Amaretto-Almond Pound Cake - Southern Cake Book

I bought another baking book today... I think I have over 500 of them now by now.

But this was is different, this one is unique. This one is special because I would really like to bake every cake in this book. How often does that happen? The name of the book is The Southern Cake Book (2014 edition) by Southern Living.

I purchased this book because it was featured in the Lagniappe section of New Orleans’ (no longer daily) newspaper – The Time-Picayune. The reporter made it sound so luscious and delectable that I just had to have it. And when the book arrived I wasn’t disappointed. The photos are gorgeous, and all the cakes look delicious. I couldn’t decide which one to bake first, but I finally decided on Almond Amaretto Pound Cake. I LOVE Pound Cake, and I love Amaretto. Win-Win.

The recipe was easy to follow and the batter came together without any problems. The only thing out of the ordinary was that you added the eggs as the last step. Flour first and then the eggs.  Odd.  I wonder if there is some chemistry to mixing the ingredients in that order. Where is Alton Brown when you need him?

Into the pan the batter goes… I’m still loving my HIC silicon fluted pan. I find the silicon pan doesn’t burn the outer edge of the cake as much as the metal pans do. I also love the bright red color! But my pan only holds 10 cups and the recipe calls for a 12-cup pan, so I cut the recipe in half and baked for about 40 minutes. I also didn't include the sliced almonds on the top of the cake. I have a brother visiting that has severe nut allergies.

The last step in the process is to make an Amaretto syrup to pour over the top of the warm cake.

Well, hum… Something went wrong with this step. I followed the instructions, I swear, but I guess I cooked it too long and I ended up with Amaretto candy instead of syrup. It was too thick to absorb into the cake (like the recipe describes), instead it coated the top of the cake and dribbled down the sides.

After a while the Amaretto “syrup” got pretty hard and broke apart when I cut a slice. But it still tasted awesome. Very almond-y. And the cake was moist enough without the added moisture from the absorbed syrup. Yummy…

So I would definitely list this pound cake as one of the best I have tasted. It rivals even the famous Elvis Presley Pound Cake or my even my Pound Cake Love recipe. This one is a keeper for sure.

Here is a link to the recipe on the Southern Living web site.

I also learned an interesting factoid from this recipe. Amaretto flavoring is made from apricot pits. Who knew?! And because the Amaretto is made from apricot pits you will find that it tastes very similar to almond extract. Why? Because almond extract is made from bitter almond oil which gets it flavor from a substance called benzaldehyde. Benzaldehyde is found in almonds of course, but it is also found in the the kernels of “drupes” or stone fruits like peach, apricots, plums, and cherries. So check the label of your favorite brand of almond extract and see if it gives you the source of the bitter almond oil.  Your almond extract could be made from almonds, but it could also be made from peach pits, or even a combination of different stone fruits.  Very interesting. Here is a link to Cook’s Illustrated ’s overview of Almond Extract.


Happy Baking....

Carol

Update:  Ha!! After looking at the recipe posted on the Southern Living web site I found a discrepancy between the directions shown in the book and the online version.  And that discrepancy has to do with the glaze.  Ha!   The one thing that I messed up on!! Double Ha!  So it wasn't a stupid, Carol, moment after all.

The book just tells you to spoon the hot glaze over the cake.  From the picture of the cake I thought that meant remove the cake from the pan and start spooning the glaze over the top.  Wrong!  The online version goes into a lot more detail, and tells you to start the glaze 10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven.  As soon as the cake comes out start spooning the hot glaze over the BOTTOM of the hot cake.  Do not remove the the cake from the pan.  Spoon the glaze over the cake while it is still in the pan.

So I didn't mess up (well not completely).  Therefore I'm taking this cake out of my "You did something wrong" column and putting it in the "book had a miss-print column".

I'm going to try the cake again this weekend (for the 4th of July), and  I will post a new picture of my perfectly glaze cake as soon as possible.

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Marbled Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake - Yummmm

Red Velvet is my favorite cake flavor, and Pound Cake is my favorite type of cake. Put the two together and you get delicious. Add Cream Cheese and you get sinfully delicious.

I love everything Red Velvet so I have been toying with the idea of compiling all my favorite Red Velvet recipes into an e-book, but a quick search of Amazon found that someone had already done it! Damn, too late again.

Check out Debra Hart's Red Velvet Everything. The book has recipes for Red Velvet Cobbler, Red Velvet Tea Cakes, Red Velvet Fudge, etc, etc. So many choices so little stretch left in my jeans.

For my first Red Velvet Everything baking adventure I decided on Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake. Just the name makes me drool. The recipe starts as a basic cream cheese pound cake but it gets fancy in the last stage when you split the batter add the Red Velvet “elixir” to one half.

