Gooey Cinnamon Cake

Recently I have spent dozens of hours reading a number of different Paris food blogs in preparation for our trip to Paris at the end of May.  Most of the blogs are dedicated to the Parisian restaurant scene, but David Lebovitz's blog is dedicated to dessert and Paris.  All of the blogs get me all worked up like a little kid on Christmas Eve or like Alex after eating dessert too late at night (i.e. bouncing around and unable to sleep).  We currently have reservations at a few restaurants and I'm pondering my options for our remaining meals.  I'm having trouble narrowing it down because I want to eat everywhere, but I'm going to have to make some tough decisions soon.  I can't wait.  But enough about that - back to David Lebovitz.  I stumbled across his Gooey Cinnamon Cake recipe a few months back but the number of steps/layers that it involved was sufficient deterrent to keep me away.  But I kept coming back to it.  I'm not sure what it was about this cake recipe that kept bringing me back for another look but after my 10th visit I decided that I had had enough.  And that is the story behind this cake.  It's not much of a story, but this cake was inspired by our upcoming trip to Paris (in a rather backwards and roundabout way).

I'm not sure what I expected the cake to taste like, but it strongly reminded me of coffee cake.  And I'm not a huge fan of coffee cake, but I found this cake to be strangely delicious.  Other bloggers have said that these cake squares reminded them of snickerdoodles, which makese sense given the prevalence of the cinnamon.  I expected the upper layer to be a little more buttery and gooey-er than it actually was, but that didn't bother me.  And it did become gooey-er after a day or two.  All in all I considered it to be a very pleasant cake.  It tasted (and looked) homemade and just struck me as a very simple dessert (notwithstanding how long it took me to put it together).  I could see making it if I ever had people over for brunch.  It didn't blow me away and I wouldn't make it the centerpiece of a dinner party, but I think brunch would be the perfect opportunity to make it again.  Then again, I might prefer a french toast bread pudding, which would be equally brunchy and potentially more scrumptious...

Recipe after the jump!

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake

If you ever want to try a dark and funky gingerbread cake you should try this recipe.  I know that description sounds a little odd, but I used the phrase "dark and funky" to describe the batter and then the cake when I first tasted it.  I think that I keep using that phrase because that is how I think of molasses and stout, both of which are principal ingredients in the batter.  Molasses is sweet and bitter at the same time and has a really deep and complex flavor.  I just can't figure out how to describe it.  If you have ever had gingerbread then you have had molasses.  We stayed away from blackstrap molasses (which I find super bitter) and used a medium unsulphured molasses.  When Alex and I shared our first piece of cake this morning we independently came to the conclusion that it needs something sweet to go with it.  I had already discarded the idea of making a glaze for the cake, but I was thinking that a nice, lightly sweetened whipped cream (or whipped creme fraiche with honey) or some Greek yogurt ice cream/gelato would be the perfect accompaniment.  Unfortunately we didn't have any of those things.  We do have heavy cream so I could have easily made homemade whipped cream but I got lazy.  I also considered lightly dusting it with powdered sugar but thought that powdered sugar would be pretty, but wouldn't contribute anything new and interesting to the flavor profile.  For some reason, this cake makes me want something creamy to go with it.  Alex suggested a batch of cream cheese frosting, which would be great if we had cream cheese in the fridge.  We had a little vanilla ice cream left in the freezer and we tried that, but it wasn't quite the flavor pairing I was looking for.  Alex thought the cake made the vanilla ice cream almost taste minty.  I'm not sure I agree with him about the minty flavor, but I agree that it wasn't quite right somehow.  I'm going to keep experimenting with the cake until I figure it out because it is a really interesting cake.  I don't taste the Guinness stout, but I definitely taste the molasses and the ginger.  I wouldn't be able to identify all of the other spices in the cake by flavor (although I obviously know what spices are in there), but you can tell there are lots of spices in there because the cake is spicy.  I wanted to throw in some chopped up crystallized ginger but the batter was so liquid-y that I was worried the ginger would sink to the bottom of the loaf pans and burn, rather than remaining suspended throughout the cake.  In the end it's probably a good thing that I omitted the crystallized ginger.  But if I were to top the cake with cream cheese frosting I would probably sprinkle the crystallized ginger on top...

