Birthday Cake (and leftover-cake bread pudding)

Earlier this week it was my birthday! My Partner decided to make me a birthday cake - the first cake he has ever made. I wrote up detailed instructions, came down into the kitchen a couple times to say "No, you didn't ruin it, it's supposed to look like that.", and generally fretted. He spent most of the cooking time in one sort of panic or another, but the result was fantastic!

 It was a very 'birthday cake' flavored birthday cake, if that makes any sense. A yellow cake with cream cheese icing - simple but classic.

He is working clearing out storm ponds, and has pulled a few cool items out of them. This cute plate is one of them. (I put it through the dishwasher first, don't worry)

And here he is decorating the cake. He was a little upset that it wasn't perfectly smooth, but it's pretty impressive for a first attempt!

We ate the cake for two days, and still had a quarter of the cake left on the third morning... so I made bread pudding out of it!

(I forgot to take a picture before we served ourselves)
Making bread pudding out of leftover cake is super easy. I used my bread pudding recipe, but left out the sweeteners.

Leftover-Cake Pudding
1/4 of a two layer cake, cut into cubes (frosting and all)
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon

(if you use a frosting that is more sugary than my cream cheese frosting, you might want to scrape most of it off of the cake before you begin.)
Preheat the oven to 350*
Place the cubed cake into an 8" square cake pan.
Whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon together in a small bowl.
Pour the egg mixture over the cake and press down with the back of a spoon so the cake is all moistened.
Bake in the preheated oven for 35 - 45 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the center is set.
Spoon onto plates and enjoy!

Birthday Cake for Non-cookers

My birthday is coming up in late April.
My Partner wants to do something for me for my birthday.
So I was thinking it would be nice to have someone make a cake for me, instead of the other way around.
...except the Partner does not cook. The simplest kitchen things that seem completely obvious and intuitive to me are completely foreign and strange to him.
The challenge, then, is to write up a recipe for cake that I can eat, that is detailed and simple enough that he doesn't have to bring me into the kitchen to help him make it...
...because once I'm in the kitchen, I'll just take over and then he won't have made me a cake for my birthday.

I have decided on a simple yellow cake, with a simple cream cheese frosting.  I was thumbing through my Fannie Farmer's cookbook this morning looking for a recipe, and there are so many fun ones. A princeton orange cake (orange velvet cake, yumm)? A jelly roll? Cottage pudding cake (a butter cake)? Maybe a type of sponge cake? Or a Marbled chocolate-butter cake?
Or go with the yellow cake (which makes 2 8" round layers), split the layers, and fill it with lemon filling and frost it with chocolate ganache? Or make a middle layer of orange chocolate mousse and chill it? Or bake it instead into one flat cake, cut it into three, stack it, and fill it with an apple filling for a tall narrow cake?
...and then I remember again who is going to be baking the cake... and I go with simple.
The original recipe had more egg yolks, white sugar, and milk. I replaced the sugar and milk with honey, the egg yolks with whole eggs, and changed some of the flour to whole wheat for more nutrition.  If I were baking the cake, I would separate the eggs and beat the whites for a fluffier cake... but I'm not.

Classic Gold Cake (for non-sugar eaters)

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup honey, agave, or maple syrup
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt (fine grain)

-Preheat the oven to 350*. Butter and lightly flour two 8-inch round cake pans. (to butter and flour a cake pan, coat the inside of the pan lightly but completely with butter, throw a handful of flour into the pan, and swirl it around until all the interior surfaces are coated, then dump out any leftover flour)
-In a large bowl, with a wire whisk, beat the butter and slowly add the honey and eggs and beat well. Add the vanilla. (this mixture may look curdled. That's ok.)
-In a separate bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, and salt.
-Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beating until smooth. (this batter will be thicker than crepe or pancake batter. If it is too thick to easily work with, stir in no more than 1/3 cup milk)
-Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans and spread it smooth with a rubber spatula.
-Bake for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick poked into the center of the cake comes out clean. ('toothpick coming out clean' means there is no clumpy dough sticking to it when you pull it back out of the cake)
-Let the cakes cool in the pans for 5 minutes before turning out onto racks.
-Cool completely before frosting and filling with cream cheese frosting.


Cream Cheese Frosting
(I can't believe I haven't put this recipe up on the blog yet!)

2 cups cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup

Beat the cream cheese and butter together until homogenous. Add the vanilla and honey or maple and beat until smooth. Generously frost and fill the completely cooled cake.
This frosting will not set up like a standard  powdered-sugar butter-frosting does.


