I Blog What I Bake

Welcome to Hummingbird Cake! I had never heard of this before my husband’s co-worker put in a request for it. Yes, I take requests. Oh, and he lent us the first 3 seasons of Dexter so I could not begrudge the man some cake. I made two modifications to the recipe. 1. I did not add any nuts. Most Hummingbird Cake recipes call for pecans or walnuts. My husband is deathly allergic to both. No nuts. 2. I reduced the amount of sugar by half a cup. With all the pineapple, banana and cream cheese frosting I thought it would be better as I don’t like overly sweet desserts.  If I had to compare this cake to another dessert it would be Carrot Cake. Very similar texture and flavor. YUM!

Hummingbird Cake Recipe
(adapted from the www.joyofbaking.com and Matt K.)

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
1 – 8 ounce can crushed pineapple, do not drain
3 ripe mashed bananas

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 8oz block of cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
Approximately 3 cups confectioners sugar (add until frosting is at desired spreading consistency)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter, flour and line two 9 inch cake pans with parchment paper.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

In another large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, vanilla, pineapple and mashed bananas. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and stir until combined. Evenly divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack. After about 10 minutes invert the cakes onto a wire rack, remove the pans and parchment paper, and then cool completely before frosting.

Printable Recipe: Hummingbird Cake

I realize I make a lot of things with bananas. There always seems to be two lonely bananas in my house that just never get eaten. They sit there in the fruit bowl all by themselves turning brown.  What’s better than baking them into something?

After my banana bundt cake debacle a couple of weeks ago, I was itching to make something with browned butter. I came across the original recipe for this bread durning some mindless web searching. I added the crumble, the glaze and did some other minor tweaks, but it had me at Bourbon. I needed no other reason to make this.

After a 9pm run to the liquor store for a bottle of Maker Mark, one ruined pot of brown butter and much clanking around in the kitchen, this is now the only banana bread I will ever make.

The bread turned out moist and flavorful and the Bourbon Glaze was great. Had a great hit of the Bourbon flavor.

So next time you have a some overripe bananas lying around, don’t throw them out…bake them into this!!

Bourbon Browned Butter Banana Bread with Oatmeal Crumble and Bourbon Glaze
Adapted from www.pioneerwoman.com

Bread
6 tablespoons of browned butter
2 large eggs
2-3 ripe bananas mashed with 1 tablespoon agave nectar or honey
2 tablespoons of bourbon
1/2 cup plain sour cream
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cups brown sugar
1 teapsoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 teaspoons ginger
1 pinch of salt

Crumble
1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/3 cup oatmeal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup of cold unsalted butter, cubed

Bourbon Glaze
5 tablespoons of confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons of bourbon
1 teaspoon agave nectar or honey

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and butter and flour the pan.

To brown the butter, place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. The butter is done after it bubbles, foams, turns a carmel color with little brown bits and smells kinda of nutty. Be careful not to burn it. Let the butter cool. (The cooling is important! If you add the hot butter to the eggs, you will scramble them. Yuck.)

Mash bananas with 1 tablespoon of agave nectar or honey.

Beat the eggs in a medium bowl. With a wooden spoon, mix in the mashed bananas, bourbon, sour cream and cooled butter.

In a separate large bowl whisk together the flour (sifted) baking soda, sugar, spices and salt.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir gently until combined. Do not over-mix unless you want dry dense bread. You don’t want that. Trust me.

Pour mixture into the prepared loaf pan.

For the crumble combine oatmeal, brown sugar, white sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. Cut in  1/4 cup of cold unsalted butter using a paster blender, a fork or your hands (using your hands is the most fun) Add crumble on top of the bread batter and bake for 60 minutes.

Allow to cool in pan for 10-15 minutes. Turn out of pan and let cool completely on a baking rack.  Once cooled, drizzle Bourbon Glaze over the top.

Slice and serve!

Printable Recipe:Bourbon Browned Butter Bread with Oatmeal Crumble and Bourbon Glaze

I have definitely been on a fruit kick. Summertime makes me abandon heavy desserts. When it’s 95 degrees and humid outside the last thing I want to be eating is some kind of cream based concoction. Although, that’s a lie. The shortbread base of these lemon bars is pure butter. I don’t know what’s heavier than that. ANYWAY.

