Wordless Wednesday - Festive sprinkles!

(birthday cake for someone at work--doubled recipe for this cake)

I like small bundts

I actually managed to plan ahead for something!  Today is National Bundt Day, and I actually baked my cake three days early.  If I'd really had my act together, I would have written the post early, too, instead of sitting here trying to finish it when I'm tired and cranky.  Luckily I still have a piece of cake left, so my day will end on a good note, as long as I get to it before my husband does. =)

I first became aware of National Bundt Day thanks to my blogging friend Mary, the Food Librarian.  For the past several years, she baked 30 bundts in the 30 days leading up to National Bundt Day.  You can read all about it here.  She didn't have time to do it this year, but she did bake a bundt for today.  In fact, I was quite amused to discover that she made the same cake that I did, the Vanilla Bean Malt Cake from Baked Elements.  

The recipe makes a small bundt cake, baked in a 6-cup pan.  I haven't used my small pan very much since I got it a few months ago, so I was happy to get it off the shelf.  Besides the vanilla bean and malted milk powder alluded to in the recipe title, dark brown sugar and buttermilk contribute to the flavor of the cake.  The cake batter is pretty easy to mix up; it uses the creaming method.   I deviated from the recipe just a little--in the technique, not the ingredients.  The recipe says to scrape the vanilla seeds out of the pod and mix them with a bit of bourbon.  Instead, I rubbed the vanilla seeds into the sugars before creaming the butter with them.  I added the bourbon before mixing in the eggs.  Other than that, I followed the directions, and my cake took 40 minutes to bake.  Once the cake was cool, it got topped with a simple glaze made from powdered sugar, vanilla and a bit of milk.  

The verdict?  Wow.  This cake is really good.  Like many cakes of this sort, it improves with age.  It's probably good that it's a small cake, because I would have eaten way too much of it if it had been bigger.  As the recipe notes indicate, you don't really taste the malt in it, but it gives the cake a bit of "something" that makes it really appealing.  I will definitely be making this one again.  

If you'd like to try the cake for yourself, I encourage you to get your hands on a copy of Baked Elements.  Don't forget to check your library if you want to preview it before deciding whether to buy it. =)

Cookies for everyone

This will have to be a quick post.  I'm in the middle of making cupcakes for my boss's birthday tomorrow (I'm writing this Monday night), and I have way too much other stuff I still need to get done before we leave for our trip on Thursday morning.  (My youngest sister is getting married on Saturday!)  

This week's TWD recipe is Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops, chosen by Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart.  I admit, I wasn't too sure about this one.  I love chocolate, but I'm not a big fan of malt.  And this recipe has both malted milk powder in the cookie dough and chopped up Whoppers thrown in.  But I knew that Jamie would really enjoy them, and odds were good the girls would eat them too.  Plus, Brianna has been asking me if I could make some cookies for her to take to her teacher.  With that in mind, I decided to make the whole batch. 

The ingredients...  Jamie found the Carnation malted milk powder for me.  I pulled out the Scharffen Berger cocoa that I've been using quite a bit lately.  I didn't use actual Whoppers; I found chocolate covered malt balls in the bulk section at Central Market.  They were huge--lots of chocolate coating.  And for the chips I used some Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips. 

The cookie dough came together quickly.  It was softer than I expected.  I used my trusty #40 disher and ended up with a total of 38 cookies.  I baked them for 11 minutes.  The finished cookies were also rather soft--I had to let them cool on the baking sheets for a bit before I could transfer them to a rack.  

The verdict?  Jamie liked them a lot.  I thought they were okay.  The malt flavor didn't seem as pronounced in the finished cookies, except for the whopper bits.  I sent half a dozen to school for Brianna's teacher, half a dozen for the after-school program teachers, and took a dozen to the daycare.  And of course, put one in Brianna's lunch.  The rest went into a tin on the kitchen counter.  When I tried to take some out for some more pictures, I found that they were rather stuck together, which was kind of annoying.  I'm not sure if I'll make these again, since there are lots of other cookies I like better.  But I'm glad I gave them a try.  If you'd like to try them for yourself, check out the recipe over at Rachel's blog.