Iced Lemon Loaf

Someone brought in to work yesterday a bunch of fresh lemons right off her neighbor's tree.  They inspired me to make a lemon loaf, and I knew just what recipe I wanted to try.

Supposedly this tastes like Starbucks' original iced lemon cake.  I wouldn't know, because friends don't let friends drink Starbucks.  But, I hear they have a pretty tasty lemon cake.  Or had.  Until they discontinued it. And then brought it back.  But not the same one.  Fickle product lineup is just one more reason to stay away from Starbucks.  

I followed the original recipe, but rearranged the directions.  I modified the glaze slightly (in italics), though, to give it a little more zip.

1½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
½ cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoon lemon extract
⅓ cup lemon juice
zest of one lemon

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9 × 5 loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until thick.  Continue beating while adding the oil and butter, then the vanilla extract, lemon extract, and lemon juice; mix until well blended.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and blend until smooth. Add lemon zest and mix well, making sure it's evenly distributed.  Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake for  about 45 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. (Check at 40 minutes.)  Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes in the pan, then gently remove and cool completely on rack.  Spread with glaze while still warm.

Glaze
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 1 tablespoon whole milk powder
½ teaspoon lemon extract
1½ - 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Beat all ingredients together until smooth, adding enough lemon juice to make a thick but easily spreadable glaze.

Conclusion:  Very good -- moist and delicate with a mild lemon flavor (except for the glaze, which I made quite lemony).  It's moderately sweet, and surprisingly buttery tasting.  It's somewhat oily, but that's typical in commercial-style cake (to keep it "fresh".  For quick consumption, you could reduce the oil up to half.)  It over-browned on the bottom (due to the high oil content), so would need protection there.  It was especially good still slightly warm.  A dash of cayenne would really make this interesting.

Original recipe:  Starbucks Lemon Loaf via My Honeys Place

The Chocolate and Cream Cheese Cake Tango

I don't like the inventor's name for this recipe:  "Rich Chocolate Cake with a New York Attitude".  It's brash.  It's confusing.  It certainly doesn't hint at what's going on here:  the sensual pairing of rich chocolate cake and creamy cheesecake.  This is so decadent it's probably banned by some religions.  So what word better describes this tempting union than... tango?  (Cue seductive Latin music.)

My (chocoholic) co-worker's birthday is this weekend, so I was looking for a cake to bring in today that was easily transportable and didn't require too much time to make during the week.  This recipe was perfect.  I split the work over two evenings by making the cheesecake mixture the night before and storing it in the refrigerator overnight.

The original recipe said it makes 3 9-inch cakes, but commenters said that even with 3-inch-high cake pans, their pans still overflowed.  I checked the quantities and realized that they were about double a normal cake, and that was just for the chocolate part.  Add to that the cheesecake part, and it's no wonder the pans overflowed.  So I cut the recipe in half and used a 9x13-inch pan and it worked just right.  (The original recipe is from a wedding cake challenge, which explains why the recipe is so large and baked in 3 pans.)  I also added espresso powder to enhance the chocolate.  I think almond extract would be a good flavor pairing in this recipe as well.

New York cheesecake swirl:

1/3 cup sugar

8 ounces (1 package) cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla (or almond) extract 

1 egg, room temperature

8 ounces semisweet chocolate morsels

Chocolate Cake:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons espresso powder (optional)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ounces unsalted butter, melted and cooled

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the sugar, cream cheese, and extract on high speed until well combined. Add the egg and continue to beat on high speed, scraping down the sides. Once combined, stir in the chocolate morsels. Chill the mixture for approximately 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Lightly grease a 9x13-inch cake pan and dust lightly with a little cocoa powder.  In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the sugar and stir to combine well.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and melted butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in small increments, gently folding the mixture until well combined.  Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan and spread evenly. Randomly place teaspoon-sized dollops of the cream cheese mixture atop the chocolate cake batter.  (If your cheesecake mixture is soft, for a prettier appearance lightly swirl the two together with a knife or chopstick.   See Notes.) Bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.  Before serving, dust with powdered sugar, if desired.

Spotted.  Not attractive.

Notes:  

• I expected the cake to rise up and cook around the cheesecake, resulting in pockets of cheesecake throughout.  As you can see, that didn't happen -- the cheesecake spread and formed  a nearly cohesive top  layer.  My cheesecake mixture was room temperature and soft, not chilled as directed, which might have been the cause.  While it didn't affect the flavor at all, the result was not very appealing visually.  Though the original directions didn't call for swirling the two parts together (perhaps because cold cream cheese doesn't blend well), it DOES refer to a cheesecake swirl, and I think the cake would look better that way.  Polka dots don't rank highly in food porn circles.

• If  I made this again, I would try the more traditional technique of mixing the sugar and cocoa powder in with the wet ingredients.  The cocoa powder is very lightweight, and tends to get kicked up into the air while trying to mix the dry ingredients.  

