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These aren't the blueberries you're looking for.

March 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My father-in-law requested a blueberry recipe for the blog not too long ago, and I’ve been thinking about several possibilities, but I want to wait for some good in-season blueberries to make something really good. Which isn’t to say that the subject of this post isn’t really good, because it is, but it uses frozen blueberries which is pretty much cheating and fresh blueberries are always better.

I didn’t actually take too many pictures of this, because it hadn’t been intended for the blog. It was intended to use up the bananas that my husband YET AGAIN didn’t eat. [Note to husband: I am not buying you any more bananas.] But then I made it, and tasted it, and decided to blog about it. Such is the life of a food blogger, I suppose: never eating a hot meal again and never quite knowing what creations will be “blog worthy” as one of our friends says.

Blueberry Banana Cake

3 ripe bananas, mashed
1.5 cups frozen blueberries, defrosted
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1.5 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1 stick of butter, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, vanilla and cinnamon. Slowly add in flour, baking powder and salt (the batter will be stiff). Fold in mashed bananas and blueberries until just combined. Pour batter into greased 9×13 baking pan. Cook for 35 – 40 minutes or until set in the center.

Now, mine came out a little light on the top, and I like my baked goods to look nice and golden brown. So I sprinkled about a tablespoon of sugar over the top and stuck it under the broiler for two minutes to caramelize the sugar and brown the top, and then it was perfect.

This makes about 24 pieces of cake, or bars, if you don’t feel like frosting them. These are really tasty; not very sweet, and the flavor of blueberry and banana really comes through. At first I was slightly disappointed in them, but on day two I had a second slice and fell in love with it: moist because of the banana, slightly tart because of the blueberries. It’s the type of snack cake that I don’t feel horrifically bad in eating and also the type that would be perfect with tea.

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Seriously, enough with the clapping.

January 27, 2010 By 6 Comments

We’re watching the State of the Union Address. Can someone please tell me why there’s so much goddamn clapping? I mean, I get it; you like what he’s saying. Can’t you just clap once or twice politely? If there was less bowing and scraping during this thing, it’d be on for half the length of time it is.

You know what you should be clapping about? This recipe I’m about to give you: caramelized banana cupcakes. I KNOW! They were delish.

I was looking for something to make that wasn’t banana bread, but would still use up the extra bananas we had laying around that I bought with the best of intentions, but as usual took forever in using them. I ended up stumbling across a recipe for caramelized bananas, which sounded like it would pair awesomely with a somewhat lighter, less spiced version of my carrot cake.

Caramelized Banana Cupcakes

2 – 3 bananas, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup spiced rum
1 teaspoon cinnamon, divided
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 cup oil
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350. In a 8 or 10 inch skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the sliced bananas and cook for about a minute. Add the rum and sprinkle in half of the cinnamon. Let cook another two minutes, until the banana is warmed through and starting to caramelize. Lower heat, cook another two minutes then set aside to cool.

Blend together eggs, oil and sugar. Slowly add in all dry ingredients and mix until batter is smooth. Add in cooled banana mixture. Evenly divide batter into cupcake pans (I filled 16 cups). Bake for 16 – 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

These came out really well; cooking the banana rather than just mashing up the raw banana adds a whole new depth of flavor to it. The banana flavor was much more pronounced and was nicely complemented by the spices. The cake itself is one of my favorites – it’s a nice dense cake that manages not to be too heavy. We had some of these plain, but I felt that for the sake of completeness I should try frosting them as well. I used a store bought [*gasp!*] cream cheese frosting. It did add a nice extra layer of flavor, but these cupcakes totally don’t need frosting. And I’m not just saying that because a) I’m not a big frosting fan and b) I will never, ever make frosting on this blog.

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Cake is actually the best part of a cupcake.

July 17, 2009 By 5 Comments

With all due respect to my dear co-blogger, frosting is most certainly not the best part of a cupcake. They don’t call it a frostingcake, do they? Or a cupfrosting? No! Cup. Cake. Clearly, cake wins.
 
And let me tell you, this cake wins everything. It’s all those cliche things people always say about cake: it’s moist! It’s rich! It’s delicious! It has a delicate crumb! [What does that even mean? I always hear it being used in conjunction with cakes. Maybe I'm too much of a plebeian to get it?]
 
But I digress. This cake is really good. The recipe is courtesy of the same lady that gave me the pound cake recipe. I’m pretty sure she’s a baking genius.
 

