Caramel apple (or pear) streusel cakes

Isn’t it great when you come across a recipe to which you add your own touches, make many times over and never seem to tire of? This is one of those.

This recipe is my take on an apple sour cream cake from Genius Kitchen, a recipe I came across a couple of years ago. It’s not unlike a blueberry muffin recipe I used to make in days of yore. I’ve made it as the apple version a number of times and it’s always a pleaser but then I thought - hey, how about pear?? Why sure!

Heat the oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9x13 pan OR line muffin tins with papers OR have ready small silicone molds of choice. As some of you know, I’m a huge fan of smaller portions so the latter two options appeal to me.

For the base recipe, prep 2 cups apples or ripe pears (about 2 large) by peeling, coring and chopping them. I often have Fujis around for general eating so I’ll use those but I also like Jonamacs, Jonagolds, Galas or Golden Delicious for this type of baking. Bosc is my go to pear.

In a separate medium bowl blend 260 g/2 cups all purpose flour (you can replace 20-25% of that with whole wheat pastry flour or spelt) with one teaspoon baking soda, one teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. You can add cinnamon or spices as well, although I usually save my spice for the streusel.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, cream 113 g/4 ounces unsalted, room temperature butter with 175 g sugar (I like a mix of 75 g dark brown sugar and 100 g granulated cane sugar or ground raw sugar) for 2-3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 teaspoons boiled cider (optional) and 2 large eggs. Blend and beat well to lighten the mixture.

Add the dry ingredients in three additions, alternating with one cup sour cream (or crème fraiche or full fat yogurt), beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until combined. Stir in the chopped apples or pears.

You have the option for a streusel topping by mixing 1/2 cup toasted and chopped nuts of choice (pecans, walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts are all good in my book!) with a teaspoon of cinnamon or spice mix of choice, 1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar and 2 teaspoons melted unsalted butter - once blended, sprinkle it over the cakes.

Portion the batter into your chosen pan or mold. I made two different sizes in my flexis.

Bake about 20-25 minutes (for small cakes) or 35-40 minutes if making a 9x13 size.

Give them a 5-10 minute cool before gently removing them from the molds, then set them on a wire grid to cool. I often drizzle some caramel on top once out of the oven.

You can leave off the streusel if you plan to garnish the small cakes with your favorite Swiss meringue buttercream like caramel apple cider or a simple whipped caramel mascarpone cream. Yum. Truth be told, I’ve combined a streusel and buttercream garnish and love the combo of the light creamy SMBC with the bit of crunch in the streusel. Yup.

Happy baking. Stay safe, stay healthy and be at peace.

Crème fraiche pound cake à la Melissa Clark

Rum crème fraiche version

After my last post on baguette this one was a piece of cake. Hah! Get it?

Here’s another great contribution to the baking world from NYT food writer Melissa Clark. This one caught my eye partly because of the rum (which I’m starting to appreciate more and more) and crème fraiche (which I’m finally making myself!) in the ingredient list, but also because I’ve made my share of tasty pound cakes over the years and am always up for a new one. If you love pound cake, you MUST try this one.

Pound cake is typically butter, sugar, egg and flour in fairly equal weights, sometimes with cream cheese or sour cream added in. As Melissa notes, pound cake recipes don’t often contain any leavening like baking powder, but it’s the creaming of the butter and sugar to aerate and the eggs to add substance and binding to create the signature texture of these traditional cakes.

I made this recipe twice, the second time swapping the rum for a smooth Kentucky peach bourbon that we recently received from cousin Harve. Just had to try it don’t ya know. I added some orange zest to the batter and used a bourbon butter variant of the crème fraiche glaze, topping it with chopped toasted pecans. Mmmm good.

Bourbon glazed orange pecan version

I’ve become very attached to my mom’s old Mirro brand loaf pan that is a bit longer and narrower than a standard loaf. I love the way the cake comes out in a sleek and less stodgy sort of way. Prep the pan, including the edges, by buttering and sugaring it.

Bake at 350ºF for about an hour until golden and a tester comes out clean.

Mmmmm . . . . doesn’t that look delicious!

The main take home point that Melissa makes is the fact that if you vary the amount of baking powder you add to the batter, you’ll achieve either a lighter (more baking powder) or more dense and creamy texture (less baking powder).

For my first go I used the higher amount of baking powder (1 teaspoon) as well as the rum, crème fraiche (she gives sour cream as an option) and vanilla called for in the recipe. Check out the sliced image - looks like a lovely pound cake to these eyes! And it was deeeeeelicious! Light yet dense if that makes any sense at all. I also loved the slight crunch in the crème fraiche rum glaze - and our neighbors enjoyed it too.

For my second go I used the lower amount of baking powder (1/2 teaspoon) and swapped Kentucky peach bourbon for the rum. I zipped some orange zest into the batter while I was at it. Another lovely crumb experience to be sure.

