Ever since I had my first one, sitting in front of a roaring campfire with a semi-clean stick skewered with lots of toasting marshmallows, I have been a big fan of s’mores. If I could go back in time, only thing I’d do differently now is to use a really clean skewer for my marshmallows, but when you’re camping and very young, you don’t tend to think about those things. I still like classic s’mores made with squares of milk chocolate, store bought graham crackers and jet puffed marshmallows. Now that my culinary skills are a little improved, however, I do like to experiment a little bit and see how I can get even more flavor out of my s’mores. Homemade graham crackers and homemade marshmallows are great examples of small changes. A big change is to turn a simple s’more into a S’mores Cake.

You don’t need a campfire for this cake, but you do need an oven. It’s a graham cracker cake, layered with marshmallow creme and milk chocolate frosting. The cake is made with graham cracker crumbs where you might otherwise use all purpose flour, and is leavened with both baking powder and egg whites that have been beaten to soft peaks. The finished cake is light in texture, but has a ton of graham cracker flavor. It is very moist, so it will crack if it isn’t handled with care when you’re stacking up the layers.

The milk chocolate frosting - chosen because the typical s’more uses milk chocolate - is almost like a milk chocolate ganache. It is made with chocolate, half and half and butter. The thing that differentiates it is that I included a little bit of corn syrup, which gives it a shiny look and makes it very easy to work with. The marshmallow creme is just store-bought marshmallow creme. It spreads onto the cake easily and stays nice and soft, making the cake easy to cut and serve.

One final note: a fire pit makes a great backdrop for a photo of a S’mores cake, but the cake really isn’t designed to hold up to heat of any kind. Both the frosting and the marshmallow creme are a little heat-sensitive. Unless it’s a cold day, you can - and should - store this cake in the fridge to keep everything intact. The cake will stay moist and tender even after a couple of days in the fridge. But if you don’t mind a melty, slightly messy cake that is like a real s’more, than by all means, go for the fire.

(more…)

If you’re from the Philadelphia area, I probably don’t have to tell you what Tastykakes are. For those of you who aren’t, Tastekakes are a regional brand of packaged snack cakes. Fans of these cakes will say that they’re better than those other brands (Hostess, etc), and I think they might be right. Tastykakes come in a wide variety of flavors, many of which are unique to the brand, and usually taste fresh and moist. I’ve made a homemade version of their Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes before, and this time around I decided to tackle Tastykake’s Butterscotch Krimpets, which are simple vanilla cakes that have a butterscotch icing.

Snack cakes, whether you’re taking Twinkies or Tastykakes, almost always have a sponge cake base. Sponge cake is more resilient (less crumbly) than butter cakes are and often stays moister, longer. I used a similar sponge cake base that I used to make my previous peanut butter Tastykakes, adding in some brown sugar to give the cakes themselves a little bit of a butterscotch flavor. The sponge cakes are made by beating lots of air into whole eggs, then folding in flour and finally mixing in hot milk and butter. The sponge turns out to be very light and moist. It’s nice on its own, with notes of butter, milk, brown sugar and vanilla, but a little on the plain side without the flavorful icing. It is very similar - although perhaps a bit better - to the taste and texture of a regular snack cake.

Most butterscotch icings rely on butterscotch chips to infuse them with flavor, and this is no exception. The frosting is very sweet, but since it is spread on in only a very thin layer on the cake, everything balances out by the time you go to eat it. I also tempered the frostings’ sweetness by mixing in a good-sized pinch of salt.

The cakes had a great butterscotch flavor and tasted fresh, moist and delicious. My tasters - a couple of Philly natives - said that they felt that this was what a butterscotch krimpet was supposed to taste like. I’m not sure about that myself, but they’re very good. The wavy shape I cut mine into was achieved by carving the sides with a knife to match the look of the packaged krimpets. You can come close by using Wilton’s ZigZag Cutter, but can also cut the bars into squares or rectangles for simplicity’s sake.

(more…)

The first time I tasted a cannele, the French pastry that is often referred to as a hand-held creme brulee, I was completely underwhelmed. The wonders of these pastries are frequently extolled by food writers and the rubbery, bland pastry I tasted was surely not worth more than a single word: bad. I tried many more, some better than others, but they never lived up to their hype, not at French bakeries, not at gourmet stores, not at restaurants “known” for them. Disappointed, I decided that the only way to really know whether a cannele was a dessert worth all the work was to make it myself. If it wasn’t any better, than I must not be someone who likes canneles in spite of their reputation.

I have since decided that unless you camp out at a bakery and run into the kitchen to eat these as soon as they come out of the oven, the only way to enjoy them is to make them at home. My homemade canneles had a crisp-chewy caramelized sugar crust and a smooth, custardy center that was definitely reminiscent of a creme brulee - albeit one with a lot more texture than usual! They are unique and very tasty.

Canneles are not something that can be whipped up quickly. The batter is easy to make, but must be prepared in advance and refrigerated for 24-36 hours before baking. Normally, cannele are baked in special copper molds that give them a signature look. These molds are pretty pricey, but luckily the cannele can be baked in muffin cups, too. This is one instance where I would strongly recommend using silicone (or buying silicone cannele molds) because these take nearly two hours in at 400F oven to form their caramelized crust, and it will stick to anything that isn’t extremely well greased. Traditionally, cannele molds are lined with beesewax to give them a clean release. Silicone needs no prep and you won’t end up with an overly chewy (or waxy-tasting, as some I’ve had have been) outer layer on your pastries.

