Tag: Cake

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This recipe is one of my old standby recipes for whenever I’m having people over. It’s a sure-fire winner and everyone seems to love it (and most people request the recipe)  Add to that, it’s pretty simple to make and most of the ingredients I always have on hand and it’s a winner for me.

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It makes a 13×9 sized pan full of yummy, creamy goodness. Perfect with a cup of tea or coffee and some good friends and good conversation.

I made it just this week when I had some ladies over – and shared the leftovers with my neighbors.  Which is part of why I’m posting the recipe here – my sweet neighbor’s son requested the recipe.

It may look complicated when you first look at the recipe below, but trust me, it’s simple.  And you can have it in the oven in about 10 minutes if you have all the ingredients at room temperature when you’re ready to begin. It goes together a lot better when the cream cheese and butter are soft.

So, CB, this is for YOU!

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Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Filling:

2 8 ounce packages of cream cheese (I use low-fat)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. of almond extract (optional)
1 egg

Cake:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter (softened)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract (optional)
1 cup sour cream (you can use light or regular)

Streusel topping:

1/4 c sugar
1/4 c flour
3 Tbsp. butter (CHILLED AND CUBED)

Glaze:

1/2 c powdered sugar
3 tsp. milk

  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. Spray a 9×13 pan and set aside.
  3. In a small mixing bowl, combine the filling ingredients (use an electric mixer for the best mix possible). Set aside.
  4. In another mixing bowl, combine the cake ingredients, beginning with the butter and sugar.
  5. Add the eggs one at a time and the extracts.
  6. Finally, add the dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream.
  7. Spread half of the cake batter in the 9×13 pan.
  8. Add the cream cheese filling on top of the batter, spreading carefully with a spatula (offset spatulas work great for this)
  9. Top the cream cheese mixture with the remaining cake batter.
  10. Use a fork or spatula to “swirl” the batter/cream cheese once or twice.
  11. In another small bowl, use a pastry blender or fork (or your hand held mixer if you have a low setting) to combine the topping mixture.  Be careful not to over mix. It should look like “sandy gravel” when it’s properly combined.
  12. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the cake.
  13. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the top is golden brown and the center is cooked. (You can tell by inserting a toothpick – if it comes out clean, it’s done.)
  14. Let cake cool for about an hour and make the glaze.
  15. Drizzle glaze over the cooled cake and let set before serving (if you can wait that long!)

Saturday Sweetness: Harvest Cake

saturday sweetnessI think I have mentioned before that my favorite cake is the Apple Cake that my mom and I make all the time. I absolutely love it.  Not too sweet but just perfect with a cup of tea, or coffee or all by itself.

I found this Autumn Cake recipe on Pinterest and decided to give it a try. I have to say, it’s right up there with the Apple Cake recipe now in terms of my favorites. I’ve made it twice and it was even better the second time, I think.

The biggest difference is that the second time I didn’t put the glaze on.  The original recipe called for a glaze, but to me, it masked the flavor of the cake and was too sweet.  The second time, I left the cake au naturel and didn’t add a glaze. It was perfect.

The first one I made for our friends from church. One of the guys mentioned as he was eating it that it tasted like “Autumn on a plate” and I have to agree.

Give it a try – I think you will agree as well!

harvest cake

Harvest Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 heaping tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 1/4 sticks (10 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups canned unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 large apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped (I used Honey Crisp and Fuji)
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9- to 10- inch (12 cup) Bundt pan.
  2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and ground ginger.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and both sugars together at medium speed until light and fluffy.
  4. Add the eggs one at a time, and beat for 1 minute after each addition.
  5. Beat in the vanilla.
  6. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the pumpkin, chopped apple.
  7. Still on low speed, add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated.
  8. Finally, gently stir in the cranberries and pecans.
  9. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with the rubber spatula.
  10. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
  11. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding, then cool to room temperature on the rack.
  12. DEVOUR!

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More Sweets for the Sweets

Hi, Sweet things! 🙂

Here’s another favorite recipe of the family. My mom has been baking this cake since I was a small girl. It was a recipe that she loved and received from a friend who I remember as an excellent cook and a wonderful baker.

It is not the healthiest, but I figure you can’t go wrong with apples in a cake. Mom has even substituted pears before with much success. Once you try it I think you will do like I did and add it to your standard repertoire of cakes to make for friends.

It’s great with coffee, tea, or just a big glass of milk.

Apple Nut Cake

1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups apples, peeled & chopped (the smaller the pieces the better)
1 cup raisins

  1. Cream oil, sugar.
  2. Add eggs and vanilla.
  3. Sift flour with salt and baking soda.
  4. Slowly add (in 1/2 cup increments) to wet ingredients.
  5. Add pecans, raisins and apples.
  6. Pour into greased bundt pan.
  7. Bake at 350 for one hour.

Mom sometimes makes this caramel icing to go on top, although my family is not much for icings on cake, so I usually don’t bother. We like our cakes au naturel.

Caramel Icing

1 stick of butter (softened) (4oz for you Europeans)
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canned milk
1 tbsp vanilla

Bring all ingredients to a boil. Continue boiling for 2 1/2 minutes. Cool. Pour over cake.

Enjoy!

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Menu Plan Monday ~ 29 November

Back to reality today.

After a week of lazing about at Mom’s house, it’s back to the regular routine.

I made a monster shopping trip on Sunday afternoon, restocking on all the perishables and produce/dairy that had gone bad while we were out of town. That necessitated a cleaning out of the refrigerator (thank you, SuperMan, for doing that for me!) and some planning for the week’s meals.

I put a crock pot on to cook with my beef vegetable soup – that will be lunches this week for SuperMan and me.

