Cheesecake-Filled Cupcakes

These were supposed to be Black Bottom Cupcakes, but something funny happened in the heat of my oven. Essentially all of the cream cheese filling I had carefully dolloped in the midst of my cupcakes was overpowered and encased by rising cupcake dough. The cupcakes depicted are actually a minority, the resolute few whose cheesecake filling refused to be wholly submerged in a tide of rising dough. I thought they’d photograph better than the others, which look exactly like regular chocolate cupcakes with sunken tops. This sunken-ness is typical of all black-bottom cupcakes and is a design feature rather than a flaw.

That these resulted in a cheesecake filling, rather than topping, was a bit of a pleasant surprise. These cupcakes, for example, lend themselves to frosting far more readily than do their traditional black-bottomed counterparts. The cheesecake in the middle is like the malt filling in the whopper, the caramel sandwiched between cookie and chocolate in the Twix. It’s the delightful hidden surprise. Really, I think them far nicer because one doesn’t realize (unless one happened to bake them) that a plain, slightly sunken chocolate shell conceals vast reservoirs of cheesecake. Or proto-cheesecake. Cheesecake-like substance.

Olive Oil Yoghurt Cake with Wild Blueberries and Lemon

Don’t be fooled by the lengthy title. This is a simple dessert that can be ready for the oven about 20 minutes flat. I’ve actually done it in ten, but I don’t want to inspire false confidence for those of you who don’t spend such a great portion of your waking hours in a kitchen.

This is a light, tender-crumbed cake that makes a perfect weeknight dessert. It’s so bright-tasting that I do think of it as quintessentially summery, but since I always use frozen blueberries (though fresh would be divine), there’s nothing to stop you from whipping this up in the dead of winter – which is when lemons are at their best, after all.

I love using olive oil because its fruity flavor makes such a nice contrast with the citrus and berries. However, canola or another neutral oil would certainly be fine. If you’re worried about too much tartness, you could swap orange zest and juice for the lemon. My mom always used to make blueberry muffins with orange juice, so that would make this like a blueberry muffin cake to me. And I can think of far worse things.

Angel Food Cake

So I had a birthday last week, and while I’m sure I could wheedle the husband into baking or buying me a cake, such entreaties would deprive me of the opportunity to make my own. When given the chance, I always prefer to have the control over my cake that baking it myself provides.

I decided to bake myself an Angel Food Cake. This wasn’t prompted by health and/or caloric concerns – I genuinely adore angel food cake and prefer it to most frosted and layer cakes.

None of my cookbooks seemed to have a recipe for this fluffy concoction, so I used google to find a recipe. And frankly, there isn’t much variation. Angel Food Cake seems is the rare baked good about the preparation of which something like consensus has been achieved. Some recipes use slightly more or less sugar (I used less), and some use slightly more or less cake flour (again, I used less). The basic setup, however, does not vary from recipe to recipe.

I’d never tried to bake an Angel Food Cake before. Because I like the kind that you get at the store or can make from a box so much, I was hoping that a homemade version would be revolutionary – the ne plus ultra of Angel Food Cake. Doubleplusgood Angel Food Cake.

Revani (Turkish yellow cake in simple syrup)

I realize I’ve been light on poetry lately. Something about the weather makes me feel un-literary and pro-food. Or perhaps I’m just trying to squeeze in some last-minute baking before the summer heat makes baking intolerable.

I think I forgot for a moment that I live in New England, where it’s almost always cold enough to bake. We get maybe one oppressive heat snap a year; otherwise, baking is always on the table, figuratively and literally. I have such a weakness for lame puns.

Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

So, cupcakes: I’m at a loss as to why I had a bee in my bonnet to whip up a batch. I don’t think I’d ever actually made cupcakes before, which is a touch odd when you consider my willingness to tackle layer cake on a semi-regular basis.

I lifted this recipe (making only minor changes) from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. In the pros side, we have excellent chocolate and malt flavors and luscious, light-textured frosting. In the cons side, we have the fact that the frosting didn’t yield quite enough for all the cupcakes – which was my fault in a way for being generous in its application, perhaps, but I think of a cupcake as primarily a small frosting vehicle, so recipes should be written accordingly – and the fact that, while flavorful, the whipped cream-based frosting doesn’t bear up to extended time in the fridge as well as a traditional buttercream would have.

This was only a problem because this recipe makes 18-24 cupcakes (depending on how full you fill the tins). I was hoping for only a dozen and presumed that was the standard quantity for cupcake recipes. Live and learn, eh?

Orange Almond Cake

Please ignore the crack. I didn’t drop it, exactly; it flopped onto the counter in a funny way as I was attempting to ease it off my cooling rack. The resultant break did nothing to diminish the flavor of the cake, nor my enjoyment of it … but it did make photography a bit of a challenge.