I used a Paula Wolfert recipe for these and had great success with it. Prepare it the night before you want to bake and bake these the same day you want to serve them. They’ll still have the same flavor the next day, but they are at their very best when served still warm from the oven, with the contrast between crust and custardy center at its most distinct.

(more…)

For some reason, I don’t think about making upside down cakes too often. It seems to occur to me more just to mix-in whatever fruit I’m thinking about pairing with the cake. But upside down cakes are easy to make and have a lot going for them. They tend to be moist and they really put the fruit flavors front and center in the cake. On top of that - literally! - the cakes never need any frosting because they come out of the oven with their topping all ready to go!

These are mini blueberry upside down cakes, baked in a muffin pan for single-serving portions of cake. I like them because they look cute and they take very little time to bake. They actually look like muffins as they are cooking, with tops rising up above the pan into a nice dome, but they flatten out a bit into more of a cake-like look once they cool down. They also don’t taste quite like muffins, as they are much more cake-like. The cakes are soft and fluffy, more tender and light than a muffin might be. They are not too sweet at all and with a mild flavor of butter and brown sugar. It was nice to have that brown sugar to give the cake a little more depth than a plain white cake would have.

These unmolded easily, and the berries did not stick to the pan. This is another advantage of doing mini cakes because, even though the berries turn out to be sweet and jammy, they didn’t turn into a stick-to-the-pan caramel. These can be served served slightly warm or at room temperature, and are delicious with a dusting of powdered sugar if you want to dress them up a bit.
(more…)

Applesauce is a slightly misunderstood ingredient in baking these days. It is often described as a “fat replacer” when it is no such thing. Applesauce is a semi-solid ingredient (basically a liquid, since it doesn’t fall into the dry ingredient category) that can add moisture to some types of baked goods. It helps out in lower fat treats because it can prevent, or at least mitigate, dryness, and it has a very mild flavor so it usually isn’t very noticeable. By itself, it doesn’t tenderize baked goods like oil and butter do, so recipes where people have gone overboard with the substitution of fat for applesauce often turn out gummy and sticky.

This isn’t to say that applesauce doesn’t have a place in baking. The way that it adds moisture is not just because of the apple juice portion of the sauce. It comes from all those little bits of apple that spread out in a cake or cookie dough and release moisture over time. This can actually help keep a baked good fresh-tasting, if you don’t go overboard with it. This Applesauce Chocolate Layer Cake is a perfect example of a good use of applesauce. It doesn’t “replace” anything in this recipe, it just serves its own purpose. The applesauce is used as the main liquid in the recipe, where other cakes might use milk or sour cream, and it works out beautifully. It also helps to making the cake a good choice for those who prefer their cakes to be dairy-free. This recipe comes from the LCBO magazine and is available online, although my copy was thoughtfully clipped out and mailed to me by a chocolate cake-loving friend.

This cake is moist and fluffy, with a very good chocolate flavor - more dark chocolate than milk chocolate. The unsweetened applesauce and unsweetened cocoa powder keep the cake from being too sweet, in spite of the fact that there is a fair amount of sugar in it (less than some chocolate cakes I’ve made, however). The fluffiness comes from the applesauce and from the fact that the egg whites are separated, beaten to soft peaks and folded into the batter. You can use any kind of frosting you like for this cake. Chocolate frosting is good if you’re trying to please a crowd of chocolate lovers, and vanilla is good for contrast. If you want to stick with the dairy-free aspect, use a meringue or marshmallow-based frosting.

(more…)

When I first saw the Giant Sandwich Cookie Cake Pan, it put me in the mood for sandwich cookies. Whoopie pies are a good choice, but nothing really beats some Oreos (or similar cookies) and a glass of milk for sandwich cookie satisfaction. That being said, it’s also easy to get a little tired of eating them in the same way all the time, so I took all the leftovers from a new box of cookies (after I was done munching on a few) and baked them into a cake.

I opted for a pound cake, as the dense but tender texture of a pound cake is great for suspending  mix-ins in without them sinking to the bottom. You can use any Oreo-type sandwich cookie for this recipe, whether you want to go with actual Oreos, Hydrox or some other brand is up to you. I used some Joe’s O’s from Trader Joe’s, which have a vanilla bean filling that has a little more flavor than the classic Oreo filling. Be sure to grease and flour the pan before baking, as the cookie filling has a tendency to want to stick to the inside of a bundt pan and can be very difficult to detach without cracking part of the cake.

The cake has a tender crumb and the density that you’d expect from pound cake, so it is easy to slice even with big chunks of cookie inside. It has a nice vanilla and butter flavor to it.  I’d recommend cutting the oreos in halves or thirds when you go to mix them in, because the bigger pieces have a more noticeable chocolate flavor, while the smaller bits just add to the overall look of the cake.

If you want to dress the cake up with a glaze, I’d recommend using this easy Satiny Chocolate Glaze. It’s rich and makes just enough to drizzle over the bundt cake. The glaze is also a good way to cover up a crack in the top of the cake if it happens to stick in your bundt pan. Otherwise, just serve the cake plain and let the beautiful oreo cookie pattern in each slice speak for itself.

(more…)