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So, this cake. I made this cake for my boss and his family. His wife is currently going through chemo treatment (they expect her to make a full recovery) and a bunch of us in the office decided to put together a care package of food for them after her latest round. Not only was I happy to do this for my wonderful boss, but it allowed me to do my favorite type of baking - bake and release, as Dorie Greenspan calls it.

The only instruction I was given was to make something apple. I did not really have any idea what I wanted to make, except that I knew I didn’t want to mess around with pie or anything that required rolling out dough. After a food blog search I found a recipe on Serious Eats that was a modified version of Dorie Greenspan’s Swedish Visiting Cake with apples. Perfect. I printed this recipe at work and left it on the printer. It did me a lot of good there.

Since I am sometimes super lazy about the dumbest things, I decided to just use Dorie’s recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours and add sliced apples, instead of searching and reprinting the recipe at home. Whatever. Don’t judge me.

Here is what Dorie has to say about this cake, because, who am I kidding here, I cannot say it better myself…

“This cake is thin and light with a golden sugar crust and an interior that is soft, chewy, moist and reminiscent of cakes made with almond paste. Although it is amply satisfying in its plainness, I upped the flavor just a little by adding vanilla and almond extract.”

Seriously, this cake could not have been easier to make. The batter comes together literally in minutes, in one bowl, no mixer needed, no waiting for things to come to room temperature. The makings of a recipe I like. Dorie calls for this to be baked in a 9 inch cast iron skillet. Problem: I do not own said 9 inch cast iron skillet. Solution: I own cake pans or I own 10 inch cast iron skillet.

I went with solution “I own cake pans", for no particular reason. Next time, I will try solution “I own 10 inch cast iron skillet". BECAUSE - this mother f’ing cake took FORever to bake. Okay, not forever, but like double the time the recipe called for. That becomes a problem when I am trying to fit this cake in after making dinner and before getting to the gym. I suspect part of the problem was that the cake pan I used was too small and maybe the addition of the sliced apples threw this cake for a loop. It just couldn’t handle being baked with apples, it didn’t know what to do with itself.

Truth be told, I made this cake twice. The first cake was a real hot mess. It was in the oven at 350F in an approx. 8.5 inch cake pan for an hour and was still totally raw in the middle. I had to abandon this cake and leave it in the good(?) hands of Nick while I went to the gym. My instructions were “take the cake out when it is not wet in the middle and don’t ruin it". Yeah. I came home to an undercooked cake which was sitting inside a turned off oven. Huh? Okay, let’s not even go there.

Let’s make a long story short and say that after some stomping, pouting, and removal of cake from pan and into garbage, a second cake was made.

This time I wised up and used a larger 9.5 inch cake pan. This worked out much better in that after an hour of baking, I had a cake that I could actually give to someone. A cake that was actually the consistency of cake and not cold lumpy gravy. Still, this second cake baked for double the 25-30 minutes Dorie calls for AND about 20 minute in when I saw it was not even close to done I turned the heat up to 375F. I am perplexed.

The silver lining in this Swedish cake saga is that at least I got to taste cake #1 a.k.a hot mess. There were some edge pieces that were acceptable to eat, and they were freaking delicious.

Cake #2 came out looking fabulous, way better than it’s deformed hot mess of a sister. It was totally cooked through and nicely golden brown (I loosely covered it with foil near the end). The top became a puffy sugary crust that sparkled with sugar but the inside was still all moist and cake like and the apples got nice and soft.

I will for sure be making this again for my own consumption. Maybe with apples or maybe not. I would like to try it without apples to see if they were the culprit of my baking time issues. The more I think about it, the more likely that seems.

The recipe that is posted after the jump is Dorie’s original recipe from the book. The cake that I baked was modified. This pretty much entailed not adding almonds, and adding sliced apples of the Pink Lady variety instead. I know, I’m a visionary, you don’t have to tell me.

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Applesauce Spice Bars. I can’t say that this is something I would have chosen to make on my own. However, as is the case with most Dorie Greenspan recipes, they were quite good. This cake was spiced with the usual suspects of cinnamon and all spice, and rounded out with a nice splash of brandy. The cake could really not have been more moist, and the glaze, oh boy. The glaze was by far the best part. Just combine yourself the right amount of sugar and fat and you have liquid happiness. I let my bars cool 100% completely before I made the glaze so I would have a nice thick icing. Some of it still did seep into the cake, but most of it set quickly and stayed on the top where it belonged.

