Tag Archives: cake

Gila’s Chocolate Cake

1 Mar

 

Gila's chocolate cakeParve or dairy

I got the recipe for this cake, which could be nicknamed “death by chocolate,” from Gila Semp. It’s very rich and moist, and it’s easy to make, especially with a stand mixer. And even though it’s based on boxed mixes, it tastes homemade.

Full disclosure: I made this cake for guests last weekend, but I neglected to take a photo! This one is by Emily Hill, via Flickr Creative Commons — and I like her addition of shredded coconut and sliced chopped nuts on top, though because this cake is so rich I often make it without the chocolate glaze, and just sprinkle with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.

Ingredients:

1 box devil’s food or chocolate fudge cake mix
5 eggs
½ cup oil
1 cup water
1 package instant chocolate pudding mix (most are dairy, but you can find parve mixes in kosher food stores)
1 package (12 oz.) chocolate chips
1 package (6 oz.) chocolate chips, optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the cake mix, eggs, oil, water and pudding mix together with an electric mixer.

Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour into a greased bundt pan.

Bake 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Optional glaze:

Combine a 6-oz. package of chocolate chips with ¼ cup of boiling water. Stir to combine.

Add a little more boiling water if the glaze seems too thick. Drizzle over the top of the cooled cake.

Serves 12 or more

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Sour Cream Coffee Cake

25 Feb

sour cream coffee cakeIt’s been awhile since I posted a dessert recipe, so this seemed a good time.

Who doesn’t love a sour cream coffee cake? I found this recipe online, but it’s originally from Barefoot Contessa Parties.

Ingredients:

1½ sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
3 extra-large eggs at room temperature
1½ tsp. vanilla
1¼ cups sour cream
2½ cups cake flour *
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. kosher salt

Streusel:
¼ cup light brown sugar, packed
½ cup all-purpose flour
1½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. kosher salt
3 Tbs. cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces¾ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Glaze:
½ cup confectioners’ sugar
2 Tbs. maple syrup

*If you don’t have cake flour, you can either use all-purpose flour but use 5 Tbs. less, or you can take out 5 Tbs. of the all-purpose flour and replace it with 5 tbs. of cornstarch. Sift the two flours together before measuring.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 4 to 5 minutes until light. Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and sour cream. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the batter until just combined. Finish stirring with a spatula to be sure the batter is completely mixed.

Make the streusel: Place the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt and butter in a bowl and pinch it together with your fingers until it forms a crumble. Mix in the walnuts if you use them.

Spoon half the batter into the pan and spread it out with a knife. Sprinkle with ¾ cup of the streusel. Spoon the rest of the batter into the pan, spread it out, and scatter the remaining streusel on the top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Carefully transfer the cake, streusel side up, onto a serving plate. Whisk the confectioners’ sugar and maple syrup together, adding a few drops of water if necessary, to make a glaze. Drizzle over the cake.

(If you want to make this in a bundt pan, you probably won’t want the streusel to be on the top, because then it would be on the bottom when you take the cake out of the pan. In this case, you can make three layers of cake batter, with two layers of the streusel in between them.)

Serves 12 to 16

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Jewish Apple Cake

24 Sep

Jewish apple cakeThe Jewish holidays are almost behind us (Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are Thursday and Friday) but apples are right in season, — and it’s a great year for them, at least in Michigan. So this seems like a good time to share this a classic recipe. It’s excellent for Shabbat dinner, Rosh Hashanah or any festive occasion.

As a variation, you can substitute sliced prune plums for the apples, which I almost like better because it gives the cake a lovely dark  purple ribbon. But I haven’t seen prune plums in the market yet, and apples are tried and true!

The hardest part of this recipe is peeling and slicing the apples. After that, you just mix the batter in one bowl and assemble the cake in the baking pan. I keep a  shaker of cinnamon and sugar in my cupboard to make cinnamon toast — if you do the same, you can skip the part about mixing cinnamon and sugar and just sprinkle some of the mixture from your shaker over the  apples.

This cake freezes nicely too!

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten well
⅓ cup orange juice
2 tsp.vanilla
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
3 large, tart apples (Granny Smith are great), pared, cored and sliced thin
1 tsp. cinnamon mixed with ½ cup sugar
Confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Measure everything into a mixing bowl except for the apples and the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Beat until smooth.

Pour one-third of the batter into a greased and floured Bundt pan. Arrange half the apples over the top of the batter (overlap the slices slightly) and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Pour on half of the remaining batter, then add the rest of the apples and some more of the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Pour the rest of the batter over the top of the apples. Bake for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

If you like you can sprinkle the top with confectioners’ sugar.

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Sour Cream Apple Squares

6 Mar

Sour Cream Apple SquaresI knew I had a recipe for sour cream apple squares – but I couldn’t find it in my card box, my accordion file or my manila folder, where my hundreds of recipes are stashed, and it’s not the kind of thing I would have gotten from my cookbooks. Thank goodness for the Web! I found this recipe on a site called Taste of Home. The unidentified person who contributed it claimed to have invented it in the 1950s with her mother.

I didn’t think it was the same recipe but a few days later I was going through my recipe box and found my original Sour Cream Apple Squares recipe – which was exactly like the one I got from the Web, except that I could tell I cut it out many years earlier from a package of Pillsbury’s Best Unbleached Flour. No matter, it’s a delicious recipe, with a nutty, crunchy base and soft, apple-y top.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups packed brown sugar
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup chopped nuts
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1 cups chopped peeled tart apples (Granny Smith are good)
Whipped cream or ice cream for topping

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar and butter, and beat at low speed until even, small crumbs are formed. Stir in the nuts. Press about 2¾ cups of this mixture into an ungreased 13 x 9-inch baking pan.

To the remaining crumb mixture, add the cinnamon, baking soda, salt, sour cream, vanilla and egg. Beat until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chopped apples. Spoon this mixture over the crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares to serve, garnished with whipped cream or ice cream if you like.

Serves 12 to 15

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Zucchini Cake

12 Feb

zucchini cake from FlickrI’m posting this recipe today in honor of the birthday of  Lois Armstrong, one of my oldest and best friends, who introduced me to this lovely cake. Unlike most zucchini cakes and breads, it does not have cinnamon or other spices. The pineapple, vanilla, nuts and raisins give it a nice flavor, and the zucchini adds pretty green specks. If you don’t tell the kids that it has zucchini in it, they’ll love it!

I confess the photo is not an actual zucchini cake baked by me. With only two of us at home, we don’t make too many desserts of this type except for company dinners or potlucks. And we usually make this cake in the summer, when we have a glut of home-grown zucchini. So I grabbed this shot off the Web (photo attribution at the end). You’ll just have to trust me when I say this recipe makes a pretty and delicious cake! And happy birthday, Lois!

Ingredients:

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
1 cup drained crushed pineapple
½ cup chopped nuts
½ cup raisins (preferably golden)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla. Add the remaining ingredients. Pour into a greased and floured Bundt pan and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/3679874866/”>betsyweber</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

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