Tag Archives: cake

Abundant Crop Recipe: Fig Cake

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I think I will have more than four Abundant Crop recipes for figs.  I realized that I was a little too strict with myself — “I must have only 4 recipes for food group, because I can fit it perfectly into a month.”  Now I see that I can easily do as many as I want — until the fruit or veggie runs out!  I have five fig recipes up my sleeve so far, but we will see how many I end up with, before the season is over.

This next recipe is what really got me into cooking with figs.  As my  mom commented a few weeks ago, we went to a restaurant that had locally grown (by the waitress) figs as a part of their dishes — we had fig chutney with our cheese platter.  When I told the waitress that we were getting lots of figs from our neighbors and had no idea what to do with them, she ran into the back and wrote down this recipe for me.  How awesome is that?  And the cake — delicious!

Fig Cake

from Colleen at Farm Artisan Foods

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups Sugar
  • 1/2 cup Oil
  • 3 Eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Ground Cloves
  • 1 teaspoon Nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
  • 2 cup Pureed Figs
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
  • 1/8 teaspoon Salt
  • 1/2 cup Half and Half
  • 2 cup Sifted Flour
  • 1 cup Chopped Pecans (I use White Chocolate Chips)

Glaze

  • 1 stick Butter
  • 1/2 cup Packed Brown Sugar
  • 1/2 cup Half and Half

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9″ round pans.

Cream sugar and oil.  Add eggs one at a time.  Mix in spices, figs, baking soda, and salt.  Alternate adding flour, half and half, and pecans (white chocolate chips).  Pour into prepared pans and bake for 20 to 30 minutes in preheated oven.

For the glaze, bring all ingredients to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.  I have some issues with this step, as it always looks kinda funky.  But it still tastes delicious!

See -- the glaze looks a little odd...

What do you think?  Will you give this one a shot?

Kitchen Disaster: When Multitasking and Baking Don’t Mix

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Matt loves his baked goods, so in our first few months of newlywed bliss, I decided to show him my life by baking him a cake. What a nice wife, right? Despite my tiredness, I press on to make this dessert of love.

When I bake, foolishly I often try to do other things at the same time. This time, I’m gathering ingredients, measuring cups and quickly looking over the recipe. As I’m pouring the oil into the bowl, two questions popped in my head, only to be quickly ignored: I wonder why this oil has a twist cap? Why does this oil seem so gloppy?

It’s a good thing that I came to my senses about a minute later, and not while the hubs was eating his first bite. You see, I get my oil from Costco, meaning it’s in a huge container. It’s about the same size as laundry detergent. Yes folks, I put laundry detergent in the cake batter mix instead of oil. Yikes!

I’m just glad that I figured it out before I actually baked it. Reluctantly, I had to throw the ingredients away and start over.

Since this incident, I’ve wisely invested in prep bowls. Thankfully, my husband and family willingly eat what I have baked — now that my detergent’s home is on a shelf above our washer and dryer.

Have you had a kitchen disaster? Please share!

Since this incident, I’ve wisely invested in prep bowls

Fun Friday Dessert

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My husband loves cake.  He really does.  And I rarely bake one just for him.  So one day I decided to make him a cake — just for him.  And I wanted it to be simple — for me!

So I did what any good housewife would do — I got out the box of cake mix.  Devil’s Food Cake, I believe.  And I cooked it in a bundt pan, to make it look extra snazzy.

Then I realized we were out of frosting.  And the whole “making it quick and easy” thing did not leave me with a chance to make some from scratch.  So I melted some chocolate chips and drizzled them on!

The verdict: delicious!  You need to eat it quickly, or the “icing” gets too hard, like a candy coating.  You can always remelt the chocolate in the microwave.  And this is delicious with a scoop of ice cream on top.  The hubby said that balances out the texture and stuff, if it is a few days later and the chocolate is hard.

Have you ever made anything easy like this?

Abundant Crop Recipe: Strawberry Shortcake Cake

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This is the last week of Strawberries for Abundant Crop, and I wanted to make this amazing cake from Pioneer Woman.  However, I did not make it in time.  These past few weeks have just been too jam packed with other things to do!  So I took a picture of the strawberries that I bought.  This way, there is at least a picture!  Now I plan to eat them with sour cream and brown sugar.  That is seriously the best way to eat strawberries — easy and delicious.  If you have never had that before, try it.  Dip your strawberries into sour cream and then dip them in brown sugar.  Yummy!

