cake

It’s a Sponge!

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

“When the occasion calls for a light, sweet dessert, this delicious orange sponge cake is a perfect choice. Stiffly beaten eggs–first the whites, then the yolks–are the secret of its light, airy texture.”

Thus begins the intro to “the best-ever orange sponge cake” according to the McCall’s Cooking School in its 1984 recipe cards series. I have several of these cards (pages) because they came in the mail as promotional material with the hope that one would subscribe and receive a packet of recipes monthly eventually becoming an entire cookbook. Well, I just saved the pages that I got for free!

I decided to make the cake. I do not do well making sponge or chiffon cakes. I like butter cakes and do pretty good with them. In my past efforts to make sponge cakes they turn out like hockey pucks and inedible. Perhaps my baking skills have improved. I am counting on it as I begin this bake. I figure that a sponge has no butter and actually has less sugar than my usual butter cakes so that is a good thing.

In baking I may change up flavorings but generally follow the instructions exactly. Baking is a science, flavoring is the art.

  • 6 egg whites, brought to room temperature
  • 1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour, sift before measuring
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 6 tablespoons fresh orange juice (silly me, I only measured out 3!)
  • 1 tablespoon freshly grated orange peel

In large bowl of electric mixer beat the egg whites until foamy then gradually beat in 1/2 cup of the sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat until stiff peaks form. Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift the sifted flour with the salt onto a plate or sheet of waxed paper; set aside.

In another bowl beat the egg yolks until very thick and lemon-colored, no less than 3 minutes. Do not underbeat. Gradually beat in remaining 1 cup of sugar and continue beating until smooth. At low speed alternately blend flour mixture and orange juice into the egg yolk mixture, starting and ending with the flour. Add orange peel.

Sponge and miracle whip potato salad 009

Now gently fold yolk mixture into egg whites. I never know if I have adequately folded this together. I did not want to deflate the egg whites but did not want the batter to be unblended.

 

Prepare the pan. The instructions are to use an ungreased 9 3/4 by 4 inch kugelhopf pan. Or a tube pan without removable bottom. So I use a bundt pan. If desired, one can spray the pan with cooking spray but after baking do not invert over bottle to let cool. Just put it on a rack to cool completely and then remove from pan by running a spatula around the edge of the cake.

Dust with powdered sugar, cut and serve. Success is mine! It is light and airy and has a light orange taste. Hubby says “moist, orangey”, at first he said “lemony” so perhaps the other 3 tablespoons of orange juice is needed. But he likes it, and so do I.

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Best Ever Chocolate Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 9 Comments

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This is the cake my Mom always made. It has become a staple of my household as well. In 2007, when looking through her multitude of recipe clippings I found the newspaper clipping that she kept, had written “Best Ever” on the side of the clipping, and then had typed into her own recipe notebook. I have made a scrapbook page to grace the cover of one of my most organized recipe notebooks. I had printed a copy of this recipe and kept it on the inside door of a kitchen cabinet at one time when I was raising my kids!

I had somewhat decided that I would not make desserts for a while as I have gained a bit of weight over the past three months. Most likely due to Holiday baking but also due to the lack of usual physical movement due to this broken ankle. It is partially healed but will need a bit more time. Aye yi yi!  However I needed an excuse to try out the newest Buttercream frosting from Nila at http://thetoughcookie.com/2016/02/08/how-to-make-swiss-buttercream-swiss-meringue-buttercream/. 

So Best Ever Chocolate Cake is my “go to” recipe but I did not want a big cake to sit around my kitchen for me to nibble away on all week! I decide to make half the recipe (it divides very nicely) and make 12 cupcakes. I can always send the “leftovers” to work with hubby.

best ever cakes 016Original ingredients: (full recipe)

  • 1 cup lard or shortening
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 beaten eggs
  • 1 cup sour milk
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

And Mom’s version:

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Mom would have used shortening or oleomargarine.  Mom would make cake for Sunday supper. She would bake most of her cakes including this one in a 9 x 13 baking pan. She would sprinkle on powdered sugar. And here’s how to serve cake: cut the cake into two parts. Cut one part into six equal pieces. We kids thought “equal” was very important! Serve the family (2 parents, 4 children) dessert. Save the other half of the cake until the next night’s supper and do the same thing. Mom had a similar approach to those rare occasions when she bought ice cream from the grocery store. This was when the package was a rectangle and a full half gallon! She would open the rectangle flat. She would slice the rectangle of ice cream into six equal (emphasis again on the equal) parts and serve the family. The flattened open box was then put on the floor for the cat to have her treat.

