What I did during my spring vacation

I was on vacation last week--we didn't go anywhere, since I was the only one off (spring break for Brianna was a month ago), but it was a nice break from work.  I realized this weekend that I actually accomplished quite a few things on my to-do list.  I got some annual doctor appointments out of the way, including my first mammogram.  Gotta love getting older... =)  (It was kind of a weird experience, but not that bad. I've certainly endured more uncomfortable things--after all, I gave birth to two children.)  I bought some new sandals and gave myself a pedicure so I'm ready for all the warm weather around here.  Of course, then I had to paint two smaller sets of toenails as well.  I even got to have both lunch and dinner out with my husband.  I took him to lunch on Wednesday for his birthday (and made him cupcakes, too), and then the daycare did parents night out on Saturday.  Two nice meals sans kiddos in one week--unprecedented!

Surprisingly, I didn't do as much baking as I originally expected to.  But for a change, I did get a jump on making the latest TWD selection--I baked it over a week ago, in fact.  This week our recipe is Lemon Loaf Cake, and our hosts are Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life.  As I was reading over the recipe (contributed by Norman Love), I realized that I was already familiar with the mixing method for the cake batter.  Both Dorie's Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes and the French Pound Cake from Flour are mixed up in a similar fashion.  Instead of creaming butter and sugar together, you start off by mixing the eggs and sugar together.  Then you fold in the dry ingredients, and finally the liquids (cream and melted butter).

I like loaf cakes, but was in the mood for something different this time.  Gillian asked me recently why I hadn't made anything in the "bug pan" in a long time.  Since I previously used it for the Flour pound cake, I figured it would also work well for this recipe.  I was lucky enough to find the pan (pictured above) at Costco last spring, which made it much more affordable for a Nordic Ware pan.  It only has a 3 cup volume, though, so I knew I'd need to put the rest of the batter in something else.  I have some small loaf pans, but ended up going with my 6-cup bundt pan.  

Besides my pan choices, I did tweak the recipe in a few other small ways.  I borrowed Dorie's tip from recipes in Baking and rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar before combining it with the eggs.  I also used a bit more salt--1/4 teaspoon--and for the cake flour, I used King Arthur's Unbleached Cake Flour Blend.  After baking, I left the bugs unadorned, but couldn't resist dressing up the bundt cake.  After I removed it from its pan, I brushed it with a lemon syrup while the cake was still hot.  Then once it cooled, I drizzled it with a lemon glaze as well.

The verdict?  We liked both versions.  This is my favorite type of pound cake--I love the texture of it, and it never seems dry to me like others do sometimes.  I like the extra punch of lemon added by the syrup and glaze on the cake, and enjoy how the tart topping makes a nice contrast to the sweeter flavor of the cake itself.  The lemon flavor was milder in the bugs, but definitely still there.  We all ate those shortcake-style with macerated strawberries and whipped cream, and they were delicious.  I need to use that pan more often--the girls really love the fun shapes.

If you'd like to give this recipe a try, you can find it on Truc's blog or Michelle's blog.  Be sure to check out the other lemony Links, too!

Handmade Loaves - Bourbon & Nutmeg Pound Cake

The only problem with picking loaves as the theme for my autumn blogging event was that I had a really hard time deciding what to make myself!  My first thought was to make a yeast bread.  I usually do non-pan loaves when I bake bread, since I'm not that excited by typical sandwich loaves.  However, I seriously considered Dan Lepard's Simple Milk Loaf (posted here by my friend Nancy), since somehow I haven't blogged it even though I've made it many times.  This week ended up being kind of crazy, though, and I spent my day off on Thursday making a fancy birthday cake for a certain young lady who turned 5 on Friday.  Thursday evening I decided to try to throw something together quickly so I wouldn't end up baking at the very last minute.  The other thing I had been considering was pound cake.  I ended up turning to my copy of Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert.  I made several of the variations of her Kamut Pound Cake a couple years ago, but again, never got them posted.  I didn't have an kamut flour in my pantry, so I decided to go with one of the variations.

The version that caught my eye was the Bourbon and Nutmeg Pound Cake.  As I mentioned in another recent post, nutmeg is one of my favorite spices, and this recipe sounded like a good one for fall.  The kamut flour from the original recipe is replaced with either spelt flour (nope, out of that too) or whole wheat flour (yes! I have that!).  I actually used white whole wheat flour.  I also got to use some of my unbleached cake flour blend for the cake flour in the recipe.  

My favorite pound cake recipes are usually the ones that fold melted butter into the batter at the end.  I haven't had much luck with pound cakes using the creaming method.  This recipe doesn't really do either.  Medrich mentions that she adapted the recipe from The Cake Bible, so if you've made cakes from that book, the mixing method will be familiar.  First you whisk together the wet ingredients--milk, bourbon, eggs and vanilla, and set that mixture aside.  Next, you mix together the dry ingredients--flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.  Chunks of butter are added to the dry ingredients, along with a third of the liquids, and the mixture is beaten together for about a minute to develop the structure of the cake.  Then the remaining liquid is added in two additions, beating for about 20 seconds after each addition.  