For the bourbon butter glaze: heat 60 ml/1/4 cup bourbon and 49 g/3.5 tablespoons unsalted butter to melt the butter, then add in 100 g/1/2 cup granulated sugar, stir to dissolve and boil one minute. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a toothpick, brush on about 1/4 of the glaze, wait 5 minutes then brush on another 1/4 of the glaze. Reserve the remaining glaze.

Once the cake has cooled, run a small offset spatula around the edges and pop it out of the pan. Blend the reserved bourbon butter glaze with 50 g/1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar and two tablespoons crème fraiche and pour it over the top and sides of the cake. In my case I added the pecans as the pièce de resistance but you can leave them off if you prefer.

Both of these cakes are buttery, luscious and dense as pound cake should be. Could I tell a lot of difference between the two? Not really, but both were superb in flavor and texture. Go either way with the baking powder and you’ll be happy no matter which one you choose. Thanks Melissa!

Remain calm and stay safe. We’re already deep into the first week of November and even though many of the leaves are now off the trees, here’s a mini photo album of what I’ve been enjoying during my walks this past month. I love autumn.

Black and blue almond butter buckle

Many years ago (14!) when I was in the middle of my year of pastry school, I discovered a recipe in Bon Appétit for an almond-plum buckle, named for the finely ground almonds that are part of the batter as well as the plum slices pressed on top before baking. I made it a couple of times back then, once with plums/blueberries/strawberries and once with cherries/blueberries. They were a big hit for the folks who were the fortunate recipients, including Steve and myself of course.

I’ve since made it periodically over the years but it’s been awhile for sure. Every now and then it comes back into my memory banks, and I must bake it again, particularly when we’re still in the throes of summer fruits season yet moving into autumn as well.

A buckle is basically a single layer cake in which the batter is topped with fruit and often a streusel topping and then baked. The fruit sinks somewhat and the batter rises around it thus referring to the buckling of the cake under the fruit.

There’s a lot written about this group of baked fruit desserts including crisps, slumps (or grunts), buckles, brown bettys and cobblers, but I’m not here today to describe how they compare in their preparation. I simply wish to share my own tweaked recipe based on the 14 year old one from BA. (Yay! I found it online so I could link you to it.)

As always, I did some basic cake recipe comparisons and made my changes based on a couple of other tasty cakes I’ve made over recent months. There’s a lot of similarity from recipe to recipe, often involving 2 sticks butter, 1 cup sugar, 2-4 eggs, vanilla, 2 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, perhaps a spice of choice or some citrus zest, some dairy like sour cream/yogurt/crème fraiche/whole milk/buttermilk, maybe some fruit involved and you’re good to go.

Here’s my recipe outlined below as well as this downloadable PDF.

Ingredients:
70 g/3/4 cup almond flour
195 g/1.5 cup all purpose flour (option to sub in whole wheat pastry flour for about a fourth of the all purpose)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
OPT 1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon or spice mix of choice
100 g/7 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
70 g/1/3 cup almond butter
175 g/1 cup minus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup crème fraiche, room temperature
1.5 cups total of mixed blueberries and blackberries (this is mainly an eyeball it decision - you want fruit sprinkled just so over the cake so that there are spots for the cake to rise up around the fruit).

The steps:
1. Heat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9” springform pan and place a round of parchment in the bottom.
2. In a medium bowl whisk together almond flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices if using.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle cream the butter and almond butter to blend.
4. Add granulated sugar and cream on medium high until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
5. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, blending well after each. Blend in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/4 teaspoon almond extract.
6. Blend in flour mixture alternating with the crème fraiche just until combined.
7. Spread batter in prepared pan, smoothing the top with an offset spatula. Sprinkle fruit evenly over the top. Sprinkle with raw sugar if desired.
8. Bake about 50 minutes until a tester in center comes out clean. Cool 20 minutes, remove from pan and finish cooling.

Ready for the oven!

The primary differences from the BA recipe are using blanched almond flour instead of finely grinding natural almonds; a reduction of butter from 227 g/8 ounces to a total of 170 g/6 ounces of unsalted butter (100 g) and almond butter (70 g) combined plus the addition of 1/2 cup crème fraiche; reduction of sugar by 2 tablespoons (~30 g). That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

I used frozen berries for this one - if you do that, be sure to allow for 5-10 minutes more baking time to allow the center to be fully baked (nothing worse than a gooey center) and be careful not to overload the cake with fruit. I sprinkled both vanilla sugar and raw sugar on top before baking, but cinnamon sugar is an option too.

If you’d prefer a streusel topping, the easiest approach is equal weights flour, sugar, cold cubed butter sanded together to coarse crumbs to top the fruit. For this size cake 60 g of each is plenty. Remember - you can double, triple or quadruple the amounts and have a good freezer unbaked streusel stash on hand to top your favorite crisp, financier/tea cake or baked fruit tart.

The buckle served as a dessert for a Labor Day cookout at cousin Jen’s, topped with whipped cream and a few fresh berries.

Simple and delicious is always good.