Recipe after the jump!

Rhubarb Coffeecake

Before I say anything about this cake, I have to say that I am generally speaking not a fan of coffee cake.  It's often kind of... dry.  And I generally think the ratio of cake to topping is off.  Sometimes there soooooo much crumb topping and not enough cake (or vice versa).  I just don't get it.  Alex likes coffee cake though.  And I like rhubarb.  Plus I wanted to try a new recipe.  I was originally going to do a play on my usual Raspberry Buttermilk Cake, but use rhubarb instead.  But I decided to try something new.  So I started thinking about making strawberry-rhubarb pie, which I LOVE.  But I didn't want to go to the trouble of making pie.  Pie is just generally beyond me - I don't have the patience to make the pie crust and do the lattice top.  And I am pretty sure that my crusts could never hold a candle to the fabulous pies that Aunt Loretta made at her daughter Christine's wedding that I attended in Kentucky back in early June.  Loretta made 16 pies for the wedding - including strawberry rhubarb, chocolate, apple and pecan pie.  Needless to say, the strawberry rhubarb was my favorite, although I the chocolate and the pecan pies were also delicious.  I might have to ask her for her recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie if I ever get up the gumption to actually bake a pie from scratch.  Speaking of Kentucky, I learned a few valuable lessons during my trip there.  First, if you visit the Applebees in Madisonville, KY and order a margarita on the rocks, you are liable to end up with what I call a "marga-tini" - a cocktail shaker full of margaritas of dubious quality, served with a martini glass with 3 olives in it, a salt rim and a lime wedge...  I wouldn't recommend it.  Stick with beer.  Also, the Kentucky hot brown (an open-faced sandwich with turkey, bacon and tomatoes, smothered in bechamel and cheese) is a heart attack on a plate, but it is seriously delicious.  Moving on.  I kept puttering around the internet until I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and I had to throw out my prejudices against coffee cake and give it a shot.  It just looked so good!  Although, had I read the recipe from start to finish, I might have abandoned ship and gone with another recipe because it was more than a little labor intensive.  Actually, it wasn't that it was overly labor intensive.  The problem was that the cake required so many individual components to be prepared separately and incorporated at the very end that we dirtied just about every bowl, spoon, spatula, measuring cup, etc. in the apartment.

This cake was delicious - not too sweet and not too tart.  I was worried once I cut the cake and looked inside and saw how little rhubarb there really was that you wouldn't be able to taste the rhubarb at all, but you totally could.  And the rhubarb helped to keep the coffee cake really moist.  You could also taste the gentle background warmth and slight spicy flavor of the cinnamon and the ginger.  My one complaint was the crumb topping - I think there was a little too much flour in it, which almost left it tasting soapy/chalky to me.  If I were to make it again I would cut back on the flour by 1/4 cup or so and see if that changed things at all.  But I was really happy with this recipe!  I know it was labor intensive but I really think it was worth it.

Recipe after the jump!

Cornmeal Cake with Balsamic Strawberries

Happy (belated) Anniversary to me!  This was the cake Alex baked for our anniversary.  I had some wonderful fresh strawberries from the farmers' market that I wanted to bake something with.  I thought about strawberry shortcake, but we have made those several times before.  I was very tempted by this Almond-Oat Strawberry Shortcake, but I wanted to make something new and (more) different.  Then I remembered that awhile back I found a few recipes for cornmeal cakes and cornmeal pound cakes online.  So I took pieces and ideas from a number of recipes to come up with this recipe.  And then I told Alex to make it for me.  Haha.  Thanks hon!  I was originally planning on whipping up some mascarpone with a little vanilla extract to serve with the cake and the macerated strawberries, but I got lazy and decided not to make the additional trip to the grocery store.  I wish I had because the creaminess of the mascarpone would have been wonderful with the cake and berries.  Oh well.  The cake was wonderfully light and not too sweet, which meant that I ate it for breakfast as well as dessert (with and without strawberries).  The texture was somewhat similar to a sponge cake or angel food cake - it was firm and fluffy, rather than crumbly and moist, but not too moist.  It isn't rich and dense like a slice of chocolate cake or carrot cake.  It was a lovely cake with a hint of citrus and a sweet crunchy topping of turbinado sugar.  I love the addition of turbinado sugar on scones, shortcakes and this cake.  It is such a wonderful touch.

