Stone fruit cake

I'm not a big cake person. I'll take ice cream, or pie, or cookies, or any other sort of baked good, over cake any day. But, there are some cakes that are very tasty indeed. Rich, lemon-y, Italian cakes with a hint of almond and pistacchio, for example. Anyway, not sure how I came about this cake, but I decided to give it a go, and I'm sure glad I did. I've made it twice now, once with the full amount of sugar and once with a little less, because it was just a bit overwhelming, and I think it's better with the less-sweet version. Then you can really taste the fruit.

I think this has become my go-to cake, at least for the time being. It's quick, easy to remember, and tastes delicious. Give it a shot!

Original recipe

The only change was to use 2/3C sugar instead of 3/4C. And, peaches rather than nectarines, since that's what I had. 

The second time, I had some very ripe plums, so those went in, and boy do they make it pretty, staining the area around the plum purple and tart and delicious. 

It'll look like way too much fruit. It's not; the cake will rise right up over that. You could even add more fruit. I bet this would be real pretty with raspberries.

See? Cake eats up the fruit no problem.


I pretend to myself that if I put a piece of cake on a plate, I will only eat that one piece of cake. The reality involves replacing the piece of cake on the plate as soon as the plate is empty...

Berry ricotta cake

This is a bit of a modification of a recipe that came from the Amateur Gourmet, who got the recipe from the Village Bakery. It looked too complicated in terms of measurements (1/4C + 2 tbs? I can't do math like that, are you kidding?), so I messed with the amounts of things until they fit the various measuring devices that I have in my house. This may be a bad approach to baking, but it tends to be the one I take... in the end, it was a success. Mostly. I felt like if you were eating the cake with your hands, it was too greasy, but maybe that's a sign that you shouldn't eat cake with your hands. Tasting the batter I was worried things would be too sweet, but it's fine once it cooks.  So, I declare success! Will definitely make again, because I love dense polenta cakes. I'm going to try leaving out the olive oil altogether, see if that makes it more of a finger food cake.

Ingredients:
1 stick of butter
3/4C sugar
1/4C olive oil
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla
1 tbs honey
3/4C flour
1/2C cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
1C ricotta
1/4C greek yogurt (it called for sour cream, but we get our greek yogurt from Sophia's, and the consistency is basically that of sour cream. That ain't no diet greek yogurt. And, well, I didn't feel like going out and getting sour cream)
~1/2 package frozen raspberries

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the rest of the wet ingredients except the ricotta and sour cream. Combine the dry ingredients together. Mix wet and dry. Fold in the ricotta + sour cream.

Butter and flour a 9" diameter cake pan. Spread half the batter into the pan, top with berries. Spread the other half on top of that, and again top with berries. The amount of berries depends how obsessed you are with them!

Bake at 350F for 50 minutes.

(As you can see, I baked a little taster cake for myself, as well as the full-sized one for everyone else. Had to know how it would taste!)

Angel food cake and a cardamom-lime fruit salad

Ed wanted angel food cake for his birthday cake.  This is slightly more troublesome than a chocolate cake or something, but I figured it was totally within my capabilities, aside from the whole I-don't-have-a-springform-pan deal.  I figured I would make little mini ramekins of cake, because those would be small enough that the cake couldn't collapse.  This worked.

I followed this recipe, except I cut it in half.  I also used less sugar... it was easier to just use 3/4C than to add in the extra 2 tbs.

If you follow all the steps in that recipe I linked to, you will have a successful angel food cake.  The one thing I did change is that I buttered and sugared the bottom of the ramekins (but not the sides!), so that it would be easier to remove the cakes once they were cooked.

I also put the extra batter into the heart-shaped pan.  This mostly worked, though the middle of the cake was a little deflated after it cooled.  Still tasted delicious, though.

The topping was a fruit salad in a cardamom lime sauce.  I put the juice of a lime, a tablespoon or so of sugar, and the seeds from a cardamom pod into a saucepan, and boiled that, while stirring, for ~5min.  This made it all thick and syrupy.  It was delicious.  Then I poured the syrup over a small fruit salad of a kiwi, ~4 strawberries, and half a starfruit.  That sat that marinating while we ate dinner, and the strawberries turned the syrup all pink.  Once we were ready for dessert, I dumped the fruit on top of some whipped cream on top of the angel food cake, and poured more syrup on top.  Delicious!  I could have eaten that all day long.  