This cake really reminded me of a muffin, in the process of making it and in the texture and taste. I am sure some people did bake them into muffins and they probably came out wonderful. I might try to lighten this recipe up in the future and make some healthier muffins with it. I really loved the chunks of apples and nuts, and I even enjoyed the raisins in this which can be hit or miss for me. Nick suggested that I make these again during the holidays and make a boozed up version of the glaze to top it with. Sounds good to me.

Nick seemed to enjoy these a lot, and I hope the rest of his coworkers do as well, as I am dumping a huge pan of them in his office this morning. They must get out of the house. I am so untrustworthy around anything sweet that I bake myself. Even if I don’t really like something, I will still eat it because it’s there and it’s home baked by me.

This was a super Tuesdays with Dorie pick by Karen of Something Sweet. You can find the recipe at Karen’s blog or on page 117-118 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

[There’s a hole in this cake]

This week’s Tuesday’s with Dorie is Classic Banana Bundt Cake. A great pick by Mary of The Food Librarian. You can find the recipe on Mary’s blog or on page 190 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I really enjoyed this cake. It’s nothing dramatically out of this world unbelievable, but it is a solid, easy to make cake, which is something that everyone needs a few of in their repertoire. It is a great dessert to bring to a party or give away as a gift or a welcome to the neighborhood type of thing. And it will feed an army!

I made this cake with my sister while I was visiting my family in NY over the weekend. Finally, some people to share my baked goods with! We enjoyed this cake on Saturday night after a yummy dinner of burgers on the grill with my homemade rolls. Nick made his famous hamburgers as well as the Triple S burger which my dad had just seen in the newspaper. It was a burger of freshly ground short ribs, sirloin, and skirt steak. Do I really need to tell you all that it was delicious?

Anyway, back to the cake. My cake came out moist and delicious and surprisingly the banana flavor was not overwhelming. It was a hit with the whole family. I think a handful of chocolate chips would be fabulous in this cake, and I am sure that some of my fellow bakers did just that.

Even though I tented it after a 1/2 hour, it still got a bit browner than I would have liked. Fear not though, because it’s ugliness was covered up quite nicely with a lemon vanilla glaze.

In an effort to lighten this up a bit, I subbed one of the sticks of butter for 1/4 cup of canola oil, and I used fat free Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. I suppose it may have been even tastier if I had made it as written, but really, this cake was so good the way I made it do I really need all that extra fat? I don’t think so.

This was yummy in my tummy with a nice cup of coffee and the company of my mom and sister.

There may have been a well of glaze in the middle of the cake that flowed out after I cut the first piece, and we may have spooned generous amounts of that glaze all over our cake. We may have.

Full recipe after the jump

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Well, I just didn’t have a layer cake in me this weekend, and I especially could not reach deep enough to make a buttercream with 3 sticks of butter. Softening an entire pound of butter for cake and frosting is hard to swallow when you have no real occasion for it.

I did consider just making a smaller version of the cake, but my parents came to visit this weekend and we were out and about walking around DC, shopping, and eating. So it was easier and less time consuming to whip up a batch of cupcakes when I had some down time. Besides, I did my fair share of pigging out on delicious food and dessert this weekend, I certainly did not need a cake at home on top of all that.

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Sunday night is a breeding ground for aggression and confrontation in this house. Unlike the more intelligent portion of the human population who spends their weekends actively accomplishing things, Sara and I rather embark upon a ~40 hour adventure of listlessness. The sloth at times reaches a degree of soliciting a wrathful hand from divine to rightfully smite us. As such, on Sunday nights there is always so much shit to do any not nearly enough time (and even less patience). Mix 1 part of this with 2 parts of loathing the forthcoming work week and we have conditions in play for a perfect storm.

Enter Tuesday’s With Dorie.

What do you mean you’re not going to do TWD this week? Oh really? I don’t care if they relaxed the participation requirements. Don’t you care about the blog, our readers, our online image? Oh well if you want me to write more posts then I will, but that is a completely separate subject. This sounds absolutely delicious. I don’t care if it’s “3 pages long” it can’t possibly be that complicated.

(finishes beer and spitefully throws it into recycling bin - at least I’m an eco-conscious asshole)

Well you wanna know something? If it’s in this “simple baking book” there is no reason I can’t make it to perfection. In fact, I’d venture to say it would be THE BEST TWD post this week if I make it. Besides, you know, men are highly underrepresented in the TWD group. Most of the greatest bakers of ALL TIME are men. I’ve been meaning to do something about this for a long time. Quotes Joepastry “if a man feels like whipping up a nice almond cocoa genoise or a few madeleines, well…he should be able to.” FINE! You go to the grocery store alone, I am going to stay home and work on this, because unlike you, I CARE ABOUT THE BLOOOOOGGGGG!!!!

