Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

This was originally supposed to be Chocolate Spice Bread from Nick Maligieri’s The Modern Baker, but I was, um. Out of sour cream. And then I accidentally added twice as much cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. And had to add an extra egg. And substituted goat cheese for the sour cream.

In other words, this is not Nick’s chocolate spice bread, but it is one of the most decadent chocolate desserts I’ve made, and that includes the afternoon I spent getting drunk on chocolate bourbon cake.

Chocolate Spice Cake Loaf

1 1/2 C AP flour
1/3 C dutch process cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1 t ground ginger
3 eggs
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
5 T melted butter
4 oz goat cheese, softened
1 t almond extract

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, spices and salt. Set aside.

Whisk eggs with sugar. Add melted butter, goat cheese, and almond extract and beat until smooth. Add dry ingredients and beat until combined.

Spread in a greased loaf pan and bake in a 350F oven for 40-50 minutes or until a clean knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for five minutes, then remove and cool completely before serving.

I figured that yet another recipe full of substitutions and minor errors was the right way to end the year. It is, after all, the way I bake 90% of my recipes.

Procrastination is an art form, dear almost nonexistent readers. Procrastination is why I’ve put off baking this coffeecake for almost two weeks now, and procrastination is why it’s being baked right now, at 10 pm. Because the other option is working on the writing project I’ve been putting off for a month, and heavens, we wouldn’t want to that, would we?

Of course not.

This recipe is basically Kitchen Brother’s Cranberry Buckle, with one important, essential, imperative addition: orange extract. Unnecessary, you say, when there’s already zest? Please, there can never be enough orange, especially in combination with cranberry.

That’s your lesson for today.

Cranberry Buckle

Streusel
1/2 C unbleached AP flour
1/2 C packed light brown sugar
2 T granulated sugar
1/2 t ground cinnamon
Pinch table salt
4  T unsalted butter (1/2 stick), cut into 8 pieces, softened but still cool
Cake
1 1/2 C AP flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
10 T unsalted butter, softened but still cool
2/3 C granulated sugar
1/2 t table salt
1/2 t grated orange zest
1 t orange extract
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
2  large eggs , room temperature
4  C fresh cranberries

Mix dry streusel ingredients, add softened butter, chopped, and rub between your fingers until the consistency of wet sand. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9″ cake pan.

Whisk together flour and baking powder, set aside.

Cream butter, sugar, salt, and orange zest. Add eggs and vanilla and orange extracts. Mix until smooth, and then add dry ingredients, mixing until the flour is thoroughly combined.

Fold in cranberries. I highly recommend you do this with a wooden spoon rather than a spatula, lest your spatula snap in two. As mine did approximately half an hour ago.

Transfer dough to pan, pressing it into corners until it is even. Gather streusel in your hand and form a large clump before sprinkling it over the cake.  Repeat until the cake is coated and the streusel is gone. Bake for 55 minutes.

I can’t vouch for its taste, but it smells fabulous.

This is based vaguely on a Paula Deen recipe, except I doubled the spices, changed molasses for maple syrup, and switched the vegetable shortening for butter (Yes, I too was shocked at the existence of a Deen recipe without a pound of butter.) They turned out well, heated the apartment on this extremely cold December day, and made my kitchen smell like Christmas, so I consider it a success.

Ginger Spice Cookies

3/4 C butter, softened

1 C brown sugar

1/4 C maple syrup

1 egg

2 C AP flour

2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon

2 t ground ginger

1 t cloves

1/2 t salt

Granulated white sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven and either grease cookie sheets or line with parchment or a Silpat. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar. Add maple syrup and egg and mix until smooth. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices and salt. Add to wet ingredients and mix.

Form dough into 1″ balls and roll in white sugar. Flatten gently with the heel of your hand and bake for 12 minutes, rotating once.

They’re quite spicy and the maple flavor I was expecting was nonexistent. If you want a milder, sweeter cookie, halve the spices – it probably would have a more maple-spice flavor then.

This, my friends, is the best blondie you’ll ever make, period. It starts with my mother’s basic caramel brownies recipe – which, like many of my mother’s best recipes, comes from the 1955 edition of the Minonk United Methodist Church Cookbook – but instead of the prescribed nuts, add a cup of heath bar crunch bits. The kind with chocolate, although the brickle bits would probably be awesome in their own way.

I used the Heath bits the first time I made these, and though I’ve made them since with chocolate chips and with walnuts, and with pecans, nothing really comes close to the rich sweetness that toffee brings to the party.  This is the epitome of blondies, and I probably would have finished my latest batch already except for the fact that I’d sent them to California for someone’s birthday.

Heath Bar Crunch Blondies

1 1/2 C AP flour, sifted

1 t salt

2 C brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 t baking powder

2 t vanilla extract

1/2 C butter, melted

1 C HEATH Bar Crunch Bits

Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Add melted butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs and stir to combine. Fold in HEATH Bar Crunch pieces.

Spread in a well-greased 8×8 pan and bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Excellent warm or cool, but somehow the most decadent when still soft from the oven.