Dorie calls this a cake, and I was determined to make it a cake and not bread. I baked it in a flat square with the intention of cutting the square in half to make a layered rectangular cake filled with frosting. Much later I realized that I’d confused the issue by forming a perfectly bread-shaped cake. Oops.

Not only that, but I don’t love the brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream I used. I think I would have enjoyed this more without the frosting, as something more similar to, well, banana bread. Oops.

Or you know what sounds really good, is mixing chocolate chips into the batter and then topping the cake (we’re back to cake and away from bread again) with chocolate ganache. Except I didn’t have any chocolate. Oops.

I’m sure there are lots of ways I could love this cake (or bread), and Kimberly, who chose the recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, has the original – a rum and coconut version – posted.

One year ago: Blancmanger
Two years ago: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

When I was unemployed, I used to bake nearly everyday. Looking back, I’m not sure who was doing all of the eating. I suppose I was doing a good portion of it. Plus there were more care packages, fresh bagels, muffins for Dave to eat at work, and a freezer overflowing with dough – cookie, pie, tart, whatever.

I still seem to be baking most days now, except instead of starting a recipe and finishing it, all in the same day, I spend a few minutes one evening getting all of my ingredients out. Then the next day I’ll measure the dry ingredients and prepare the pan. The day after that is my favorite, with the mixing and baking. Sometimes there’s an additional day for prettily packaging.

It works pretty well, actually. And even if it wasn’t a great system, it’s a heck of a lot better than not baking at all. I need opportunities to try out fun new recipes, like for vanilla bean cupcakes.

Although adding the ‘bean’ in the title is a bit of a misnomer for me, as I was all out of vanilla beans, so used vanilla sugar and homemade vanilla extract instead. Honestly, I’ve tried using vanilla sugar, Tahitian vanilla beans (which are supposed to be better than Bourbon vanilla beans for baked applications), and vanilla extract all at once in a cake before, and still couldn’t taste any appreciable vanilla-ey-ness, so what I was expecting, and what I got, was a light, fluffy, perfect basic cake. I love cake. I love baking. I especially love the mixing and baking day of baking. And the eating day of baking.

Two years ago: Salmon Clubs with Avocado Butter

Printer Friendly Recipe
Vanilla Bean Cupcakes (adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride and Annie’s Eats)

Makes about 30 cupcakes

3 cups (12 ounces) cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups (14 ounces) sugar (use vanilla sugar if you have it)
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1¼ cups buttermilk, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two cupcake pans with paper liners. In a medium bowl, combine the cake flour and baking powder.

2. Place the butter and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the bowl of the mixer with the butter and discard the pod (or reserve for another use). Beat on medium-high speed for 3 minutes, until light and creamy in color. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for one more minute.

3. Add the sugar to the butter mixture, ¼ cup at a time, beating for one minute after each addition. Mix in the eggs one at a time until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Combine the buttermilk and the vanilla extract in a liquid measuring cup. With the mixer on low speed, add one-third of the flour mixture, followed immediately by half of the buttermilk, mixing just until incorporated. Repeat with another third of the flour and the rest of the buttermilk, then the last of the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix for 15 seconds longer.

4. Divide the batter between the prepared paper liners, filling each about 2/3 of the way full. Bake 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Someone brought a rum bundt cake into work last week, and oh my god, was it good. Tender, extremely moist, and intensely rummy, I could hardly resist grabbing one wedge after another. My officemate, who apparently has far better self-control than I, cut herself a piece and set it aside until the end of the day, six or seven hours later. She regretted the wait as soon as she bit into it and realized that, by then, the rest of the cake was gone. Clearly we needed to get the recipe.

It turns out that the recipe is a doctored cake mix, which just proves that of all the types of prepared, processed foods, cake mix is probably the best at imitating, and in some cases perhaps surpassing, the completely homemade version. And although I can hardly believe this cake I had could be improved upon, and I don’t think the chemicals in one boxed cake mix recipe is going to knock me dead, I’m still too stubborn to use a boxed mix.

