Birthday Bakery Crawl

Took The Husband on a bakery crawl for his birthday, because The Husband loves himself some baked goods and we live in an area full of bakeries we have not visited yet. You would think, considering how much money we spend on baked goods every year, that such a thing could not be true and yet it is.

While I'd plotted a great many bakeries thanks to Yelp and Google Maps, we only visited three before The Husband cried uncle! I have no doubt we'll visit the remainder soon ... a bakery a weekend would probably be the sensible method.

Sensible, schmensible. Visit all the bakeries. Eat all the things.

Cupcakes  from Sugarbelle

Chocolate mousse cake from La Petit France

Assorted tarts from Aby's Bakery

Banana Bread & The Cookies of Appeasement

Once again, our freezer suffered from a surfeit of bananas. Its salvation? Money Saving Mom's tempting "Freezer-Friendly Chocolate Banana Bread" (subbed peanut butter chips for chocolate). I don't know that this bread actually freezes well as it's going straight to work and into hungry librarian bellies, but it looks and smells fabulous. Indeed, its heady perfume made me feel a bit drunk after a while and I had to remove the loaf to a cupboard while I baked The Husband's Cookies of Appeasement.

My co-worker's could not get enough of this bread!

I'd already baked The Husband a beautiful almond bundt cake earlier this week (with homemade raspberry sauce even!), but he was still clearly displeased to come downstairs this morning and discover the delicious baking smells that had finally roused him from his snug nest were not for him. Oh, the betrayal in his eyes! And the scorn he heaped upon my poor, innocent banana bread.

Tender almond sponge with raspberry sauce, yum!

So I baked him cookies -- Betty Crocker's "Black Beauties" -- which allowed me to use up the bag of Betty Crocker double chocolate chunk cookie mix leftover from a work event, so yay for that. The cookies came out well, even though I omitted the nuts (meant to replace them with chopped hazelnuts but forgot) and did not dip the baked cookies in melted chocolate (clearly, I do not love my husband that much). They were best the first few hours out of the oven, when biting down on their crisp exteriors released warm, gooey chocolate centers. I suspect that tomorrow they'll just be a bit chewy and The Husband will lose a little of his ardor for them.

Can't go wrong with a warm cookie

Oh, fickle Eater of Cookies!

Italian Homework: Italian Cheesecake

For "Lesson 11: Creating Sumptuous Italian Desserts," the penultimate class in the online Italian cooking course I've been taking through Universal Class and my public library, I made a fabulous ricotta cheesecake. It was my first cheesecake! And so blessedly easy! Fool-proof, even! No water bath! No crust! Just pure, unmitigated deliciousness.

My first cheesecake! So proud!

The cheesecake was light, creamy, and mildly sweet. Filling, but not heavy --- I love cheesecake, but it usually leaves me with an "Ohmygod, I need bigger pants and a nap" feeling. This cheesecake was almost like eating a dense lemon mousse and left my tummy content rather than overstuffed.

Ricotta Cheesecake
Serves 8. 8 Weight Watchers Points+ by my math, but ymmv.

Ingredients

6 large eggs
⅔ cup sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla extract [Penzeys Mexican vanilla]
1 32 ounce container whole milk ricotta cheese
Zest of one lemon

Directions

Pour the ricotta cheese into a colander lined with cheesecloth and let drain for an hour.

Pre-heat oven to 350°F. Spray a nine-inch springform pan with cooking spray.

Separate the eggs, placing the whites in one bowl and the yolks in another. Beat the yolks by with an electric hand mixer or what have you until light yellow and thick. Add the sugar and vanilla and continue to beat on medium speed for another 2 minutes. Add the ricotta cheese and lemon zest and mix well.

Clean your beaters and beat the egg whites on high speed until they make stiff peaks. Using a rubber spatula, fold the whites into the ricotta mixture until mixed well. Pour the mixture into the springform pan and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the cake is golden brown and the sides begin to pull away from the pan (start checking at about 50 minutes). Let cake cool completely before refrigerating. Cover with foil and let settle in the fridge for at least 7 hours before cutting.

Serve with fresh berries and whipped cream.

Next time, I'm trying this with orange zest! Bet it will be just as fabulous.

Good-bye, bananas! Hello, banana bread!