Lemons go with with just about any berry. I chose blackberries because I have already used strawberries and raspberries in recent posts. These would be amazing with strawberry. I’ll try that sometime soon. Back to the recipe at hand.  The aforementioned shortbread base is phenomenal. You can repurpose this for just about any bar recipe; brownies, blondies you name it. It is super simple to prepare, just so long as you have a food processor.  My advice is to make the blackberry sauce first and leave it to the side until its time to add it to the lemon portion. This recipe comes together very quickly once the shortbread is done.  I have also included some images of plain lemon bars that I made, just in case there are those of you that have no interest in the blackberries.

Blackberry Lemon Bars with Hot Shortbread Base
Shortbread base from www.epicurous.com

Hot Shortbread Base

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut butter into 1/2 inch pieces. In a food processor process all the ingredients until the mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle mixture in a 13×9x2-inch baking pan and with a metal spatula press evenly onto bottom. Bake the shortbread until golden, about 20 minutes. Prepare the filling while this is in the oven.

Blackberry Lemon Filling

3/4 cups fresh lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
1 cup white granulated sugar
4 Large eggs
1/3 cups flour
1 pint fresh blackberries

Pulse blackberries and 1/2 cup of sugar in a food processor until blended. Heat blackberry mixture in a small saucepan over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Press heated mixture through a wire-mesh strainer. Discard the solids and reserve the liquids. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until well combined. Stir in the lemon juice, zest and flour. Pour immediately over the hot shortbread. Take the blackberry liquid and drizzle it over the lemon mixture. Reduce oven to 300 degrees  and bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely in pan. Once cool, dust with confectioners sugar if you would like.

If you don’t want to use the blackberries, just negate the entire step from the recipe and will have delicious traditional lemon bars. Enjoy!

Printable Recipe:Lemon-Blackberry Bars

When I started this blog I said that I would post my failures as well as my successes. Well, here ya go. My Brown Butter Banana Cake debacle. I had some bananas that I need to either use or throw away. I didn’t want to make yet another banana bread so I decided to do something different. I had seen a few recipes using brown butter lately so I Googled Brown Butter Banana Cake to see if there were any for a cake. I found what looked like a really good one and got started.

There are two things that went wrong here.

One, I used a 30 year-old bundt pan. Why? The recipe called for a bundt pan and I don’t have one. My mom was nice enough to rummage around in the basement and find a pan from 1979. I floured and buttered this thing within an inch of his life and it still did not want to come out! I am now convinced that bundt pans are the reason non-stick was invented.  Second, I messed up the recipe and forgot 1/3 cup of flour. Disaster. Instead of being fluffy the cake was dense and overly moist. Good taste, HORRIBLE texture.

There you have it. My Brown Butter Banana Cake debacle. I will try this again once I have my own pan. For now, I have posted the recipe below so you can try it. If you do, send me pictures and I will post what this poor little cake was supposed to look like.

Brown Butter Banana Cake with Chocolate Chips
Source: www.finecooking.com

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup finely mashed ripe bananas (2 medium banans)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 10-cup bundt pan. Tap out excess flour.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Once the butter is melted, cook it slowly, letting it bubble, until it smells nutty or like butterscotch and turns a deep golden hue, 5-10 minutes. Remove the pan from thereat and pour browned butter through a fine sieve into a medium bowl and discard the bits is the sieve. Let the butter cool until it is very warm rather than boiling hot, 5-10 minutes.

Using a whisk, stir the sugar and the eggs into the butter. Whisk until the mixture is smooth, about 1 minutes. Whisk in mashed bananas, vanilla and salt. Sift flour and baking soda directly into the batter. Pour the chocolate chops over the flour. Using a rubber spatula, stir just until the batter is uniformly combined. Don’t over-mix.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly with the spatial. Bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 40-45 minutes. Set the pan on a rack and cool for 15 minutes.. Invert cake onto rack and remove the pan. Let cool until just warm and then serve immediately or wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for up to five days.

Brown Butter Banana Cake Recipe

“Girl I love your peaches wanna shake your tree…” I couldn’t stop singing this to myself as I was dancing around my kitchen putting together these individual peach cobblers. Appropriate, no?

Anyway, I planned on these being plum cobblers, but couldn’t find any nice black plums. After the fact, I learned  that plums are not quite in season yet, hence the difficulty in finding them. Oh well. These turned out great! The inspiration came from The Bitten Word, they had posted cherry cobblers, but I didn’t want to take on pitting a million cherries. Some days I am all about the mess and the challenge. This past Sunday was not one of those days. Peeling peaches was as far as I was willing to go with the prep work. The cobbler topping for this recipe is delicious. It’s a biscuit-like topping and I’ve never had that before on a cobbler. It was so good I just baked the extra rounds of dough I had so I could eat them on their own. Another great thing about this recipe is that pretty much all the sugar comes from the sweetness of the peaches and since the cobblers come in such neat little packages this is perfect dessert to serve to company!

