Oh my god, this was so good. I think this is the best cake i’ve ever made. I think this will be my signature cake, you know, if I ever need a signature cake.

I wasn’t even sure this was going to turn out as I basically combined two recipes, substituted some ingredients and just hoped for the best. It’s a little spicy, very vanilla-y, with a little hit of citrus.

This cake uses cheese! Intriguing! But, instead of all ricotta cheese, I used one cup of mascarpone and 1/2 cup of ricotta — but you could use all ricotta (what the original recipe with the cheese called for if you wanted to). I just had the marscapone on hand and I wanted to use it.

The cake has a light texture and a wonderful flavor. It doesn’t even need a glaze or powdered sugar!

Cardamom, Vanilla & Orange Pound Cake
A combination of two recipes — an orange ricotta pound cake by Giada De Laurentiis and a vanilla cardamom pound cake in Gourmet magazine
1 1/2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp cardamom seeds, freshly ground (or just use ground cardamom)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, room temperature (plus more for the pan)
1 cup (8 oz) mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped out
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 1 orange
2 tbsp milk (fat-free is fine)

Cardamom seeds — I ground these in a spice grinder. You can also just use pre-ground cardamom

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a bundt pan or a 9 by 5 by 3-inch loaf pan with a little butter. Actually, here I used the Pam for baking (butter + flour in a can) because I kind of love it…I’m not sure why. Anyway, in a medium bowl combine the flour, ground cardamom, baking powder, and salt. Stir to combine.

I accidentally added the orange zest after creaming but before the eggs…no biggie…it still worked!

Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter, mascarpone, ricotta, and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. With the machine running, add the eggs 1 at a time.

Add the vanilla (seeds & extract), orange zest, and milk until combined.

Add the dry ingredients, a small amount at a time, until just incorporated.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean and the cake is beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 45 to 50 minutes.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

You might not make it to “completely”…just do the best that you can. It is pretty good warm!

Mmmmmmm…cake….

***

I finally got my Alton Brown poster up on the back of the basement door. It looks good and guards over the kitchen like a benevolent, science-y mascot!

Oh, look, it’s more bread! And not just any bread but some tasty, crunchy, chewy ciabatta.

This is very similar to the French loaf recipe, but there’s no sugar and you shape the dough into two, flat, rectangular loaves. There aren’t a lot of pictures here — mainly because I think I was just lazy. This, like the French round, is from the treasure trove of King Arthur Flour online recipes — specifically the yeast breads > French & Italian.

Rustic Italian Ciabatta
Adapted from the King Arthur Flour Website
1 1/2 cups cool water (12 ounces)
3 1/2 cups Bread Flour (or King Arthur European-Style Artisan Bread Flour (14 3/4 ounces)
2 tsp dry active yeast (the original recipe said instant yeast — is that something different? I used dry active)
1 1/2 tsp salt

Stir the water, 2 cups of the flour, and 1 teaspoon of the yeast together, cover and let rest at room temperature for several hours, or overnight. Here’s what I did — we were going out of town for the weekend, so I mixed the starter up and stored it in the refrigerator for about 2.5 days.

Add the remaining flour, yeast, and salt, mixing vigorously until the dough begins to hold together. This is a very sticky dough; add more flour only if it’s “soupy.”

Place the dough in a lightly floured bowl. Let it rise for 1 hour, then gently deflate it. Let it rise another hour, then turn it out onto a liberally floured work surface or silicone rolling mat, and sprinkle lots of flour on top.

Flatten the dough to an 8 x 10 inch rectangle, about 3/4-inch thick, and cut it into two pieces, each about 4 x 10 inches.

Transfer the loaves onto a piece of parchment, leaving about 6 inches between them. Cover with a proof cover or heavily oiled plastic wrap, and let rise till they’re very puffy, about 2 hours.

While the dough is rising, place a baking stone in the oven and set the temperature to 500 degrees F. Allow the oven to heat for 30 minutes. Spritz the dough with water, then transfer the bread to the stone, parchment and all, and lower the oven temperature to 425 degrees F.

Bake the ciabatta until it’s golden brown, approximately 22 to 25 minutes. Turn the oven off, crack the door open about 2 inches, and allow ciabatta to cool completely in the turned-off oven. Yeah, good luck with that…we lasted about an hour before the bread was taken out and snacked on.

Note: If you don’t have a baking stone, transfer parchment and ciabatta to a cookie sheet, and bake on the middle rack of your oven.

Ah, a new year. What better time to learn a new skill? And the new skill I have my heart set on is bread making…with yeast and everything. I have flirted a bit before with Parmesan Flatbread and Pizza Dough, but now I am talking full-on loaves of crusty, wonderful bread. I know, so scary!

