Category Archives: cake

Apple cake with flapjack topping

Posted on by
12

Apple cake

You know who could make this cake? Peter Rabbit’s mom, that’s who! I realize that this is the third time I’ve attributed a recipe to Peter Rabbit’s mom. The truth is, she’s a master chef, and she’s going to have a show on the cooking channel. It’s going to be called Fantastic Foraging!! Actually, thinking about Mrs. Rabbit’s culinary skills seems to represent the epitome of warm and comforting winter cooking, for me. Cooking with food you can find in hedgerows. Like blackberries. And there is a layer of jam between the apple cake and the flapjack topping. I should also mention that this is “flapjack” in the English sense of the word…an oaty cookie made with golden syrup, not the American sense, which is a pancake, which would make a weird topping for a cake. So, this is a spicy cake made with molasses topped with a layer of blackberry jam and then a chewy crispy layer of oats mixed with butter, golden syrup and raw sugar. Simple. Nice with coffee in the morning, nice with a dollop of vanilla-flavored whipped cream, a chunk of dark chocolate and a glass of wine after dinner.

Here’s In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree by Duke Ellington
Continue reading →

Spiced cider cake with chocolate-covered ginger

Posted on by
1

Spiced Cider cake

Chocolate-covered ginger? Chocolate-covered ginger! I saw this at my extremely ordinary grocery store in the bulk food section. Of course I had to try it! Of course I had to put it in a cake! After feverishly running through various options in my head (a lemon ginger cake? A dark molasses-y cake?) I decided on a light but very spicy cake, with apple cider in it. To remind you of fall walks with fresh cider and cider donuts and apple butter… It smells wonderful while it’s cooking, and tastes just as good. If you can’t find dark chocolate-covered ginger, I would recommend using candied ginger and dark chocolate chips. I cut a snowflake out of paper and dusted powder sugar over the cake (and myself!) to make the pattern. Once again proving that cooking is all about the games you played when you were little.

Here’s James Yorkston’s beautiful Woozy with Cider (I used regular American cider, but I think you could use hard cider, too. Hmmm…I’ll have to try that!)
Continue reading →

Chocolate chip fruitcake

Posted on by
3

In which we present a fruitcake you actually want to eat

Chocolate chip fruitcake

The poor fruitcake. It’s become a joke, hasn’t it? Well, I was thinking the other day that there’s no reason you couldn’t make a fruitcake that people actually want to eat. I’m not a big fan of candied fruit, so the first step, for me, was to get rid of that. I’ve substituted dried fruit – cranberries, cherries, apricots and golden raisins. All things that are delicious on their own, and which add a pleasant tartness to the dark, sweet, spicy cake. And then, of course, I added bittersweet chocolate chips. Because everything is better with chocolate chips!! And you know how lots of fruitcakes have brandy sprinkled on at the end? Well, this one has a coating of bittersweet ganache with rum in it.

You could bake these in regular cake pans, but for some reason (because I’m crazy!) I wanted them to be more unusual shapes. So I baked one in a casserole dish, and the other in a little straight-sided unusually shaped bowl that my friend Peter made. I wanted to cook them for a long time, because Mrs Beaton cooks her fruitcakes for, like, 3 hours! Mine only took a little over an hour. And if you use regular cake pans they’d probably be done in 1/2 an hour.

The smell of this cake is intoxicatingly christmas-y, so let’s dive right in with The Maytals’ Happy Christmas

Continue reading →

Supreme cinnamon buns with bittersweet chocolate

Posted on by
Reply

Best cinnamon buns EVER

I LOVE cinnamon buns. Love and love and love them. Is there anything more fun to eat than a pastry that you can unfold to find more and more cinnamon-y goodness the farther you go?

But I have to tell you, I frequently find myself disappointed by the bun part of the cinnamon bun. Often it’s just white bread dough. It’s the thing you set aside to get to the tasty insides.

So I decided to make a cinnamon bun with a pastry element you’d like to eat by itself. And I decided to add bittersweet chocolate chips, because everything is better with chocolate chips. Especially on a cold and rainy day, such as we’ve had lately.

The sugar and cinnamon and chocolate got all melty together in the best possible way.

The reviews are in…little Isaac said he felt like it was so good that he would ask for another as soon as he had finished the first one. And my husband said that we could be nailed into our house the whole winter as long as we had supplies of these cinnamon buns. Malcolm liked them so much he helped me name them.

For the record, I think these would be good with some orange zest in the crust, but I haven’t tried that…yet.

