Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

Today is that Hallmark holiday known as Valentine’s Day, and if I were keeping with the theme, I would post something sinfully chocolatey – brownies, or Devil’s Food cake, or the Chocolate Bourbon cake – or maybe red velvet cupcakes, which I haven’t actually ever made and should try one of these days. But no. You’re getting an orange cake, because I love oranges, and I’m spending Valentine’s Day with my cat and the season premiere of The Amazing Race, so I’m not baking chocolate if I don’t want to, dammit.

This is not to say that I have anything against chocolate – it’s actually mostly to say that I don’t have enough Ghirardelli to pull off devil’s food today.

This is one of my more frequently repeated desserts, honestly; sometimes I make the whole thing in a 9×13, sometimes I make cupcakes, theoretically I could do the layer cake thing at some point, but today I’ll be halving the recipe and doing one 9″, single layer cake. The recipe posted is the whole thing, though.

The cake is from Allen at Eating Out Loud, and the frosting is from…the 1976 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook, and is the only buttercream recipe I will ever, ever use. Ever. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, people, and this buttercream is perfect.

Orange Sour Cream Cake

Via Eating Out Loud

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. orange extract
8 oz. butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup fresh orange juice

Preheat oven to 350F and grease and flour pan(s) (or line muffin tins with papers if going the cupcake route).

Cream together butter and sugar, and then stir in sour cream, vanilla, orange extract, and eggs until thoroughly combined. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda and salt, and then slowly add to wet ingredients, mixing until smooth. Pour in orange juice and again mix until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan(s) and bake. If you’re doing this in a 9×13, bake for an hour. Make it 30-35 minutes for 8″-9″ pans, and 20-25 minutes for cupcakes. Set aside and let cool.

Orange Butter Frosting

Via Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, 1976 edition

1/3 C butter, softened
3 C confectioner’s sugar
1 1/2 t orange extract
2 T orange juice

Blend butter and sugar. Stir in extract and orange juice, beat until frosting is smooth and of spreading consistency.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

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.