A Couple of Cakes

Since discontinuing my website, I have been slowly bringing into this blog recipes that once were only on the website. It is taking time, as there are a lot of them that were once only on the website, but I am working them down, and today I wanted to put two cake recipes in here that are truly delicious. One uses rhubarb, which is not available everywhere at this time of year, but do file this recipe away for spring, because it is worth it! The other can be made most any time, using cornmeal!

The Rhubarb Pecan Coffeecake recipe is one I originally experimented with using gluten free flour mixtures, such as this simple "6-2-1 Flour Mixture." The end result is quite different in color and texture, but made with regular all-purpose flour or substituting 1:1 with the gluten free flour mixture makes no difference at all to the great flavors.

Rhubarb Pecan Coffeecake

Rhubarb Pecan Coffeecake

Rhubarb Pecan Coffeecake

Makes one 9 x 13 pan

CAKE:
½ cup butter
1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
2½ cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup chopped pecans

STREUSEL TOPPING:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup light brown sugar
4 - 5 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon cinnamon

CAKE: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat together the butter and sugar; beat in the eggs and vanilla. Whisk or sift together the dry ingredients, to combine. Alternately beat in the dry ingredients and the sour cream. Stir in the rhubarb and nuts. Pour into a greased 13 x 9 pan. 

STREUSEL: Mix the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Work in the butter until it looks like large crumbs. Sprinkle over the cake. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other cake I am sharing here is the Sour Cream Polenta Cake with Honey Orange Glaze. It is a small, single layer cake with an extremely tender and moist crumb, as well as a little bit of texture, due to the cornmeal. The glaze was made with honey and Grand Marnier liqueur, but orange juice could be substituted for the liqueur. I served this cake with dollops of Mascarpone Whipped Cream, which was just the perfect accompaniment.

Sour Cream Polenta Cake with Honey Orange Glaze

 

Sour Cream Polenta Cake with Honey Orange Glaze

Makes one 9-inch single-layer cake

Sour Cream Polenta Cake
with Honey Orange Glaze

CAKE:
1 cup all purpose flour
½ cup fine yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon orange zest in thin matchsticks
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon cardamom seeds, coarsely smashed
1 stick unsalted butter
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
¾ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

GLAZE:
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier Liqueur, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-inch spring-form pan with cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment and spray the parchment. Set aside.

In a bowl, whisk together the first 7 ingredients and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter with the sugar. Once creamy, add in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in the sour cream and vanilla to combine. Add in the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, make the Honey Orange Glaze. Combine the two ingredients and heat in the microwave on short bursts. Once cake is done, set on the counter and with a pastry brush, spread the Honey Orange Glaze over the hot cake repeatedly, until it is all used. Allow the cake to cool. Remove the rim of the spring-form pan and quickly flip the cooled cake over onto a rack. Remove the parchment and then set a cake plate over the cake and flip it back over, so the top remains upwards. Serve wedges of the cake with the Mascarpone Whipped Cream. 


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Sweet Potatoes and Cornmeal

I know that these two ingredients sound like there should be a savory outcome, though that wasn't my idea. And, for once, it appeared to be a pretty novel idea. 

Most of the time, when I sit thinking about what I would like to try, despite how unusual the combinations may seem in my mind, I will find on hunting online that it is not a new idea at all, but one that hundreds of people have already done before. This just says to me that the combination is a sound one, and reinforces my belief that there is really nothing new at all. 

Sweet Potato Cornmeal Cake

Tweaking an existing recipe can result in something totally new. Sometimes new is better, but sometimes not. That is what experimentation is all about. It is rare for me to make a recipe just "as is." I can't help myself. The reason is often simply just that maybe an ingredient doesn't appeal and I take flavors into a different direction. In this particular case, there was only one recipe I could find for a cake made with sweet potato and cornmeal. It seemed unusually long and complex, with too many tiny amounts of things I don't keep on hand, like a tablespoon each of apple juice and orange juice. 

One tablespoon. 

Each. 

Really? 

Anyway, when I first gave thought to sweet potato and cornmeal together in a cake, I knew:

1. I wanted it to be a tube cake
2. I wanted about half and half cornmeal and all-purpose flour
3. It would be a heavy cake, sort of pound cake style
4. I thought of using a glaze instead of other icing

When looking at ingredients in some other cakes of this type, a lot of oil is used. I know whether it is butter or oil, it is fat. I first went with the idea of using olive oil, but then switched to coconut oil when I thought of using coconut milk for the liquid and orange extract for the flavoring. I felt that orange and coconut would be a nice combo. I did lower the amount of oil and used applesauce for part of it, to conserve a few calories (but who am I kidding?). I thought of whether to use 3 or 4 eggs, finally going with four, since it is a heavy cake. How much sweet potato? I had two of them, and weighed them before peeling. They came to just barely over one pound. I peeled them and cooked them in salted water, drained them and put them through a ricer (though mashed would have been fine), and measured out 1½ cups. There was just a little left, which I ate for lunch.😀 

Sweet Potato Cornmeal Cake

Something else that occurred to me, going with a somewhat tropical theme (coconut oil, coconut milk and orange extract) was using fresh ginger. I've never used fresh ginger in a sweet application, though I use it all the time in savory. Why is that? So I got out my ginger root. 