 
I have to admit, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but it was pretty damn close:
 
2 & ½ Cups of sifted flour
1 & ½ Cups of sugar
½ teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of coco
1 cup of buttermilk
1 & 1/2cups of Oil or (Soft Butter)
1 teaspoon of vinegar
2 eggs
1 ounce of Red food coloring
1 teaspoon of vanilla flavor
 
Preheat oven to 350. Cream together sugar and oil or (butter). Add eggs, beat well. Sift together flour, salt, and soda (set aside). Mix together food coloring, vinegar, and coco. Add to sugar and oil mixture. Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Blend well. Pour batter into two, well greased and floured pans, or spray with non-stick oil. Bake for 35 minutes. Cool.
 

 
I, of course, had to make cupcakes instead of cake. I always feel pressured when I make cake; that it has to rise perfectly, and there always seems to be so much of it. Cupcakes are way less pressure. Plus, they’re easier to carry to work, which is why I made them in the first place — it was my turn to bake for the department birthdays.
 
The only other change I made was to scale back a bit on the fat in the recipe. I used butter, but I only used two sticks [only! my husband was horrified and intrigued at having to take out two sticks of butter for me before I got home from work]. I also used slightly less sugar than listed, but didn’t cut back too much, since I wasn’t sure how that’d affect the taste. I feel like I could cut it by maybe a third of a cup and not have the taste affected too much.
 

 
See? I even spelled out “happy birthday” in little candy pieces. How precious am I? I also made one for the husband, because he looked all sad face at the thought of me bringing all the cupcakes to work. Yes, that is store bought frosting. Cream cheese frosting, which I’ve heard some people like on this cake and other people think is blasphemy. It works for me though, because I feel like it cuts some of the sweetness of the cake.
 
But seriously people, do yourself a favor and make this cake, in whatever form you want. Look at how beautiful it is!
 

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Frosting is the best part of a cupcake

June 30, 2009 By 2 Comments

For realz. No lies. Cake is good. Frosting makes it great.

I love sprinkles, and frosting, and cakes! The ones in the upper-right are Erins. :-)

I love sprinkles, and frosting, and cakes! The ones in the upper-right are Erin's. :-)

I had a pretty cupcake-heavy couple of weeks a little while ago and I’ve been meaning to post a bit about them here, so it’s about time to finally catch up! And really, who doesn’t love cupcakes? People without souls, that’s who.

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Rambling Regarding Rhubarb

June 22, 2009 By 4 Comments

And cake. But who doesn’t like some late-night alliteration?

I got both strawberries and rhubarb in my farm share last week, so the logical thing to do with them seemed to be dessert. I’ve eaten strawberry rhubarb pie before, but had never seen raw rhubarb in person until this week. It’s so colorful!

As it turns out, I’m way too lazy to make a pie crust from scratch nine times out of ten (or more). And I’d already eaten strawberry rhubarb pie anyways. Time for something new: cake! Cake that doesn’t tempt me to use the octopus pan. Cake that works like a clafoutis or an apple charlotte; cake where you just pour batter over fruit and hope for the best… easy, tasty cake.

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Success Cake

June 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

So last time I posted, I wrote about failure cake. Specifically, I talked about my failure to remove cakes from shaped pans. This time: Victory.
Last Saturday I was able to successfully unmold forty small flower shaped cakes!

Rose-shaped victory cake

Rose-shaped victory cake

The plan for Cake Experiment was to change one variable at a time. For example, last time I tried using this ridiculous pan, I greased it with melted butter and used a honey cake mix. So this time, I should have tried changing the grease or the mix, but not both. In the interest of actually getting to eat the cake, experimental integrity be damned. I changed both. The largest contributing factor was most likley the grease. This time I used Baker’s Joy. It’s this neat-o spray that does the greasing and the flouring at once.

This is the baking spray of victory. Also shown: victory cake mix and victory pan.

This is the baking spray of victory. Also shown: victory cake mix and victory pan.

Baker’s Joy (or some similar spray) gets into all the detailed bits of the pan with the oil AND the flour, so nothing sticks!

The cake mix may have helped a little, too. The only other time this pan worked even a little bit, I used the same mix (Duncan Gernam Chocolate, in case you were wondering). Cake Experiment: Phase Two will involve cake from scratch, plus Baker’s Joy. I’ll report back my findings.

Shaped pan filled with delicious batter, pre-victory. See how it glistens with Baker's Joy goodness?

Shaped pan filled with delicious batter, pre-victory. See how it glistens with Baker's Joy goodness?

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