To frost and fill a cake
(it occurs to me that not everyone grew up watching their mother do this.)
Look at your completely cooled cakes. If they are lopsided or peaked in the middle, gently slice off a bit of the top with a bread knife to make them more flat (they don't have to be perfectly flat). The trimmings can be discarded or eaten.
Place one of the cakes on the surface you want your completed cake to be on. (a very flat plate or a piece of stiff cardboard covered in tinfoil works well)
Using a cake spatula or a butter knife, spread a thick layer of filling on the top of the bottom cake. If your filling and your frosting are different, make sure the filling does not hang off the sides of the cake.
Gently place the second cake on top of the bottom cake and filling. Gently spread the frosting on the top and sides of the cake. Try not to press down, so the filling doesn't get squeezed out. Try to spread the frosting in only one direction to avoid lifting crumbs from the cake surface and making a messy-looking frosting.
To smooth the frosting, dip your butter knife or cake spatula into hot water, shake it dry, and run it lightly over the cake surface.

Ok Folks,
Is there anything in this recipe that could confuse a non-baker? Any instruction I have glossed over because it's common knowledge?
Tell me and I'll add it in!
I'll update with pictures and the tale of the cake's making after my birthday!
-Zay

Edited to add a picture and a little more clarification to the recipe. -Z

Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake: Perfected

As you may recall, a while back I posted a recipe for chocolate pudding cake as an example of how to convert a recipe to honey. Since then, I have tested the recipe, and found that a little tweaking made it much better.The original didn't have enough pudding, and the cake did not rise through the syrup as it was supposed to. Both problems have been solved.
So here it is, a delicious, puddingy, chocolatey, cakey dessert.

Flip upside down to serve

Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake

-pudding
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups milk
1/8 tsp cinnamon

-cake
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup milk
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350*. Have an 8x8 pyrex cake pan ready. 
In a small saucepan, mix the pudding ingredients together over low heat, and heat, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a boil, but do not let boil over. (it will try to if you let it)
While the pudding ingredients are heating, mix the cake batter. Blend the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, make a well in the middle, and add the wet ingredients. Do not mix into a batter until the pudding mixture comes to a boil.
When the pudding mixture comes to a boil, pour it into the 8x8 cake pan. Quickly blend the cake ingredients together to make a batter, and drop by scant teaspoonfulls evenly across the top of the pudding mixture.
Bake at 350* for about 25 minutes, until the pudding on the bottom seems to be boiling well, and the top of the cake seems cooked and dry. Some of the pudding may boil through onto the top, this is fine.
Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. The cooling time is very important to allow the pudding to thicken, otherwise the bottom will be more milky instead of puddingy.
With a large spoon, scoop cake and pudding out onto small plates. This cake is great by itself, but even better with whipped cream or ice cream.
This cake is very rich, so a little goes a long way. If you have leftovers, the cake is also good cold and stores well in the fridge... until someone with a spoon comes along and devours it, that is.

Some of the Cake has been devoured

Batter and Pudding ready to go

-A note on cocoa powder. The first three times I made this recipe, I used Ghirardelli cocoa powder. It was delicious. This last time, (the only time I remembered to take pictures), I used Hershey's "special dark" cocoa powder. The result was... less than stellar. I purchased the hersheys only because the store was out of Ghirardelli cocoa powder. It is much darker than regular cocoa powder, and smells as though they achieved this by burning some (if not all) of the cocoa beans to charcoal. It is unpleasant, bitter, dark, and does not taste like chocolate (but then again, when has hersheys ever tasted like chocolate?).

In conclusion, you can use a little less than a cup of high quality cocoa powder and make a dessert that is worthy of the gods, or you can use the same amount of cheap cocoa powder and have a dessert that is merely 'meh'.
It is your choice.Choose wisely.
-Zay

One-Egg Whole-Wheat Honey-Lemon Pound Cake (of yum, with strawberries... including tales of vegetable triage)

(Don't you love the titles of old books that go on for about a page? Me too. That's why the title of this blog post is so silly.)
I got my Bountiful Baskets again this week. I love it. The only (semi)problem I have is that there is so much produce all at once! Much more than I would normally ever buy at once. I have resorted to a sort of vegetable triage, where I categorize thing by how long they will last and use the perishables up first. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash? Throw them in a bin, they'll be fine for at least a month. Lettuce, asparagus, bok choy? Figure out meals that will use it up fast. So far I haven't had anything spoil before I got to it, so there must be something to my system.
I got some strawberries in my Bountiful Baskets this week, deep red, perfectly ripe, obviously a use-quick item. The instant I saw them I decided I was going to make pound cake. Nevermind that I have never made a pound cake I could eat before, I had decided, and it was to be.
Of course I started with an internet search for honey pound cake, no need to reinvent the wheel if it's already been done. I found a decent-looking recipe here, but then realized I had an egg shortage. Last summer at work I would make a one-egg lemon pound cake that seemed very good, so I found that recipe again here.
Being myself, I decided to make a mutant love-child of the two recipes for my experiment. The result is fantastically delicious, if I do say so myself. It is dense, sweet, flavorful, tender, and everything a pound cake should be, including that I can eat it! I used a mild orange honey, which I think did good things to the flavor. Use the best-tasting honey you can get ahold of and this should turn out delicious for you too.