I also baked a Brown Sugar cake, but with a twist. I added a scoop of protein powder (and upped the water to 3/4 cup to compensate) and used a Spice Cake mix as the base instead of a yellow cake mix. YUMMINESS.

I am also planning to stick some oatmeal in the crock pot – trying out Alton Brown’s recipe for Overnight Oatmeal. It looks yummy.image

Here’s what I have planned so far this week:

Monday:  Spaghetti and meatballs, salad & garlic bread

Tuesday: I’m thinking of whipping up some sort of chicken/pasta dish

Wednesday: Meatball subs & salad

Thursday: not sure yet…I’m cooking dinner for a friend whose little one is having his tonsils out. Whatever I cook for her, I’ll just double and have some for us.

Friday: dinner out

Saturday: homemade chicken pot pies

Hope on over to orgjunkie.com for Menu Plan Monday ideas…

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Saturday Sweetness

This is a recipe that is not for the faint of heart.

Seriously.

You must be a bona-fide chocoholic in order to truly appreciate it.

Otherwise, you may find yourself overwhelmed in chocolate-ness. Which, truly, might not be a bad place to be.  But, only if you are the kind of person who likes that sort of thing.

It all started simply enough.

Mom and my step-dad decided they had a hankering for a nine-layer cake.  There is some dissention as to who actually decided they wanted the cake first – neither is willing to take responsibility for the original idea.

When I got to town, it had become a full-blown obsession and we went on a hunt to find one – visiting a few local bakeries (even one run by an old high-school chum) only to find that “nobody bakes those anymore.” (the standard answer we received)

Apparently, nine-layer (or seven-layer) cakes are a pain to make and are prone to collapse/failure/all sorts of doom and gloom.

Mom and I decided we were not going to be thwarted so easily.

We would just make the cake ourselves.

We’re like that.

We don’t like taking “no” for an answer. We take it as a challenge.

So, we sought recipes for homemade icing and baked our cakes. (well, Mom baked the cake. I focused on the research.)

And the assembly began.

First we started with making the icing (recipe is at the end of this post)

The recipe called for 3-4 tablespoons of heavy cream.  But we found that we had to increase that amount considerably to make it to a good icing consistency.

After two batches of icing were prepared and the cakes were cut, we were ready for assembly.  We’d decided early on that there would not be seven, eight or nine layers. We were quite content with four.  That would be challenge enough.

So, we slathered on our homemade icing and piled on the layers.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches on the outer layer of icing my step-dad magically appeared in the kitchen and whisked the cake right out from under my spatula.

I didn’t even get to take a picture of my finished masterpiece!

After diving in (all three of us) it was determined that the cake was a success.  The number of layers were not really important.  (Truthfully, I think it is just a way for a pastry chef to show off.)

I did manage to get a picture of the cake the next day – it’s a little crumb-y but that is because the cake itself is so delicate.

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So, if you have a hankerin’ like we did, here’s a recipe for a truly decadent chocolate icing to go along with a standard yellow cake.

Chocolate Icing

3 cups powdered sugar

3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa

1 stick of butter (softened)

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tsp vanilla

 

Sift cocoa, sugar together.  Combine 1 cup of sugar/cocoa with butter.  Add cream (1 tbsp at a time) and sugar/cocoa, alternately, until the icing is desired consistency. Add vanilla.

This is an icing recipe that really needs to be made with a mixer. I can tell you from experience that it truly doesn’t come together well without the mixer. 

The icing also needs to be refrigerated.  We made a double batch for this cake and had about 1 1/2 cups of extra icing left (which we’ll use for cupcakes next week)

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You should bake this

I have it on good authority (my mom) that this is one of the best cakes you will ever bake.  She has just baked it and called me to tell me to bake it right away.  I have one in the oven, because, as we all know, I’m a very obedient daughter.  Of course I hung up the phone and started mixing! Mama said to!

I’m baking 2 small loaf cakes because I’m taking one to a friend who just had surgery. Everyone knows cake is the best medicine when you are recovering from surgery.  That, and my great-grandma’s sausage-rice casserole.  That’ll cure anything that’s wrong with you.

Brown sugar cake

Now that I've baked the cake and had a teensy-tiny sample, I can tell you it is soooo good. There's a rich, buttery taste to it.  I am thinking it would be great served on a cool fall morning with some tea or coffee.

Next time I make it I may add some diced apple and/or cinnamon.

But it is definitely worth a try.

Brown Sugar Cake

  • 1 pkg. (2-layer size) yellow cake mix
  • 1 pkg.  (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding
  • 4 Eggs
  • 2/3 cup  BREAKSTONE'S or KNUDSEN Sour Cream
  • 2/3 cup Water
  • 1/2 cup  Oil
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup  chopped PLANTERS Pecans
  • 2 tsp. Powdered sugar
  1.  HEAT oven to 350ºF.
  2. BEAT first 6 ingredients with mixer 3 min. or until well blended. Add brown sugar and nuts; mix well.
  3. POUR into 12-cup fluted tube pan or 10-inch tube pan sprayed with cooking spray.
  4. BAKE 1 hour or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool cake in pan 15 min. Loosen cake from sides of pan; invert onto wire rack. Remove pan; cool cake completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar just before serving.

I also added about 2-3 tablespoons of cinnamon sugar to the cake pan after I’d sprayed it with non-stick spray and before I poured the cake in. Next time, I may get crazy and add some to the cake, too.

*Click on the cake name to get a printable copy of the recipe. 🙂

Oh, and I'll be sitting over there in the corner in a diabetic coma after my little taste. If you need me, just nudge me.

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