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Okay, these were pretty delicious. Moist cinnamon cake, a surprise swirl of chocolate and cinnamon sugar in the middle, and chocolate ganache frosting to top it off. How could it be bad? The answer is, it can’t be bad.

The original recipe by Dorie Greenspan was for a whole cake, and you can find it on page 210-11 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. However, in a effort to save some money on ingredients and to stop my waistline from expanding even more, I halved the recipe and made some cupcakes. I just could not bring myself to take out 10 tablespoons of butter for one cake this week.

I really love cinnamon, and this was the cinnamoniest cake I have ever made. The batter seemed pretty standard and it was simple to make, the only substitution I made was that I used low fat buttermilk instead of whole milk.

To make the cupcakes, I scooped a bit of batter into each cupcake cup, sprinkled the cinnamon, sugar, espresso powder mixture over the batter, then topped it with some more batter. The only tricky part was figuring out how many cupcake cups to fill halfway. I ended up having to abandon one half filled cup to fill up the others. I ended up getting 8 cupcakes out of a half recipe.

I let them cool overnight and frosted them the next day. The chocolate frosting couldn’t be easier to make. Chocolate + butter + double boiler = delicious ganache frosting. This frosting did set very nicely after about 2 hours. I was pleased.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have had a bit of an upset tummy for the last few days so I only ended up eating 1/2 of a cupcake just to try it. They were great. Nick, Geoff, and our friend Nick of Macheesmo all gave them a thumbs up. The rest go off to work today with Nick.

I read on the P&Q that some people were not fans of the cinnamon chocolate combination. I suppose I don’t eat such a combination too often, but it was fabulous in this recipe. Just the right mix of comforting laid back buttery cake and chocolate decadence. However, I would totally eat this as a coffee cake with no frosting, and just the little secret punch of swirly chocolate in the middle.

Many thanks to Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures for picking this fab cake for all of us to make. Check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll to see what the other bakers thought.

(How great is that swirl?)

Well, this is a quasi Tuesdays with Dorie post this week. This week’s recipe was mango bread and was chosen by Kelly of Baking with the Boys. I was going to be a trooper and make this mango bread, even though Nick and I are not fans of the mango. Then I thought to myself, just change out the mango for some strawberry. Yes, you are a genius Sara. You have been wanting to make strawberry bread and now is your chance.

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Even though I had already made a pie for Nick for his birthday, I also wanted to make a layered birthday cake. Really, I had been wanting to make a layer cake for a while and his birthday was the perfect excuse.

I knew that I wanted to make a white or yellow cake, and that I wanted to dye the middle layer. (I would have preferred pink, but I went with blue since this was technically for Nick). I decided on a cake recipe that I saw at Food Loves Writing. Coincidentally, this recipe was actually originally printed in the Washington Post because it is a recipe from Restaurant Eve. Restaurant Eve is a well known restaurant in Alexandria, VA. I have never actually been there but have been reading many good things about it in various local publications for a few years now. So that, coupled with Shannalee’s review, made me confident that this cake would be delicious.

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This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Tiramisu Cake and was chosen by Megan of My Baking Adventures. The original recipe can be found on page 266 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here.

So, Tiramisu Cake. Really, I could take or leave Tiramisu for the most part. I think by now most people know that Tiramisu means “pick me up” in Italian because it is often eaten in Italy as an afternoon snack that provides a nice jolt of caffeine from the espresso drenched ladyfingers. If you didn’t know that, well, now you do. Dorie Greenspan in her infinite wisdom has transformed this ubiquitous dessert into a cake.

I almost skipped this one, but at the last minute on Sunday night, I decided to go for it in the form of Tiramisu Cupcakes. My plan was to fill the cupcakes with the marscapone cream, reminiscent of the berry surprise cake we made for TWD a few months ago.

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I made this cake for Passover Seder at my parent’s house. It had to be flourless, ya know, the whole Passover thing.

Nick was the one who suggested the flourless chocolate cake and volunteered us to make it. He then went to pastry guru Joe Pastry to see what he had to say about such cakes. Mr. Pastry suggests using this recipe from Epicurious.

So, the night before our Seder, 11PM rolls around and there is no flourless chocolate cake. There is only me watching TV and Nick drinking scotch and playing online poker. Guess who ended up making this cake all by her lonesome, after having to harass Nick just to print out the recipe.

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