A breakthrough.

Bundt cakes were among the very first things I attempted when I was still testing the waters with baking. My cousin, seven years my senior, had joined a sorority when she started at UCLA -- one that had reputation for always offering good food at their events and, appropriately enough, had their own sorority cookbook, economically bound with those black plastic spirals. This was their arsenal, the recipes that would make beer-guzzling men weak in the knees. Some time into her first year, my sister tried the leftovers of one of the Kahlua cakes from an event and could not stop gushing about how much she loved that cake. Turns out, at its heart was a box of yellow cake mix, but with a few bells and whistles (i.e. the addition of vanilla pudding mix, a generous cup of Kahlua, etc.), it became a pretty special and crowd-pleasing bundt cake (as can be expected with a sufficiently boozy pastries). You'd get a kick just from sniffing the finished product. This recipe made the rounds to my own events countless times while I was in high school, and eventually, we outgrew that cake and started making cakes without boxed mixes!

No one really turns down a bundt cake, but this style of cake just doesn't excite me like it used to. They're almost always universally appealing, which isn't at all a bad thing to be, but it has been starting to feel like if I've made one bundt cake, then I've made them all. It was with this attitude that I baked this week's Tuesdays With Dorie choice of Nutty, Chocolaty, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake by Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort, and expected to have a perfectly decent bite for dessert. I was completely, and pleasantly, surprised.

Rugelach are among my favorite baked goods in the world (and one of my favorite Dorie recipes) and this cake, predictably buttery like a pound cake, also has a tang from sour cream, creating this base with a taste that is completely reminiscent to rugelach dough. I left out the orange zest and raisins because I knew the other people helping me eat the cake would object, but the cinnamon, chocolate, and walnut ribbon throughout the batter re-created all the flavors I love about rugelach. (The addition of orange zest and raisins would still conjure up the same sentiment, I'm sure.) Warmed up in the toaster oven, the crust of the cake becomes a crisp, wafer like shell, and irresistible. Sour cream bundt cakes may not ever be en vogue again, and they rarely disappoint, but, everyone, I have found my new favorite bundt cake/coffee cake, and I know it as Rugelach Cake.

Swoon.

Dreary skies and coffee cake.

I love a good coffee cake. It's such a simple baked good, but when confronted with a slice, I know few people that would refuse it -- especially with a cup of coffee.
It doesn't matter whats mixed into the batter. Exotic fruits, fragrant spices, a chocolate swirl -- as long as it has some buttery streusel on top, I'm all over it.

This week's Tuesday's With Dorie choice of Cardamom Crumb Cake by Jill of Jill's Blog was one that I especially couldn't pass up. It wasn't until the last few years that I really tasted what cardamom was like, and I've loved it ever since. Nearly anytime a recipe calls for cinnamon, I always try to add a tiny bit of cardamom and freshly grated nutmeg. It's such a distinct taste, and relatively accessible in my opinion, but it appears on menus and in baked goods so rarely!

I didn't have orange on hand so I ended up using lemon, but I think it was still appropriate. Despite the butter content of this cake, the citrus made it so light. And combined with the sugary streusel, I didn't quite want to have just one piece.

So I didn't.

Rectangles and squares

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Despite all the wonderful things that are baked in rectangular pans, there's always this feeling embedded in my being, somewhere between the vertebrae in my neck (I know, because I feel that area tense up) when I think about baked goods in 9x13 form. I have a deep affection for bread puddings, cobblers, and coffee cakes whose recipes frequently call for 9x13 pans, but in my mind, they are all improved exponentially by simply being baked in other pans. Ramekin, Bundt pan, deep dish pie plate -- all are better!

It's really an awful prejudice. I mean, why would one ever discriminate against a baking pan?? The size usually feeds more people, and it all boils down to ratios anyway -- with a little math, you could just adjust the proportions, use a different dish, and it would taste just the same. What more could you want?! It really doesn't make any sense! And I don't even have a problem with using 9x13s to bake drumsticks!

I have to make a conscious effort not to throw out recipes when the first line reads something along the lines of "Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease 9x13 pan." I obviously realize it's completely unreasonable to shudder at the thought of the confines of four walls, two parallel sides of the same length perpendicular to two other sides of the same length, but I honestly cannot help it. Perhaps it was being exposed to too many ugly sheet cakes in my youth, with cloyingly sweet frosting and sprinkles applied with too heavy a hand. And, comparatively, isn't there something so majestic about layer cakes? When I think "sheet cake", I am attacked by images of linoleum and formica, whereas "layer cake" brings to mind fluffy clouds and sunshine - seriously.

Unfortunately, the "a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square" rule applies to baked goods too, and I often find myself not quite sneering, but wrinkling my nose at square pans. That was the case this weekend when I previewed this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Cinnamon Squares, selected by Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures.

Groan.

Do I have to??

It turns out, this was the perfect recipe for this weekend as I had already been working on a few baking projects and the last thing I wanted to do was wash more dishes and turn on the mixer. The recipe comes together so quickly and you get all the pleasure of a buttery cake without any beating of the butter!! It reminded me a lot of coffee cake -- with a shiny coating of chocolate frosting that I wasn't really so excited by (I'm just not one of those chocolate frosting people) -- and as coffee cake, I gave myself to go ahead to have some for breakfast! The edges were a little, shall we say...firm?, but it was perfect as you made your way towards the center. I think I'd add some excitement in the form of nutmeg and nuts next time, but it was a nice informal, yet dependable cake.

