Lemon upside down cake

Now, an upside down cake is very easy to release, which I like, but this may be the last one for a while. I liked the look of the Blood Orange upside down cake from Dessert Person, and I decided I wanted to make one with lemons.

I first made my trusty coffee cake recipe:

2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 T baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup sour cream

Pre-heat oven to 350, mix dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, mixing between each add. Add part of the dry ingredients, then alternate with sour cream until all are added. Mix until flour is just incorporated, then place on the topping.

To make the topping, slice 2 lemons thin (note 1: I really needed a mandoline, because some of those slices were pretty scary to make)(note 2: the lemons shrink, so maybe 3 or 4 would be better) and place on the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ pan.

Melt a stick of butter, and add a half cup of sugar and mix, then pour on top of the lemons

Pour batter on top, then bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. Allow to cool for 15 minutes, take a offset spatula and run it along the edges, invert and release onto the serving dish.

Whole house smells… lemony now.

Complex (Soft) Bread

I was talking with someone I make bread for a lot, and they said they like “soft bread”. Well, what can I do to make a given bit of bread soft? Reverse creaming? Tang zhong? Why not both.

Normally, we are told, if you make bread at 60%, you want to make it 75% for tang zhong. I had to write down all the components first, because I wanted to make sure I had enough water (and I reduced the tang zhong to make sure I could add some almond milk, which was left over from the parkin).

Sponge
- 100g flour
- 100g water
- some yeast
Tang Zhong
- 27g flour
- 113g water
Reverse creaming
- 327g flour
- 10g salt
- 56g butter (half stick)
Liquid
- 162g almond milk

The night before, mix the sponge ingredients together in your mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap.

The day of, heat the tang zhong ingredients together until they stick together. The slurry will flow evenly over the pan and at some point, your stirring will leave trails, and once you can pile it, it’s ready.

While the tang zhong cools, put the flour, salt and butter in a food processor and blitz. You can go until there are still chunks of butter (like you were making a pie crust), or until it’s completely incorporated (how I always do it). Put the reverse cream ingredients on the sponge, then add the tang zhong and pour the almond milk on. Run the mixer with a bread hook until the dough is fully kneaded.

Allow to rise, flatten it in a tablet form, roll it up and place in a loaf pan and allow to rise again. Bake for 42 minutes at 350.

Very Soft!

Sock it to me cake

But first, bonus bread loaf (replaced 50g of flour with oat flour)

As long as I’m here, though, glazed buttermilk donut cake. I may need to make that. Seriously.

Anyway, I was at work talking to someone about the apple cake and a woman said, “wait, you’re the baker?”

I confirmed I was and I take requests. Seriously, do you have any idea how hard it is to go through 30 shelf-feet of cookbooks to decide what to make? She said, “sock it to me cake and cornflake cookies.”

I looked up cornflake cookies and they are all over the map, so I asked if she meant the no-bake kind, or the baked kind or what. I got the exact recipe emailed to me.

But first, sock it to me cake.

Cake:

2 sticks (8 oz.) butter
2 1/2 c granulated sugar
6 eggs
3c flour¹
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (8 oz. container) sour cream

Filling:

1 cup pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 Tablespoon cinnamon

Pre-heat over the 325.

Prepare filling by mixing the 3 ingredients in a bowl.

Mix dry ingredients, beat butter to a cream, add sugar and beat until creamed. Add eggs one at a time mixing between adds. Add half the dry ingredients, mix, add all the sour cream, mix, add last of the dry ingredients and mix one more time.

Grease and sugar² a bundt pan, spoon out half the batter. Spread the filling evenly around the pan, then cover with the rest of the batter.

Bake for 60-75 minutes. Allow to cool for 15 minutes, use a skewer to loosen the cake from the pan and release the cake onto a serving dish.

Close up of the pecan/sugar layer:

¹ – I was out of AP flour, so I had to decide if I wanted to mix bread and cake flour, bread flour plus corn starch, just use cake flour or use self-raising flour. After consulting with friends, I went with cake flour, though I did have about half a cup of AP flour left.

² – pretty much every recipe says to grease and flour, but I prefer to sugar… makes a nice crunchy later on the outside.

Parkins – Cassel’s Dictionary of Cookery (1884)

I’m heading tomorrow to New Jersey for my uncle’s memorial service. Since my father will be there, I thought I’d see what I could make that’s gluten and lactose free. Well, it’s almost Guy Fawkes day, so…

Gingerbread parkin (to be made for the 5th of November)

Rub half a pound of butter and half a pound of fresh lard into four pounds of oatmeal, or flour and oatmeal mixed. Add half a pound of brown sugar and an ounce of ground ginger. Mix 3 pounds and a half of treacle with a cup full of new milk; stir these into the oatmeal etc, to make a stiff paste, bake in a moderate oven, either in oil tins or dripping-tins till brightly browned. About 20 minutes if baked in Patty pans and one hour and a half in large dishes.