Strawberry lemon buttermilk cake

Ali made this amazing buttermilk strawberry cake the other day (ok, back in May or June or something like that), and then she left a thing of buttermilk in my fridge.  I used it in many things, but ultimately, the only option was to make another lemon buttermilk cake.  I can't find the exact recipe I used, but this one is close enough, and the cake really was good.  Moist, dense, lots of zing from the lemons and buttermilk, and packed with strawberries.  Hard to go wrong!

If you follow this recipe from epicurious, you'll get close.  I remember I used a full lemon's worth of zest, and 3 eggs, but only 3/4C sugar.  And I think I used olive oil, not butter... I can't remember.  Should have written this down earlier!  I'll have to ask Ali if she can remember the recipe, but that epicurious one is certainly worth a go =)

These were strawberries, tossed with some sugar and some basil.  Good enough on their own, they barely needed the cake!

Definitely plop some whipped cream on top!

Lime polenta yogurt cake

Yogurt cakes are awesome. I was going to make a lemon one, but I happened to have two limes, so I went with that, and deliciousness ensued. I had some whole milk yogurt left over from something, so I had already decided to put it into a cake, sort of like this one, but naturally I got distracted and made something different. I used a pretty coarse grain of corn meal here, and it made it deliciously textured. Worth trying. And the lime just brightens everything up, and the glaze keeps it moist.

1C flour
1/2C cornmeal - the coarser the better
3 eggs
1/2C oil
1/2C yogurt
3/4C sugar
zest of 1 lime (2 limes if you really like limey stuff. I used two)
1/2tsp salt
1/4C powdered sugar, for glaze
lime juice, for glaze

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Mix together the eggs, oil, and yogurt. In a separate bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, salt, and lime zest. Add the dry to the wet, stir to combine. Grease a cake pan (I used an 8" diameter one), and pour the batter into the pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the glaze. Mix ~1/4C of powdered sugar with the juice of one lime. It should be fairly runny, but add more juice or more sugar to get the texture you'd like.

When a tester comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven and dump out on a cooling rack, positioned over a plate. Maybe in a more graceful way than dumping. Poke a bunch of holes in the cake, and pour the glaze over the cake while its still warm, being sure to scoop up the glaze that ran off the cooling rack onto the plate back onto the top of the cake, especially into those holes you pokes.

Let the glaze and the cake cool for a bit before eating it. And then do your best to not eat it all at once...

Orange yogurt cake

I'm continuing my quest for the perfect lemon-cornmeal cake... except this time it was an orange cake, with yogurt. In the past, I tried a lemon cornmeal muffin, but that wasn't quite was I was looking for. This one was a little closer, but the cornmeal was a very fine grind, so its not that cornmeal-y. I didn't have any orange zest, so went with orange extract, and I used the idea of a marmalade glaze from Dorie Greenspan's yogurt cake. Actually the recipe is pretty similar, although I was really just sort of throwing things in the pan - it was super quick to pull this together, and then it tasted darn good when I took it out of the oven. It reminded me a little of a pound cake, but not quite so dense - that is something I definitely don't like about pound cakes, they're just too dense. But I could see orange marmalade going really well as an accompaniement for this cake. Actually I could see some sort of alcohol working really well in the glaze... a limoncello-spiked lemon cake, anyone? I'll have to acquire some limoncello, then thats next. Maybe without the cornmeal, although it does give a nice little bite.

Orange cornmeal yogurt cake
3/4C regular flour
3/4C fine-ground cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp orange extract (or orange zest, if you have it)
3/4C sugar
3 eggs
1/2C plain whole milk yogurt
1/2C oil

Preheat the oven to 325F. Put all the wet ingredients into a bowl, and whisk them until they're really well combined. Dump the flours on top of the wet stuff, and the salt and baking powder on top of that. Stir the salt and baking powder gently into the flour, and then fold all the dry stuff into the wet. Pour into a greased 9x5" pan, and bake for 45 minutes. Its done when the edges are pulling away from the edge of the pan and a tester toothpick comes up clean.

