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

mmmm.....Muffins!

Haven't posted in a long while - my camera had some problems and February was short anyway...so here I am, back at it!

I was in the mood to bake and I had some blueberries that I needed to use, so I found a basic muffin recipe in King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion for "All-Star Muffins" which includes several variations as possibilities.

I gathered my ingredients, turned on my oven, and prepped my pans.  I've only recently in my life discovered the wonderful world of portion control scoops.  Aren't those liners cute?  Most of the cute faded away in the baking process, though.  :-(

I cut up my butter and let it come up to room temperature in the mixing bowl while I assembled the rest of the ingredients.

Here's the dry ingredients (except the sugar - sugar is regarded as a 'wet' ingredient due to how it behaves).

Ok, so you blend the softened butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.  This takes a few minutes.

Not there yet....

Almost there...

There it is...light and fluffy.

I added my eggs one at a time.  For me this is easier done by prepping each of them in their own little bowl.  Mix after each addition.  Also, that spatula there is by Kitchen Aid and it may look like a funny shape, but it really is the best for scraping the bottom of my (also Kitchen Aid) mixer.  

Next goes some sour cream and vanilla. Mix well.

  

And then the dry ingredients...You don't want to overmix at this point or you will activate the gluten too much and have a heavier product.  Just gently mix until combined and stop.

Ok, so that's the basic mix, and from here you can make several variations.  I had some blueberries that I wanted to use up, but for some strange reason, I also wanted some chocolate in there.  So I used some 'mini' chips with the berries.

See how tiny they are compared to a regular sized chip?

I folded in those last add-ins by hand.

I scooped them into the liners and dusted them with some cinnamon sugar.  I used my small strainer for this to help make the coating nice and even.

Ready to go.  I got a few more muffins than the recipe said I'd get - I guess they figured on a bit larger muffin, but this worked out nice for me.

And done!  My two pans are a bit different.  The blue one on the left is enamel-coated cast iron and has slightly smaller cups.  I just watched them closely for time and ended up taking the other pan out a few minutes before the heavier cast iron one.

Not sure if you can see what I mean here...

But this was the difference in the final product.  Both tasted the same (yummy!), but the ones made in the smaller cups were forced to rise a bit more.  (Remember I used a portion control scoop so the same amount of batter went into each cup.)

Delicious!

~ks

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

My Mom used to make cinnamon swirl bread sometimes when I was a kid.  The other day I decided I had to have some!  I've worked with yeast breads before (with some success), but it has been many years.  I had just been to Costco and bought some fresh yeast and my other ingredients were fresh, so off I went.

America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

I only needed the yolks from my eggs, so I put the whites into a container (and marked it!) for the freezer - most likely destined to be a future Angel Food Cake.

King Arthur Flour has this cool yeast spoon that measures out exactly the amount of yeast in one of those little packets - 2.25 tsp.

Here's my ingredients all measured out...wasn't sure which way to go with it, so I did it both ways.

You mix the brown and white sugars and reserve some for the topping.  I made a little error here - I should also have mixed in the cinnamon at this point but I didn't figure that out until later.  I still used the cinnamon in the swirl part, but just lightly spread it around over the sugars.  It turned out fine, but I'll pay more attention next time.

I gently warmed up the milk, and whisked in the melted butter and the egg yolks here.

I put most of the flour and yeast salt and (cinnamon) sugar mixture in the mixer.

Then I slowly added the milk mixture into the dry with the mixer on low...this took about 2 minutes.

At this point I thought it needed a bit more of the flour, so I put in just a spoonful at a time till it came together.

Then I turned it out on a floured board...

...and smoothed it out into a ball.

I lightly oiled this bowl and put the dough in here to rise.  Then I also lightly oiled some cling film and put that on top.

Earlier I had turned my oven on low for a few minutes and then turned it off.  Here is where I put the dough to  rise.

 And here she is about an hour and a half later.  POUFY.

Then I turned it out on the board.  I wish I had a little bit bigger board but oh, well.  I tried to spread it out like they said, but the dough was a little rebellious and would only work with me so far.

Here is where I sprinkled the sugar mixture on and wondered, "What about the cinnamon?"...so I read more carefully and realized it should have been in there all along.  So I just dusted it on there and then rolled it up, pinched it closed, and put it in the lightly oiled pan seam side down.

Here's how she is after the second rise.

On goes a little more of the cinnamon sugar and a spritzing of water to keep it in place.

And here is the finished bread!  I liked how much this rose, but maybe next time I will use a slightly larger pan.  See the little gap in the bottom there?  Oops...gotta watch how I place it in the pan, too.