Individual Peach Cobblers
Serves 8
Adapted from “The Bitten Word”

3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup white granulated sugar
3/4 cups (1 1/2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter
2 cups very cold heavy cream, plus more for brushing
9 medium sized peaches – peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoons corn starch
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and 1/2 cup sugar. Using large holes on a box crater, grate butter into flour mixture. With a fork, stir in cream until dough just comes together. On a floured work surface, roll out dough to a 3/4 cinch thickness with a floured rolling pin. With a knife or biscuit cutter, cut out 8 to 12 rounds or squares of dough.

There are tons of recipes that I want to put up on the blog, but I only have so much time. So, I have decided to do some baking “shorts”.  I’m not really sure what else to call them. “Micro-posts” sounds weird. Anyway, these won’t have a million pictures or stories to go along with them . Just good food.

I adapted this recipe from the Strawberry Bread recipe on My Baking Addiction. The Limoncello glaze was delicious! But if you don’t have, or have never heard of, Limoncello, you can substitute fresh lemon juice or lemonade.

Strawberry Lemonade Bread with Limoncello Glaze
Adapted from My Baking Addiction “Fresh Strawberry Bread”

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon fresh grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, roughly blended

Glaze
4 tablespoons of confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon of Limoncello (or lemon juice or lemonade)

DIRECTIONS

Bread:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour a 9×5 inch loaf pan and line with parchment paper.
I a medium bowl sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
On the medium speed of an electric mixer beat the sugar and butter together.
Beat in the vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice.
With a wooden spoon or spatial, stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until just blending. Add the buttermilk and still only until just combined. Be careful not to over mix.
Fold in the strawberries and bake in a 350 degree oven for 50-60 minutes.  Allow bread to cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Carefully turn it out of the pan and allow to cool completely on a baking rack.

Glaze:

Stir together 4 tablespoons of confectioners sugar with 1 tablespoon of Limoncello. Once bread has cooled completely, pour over the top and spread. If the glaze is to runny add a little more confectioners sugar.

I’m on a berry kick lately. It must be the weather. Sunshine and heat make me want fruit. I’ve also been reconnecting with my “More From Magnolia” cookbook. As I was flipping through it on Saturday afternoon I came across the Strawberry Shortcake recipe. The whole of my experience with Strawberry Shortcake has been those packaged angel food cakes you buy at grocery story, topped with Cool Whip and strawberries. Not that appealing.  I was excited to attempt my first homemade Strawberry Shortcake!  Overall, this was fairly easy to make. My cake layers didn’t come out perfectly even, but I fixed that with a leveler. Also, my cake frosting skills are still a work in progress, but I think I’m getting better at it. I think.

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe from Magnolia Bakery

Cake
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks of butter) softened
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whipped Cream Filling/Frosting
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 cups confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Berries
2 pints (4 cups) ripe strawberries sliced in half
2 tablespoons of sugar

Grease and lightly flour 3 9×2-inch round cake pans, line the bottom with parchment paper. Do this step even if you working with nonstick pans.

In a small bowl combine the flours and set aside.
In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar until smooth (about 3 minutes).  Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy.
Add the eggs on at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition beat until the ingredients are incorporated, but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl, making sure all the ingredients are well blended.

Divide the batter among the prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the layers cool in the pan for 1 hour. (YES, one hour. You can wait.) Remove from the pans and cool completely on wire rack.

To make the cream filling whip the heavy cream with the sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form. How long this will take depends on how cold your cream is. I recommend chilling the bowl you will be using in the fridge prior to making the whipped cream.

Once the layers have cooled completely (LET THEM COOL OR THEY WILL MELT THE FROSTING…I’m not yelling you, just warning you) spread one-third of the whipped cream filling over the bottom cake layer, followed by one-third of the berries. Repeat with the remaining layers.  After all the layers were assembled I used the rest of the whipped cream to cover the whole cake, you can leave the sides bare if you choose.

I used 8 inch cake pans, because I didn’t have three 9×2 inch pans. Result? A REALLY TALL Strawberry Shortcake.  It was so good.  I would recommend serving this as soon as you can. The whipped cream frosting can be temperamental in the summer heat and putting cake in the fridge dries it out in no time.

Enjoy!

ps – my next post involves the left over strawberries I had from this recipe

One of the best bits of summertime is all of the fresh fruit and not only it’s availability, but it’s cost! I can finally buy a pint of raspberries for under $4.  Yay!