Let it cool for 5 minutes, then take it out of the pan and put it on a cooling rack (over a plate, to catch the glaze drips). Microwave 1/2C marmalade with 1tbs water until its warm, then strain it. Mix the marmalade mixture with approximately an equal amount of confectioner's sugar, and pour that over the top of the cake, and let it harden - it'll harden to a tacky hardness, not super hard. Enjoy in slices!

Sorry 'bout the crummy pictures (crumby, hehe), we were too busy eating the cake. This is on day 3, and its still not stale after sitting out for three days. Sweet.

A sort-of Whitney Cake

Whitney cakes are the ultimate simple cakes. I probably have the recipe wrong, but its a Bullitt recipe, and its something along the lines of 1C flour, 1C sugar, and 1C liquids. I think the liquids are egg, milk, and butter, and there is probably some baking powder and salt too. I wanted to make a whitney cake, with some cherries, since I had some cherries and they weren't getting eaten fast enough, but then I made a half recipe, and I don't even know if its a real whitney cake since I just sort of made it up. I also didn't have any milk, so used yogurt, and I didn't feel like melting butter, so I used oil. But, it tasted delicious. I'll do this one again. I feel like it would work well with any fruit, so peaches are next...

Cherry Almond Cake
Made one small heart-shaped pan (~1.5 C batter?)

1/2C flour
1/3C sugar
1/8tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
2 tbs yogurt
2 tbs oil
1/2 tsp almond extract
~4 cherries, cut in half and pitted

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put the sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Mix it all together. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg, yogurt, oil, and almond. Add the dry to the wet, and stir it around just until its mixed. Pour into a well-greased pan, in my case I used a small heart-shaped pan. This isn't much batter. It makes a thin layer.

Cut the cherries in half and remove the pits. Artfully arrange them cut-side down on the top of the cake batter. Bake the cake for 15-20 minutes, start checking it after 15 minutes.

I hesitate to say this serves more than one...

Persimmon Pudding Bread

Or, persimmon bread without the baking soda. A while back, after making our persimmon pie, Jackie gave me a whole bagfull of persimmon goo. It lived in my freezer for a while, until I had time to think about what to do with it. A quick search of the internets brought me to James Beard's persimmon bread, on David Lebovitz's site, and it looked and sounded good. So I figured I'd make it. His bread looks delicious. Mine looked like this:


Thats right, somebody didn't add baking soda. I tried a piece, and despite the two sticks of butter and copious quantities of alcohol and sugar, I didn't like it. Too much like fruit cake. Or a brick. Since my colleagues seem to be immune to the bad baked goods I sometimes bring in (I rarely bring in the good stuff, I eat that), I brought in one of the two loaves. It was pretty much devoured, and people claimed to like it. Weird. So, if you like a pudding-ish, dense, moist, brick-like bread, omit the baking soda from this recipe. If you'd rather have a lighter bread, keep the baking soda. Or just turn the goop into a smoothie or something. I'm not making this one again...

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Read this first. Testament to how awesome this cake really is.

This recipe is another one taken straight from King Arthur Flour, which I had tried before but forgotten to take pictures. It was so good that I decided to do it a second time, and it was well worth it, as always. The original recipe is here, but I didn't put any chocolate chips in it or on it this time, because I didn't have any. The cake was fine without them, but would have been even better with more chocolate.



In case the King Arthur website ever goes down, I am reprinting the recipe (please don't sue me):

1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) butter*
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups (12 1/4 ounces) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup (4 ounces) sour cream or yogurt (I used yogurt this time, last time I used sour cream)
2 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
3/4 cup (2 1/4 ounce) Dutch-process cocoa
2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional but tasty
2 cups shredded zucchini (about one 10" zucchini, about 12 ounces)
1/2 cup (3 ounces) chocolate chips (didn't use these this time)
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips, for icing (didn't use these this time)

*being lazy, I only used oil.