Over the years I have altered the ingredients from time to time. I use butter now and not shortening. I usually keep buttermilk in the fridge so that can be used instead of sour milk. At times, recently, I use coffee instead of the hot water. I once “improved” the recipe using Shirley Corriher’s book Bakewise for the “scientific” version based on ratios and weights of flour, sugar, eggs, and fat. That required more eggs and using half butter and half oil. If I remember correctly that cake was more evenly baked, the top was not puffed up and the color was slightly lighter as was the texture. I think my son liked that cake.

Even though I had intended to only make a dozen cupcakes I thought it would be interesting to make the original (I have lard in my fridge to use!) and then make my more “modern” version. There will be family home for dinner tonight to test these on.

For the first set I use lard (I am not going to use oleo), regular cocoa, and make the sour milk. I even sift the dry ingredients together. For the second batch I use butter, buttermilk, coffee, and Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa. I whisk the dry ingredients together. Otherwise I use the same method for mixing the batter as per the original clipping. This is how mom taught me. She also had me sift the dry ingredients three times and only stir the batter clockwise. We did not always have an electric mixer available.

There is a definite color difference. The “modern” version rose a little higher as well but not too much so. I will have to remember which are which once I frost them!

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Now that I think about it, I could have piped the buttercream on one batch and spread it on the other!

Let us see what the family thinks. They were excited about the experiment. We spent 10-15 minutes in discussion and deliberation after dinner. My son had grown up eating this cake. His first response was that both tasted like he remembered. Hubby liked the darker version because it looked as if it would be richer and more chocolaty. Stepdaughter (I hate the prefix “step” but it is what it is!) liked the look of the lighter brown one and noted that it had a nice “muffin top” which was appealing. Everyone thought that if they were presented on different days and not in comparison with each other, the difference would not be evident.

Results: The lighter brown cupcake was the original recipe. The darker brown was my modernized version. The modernized version was described as moist. The original version was cakey. There  was no discernible taste difference. After several cupcakes were tested, and devoured, with and without the frosting, the preference was for the original recipe. When the changes were described the suggestion was to make the original but use butter and buttermilk. This is exactly how I have been making this cake for the past 10 plus years!

 

 

 

Musings from my Kitchen Table

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

For the past 8 or so weeks I have started my day sitting at my kitchen table contemplating the day at home, out of work due to my broken ankle. If hubby had coffee before leaving for work there is a thermos of coffee waiting for me. If not, that is the first thing I’ll make. I have a journal that I write down what I would like to accomplish on that day or that week. My “to do” lists rarely have been checked off completely. From my kitchen table I can see the stove, the pile of dishes in the sink, the cats eating their food, and my cabinets full of cookbooks.

In the weeks before Christmas the list was full of sewing projects, cookies to bake, and gifts needed. I wheeled around the house in my sewing desk chair preparing for the holiday. Then the holidays came and family was around and it was great fun. The ankle pain had died down mostly by then but for occasional twinges and achiness. After the Christmas holiday my son was home and we talked some, he played piano a lot, and I trusted him to drive my car. It is a standard shift and he learned and mostly drives automatic. We cooked a little bit together, watched Jeopardy and football, and he cooked some meals for us.

So after the New Year I expected to be healed and well on my way back to work. Did not happen! Another 4 weeks for healing the bone was needed. So here I am, sitting at my kitchen table in the mornings planning out my day. There is no holiday to prepare for. It is only bleak winter.

The son left for vacation. He decided to see Vietnam. I went to High School and college in the 1970s. My brother had a low draft number the year they stopped the draft. Saigon fell in 1975. There was a flooding of refugees. Do you know the oddness of feelings when there is the thought “my son left for Vietnam this morning”? (Mothers of my parents’ generation dealt with that for the many years of the war. I am ever grateful that my family was saved from the ravages of that war. Many were not spared.)

Bleak winter calls for soup. This is a barley soup from the back of the barley package. I use my regular substitutes: potatoes for parsnips, spinach for kale, northern white beans for the cannellini, Italian seasoning for the basil. With soup, the exact ingredients are not essential for successful outcome. Throw whatever you have around the house in a pot of broth!

Sitting in my kitchen I like to plan supper. I don’t want to wait until the end of the day to decide. Sometimes I do, though very seldom. I brought my computer in here so I could take care of household business. But I also peruse all sorts of wonderful recipes from you fellow bloggers as well as the King Arthur Flour website and blogs. I have gotten used to baking something or trying a recipe each day.

The other day I was contemplating brownies. Today I am contemplating chocolate cake. I was even thinking I could make a cake and send my sister a picture of it for her birthday at the end of this week. “Give” her a birthday cake!? Hubby does not have a sweet tooth like mine. I would eat 80% of the cake when and if I make one. What to do? I revisit the desserts for two website: www.dessertfortwo.com . Here I can find small batches of chocolate desserts. Brownies or cakes, which will it be?