Oh, sweet banana-y goodness in my oven and so much less banana-y goodness in my freezer! There had been too many bananas in my freezer and I was becoming quite annoyed with their propensity for leaping from the freezer whenever I opened the door to fall upon my poor toes. Yes, I could easily have rearranged the contents of the freezer, but baking banana bread seemed easier. Also, it got rid of half the bananas and that is a good thing as the freezer is not for Infinite Banana Storage.

My go-to banana bread recipe is for "Blueberry Banana Bread" from the defunct Genesis of A Cook. I have very real fears the originating blog will just up and vanish one day, so I'm posting my version of the recipe below.

You'll see I've omitted the streusel topping in my version and that's just a time-saving move on my part. Also, the streusel topping is good, but the cake stands up well on its own and doesn't really need the extra bling.

To get 1 cup of banana, I used 6 thawed frozen organic baby bananas. I just let the frozen bananas sit on the kitchen side for about on hour, then snipped the ends off each banana and squeezed the fruit out like toothpaste from a tube.

Blueberry Banana Bread

Ingredients
2 cups plus 1 Tbsp white whole wheat flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tsp Penzeys baking spice blend
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
½ cup low-fat buttermilk
1 capful Penzeys Mexican vanilla
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained, or frozen blueberries

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. In a small bowl or baggie, gently toss the blueberries with 1 tablespoon of flour.

In a medium bowl, blend flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and baking spice. In a large bowl, stir mashed bananas, buttermilk, butter, vanilla, and egg together. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture just until evenly moistened; the batter will be very thick. Gently stir in blueberry mixture.

Glop batter into a greased 8-cup bundt pan or 9x5 loaf pan. Bake bread in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes. Let bread cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and turn over onto rack to cool completely, about 45 minutes.

Best served warm with a big mug of tea.

Crazy Cooking Challenge: Cheesecake

August’s Crazy Cooking Challenge was cheesecake. Cheesecake. In August. Eek! August means heat and stickiness. It means huddling over the air conditioner vent with a sweaty glass of iced tea, day-dreaming about ice cold melon and popsicles. There was just no way I was going to be able to bake or eat a cheesecake (The Husband wishes you to know that, if I really loved him, I would have baked a cheesecake and he, out of love for me, would have eaten it all).

I tried a couple no-bake cheesecake recipes, but they either just didn't turn out good enough for the Crazy Cooking Challenge or were so appallingly bad that I can't bear to think about them. August 7 crept steadily closer and I was still without a recipe. So what to do?

I turned, as I always turn, to my library’s cookbook collection and Jacques Pepin's More Fast Food My Way was my salvation. I would make "Mini Savory Cheesecakes on Arugula or Butterhead Lettuce" and my taste buds would be so happy. Yes, I would still run my oven, but only for twenty minutes and I could live with that, because ... blue cheese. Le fromage bleu. Délicieux!

I know, you're thinking "Savory cheesecakes? What the heck?" Normally, we think of cheesecake as a decadent sweet to be enjoyed as a dessert, studded with chocolate or glazed with fruit. But, why not a savory cheesecake for a light lunch or appetizer?


If you're going to make this recipe, I strongly suggest watching the accompanying episode first as there are a few differences between how the recipe is written and how it is filmed. For instance, the video calls for adding about ¼ cup crumbled blue cheese to the cheesecake batter, plus some on top before baking and the written recipe just wants it on top. Claudine omits the bread crumbs (and I did, too). Also, the video says the savory cheesecakes can be served hot or lukewarm -- they fall as they cool, but they still taste good.

Boy, do the ever! Mine never puffed up as much as Pepin's, but they still taste outstandingly good. The strong blue cheese is tempered somewhat by the sour cream and cream cheese and the tangy salad vinaigrette partners well with it all. While I used reduced fat blue cheese crumbles and light sour cream in this recipe, the cheesecake still tastes rich and decadent -- also, unexpectedly light (almost fluffy) which it's squat, puck-like appearance belies.

Imperfectly Delicious Oreo Cheesecake Pudding Bites

August's Crazy Cooking Challenge is cheesecake and straight away I knew I would need a recipe for a bite-size no-bake cheesecake, because ... August. August is not for baking nor is it for heavy food like cheesecake.

Happily, I found a recipe at Cooking Classy for no-bake "Oreo Cheesecake Bites" that looked like it would be perfect for the challenge. We like Oreos. We love cheesecake. We adore bite-size nibbles.