This was so tasty I had to share it anyway. It’s a first for me in that it’s a gluten free recipe. I didn’t make it for that reason – neither I nor the husband need restrict our intake of wheat protein – but rather, because I thought this might combine the virtues of Shaker Lemon Tart and amaretti in one recipe. It calls for whole oranges and ground almonds. You bind it with egg, sweeten with sugar, and leaven with baking powder. I added a bit of vanilla, but that’s it. Really, this is a ridiculously simple conceit for a recipe.

This cake is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Clementine Cake. I love clementines, but I love them raw; I can’t imagine eating them baked into something. Oranges, on the other hand, are heaven in all sorts of confections.

Plum Almond Upside-Down Cake

It had been a while since I made something cake-y as opposed to a cookie or tart. I was starting to hanker cake, but I lacked the ambition to make a layer cake or something that needed to be frosted.

I had spied this recipe some time back and bookmarked it, thinking it looked so very delectable. The contrast of the rich red of the plums and the gingerbread-y cake itself made me wish I could reach through the computer screen and have a nibble, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-style.

The original calls for molasses, ginger, and cinnamon as the only flavorings. Molasses and ginger are good, but I can find them a touch harsh when they’re the dominant notes. I suspected that my palate would be happier if there were some vanilla and almond notes to balance the cake. And nutmeg: nothing makes me happier than nutmeg. For my palate, these proved to be inspired additions

Caramelized Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Husband had a birthday last week, and I am in the habit of baking him layer cakes each birthday. Husband also has a ridiculous and overpowering affection for apples and apple-spackled baked goods, so when I spied this recipe on the Martha Stewart web page, I had a suspicion he would be unable to resist its allure.

I’d complain, but he used to ask for carrot cake every year, and something about the process of shredding 3 cups of carrots kills me every time. I don’t know why I find the process so vexing, but there you have it. Also, carrot cake is hard to ruin, and I do like to broaden my repertoire of culinary tricks when opportunities present themselves. Birthdays present fine opportunities.

Yellow Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

I do not come from a family of cooks. My mother has a handful of dishes that she makes well – most of them odd Adventist concoctions such as Chik’n Rice and fried Fri-Chik
– and she can even make a decent filling for an apple pie, though my powers are insufficient to persuade her that butter makes a much nicer crust than margarine. Old habits die hard.

My grandmother also has a handful of faithful standbys. Everyone loves her stuffing. She makes a good vegetarian chili, and I’ve always enjoyed her potato salad.

Still, neither of them are culinarily adventurous women. They are not philosophically opposed to processed food, and neither ever passes up an opportunity to combine condensed cream of mushroom soup with vegetables, pasta, or rice and call it a meal. And hey, even I like this sort of thing … sometimes. But given that these ladies live in Florida – where you can get excellent, farm-fresh produce all year long of the sort I can only wistfully dream of in Connecticut – their near-exclusive reliance on foods that could survive a nuclear holocaust continues to baffle me.

Fruit Cake

I love fruitcake. I love it earnestly and un-ironically. I love that it’s like the perfect marriage of trail mix and cake. I love its density, its chewiness, its booziness. I love it to the depth and breadth and height ….

Well, that’s a bit much. Suffice it to say that I really like fruitcake and am saddened by its unwelcome reputation.

Given my love for fruitcake, it was only a matter of time before I decided to try my hand at making my very own. The crop of fruitcake recipes popping up on tastespotting and foodgawker this time of year only heightened the temptation.

As with most temptations, it was only a matter of time before I succumbed.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

Coffee cake is hard to ruin. Nonetheless, every time I make coffee cake, I end up on pins and needles until it comes out of the oven and I’ve sliced into it. This is entirely my fault. I’m unable to leave a good recipe alone and bake as directed. I stubbornly insist on mucking about with demonstrably good things.

Take this Smitten Kitchen recipe. It looks delightful – nay, it is delightful. And it sounded like just the thing. Except … (there’s always an “except”), her recipe calls for two cups of sour cream. I’ve had coffee cakes with that much sour cream before and found the flavor overpowering and the texture so rich that they approached cheesecake levels of decadence. Since I’m on a huge baking-with-yoghurt kick, I thought it would make a good replacement. Also, I really like nuts in my coffee cake, so I wanted to add them. And here’s where I’m just a big show-off: I wanted to use a bundt pan, not the 9x13 pan indicated, for a higher visual impact factor. Sometimes, even I am astonished by my frivolity.

Fresh Orange Italian Cream Cake

This week, husband defended his dissertation, and to mark the occasion, I had promised him a cake. This is as much for me as for him – I like having an excuse to take on baking projects, and “because I feel like it” only sometimes suffices.

I told him I’d make anything he wanted, but being rather more knowledgeable about cakes: their varieties and permutations than him, I sent him some links to various recipes that sounded promising. The one he selected was this Fresh Orange Italian Cream Cake from Southern Living.