Mississippi Mud Cake

I got two birds with one stone this week for both Lost Lunch Thursday and PLTI by making two Mississippi Mud Cakes, from Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes. I figured that I really needed to try a recipe from this book other than the Sweet Potato Pound Cake, and the mud cake did not disappoint. While I tend to find marshmallows generally a little weird, they take on a pretty interesting texture when they are coated hot with a warm chocolate glaze. The dense, nutty cake is pretty good, too. Definitely a recipe to revisit, and another reason to endorse this cookbook.

Celebration Cakes

Because of my surplus of overripe bananas to use up, I made a couple of banana cakes, then froze the cake layers until I had a reason to frost and serve them. The top cake is from a recipe in Alisa Huntsman's Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes. Although I ended up hating the slack cream-cheese frosting I used on the cake, I loved the cake itself. It contains a bit of Chinese five-spice powder, certainly not an ingredient I've used in baked goods prior to this cake, and I really liked the way its flavor played off the banana.

The second banana cake, frosting with chocolate icing, is from Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes. This book and author can do no wrong.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake, Again

My fondness for Nancie McDermott's Sweet Potato Pound Cake recipe is well documented here. I can't think of much I'd do differently with that recipe -- except for add some crystallized ginger to it. In the end, it's a brilliant addition to this cake. For this version, I added a ginger-cream cheese frosting from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. I added some heavy cream to the icing to make it a little looser for a more glazelike consistency.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake with Quick Caramel Glaze

I was overdue in making something for my colleague Chuck's birthday. Since I now feel beyond certain that I can't go wrong with Nancie McDermott's Sweet Potato Pound Cake, that's what I made. This time, I tried it with Quick Caramel Glaze. For the glaze, butter, brown sugar, and evaporated milk are cooked just to a boil. Then, confectioners' sugar and vanilla are added, and the glaze is quickly poured over the cake. This glaze sets up really fast, perhaps a bit faster than I was banking on. While the sliced cake looked as appealing as ever, the whole cake looked like it was slathered with spray-foam insulation.

P.S. You can follow this link to the recipe for this cake.

A Trip to Houston

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Texas for the Houston Marathon. Because the holidays had put me in a cookie-baking frame of mind, I baked a lot of cookies to bring along and share with the friends who were also going to be at the race. I relied on recipes from three books.

From Mom’s Big Book of Cookies by Lauren Chattman, I made:
Benne Wafers: excellent cookie, with an unusual flavor from the sesame seeds.
Sour Cream Chocolate Mint Chip Cookies: soft, cakey. I didn’t love these cookies, truth be told.
Snickerdoodles: a thinner, crisper version than the ones Ryan usually makes on Cookie Day (from a recipe in The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle).
Mexican Chocolate Chip Cookies: pretty good, a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie with cinnamon in the dough.

From A Baker’s Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies by Dede Wilson, I made:
Double Chip Browned-Butter Oat Scotchies: excellent. Oaty, butterscotchy.
Coffee-Toffee-Chocolate Chunk Cookies: a classic.

From Cookies by Jill Snider, I made:
Lemon-Poppy Seed Balls: nice and tender, but in need of a bit more lemon flavor.
Key Lime-Coconut Macaroons: didn’t like them at all; they had a rubbery texture. I made the dough in advance and refrigerated it for a day before baking it. I wonder if that contributed to the unfortunate texture.

Also, to fulfill a promise, I brought along a Sweet Potato Pound Cake, from a recipe in Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott. I’ve made this one before, and absolutely love it.

Finally, I made a couple of flourless treats for my good friend Enid, who can’t consume wheat-based baked goods. Although I really like baking for friends in general, I get a special bit of joy in baking for Enid because I know that homemade baked goods can be harder to come by for those who can’t eat wheat. So for Enid, it was a batch of Cliff's Brownies (from Gluten-Free Baking by Rebecca Reilly) and a batch of Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies from Lauren Chattman’s book. It’s a brilliantly simple four-ingredient recipe (peanut butter, egg, vanilla, sugar) that I augmented with some Ghirardelli dark-chocolate chips.

Pumpkin-Raisin Cake

Since I couldn't get a pumpkin cupcake a couple of weeks ago, I dealt with my pumpkin craving by making a cake. I'd seen the recipe for Pumpkin-Raisin Cake while leafing through Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes in search of a recipe for Claire's birthday cake. Pumpkin, raisins, walnuts. It sounded good, and it turned out really well. I made it as a 9x13 sheet cake rather than as two 9-in. layers. It's an option outlined in the recipe; however, I wish the recipe had indicated that in that size pan, the cake would require an extra 20 min. of baking time. The cake recipe is accompanied by a recipe for Lemon-Cream Cheese Frosting, which I used for the cake. Not sure I loved this frosting. It's essentially powdered sugar, cream cheese, lemon zest, and lemon juice. It ended up having a pasty, glazy texture.

I'm really taken with Southern Cakes. It's a terrific little book. I think that tomorrow, I might try a sweet-potato pound cake.

Claire's Birthday

Claire turned 12 yesterday, but her "party" -- taking five friends to see The Game Plan, a film that made me comatose; I might still not be conscious -- was today. For her birthday, she requested the Hershey's chocolate cake I'd made a few weeks ago, but because I listen as well as she does, I decided to pursue a different recipe. I ended up making Helen Hudson Whiting's Celestial Chocolate Cake from Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes.



The technique is very similar to the Hershey cake, oddly enough, with cocoa powder bloomed in boiling water combined with the rest of the ingredients. (The technique similarity absolves me from guilt for using a different recipe, right?) The prep is slightly different in that the butter-sugar-egg mixture gets all the flour and leavenings before the cocoa slurry is added in. The recipe recommends a filling of whipped cream, but I made a plain white butter cream rather than mess around with that. I did use the chocolate frosting recipe recommended for the cake and liked it a lot; it's smooth, creamy, and easy to spread.

All in all, this cake was a huge success. As I was reminded yet again, it's always Karen's cakes that go awry. Claire's turn out just fine. And I myself am long overdue for a birthday cake from Costco.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

A week ago, Southern Cakes arrived in my mailbox, ordered from The Good Cook book club. (Sadly, their all-books-are-$10-each promotion ended, but I ordered this book on a buy-one-get-one-free sale.) Southern Cakes is a new book by Nancie McDermott. The timing of the book's arrival was perfect because I needed to make something for Karen to bring in Monday for a work birthday.

Sunday ended up being kind of a crazy busy day, and I didn't get around to starting the cake til evening. I figured I'd make a pound cake because it wouldn't require frosting or decorating, and since I had some cream cheese in the fridge, I decided to try Cream Cheese Pound Cake from this new book.

No chance to sample it, but it looked great out of the oven. When the cake dome came home empty, I figured that something must have gone right with the cake.

At this point, I need to spend a little more time getting to know this book. My immediate reaction was that it is full of recipes I really want to try. I'll take that as a good sign.