I love raspberries. They are one of my favorite fruits and one of the few raw fruits that my husband is not horribly allergic to.  That being said, I try to get these little berries into as many recipes as I can. This is the first time I tried putting them into cupcakes. Truth be told, they did not turn out as expected in the first go around. I over-beat the batter and turned them into raspberry muffins. Tasty? Yes. Cupcakes? No.  So, a word to the wise, DO NOT put the raspberries into the batter whole. Chop half, puree half and then FOLD them into the batter.

I made two options for the topping to go on these cupcakes because I couldn’t decided which I wanted to use, so I used both. The first is a raspberry cream cheese frosting, the second is chocolate ganache topped with a whole raspberry. One note, if you do the ganache it is best to serve them fairly soon after adding the ganache. I like my ganache a little more liquid than set.

Raspberry Cupcakes Recipe
Basic Vanilla Cupcake Recipe from “Magnolia Bakery”.

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pint fresh raspberries

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8oz package of cream cheese, at room temperature
1 stick butter, at room temperature
3 cups confectioners sugar
1 pint fresh raspberries

Chocolate Ganache

8oz semisweet or bittersweet chocoloate
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons unslated butter

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin tins with cupcake papers.  In a small bowl, combine the flours and set aside.

Chop one half of the raspberries. Set aside. Puree, or just mush with a fork, the remaining raspberries. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of hand held mixer, cream the butter until it’s smooth. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy. About 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and the vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over-beat! (unless you want muffins)

Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.

Fold the chopped and pureed raspberries into the batter

Carefully spoon batter into cupcake liners, filling them about 3 quarters full. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool in the muffin tin for 10 minutes before removing them and placing them on a baking rack to cool completely.

Now, for the cream cheese frosting.

Cream together the cream cheese and the butter. Slowly beat in the confectioners sugar one cup at at time. Beat in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Add 1 pint of raspberries and beat until incorporated. Spread, or pipe, over cooled cupcakes.

For the chocolate ganache…

Place chopped chocolate into a heat resistant bowl. Set aside.  Heat cream and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil. Immediately pour the boiling cream mixture over the chopped chocolate. Allow it to stand for about 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Gently spoon ganache over cooled cupcakes and top with a fresh raspberry.

Enjoy!!

Sugar and spice and everything nice. That is what I think of when I think of this cake.  It was so sweet and comforting and just plain good!  This recipe has already been on two food blogs that I know of, but I just couldn’t resist making it. The original recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen and Hot Polka Dot featured the cake just over a week ago. I made a couple of super minor adjustments and added the drizzle.  My first attempt at the cake didn’t quite go as planned. I ignored one of my own baking rules. DON’T RUSH. Every time I rush I make mistakes and this was no exception. Let’s just say a tablespoon and a teaspoon of baking powder produce very different results indeed.  So don’t bake rushed, don’t bake distracted and don’t drink and bake. Bad things happen.  Anyway, the second go around worked out perfectly and produced very delicious cakes!

Apple Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, “Mom’s Apple Cake”, www. smittenkitchen.com

6 macintosh apples – peeled, cored and cut thin
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
5 tablespoons of sugar

2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon fresh orange zest
4 eggs

Cream Cheese Drizzle
Courtesy of My Baking Addiction, www.mybakingaddiction.com

4 oz. of cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
2 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

The original recipe called for a tube pan. I don’t have one, so I used two 9 inch cake pans instead. Having two cakes is never a bad thing. Line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper and butter and flour the pan.

Peel, core and chop up six macintosh apples and place in a mixing bowl.  Stir cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg into the apples and set aside.

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together oil, vanilla, orange juice and zest.  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ones.  Next, add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all the ingredients are incorporated. Note: this dough is thick and sticky!!  (At first I thought I did something wrong.)

Pour half the batter into the pans. Because it’s so sticky you will have to work it to the sides with spatula.  Layer half of the apples on top of the batter. Pour the remaining batter on top and then finish with another layer of apples. Be patient with it.

Bake in a 350 oven for approximately 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean.  Allow to cool in pans for 10 minutes. Turn out of the pan, remove the parchment paper and allow to cool completely on baking racks.

Now for the cream cheese drizzle.

In a medium sized bowl, cream together the cream cheese and the butter. Add the confectioners sugar, alternating with the milk and vanilla and beat until it reaches desired consistency. If it’s too think to drizzle, add more milk. If it’s too watery add more sugar.  I used a squeezy bottle to apply  the drizzle. You can also pipe it with a pastry bag.

Slice it up and enjoy with good cup of coffee!