. Also, the lemons I got were particularly thick-skinned, which was kind of annoying: more skin than fruit really, and it got pretty chewy at times. Still, a really worthwhile and adaptable recipe that I can see going well with other citrus fruits like oranges or even grapefruit.

Enjoy!

Magazine Monday #58...On Tuesday...Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding Cake

What do you do when you are viciously premenstrual and you just HAVE to have a chocolate, peanut butter, pudding, cake fix? You come across a recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding Cake in Canadian Living, while looking for another, unrelated, recipe, and you go for it!

The recipe is here.

I didn't use my slow cooker, but rather my nice old oven. Worked great. Here are the results:



And...I couldn't just serve it nekkid, could I? No! I happened to have the perfect accompaniment: Blue Bunny Peanut Butter Panic ice cream, purchased during recent cross-border shopping trip! As if there wasn't enough peanut butter & chocolate already!


This hit the spot, babies! Totally! The sauce created as this dessert baked could have been a tad thicker, but otherwise, this was a really, really awesome dessert. And half of it was gone 15 minutes after it came out of the oven...

Sperm Cake...Or Tadpole Cake...

Well, if that title doesn't increase my search engine hits, I don't know what will!

Anyway, yesterday I made a blueberry banana cake at work, and when I took it out of the oven, I noticed that this strange effect had occurred with the blueberries, due to my spreading of the batter...


What do you think???