The recipe calls for an 8" by 4" loaf pan lined with parchment paper, and a bake time of 55 to 65 minutes at 350ºF.  I decided to use the vintage loaf pan that I received from my friend Nancy, which is about 3.5" by 10" and only 2.5" deep.  For others who have similar pans, the bake time is about 40 minutes.  Once the cake was baked, I let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then lifted it out (I let the parchment overhang the sides a bit so I'd have handles) and let it cool completely on a rack.  The next morning I cut it into thick slices and took it to work.  (I did take a few pictures, but it was early in the morning and still dark outside, so they weren't very good.) 

The verdict?  Well, I had to bake a second loaf today to take decent pictures.  I thought I'd have some left from the first loaf that I took to work, but it was pretty well devoured.  I'll take that as a positive review. =)  I really liked it myself--the cake is delicious, with a subtle spice from the nutmeg.  I've made some dry pound cakes in the past, but this one definitely is not.  I really like the slight nuttiness from the whole wheat flour, too.  But don't take my word for it, try it for yourself!  

I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of the book (maybe your local library will have it!)--there are lots of other enticing recipes besides this one.  I was also able to find the recipe on Google Books here.  (The link shows the variations page; the full recipe is on the previous page.)  For those who like to use metric weights, here are the ingredients I used:

30 grams(2 tablespoons) whole milk, at room temperature

15 grams (1 tablespoon) bourbon

3 extra large eggs (what I had--the recipe calls for large)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

100 grams unbleached cake flour blend (KAF)

50 grams white whole wheat flour (KAF)

150 grams granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

185 grams (13 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened

For lots of other delicious loaves of many varieties (including some savory ones!), check back later this week for the round-up!

What's buggin' you?

I was having a rough day when I got to work on Friday.  I was trying to leave it at home, but as soon as someone asked me if I was okay, I realized that maybe that was easier said than done.  I was missing my mom, a lot.  Long-time readers of my blog may recall that my mom died three years ago, in March.  While the date on the calendar has some significance, what really sticks with me is the fact that it was on Good Friday.  And of course, that date changes from year to year.  Even though I knew it was coming, it still surprised me a bit how emotional I was feeling.  (It shouldn't have, when I think about how stressful this year has been so far.)

I always think about Mom on the night before Easter as I'm filling baskets for the girls.  She was the one who taught me to count everything that I put into the baskets, down to the last jelly bean.  Why, you ask?  Because siblings are competitive, and will immediately notice any differences in who got what.  In fact, one of the first things Gillian did Sunday morning was pull everything out of her basket and count it.  I don't think she actually compared it to what Brianna had (she was just proud of her counting skills), but you can bet B would have said something if she thought G had more of anything. =)

Just in case the candy wasn't enough sugar for the day, I wanted to make something yummy for dessert on Easter.  I've been searching for a good vanilla pound cake since I got my latest batch of vanilla beans.  I've made several recipes and always end up with the same thing--cakes with good flavor but a dry mouthfeel.  To find new recipes to try, I've been using a nifty new tool that I discovered thanks to Jessica of cookbookhabit.  It's called Eat Your Books, and basically provides you with a comprehensive index for the cookbooks already on your shelves.  It doesn't give you the recipes, just helps you figure out where to look.  When I searched for "vanilla pound cake" I got 23 results from my 98 cookbooks.  A few were obviously recipes that utilize pound cake as an ingredient, and some were for other flavor variations that included vanilla in the ingredient list.  But I got about a dozen recipes for what I was really looking for, a basic vanilla pound cake.  I've already tried a few of them that weren't quite what I was after, and this time decided to check out the recipe in Joanne Chang's Flour.  

What appealed to me about this particular recipe was that it uses melted butter folded in at the end, rather than the creaming method.  I've made a similar recipe in the past, the Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes from  Baking From My Home to Yours.  Both recipes use the same mixing method.  First, you whip together sugar and eggs.  Even though Chang's recipe says to mix the vanilla bean seeds with the melted butter, I took a page from Dorie's book and rubbed them into the sugar before I started mixing.  Once the egg mixture is really light, you gently fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and then fold in a mixture of melted butter and some heavy cream.  

Part of why I wanted to make a dense cake like pound cake is that I thought it would be perfect in my new pan--I found this adorable bug pan when I was at Costco on Saturday.  It only holds a total of 3 cups, so I put the rest of the batter in one of my mini (2-cup) loaf pans.  The bugs baked for 20 minutes, while the loaf took 30.  (One thing to note--all of my pans were filled a bit too much, so next time I'll probably fill the bugs a bit less & put the extra batter in a 3-cup pan.)

The verdict?  This is an excellent pound cake recipe.  The finished cakes had a nice tight crumb and a great texture--not too dry.  I'm already thinking of different ways to change up the flavor of the batter and other pans to bake it in (I have a couple of mini bundts as well as my madeleine pans--which I think would be good since the cakes had humps on the backs).  The shapes were a big hit with the girls--they had fun debating which one to eat first.  They split the butterfly and the ladybug--both shapes that were symmetrical, so that there wouldn't be fights over who got the bigger piece. =) (another thing I learned from my mom)

I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Flour.  I've really enjoyed everything I've made from it so far.  If you want to try this particular recipe, you can find it here on Rose Levy Beranbaum's blog.  The vanilla bean variation is at the end of the recipe.