One-Egg Whole-Wheat Honey-Lemon Pound Cake
1/2 cup butter, warm
3/4 cup honey
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon extract
1/2 cup milk
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350*, grease and flour a 4"x8" loaf pan.
Cream together the melty butter with the honey, mix in the egg, vanilla, lemon extract, and milk until smooth. Pour the flours in a heap in the middle, mix the baking powder and salt into the flour before mixing everything together until smooth. Do not overmix.
Scoop the batter out into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top slightly. Bake for 45*, or until the center is raised and cracked and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out dry.
Let cool in the pan a few minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely before serving.
To serve, slice into thick slices, place each slice on a plate, top with strawberries and eat with a fork as slowly as you can force yourself to eat it.
I was going to have a picture of the serving suggestion... but once I had everything plated I forgot and ate it up instead, so you'll have to make it yourselves to see what it looks like!

Notes:
-On the strawberries. If your strawberries are prefect and super sugary sweet, you can just slice them and put them on the pound cake, but if they are a little tart you can slice them in advance, pour a little agave over them. Agave dissolves at cool temperatures, unlike honey, so it's better for cold uses, since you don't want hot strawberries on your pound cake. (or maybe you do, you weirdo)
-On the flour. This being a dessert, I wouldn't use more than half whole wheat flour, to keep things light and tender. If you have whole wheat pastry flour, use that, but if you don't, don't worry about it. I didn't and still had good results. As long as your whole wheat flour has good flavor, your pound cake will be good.

How to Convert a Recipe to Honey: Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake

Recently I went to over to my Aunt Mary's for dinner. Knowing Tyler and I don't eat refined sugar, she had made a special 'sugar free' chocolate pudding cake for us. Unfortunately, she used fake chemical sweeteners in it, which destroyed the good flavor of the chocolate as well as making me feel a bit queasy about eating it.  With this in mind, I thought I would try to write an easy guide to converting a recipe to honey, which is good for you and usually tastes as good or better than sugar.
Converting a recipe to a honey version is usually quite easy, as long as the recipe already calls for a liquid. I will begin with a basic chocolate pudding cake recipe link. I chose this one because it has a lot of good reviews. Look at the original ingredients list. 

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups hot water

The original instructions tell you to first make a cake batter out of some of the ingredients, sprinkle others on top, and pour hot water over all before baking. In theory, the water dissolves the ingredients sprinkled on top, the cake batter rises through this syrup, and a pudding layer forms on the bottom. I can work with this.  
The original recipe cake batter ingredients are:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
3 Tbsp oil
This calls for both sugar and a liquid. Since honey is about twice as sweet as sugar, you want to use half as much honey as it calls for sugar, and reduce the liquid by that amount. I will also replace the oil with butter because it makes everything delicious. This changes the recipe to:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
scant 1/4 cup milk
3 Tbsp melted butter
Obviously, there is no way to tell if these proportions are right without testing the recipe, but they should be close enough to make a good product.

In the original recipe, the next step was to sprinkle cocoa and sugar on top of the cake batter, and pour hot water on top. Here is where the recipe will diverge from the original. The original sprinkling ingredients were:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
and the hot water to pour on top was:
1 1/4 cups hot water mixed with
1 tsp vanilla.
In my version it will all be mixed together into a syrup which will be poured on top of the cake batter. I will reduce the water by the amount of honey I replace the brown sugar with, and replace the chocolate chips with a little extra cocoa powder. I will also add a dash of cinnamon to cut the honey flavor without being detectable itself. Leaving us with:
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon
and that's it for the most part. All that's left is testing and fine tuning the recipe. The final version is:

Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake
Cake
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
scant 1/4 cup milk
3 Tbsp melted butter
Syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon

Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the honey, milk, and butter. Spread into an 8x8 cake pan.
In a small pot, mix together the honey, cocoa, hot water, and cinnamon. Heat to near boiling. remove from heat, add vanilla, and pour over the cake.
Bake in a 350* oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the top looks dry. Let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving.

** disclaimer**
This is an untested recipe, put here to demonstrate the ease of converting a recipe to honey. I will test it as soon as I can, because I love chocolate, but I don't have any cocoa powder right now. It might be that the proportions are off. The cake might not rise up through the syrup, it might not be sweet enough, or too sweet, or not rich enough, or too rich. I don't know. The water in the syrup might need to be replaced with milk, or some other flavor extract might need to be added (rum and maple come to mind). The syrup might need to be added to the pan first, the cake batter spooned on top. Only testing will tell, but this recipe should be reasonably close to good.
</perfectionist>

Honey Baked Apples

For once, I shall blog not something that I have made, but something that someone else makes that I love eating.
Baked apples! Sweet and tart, with the juices caramelized around them.
Hot, fresh from the oven.
Very good with homemade icecream.
(can you tell yet that I love these apples?)