However, since I am so nice, I will still share the recipe with you.  I made this cake last July, for a friend’s engagement party.  It was a hit and a few people asked for the recipe.  Without further ado — Ree’s Shortcake Recipe.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake
by Ree a.k.a. Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup Flour
  • 3 Tablespoons Corn Starch
  • 1/2 teaspoon Salt
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
  • 9 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, Softened
  • 1 1/2 cup Sugar
  • 3 Large Eggs
  • 1/2 cups Sour Cream (room temp)
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla

Icing Ingredients

  • 1/2 lbs. Cream Cheese (room temp)
  • 2 more Sticks Unsalted Butter
  • 1 1/2 pound Powdered Sugar (sifted)
  • 1 more teaspoon Vanilla
  • 1 pound Strawberries

Be sure to use a cake pan that’s at least 2 inches deep! Before baking, the batter should not fill the pan more than halfway.  And give yourself a lot of time to make this recipe, as you have to do lots of waiting.

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and corn starch.  In another bowl (if using an electric mixer, these ingredients go into that), cream 9 tablespoons butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Add sour cream and vanilla and mix until combined. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just barely combined.  Pour into greased and floured 8-inch cake pan (remember, it’s gotta be a tall pan). Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until no longer jiggly. Remove from cake pan as soon as you pull it out of the oven, and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Stem strawberries and slice them in half from bottom to top. Place into a bowl and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons sugar. Stir together and let sit for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, mash the strawberries in two batches. Sprinkle each half with 1 tablespoons sugar and allow to sit for another 30 minutes.

Make icing: combine cream cheese, 2 sticks butter, sifted powdered sugar, vanilla, and dash of salt in a mixing bowl. Mix until very light and fluffy.

Slice cake in half through the middle. Spread strawberries evenly over each half (cut side up), pouring on all the juices. Place cake halves into the freezer for five minutes, just to make icing easier.  If you do not do this, you will regret it.  Trust me.  I have made this a few times, and definitely did not skip this step the second time.  Remove from freezer. Use a little less than 1/3 of the icing to spread over the top of the strawberries on the bottom layer. Place the second layer on top. Add half of the remaining icing to the top spreading evenly, then spread the remaining 1/3 cup around the sides.  This cake looks best when you add strawberries to the top as garnish.

Cake is best when served slightly cool. The butter content in the icing will cause it to soften at room temperature. For best results, store in the fridge!

My Notes:  Make sure you get quality cream cheese (were talking Philadelphia & not Staters here) or the icing will just run all over the place!


How to Frost a Cake

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This post was inspired by my Mom’s comment on this post.  I made a delicious cake, but the frosting got all over the place and was a runny mess.  Still tasty, but it was not getting 5 stars for presentation!  Here is her comment:

My mouth is watering as I read this. Looks and sounds amazing! When I am concerned about how much frosting/icing is going to end up on the cake plate, I take a big square of waxed paper, cut it into 4 large triangles, and place them on the cake plate first so the points of the triangles meet in the middle – or cut off the points so they don’t go all the way to the middle. (It makes an “X”, with the longest side of the triangle an inch or so outside the cake.) Then frost, ice, let it run. when it’s set up or done running, slide the waxed paper out, and the plate underneath is clean. And you get to scrape all the extra icing off the waxed paper and enjoy it. Also, it’s nice to put some of your sprinkles on the cake plate too, as garnish.

I decided to give her technique a try a few weeks ago.  I was doing a photoshoot with a friend and needed a cake for the pictures.  Once I get the disc, I will share the pictures with you all!  Anyways, the frosting here is canned, but the technique still worked the same.  And yes, I kinda missed the memo on large triangles things (sometimes I don’t get concepts like that, but next time maybe I will do it right).  The squares worked just as well — and gave me more room to mess up anyways!

Next time I will leave the square cut out in the middle so I can stick a dab of frosting on the plate.  That should keep the cake from sliding like mine did.  Here you can see what it looks like from below :)

Right here, there should probably be a picture of me putting on the second cake layer and lots of frosting… imagine that picture in your head!  Now there is another picture of me flinging sprinkles onto the cake.  You see, I just wanted us to practice using our imagination today! haha

Can you see who came home and wanted to help?  This is the fun part of baking! haha

One fine cake!  And yes, it did taste delicious too!  I think if I had put a dollop of frosting on the bottom, like mentioned before, it would not be so far off to one side!

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