Cardomom Vanilla Bundt Cake

The town where I was born and raised does not have a bakery. Yup - no joke.  There is no bakery. Actually there isn't even a downtown. To be fair, I didn't grow up in a city. It isn't even large enough to be called a town. It's technically a village, and our downtown is an outdoor mall.  I know that sounds cringe-worthy, and to be completely honest, the village I grew up in is made up of *gasp* gated communities. So, that should give a little more perspective on the lack of a bakery where I grew up. That being said, the towns surrounding my village are much more quaint and traditional - with genuine downtown areas, and plenty of mom-and-pop businesses including bakeries.

One of the bakeries my parents' favored is called Ingram's Busy Bee Bakery. Our hands-down favorite item from the bakery was cardamom bread (we simply called it "hard bread"). It's day-old bread (I'm not quite sure what type of bread - maybe it's a brioche) that's toasted then sprinkled with a generous amount of granulated sugar (I think it may actually be sugar scented with vanilla beans) and ground cardamom. My parents enjoyed it with tea, and we loved dipping it into a cold glass of milk.

Looking back on our love for cardamom bread, it makes me appreciate the range of tastes and spices we were exposed to as children. One of the first cups of tea I ever consumed was when I was maybe seven or eight. It was a chai (tea mixed with milk) that was pink (yes, pink!) and it was infused with cardamom, cinnamon, and served with chunks of green pistachios. When most of my classmates were excited to have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, I always looked forward to a soup made of brown lentils garnished with fried cumin seeds, garlic chips, and fresh coriander. To say the least, my earliest food memories are unique.

Without even consciously thinking about it, I've exposed the little Y to a wide variety of foods (I think she's consumed nearly every lentil in existence in nearly every form  - fried, stewed, sprouted, steamed, baked, and raw) and spices. Here's our spice drawer:




There's everything in there: cumin seeds, coriander seeds, nigella seeds, mustard seeds (black and yellow), cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, curry leaves, turmeric, black and green cardamom, dried red pepper and it's flaked version, fenugreek, smoked paprika...the list goes on and on. Since I spend so much time in the kitchen, the Y has been poking around the spice drawer since she was probably ten months old. I've let her smell the spice containers and taste quite a few of them. (She particularly loves the smell of the black cardamom which I think smells horribly strong and musty). When we go out to restaurants the Y often asks to have "mashki daal" (steamed lentils with turmeric, chunks of ginger, cumin, coriander, and garlic) or biryanni (probably the most famous Indian/Pakistani dish in the west - rice pilaf laden with spices and meat). My parents and in-laws love witnessing the Y's connection to her cultural heritage through food (and to be honest, I feel just as grateful because when we visit the homeland, we feel like and are seen as tourists more than locals.)

The cardamom bundt was the result of searching for a suitable birthday cake for my dad. Every year when my dad's birthday rolls around, I know that the usual crowd-pleasing chocolate cake will not cut it. For all the years I've been baking cakes for my dad's birthday, I'd never really come across a cake that he has fallen head-over-heals in love with. He loves the play between sweet and savory - thus he enjoys gingery, peppery, desserts more than syrupy sweet confections. So, I went a hunting for a cake with bolder flavors, and when I came across this recipe for a cardamom vanilla bundt, I knew I hit the jackpot. My first thought was "hard bread," and my next thought was I think it'll be a crowd pleaser for all the adults in my family because of the strong food memory we all had with cardamom toast.

Instead of buying cardamom powder, I made my own by opening up green cardamom pods and grinding the little black seeds. I ground them by hand, but it could have easily been done using a coffee grounder reserved for spices. My sister in-law shared an extremely helpful tip about cleaning out spice grinders - she said to place one teaspoon of uncooked white rice into the grinder in order to remove any residual oils left by the spice previously ground in the coffee grinder.





The batter is light and fluffy once all the ingredients are creamed together.



I used a 12 cup bundt pan. In this photo, you can see little specs of orange peel in the batter. I tried one version of this cake with one tablespoon of orange peel. It tasted fine, but the orange overpowered the vanilla and it even muted the cardamom taste.





The original recipe for the cardamom vanilla bundt cake can be found here. I made a few changes:
1 - Reduced the butter to two sticks
2 - Reduced the sugar to one cup
3 - Substituted buttermilk for the plain milk (and I kept the lemon juice)
4 - Omitted the topping
5 - Baked it for 50 min.

Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake - Daring Bakers

This month's Daring Baker's challenge really caught my attention (Who am I kidding? Every challenge thus far has done just that...) Swiss cakes (a sponge cake that's baked flat, then slathered with a filling, then rolled up and sliced) never interested me. I guess it's because it reminded me of those pre-packed Swiss Rolls made by Little Debbie. I have to admit that I was obsessed with them when I was growing up. Not because they tasted good. Nope. I wanted those trans-fat-filled, artificially flavored, corn syrup laced snacks only because I wasn't allowed to have them. My mom NEVER bought them. On occasion she would give in and buy the Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies (Yummmm! Now those actually taste good - well at least I think they do because it's been something like fifteen years, possibly longer, since I've eaten one). The main reason this challenge appealed to me is because the recipe called for making your own ice cream without the use of an ice cream maker. Huh...thought that wasn't possible.

 Below is the vanilla ice cream. Turned out pretty nicely - smooth consistency and pretty robust flavor. It was my husband's favorite part of the dessert, and he truly hearts ice cream. That being said, I have to say, making my own ice cream has pretty much ruined eating ice cream for me. Ice cream's never been that high on my list of desserts. I have a cost-benefit analysis that all desserts that I consume must be subjected to prior to ingesting them. It all has to do with a saying I remember my seventh grade Spanish teacher uttering as she laced up her running shoes over her pantyhose before heading off on her afternoon power walk around the school, "A minute on your lips and an eternity on your hips." If I'm going eat something that will inevitably find it's way to my pouch or bum, it better be worth it. Ice cream just doesn't pass my rigorous dessert analysis, and after making homemade ice cream, yeah, I won't be rushing out for a cone or quart of ice cream any time soon. No sir. I can't even eat a bowl of cereal with whole milk because the whole milk is so thick it makes me want to gag, so there's no way I can consume of bowl of ice cream without remembering how much flipping cream I poured into the bowl to make the ice cream for this dessert. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.




Making the sponge cake for the dessert was much more of a pleasant experience. The texture of the cake was light and airy, and the cake was quite satisfying in it's chocolate flavor. What I didn't really enjoy was the whipped cream filling. It was fine when at room temperature, but because the entire dessert has to be frozen when put together, the frozen whipped cream didn't do it for me.  Here are the Swiss Rolls:






I've loved the Daring Bakers, but alas I've decided that this is my last challenge. I have too many of my own recipes lined up to try, so I have to say farewell to the group in order to make room for my own agenda!

TWD - Devils Food White Out Cake

I was really excited to make this weeks TWD. The cake looked phenomenal on the cover of the book, and who doesn't love chocolate cake? It was my niece's birthday (Happy third birthday Choocher!), so I thought, why not make life easier and combine TWD and a family birthday. The frosting was easy to prepare, but I have to admit that it took a lot longer for the syrup to reach the right temperature before beating it into the egg whites. Other than that small unexpected twist, the frosting came together beautifully. 

I've never decorated a cake with cake crumbs because it always seems so untidy to me, but I thought I'd give it a shot this time. Crumbling the cake was a lot more fun than I expected (I actually thought I'd find it unsettling - ripping apart a perfectly nice cake layer). It also gave me an opportunity to taste the cake, and it was phenomenally moist, chocolatey, and delicious with the addition of the chocolate pieces. 

The finished cake actually did look untidy with the crumb decoration, but it still tasted delicious! I had so many crumbs that I put some on top of the cake as well. I left enough space so that I could pipe "Happy Birthday." 

Here's the inside of the cake. The picture is horrible, but the inside layers held up pretty well once cut. I have to say that the frosting wasn't my favorite. Its texture became too sticky and unpleasant after it was refrigerated. Overall the cake was pretty good, but the consensus in my family was that I've made many other chocolate cakes that were a lot tastier! Let's see what next week brings...

Berry Surprise Cake

My very first TWD post! I was so excited (still am) to be part of Tuesday's With Dorrie. When I got the cookbook, I eagerly read through many of the recipes (especially the pies!). I have to say that I would have never chosen to bake this cake if it wasn't for TWD (especially now because berries are so out of season). Before baking, I read some of the other bakers' experiences with the recipe wich proved to be very helpful. (Thank you to the other TWD bakers for the advice!)

I made some alterations of the recipe. First of all, like the other bakers suggested, I added more sugar to the filling. I added 1/2 cup of powdered sugar. I chose to add powdered sugar because I was affraid the addition of too much granulated sugar would cause the filling to be grainy.

The other changes I made was not out of choice but necessity, and they were all a result of the cake falling (rather collapsing) once it came out of the oven and cooled. In order to use the filling, I had to cut the cake in half (horizontally) to create two layers. Then I frosted it.

As for the taste, the cake tasted pretty good if one could get over it's tough texture. The filling, with the additional sugar, was the star of the cake. If berries were in season, then maybe they would have been the star of the cake. As a complete cake, the flavors were pretty well balanced (the tartness of the creamcheese off set the sweetness of the cake). I don't think I'll ever make this cake again, but I may use the filling with another cake recipe.