Fruit Basket Coffee Cake

Summer certainly brings lots of kinds of fruit. Right now we have ripe peaches, luscious dark cherries, olallieberries right off the vine, and raspberries, plus green grapes and some plums that are almost ripe which are turning a lovely shade of red-gold on the tree down the hill. The plums and olallieberries are the only local fruit, but the cherries, peaches and raspberries are certainly seasonal.

Yesterday I made a lovely coffee cake to showcase the peaches, cherries, olallieberries and raspberries. It's a variation of the Nectarine Cake in Lauren Chattman's Cake Keeper Cakes book, one of the great cookbooks we baked from during my time with the Cake Slice Bakers.

I made one and a half times the cake batter because the original recipe only makes a thin layer of cake and I wanted one thick enough to absorb all the fruit juices. I also added some almond extract, while keeping the vanilla extract. For the topping I used brown sugar, pecans and ground nutmeg instead of white sugar and cinnamon...they recipe gave two choices for nuts and pecans were one of them.

I baked it in a nine-inch springform pan instead of a ten-inch one. Because I had such a wonderful choice of fruits, I used cherry halves around the outer edge, then peach slices, then olallieberries and raspberries in the middle.

Do watch this cake because the nuts might get too brown...just tent with foil if that happens. Because  the batter is deeper than the original, it took a while to bake, but came out moist with a nice crumb and browned crust. We actually enjoyed this cake for dinner dessert, so I served it with soy vanilla ice cream and that was a great choice. Sweetie added some whipped cream to his, and you can always add extra prepared fresh fruit.

I've never been a big fan of summer, but sitting outside for dinner because it's still warm by 7 o'clock makes summer a bit easier to take. All of the beautiful flowers that are blooming in the garden also are a benefit of summer. Too bad it gets so hot!

Do try this cake, especially if you have some ripe fruit on hand. You can use all one kind of fruit or two kinds, or three if four is too much. With most kinds of fruit, push them down into the batter a bit to allow the juices to soak into the cake. Enjoy!

Fruit Basket Cake with Nutmeg Nut Topping
based on Nectarine Cake in Lauren Chattman's Cake Keep Cakes
serves 8-10

For the Topping:
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

For the Cake:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks, 6 oz.), unsalted butter or non-dairy margarine, softened
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups assorted stone fruit and/or berries or one kind or fruit, ripe - peel plums or peaches and pit them, pit cherries, pit nectarines or apricots, wash and dry berries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease the insides of a springform pan, 9-inch or 10-inch preferred.

Combine the brown sugar, nutmeg and chopped nuts in a small bowl. Set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl or on a sheet of waxed paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter together on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed.

With the mixer on low, add the eggs, one at a time, beating to combine the eggs with the butter mixture after each addition. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed.

Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. With mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture, a 1/2 cup at a time. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed and at the end. Use scraper to give batter a final stir to make sure all is combined.

Scrape batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top of the batter. Carefully place the prepared fruit, pushing down a bit into the batter. If using more than one kind of fruit, you can create a pattern.

Sprinkle with the topping. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45-55 minutes. Cool cake in pan for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides, unhinge the springform and cool cake on wire rack until tepid. Remove from the springform bottom and place on a serving plate.

Serve with more fruit, ice cream, whip cream or just as is.

Store uneaten cake, if any, in a cake keeper or wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for up to 2 days.

Cranberry-Sour Cream Pound Cake with #theCakeSliceBakers

Christmas is coming...it's only a little over a month away...and you may want to create some food memories of your own with my choice of this month's Cake Slice Bakers choices. What could be more seasonal than fresh cranberries? They are often on sale for Thanksgiving and on and off up to Christmas. They also freeze well and you can bake with them using frozen berries, so unless you hate cranberries, it's good to stock up on a bag or two or three.

This lovely loaf cake is a nice, buttery, rich pound cake with the added benefit of the bright color and burst of flavor of the cranberries, plus the tang of sour cream. Since mine had to be mostly dairy free (I can have yogurt for some reason, but not sour cream), I used non-dairy margarine and plain yogurt instead of butter and sour cream, and it was still rich and wonderful.

The crumb is slightly less tight than classic pound cake, but still slices nicely and holds together well. I made it at the beginning of the month and sliced it into long fingers to serve at a gathering where they were looking for something to go with mid-morning coffee and tea. Because the cranberries keep it from being too sweet, it was a hit. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the cake cut into fingers, but I bet you know how to do that anyway. The photo I did take was taken when the cake was recently out of the oven, so the slice is a bit streaky with the cranberry juices, but it was better to slice when it cooled completely.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

Next month will be the last bake from our current book, The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake. Each recipe has been well thought out and has worked perfectly for me, so do consider purchasing this book yourself. It will have the recipe for this lovely pound cake and for many other delightful cakes. Maybe Santa will give it to you for Christmas? BTW, I receive no benefits from ATK for suggesting this. I just think it is a great cake book.