Recipe after the jump!

Salted Caramel Six-Layer Chocolate Cake

So I know this picture is lame.  The pictures I took of the whole cake were even worse so I'm not even going to bother posting them.  I was in such a rush to get to the event that I was bringing this cake to that I didn't have time to really set up and take some pictures.  And to be perfectly honest, I don't have a very good set-up for taking pictures anyway.  I really need to get a better spotlight so I can take better pictures of our food for the blog.  We can make that my super early New Year's Resolution.  If you want to see good pictures of the cake, you should just go to Martha Stewart's website here and commence drooling immediately.  For more pictures, you can go to The Bitten Word.

You might be curious why I am posting about this cake while in Hawaii.  The reason is that I have been thinking about how delicious it was and couldn't wait until my return to share the love.  It was delicious.  When I read the name of the recipe, I assumed that the caramel itself would be salted and that the sea salt I could see sprinkled on the top of the cake was just, well, the icing on top of the (already salty) cake.  The caramel had a hint of salt to it, but not as much as I had been expecting.  But man, it was delicious.  The cake was very moist, almost a little brownie-like in texture.  And then the caramel soaked into the cake, making it even more moist and delicious.  And the frosting was deeply cocoa-flavored and chocolately.  I really liked that it wasn't as sweet as most frostings are because that level of sweetness totally turns me off (and actually makes my teeth hurt).  But this frosting was just rich and delicious.  You totally have to listen to Martha when she says to let the frosting sit for 30 minutes before frosting the cake.  After we first finished making the frosting I was convinced that it was a total bust because it was more like a ganache than a frosting.  I had no idea that it would set up that much in the 30 minutes (well, in our case it was more like 60 minutes) that it rested.  I guess Martha Stewart really knows what she is talking about, huh?  Anyway, try this cake.  I am totally planning on making it again for some special occasion.  It was amazing.  Mine came out a little lopsided (I guess I need some more practice assembling layer cakes), but so be it.  I will take amazing-tasting cake over pretty, but dry/boring cake any day!

Recipe after the jump!
 

Banana Chocolate Chip Cake with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Sometimes when you're me recipes come about by accident.  Take this cake for instance.  I wasn't planning on making a cake this weekend.  It was actually the very last thing I had in mind this weekend.  But when I went to break off a banana from our bunch on Sunday for breakfast I ripped the stems off the entire bunch.  Oops.  Which meant all of those four bananas had to be used or eaten.  Stat.  So I was going to make banana bread, but after making a loaf of Zucchini Cornbread Saturday I wanted to do something a little different.  I decided that the logical thing to do was to make the banana cake that I remembered from Susan Spicer's cookbook.  I grabbed the cookbook to make sure we had everything and somehow we did.  It was clearly meant to happen.  Everything from the unintentional banana demolition to the Zucchini Cornbread was pointing me towards this cake.  So I baked a cake.  And for the record, this was my very first attempt at a layer cake  So any issues with frosting, etc. should be excused.  I tried.  It might not be pretty but I should get some points for effort.  One thing I will say is that I wish I had just a little more frosting to spread between the layers of cake.  There just wasn't enough to cover the whole cake and still have a nice layer in there in the middle.  Oh well.

My cake was yummy.  Really yummy.  I had two pieces.  And I know that I have a sweet tooth, but I never have two pieces of cake.  I typically don't like cake that much.  Cupcakes yes, cake no.  Cakes are never moist enough for me and I don't like most frostings.  But this cake was very moist and the peanut butter cream cheese frosting was delicious.  I licked my fingers after frosting the cake.  A lot.  I love peanut butter and chocolate together.  With or without banana that flavor combo is a winner in my book.  But when you add in the banana here it all just comes together so well.  It's delicious.  I briefly considered eating a piece for breakfast, but I decided that was entirely too gluttonous.  I guess that I'm just going to have to wait until after dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake

