Tag Archives: butter

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Marble Cake

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Marble cake speaks to the gemini and the indecisive-crazy-person in me. I mean it’s two different cakes in ONE CAKE.

There really isn’t a way to lose.

This cake is dense yet tender in the crumb and manages to be moist yet sturdy. The light batter is fragrant with vanilla and butter, the dark batter is rich and dense with dark chocolate. I think it’s key not to go too crazy with the marbling, so you can taste the two distinct flavors–just a few swirls with a knife or a toothpick through the batter give you just enough marble, leaving you with dedicated sections of vanilla and chocolate cake. This cake has the character of a pound cake–it’s dense and rests well, getting even better the 2nd and 3rd day. It’s totally the kind of cake to have around for impromptu coffee dates and, I have a hunch, would probably ship well–a theory I plan to test this holiday season.

Marble Cake

Adapted from Baking: from My Home to Yours

The original recipe calls for a little less butter, but I was being a bit of a space-cadet and just chucked two whole sticks of butter into my mixer–the batter was made before I realized my mistake, but the cake definitely didn’t suffer from the extra butter. I used an 80% dark chocolate bar–this made for a super-dense and rich chocolate batter–use a good quality chocolate, whatever is your fave will work great.

2 cups, plus 2 Tablespooons, all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg

2 sticks unsalted butter (8 ounces), room temperature

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

1/2 cup milk

4 ounces dark chocolate, melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 325*F. Grease and line a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan with parchment, place the pan on top of a sheet pan. Set aside.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Set aside.

Working with a stand or hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar and beat another 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. The batter may look curdled at this point, but that is okay. Scrape the bowl and beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Reduce speed to low and alternately add flour and milk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Place 1/2 of the batter in a separate bowl and fold in the melted chocolate so you have a vanilla batter and a chocolate batter.

Alternately drop spoonfuls of batter into the loaf pan until the pan is filled with the batter and plunge a butter knife into the batter, making a zig-zag pattern from one end of the pan to the other. Do this only once for a perfectly marbled batter. Bake in the center of the oven for 40 minutes uncovered. Cover loosely with foil and continue to bake another 30-40 minutes, until the vanilla batter on top is golden brown, the top is cracked, and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on a rack for about 10 minutes before turning out and cooling completely. Wrap cool cake well with plastic. Can be kept, wrapped well, at room temperature for several days.

 

 

 

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Recipe: Hazelnut Pound Cake

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Sometimes there are things in life that seem to follow you around. Needling, restless things that haunt your brain.

Like, last week, I ran into the biggest spider I have ever seen in our bathtub. Normal sized spiders FREAK ME OUT, but this one was abnormal. It was the size of my palm and it’s legs stretched over the edges of the drain. It was a monster…and the memory of it is haunting me. I can’t stop thinking about it and I’m sure it’s friends are lurking somewhere in my home. Big sigh.

Pound cake is something else that has haunted me…for years! I have made pound cake after pound cake and none of them have turned out. Either they sink in the center, come out way to dense and wet, or just lack flavor. I want the perfect crumb and flavor–dense while still being light, buttery, and better after resting a day or two.

I found this pound cake recipe via Orangette. Not only is it the perfect texture, it comes with a heavy sprinkling of hazelnuts, my favorite–the original recipe call for pistachios, which I believe would make one special cake. So, even though I am still haunted by the spider encounter, I can get over my pound cake issue… finally.

Hazelnut Pound Cake

Adapted from Orangette

The original recipe calls for citrus zest, which I left out, but I think this version would be lovely with some orange zest. 

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

5 eggs

4 Tablespoons half & half or whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, skinned, and chopped coarsely

Preheat the oven to 325*F. Spray a 9x5x3 inch pan with cooking spray and line with parchment, leaving an overhang on two edges.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer or with electric beaters, beat butter until creamy and light, 2 minutes. Add sugar and beat to incorporate, 1-2 more minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, to incorporate well, scraping the bowl as needed. Add extracts and half&half and beat to combine. Fold in the flour mixture and 1/2 of the hazelnuts. Scrape batter into the prepared pan, smooth top and sprinkle with remaining hazelnuts. Bake in the center of the oven for about 1 1/2 hours (I started checking it at about 60 minutes). Remove from oven and cool completely on a cooling rack. Can be kept, wrapped in plastic at room temperature, for a week.

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Recipe: Butterscotch Pudding

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Let’s talk pudding.

Pudding, in the all-American sense, is that soft, spoonable, comfort dessert that we all know and love. The homemade stuff, not to be mistaken with dry-packet you stir with some milk or those little plastic cups with the foil on top. Not those guys, not ever. Let’s talk about the stuff made on the stovetop with things from your pantry and fridge. The kind that stirs up faux-nostalgia, ’cause my mom never made pudding and definitely never made it from scratch, or the real kind of nostalgia if your mom/grandma rolled that way. Let’s talk about the kind that has egg yolks, lots of dairy, and begins or ends with butter. That’s the kind of pudding I have come to love, being the kid that was deprived of the good stuff until I had my own kitchen and will to whip it up myself. Usually, I stir some butter into the pudding at the end, it makes it silky, lately that butter has been browned for the sake of flavor and science. Not really for science, I just like to say that I’m doing stuff for science. It seems more official that way.

Anyway…this pudding begins with butter–and duh, I browned it–also, lots of brown sugar. Those two things are what butterscotch is made of, not those orange-colored hard candies you find all stuck together in a dish at grandma’s.

Butter + brown sugar=butterscotch and love. A pinch of salt makes the sweet, sweet sugar sing. There’s also whole milk, egg yolks, and a little bit of cream. All of those guys add richness and goodness. You can add bourbon, or whiskey, or scotch if you want. That’s not necessary, but it is delicious and slightly boozy tasting. You can decide whether or not  you want to go that route and get the bonus points.

Butterscotch Pudding

Adapted from David Lebovitz 

So, if you find you are out of brown sugar, like I totally did, you can make it your self by mixing together plain-old-granulated sugar with molasses. My ratio is 1 cup of sugar to 1 tablespoon of molasses, mix, mix, mix, and done.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 1/4 cups whole milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

3 egg yolks

1 tablespoon whiskey

1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium sauce pot, brown butter over medium low heat. The milk solids will become brown and smell nutty like toffee, watch it closely  so it doesn’t burn. Remove from heat and immediately stir in brown sugar and salt. Once the sugar is completely moistened with the butter, whisk in the milk.

In a small bowl whisk together the cream and the cornstarch until smooth. Whisk in the eggs. Whisk the egg mixture into the milk and butterscotch mixture and heat over medium, whisking constantly, until the pudding thickens to coat a spoon and is the consistency of hot fudge sauce. Remove from heat and stir in whiskey and vanilla. Using an immersion blender or regular blender, pulse a few times to aerate. Pour into individual cups (4-6) or into a large bowl and cover well with plastic touching the surface (to prevent a skin from forming), allow to cool and chill until ready to serve. If you place all of the pudding in a single bowl, whisk vigorously to smooth before serving. Serve with softly whipped , unsweetened cream.