A web search yielded nothing but that same recipe, cake mix and oil and rum, over and over. I started thinking of what cake recipe of mine I’d adapt to imitate the recipe I was finding, resigning myself to doing some experimenting.

It took me five days to make the connection that I was searching for a from-scratch rum cake, and I was planning to make rum-drenched vanilla cakes over the weekend. I’m not so smart.

My first impression was that Dorie’s cakes weren’t as moist or tender, although they were fluffy and light with plenty of rum flavor.  Two days later, the cake had ripened, and its texture was very similar to the one I’d eaten at work.  In the future, I might replace the melted butter in the cake with oil, which I think makes cakes moister, but other than that, I think I have my from-scratch rum bundt cake recipe, and I didn’t even have to experiment.

Wendy chose these cakes for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. I doubled the salt.

One year ago: Comparison of three white cake recipes
Two years ago: Apple Cheddar Scones

Most of us probably had the same first experience with plain yogurt. You think it’s going to be yogurt, but not quite so vanilla-ey! And then, ew, wtf, this tastes like sour cream. Force down a few bites; toss in trash. That was the end of my plain yogurt experience for several years.

And then I made an important connection – it tastes like sour cream, but it’s good for you! And now I use it everywhere – in sauce for fish tacos, on baked potatoes, on pancakes with jam, and now, in chocolate frosting. I held my breath waiting to see if it would curdle or if it would mix with melted chocolate to form a smooth icing, and I am pleased that it worked wonderfully. What a simple but luscious frosting recipe.

Low-fat Greek yogurt (my grocery store just started carrying Fage!) might not have been quite as good a replacement for sour cream in the cake itself. Fat in cake leads to moistness, and my cake seemed just a tad dry. A little cherry jam and chocolate yogurt frosting fixed that right up, and I’ve hardly been able to step away from this cake since, shaving dainty slivers off here and there throughout the day, hoping Dave doesn’t notice that half of the cake has disappeared.  But it’s okay, because I used yogurt, and not sour cream.

Amy chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. Besides the yogurt substitutions discussed above, I doubled the salt in the cake.

One year ago: Mixed Berry Cobbler
Two years ago: Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

This cake fit so seamlessly into my weekend that I hardly know what to say about it. I mixed it up and baked it early Friday evening, and I grabbed a bite here and another there throughout the weekend until there was nothing left.

With the ingredients stirred by hand, and the light lemony almond flavor, it was easy to bake and just as easy to eat.

Nancy chose this for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. I doubled the salt (of course).

One year ago: Chocolate Ameretti Torte
Two years ago: Marshmallows

Somehow with all of my random kitchen junk, I didn’t have a full-size bundt pan for the longest time, but I finally got one recently. This was its first use, and I was so excited about my perfectly browned, beautifully scalloped, marbled bundt cake. Too bad I didn’t take any pictures of it before this:

Fortunately, enough of the cake was intact to cut some slices, not that I have any problems eating cake bits. And the cake bits, they were good – rich and dense with contrasting vanilla and chocolate bites.

However, one thing I’ve learned is that if dessert isn’t divided into neat portions, it’s all too easy to grab a bite here and another there until I’ve eaten far more than just one serving.

So I took that ziploc bag full of broken cake, crushed it up with the other two cakes I’d dropped at the same time, added some cream cheese frosting, and dipped everything in chocolate. Yes, I added frosting and chocolate in order to eat less dessert. So far it hasn’t worked.

Erin chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Banana Cream Pie
Two years ago: Lemon Cream Tart

I was half-tempted to copy and paste from my coconut cream tart entry – the part about how I used to not like coconut but now see the error of my ways – but I didn’t want to give everyone a case of déjà vu. Suffice to say: I am so glad I am no longer anti-coconut. Heck, forget “no longer anti”; I am officially pro coconut.