The idea of a glaze - didn't quite go as well as I had wanted, because I thought the glaze would penetrate the cake more than it did. In the pan, hot from the oven, while some glaze did penetrate, it left the top of the cake so sticky that once it came out of the pan and onto the plate slightly off center - there was no budging it! It was there to stay. Since I had glaze left, I drizzled it over the partially cooled cake, and it looked far prettier.

All in all, the ingredients came together easily, the cake baked perfectly, came out of the pan just right. But then, I had some sort of stomach flu all day yesterday, so I could not even think of tasting it. 😨 My husband was happy though, and that is always good! Today I gave it a taste, and I am happy as well. It has a very pronounced flavor of cornmeal. I love cornmeal, and that is why I wanted to use it half and half with the flour. If you cannot think about "cornmeal" and "sweet," in the same sentence, then this cake would not be for you. For myself, I am very pleased with it.

Sweet Potato Cornmeal Cake

Makes one 10-inch tube cake

Sweet Potato Cornmeal Cake

¾ - 1 pound sweet potatoes
1½ cups granulated sugar
½ cup coconut oil or vegetable oil
½ cup applesauce (or another half cup of coconut oil)
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
1½ teaspoons orange extract
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs
-----
1½ cups yellow cornmeal
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

GLAZE:
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cane or corn syrup
⅓ cup buttermilk
¼ teaspoon baking soda

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into 1½-inch chunks. Place the sweet potato chunks in a small pan and just barely cover with water. Add a teaspoon of salt and bring to boil. Lower heat and cook until easily pierced with a knife. Drain the sweet potatoes, then mash or rice. Measure out 1½ cups of the puree and place into a mixing bowl. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. With cooking spray, grease a 10-inch tube pan, then sprinkle with flour to coat well. Set aside.

In a bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir together well and set aside.

To the sweet potatoes, add in the sugar, coconut oil, applesauce, coconut milk, ginger and extracts and stir well to blend. Add in the eggs, one at a time, stirring to completely incorporate before adding the next.

Stir in the dry ingredients a third at a time, allowing all the flour to be mixed in before adding in the next third. Once all the ingredients are mixed, pour the batter into the prepared tube pan. Place the pan in the oven and bake for approximately 55 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack or a plate and drizzle with the glaze. 

GLAZE:  Before the cake is done baking, make the glaze. Stir together the granulated sugar with the cane (or corn) syrup and buttermilk to combine. Bring the mixture to boil, then lower the heat and add the ¼ teaspoon baking soda. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, for about 5 or 6 minutes. Let cool slightly before using to glaze the cake.



My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Time for an Anadama Bread Update

Anadama Bread: heard of it? I had heard of it long, long ago, and even tried making it once, when recently back in the US after living in Guatemala. The problem is that I really don't care for molasses. I use it, don't misunderstand. I just use it very sparingly. The other notable ingredient is cornmeal.

The Story of Anadama

Anadama Seed Bread

The story of how this bread came to be called "Anadama" is different, depending on where you've heard or read it. All the stories have some similarity, dealing with a Massachusetts man, angry with his wife and stating, "Ana damn her!" and thus the bread was shortened to Anadama. Some of the stories say that Ana began making bread but decided to leave, whereupon her husband came home and tried to finish the bread, calling out "Ana dam her". Others say that the husband was tired of cornmeal mush and molasses every day and tried adding some yeast and flour and making a bread, using the same epithet. The stories all vary just a little, but all of them deal with cornmeal and molasses and finally becoming bread - which then became famous, somehow. 
 

beautiful texture

As I said earlier, I did try making this kind of bread once over 30 years ago. I have had no great urge to repeat the experiment until very recently. The same bread baking book I have been rhapsodizing over for more than a year now is the reason I became interested in trying this bread again. In The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart, there is a recipe for Anadama bread, with Mr. Reinhart's own version of how this bread came to be. As I have made over a dozen kinds of bread from this book, ALL of which have been splendid examples of bread creation, I figured that the recipe for Anadama Bread might just be something I would wish to try again. Mr. Reinhart advises that one find the very lightest molasses possible. This, alone, made me trust that maybe this recipe would be a better version than what I had tried so long ago.