Cider-Glazed Apple Bundt Cake for Fall with #theCakeSliceBakers

Can you tell that I love the fall of the year? In our area things like tomatoes and roses do really well in October, plus there are the fall fruits like figs and quince, persimmons  and, of course, apples.

I missed baking with the Cake Slice Bakers last month, but this month I was able to bake one of the recipes, Apple Bundt Cake. I used my Bundt pan that has four small cake molds so that I ended up with four very cute little cakes. The cider is easy to reduce in a wide skillet and only took about 20 minutes, so plan ahead to create your apple reduction in advance. It really adds to the apple flavor to have it in the batter, brushed over the warm cakes, and in the sweet drizzle that decorates the tops.

This is an easy cake to make because you don't even need a mixer...it is all mixed by hand. The dry ingredients go in one bowl, the wet ingredients, vanilla and brown sugar in another one. They get mixed together and then the apples are stirred in...it's as easy as that. The most time consuming part is peeling and shredding the apples and waiting for the cake to bake...if you bake one cake in a full sized Bundt pan it's over an hour of smelling wonderful fragrances of apple and brown sugar and butter.  If you like you can decorate the baked, drizzled cake with seasonal decors...I used a Harvest blend.

Worth the wait for the cake to bake, because the final cake is moist and delightful, almost like a pound cake with apples, but with a more open texture due to the technique used for mixing the batter and due to the shredded apples. Here is what a cut piece looks like (with no decorations or drizzle).

It just so happens that this recipe is available at the American Test Kitchen website, so you can try it and see why you should really buy the book. Every recipe I've tried has been perfect.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

An InLinkz Link-up

Lemon Sheet Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

A little late to the party, but summer is never an easy time to find the right time to bake. As usual, we have a project for the house going on. This July it's a refurbishment of the back deck, which is a three level affair connected by steps. Sweetie and I built it together over 25 years ago, so it has aged enough to no longer be beautiful, nor totally safe.

Today we stopped early enough that I whipped up the Lemon Sheet Cake from The Perfect Cake cookbook (no 'buttermilk' in the title since I didn't use buttermilk). Except for using non-dairy margarine and soy creamer as substitutes for the butter and buttermilk, I followed the recipe exactly. Those substitutions are necessary if I'm going to eat any of the cake, and I soooo enjoyed this cake that I'm glad I did.

This cake is tender, moist and has a heavenly true lemon flavor. The crumb is fairly tight and the crust delicate. I love the lemon sugar glaze even though it does make the cake pretty sweet. The sprinkle of lemon zest enriched granulated sugar over the glaze adds just the right touch of crunch, and even more lemon appeal and sweetness.

Allow some time at the beginning to zest and juice the lemons...takes 5-10 minutes, but is well worth the effort. Otherwise this is a fairly basic cake recipe where you cream the butter with the sugar that has been enriched with the lemon zest, then you add eggs, then the dry ingredients in three parts and the wet ingredients in two parts, with the dry added last. Using cake flour is wonderful since it makes the cake delicate and tender.

I know that quite a few Cake Slice Bakers also make this recipe. Who can blame them? This cake if just fine by itself and even better with a few ripe strawberries or raspberries or blackberries or blueberries and since this is berry season that's easy to do. I added a few  strawberries from our garden and it was the perfect summer treat with the luscious lemon cake!

Do visit the other Cake Slice Bakers to see how their cakes turned out. There is at least on who did the cake pops and one who did the almond meringue layers with fruit. No recipe, but do consider buying the book because every recipe so far has been flawless.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook,  Instagram, and  Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers are baking from a new book "The Perfect Cake" from America's Test Kitchen.

Our choices this month are...

1. Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake
2. Apricot-Almond Meringue Cake
3. Refined Strawberry Shortcake
4. Party Cake Pops

Visit our members to see what cake choice they baked up! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Blueberry Muffins - #TheCakeSliceBakers extra

Since the late fall The Cake Slice Bakers have been baking from The Perfect Cake and posting on or after the 20th of the month. Often we have also had another cake cookbook to choose a recipe from with the rule being that it has to be posted by the 19th of the month. Something has always gotten in the way of my baking that extra recipe, but this month, July, I did!  Happy 4th of July!

I love to bake with seasonal fruits. July is the season for blueberries and our market had them on sale, too. Lovely, purple-blue fat juicy blueberries seemed perfect for blueberry muffins. Our 'extra' cookbook, Maida Heatter's Cakes has a great recipe for blueberry muffins. Muffins are, essentially, small cakes. I made that even more apparent by baking them in giant muffin tins. The muffins came out of the pan looking like little cakes bursting with cooked blueberries and their juices, with a nice browned top and tender interior.

