Breaking Pomegranates

Lemonade Cake

22 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment

by E. Catherine Tobler in cake, Cooking

The May 2012 Better Homes & Gardens showed up and it had a violently pink cake on the cover. It was clear from the start that it was something I needed to make. The lemonade cake comes from the mind of Karen Tack, who has written a book about…cake. Imagine! The book also involves pie, but we won’t hold that against it.

The first thing you should know is: this cake is evil. I modified it to be a little less evil (emphasis on “little”), but you’re still going to wind up with something amazingly rich, dense, and sweet. I’ll be taking the cake to Bible study this week and will probably still end up freezing a bunch of it to eat later. Cake does freeze well–remember that!

Pink Lemonade Cake

1 cup butter

4 eggs

3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups sugar

Red and/or pink food coloring

1 1/3 cups milk

1/4 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed

1 tsp. pure lemon extract

Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temp for 30 minutes. Grease two 8- or 9-inch cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper or wax paper, and grease the top of the paper. Flour the pans. This really will save you from anything sticking. I used 8-inch pans and the layers came out easy-peasy.

Stir together your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350!

I have a stand mixer (a Kitchen Aid named Ripley, since her top looks like a big alien head–one of the best things I’ve ever bought!), and that’s what I use for all baking doings. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can probably wrangle this with a hand mixer, but it’s going to get a work out!

So, in your mixing bowl, beat your butter until it’s smooth. Add your sugar a quarter cup at a time. Here’s one big change I made. I cut the sugar by half a cup. Two cups sounds like entirely too much sugar and even now, I’m wondering if I could have cut it back by a whole cup. I may try that next time. Knowing all the sugar that was yet to come (with the lemonade and the icing), two cups was just staggering.

Cream your butter and sugar, then add 1/4 tsp. of your food coloring. I use Wilton gel colors, so my measure was much less. You are aiming for a light pink here. Once done, add your eggs one by one, beating until fully blended.

Measure your lemonade in a liquid measuring cup. To this, add your lemon extract, or… I wasn’t willing to spend $6 on lemon extract, so bought one lemon and used its zest instead. This worked perfectly. I zested the lemon into the lemonade and oh the smell of it! The original recipe says to add your milk to the lemonade and extract, and that it will look curdled, but don’t panic. I just added the lemonade/lemon to the butter mix, and then alternately added the flour mix and milk, blending until all was smooth. This makes a thick batter.

At this point, you want half of your batter in one cake pan. This will be anywhere from 3 to 4 cups of the batter. With your remaining batter, you want to add  another 1/4 tsp. of food coloring so it’s twice as pink as the one you just made.

Spread into your pan. I used 8-inch pans and they took about 40 minutes at 350. The recipe says 35 minutes for 9-inchers. When they come out, allow to cool for ten minutes, then remove from pans, peel off paper, and cool completely. To get the four layer effect, of course you’ll slice each layer in half (a serrated knife works best), and alternate your layers.

Ms. Tack included a lemonade buttercream recipe, but I didn’t use it as I’m opposed to marshmallow fluff. I used the Wilton icing recipe and added more of the thawed lemonade concentrate until I had a consistency I was happy with–which ended up being more lemonade than I expected. You may need a good amount of icing for this cake, considering you have So Many Layers.

This makes a lot of cake. This makes a lot of dense, rich cake. I think halving the recipe and making cupcakes would be ideal so I may try that. Once I’ve worked off the calories from this one.

Banana Chocolate Cupcakes

01 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment

by E. Catherine Tobler in cake, Cooking

My recipes for banana cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes are pressed together on neighboring pages in my recipe book. I wondered if I might combine them and I’m happy to report that yes, it’s possible and also highly successful.

Preheat your oven to 350. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners; this recipe should make about 12 cakes.

¾ cup all-purpose flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

Whisk these dry ingredients together and make a well in the center. Set aside

½ cup butter, melted

1 tsp. vanilla

Melt your butter in a smaller bowl and add the vanilla to it. Inhale. Mmm.

3 bananas, ripe or overripe

½ cup sour cream

1 large egg

Mash your bananas in another bowl. Top with sour cream and egg. Add the banana mix and the vanilla butter to the well in your dry ingredients.

Gently stir until combined.

Spoon evenly into cupcake cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remember that I am baking at high altitude, so you may need to tweak your time. Cool on a rack and then…frost.

White Icing

1 ½ sticks butter, softened

3 2/3 cup powdered sugar

1 to 2 tablespoons of milk or water

Meringue powder, optional

Flavoring

Combine in your mixer until smooth.

A couple of notes here: I usually use salted butter. In this instance, I didn’t because I accidentally bought unsalted. It worked fine, but I did end up adding a very small pinch of Kosher salt to help the flavors bloom.

I used vanilla, but also added a tiny smidge of almond, and it was outstanding. For other cakes, you could easily flavor this with orange, cherry, whatever.

Milk and water: I’d only use if your icing seems too thick. I did use a little water in mine this time. For me, it often depends on the weather (and perhaps how soft my butter was to begin with).

The meringue powder is a trick I learned from cake decorating; it helps your icing set up, and develop that nice little “crust.” I find this with Wilton products usually, so not in a regular grocery store (I get mine at Hobby Lobby).

This recipe will frost slightly more than 12 cakes, but leftover icing isn’t a problem, is it?

Strawberry Cake

02 May 2011 Leave a Comment

by E. Catherine Tobler in cake, Cooking

One way I know spring and/or summer are arriving and/or here is the abundance of strawberry cake in the house! I came across this recipe in 2005 (in Martha Stewart’s Living) and it’s been a favorite ever since.

You will need:

One pie plate

One pound of strawberries

1 1/2 cups flour (all purpose works fine)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

6 tbsp. butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 350.

Mix your butter and sugar until fluffy, then add vanilla, egg, and milk. Your mixture will look a bit curdled, do not panic. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt until just combined. FYI: I always add a smidge more vanilla than they say; it makes this cake so fragrant and fabulous.

If raw egg doesn’t weird you out, taste your batter. It’s so lovely and like satin! I’m thinking it might even be good with a bit of cardamom, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Pour your batter into your pie plate (which you can butter if you like). Remove the leaves from the berries. Cut the berries down the middle. Place the berries cut side down over the top of the batter until entirely covered. Sprinkle the top with sugar–you can use regular white granulated or you can get fancy and use coarse decorating sugar.

Bake for ten minutes at 350, and then turn your oven down to 325 and bake for another hour. It usually only takes another 55 minutes here, so you may want to check yours in the last fifteen minutes or so.

It’s tasty warm with ice cream, and it’s also great when cooled. This cake is super simple and tasty, and always well-received when I need to take something to a gathering.