So cute!

Unfortunately, I immediately ran into a big problem -- none of the grocery stores near me sold 3.4 oz packages of cheesecake flavored instant pudding mix. The closest thing I could find was 1 oz Jell-O brand sugar-free instant cheesecake pudding mix at Target.

I decided to give it a go but fudge the amount of liquid, because I worried that using the smaller box would mean a soupier filling if I used the original amounts of liquid. So, instead of 1 cup heavy cream and ¾ cup milk, I used 1 cup heavy cream and ¼ (1%) milk. This sounds logical, doesn't it? Well, it didn't work. My cheesecake filling was still very pudding like and leaving it in the freezer for 20 minutes (instead of 10) didn't noticeably improve it.

Mind you, it still tasted very good -- gooey Oreo cheesecake filling cannot taste bad as it contains both Oreos and cheesecake and those things are never bad -- and we were happy enough to eat the bites, imperfect as they might be.

Because the recipe made 30 and there are only 2 of us, I made 6 bites and stored the rest of the filling in my frosting gun in the freezer so that 1) the filling would hopefully set-up more as time went on and 2) we could make more bites whenever we pleased. If the filling doesn't set up more overnight, I'll just make cheesecake parfaits by layering the gooey filling with crushed Oreos and whipped cream.

Eek! Two days left to find another cheesecake recipe! To the library!

Consolatory Cupcakes for Breakfast

Over the weekend, The Husband learned a terrible truth -- the prettiest cupcakes are not always the tastiest. He'd gone out Saturday afternoon and acquired sushi and cupcakes, so that I would not need to cook when I came home from work all tired and cranky. The sushi was delicious, but the cupcakes were not. They were yellow cupcakes filled with raspberry-flavored goo and topped with about three inches of pink raspberry buttercream decorated with a mint leaf and fresh raspberry. They were very pretty.

They did not taste good. The cake was dry and crumbly. The filling was the same red goo used to fill donuts -- there was a whiff of artificial raspberry about it, but otherwise it was just overwhelmingly sweet and sticky and red. The vanilla frosting tower was stiff and almost gritty with sugar. Overall, they were simply Unfortunate Cupcakes. I felt sad for The Husband, but it was a lesson he had to learn sometime. You shouldn't buy baked goods based on pretty.

So I woke up Sunday morning with cupcakes and The Husband's happiness on my mind. I had a box of Betty Crocker Fun da-Middles "Chocolate Cupcake with Creamy Vanilla Filling" mix squirrelled away in my baking cupboard since before Christmas. They couldn't possibly come out worse that Saturday night's cupcakes and might make a nice breakfast. Yes, indeed, cupcakes for Sunday breakfast!

It was easy to make this mix as it goes together like every other Betty Crocker cake mix -- eggs, oil, water, cake mix, stir, stir, stir.

Put two tablespoons of cake batter in each cupcake liner.

Add a splodge of filling to each cup.

Top with the remaining batter. The box says it's important to completely cover the filling which was a bit of a bugger for me as my "two tablespoons of cupcake batter" had been a bit on the heaping side and there nearly wasn't enough batter to go 'round in the end.

Since I was using a non-stick pan, I baked the cupcakes at 325°F for 26 minutes and they came out perfect. Not very pretty, mind you, but pretty delicious.

Fluffy and chocolaty with a marshmallowy middle, these cupcakes were significantly better than Saturday's bakery cupcakes. Which is kind of a sad thing to write, really, but think of all the money we'll save.

Of course, now that I've made these cupcakes, I'd like to try making some filled cupcakes from scratch. I'm thinking that all I really need in order to clone these particular Betty Crocker cupcakes is a good chocolate cupcake recipe and a container of marshmallow cream ...

First Cake of '12

Started 2012 on a sweet note with "Raspberry Buttermilk Cake" from the June 2009 Gourmet.  This is  a dynamite emergency cake for those days when you crave a fast, fruity, homemade cake. What? You never have cake emergencies? Well, we have them a lot in our house! Cake goes with everything, you see. So everything needs cake.

Although the recipe calls for vanilla extract, I used Cook's pure red raspberry extract for extra raspberry-ness. You could just as easily use orange or almond or what have you depending on the kind of berry you use in the cake. Yes, it's officially "Raspberry Buttermilk Cake," but there's no reason it couldn't be blackberry or cranberry, instead. The recipe is a forgiving one -- just mess about and make what you like!