As usual, I brought it in to work for more people to help with it, and though it started off slow with only 1/4 of the cake gone by 1pm, it finished strong by being mostly devoured by 4:30. Thank goodness I momentarily got over my mild disdain for sheet cakes -- without me, those skinny, fashion types would never reach a respectable daily caloric intake! Turn your back and they'll polish off an entire cake!

Prelude to summer.

I love my Sunday ritual of going to the Hollywood Farmers' Market. Rain or shine, I am always there at roughly the 8 o'clock hour, regardless of whether I slept at 9:30 pm, or 4:30 am the night before. People are amazed at my stamina when I tell them after the third drink of the evening that I'll still be in attendance at the market the next morning, but it's an event I look forward to all week, and brings me a sense of calm and everything-is-as-it-should-be if only in the hour that I'm there, half zoning out and half taking in all the colors and aromas of the season.

It's Los Angeles, so the market is blessed with a wide array of produce every week, and I have golden beets within reach without fail while my cousin in Manhattan has to search five different markets in different areas for them. Sadly, I'm sure many Angelenos (myself included) take this amazing selection for granted and overlook so much of what's available. I'm guilty of this offense when it comes to berries. Not so much strawberries as it wouldn't be unusual for me to pick up a half flat some weeks, but I have never once gone home with any of those tiny globules of blueberry or blackberry goodness - until now. They don't run cheap which is a major deciding factor in my decision of whether or not I really need them that week (especially after having spent $5 on a dozen of my favorite eggs, and $4 on a pound of Empress dates, and another $4 on 5 pieces of pita bread), but this week's Tuesday's With Dorie selection by Sihan of Befuddlement seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally give in and pop my berry cherry.

Coffee cake is one of my weaknesses with it's characteristic streusely topping, and the blueberry crumb cake sounded like it's close cousin. I have to admit, though, I was slightly disappointed at first bite. I had made it the day before, and when I finally tried it a day and a half later, it didn't induce the same kind of response as, say, Dorie's apple pie. Also, the cake took much longer than the 55-65 minutes for the knife to come out clean, and when it finally did, I think the cake was a tad dried out. (Those slits in the crust are from all the testing I did! Hideous, but necessary.) And the berries (blueberry with a smattering of blackberry) -- they could have definitely been sweeter, so it was a slight disappointment for my first berry-buying occasion.

It wasn' t all bad though -- the big crumb "crust" was my favorite part, as well as that of most of my coworkers' and when I finally decided that microwaving may save the cake, I found the butteriness in the crumbs so much more enhanced, and with the accompaniment of a berry tea, an utterly good midday indulgence.

Even though I was less than thrilled with my first taste, others were still very enthusiastic. It was devoured so quickly that I was a worried the innards wouldn't get a chance with the camera lens. Still, I would do things differently if there is a next time -- berries + sugar = good idea before summer, even in California, and don't be fooled by a seemingly wet batter after your gut tells you it's ready. Near fatal flaws!

Black & White Unite! - Baking for Barack

So, it's a little late of a post, but it's never too late to celebrate the amazing feat of having elected such an inspirational leader for our country right? Back in October, I read about this baking event to raise money for the campaign in swing states on EatingLA and while some awesome folks went to Nevada and drew attention to the cause by making human pyramids at intersections and going door-to-door, I contributed by spending a day baking. Not a far reach for a Saturday afternoon/evening, but I like to think I was responsible for a tiny bit of the over $7000 that this sale raised in one morning.



While sometimes it's nice to make something unique with a little bit of ingenuity, I feel that at bake sales, there's a certain expectation of what the treats should be, and one shouldn't stray too far from that. Cookies, bars, muffins, cupcakes, and coffee cakes are all pretty standard as they're such portable crowd-pleasers and who has ever met a homemade cookie that they didn't like?

Okay. I have, but usually they're pretty good.



It was a tough decision, but I settled on David Lebovitz' Black-bottomed Cupcakes, a classic sour cream coffee cake, The Cheeseboard's currant scones,and the image on smittenkitchen was just too tempting, so peanut butter brownies.



I was a little late getting there, but was floored by what I saw once I arrived. It was a huge sale with so many volunteers -- children manning the lemonade stand and adults holding fort behind the baked goods. It really speaks to the involvement of the community as so many families were holding up signs for the bake sale, cheering on either side of the street, and those that weren't working the sale were strolling up with their loved ones and making their contribution by purchasing the goods. There were long tables packed with cupcakes, coffee cakes, all sorts of cookies, loaves, and there were still more things that couldn't fit on the spread yet. I had never seen anything like it and got that warm, fuzzy feeling witnessing such a vision of community.



I couldn't leave without buying a couple things, and what did I end up with? A currant scone from Clementine and a slice of streuseled sour cream coffee cake. "Wait...isn't that what you made?" Yes, it is. Those are a couple of my favorite things that clearly I love to make, and eat. Given the option, and even with dozens of other tantalizing temptations like pumpkin cookies and sticky buns, I cannot resist the simple pleasures of a scone or coffee cake. With the addition of a latte from Lamill, it was a rewarding, inspirational, lovely morning indeed.

This bake sale obviously wasn't what tipped the presidential race over the edge, and I know even all the bake sales around the country weren't responsible for the victory, but looking at the incredible involvement of the neighborhood for this cause, the call for change was deafening. And if this showing existed all over the US, it's no wonder we can now look toward the near future with even more hope.