While searching for an Irish recipe to make for St Patrick's last year I came across several dessert recipes involving Guinness.  Last February we made a Chocolate Guinness Cake for a dinner party, so it wasn't the first time we had baked using Guinness.  And when I originally found that recipe I stumbled upon a few other recipes that sounded interesting.  This was one of them.  The other recipe that I really wanted to make was one for Chocolate Guinness Goodness - basically a chocolate pudding recipe with Guinness in it and then fresh Guinness-infused whipped cream on top to mimic a pint of actual Guinness.  I don't know if I will actually like the taste of it, but I love the idea.  However we decided to make a Guinness Stout Ginger Cake from Gramercy Tavern tonight.  Having held onto this recipe for an entire year I was pretty excited to finally have the chance to make it.

Like many gingerbreads, this cake is deep and heavily scented with spices, but not very sweet.  Without a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I'm not sure that I would consider this cake to be a dessert.  I originally wanted some Haagen-Dazs Five ginger ice cream, but they didn't have any at the store.  On second thought, that might have been ginger overload so maybe it's a good thing that we had to substitute Tahitian vanilla gelato.  Also according to Alex the spices are almost harsh when you eat the cake by itself.  The vanilla gelato helps to tame them a bit.  The Guinness and oil kept the cake incredibly moist.  They also gave the cake a very fluffy/spongy crumb - almost like devil's food cake, and a wonderful crust on top.  This cake would be the perfect dessert for afternoon tea (or coffee) - or the perfect anytime dessert for people who don't like things too sweet.  I wish I had read the reviews of the recipe online because if I had, I would have known to pour the batter into two 9x5 loaf pans, rather than just one (the recipe called for just one).  Halfway through the baking process I told Alex that I wasn't sure if I liked the burnt/bitter smell of the cake, which we attributed to the molasses.  It turns out that the cake basically erupted and overflowed all over the oven.  And then the excess batter burnt to a crisp, which meant that when we opened the oven the first thing we saw and smelled was cake cinders.  Oops.  Next time if I make this recipe, I am either going to use two 9x5 pans, or a large bundt pan so that we avoid the smell of burnt cake and the subsequent cleanup.  Also, you need to watch the Guinness-molasses mixture while boiling it because it goes from simmering, to boiling over in a heartbeat.  Apparently this recipe is prone to overflowing in all kinds of ways.  Luckily Alex was watching ours so he prevented that mess from crusting itself to our stove top.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemon-Almond Pound Cake

My husband is something of a citrus fiend.  If we need freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice while cooking, chances are that I will turn around to and find him sucking on the remains of the  lemon or lime he just squeezed.  Actually, chances are that he will suck on it, Brady will come to find out what he is eating and then Brady will try to steal it and run away with it.  But since Brady doesn't particularly like citrus he tends to spit out the lemon or lime, pick it back up, spit it back out again, then give it a last lick, before finally giving up.  Anyway, Alex loves lemon poppyseed muffins so I decided to give this Lemon-Almond Pound Cake recipe a try.  I'm always the one who decides that I want to bake and then what I will be baking, so this time I decided to pick something that I knew he would like.  I borrowed this cookbook from a friend awhile ago and I copied down a lot of recipes from it before I gave it back.  I have been sitting on this recipe for some time, but decided to make it last night because it was SNOWING outside (which makes me feel like baking), plus it was Brady's second birthday, which makes me feel like cake.  So we got ourselves a bottle of champagne and I baked a cake, and Brady got some new toys to play with (including a ball shaped like a frog whose toes he has already eaten off).  Sounds like a win for everyone, doesn't it?

This cake is lovely and lemony and light.  It has just the right amount of sweetness to balance out the tartness of the lemon, without turning the whole cake sugary sweet.  I also love the crunch of the almonds.  I think I might prefer the crunch of the sliced almonds to poppy seeds, but I just don't know.  I was a little worried about the lemon glaze, and we did use it sparingly, but it's really nice too.  It would make a fantastic breakfast, a really nice snack and a wonderful light dessert.  Granted, it's not your typical birthday cake, but that's just fine with me!

Recipe after the jump!

