What better way to have your coffee (and tea) with this rich, yeasted cake?
Tag Archives: cake
Mexican chocolate brownies topped with pine nuts
Saturday, 5 July 2014
I first encountered this brownie while perusing Sunset Magazine many years ago. Alice Medrich’s brownie recipes from Seriously Bitter Sweet (2013) also provided helpful measurement tips. Furthermore, I added a nice, warming kick of chile powder—i.e., ground dried red chile peppers, not the spice mix containing additions of cumin and oregano.
Dark gingerbread cake with rum and citrus
Sunday, 25 May 2014
This recipe has been sitting in my files for years, and while we’re on the cusp of summer, gingerbread cake is a comforting reminder of what is behind us—and something to look forward to. This cake uses a lot of ginger, both fresh and powdered, and you could use either oranges or lemons for the […]
Orange cake with browned butter, and draped in chocolate ganache
Thursday, 28 February 2013
[Actually made this cake nearly a year and a half ago!] Browned butter adds a hint of nuttiness to this cake without adding nuts. Because this cake is made with the sponge technique, rather than a creamed-butter-and-sugar one, it’d be drier without a syrup, so I’ve added that as well. Also, because three is such […]
Orange cake with hominy grits & pine nuts
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Packages of hominy grits always seem too large. So, having heard that some cakes are made with polenta, I tried something similar with grits. My recipe resulted a moist yet pleasantly crunchy cake, with a thin sugary crust and pine nuts to add to the crunchiness.
Elderflower cordial & citrus cake
Friday, 19 August 2011
Elderflower has the aroma of spring, and brings respite from the heat of summer. (Even though, admittedly, we’re not having much of summer. But still.) Combining elderflower cordial with lime or lemon juice in a cake has yielded one of my favorite cakes for this and the last season.
Yellow sponge cake: génoise
Friday, 13 May 2011
I’ve been searching for years for a sponge cake recipe. A cake that’s less dense in texture than the typical American butter cakes, that’s not necessarily made by the creaming method, which is to say, by beating soft butter and sugar until creamy and somewhat fluffy, then adding the other ingredients (eggs, flour, etc.). So, […]
Optionally upside down apricot cake
Monday, 29 June 2009
During the peak of last year’s plum season, Elise Bauer’s upside down cake recipe provided us with numerous delicious desserts. The apricots had been long gone, so I was eager to apply her excellent recipe to one of my favorite fruits. This year, it worked out quite well, thank you very much. Rightside-up upside down […]
Chocolate frosting, with mocha & liquor options
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
I’ve often wondered why yellow cake with chocolate frosting is no longer as popular as it was in my childhood. I love the contrast between a simply flavored (vanilla) sponge and a rich frosting of chocolate or coffee. But when I’m at a bakery, grocery store or restaurant, what I usually see is chocolate cake […]
Apricot tea cake
Saturday, 7 July 2007
Just as there’s an abundance of apricots, sometimes there’s a lot of leftover apricot jam. Glazes are great, but they don’t use up much. After flipping through some cookbooks, I got the idea to use apricot jam instead of applesauce to make a tea cake. Unlike applesauce which is usually unsweetened, fruit jams can have […]