Conclusion:  This was very tasty and moist, and was well received at work.  But even though it has more cocoa powder than most cake recipes, it didn't seem that chocolaty.  (It might have been the cocoa powder I was using, which isn't my favorite.)  The cake also fell in the middle, though that might have had something to do with the oven door slamming shut mid-way through the baking.  (Oops.)  Of course, that only made the center of the cake that much fudgier.  No one complained.  (I should also mention the cheesecake part is mighty fine baked separately as its own dessert, warm or cool.)

Original recipe:  Rich Chocolate Cake with a New York Attitude via the Food Network

English Digestive Bake-Off: Foods of England

As I mentioned on my post for King Arthur Flour's English Digestives, I'm a big fan of digestives, and have been searching for the elusive, perfect recipe.  That post was part of an Avid Baker's Challenge bake, but it got me started on my grand bake-off effort.  That same day, I also made another recipe, this one from Foods of England.

One major difference with this recipe was it called for the addition of oats.  I used oat bran, and I think it made a huge difference, giving it a nice nubbly texture.  I also found that using unsalted butter and adding the salt as a separate item created the proper tongue-taste I was looking for.  The salt does not become completely integrated --  you can detect single grains here and there zapping your tongue occasionally.

This cookie was considerably more humble in appearance, but that is probably truer to its original form. The dough was very dry and crumbly.  The biscuit was less sweet than the King Arthur recipe; although I wouldn't call it a savory biscuit, it could be paired just as easily with jam or chocolate spread as with a piece of cheese.

Again, I made one quarter of the recipe.  I messed up the butter and milk quantities, so I'm not sure this is an accurate representation.  (I didn't put in enough butter at first, and had to keep adding milk.  I finally realized the butter error and corrected it, expecting then a sticky dough because of the extra milk, but still had to add a little more milk to get it to hold together.)  I also didn't make them the right size (2.5" instead of 3" -- I wasn't thinking and used the same cutter as I used for the KA recipe.) I'll need to try this one again one day.

Here's what I used:

6 2.5 oz plain wholemeal flour
2 0.5 oz fine oatmeal oat bran
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
½ 1/8 teaspoon salt
3 oz 1.5 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 0.25 oz soft brown sugar
3 to 4 1-2 tablespoons milk

Baked at 375F for 13 minutes, they were just barely starting to color and the bottoms were golden.  Yield:  6 2.5" biscuits,  1/4" thick.

I should have left these in for a few more minutes, as they tasted a little raw and tough, but since they were smaller than called for in the recipe I was worried about overbaking them.  I also wonder if using oat bran instead of oatmeal caused the dough to be too dry, as the biscuits were also rather dry even though I added more milk than called for.

Conclusion:  Very good.  Not quite sweet enough -- just enough sugar to take the bitterness off the wheat.
 I liked the salt distribution and the rougher texture, but they're not very rich; a little more butter would improve them.  They were slightly raw-tasting, so a few more minutes in the oven would help as well.   I might spread some milk chocolate on  these.

Original recipe:  Digestive Biscuits via Foods of England.

May ABC Challenge: English Digestive Biscuits

I've been a long-time fan of digestives.  I don't know what they're "supposed" to taste like, exactly, but since I thoroughly enjoy the McVitie's brand, that has become my ideal. They're very short, not too sweet, with a nubbly texture and a little bit of salt just on the tongue.  But they're also expensive.  So when I found a recipe for digestives years ago by Marion Cunningham (from whom delicious things issue), I gave it a go.  Unfortunately, her recipe fell far short of expectation.  (I think it was the egg.  From now on I vow to spurn any digestive recipe containing egg.)

I've been intending to have a Digestive Bake-Off  in order to find a recipe with that perfect balance of shortening, sugar, and salt and just the right crumbly texture. This month's challenge gave me a chance to make some headway, at least with one recipe.  I  tried to follow it faithfully, since you can't compare recipes if you start mucking with them.  I  must confess, though, that on seeing the recipe contained no salt I knew that they would not pass muster.  Therefore, I changed the butter to salted.  I also made only one quarter of the recipe, which could have altered the proportions slightly due to the smaller margin of error.

Here's what I used to produce 8 biscuits:

1/2 cup 1/8 cup (0.5 ounce) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups 3/8 cup (2.5 ounce) whole wheat flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted salted butter at room temperature
3/4 scant 1/4 cup (0.75 ounce) confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup 1 tablespoon (0.5 ounce) cold milk

Baked at 350°F for 15 minutes, the thinner ones over-browned on the edges. 

 

Conclusion:  These were quite good, but ultimately lacked something.  They were about the right level of sweetness, but the salt was completely integrated and wasn't detectable.  The texture was quite smooth.  The ones that had browned too much had a better taste and texture, with the butter having nicely crisped up the dough, while the blonder ones tasted a little raw and were slightly tougher.  It could be that I didn't prick them enough.  (Since I'll be making several different recipes over time, I wanted to mark each with the recipe source.  I should have just pricked right through the name!)

Original recipe:  English Digestive Biscuits via King Arthur Flour