As I often do, I made a few changes. Besides the size of the pans, I also substituted 1/2 cup almond flour (finely ground blanched almonds) for the same amount of flour. Instead of adding the lemon zest with the wet ingredients, I rubbed the zest into the sugar before adding the sugar/zest to the dry ingredients. Since dairy is a no-no for me, I used soy milk instead of regular milk and non-dairy margarine, melted, instead of the melted butter. Finally, I sprinkled some sanding sugar over the tops of the unbaked muffins right before they went into the oven.

When I was younger and could burn off the calories more quickly, I would have blueberry muffins quite a few times in the summer when they are in season. Now I'll probably only have them this one time... a much appreciated seasonal treat. We'll still enjoy them with our morning yogurt or cereal of course and in a fruit mixture with other delicious summer fruits. But blueberry muffins this good should be baked often, so, dear reader, it's up to you. They do freeze well after all. Just remember, when mixing the wet into the dry ingredients, mix as little as possible and gently for the most tender, delicious blueberry muffins!

Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12 regular or about 5 super sized

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour (finely ground blanched almonds)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
finely grated rind of 1/2 lemon
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and dried
1 egg, lightly beaten
4 tablespoons (half stick, 1/4 cup) butter or margarine, melted and cooled a bit
1/2 cup milk or soy milk or almond milk
about 1 tablespoon sanding sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Oven rack should be in center of oven. Use paper liners if you desire, or butter the muffins cups, even if pans are nonstick.

In a very large mixing bowl, combine the flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. Pour the granulated sugar in a mound over this combination and add the grated lemon zest on top of the sugar. Using clean fingers, rub the zest into the sugar. You will smell the lemon oils being released into the sugar and will see the sugar become moist. Once zest is rubbed in, whisk all the dry ingredients together until fully combined. Add the dry blueberries and use your finger to lightly mix them with the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In a small bowl place the lightly beaten egg. Add the butter and milk and use a fork to combine thoroughly. Gently make a well in the dry ingredients center and pour in the wet ingredient combination. Using the fork, gently and quickly combine the wet and dry using as few strokes as possible until just mixed.

Use a small measuring cup or disher to fill prepared muffin cups 2/3 full with the batter. If desired, lightly sprinkle the tops with sanding sugar.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Test for doneness. Pressing lightly on the tops in the center will cause them to spring back after pressing when done. If needed bake another 2-5 minutes.

Place baked muffins, in tin(s), on a cooling rack for ten minutes. Use a table knife or small offset spatula to carefully remove the muffins from the tin and set them right side up. Muffins in paper cups will be easy to remove, but you may need to use the knife if they have stuck to the tin.

Serve warm or cooled. Usually no additional butter is necessary.

An InLinkz Link-up

Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

Chocolate cake with chocolate icing has always been my favorite cake flavor combination. Imagine how excited I was when I found out that an Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake was one of the choices for the Cake Slice Bakers for June. A grand chocolate layer cake! What could be better?

There were a few new techniques which took it out of the old-fashioned category in my mind, but the trick of making a sort of pudding for the chocolate part of the cake, by cooking the cocoa, chocolate and water together, then cooling it before adding it to the batter, was one I will use again. It seemed to make for a very moist cake with a tender but firm crumb. Buy or borrow the book and check out this cool technique!

The second non-old-fashioned thing was making the frosting in a food processor. Since mine was unavailable when I made the frosting, I used the exact same ingredients called for, but put them together in a different manner. I creamed two sticks of butter in the bowl of my stand mixer, added the cocoa and slowly beat it to make a paste, very slowly added the salt and confectioners sugar keeping the stand mixer on low speed, then added the vanilla and corn syrup and mixed them in. Once the chocolate mixture was cool enough I added it with the mixer on low and once that was incorporated I added the remaining butter, a tablespoon at a time. Once all the butter was incorporated, I turned up the speed for about a minute to completely mix the frosting. Of course there was a lot of scraping the sides of the bowl and the beaters throughout the process.

The frosting was creamy but didn't seem to get to filled with air and it was easy to work with when I applied it to the cake layers. I used the back of the spoon method to put swirls on the top of the cake, then used a pastry bag and tip to use some more frosting to decorate the bottom with flowers, with one in the middle of the top.

The resulting layer cake was lovely to look at and delicious, but I found it overly rich. (I write 'butter' but really used non-dairy margarine since I can't tolerate butter. Maybe real butter would have been less rich, but I doubt it.) Fortunately we were able to share this delightful cake with neighbors (who proclaimed it perfect for breakfast!), and with my sister and her family. Thin slices worked out well.

I decorated the final slice with strawberries from our garden. Celebrating summer!