Here is experiment number one. I’ll give myself about a C+.

I’ve started my bread learnin’ at the King Arthur Flour site because I happen have that brand of flour at home and they also have tons of free recipes online. I’m going to try and bake myself through some of their recipes, starting with French-Style Country Bread. I’ll intersperse the original recipe with my photos. Any notes that are mine will be in italics.

Full disclosure: I am kneading with the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer.

Okay, let’s go!

French-Style Country Bread
From King Arthur Flour Online Recipes

Sponge Starter (Begin 2 to 16 hours ahead)
1 cup (8 ounces) cool to lukewarm water, preferably spring water (90 to 100°F)
1/2 teaspoon active dry or instant yeast
1 1/4 cups (5 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
1/4 cup (1 ounce) King Arthur White Whole Wheat or Traditional Whole Wheat Flour

Dough
All of the sponge starter (above)
1 cup (8 ounces) lukewarm water, preferably spring water (l00 to 115°F)
3/4 teaspoon active dry or 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
3 3/4 to 4 cups (1 pound to 1 pound 1 ounce) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

To Make The Sponge: Stir all of the sponge ingredients together to make a thick, pudding-like mixture. I think mine was a little dry. Cover with plastic wrap and leave on a counter overnight or for at least 2 to 4 hours.

My sponge…she is not like pudding.

If you’re making this in a bread machine, place the sponge ingredients inside, and turn the machine on for just a few seconds to mix the ingredients together. Turn the machine off and close the cover.

Let the sponge rest for 4 hours or overnight (anywhere between 2 and 16 hours is fine, the longer the better). I let my sponge rest about 3.5 hours.

To Make The Dough: Stir down the sponge with a spoon and add the water, yeast, sugar, most of the flour (hold back about 1/2 cup to use if required) — I used 3 cups of flour here, but I think I also had extra dough in my sponge starter, and salt. Knead the dough, adding more flour as necessary, to make a soft dough, 10 to 12 minutes.

Ready to start rising!

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl or plastic container, cover with lightly greased plastic wrap and a damp towel, and let it rise until almost doubled (depending on the weather, this could be l to 2 hours). If you’re going out, or if you prefer, let the dough rise slowly in the fridge. If your dough has been refrigerated, allow it to come to room temperature; it’ll warm up and rise at the same time.

It has risen!

After its first rise, deflate the dough gently, but don’t knock out all the air; this will create those “holes” so important to French bread. Form the dough into a round ball. Place two cookie sheets atop one another, and place a semolina- or cornmeal-dusted piece of parchment paper on top. I just used one cookie sheet and I was out of parchment, I had to use foil.

After 2nd rise on the cookie sheet.

Gently place the ball of dough on the cookie sheet, seam-side down. Cover it lightly with a tea towel, and let it rise the second time until it’s puffy and about 40% to 50% larger, anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes (depending on the weather, luck, and magic). Slash or cross-hatch the bread with a sharp knife or lame.

My slashing deflated mine a bit.

Dust it with a little flour. I forgot to dust with flour. Also, mine got a lot bigger in the 45 minutes it rested. It kind of got blob-like. Next time, I may take more care in shaping the original round.

Out of the oven.

For Oven Baking: Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. After slashing the bread, spritz water into the oven with a clean plant mister, and place the bread in the oven. Reduce the heat to 425 degrees F and spritz with water every few minutes for the first 15 minutes of baking. Bake the bread for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until it tests done. Yield: 1 large round bread or two medium breads.

Notes/Results:

1. I baked my bread on a pizza stone, I just slid the foil onto the stone. I will use parchment next time. I think I’ll continue to use the stone.
2. I had no spritzer, so I had a small baking dish of water in the oven while I baked the bread. Not sure if that helped but I did buy a spritzer. I will use that next time.
3. I measured my flour, next time I will weigh it as my starter was more dough-like than pudding-like. I probably had about 1/2 cup too much flour.
4. I used sea salt, next time I will use regular salt.
5. I will let the starter go as long as possible on the next batch, to try to develop more flavor.
6. Hmmmm, glad I am not doing this too seriously — it’s much more enjoyable when I am not putting that much pressure on myself. If the bread turns out — great! If not, hopefully the next loaf will work.

That said, this loaf (round?) was not bad at all. I didn’t think it had a lot of flavor (that might have been a salt issue, plus not letting the starter sponge go that long) and I wanted bigger holes. That said, I was super, super happy with my rising, though. It rose most excellently! I used Alton brown’s trick of filling a baking dish with boiling water, setting that in the oven (turned off) and putting the dough in there to rise in a nice, humid space.