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lighlty grease a 9" x 13" pan. (I also made half the recipe with the full amount of zucchini, because I only have a 8x8" pan)

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the sour cream or yogurt alternately with the flour. Then add the cocoa and espresso powder, mixing till smooth. Finally, fold in the zucchini and 1/2 cup chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes, till the top springs back lightly when touched, and it seems set. Slide the cake out of the oven, sprinkle it evenly with the 1 cup chocolate chips, and return it to the oven for 5 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven, and use a cake spatula or rubber spatula to spread the chocolate chips into a smooth glaze. Cool on a rack. Yield: 24 servings.

Mystery Mocha Cake

It was Ed's birthday last week, and I wanted to make a cake, so I was browsing the King Arthur Flour site for cake recipes. I never actually made him a cake, since he just took in the leftover car bomb cupcakes to work and they all gorged themselves on those, but, I found a cake I really wanted to make: the MYSTERY MOCHA CAKE! Mostly its the mocha in the title--anything with coffee and chocolate put together is a win, for me. It looked pretty straightforward, so I tried it last night.

The recipe says to bake it for 40 minutes, which I did, and it did in fact bounce back when poked, but, it was still really goopy on the inside. Since there are no eggs in the cake, thats ok. Its molten. And DELICIOUS. There is this crunchy coating on top, and goopy insides, and some chocolate cakeness too. Oh god. Amazing. I would have taken more pictures, except. well. There wasn't much to take pictures of, once we got into it. King Arthur says this this is a "low calorie" cake--I think thats relative. I mean, if you eat the whole thing, thats not so low calorie. Although low is a relative term, right?

Here is the recipe from King Arthur Flour's site, but I've reprinted it for your lazy viewing pleasure. Seriously, make this. It is so good. You will not regret it. But its not fancy or pretty-looking, so don't make it for some special occasion. Or do.

Mystery Mocha Cake
3/4C granulated sugar (I used brown sugar, due to my current lack of white sugar)
1C flour (I used 1/2C white flour, 1/2C whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4C cocoa
3/4C skim milk
2 tsp vanilla

Sauce
1C double-strong coffee (I don't have a coffee maker, so I just used instant coffee. And decaf. Thats like sacrilege to some people...sorry. tasted good anyway!)
1/4C cocoa
1/2C white sugar
1/2C brown sugar (I used all brown sugar)

For the cake, preheat the oven to 350. Mix together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the skim milk and vanilla, stir it around until it makes a cake batter. Go ahead and taste, since there aren't any eggs.

Spread the cake batter into an 8x8" pan that has been lightly greased. Sprinkle a cup of sugar over the top of the batter. It is going to look like a LOT of sugar. Like an inch thick. Thats ok. Thats a good thing. Don't use less sugar.

Mix together the coffee and cocoa. Pour it over the top of the cake batter + sugar. Its going to look like a LOT of sauce. In fact, the whole top of the cake is going to be liquid. Thats ok. Just put it in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes, and take it out when it bounces back a little when you press it.

You want it still pretty goopy inside, because that goopy coffee-chocolate (ok, mocha) sauce is the best part. Unless the crunchy sugar top is the best part. The whole thing is pretty good. Especially when topped with vanilla ice cream, when its still hot from the oven. Ohhhh chocolatey heaven!


Here you can see the chocolatey-goopy-goodness. A zoom-in to the bite-size piece that is missing from the whole cake...

Pear-Cranberry Coffee Cake

I don't know if this is a bread, or a coffee cake, or a what. Its based loosely off of a bread recipe, but the streusel on top gives it more of a coffee cake feeling. Tastes good, though!

2C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2C sugar
1 1/2C chopped pears (I used one Bosc pear, skin on)
1/2C cranberries, chopped in half
1/2C walnuts
1C buttermilk
1/4C applesauce
1/4C yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

Streusel:
1/4C brown sugar
1/4C flour
1/4 stick of melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, pears, cranberries, and walnuts. Mix well. In another bowl, beat the egg, then add the buttermilk, applesauce, yogurt, and vanilla. Add the bowl of liquids to the dry stuff. Stir just to combine, then pour into a greased 8x8 inch baking pan. You could probably make muffins, too.

Melt the butter, then add the rest of the streusel ingredients. Once they are all combined, sprinkle this over the top of the cake. I added about 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts, too, but this is optional.

Bake for ~30-45 minutes, until your toothpick comes out clean. Cool briefly, and enjoy!