Stay well, remain calm and keep baking. It helps.

The flowering crab I photographed last spring + some wild grapes

Maple glazed blueberry drop scones

I originally included this blueberry drop scone review in my recent “Puttering in the kitchen in August” post but, after consideration and Steve’s helpful encouragement, I’ve broken it out into it’s own post. Enjoy my discoveries on these tasty treats!

I’ve now made these scones THREE times since discovering Dorie Greenspan’s NYT article on Joanne Chang’s recipe. Print it out for your own to-do list!

The term drop scones refers to scooping and dropping the balls of dough on the sheet pan as opposed to forming a dough round or rectangle and cutting more uniform triangle shapes for baking as seen below. Both work depending on your vision.

Upon first taste test I found them delightful - just a hint of crispy to the outside and more cake like, tender and moist on the inside than my usual scones. The more I ate them, the more they grew on me.

I’m usually not big on cute-sy combo names like cruffins or cronuts, but for these the word “scuffins” definitely comes to mind - a term someone somewhere coined some years back - a cross between a scone and muffin. Oh well, call them what you’d like - they’re good no matter the label. Try them out yourself and see what you think.

This recipe involves a slightly different mixing method than the one I’ve come to rely on over the years. Here’s what I discovered about the process (having the recipe on hand as you read through this is helpful). You need to plan ahead - the dough is wrapped and refrigerated for at least 1 and up to 24 hours to allow the flour to fully absorb the moisture before scooping and baking. While the recipe calls for 8 large scones, I made mine smaller using a generous 1/4 cup size scoop with a yield of 16-18 scones.

Chilled dough ready to scoop - check out those butter pieces!

First batch: I pretty much followed Joanne’s recipe, using Vermont Creamery’s crème fraiche but since I didn’t have any buttermilk in the house I made the faux version by adding lemon juice to whole milk. I added the first half of the butter into the dry ingredients using the mixer with the paddle to break up the butter pieces (as she suggests), but when it came time to add the second half of the butter, I gave the mixer a rest and used my by-hand method of flaking the butter into the mix by literally flattening the butter pieces with my fingertips and leaving visible pieces in the dough.

The liquid ingredients are all blended together along with fresh blueberries and then added to the flour/butter mixture. Here again I preferred doing this by hand using a spatula and bowl scraper to quickly and gently blend everything, picking up the dry ingredients until a cohesive dough ball forms. I typically don’t add fresh fruit to scones since the fruit can become mushy and macerated during mixing, but the fresh blueberries held up well with a gentle touch.

I refrigerated the dough for four hours and then baked them. Glaze them right out of the oven, cool a bit and enjoy warm or room temperature. Nice!

First batch

I continued the by-hand approach for the next two batches as well. It speaks to me. Remember our two hands are some of the best tools we have!

Second batch: no crème fraiche on hand so this time I used Siggi’s Icelandic “touch of honey” whole milk yogurt and actual buttermilk. Once I had the dough mixed and gave it a few hours of refrigeration, I scooped out the dough balls onto a parchment lined sheet pan and froze them. It was a couple of days before I baked them (directly from freezer to oven) and they didn’t bake as evenly as the first batch. I also found they browned more on the bottom and were less tender and delightful. Perhaps you can appreciate their “rough and tumble” look below.

Full disclosure - I messed up the baking powder amount and attempted a fix so accuracy is in question. Even though they rose OK they weren’t as fluffy as batch one. Yikes - not my usual M.O.

True confession time - a few weeks back I tried some roasted tomato, ricotta, herb scones and realized after I had them in the oven that I FORGOT to add the baking powder. Whoa! How many times have I made that base scone recipe?? Just goes to show you how distraction and lack of focus can sneak right in there these days.

Second batch

Third batch: I made my own crème fraiche - yay! Here’s the deal: heat a cup of heavy cream to about 95ºF (easy in a glass Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave), stir in a teaspoon of buttermilk, cover loosely and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. Mine was thickening nicely by then and into the fridge it went. I used it for the scones on day 4 of it’s maturation - nice and tangy. I again used a squeeze of lemon juice in whole milk as my buttermilk. I reduced the whole wheat flour by 20 g and increased the all purpose by 20 g (I just felt like it).

BTW - For all three batches I used white whole wheat flour for the whole wheat portion. In the future I’ll try whole wheat pastry flour (if I can ever get my hands on some again!) for an even more tender result.

This time I kept the dough refrigerated for a full 24 hours before scooping and baking. The end result was much like the first batch. Mmmmm good.

What I learned: mix by hand, refrigerate the dough 4-24 hours then scoop the chilled dough and bake soon after. Use the right quantity of baking powder. Duh. Thumbs up on the crème fraiche and buttermilk combo. Maybe don’t freeze them unbaked but I’m not necessarily giving up on that approach. That second batch was the outlier due to a questionable baking powder amount and maybe even the oven temp when baking directly from the freezer.

I encourage you to give these a try. You’ll like them.

Autumn is coming . . .