While still warm from the oven, we ate this cake plain and then, when properly cooled, with vanilla ice cream and more raspberries. It's good either way. A lot depends on whether you're eating it as breakfast or as dessert.

A Mix A Week(ish): Barefoot Contessa Brownie Pudding Mix

Alright, so it's been over a month since my last Mix a Week post! No excuse for it, but I haven't bought any more mixes in the interim so I'd say I'm still doing pretty well. I finally decided to get back on track by making up a box of Barefoot Contessa's "Brownie Pudding Mix" that I picked up, ohhhh, last year at one of Stonewall Kitchen's clearance sales.

This mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble -- all I needed, besides the mix, was two sticks of butter and four eggs. Everything comes together in under ten minutes and bakes for an hour. The cake is ready to eat as soon as it comes out of the oven, which is awesome for us impatient type -- no standing around the kitchen, staring at a cooling cake, and wondering just how soon we can nom it.

Baked in a bain-marie! I feel sophisticated!

Ooey-gooey chocolate decadence.

Yum!

And pretty tasty, too -- crusty on the top with a soft, sweet center -- but it still can't hold a candle to King Arthur Flour's lava cakes which have a richer, deeper flavor.

And, happily, I still have two boxes of King Arthur's mix in my pantry!

Easy Autumnal Bundt

Tuesday was National Bundt Day and, to celebrate, I made an apple-walnut bundt using About.com's recipe for "Apple Cake." I substituted King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour for half the all-purpose and added in a ¼ teaspoon each of ground allspice, mace, cinnamon, and ginger, but otherwise followed the recipe as written.

This bundt bakes at 325°F for 90 minutes and I was worried that it wouldn't bake through at such a low temperature, but the cake tester came out clean at the 90-minute mark and the cake certainly looked done. I let it sit in the bundt pan for about 10 minutes, then slid it out and let it cool on a rack for an hour.

When I bring a cake to work, I usually slice it and arrange it on a platter as unsliced cake will just sit, untouched for hours, on the staff table while sliced cake immediately disappears in an explosion of crumbs and discarded napkins. I presume it's a psychological thing -- no-one wants to cut their own slice lest they be declared greedy guts by their coworkers, but if the cake is already in slices, then it's not their fault?

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Peppermint Whoopie Pie

I had planned on baking up a box of King Arthur Flour's Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars this past weekend to keep up with my Mix A Week Challenge, but The Husband complained so bitterly about me not baking anything he could eat (hello? last week's cookies?) that I caved and offered to make up the boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pies mix instead. My offer was not completely altruistic as I realized baking whoopie pies meant I got to try out my new whoopie pie pans!

Aren't they cute? Nonstick, lightweight, and perfectly sized. Stonewall Kitchen sells 'em, but I bought mine off on Amazon -- $13.36 each plus free Prime shipping and no sales tax.

The mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble. It took five minutes to make each batch of batter and only ten minutes for the cakes to bake. Yes, they did have to cool for about half an hour before I could fill and assemble them, but that gave me plenty of time to make the filling and read a little of Emma Donoghue's Inseparable. Indeed, it took so little time to make these whoopie pies that I ended up making both boxes. That's sixteen peppermint whoopie pies -- enough for The Husband and work.

My only complaint was that the mix did not provide enough crushed peppermint candies to properly coat the edges of all the whoopie pies, but this was easily fixed by crushing up some peppermint candy canes I found in the back of our candy cupboard.

Yes, we have a candy cupboard. Doesn't everyone?

Nine baking mixes down, eight to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

This weekend, in keeping with my Mix A Week challenge, I made a batch of Stonewall Kitchen's Red Velvet Whoopie Pie mix. Whoopie pies and red velvet everything were incredibly trendy last year and I'm guessing Stonewall Kitchen thought to cash in on two trends with one mix. Certainly, I remember snatching up a box of the mix as soon as I walked into the shop.

Is it a cake mix? Is it prettily packaged in Stonewall Kitchen bling? Is it on sale? I will purchase it and bring it home. Then I will shove it in a cupboard and ignore it for six months. Oh, Stonewall Kitchen, I wish I knew how to quit you!

Other than by developing a terrible food allergy.

The mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble. It probably took five minutes to make the batter, once the butter was softened, and only ten minutes for the cakes to bake. Yes, they did have to cool for about half an hour before I could fill and assemble them, but that gave me plenty of time to make the filling and do the washing up.

I liked these whoopie pies pretty well. While filled with the anathema that is vanilla butter cream frosting ("true" whoopie pie has a marshmallowy frosting, imho), they were very light and flavorful in an inverted-cupcake way. I was also really pleased with how precisely the recipe worked out -- it really did make twenty-four cakes and enough filling to make exactly twelve whoopie pies. I thought, with my skills, I would surely end up with half an unfilled whoopie pie!

The Husband said that, while these whoopie pies didn't taste that chocolaty, he would be happy to eat a lot of them. Indeed, he went on to say he could eat a lot of them every day -- although that might get a bit samey, so I should probably mix them up with another kind of whoopie pie! Oh, The Husband, he is so lucky I have two boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pie mix waiting to be made up.

Four mixes down, thirteen to go!

A Mix A Week: Barefoot Contessa Orange Pound Cake

Sometimes, after getting a cookie or cake mix home, I experience a bitterly unhappy "WTF??" moment when I realize that preparing the mix is almost as complicated as baking it from scratch. Blame it on years of Betty Crocker cake mixes, but I don't want to do much more than add liquids and stir when using a mix. I don't want have to zest or juice two blessed oranges or bring eggs to room temperature. Frankly, I'd be ecstatic if I didn't have to bring a stick of butter to room temperature.

Yes, when it comes to mixes, I am the laziest baker that ever lived.

So there was a lot of cussing and bitching in my kitchen when I finally got around to making Barefoot Contessa's orange pound cake mix. I softened butter, I put eggs in a bowl of warm water, I zested oranges, I juiced oranges, I made glazes, I swore bitterly about fiddly f-ing mixes. I vowed I would never make this mix again.

And, you know, it is a pretty decent pound cake. Dense, moist, fragrantly orange. We've enjoyed eating it (The Husband said it was just as good as Sara Lee!), but baking it made me so completely and irrationally annoyed that I don't think I'd attempt it again.

We've been eating the orange pound cake with unsweetened whipped cream and berries from the farmers market -- a combination that would make any mix-based cake seem quite awesome, I kid you not.

And that's two mixes down, fifteen more to go.

It's Not a Birthday Without Cake

Today was The Husband's birthday (and the first day of Spring -- how great is that?) and while we ate out a bunch of times over the weekend and partaken of many sweet Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a birthday just isn't properly a birthday without cake.

I made this cake using Betty Crocker's recipe for Chocolate-Strawberry Cake with Fluffy Frosting. I had seen a fabulous photo for it in Berry Crocker's flickr photostream a few weeks ago and just knew I had to make it for The Husband as he loves strawberries and chocolate.

While my cake did not turn out as pretty as Betty Crocker's -- I ended up smooshing leftover morsels to the side of the cake to hide my lacklustre frosting job -- it came out pretty darn yummy and I look forward to making it again. I'm pretty sure this recipe could be modified to use different SuperMoist® cake mixes and I'm thinking I might make it with French vanilla cake mix and raspberries ...

Free Cake is Always Good Cake?

While I'm not currently eating things like cakes and cookies, I have a lot of baking stuff cluttering up my kitchen. What to do with it all? Why, make delicious things for my coworkers! I don't know if librarians as whole have a heightened attraction to sweets or if it's just the that stress of working with the public makes us crave sugary carbs, but free cake always goes down well.


Over the long holiday weekend, I made "Noel Fruitcake" from Bundt Classics (Nordic Ware, 2003) with a few tweaks. My coworkers say the cake came out really tasty, but they can be like ravening jackals when it comes to these things and it's hard to know whether they enjoyed the bundt because it was good or simply because it was there in the staff room.

Noel Fruitcake, Modified

1 cup King Arthur Flour's Our Favorite Fruitcake Blend
2 Tbsp Captain Morgan Parrot Bay Pineapple Rum
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 egg
2 cups King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground mace
½ tsp ground allspice
1 cup chopped walnuts

Combine dried fruit and brandy, cover and let sit overnight.

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour bundt pan (I used a 10-cup and was too big, but I think there's too much batter for a 6-cup).

Cream together sugar and butter until butter is light and fluffy. Add eggs and applesauce, mix well. Batter will look curdled and disgusting -- this is normal.

