a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Banana Cappuccino Cake

My normal coffee shop order is a bit boring– a cortado with regular milk, or basically a baby cappuccino. My fantasy order, however, is a grande mocha topped with a mountain of whipped cream. Alas, I must pick and choose my daily sugar battles, and if there’s gonna be cake at home, I’ll just stick with the boring coffee order. But maybe with cake I can actually have it all, by turning a Banana Cappuccino Cake into a Mochaccino one.

Dorie takes an easy banana cake and adds espresso powder and coconut to play up the tropical feel. Almost a year ago(!), we baked A Big Banana Cake, and looking at the ingredient list, I thought it could use some baking powder. This cake recipe is very similar, and I wish I had thought to add baking powder here, too. My only quibble with the cake is that was a bit dense, and maybe a little extra leavening would have given it some more height and fluff. I’ll note it in my book in case future Steph makes it again.

I had some chocolate frosting in the freezer leftover from the Devil’s Food Party Cake we made back in the fall. It wasn’t much– really just enough to frost a single layer cake. Since Dorie employed the “what grows together goes together” flavor philosophy with her banana-coconut-cinnamon combo, I figured why not add chocolate to that list. I needed to rewhip the buttercream after it defrosted, so I took that opportunity to bring it more in line with the frosting in the recipe. I added in a shake of espresso powder, a dash of cinnamon and a little knob of cream cheese. Hard to go wrong with all these flavors together, I must say. The espresso taste didn’t come through much in the cake itself, but in the frosting it was definitely there, giving me my mocha vibes.

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Mix-It-Up Citrus Loaf Cake

I almost always have a little plate floating around my fridge holding half a cut lemon or lime or both. Sometimes there’s an orange rolling back and forth, too. Dorie’s Mix-It-Up Citrus Loaf Cake is a cake that’s designed to be made with whatever combo (or even single) citrus you fancy. This version cleared out the fridge for me…lemon, lime and orange.

This is just a quickie hand-mixed olive oil cake with lots of zest and juice (and honey). I made a half-sized loaf and it was done in about 30 minutes. Mine had that damp olive-oily crumb, a nice crust and the citrus mix gave Fruit Loops vibes. I opted in on the marmalade glaze topping, of course.

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Pears, Nuts and Rye, Oh My

I certainly did say “oh my,” when I mentally absorbed the ingredient list for this Pears, Nuts and Rye, Oh My cake. I’ve been out of AP flour for about a week now and didn’t feel like going out on a snowy weekend to get some, but it’s no problem for this recipe. With its mix of spelt, rye and nut flours, I can see this not being a true” anytime cake” for many people, but, weirdly, I have all those things on hand. I even had a pear ready to go…I remembered how long they take to ripen from our last pear project, so I went pear shopping well in advance.

This cake has a lot of flavor from the earthy flour blend, a nip of brandy and notes of molasses from brown sugar. Chunky pear slices and hazelnuts are arranged on top of the batter and drizzled with honey. During baking, some stay afloat while others sink into the batter in a very appealing way. I baked my cake in a regular cake pan instead of a springform and it turned out just fine.

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Baked-in-a-Skillet Gingerbread

Gingerbread is one of my most favorite holiday treats. It can come in many forms, not just cookie versus cake, and I’m here for all of them. On the cake side, I’m used to gingerbread being dark and moody, heavy on the molasses, and sometimes even boosted with coffee. This Baked-in-a-Skillet Gingerbread is less molasses-forward and more spice-forward, zippy with bits of candied ginger.

The batter contains a surprise ingredient that threw me for a loop, especially since I didn’t bother to read the recipe until I was just about to make it! Apple butter isn’t a pantry staple for me, and I didn’t really want to go and get it just for this, nor did I feel like making it. I was contemplating substituting it with banana-data puree, but then as I was rummaging through my cabinet looking for last year’s jar of molasses, I found something else I bought last year– a seasonal pumpkin spice spread from Bonne Maman that I had big plans to use, and then, of course, never did. Problem sorted– I used that. (Now I have 3/4 of an open jar left to contend with, however.)

Sometimes I think the “skillet-baked” sweets thing is mostly a gimmick, but here I think baking it this way gives a nice crust to the gingerbread. This is a dense cake, not dry, but certainly not damp, and it lasts for days. It reminds me of some Scandinavian-style gingerbreads I’ve had, and it’s only as I type this that I wonder if that’s why Dorie suggests topping it with Swedish pearl sugar…

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Fall Harvest Cake

The most fun thing about making this Fall Harvest Cake is that you get to choose what you “harvest” to put in it. Pick some fresh fruit, pick some dried fruit, pick a nut, pick a glaze– it’s like the ultimate “playing around” cake, and I think you’d have to try hard to choose a combo that didn’t work well.

The base for this bounty of fruit and nuts is a sturdy but moist olive oil cake. It’s easily whisked together by hand, and I made it even easier by making it a one bowl affair. A couple of days before I baked this cake, I happened to have devoted a few hours to poaching several quince. Rather than apple or pear, I used slices of sweet, deeply rosy quince that I cut into chunks. For my other add-ins I used seedless red grapes, candied orange peel, dried cranberries and the last dregs from bag of sliced almonds. Quince has a lot of natural pectin, and its poaching liquid basically gels into a glaze when it cools, so I just used that to add some shine and extra fall fruitiness to the top of my baked cake.

Wow, was this good. I don’t do too much baking with grapes, but Dorie’s right that they are a surprise treat here. This cake stayed soft and delicious for four days on my counter (my kitchen has basically zero climate control and is as cold as a root cellar in the fall and winter, else I may have chosen to refrigerate it if keeping it that long).

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!