Baked Double Chocolate Loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread

So I have been holding onto this recipe for a long time and waiting for a "special" occasion to make it. Really, I was waiting for someone else to come over so it wouldn't just be Alex and I inhaling our way through an entire cake. I got the recipe from a Tasting Table email, but it was from one of the Baked cookbooks so I was super excited for it. I just knew it was going to be delicious. Not only do I love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, but it was a Baked recipe and after baking and loving the Baked Brownies, I had utter faith in this recipe.

Sadly, I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - the recipe isn't bad. I just felt like it was a little off. For instance, the cake to frosting ratio is just way off. I'm not one who generally likes a ton of frosting on my cakes or cupcakes, but this cake was so dense and dry that it really needed more frosting. The cake was really deeply and intensely chocolaty (which you would expect given the amount of cocoa powder and dark chocolate that went into the cake), but forkfuls of plain cake were just lacking something. The cake was almost more of a brownie than a cake. And given that there was buttermilk, oil and eggs in the cake I just expected it to be a little more moist. Instead it was bordering on dry and crumbly. Actually, it was so crumbly that I literally couldn't get a piece of it to take a picture of because every piece I tried to cut basically exploded into a pile of crumbs with frosting on top. I tasted the batter so I knew that it wouldn't be a very sweet cake, but I expected the addition of the chocolate chunks and the frosting to make all of the difference. I think that if I make this cake again in the future I will turn it into cupcakes. And I will double the amount of frosting. And add more buttermilk so that the cake is far moister. I will also consider either substituting semi-sweet chocolate for the dark chocolate in the cake, or adding more sugar to the frosting to sweeten that up. I will probably do one, but not both. Our friends who were over last night recommended perhaps turning the cake into a layer cake (with frosting between the layers), so I guess that could work too. So I'm a little sad that the recipe that I have been saving and holding onto with such faith in its utter awesomeness turned out to be a little less awesome than expected. But given a few tweaks, I still have faith that it can become utterly awesome. It's just not quite there yet.

Recipe after the jump!
Tasting Table

Zucchini Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Recently I had the opportunity to go to a business lunch at Marea in NYC.  Everything I ate there was amazing, but one of the things that stuck out the most to me was from the little silver tray of cookies and other mini-treats that they served after the meal.  It was perhaps the most delicious zucchini cake I have ever tasted, topped with a little dollop of cream cheese frosting.  It was so moist and unbelievably delicious.  So I figured I would try to make my own.  Now I know better than to expect that my zucchini cake could ever compare with something I try at a restaurant like Marea.  I am good in the kitchen, but I am not 2 star Michelin Guide good.  And to be honest, neither are most professional chefs.  So it's all good.

I love the spices in this cake.  And then I love the combination of the cake with the slightly citrusy cream cheese frosting.  Then again, I think I would love cream cheese frosting on any type of cake.  My cupcake choices are often dictated by which cupcakes are topped with cream cheese frosting and I firmly believe that Magnolia's red velvet cupcakes would be immensely better if they had cream cheese frosting, rather than buttercream frosting (which I often find to be too sweet and too buttery).  This was my first experiment substituting apple sauce for vegetable oil and it turned out really nicely.  In the past I have always been worried that the flavor of the apple sauce would interfere with the flavor of the cake itself, but in this instance it worked marvelously (although I did think that a few days after being baked the texture of the cake turned a little gummy, which I attributed to the apple sauce).  The cake was very moist and very flavorful.  You can't really taste the zucchini, but the zucchini isn't really the point, is it?  The zucchini is there to fool you into believing that you're being healthy, while inhaling large quantities of delicious cream cheese frosting!  Then again, the zucchini does help to keep the cake moist, plus it makes the cake look so pretty with all of the vibrant green flecks (if you look closely in the picture above you can see some) so it definintely does have its uses.

Recipe after the jump!