There is no specific recipe, you just go with what feels right (my kind of cooking!)

1 or 2 or 3 apples, depending on size. quartered or eighthed and cored. they should cover the bottom of a 9x13 pyrex baking dish with some space between - but don't put them in the dish yet. The better - tasting and crisper your apples are the better this dessert will taste.
about 1/4 to 1/3 cup honey - do put this in the dish
juice of one lemon - also in the dish
several healthy sprinkles of cinnamon - into the dish
1 to 2 Tbsp melted butter - in the dish
Mix the honey, lemon, cinnamon, and butter together until fairly homogeneous. Put your apple slices on top, turning once to coat them all over. Put in the oven uncovered and bake at 400* for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 375* and bake until the apples are tender and the juices are reduced and fragrant (but not burnt) about 30 to 60 minutes.
Serve immediately with caramelized juices poured over top and a little vanilla icecream to the side.
 

Turning the Apple Slices

Recipe Variations -
vary the seasonings by adding lemon zest, or nutmeg, or a dash of cloves to the mix. Alcohol-based extracts (like vanilla) do not work with this recipe because they cook out.
vary the fruit - replace the apples with pears, or add a handful of raisins or dried currants or some fresh berries in the last five minutes of cooking.
change up the honey - different honeys have different flavors. If you don't like store-bought clover honey, try local wildflower honey, orange honey, or my favorite - blackberry honey.

Enjoy playing around with this recipe, if you stay pretty close to the proportions mentioned in the recipe, you're guaranteed to have a great dessert. 

Honey Peanut Butter Cookies of Deliciosity - 3 ways

I love peanut butter cookies, and lately I have been having a craving for them.
Unfortunately, most recipes for honey cookies have a token teaspoon of honey and a cup of sugar - not good for those who refuse to eat the refined stuff - and sugar-free recipes all use chemical sweeteners which freak me out to no end.
So I made my own! This recipe has three versions - it's a forgiving medium, so have fun and play around with it!

Honey Peanut Butter Cookies - the recipe closest to the original
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup all natural peanut butter
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup honey (or maple syrup, or agave, or whatever)
1 tsp vanilla
1 2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Honey Peanut Butter Cookies - Option 2, Supersize the PB! (my favorite)
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup all natural peanut butter
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup honey (or maple syrup, or agave, or whatever)
1 tsp vanilla
1 2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Honey Peanut Butter Cookies - Option 3, Sweeter!
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup all natural peanut butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup honey (or maple syrup, or agave, or whatever)
1 tsp vanilla
1 2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix wet ingredients in a bowl, add the dry ingredients and mix until homogeneous but do not over-mix. Form into balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Press with a fork to make the charictaristic hatchmark on top and to flatten the balls. Bake at 350* 8-10 minutes until the bottoms are lightly browned. Remove to a rack to cool. These cookies are very tender, not overly sweet, and good with milk.

RECIPE NOTES:
If you use unsalted Peanut Butter, add 1/2 tsp salt to your dry ingredients.
If you want whole wheat cookies, this recipe is great for that. I use 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2/3 cup white flour.
If you don't want to use/don't have baking powder, use baking soda and add 1 Tbsp vinegar to the wet ingredients.

Dark Chocolate Mousse

not bear poop

No longer will this chocolate addict be denied Chocolate Mousse with Raspberry sauce, for I have created one with no refined sugar!

Muahahahaha! The world will now be mine!

Dark Chocolate Mousse

-mousse
1 medium egg yolk
1 T butter
2 medium egg whites
1-3 T real maple syrup or honey
1/2 cup heavy cream
6 oz Dark, Semisweet, or Unsweetened Baker's chocolate.

-sauce
1/4 cup real maple syrup
2/3 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
lemon juice
extra raspberries to garnish (optional)

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. beat in the egg yolk and 3 T of the cream.
In a large bowl, beat the remainder of the cream until it holds it's own shape. Fold carefully into the chocolate.

In a separate very clean bowl with a very clean whisk, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Gradually whisk in 1 T of the maple and continue whisking until stiff but not dry. Gently fork the egg whites a little at a time into the chocolate until well combined. Taste the mousse, depending on the darkness of the chocolate used, add 1-2 more T of maple, folding in gently, if needed. Cover and refrigerate.

-sauce
Combine maple and raspberries in a small pot. heat until almost boiling and simmer stirring occasionally for 3 minutes. Puree in a blender then rub through a sieve to remove most of the seeds. Add lemon to taste. To serve, spoon a small amount of mousse into a small serving bowl. pour a little raspberry sauce over top. garnish with a few fresh raspberries and eat with a spoon.