Add all remaining ingredients, except nuts and fruit, and mix well. Mix in nuts in fruit and spoon into prepared bundt pan.

Bake for 50 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pan and allow to cool completely on rack. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap to store. This cake is best made a few days ahead of time.

Next week, I think I will feed them "Honey Spice Cake" from Bundt Classics as several of them have lamented the lack of spice cake in their lives (seriously).

First Cake of '11

Thought I'd start 2011 on a sweet note!

"The Darkest Chocolate Cake Ever" from Bundt Classics (Nordic Ware, 2003) with chocolate glazed drizzled down each curve. While I'm not a chocoholic, I am rather partial to this cake as it is neither as dark nor as decadent as its name might suggest.

While the recipe calls for almond extract, I used Penzeys Mexican Vanilla. You could just as easily use orange or mint with a vanilla or peppermint glaze. Chocoholics could even use chocolate extract for a deeper chocolate flavor (although that might be gilding the lily a bit).

Pan is the Heritage Bundt® Cake Pan "exclusive" to Williams-Sonoma. It is my favorite cake pan -- so simply elegant and the edges have great definition.

Hot Chocolate Yumminess

See that yummy, oozing, chocolate goodness over on the left?  I made six of those all by myself Tuesday afternoon.  I was in the mood to bake something, The Husband was in the mood to eat a baked something, and I was darned if a wheelchair and a poorly arranged kitchen were going to stop me.  If I could manage brownies two weeks ago, I could certainly manage tiny chocolate cakes on Tuesday.

I made these using King Arthur Flour's Chocolate Lava Cake Mix which is an incredibly easy and delicious cake mix. Seriously, you can have hot chocolate goodness in your tummy in under thirty minutes and the people you share them with (should you choose to share them) will think you are a baking master worthy of much adoration. They are darkly, bitterly sweet and gooey .... oh, just thinking about them makes me salivate and I don't really like chocolate that much.

Step 1
Preheat your oven and assemble all ingredients:
melted unsalted butter, hot water, eggs, cake mix.

Knowing pots were beyond my ken, I used the microwave to melt the butter and heat the water. One minute in the microwave made the water nice and hot, without being dangerous. Can you imagine what kind of mischief I could have gotten up to with an electric kettle?

(It was bad enough that, by the time I was done measuring it out, I looked like I'd taken a bath in the dry mix).

Step 2
Whisk together the hot water and dry cake mix, then add the melted butter,  whisk some more, and add the eggs (one at a time).

If you're a super clever baker, you'll have cracked the eggs into a measuring cup and so you'll just pour them, one at a time, into the batter.  I am not a clever baker, so cracked and plopped as I went.

Step 3
Evenly divide the batter among the greased ramekins, wipe off any spillage, and put them on a jelly roll pan. Slide the pan into the middle of your preheated oven and bake for 14 - 18 minutes.

You want to remove the ramekins from the oven when the tops of the cakes are still a bit jiggly in the middle -- usually at 17 minutes for my oven, but ovens vary so you might want to start checking at 14.

(The Husband removed the pan from the oven for me, lest I throw all my "hard work" on the kitchen floor).

Step 4
Let the ramekins sit for 5 minutes, then run a butter knife around the edge of each cake to help it "decant" more easily. Invert a dessert plate or saucer over the top of a hot ramekin, grab the ramekin and plate with a tea towel, and flip.  Lift the ramekin and admire the pretty cake nestled in the middle of the plate. Repeat for as many cakes as you plan on serving.

Step 5
Top each cake with a splodge of fresh, unsweetened whipped cream and nom.

(If you're feeling guilty, a sprinkling of fresh raspberries could certainly help healthify things).

Extra cakes keep well in the fridge. Just wrap each ramekin in cling wrap and store until needed. When craving strikes, reheat in the microwave for about 25 seconds or until the cake is soft and center is molten.

Mom's Tomato Soup Cake

For as far back as I can remember, my mother has been making tomato soup cake.   Usually, it makes its appearance in the autumn or around Christmas, but she has also been known to bake it for special visitors.  I guess you could think of it as an old-fashioned company cake. Dense, spicy, and nutty, it's probably more of a tea loaf than a cake, but cake is what we've always called it.

