Regular readers know I have a fondness for cake -- well any sweet really, but especially cake.
So I was delighted to receive a copy of Cake, I Love You: Decadent, Delectable and Do-Able Recipes by Jill O'Connor.
This book is filled with cakes I want to eat.
These are not ordinary cakes. And despite the word "do-able" in the title, these are not whip-up-at-a-moment's-notice cakes either. Take the Lemon Bomb, for example, this cake is a lemon-lovers dream. Yet, the recipe is made up of five parts: meringue kisses, lemon curd, lemon cake, limoncello syrup and lemon buttercream. The meringues alone take more than 4 hours to prepare. Yet the end results sounds divine: layers of lemon scented cake are soaked in a syrup of limoncello and sandwiched and frosted with a billowy lemon curd buttercream and then coated in crumbled meringues. The recipe requires 18 (!) eggs.
And then there's the Scotchmallow -- two layers of rich chocolate cake soaked in caramel, an equally thick layer of homemade marshmallow sandwiched and coated in chocolate buttercream and drizzled with more caramel and finished with Belgian chocolate sprinkles.
But not every recipe in Cake, I Love You will take days to make and dirty every bowl in your kitchen. Some are seductively simple.
Like O'Connor's recipe for Classic Diner Crumb Cake. With its high crumb to cake ratio, this cake will have special appeal to cinnamon-sugar lovers.
Classic Diner Crumb Cake
Crumb topping:
2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup butter, melted
Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
¾ cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
Confectioners' sugar, for sprinkling
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with vegetable oil or butter.
In a medium bowl, stir together the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Add melted butter and stir with a fork until mixture is crumbly. For big, chunky pieces, grab handfuls of the mixture and press them together, then break the larger chunks into slightly smaller pieces. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well and scraping sides of bowl after each addition. Beat in vanilla and sour cream. Scrape sides of bowl. And flour mixture and mix on low until just combined. The batter will be quite thick.
Spoon batter to the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula. Using your hands, sprinkle the crumb mixture evenly over the batter, making sure some of the larger clumps remain as you cover the batter completely.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted near the center comes out clean and the crumb topping is firm. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 to 15 minutes. Cut into squares and serve sprinkled with confectioners' sugar, if desired. Cake will keep tightly covered at room temperature for up to 2 days.
Makes about 12 servings.
Food on 11/22/2017