And I have been thinking about frozen raspberries as well. And here is where other bloggers become my inspiration. I rarely make one of the recipes exactly but I will give credit to the inspirers! http://bitesize-bakes.com/2016/01/26/raspberry-buttercream-layer-cake/ and http://www.dessertfortwo.com/2011/09/one-bowl-chocolate-cake/ and http://sugarbcupcakes.com/2016/01/21/chocolate-raspberry-ganache-cake/

MusingsChocCake 008I get out the closest thing to a six inch cake pan that I can find. This is a 7-inch cast iron skillet to make the one-bowl-chocolate-cake:

  • 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (I am using Hershey’s Special Dark since the only other chips I have are bittersweet chocolate)
  • ½ cup seedless raspberry jam
  • ¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt

Grease and flour the pan. Melt butter; stir in chocolate until melted; add the jam and sugar and stir well; add the egg and stir until well blended. Sprinkle on the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Bake 43 to 45 minutes at 350 F. My cake took only 40 minutes. The directions say to let cool completely before trying to slice. I turn it out on a plate. Tasting the crumbs from the bottom of the pan finds that there is definitely a raspberry taste to this chocolate cake.

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Meanwhile plan the frosting! With the Raspberries! Should it be pink or chocolate? When getting the raspberries from my freezer I find that I have a container of chocolate frosting leftover from the birthday cake made in early December. (I hate throwing food of any kind away.) So I take some raspberries for decoration and put the rest with this frosting, thawed of course. I whip that up to blend and then chill it a bit for spreading consistency. Now to wait for the cake to cool completely. Otherwise the frosting will melt and become more of a glaze. That’s not a bad idea, but, no, I’ll wait.

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Looks very rich and yummy! I could whip up some cream to serve with it. This small cake should make dessert for two for two nights.

(While finishing this up the KAF shopping magazine came in the mail, with a chocolate sheet cake recipe in it! Another cake next week?)

Birthday Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

I have the privilege of making the birthday cake for my granddaughter’s second birthday party. What to make? I had recently organized some photos and found some of my daughter and there was one of her third birthday and the cake I made then. And it is in the shape of my granddaughter’s favorite word: cat!

afterThanksgivingCakeHumility 014
1986

This is right out of Betty Crocker. I don’t remember making neither the cake from scratch, nor the frosting but this time it will be. But it is not easy to decide on which cake recipe to make. I am thinking that the cake made for son-in-law’s birthday was a bit denser than I would like for this cake. Perhaps I should just use a Betty Crocker recipe for a white or yellow cake. Food for thought!

So I decide to peruse my Mom’s recipe notebook, the one with her typed recipes and clippings. I have only used two of the recipes in the cake section, Best Ever Chocolate and Mayonnaise. What else is there? There is a booklet published in 1967 by the Betty Crocker company, whoever they may be, all about the perfect cake from scratch and mix.

There is even a quiz on the back to rate your cake. How cool is that! I also found a description of the “regular way” for mixing a cake. This is your standard cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, sift dry ingredients together and add alternating with the milk. Now I just need to find a description of the “mix easy” method.

afterThanksgivingCakeHumility 015In preparation to make the “old fashioned” cake from the Betty Crocker booklet, I need to make my own cake flour. Every once and a while I will buy this stuff, but rarely, and I do not have any on hand at the moment. This is easy to do. Replace two tablespoons of each cup of flour with cornstarch. Sift thoroughly. This particular cake recipe makes it easy. Just replace the ¼ cup with cornstarch and use two cups of regular all-purpose flour. Pretty handy dandy, I’d say.

Making the cake: ah hah! This is the “modern method”, one bowl, super quick! Mix together all the dry ingredients. Add exactly 2/3 of the milk, the shortening/butter and flavorings and beat for 2 minutes, or 300 strokes. Add the two unbeaten eggs and the rest of the liquid and beat for another 2 minutes. Pour batter into pans and bake 30 minutes at 350 F. There is a footnote in the booklet that says to add cocoa and baking soda, if the recipe calls for it, with the dry ingredients.

Looks nice in and out of the pans. I used baking spray with flour added so the one cake did not turn out of the pan perfectly. Luckily I will frost these and that should take care of that.

Decorating the cake is a challenge. I could not find licorice whips just twizzlers. I could pull those apart…or buy thin pretzel sticks for the whiskers. I am using vanilla wafers for the eyes and paws as that is what I did 30 years ago. Perhaps using frosting pens to draw the nose, mouth, and outline the ears and paws. I finally chose to use red pull apart Twizzlers. I make a chocolate pudding type frosting and then decorate.

Voila!skylarbirthday 001

Like mother, like daughter!