Applesauce Snack Cake and Silicone Bakeware - do they mix?

I look around on eBay for cool kitchen items sometimes and saw this neat bundt loaf pan that I hadn't seen before.  I lost the bid on that one (sniff) and kept looking for one like it.

I also check out thrift stores for good deals on kitchen stuff.  Yesterday I wandered through my local thrift store and noticed this for $2.50:

That's exactly the shape and size I was thinking about, but I've never bought any silicone bakeware before and was a little unsure about it.  The couple bucks it cost was worth a shot to me, though.

I was so excited about it I decided to make a cake last night.  My son and I are the only ones home at this moment (hubby is out of town for a few days), and he generally isn't a chocolate cake fan - he tends to like desserts that are more fruity.  So, I chose an applesauce snack cake from Americas Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, which I like to call "ATK Blue"

I was going to take more pictures, but I was having a little technical difficulty with my camera.

This recipe called for a couple of ounces of dried apples to be chopped to smallish pieces and then you simmer those in a cup of apple cider for about 15 minutes and let them cool.  You also need to melt a stick of butter and let that cool.  An egg and a cup of applesauce need to come to room temperature.  So this recipe needs a wee bit of planning ahead - it doesn't just 'throw' together'.  Happily, I had the time to do this recipe right, as it was deLICious!!

I was very happy with how the tufted design showed up and the cake released easily (with no butter or PAM spray or anything at all).  I was also very happy with the wire frame that came with this as it made it pretty easy to handle.

This cake turned out a bit 'short' but only because the recipe only yielded so much batter - it was designed for an 8x8 square pan, which they wanted you to create a foil sling for and then grease the sling.  The pan could have taken 9 or maybe 10 cups of batter.  I will definitely use this pan again for a larger cake recipe soon.  We have an office party next week...maybe I'll make a chocolate pound cake or something...




~ks

The North thinks it know how to make corn bread, but this is a gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite as bad as the Northern imitation of it. ~Mark Twain

Now here's a divisive topic.  I don't have a passionate view on the topic - I'm open to trying various versions.  I've made a more traditional Southern version before, so this time I wanted to go Northern.

Crescent Dragonwagon has written a really interesting book solely on the subject of cornbread - The Cornbread Gospels where she explores all the differences and nuances of the varieties of cornbread recipes out there.

This time I made Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread.  I always like a chance to use my cool Griswold cornstick pan (love eBay!).

In a previous experience with this pan, the recipe called for putting the pan into the oven during the pre-heat so that it gets nice and HOT and therefore would develop a nicer crust texture.  So I did that.  Then I put a little bit of butter in each slot - you do NOT want batter stuck in all of these nooks and crannies!

Then I used a portion scoop to put batter in each slot.

I put that into the oven - the recipe as written is for an 8 inch pan and calls for 20 minutes, but I was sure these would be done much sooner.  They were done at about 8 minutes.

Oops!  One broke....oh, well, the cook must eat it.  ;-)

This recipe was for an 8 inch pan, but done with the cornstick pan, I got about 19 cornsticks.  I took these to a family dinner and everyone liked them.  They were delicious with butter and honey on them...mmmmm.....



~ks