Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

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.

I’m never quite sure how to classify the muffin. Technically speaking, it resides in the the quick bread category, along with biscuits and scones and banana and zucchini bread, but I’ve adapted cake recipes to make muffins and I imagine I could reverse that in some cases. There are definitely more cake-like muffins out there. This isn’t one of them.

I first came across Elise’s Blackberry Muffin recipe back in 2005, and wanted to try it then, but when I blogged about it on my now inactive blog, my mother promptly sent me her sweet muffin recipe from Betty Crocker and informed me that they made the best fruit muffins ever, and I never got around to Elise’s. Then I was hunting around for something to bake today, came across them again, and finally, four years later, I’ve made them.

They might be the best raspberry muffins ever. Don’t tell my mother.

The secret is the sour cream, which makes for a fluffy, slightly dense, moist muffin. It’s also only got 2/3 cup of sugar, so it’s not overly sweet either; it’s perfect, and I’m currently devouring them as an accompaniment to my tomato and spinach soup for dinner tonight. I chose raspberries, my favorite fruit for muffins, but blueberries or the original blackberries work fine too.

Raspberry Sour Cream Muffins
2 C all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 large eggs
1 C sour cream
2 t Half-and-Half
2/3 C sugar
8 T warm melted butter (1 stick)
1 t vanilla
1 C frozen raspberries

Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a standard 12 muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix together with a few light strokes, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add the berries. DO NOT OVERMIX. The batter shouldn’t be smooth.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 17-20 minutes (or longer). Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on a rack.

It actually makes 18 instead of 12, which amazed me, because even when a recipe says it makes 18, I only ever get 12.

Battle Two in my ongoing and unsuccessful war against my Bundt pan, I baked this cake for National Bundt Day. Which was two weeks ago. And had so many plans to bring it into work and wow the four other employees with my cake prowess, but again, I was defeated by a bundt pan that doesn’t want to release cakes.

Possibly I should stick with sheet cakes and round cakes and cupcakes, but I refuse to be vanquished by a Calphalon pan. But I digress.

This cake, other than the pan disaster, also heralded me realizing that my microwave had a minor smoking problem, required the purchase of alcohol and espresso powder, and had one of the most spatter-y batters ever, but it was incredible. When I dug into the broken quarter directly after it came out of the pan, I thought it was possible that I could actually get drunk on this cake. I don’t consider this a bad thing.

From the New York Times via Elise at Simply Recipes, it takes an entire cup of whiskey. Trust me on this: use it all. It makes for an immensely flavorful, immensely moist cake that, yes, you may be able to get drunk on.

Chocolate Bourbon Cake

1 C unsalted butter, softened

2 C AP flour

5 oz bittersweet chocolate

1/4 C instant espresso

2 T unsweetened cocoa powder

1 C bourbon whiskey

1/2 t kosher salt

2 C granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 T vanilla extract

1 t baking soda

1/4 powdered sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 325F and grease and flour a 10-cup bundt. Set aside. Melt chocolate in microwave or over a double boiler. Let cool.

Place espresso powder and cocoa in a 2-cup glass measuring cup. Add enough boiling water to make 1 C. Add 1 C of bourbon. Stir until cocoa and espresso has dissolved. Set aside.

Beat softened butter until fluffy (2-3 minutes on high). Add sugar and beat until well combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda and melted chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula.

With the mixer on the lowest speed, beat in a third of the whiskey espresso cocoa mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with whiskey mixture. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes for Bundt pan (loaf pans will take less time, start checking them after 55 minutes).

Transfer cake to a rack. Unmold after 15 minutes and sprinkle warm cake with more whiskey. Let cool. Sprinkle powdered sugar through a mesh sieve over the cake before serving.

Everything went well until the unmolding part. Also, I didn’t bother sprinkling with more whiskey – it didn’t need it, but your mileage may vary here.

Welcome to my brand new, shiny baking blog. It’s still under construction – I want a header eventually – but for now, all the baking posts I’ve been adding to my main blog at zonkered.net can be here. Over this weekend I’ll probably post my two most recent cakes, but for now: the Single Girl’s Thanksgiving Menu (for 2009, at any rate). No cake, but there is pie, and even the savory items are baked.

Okay, or roasted, if you insist.

The only thing I’ve done so far is apple pie, loosely based on Deb at Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, but also planned for the day are stuffed mushrooms and roasted acorn squash, loosely based (yes, again) on a couple of the Pioneer Woman’s recipes.

Deb’s apple pie is from America’s Test Kitchen; thus, my pie is from America’s Test Kitchen + my mother + me, when I changed stuff around. I haven’t tried it yet. It may very well be a horrible disaster.

I doubt it, but you never know.

Apple Pie

3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

4 Gala apples, peeled cored and sliced

3/4 C sugar

2 T flour

1 T Penzey’s Apple Pie Spice

1 T lemon juice

2 prepared pie crusts

Preheat oven to 425F and fit one pie crust to your pie plate. Let the edges hang over for now, and attack the apples. This is going to take a while.

Fill a bowl with water and add the 1 T of lemon juice – this will keep your apple slices from turning brown, and since you’re using seven of them, this is a concern. Peel, core and slice, and then drain the apples when you’re done.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar, flour, and pie spice. Toss the apples until they’re coated. Get in their with your hands; using a spoon is just going to make you lose apple slices, and you won’t get them coated. You’re going to get goop all over your hands anyway.

Pile the apples in the crust – they should mound up pretty high – and then cover them up with the second pie crust. Trim the edges and seal. Use a fork if you’re fancy, use your fingers if, like me, you’re lucky that the pie crust didn’t completely fall to pieces. Cut holes in the top to vent, unless again, you’re like me and managed to rip three holes in the middle while stretching it over the pie.

Sometimes being something of a disaster is a good thing.

Slide the pie into the oven; bake for 10 minutes at 425F, and then lower to 350F for an additional 40-50 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for at least four hours before eating. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or anything else that sounds fantabulous.

The mushrooms and squash might show up later. I make no promises.