[food] notes on cake

[kaberett]

Today we made scones, with me rubbing fat into flour and directing the operation and A doing most everything else; they are the best scones I have ever been involved in making and I am delighted to have learned where to actually make improvements. (Briefly: I was overly alarmed by the portion of the instructions that goes "mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients together as quickly as possible, and handle the dough as little as possible".)

Tomorrow I am definitely going to make the familial hazelnut-and-chocolate cake for myself, Adam's wariness about it notwithstanding.

Once I've finished that (or possibly before, depending on how we're feeling) we'll make a round of pear bread, because Ocado were very insistent about selling me two kilos of pears for £3.23 and I'd just turned half the previous bag into a tub of Ruby Violet's pear sorbet.

Other cakes of which I am particularly fond, from my archives, should you feel moved to bake: brownies modified nach Geschmack, pineapple upside-down banana bread, Kardemummebullar (though really those wanted starting tonight to be food tomorrow, ah well). In the category of "I know I like this but I have yet to get around to making it": Bündner Nußtorte.


I would be delighted to hear tell of your favourite cakes, with or without recipes.

Comments

[rugessnome]

There's a (n obviously out of season except maaybe in the southern hemisphere or much nearer the equator) zucchini-chocolate bundt with coffee in one of my vegetable cooking books that is a bit of a project but marvelous.

(Similarly, since I've been (intentionally) cooking so much out of Still Life With Menus, the applesauce cocoa cake there is actually a big chocolate-spice flavored thing. Applesauce cake, to me, mentally=casual thing probably in a square pan, so there's a little dissonance with the name)

An apparently obscure pan-"middle-Eastern" book my local library has, offered an orange tahini cake I made a few years ago and have been thinking about doing again, having found a copy second-hand. (I think I took two attempts to get something reasonable because I was cutting the quantities in half or more and made a grievous error in the first batch.) It was a pretty casual loaf cake.

Several years ago, I did Crescent Dragonwagon's Rose of Persia cake (rosewater, cherries, and lemon) for my birthday, but it did not totally sell me on besan in pound cake.

(What I really meant to do, but didn't, this year, is the "lunar" eclairs from Still Life With Menu, with ricotta-lime-white chocolate filling)

And yeah, minimal handling is a fairly standard US-biscuit instruction. (Trying to avoid gluten development, see... though I want to say the fat is a hindrance to gluten anyway)

(by the way, have a happy birthday.)

[jesse_the_k]

I just made some besan-adjacent almond chickpea fava-bean shortbread cookies, with excellent results, to my surprise and delight.