Olive Oil and Fresh Rosemary Cake

What do you make for dessert to eat with champagne?  And what do you make for dessert for two people?  Chocolate-covered strawberries would be fantastic, but it just seems a little indulgent.  Somehow olive oil cake seems more appropriate.  I'm not sure that makes sense, but it made sense in my head.  You know how those things go.  Plus I have been meaning to try some of the other recipes for olive oil cake that I found the last time I decided to make an olive oil cake.  We didn't have oranges on hand to make the olive oil cake from Molto Italiano, but we had everything we needed to make the olive oil cake from The Babbo Cookbook.  I tried to find a gelato or ice cream that I thought would pair well with a rosemary olive oil cake, but somehow all I could find was Tahitian vanilla.  In The Babbo Cookbook Mario Batali says they serve this cake with braised fresh figs and a raspberry sorbet, but I found neither.  And to be honest, I didn't want either, although I thought that I might be able to find Ciao Bello's blackberry cabernet sorbet and that sounded like a fabulous pairing for my cake, but Zabar's didn't have that this time either.  I briefly considered serving it with strawberries and homemade whipped cream, but then decided to just go with the vanilla gelato.

This olive oil cake isn't as moist as I thought it would be.  Instead it is crumbly and only slightly sweet (which I did expect).  And it is bordering on dry in that way that some Italian desserts and breads are.  So I guess I should have expected that, although the Almondy Citrusy Olive Oil Cake I made previously was a little more moist.  The flavor of the rosemary is fairly subtle, but the olive oil comes through very nicely.  I think this cake would make a great mid-afternoon snack with a cup of tea, or a very nice breakfast (which is how I had it this morning).  Since it isn't that sweet it doesn't have to be dessert.  I actually preferred the cake for breakfast, toasted, and smeared with Tiptree Orange Marmalade, rather than as dessert with vanilla gelato, but that's just me.

Recipe after the jump!

Blackberry and Thyme Buttermilk Cake

Recently I found a recipe for Blackberry Thyme Clafoutis by Tim Love in InStyle magazine (who knew they had recipes) that caught my eye.  The combination of blackberry and thyme sounded intriguing, plus the dessert is baked in on of my absolute favorite things - my cast-iron skillet.  So I started to make it and then realized that we didn't have any whole milk.  And the clafoutis is something of a custardy or puddingy cake, and I wasn't sure how we would feel about that as a leftover.  So instead of making the clafoutis like I had intended, I decided to take Tim Love's flavors (namely the combination of the blackberries and thyme, served with vanilla ice cream) and instead modify the Raspberry Buttermilk Cake recipe I love so much to use those ingredients.  For those of you who have whole milk or are making dessert for a blackberry-loving dinner party, I am also including the recipe for the Blackberry-Thyme Clafoutis that first caught my eye.

I love this cake.  Alex was slightly less of a fan, but I loved the faint hint of thyme flavor combined with the lightly sweet, very moist cake.  I will agree with him that the blackberries weren't very sweet, which made some bites very tart, but I thought that combined with the vanilla ice cream it was perfectly lovely.

Recipe after the jump!

Tres Leches Cake

So this cake was the result of the fact that literally none of the four grocery stores I tried on the UWS carry peanut butter chips.  I was trying to make this Black-Bottom Peanut Butter Mousse Pie to bring to a dinner party, but without peanut butter chips I had to come up with a plan B.  I have been meaning to try to make tres leches cake for some time now and I figured now was the perfect opportunity.  I was also planning on making a Latin American dish for dinner the night after the dinner party, so I figured tres leches was definitely the way to go.  I looked at several recipes while trying to decide exactly how I wanted to prepare my cake, including this recipe from Ree Drummond's blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, an Alton Brown recipe, an Emeril recipe, and this recipe from Food & Wine.  The Food & Wine recipe had a particularly intriguing cinnamon-scented dulce de leche component that you drizzle on top of the cake after it is completed, but I didn't have the time or the whole milk to make it.  But I am definitely going to make it the next time I try my cake because it sounds amazing.  One of my favorite versions of tres leches cake I have ever eaten was at a restaurant in Maryland where they serve the cake drizzled with a cinnamon simple syrup of sorts.  It is amazing - kind of like red hots in liquid form.

