Jam Cake

This must be iced with caramel icing! A must-have at Christmas!

1 cp Unsalted butter
2 cp Sugar
5 lg Eggs
3 cp Flour plus 1 tbsp
1 1/2 tsp Allspice
1 1/2 tsp Cloves, ground
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Salt
1 cp Buttermilk
1 tsp Baking soda
1 cp Raisins, chopped
1 cp Black Walnuts, chopped
1 cp Blackberry Jam (Mom insists it must be homemade! We leave the seeds in.)

1. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. (5 minutes)
2. Add the eggs one at a time and combine well after each addition, scraping the bowl occasionally.
3. Into a bowl, sift together 3 cups of flour, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.
4. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk and baking soda.
5. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in batches alternating with the buttermilk mixture, ending with the flour.
6. In a bowl, toss together the raisins, walnuts, and 1 T flour. Stir the mixture into the batter with the jam, stirring until well combined.
7. Line the bottoms of 2 buttered 9-inch cake pans with wax paper and butter the paper.
8. Pour the batter into the pans and bake in the middle of a preheated 325F oven for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
9. Let layers cool in the pans on a rack for 15 minutes, invert them onto the rack and let cool completely.

Banana Crunch Cake

This recipe is from King Arthur Whole Grain Baking. I love it with the topping, but I also make it w/o and put a caramel icing on it, which works because the cake itself is not overly sweet. I've never been a fan of banana cake or banana bread, but this recipe converted me! I especially love the fact that it has no white flour in it. This recipe makes delicious muffins, too. Just be aware that this only makes 4 cups of batter, which is enough for one 8" x 2" square pan. If you want a round cake, you should use a 9" pan. Also, I've only ever made this recipe with walnuts, not pecans, and never used any chocolate or toffee chips.

Cake batter
1 cp (120g) oat flour (or ground oats)
1 cp (120g) whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cp (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp
2/3 cp (132g) packed light or dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
1 cp (225g) mashed banana (2 large or 3 medium), the riper the better
1/2 cp (109g) plain yogurt, non-fat to full-fat
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cp (60g) chopped pecans or walnuts
1 cp (168g) chocolate or toffee chips (optional)

Crunch topping
3/4 cp (60g) old-fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cp (66g) packed light or dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
2 T (28g) unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cp (30g) chopped pecans or walnuts

1. Grease and flour an 8-inch-square pan. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Whisk the flours, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy, ca. 5 minutes.
4. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl between additions.
5. Mix in half the dry ingredients until moistened, then mix int he bananas, yogurt and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and bottowm f the bowl, then add the remaining dry ingredients and the nuts and hcips, if using, mixing until evenly moistened.
6. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan.
7. Make the topping, if using. Combine the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and alt in a small mixing bowl until well blended. Stir int he melted butter until the moisture forms large crumbs; stir in the chopped nuts. Sprinkle the topping over the batter in the pan.
8. Bake unit the edges pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and place on a rack to cool for 20 minutes before serving warm, with ice cream, or cool completely before eating.

Quick Caramel Icing

This is from the Cake Doctor cookbook. I don't know why but sometimes it stays soft. Depending on the weather and consistency of the icing and/or cake and my general icing abilities that day, sometimes I need more than other times, so I double the recipe. Just put what's left into a plastic container in the fridge. When you want to use it, just heat it in the microwave or on the stove or make another batch and add the old to the new at the end. If it's getting hard like it's supposed to, then it makes great pralines with pecans.

Quick Caramel Frosting

12 T butter

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

3/8 cup whole milk

3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put butter and brown sugars in a medium-sized heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir and cook until the mixture comes to a boil, about 2 minutes. Add the milk, stir, and bring the mixture back to a boil, then remove from the heat. Add the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat with a wooden spoon till smooth, returning to a low heat if necessary.

Use immediately to frost cake. If frosting hardens while you’re still frosting the cake, place the pan back over low heat and stir till frosting softens up.

White Cake with Caramel Icing (Blue Ribbon-Winning)

White cake with caramel icing is my mom's favorite cake. This cake recipe is from King Arthur, but I'm too cheap to use their wonderful cake flour, so I just use White Lily all-purpose flour. (You can substitute this for cake flour in any recipe, btw.) This cake is rather dense and not exceedingly moist, so I use a butterscotch schnapps simple syrup on the layers. I use the quick caramel icing recipe from the Cake Doctor cookbook, below. (As a word of warning, sometimes is doesn't want to stick to the cake. I have no idea why. If you do, then let me know! I've grown to view making this cake as simply an exercise in practicing patience.)

White Cake

2 3/4 cup White Lily All-Purpose flour

1 T baking powder

1 3/4 cup superfine sugar (granulated can be ground fine in food processor)

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp almond extract

4 large egg whites

1 large whole egg

1 cup Stonyfield organic full-fat plain yogurt

1.      Preheat oven to 350F.

2.      Grease and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

3.      Combine the dry ingredients, add the softened butter and mix on low speed for 2 minutes.

4.      Meanwhile, combine the wet ingredients.

5.      Add the liquid ingredients one-third at a time, beating on medium speed for 2 minutes after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl in-between each addition and at the end.

6.      Divide batter between pans, tap each pan on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, till a cake tester comes out clean. If the cakes are pulling away from the edges, they’re already over-baked!

7.      Let sit on cooling rack for 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto a rack and then place another rack on top and flip them over. Let cool at least 1 hour before frosting.

Simple Syrup

Heat and stir till sugar is dissolved:

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Set aside to cool. When cooled add:

1/2 cup butterscotch schnapps

When the cakes are cool, level them and brush the tops with simple syrup.

Quick Caramel Frosting

12 T butter

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

3/8 cup whole milk

3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put butter and brown sugars in a medium-sized heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir and cook until the mixture comes to a boil, about 2 minutes. Add the milk, stir, and bring the mixture back to a boil, then remove from the heat. Add the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat with a wooden spoon till smooth, returning to a low heat if necessary.

Use immediately to frost cake. If frosting hardens while you’re still frosting the cake, place the pan back over low heat and stir till frosting softens up.

Russian Salad Dressing (James Beard)

This is Mom's favorite dressing. It tastes delicious with endive and arugula. She swears she got it out of James Beard's American Cookery, but we can't find it in there anywhere!

1/4 cp sugar
3 T water
1 1/2 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
2 1/2 T lemon juice
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T vinegar
1 cp salad oil
1/2 cp catsup
1/4 cp grated onion

In a saucepan, cook sugar and water until it spins a thread, about 230°. Cool syrup. Combine remaining ingredients; add syrup and whisk to blend well. Chill thoroughly.
Makes about 2 cups of Russian dressing for salad.

Volume to Weight Conversions for Baking

I love my kitchen scale because it allows me to dirty fewer bowls and be lazy--physically, that is, but not mentally! All that math! Still, it's so cool to be able to make a recipe of cake batter, weigh one cup and figure out how many cups of batter you have. I guess I'm just a kitchen geek ;-) Well, here are the conversions that I use the most. I often round up if it's really close, like with granulate sugar. I just consider 1 cup of sugar to be 200 g.
                                                   
1 cup all-purpose flour                120g
1 cup granulated sugar                 198g
1 cup packed brown sugar           198g
1 cup powdered sugar                 120g
1 cup cocoa powder                     85g
Butter
    4 T                                      2 oz/57g
    8 T                                    4 oz/113g
   16 T                                   8 oz/227g
1 cup Crisco                                 192g
1 cup sour cream                          242g
1 cup corn syrup                           340g
1 cup mashed banana                    225g
1/4 cup peanut butter                     65g