We were discussing weird recipes at work and, when I mentioned my mother's cake, several people seemed horrified.  Soup does not go in cake, I was told.  Neither do tomatoes.  Tomato soup cake must be some kind of travesty played out by people who don't really like cake.

Of course, the next time I saw my mother, I had her copy out her recipe so I could make tomato soup cake for my co-workers and show them how wrong they are.  Then, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my ankle and ... well, I won't be baking for a while.

Nonetheless, I give you my mother's tomato soup cake recipe just as she has written it down.  My mother bakes a lot of things more from memory than recipe now, so I cannot guarantee this recipe will yield loaves identical to those which leave her oven.

Mom's Tomato Soup Cake

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
1 10¾ oz. can condensed tomato soup
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans are good)
1 cup raisins (golden or brown both work fine)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

In a large bowl sift flour and baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; set aside. In another large bowl, cream together the oil and sugar till smooth. Whisk in the tomato soup. Slowly add flour mixture to oil and soup mixture. Beat just until combined. Fold in nuts and raisins; pour into prepared loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Makes 1 loaf. Double for a bundt cake.

Too Many Satsumas!

Someone was not keeping up with his end of our satsuma-consumption agreement and a few wee fruits started to mummify themselves in the fruit bowl. When faced with mummifying citrus, I usually ream them and use the juices to baste roasting poultry or salmon, but I wasn't in the mood for anything savory when I set out to find a use for these poor satsumas. No, I wanted something sweet. Something The Husband might like. Something like .... cake.

"Moroccan Orange Cake" turned out pretty amazing and, because it uses oil instead of softened butter, was pretty instant for a not-from-mix cake. The most complicated part was zesting and juicing the satsumas to get the amounts called for -- of course, I had no idea how much zest an orange should yield so merely zested all the satsumas I planned to juice (four satsumas yield a half cup of fragrant juice).

This cake was delicious -- fragrant, moist, and with good crumb. While it would be easy to glaze this cake with a little orange juice and confectionery sugar, I feel the cake is fine without it. We ate the cake, still slightly warm, with vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream, but it would probably be fine all on its own with a glass of milk.

(One thing I really love about bundt cakes, is that it is so easy to portion them out! Based on the bumps in my pan, this cake makes either twelve generous or twenty-four sensible servings).

Arr, It Be Fruitcake Season!

Finally, mere days before Christmas, I have baked my first fruitcake! Used King Arthur Flour’s recipe for "Orange-Cranberry-Nut Fruit Cake"and it worked out really well considering I decided to bake fruitcake at eleven o'clock at night. Oh, the madness!

No doubt, sensible bakers will decry late-night baking as a bad idea and they might be right, but that has not stopped me yet. Late-night baking is a character builder and reinforces basic cookery techniques. Techniques like assembling all ingredients before beginning the baking process lest, at an inopportune moment, I discover I am short an ingredient which cannot be acquired in the middle of the night ...

KAF's recipe called for ½ cup brandy, cranberry juice, or water. To my horror, I was out of brandy! Neither water nor cranberry juice were acceptable options as, in my mind, fruitcake = cake with fruit and booze. Happily, a rummage through my liquor supply turned up the next best thing -- a bottle of Pineapple Jack Pineapple Coconut Rum leftover from last year's fruitcake adventure. Microwaving the dried fruits with rum made my kitchen smell marvellous!

When baking this cake:

• I used a fifty-fifty blend of King Arthur Flour's organic all-purpose and white whole wheat flour for this cake -- I was worried using just whole white wheat would be too noticeable (I need not have worried as the other ingredients are so flavorful, the cake bits fade right into the background).
• I also used orange extract instead of orange oil, as I did not have any.
• It was impossible to add the undrained fruit, candied cherries, and nuts to my batter without killing my KitchenAid, so I dumped everything into my big meatloaf bowl and gave it a good stir (this happened with last year's fruitcake, as well).
• In the end, I omitted the glaze (worried it would make the cake too sweet) and just drenched my warm, beautiful cake with rum before letting it sit overnight.

(The Husband suggested I pour the whole bottle of rum over my cake and set it on fire. I had never heard of torching fruitcake, but he seemed certain it is an English Tradition. It is possible he was confusing fruitcake with Christmas pudding).

In the morning, I cut off a generous chunk and had it for breakfast with a glass of milk. Yummy. So fruity and nutty with just the barest hint of rum. Definitely, a keeper.