Ginger Cardamom Flatbread

I got these … cookies? buns? from a local store, made just down the road and flavored with ginger and cardamom. Decided I’d take a shot at making them, except instead of making a rolled out cookie (which is what they seemed to be), I went with a yeast raised flatbread. Which I knew wouldn’t work, but I liked the flavor combination.

100g flour (whole wheat AP)
100g water
4g yeast

Make a sponge and let it sit overnight.

75g sugar
stick (112g) melted butter
1 Tablespoon ginger
1 teaspoon cardamom
400g flour (whole wheat AP)
(forgot the salt, probably want 10g)

mix the ingredients with the sponge and mix until dough is ready. Allow to rise for an hour, then separate into 100-110g pieces. Roll out, allow to rise for 20 more minutes, then bake 20 minutes at 350.

Probably want more sugar, but they came out fine. The only thing I’m slightly irate about is that I used the same size of dough, rolled out to the same thickness, and half the flatbreads puffed to make pseudo pitas, and half didn’t.

Allspice lemon poundcake

I had a zested lemon, and Mollie asked me to make a cake so… lemon… allspice? pound cake? Guess I’ll go with it.

4 eggs (220g)
2 sticks of butter
250g of sugar
250g self rising flour
juice of a lemon
1 teaspoon allspice

For reasons that escape me, I mixed the eggs and sugar, then added the butter. This resulted in chunks of butter floating around in the mixture. Added the flour, and there were still chunks of butter after it was all mixed, but I went with it.

50 minutes at 350

I also had a half batch of cream cheese frosting left, because the last time I made a half batch, I sort of forgot about the 4 oz. of cream cheese which… ended poorly.

For the record, the cake came out really well, even if the butter wasn’t mixed properly.

Silesian Cake

I decided I wanted to make Silesian cake. The first 2 hits for recipes were a recipe in good English that had 2 ingredients I’d have to import from Germany (nope). Well, recipe number 2 was a Spanish site that google translated to English and asked for a “baking pan” (Which is a Spanish thing, but the size varies and is probably larger than any of my pans) and asks for “starch”. Here’s the Spanish recipe if you prefer.

Luckily, I am prepared to interpret recipes. Here’s how I made it:

Mix 100g of AP flour, 100g of almond milk and 2g of yeast and allow to sit for 4-6 hours (or overnight).

Grease a 10″x15″ pan.

add the following to the sponge:

350g AP flour
350g almond milk
50g butter
50g sugar
1 egg
a pinch of salt

Mix and allow to rise for an hour. Spread across the bottom of the pan. Now mix:

200g melted butter
200g sugar
3 eggs
1kg cottage cheese
40g cornstarch
zest of a lemon
a pinch of salt

Spread across the bread layer.

Now mix in a food processor:

350g flour
200g sugar
200g butter
a couple of shakes of cinnamon
a pinch of salt

Now, I like to make it uniform, but to get a proper streusel texture, you want to leave it “chunky”. Spread across the cottage cheese layer.

Heat the oven to 410 (to allow a final rise), and once the oven is ready, put the cake in and bake for 40-50 minutes. Like a cheesecake, you want some wobble in the middle, but not a lot.

Allow to cool and eat. Notice it collapsed a little.

Cake with frosting

Mollie like to make sugar strawberries, which is adding sugar to strawberries and letting it sit in the refrigerator. You can eat the strawberries, and she decided to start collecting the juice. Which led to her having a full small bottle of strawberry/sugar juice. She asked me to make it into a cake.

I looked up a recipe for “cake with water” and I got a ton of hits for “water cake” which I guess is a thing (the only water cake I know of is cake mix, so I assumed there were scratch recipes, but didn’t think it was popular). I also asked Mollie if she wanted frosting, because I had some cream cheese lying around. Sure, she says.

- 3 1 /2 cups whole wheat all purpose flour
- 1 1/4 cups white sugar
- 1/4 salt
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 250 ml peanut oil
- 400 ml water

Bake for 45 minutes at 350 in a 9″x9″ pan (greased and papered).

Frosting

1/2 cup butter
8 oz. Philadelphia Cream Cheese
3 cups powdered sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese, add the sugar a cup at a time (and make a half batch for the cake above, I’m going to put the leftovers on pancakes).

Raisin Apple Cake

Box of Betty Crocker super moist white cake
2 3.2 oz. containers of Mott’s cinnamon apple sauce
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup water (cake was crumbly, maybe 3/4 cup would be better)
1 cup raisins
1 Tablespoon flour

Pre-heat oven to 350. Mix liquid ingredients. Put flour and raisins in a bowl and mix. Add cake mix to liquid ingredients, add raisins and mix until batter is incorporated. Place in Bundt pan and bake for 40 minutes (45 would be better, but it worked out).

Election Cake – Fannie Farmer (1951 and 1994 editions)

I found a few 19th century recipes, but I didn’t feel like trying to guess at the amount of flour, so I thought (correctly) the Boston School Cookbook would have a recipe. Both editions did, one for 2 loaf pans worth and one for a single pan. I took the recipes from the two editions and thought about how I wanted to make them and made my own recipe. Recipes also feature nuts (pecans or walnuts) and figs, but I had raisins, so raisins it was.

Make a sponge of 75g AP flour and 75g water, allow to sit for 8 hours.

pre-heat the oven to 350 and mix the following

175g AP flour
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon mace
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins

I mixed the flour and butter in a food processor, then added the salt, baking soda, and spices and mixed again.

Place the brown sugar in with the sponge and mix.

Add the flour mixture and mix.

Add the egg and almond milk and mix.

Finally, add the raisins and mix. The raisins are supposed to be mixed with a Tablespoon of flour before adding, but I forgot. The raisins did, in fact, sink to the bottom of the mix.

Once the mixture comes together, place it in a prepared (greased and sugared/floured) loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes at 350.