This cake recipe is easy, but it does require several steps and lots of dish washing.  When I prepared it I used my stand mixer three times, which required three washes, various measuring cups, etc.  So if you're looking for a recipe that doesn't make a mess of the kitchen, this probably isn't the recipe for you.  But if you don't mind a little dishwashing so long as it produces delicious results, I say give this recipe a try!  The cake is delightfully moist, sweet and somehow light.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I'm not sure why the idea of Chocolate Zucchini Cake was so appealing to me.  For whatever reason the thought of baking a Chocolate Zucchini Cake has tantalized me for some time now.  So I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and make it.  =I have never never tasted a Chocolate Zucchini Cake, so I basically made the cake just so I could try it and see if the cake could possibly live up to what I hoped it could be.  Seeing as I have absolutely no baseline upon which to judge my cake against other cakes, all I can say is that I thought my cake was delicious.

The flavor of the cake is deeply chocolately, and the crumb is incredibly moist and fluffy.  You can't taste the zucchini, but it does help make the cake incredibly moist, as does the use of buttermilk.  The cake has a very light background flavor that reminded me of very chocolaty gingerbread, rather than a typical chocolate cake, but it's really hard to describe.  I think that the touch of cinnamon and the use of brown sugar in addition to the granulated sugar are the cause.  It's really unique so I like it.  I also like that the cake isn't as sweet as a lot of other cake recipes.  We left the walnuts out this time because Alex doesn't like nuts in baked goods, but I think that walnuts provide a wonderful textural contrast to the fluffy cake, as well as a slight bitterness that I always find very appealing in baked goods.  If you are using the walnuts, I would probably recommend cutting back on the amount of chocolate chips.  Even if you aren't adding walnuts, you can cut back on the amount of chocolate chips to cut back on sweetness and richness if that's your thing.  Originally I was thinking about slathering this cake in some cream cheese frosting, but it really doesn't need it.  And considering how much I love cream cheese frosting, that really says something!

Recipe after the jump!

Chocolate Guinness Cake

While searching for a chocolate cake recipe, I kept stumbling across glowing references to Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I am usually not a fan of chocolate cake, or chocolate ice cream for that matter.  I often find that chocolate cake doesn't taste at all like chocolate and chocolate ice cream just tastes chalky.  And while I recognize that stouts can be quite chocolate-y and pair wonderfully with some desserts, the thought of making a chocolate cake with Guinness in it sounded a little weird.  But since literally EVERYONE online was raving about the cake and it sounded intriguing I figured I had to try it.  I was almost dissuaded because I could only find recipes with measurements in grams and Celsius, but eventually I stumbled across a copy of the recipe that had been converted into cups and Fahrenheit on the Washington Post website.  Perfect!

The batter of this cake is very dark and rich.  It's also a very wet batter.  This is definitely not a box mix chocolate cake or a devil's food cake.  Nigella described the cake as having a "resonant, ferrous tang" (which in my mind translates to an irony taste), which doesn't sound that great to me.  Luckily, I don't taste any iron in the cake.  I also don't taste the Guinness, but I can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.  This cake is also a little less moist than I thought it would be, considering how wet the batter was.  Granted, wet batter doesn't always translate into moist cake, but in this instance it really seemed like it would.  But overall, this is a really nice, not too sweet chocolate cake!  Plus the cream cheese icing is delicious - not too sweet, but nice and cream cheesy.

And, this cake really does get better the second day.  I'm not sure how or why that is, but it's true.  It tasted even moister 24 hours after I cooked it than it did 6 hours after.  Go figure.

Recipe after the jump!

Almondy Citrusy Olive Oil Cake

Olive oil sounds like such a weird thing to put in a cake (or in any dessert for that matter).  But after having tried the olive oil gelato from Otto I knew that done right, olive oil in desserts can be AMAZING.  Just trust me.  If you don't trust me, then go ahead and Google "Otto olive oil gelato" and be prepared to read all of the bloggers' crazily rhapsodic accounts of their first taste of Otto's olive oil gelato.  And yes, it really is that good.