I am definitely pro this cake. It gets an initial hit of coconut flavor from coconut milk, more from shredded coconut, and in my case, another layer of coconut from the bottle of coconut extract I’ve had in my pantry for at least five years. Then I decided that an unadorned bundt cake is just sad, so I mixed up a quick glaze of powdered sugar, more coconut milk, and more coconut extract.

Oh. Yes. A few people who made this before me reported that their cakes had been dry, but mine wasn’t the least bit. The texture was soft and fluffy. Best of all, the cake was infused with and covered by coconut flavor.

Carmen chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she will post the recipe. I used about ¾ teaspoon salt instead of the mere pinch the Dorie recommends. And I dumped in who-knows-how-much rum instead of the two teaspoons called for.

One year ago: Coconut Butter Thins (Apparently March is coconut month for TWD!)
Two years ago: Gooey Chocolate Cakes

I’ve come full circle on milk chocolate. As a kid, like most of us I think, I didn’t like dark chocolate at all. Ew, too bitter! Recently, I’ve felt the opposite. Milk chocolate was too sweet – where’s the chocolate flavor?

But now milk chocolate just reminds me of the time I left a chocolate bunny on my windowsill right after Easter, and it melted and was suddenly ten times better than any milk chocolate I’d had before. It may just be that I’m buying higher quality milk chocolate these days; regardless, I like having another type of chocolate to enjoy.

Whatever the reason, I really enjoyed this milk chocolate cake. After three weeks of banana cream pie, I was in the mood for something dark and rich.  I was still interested in the milk chocolate idea, so I just replaced the nuts in the swirl with more milk chocolate. Ooh yeah, there’s a nice chocolate kick.

Even more exciting than chocolate-glazed chocolate cake with a cocoa-chocolate swirl is that it’s lobster shaped! Yay, lobster shaped cake!

Kristin chose this for TWD and has the recipe posted. The glaze, a simple mixture of melted chocolate and corn syrup, didn’t work for anyone. I added milk until it smoothed out and was quite happy with the result.

One year ago: World Peace Cookies

I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t have high altitude problems with my baking now that I live at just over 3000 feet. It’s right at the margin of where some cookbooks recommend making adjustments. I conducted one little test, comparing chocolate chip cookies made at sea level with the same recipe made at 3000 feet, and the results were identical, so at this point I’m hopeful.

But it does leave a kernel of doubt in my mind when I’m unhappy with how a recipe turns out. Is the recipe or the altitude at fault? Fortunately, if I made the recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, I have several hundred other bakers to compare the results to.

In this case, my cake was a little dry. Not terrible – it was still chocolate cake, and it was covered in cream cheese frosting – just not as good as other chocolate cakes I’ve made. I’ll have to read what others have said to see if those results were typical. I’m kind of hoping we all had dry cake this week, because having to constantly adjust recipes for my altitude sounds like such a pain in the butt.

This cake (along with Tarte Tatin, which I didn’t get a chance to make this week) was chosen by vote (sort of). Laurie, the founder of TWD, has posted the recipe.

One year ago: French Pear Tart

Back when my brother was the family cheesecake-maker, we didn’t eat a lot of chocolate cheesecakes. He didn’t like them. I always thought, what is there not to like? It’s chocolate, and it’s cheesecake. Seems like a good match.

But now I see his point. I like both chocolate and cheesecake, but the flavors don’t seem to compliment each other like other pairings do. Chocolate and peanut butter; cheesecake and pumpkin; chocolate and mint; cheesecake with berries – the individual flavors all improve their partners.

But cheesecake mixed with chocolate, somehow, the flavors seem to oppose instead of enhance each other. There’s the bitterness of the chocolate and the tang of the cheesecake, but there isn’t any middle ground where they mesh together to create something new.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. After all, there is still distinctive cheesecake and chocolate flavors, and that’s enough to make me happy.

This was chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie by the Tea Lady, who will post the recipe next Tuesday.

One year ago: Butterscotch Pudding