I think this 'tearing' effect is from the top not being nice and smooth going into the oven.  It didn't affect the taste at all.

And here are the lovely swirls!  If I had been able to spread the dough out more, I would've gotten a more swirly effect than this one, but I'll take this for a first effort. :-)

The only real problem this bread presented was the AWESOME yummy smell driving everybody crazy in the house until we could dig into it!

That little gap there came from not rolling the dough quite snugly enough in that spot.

Next time I will try it with raisins.

This experience has renewed an interest in bread-baking for me so I have been reading the bread books in my collection and hope to be doing more soon.  I always thought you were sorta locked into a time thing when working with breads - how long it has to rise, etc.  But as I'm reading, you can exercise a measure of control over the process - speeding up or slowing down the rising process.  I'm so excited about this, because maybe it means I won't have to always wait for a weekend day to try a new bread!

~ks

Cake - Take #2

Last week's red velvet cake needed six egg yolks.  So I saved those extra whites and put them in the freezer for this week's cake - Angel Food Cake.  I went with a recipe from Cook's Illustrated.

Cook's Illustrated Cookbook

I still needed six more egg whites for this cake, so I've saved those extra yolks and will be doing a zabaglione a little later today...mmmm....

Now, I've never made an Angel Food Cake before.  I like them ok - I guess I've just typically gravitated toward a little bit richer cakes.  So I had to buy a new pan.

So first you need to separate your eggs.  I understand (by research, not my own experience) that this is easier done when the eggs are still cold from the fridge.  So I did that.  But the whipping of the whites is easier done with room temperature whites, so I let them sit on the counter for a little bit while I got the other things ready.

I like it when recipes are listed with weights for the ingredients - I have a little scale and I use it especially with baking.

I wisked half the sugar and the cake flour and set it aside.  Then I started whipping the egg whites with the cream of tartar and the salt - started kinda medium low for a minute, then increased to medium high for another minute.  Then I gradually added the other half of the sugar with the mixer going.  They only want you to get to 'soft peaks' here and that only takes another minute or two.  With egg white whipping, there are: soft peaks, firm or stiff peaks, and then there's waaaay too far, and there isn't much time in between these, so you have to stay close and pay attention.  I think I got to a pretty good place with my egg whites.  :-)   Then I added the vanilla, almond extract, and lemon juice - this you just beat till blended.

Then I sifted the flour/sugar mixture into the whites, a little at a time, and just gently folded each addition in.  I'm always afraid of deflating things at this point, so I try to be very gentle with folding.

Then I put the batter into the pan.  Since my pan has a removable bottom, I didn't treat the pan at all.  If you have a one-piece tube pan, they suggest that you cut out a parchment to lay into the pan so you can get the thing out later.  No greasing of the pan is necessary - in fact, you don't even want it because it will not be good for the egg whites as it won't allow them to 'climb' the pan and the batter won't rise.

Then it bakes in a low oven (325) for 50-60 minutes.  About half-way through, I did carefully turn it around in the interest of even baking.

Here she is right out of the oven.  Now it needs too cool for a looong time - like two hours and upside down, which is why the pan has those 'feet' on it.  If you have a tube pan without the feet, you could turn the pan over and put the center tube over a metal funnel or a slender bottle or something.  It needs to cool upside down so that it won't deflate.  I did check my pan several times along the way as to temperature, and it really did need that long to get completely cool.

Since my pan is in two pieces I did put it on a half sheet pan with some parchment -I had no idea if I'd get any leakage.

And, voila!  No leakage!  As good as that is, I will probably not bet on it anyway in the future, as a leak like that would be a pain in the neck to clean up off the oven floor.

To get the cake out of the pan I did have to gently run a butter knife around the inner and outer tube parts and it came right out.  Then I needed to run that knife between the pan bottom and cake bottom to get that to come off.

So I placed it on the plate this way - as it was in the pan.  My Grandmother said she usually flips it so the flatter side is up.  I didn't know the protocol and I don't know if it matters.  This isn't a 'gorgeous' cake by any means - but it really did come out very, very nice.  It would be great with fruit - sort of like a strawberry shortcake thing, it was good with ice cream, it was good by itself.  My family liked it - they said it was nice and tender and not 'tough' like the kind you get at the grocery store.  I will be doing this again.

I'm not sure if this was supposed to have risen more, but this was delicious as it was.

My Great-Grandmother was a young mother during the depression.  I guess they must've had chickens or some other easy access to eggs, because my Grandmother said that her Mom made one of these cakes every day back then.  Remember, no mixer - she just used something like this whip and her strong arm.  Wow.  I'm not sure I'd even want to try this without my trusty Kitchenaid mixer.


~ks