Here’s the Stone Roses with Sally Cinnamon
Continue reading →

Millionaire Shortbread Cake

Posted on by
4

Millionaire Shortbread Cake

When I was little we lived in England for a while, and I have vivid and fond memories of being out somewhere, a museum, maybe, and becoming very tired all of a sudden. We’d all decide to stop for “tea and a sweetie” as my dad called it. And we’d all be instantly restored, and I remember talking about how remarkable it was that we all felt more lively. The restorative powers of tea are not to be underestimated! On these occasions, as I recall, my mother used to love millionaire’s shortbread, which (as I recall it) was a perfect combination of shortbread, caramel, and chocolate. And then there were variations – some had a digestive crust, some had milk chocolate, some had dark, one (my mother’s favorite) had lemon curd and dark chocolate.

Yesterday when faced with the delightful conundrum of what kind of cake to make for my mother’s birthday, I decided to make a cakey version of millionaire’s shortbread – combining different elements of my memories of the sweetie. So I made a cake very loosely based on a digestive biscuit (well, it had a tiny bit of oats and whole wheat flour in it, and I used brown sugar), a lemon caramel coating (turned out really tasty! I ate it by the spoonful as I was cleaning up) and a bittersweet chocolate ganache on top of that. My mom said it was the best cake ever! Result!

Here’s Barbara Dane’s It isn’t Nice. A song my mom likes, and I love, too.
Continue reading →

Almond sherry cake

Posted on by
1

Almond cake with port-poached quince

This is a simple cake that goes well with other things – like fruit compotes and whipped cream. It’s nice in the morning with a slathering of blueberry jam and a cup of coffee. It’s nice after dinner with a square of bittersweet chocolate and a glass of wine. It makes a nice base for a trifle, what with the sherry and all. We had it last night with a port-poached quince compote. And tonight I think it will be a blackberry, apple cassis compote. And chantilly cream, of course! Know what that is? Whipped cream with vanilla essence, that’s what!

almond sherry cake

Here’s Cake Walking Babies From Home by Sidney Bechet 1925 (and Louis Armstrong!)
Continue reading →

Shark cake! Aaaaaaghhhh!!!!!!

Posted on by
Reply

Shark cake!!

Watch out! There’s a shark swimming through schools of gummi bears, and he’s eaten a lot of them! They’re in his belly!! My son turned 6 yesterday, and he asked for a cake shaped like a shark, with gummi bears in his tummy. So that’s what he got!! The cake itself is quite simple – just a regular cake made with half brown sugar, and with chocolate chips added at the end. Whenever I double (or triple) a cake recipe I add an extra egg. So this had four eggs altogether. (Not sure how that math works out, quite!) And the frosting is butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla. The trick to getting a sharky nose was to use pie plates instead of cake pans, to give it that bevelled look. And then cut the sides away – it’s quite complicated! But fun to make.

Here’s the playlist I made for Isaac’s birthday.

Pear, hazelnut, dark chocolate CAKE!

Posted on by
1

Pear chocolate hazelnut cake

The juiciness of the pear, the nutty crunch of the hazelnut, and the supreme deliciousness of very very dark chocolate combine to make this fairly ordinary cake seem like something special. This is a nice combination of autumnal flavors, and it goes well with your coffee in the morning, but with a dollop of cream whipped with a little sugar and vanilla, it can seem like a fancy dessert as well.

Here’s Miles Davis’ Chocolate Chip
Continue reading →

CAKE

Posted on by
1

I love making cakes. Not fancy, special-occasion cakes, but every-day cakes, to have with coffee in the morning, or tea in the afternoon, or a glass of wine after dinner. I have a very simple recipe I use, that is a good starting point for any kind of variation you can think of. It’s a vanilla cake, but you can add any kind of flavoring you like. You can add chocolate chips, or nuts, or coconuts, or fruit. You can slice it in half and spread jam or nutella (or both!) in between and stick it back together again. You can add lemon zest or orange zest or cinnamon or ginger. You can make a chocolate cake by adding cocoa powder or melted chocolate. You can make a crumb topping with brown sugar, oatmeal, flour, butter and cinnamon. You can frost it, or put powdered sugar on it, or coat it with ganache, or make it into an angler fish for your son’s birthday. The possibilities are endless!

To show you how easy it is, I’ve made two at once! A pumpkin chocolate chip cake, and a coconut-almond cake with cherry filling.

Here’s some instrumental hip hop to warm up this dreary day.
RZA’s Cakes, and Pete Rock’s The Cake.
Continue reading →