We’ve eaten about 3/4 of the loaf so far, most recently, using the bread for grilled cheese sandwiches (sharp white cheddar, onion, dijon mustard, cherry tomatoes and some balsamic vinegar). Those were really tasty!

Oh and I used some to make croutons for a Caesar Salad. So good! I think this weekend, I’ll attempt another loaf of this French-Style Country Bread.

But next up: Hazelnut Pecan Golden Raisin Baguettes — the starter is going even as I type this!

So here is what we snacked on Christmas morning while opening presents. This is also a great way to use up the odd piece of puff pastry you may have in your freezer after the holidays. Or, just go buy some puff pastry for the sole purpose of making these. That would certainly work too!

The original recipe is based on one by Ina Garten but I cut the butter way down. Seriously, I think the original recipe’s rolls would have been swimming in butter. I adjusted it to only 4 tablespoons total (about half of what was originally called for).

I also omitted the raisins and added the pecans to the filling, as many reviews mentioned that the pecans burned while on the bottom of the muffin tin.

Note: I put these together the night before up to getting them in the muffin cups. Then I wrapped them up tightly with plastic wrap and kept in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning I baked them. Worked really well!

Puff Pastry Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe adapted from the Barefoot Contessa
3 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tbsp brown sugar, packed
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, defrosted

For the filling:
1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped pecans (mine were lightly salted and toasted)
1/2 tsp orange zest
1/4 tsp anise seeds

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Locate a jumbo 6 cup muffin tin. Combine the 3 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons brown sugar. Divide this mixture between the bottom of the six muffin cups.

In a bowl, mix the brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans, orange zest and anise seeds.

Lightly flour a wooden board or stone surface. Unfold your sheet of puff pastry. Brush the whole sheet with the melted butter. Leaving a 1-inch border on the puff pastry, sprinkle the sheet with the brown sugar/pecan mixture.

Starting with the end nearest you, roll the pastry up snugly like a jelly roll around the filling, finishing the roll with the seam side down.

Slice the roll in 6 equal pieces. Place each piece, spiral side up, in a muffin cup.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the sticky buns are golden on top and firm to the touch. Be careful - they’re hot!

Allow to cool for 5 minutes only, invert the buns (you may have to do this one at a time, not just by flipping the muffin tin over) onto onto a plate. Use a spoon to spread any brown sugar/butter that stays in the cup, on top of the roll.

These are delightful eaten warm, but still delicious eaten at room temperature!

This was an experiment that I took to work for a Halloween party last week. It was an extra fun cake to make, as I had just bought myself a new bundt cake pan in honor of National Bundt Cake Day coming up on November 15!

Where did I learn that bit of trivia? Why here: Food Librarian’s ‘I Like Big Bundts’ extravaganza! Now that is an awesome task right there. While I am not delightfully crazy enough to make a bundt a day, I did make one — this Sour Cream Pumpkin Bundt with a Streusel-y inside.

The recipe is from Libby’s (the makers of canned pumpkin), although I used a can of Trader Joe’s Organic canned pumpkin. The cake turned out so well! I added orange zest, pecans and a few more spices to the streusel and I also used a chocolate ganache as a glaze, rather than a traditional powdered sugar icing.

Sour Cream Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Streusel
recipe adapted from Libby’s
Streusel
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp orange zest
2 tsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup sour cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 oz dark chocolate chips
1/2 tsp orange zest
Optional: 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 12-cup Bundt pan.

For streusel: Combine brown sugar, spices and zest in small bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture is crumbly. Add pecans.

For batter: Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Beat granulated sugar and butter in large mixer bowl until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add pumpkin, sour cream and vanilla extract; mix well. Gradually beat in flour mixture.

To assemble: Spoon half of batter into prepared pan. Now, here after making this once, I think it would be easier if after you put half the batter in the pan, you take a spoon and make a little indentation around the middle of the batter for the streusel.

So, you can try that and then carefully sprinkle streusel over batter, not allowing streusel to touch sides of pan.

Top with remaining batter. Make sure batter layer touches edges of pan.

Bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in cake comes out clean. Mine baked for 60 minutes. Cool for 30 minutes in pan on wire rack. Invert onto wire rack to cool completely.

Make Glaze:
Place chips and zest in a bowl. Heat the cream in a pot until it just comes to a boil. Remove from heat and pour oven chocolate and orange zest. Let sit for about 30 seconds then stir until, all the chocolate is melted. Let cool for a few minutes.

Set cooled cake over a wire rack set over a baking sheet. Drizzle glaze over cake and sprinkle pecans over top. Let glaze cool and harden.

Eat.