Still, I waffled on actually making the bread. I would periodically look at the recipe, and then turn to something else instead. And so passed a year. And then I got one of my cooking magazines in the mail, and what should I find inside? A recipe for Anadama Bread! This one though, had a little twist: the addition of seeds. They used light and dark sesame, light and dark flax and poppy seeds. I love seeds in breads so this sounded wonderful. I have light and dark sesame seeds, but had no flax except ground. Since flax seeds will pass right through a person without ever breaking down to yield their health-giving properties, I figured using pre-ground seeds would be a good idea anyway. I left out the poppy seeds, only because there wouldn't be enough of them to really taste, with everything else going on in this bread. I do love poppy seeds in things! I thought it would be a waste to use them here.
 

fresh from the oven

Creating a Recipe of My Own

When I read this recipe for Anadama Bread with seeds in my magazine, I wondered what differences there would be, between the recipe in my revered book and the recipe in the magazine. (I keep saying "magazine" because I cannot recall if it was Food and Wine or Bon Appetit). I got out the book and sat comparing the two recipes. I was amazed at how vastly different they were. The ingredients are much the same: flour, cornmeal, molasses, yeast. Little variances: the addition of milk or not, seeds or not, etc. 

I decided I would create a recipe of my own, walking a line of sorts between the two recipes. Since my tolerance for full flavored molasses is very low, I opted to use half molasses and half honey for that portion of the recipe. I went in between with other ingredients: neither as much as one, or as little as the other. It is a straightforward bread, mixed, allowed to rise, form, shape and bake. No exceedingly long "sponges" that need to grow for a day or more. Nothing difficult at all. I've made bread for so long that it is a way of life for me (though my whole foundation for this way of life was my Mom's bread: said foundation was shaken to the core with Mr. Reinhart's book). I know the basics. I know how a yeast dough works, how it looks and feels. 

Once I had decided on the amounts for my version of this bread, I went to work. I made up the dough; the recipe worked splendidly. It grew nicely, rose beautifully in the pans and baked perfectly. I allowed the bread to cool and sliced it. The flavors were wonderful. While I cannot specifically taste the seeds, they do make for a lovely presentation. Whether the seeds (optional in any case) are added or not, my version of this bread is all I hoped. And I hope some of my readers might try it out!

Anadama Seed Bread

Anadama Seed Bread

Makes two (4 x 8-inch) loaves
 
1½ cups (210 g / 7.4 oz) yellow cornmeal
1½ cups (12 fl. oz.) warm water
------------
3 cups (420 g / 14.8 oz) bread flour, divided
2½ teaspoons (8 g / 0.28 oz) instant yeast
½ cup (120 ml / 4 oz) water
------------
4 tablespoons (60 ml / 2.8 oz) light molasses
(or use half each molasses and honey)
1½ teaspoons (6 g / 0.21 oz) fleur de sel or coarse salt
3 tablespoons (19 g / 0.67 oz) softened butter
2 tablespoons (20 g / 0.71 oz) white sesame seeds
2 tablespoons (20 g / 0.71 oz) black sesame seeds
3 tablespoons (22 g / 0.78 oz) flax seeds, ground
------------
½ cup (70 g / 3.0 oz) bread flour, if needed

In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a heavy duty stand mixer, stir together the cornmeal and war water. Allow these ingredients to soak for 1 hour to soften. After the hour, add in half the bread flour, with the instant yeast and the 1/2 cup of water. Stir well and allow to ferment for an hour.

Add in the remaining half of the 3 cups of flour with the salt, molasses (and honey if substituting part), the butter and the seeds. Stir these ingredients until they come together. If mixing by hand, turn dough out onto a floured surface, using some of the last half-cup of flour as needed. Knead the dough for 10 to 15 minutes. If mixing in a heavy duty mixer, set dough hook in place and begin kneading at lowest setting, slowly increasing to setting 2 or whatever speed is recommended for kneading bread. Add in the remaining half-cup of flour if needed, until the dough comes together well. Continue kneading for 8 to 10 minutes. The resultant dough should be tacky but not overly sticky.

Grease a large bowl and place the dough into the bowl, turning once to grease all sides. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for approximately 90 minutes, or until doubled in size.

Grease two (8.5 x 4.5-inch) loaf pans with cooking spray and sprinkle with cornmeal. Set aside. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide in half. Form each half into a smooth loaf, flattening the dough and then rolling tightly. Tuck in the ends. Place each loaf into one of the prepared pans. Spray the tops of the loaves with cooking spray and sprinkle liberally with cornmeal. Cover the loaves with plastic wrap and allow them to rise until the dough shows at least 1-inch above the rims.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Set the loaves on a lower-middle rack and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate pans, for even baking and bake for another 20 minutes, or until the loaves are golden and test 185 - 190 degrees with an instant read thermometer inserted into the centers. Turn loaves out onto racks to cool before slicing.


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.