Made a quarter batch, substituted almond milk for milk, cinnamon for ginger (my father prefers not to have ginger), and added a pinch or two of salt. Finally finished of the lard I had bought.

Mollie is convinced it’s a gingerbread, probably because of the molasses. I told her it has cinnamon and not ginger and she didn’t believe me.

Caramel Apple Upside down cake

I pretty much went full interpretive dance mode on this cake. The last time I made the cake, I thought there was too much caramel, so I completely reworked the sauce and… it came out OK, but I could’ve cut the butter back some. I also had just gone to the grocery store to get more molasses, and I didn’t get the sour cream, so I did a quick search for a coffee cake recipe, without sour cream (yea… good luck with that) and used a different kind of flour because why not at this point.

Sauce:

6 Tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 pink lady apples

Cake:

2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
stick (1/2 cup) cold butter
egg
3/4 cup milk

Pre-heat oven to 350. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the sugar until it’s mostly incorporated. Cover the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ pan with the sauce. Peel the apples and cut into 16ths. Layer across the caramel.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the mixer. Cube the butter (I cut the slice into 4 identical strips then make cube size pieces) and mix into the dry ingredients until incorporated. Beat egg and add milk. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix until barely incorporated. Bake for 25-30 minutes (I went 35, but 30 was probably OK). Allow cake to cool for 20ish minutes, then place the carrier on top and flip the pan and carrier together. Cake flopped right out cleanly.

Browsing the Pillsbury website

A couple of weeks ago I made monkey bread from a Pillsbury kit by request. I did not like it. The bread itself “tasted like almonds” and I was requested to try making my own. So, off I went recipe hunting.

The one from food network looks interesting.

Somehow I ended up on the Pillsbury website and found a list of all the grand prize winners from the bake off. Not that I needed another 30 recipes I will never make. They also have a selection of recipes from the bake off (500 or so).

Now, you’d expect Pillsbury (as a company that makes pre-made doughs) to have recipes (a) using that dough, (b) creative and (c) easy to make. I was surprised that they had a whole selection of Mexican(-ish) recipes, and I started reading through some of them.

Ginger-molasses monkey bread. I could make my own biscuit dough and use their topping… sounds good.

loaf pan cheesecake?!? What witchery is this?

Taco Bundtwich?!? Wait, I can cook bread in a bundt pan? I mean, I conceptually knew that. Loaf of bread, cook in a bundt pan, slice it in half, fill with cheese, cook again? Like a raston, only with cheese instead of butter. Although, to be fair, a bundt pan bread would make an awesome raston. Seriously. I need to sit down for a minute.

Mollie’s cheese bread

My recipe selection technique:

Literature search on google books
review relevant titles
cut down selection
store text copies
read recipes
pick a recipe

Mollie’s recipe selection technique:

watch tiktok

Cheese bread:

1 1/3 c AP flour
1 teaspoon yeast
4 Tablespoon melted butter
1/3 c milk

Mix ingredients, cover and allow to rise for an hour. Split dough into 2 parts, roll one half out flat, cover in grated cheddar cheese, roll other half out and cover the bottom. Bake for 30 minutes at 325.

Cinnamon Toast Cake (Pillsbury – 1963)

Bonus picture: cheese bread.

100g each water and flour with yeast to form sponge overnight, 400g flour, 10g salt, 175g water (55% hydration), 75g shredded asiago cheese.

Bread and Monkey bread

“Can you make monkey bread?”

“Sure, I think I have a recipe.”

“No, from this Pillsbury kit”

Raspberry Ribbons (Pillsbury – 1962)

Had a couple of problems making them. First, the dough did not rise at all (big shock, I know since it’s so enriched). Then if I were to roll out 14″ strips as the recipe calls for, they would need to go 2 to a cookie sheet, which means 2 cookie sheets (ignore all 4 on a single sheet, wasn’t sure how much rise I’d get), which means either letting them cool while filling, or using two levels of the oven (the choice I first tried which… did not work).

Probably the right way to bake would be all 4 on a sheet. Or, honestly, make a different shape. Maybe a ring with 3 rounds of jelly in between layers? Not sure, but doable.

Then… the glaze was too much. Half batch next time.

BUT, they were pretty popular.