So this weekend I decided that I wanted to make an olive oil cake.  Why not come up with a baking project for the 3-day weekend?  At first I was going to make an upside-down pear cake, but considering I made the cake with Asian pears just last week, I figured I needed to do something different.  Like all good little bloggers I started searching the internet and my bookshelf for inspiration.  First I stumbled across this Almond Olive Oil Cake from Gina DePalma (Babbo's pastry chef).  But that was out because I don't have any almond flour, plus I am not sure about the whole glaze thing.  Then on the bookshelf in The Babbo Cookbook I found their Olive Oil and Fresh Rosemary Cake.  But I am out of fresh rosemary.  As a side note, the Babbo cookbook also has the recipe for that amazing olive oil gelato that I talked about above, but there is no room in my NYC kitchen for a gelato/ice cream machine.  Blast.  Similarly, Mario Batali's Molto Italiano cookbook has a recipe for Olive Oil and Orange Cake, but I don't have 6 oranges on hand to zest and juice.  Then I remembered that a long time ago I bookmarked Giada's Almond Citrus Olive Oil Cake recipe.  I had yet to make it because I just wasn't sure about the citrus compote that goes with it.  However, the recipe itself seemed like a good base for my cake recipe and after reading most of the other cake recipes I came to the conclusion that I could just make the cake without the compote and serve it like that. 

As all olive cakes tend to be, this is more of a savory cake than a sweet one.  If you want to make it sweeter, feel free to add a bit more sugar or honey.  Better yet, serve the cake with some nice vanilla gelato.  Then you get the savory warm cake and the sweet cold gelato together.  Yum.  One last option that I might recommend (and I never thought I would say this) is to prepare a lemony glaze like in Gina DePalma's recipe, instead of just sifting powdered sugar on top.  The glaze should run down into the cake and make it both sweeter and a bit moister.  I however am a fan of the sugary-salty blend with desserts so the savoriness of the cake is very appealing to me.  Either way, the cake has a wonderful crumb and is neither too moist, nor too crumbly.  It really would make a delicious breakfast or snack with a cup of tea.

Recipe after the jump!

Semi-Old-Fashioned Asian Pear Star Anise Cake

I looked in the fridge the other day and realized that I have a ridiculous number of apples and pears in there - far more than Alex and I could or would eat in the next few weeks.  So the obvious solution was to try to make with some of them.  The honeycrisp apples I will eat on their own, so there was no need to bake those.  Aside from them I had red Anjou pears, green Bartlett pears, Asian pears, and Granny Smith apples.  The obvious choice was to make an apple pie or apple crisp, but for some reason Alex doesn't like either of those.  Plus I have a ton more pears than apples, so why not use pears instead.  I started looking around and stumbled upon Ming Tsai's Cranberry-Asian Pear Star Anise Cake, which looked  really interesting, but far too complicated.  Then I saw Cele's Old-Fashioned Pear Cake recipe on 101 Cookbooks, which looked very simple but perhaps wasn't as interesting.  So I decided to come up with something that used similar flavors as Ming Tsai's recipe, but Cele's batter.  Sounds easy enough, right?  I am going to call my creation my Semi-Old-Fashioned Asian Pear Star Anise Cake as a nod to the two recipes where I found my inspiration.

There is something glorious about the smell of baked goods with unusual spices like star anise, cardamom and five spice in the batter.  While the aroma of baked goods is always wonderful, there is something spicier and more luscious about the smell of cakes in the oven with a healthy dose of star anise in them.  It kind of reminds me of the smell of apple cider versus mulled wine simmering on the stove.  Both smell wonderful but the extra kick of the allspice and other mulling spices in the wine just take it up a notch.

One of my favorite things about this cake is the light and clean flavor of the Asian pears, combined with the flavor of the star anise.  Also, the cake is wonderfully light and crumbly.  I do love a moist cake, but the texture of this cake is almost scone like - lighter and fluffier than your average cake.  It makes for a nice departure from some of the heavier cakes I have tried recently, particularly when served with some Haagen Dazs Five Ginger Ice Cream.  Also, since this cake is only lightly sweetened and the texture is scone-like, it would make a delicious breakfast with a nice steaming mug of tea.  Yes tea, not coffee.  I might be one of the few people left on Earth who don't drink coffee.  But I suppose the cake would make an equally lovely breakfast with a cup of coffee, if I were so inclined.

Speaking of ice cream, I discovered that making quenelles is WAY harder than the people on Top Chef make it look.  Alex and I were shooting ice cream all over the kitchen.  So pardon our lame presentation - we tried! 

Recipe after the jump!