 Next time I would do a ganache icing or the really old fashioned one with cocoa, hot milk and confectioners sugar, both of which would probably be less rich than the Test Kitchen chocolate frosting. I wouldn't change a thing about the cake itself. I baked the layers two full days before I frosted and served it and the cake layers stayed moist just wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature. This is a wonderful cake, but it is expensive to make if you use (as you should) high quality chocolate and cocoa. Use a chocolate that you enjoy eating since you will really taste it. I used Scharfenberger and was glad I did.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake, Rhubarb Ribbon Cake, Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze, and Summer Peach Cake.

The Cake Slice Bakers are baking from a new book "The Perfect Cake" from America's Test Kitchen.

Our choices this month are...

June 2018

1. Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake
2. Rhubarb Ribbon Cake
3. Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze
4. Summer Peach Cake

Visit our bakers too see what choice they baked up!

An InLinkz Link-up

Italian Almond Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

We had a really nice group of cakes to choose from this month as the Cake Slice Bakers continue to bake from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen. #atkcake

There was the creamy sweetness of the Tres Leches Cake, the tang of lemon in the Lemon Pudding Cakes, wonderful almond flavor in the Italian Almond Cake and fun and pretty Confetti Cake.

I chose the Italian Almond Cake because I wanted a tea cake that I could enjoy over a few days and one that wasn't too complicated since my energy levels continue to be lower than usual.

In the photo that is with the recipe in the book you can see that with the Italian Almond Cake there is a nice crunchy crust with sliced almonds, and lemon sugar. The photo doesn't really show much of the interior of the cake, but mine had a lovely dense crumb, similar to a pound cake and it was really moist. There is plenty of almond flavor in this cake but it has a nice brightness from the lemon zest, too. I did use melted non-dairy margarine instead of butter, but otherwise I baked it exactly as written in the cookbook.

I'm not going to include the recipe since, if you like to bake cakes, this book is worth purchasing. It has all the classics, plus some new and different ones. Each recipe is well written and the Test Kitchen folks  have clearly tested and tested to come up with recipes that work and are delicious. I expect this to be a book I go to again and again over the years.

Be sure to check out the other Cake Slice Bakers posts, too.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Tres Leches Cake, Lemon Pudding Cake, Italian Almond Cake, and Confetti Cake.

An InLinkz Link-up

Boston Cream Cupcakes #TheCakeSliceBakers

You've probably heard the name Boston Cream Pie at some point in your life. The immediate visual that comes to mind if you have never had this dessert is a creamy pie in a nice crust with maybe some maple syrup for flavoring or something. In fact, a Boston Cream Pie is a cake. Vanilla cake is sandwiched with a vanilla pastry cream and then topped with a rich chocolate ganache. It's a great combination of flavors and textures and a classic for a reason.

This month the Cake Slice Bakers are baking again from The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen, #atkcake, and our choices included Boston Cream Cupcakes. Being an iconoclast and not a lover of working with lots of pieces, I changed it to a small Boston Cream Pie cake, made using a 6-inch in diameter springform pan with tall sides, plus three smaller cakes made using mega-muffin pans- pretty close to Boston Cream Cupcakes. Two of those small ones were tall enough to split and fill, but the smallest on worked well for the original instructions for cupcakes, so I cut out a divot in the top, sliced off a bit of the point to make room for the pastry cream, then filled the depression with a tablespoon or so of the cream, topped it with the cake hat, then poured the chocolate glaze over it all. Here is what that one looked like:

I made this treat for Valentine's Day. Two of the little cakes went to a neighbor couple and the other went to another neighbor. Sweetie and I enjoyed ample portions of the large cake. It was delicious. This cake is not as fine crumbed as a pound cake, but still has a fairly tight crumb. It rose well and had a nice, mild vanilla flavor. The pastry cream, which I made with soy non-dairy creamer and non-dairy margarine, was wonderful...very smooth and creamy and strongly vanilla. I chilled it so that it would make a sturdy filling, which is especially important when you are cutting the cake. A too soft filling just squishes out as you cut.

The genius part of the ganache topping is the plain corn syrup. It really makes it easy to work with. Since I did use bittersweet chocolate as called for, the topping was a nice deep chocolate contrast to the vanilla in the cake and pastry cream.

I decorated the iced cakes with tiny sprinkles in heart shapes. It made a really pretty Valentine's Day gift for Sweetie, who loves Boston Cream Pie!

Because the book that this recipe comes from isn't in print yet, I'm not including the recipe. It should be published next month. You are probably going to want to buy this if you make a lot of cakes, or just want recipes for cake that are tested and perfect! Sometimes the instructions seem different, like cutting the fat into the flour for a cake like this. It's a technique often used for pie and biscuits, but not that often for cake. I'm sure it helped this cake rise so nicely and probably contributed to the tenderness, too.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Chocolate-Espresso Dacquoise, Blitz Torte, Bananas Foster Cake, and Boston Cream Cupcakes.

An InLinkz Link-up