At this point I have one bowl of red batter on one of yellow batter.  Next the recipe instructions tell you to add 1-1/2 cups of flour to the red mix and the remaining 1-1/2 cups to the yellow mix.   Huh???  That step had me worried.  I didn’t think to weigh the bowls of wet batter to ensure that they each had the same amount.  Did I get more batter in one bowl and less in the other?  Would this throw off the ratios and put too much or too little flour in relation to the butter/sugar/eggs?  Would my cake be too wet or too dry?  Would my Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake be a flop?Oh the horror!!

Well, too late to worry about it now.  But NEXT TIME I will weigh the batter to make sure the amounts are equal,  or better yet mix in the flour before dividing the batter.   That would eliminate any potential screw-ups.

 

Next the instructions tell you to drop spoonfuls of the batter into the prepared tube pan alternating between the red and the yellow batters.  I bought a new silicon tube pan just for this cake.  For some reason my oven burns every cake I bake in the traditional metal bundt pans, so I wanted to give the silicon pan a try.  The HIC Fluted Pan is a pretty red color, which sadly doesn’t show up well against the red batter of the cake.  Sorry….

So I’m moving along happily filling my pan spoonful by spoonful when I realized I have too much batter and not enough pan.  The recipe didn't list what size pan to use, so naive little me just assumed that the batter would all fit in the pan "I" happened to select.  I’m constantly amazed at how oblivious I can be…

But not to worry.  I greased up some of my mini tube pans, and soon I was spooning again.

In fact the batter shows up much better against the metal pan.

Next you swirl the two colored batters together.  Pretty.

Then bake.  I baked the mini tube pan for about 30 minutes, and the big pan for about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

The mini pan cakes came out perfect.

But the large cake was slightly over baked.  I baked until to toothpick tester came out clean, but next time I would take it out when a few crumbles still clung to the tooth pick.  Better to under baked than over baked.

Next came a simple sugar glaze.  Then the slicing and big reveal.

Too cute.  The red and yellow swirls look amazing.  The colors are still distinct, but they swirl together like young lovers.  So romantic.  Definitely a cake for Valentine’s Day.

The larger cake looks just as swirly and delicious, but I had to add some whipped cream to give it a little moisture.

So all-in-all my first test from the Red Velvet Everything cook book was a great success.  Now I just have to figure out what to bake next.  With 50+ recipes in the book it will be a hard decision to make.

The people at work are going to love/kill me,

Carol



PS: for a similar version of Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake check out this YouTube video by Cicone.

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Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake

By Debra Hart

From the book: Red Velvet Everything

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups   Unsalted butter, softened

8 oz              Cream Cheese, softened

3 cups          Sugar, granulated

5                    Eggs, large

1-1/2 tsp       Vanilla 

1/4 cup         Buttermilk 

2 TBLS         Cocoa Powder, sifted

1 tsp              Apple Cider Vinegar

1 oz               Red Food Coloring

3 cups          Cake Flour



Directions

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan. 
• Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar together. 
• Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
• Divide the batter between two bowls. Weigh to ensure that they are divided equally. 
• In a separate, small bowl combine buttermilk, cocoa, and vinegar. Whisk until smooth. Stir in food coloring. Add the red mixture to one of the bowls of batter. Stir until combined. 
• Add 1-1/2 cups of flour to each bowl of batter. Beat until just combined. (I just stirred the flour into the creamed mixture, I didn’t bother with the beaters.) 
• With a large spoon drop spoonfuls of batter into the prepared tube pan alternating between the two colored batters. 
•  Using a knife, gently swirl the two colors. (Don’t over-swirl. You want the colors to just wrap around each other.) 
• Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour and 35-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out (nearly) clean. 
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes and then gently remove the cake from the pan.

If desired glaze the cake with a powdered sugar glaze.

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Easy (Meyer) Lemon Pound Cake

I was grazing in Sam’s Club one day (they give out the BEST food samples) when I stumbled across a 2 pound container of Meyer Lemons for 0.98 cent. Yes 0.98 cents. I think someone made a BIG mistake there.

I meekly mentioned my pricing concern to the cashier, but like any 20-year-old he didn’t seem to care. Feeling slightly guilty I handed over my $1.08 and dashed quickly out of the door. I zigzagged a path to my car, slithered into the driver’s seat, and tossed the container onto the floor. Heart pounding, palms sweating, I felt like a sticky-fingered shoplifter.

Returning home I pulled out my Kindle and searched the internet for something to bake with my ill-gotten gains. I found a recipe for Easy Lemon Pound Cake on Food.com. Perfect. I also had a new silicon loaf pan that I wanted to try out so this was like a twofer.

This was the first time using the silicon pan so I followed the instructions and greased it up well.

The Easy Lemon Pound Cake as indeed EASY. 

The batter came together in a matter of minutes. No creaming of butter and sugar. Just stir melted butter and sugar together, throw in all the other ingredients and voila… pound cake. I did make some adjustments to the recipe based on comments associated with the original recipe on Food.com. I used 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice instead of 1, and I added a teaspoon of Meyer Lemon zest.

Yum-meee. Just look at that beautiful lemon batter. Thick and rich with tiny flecks of zest.

And it looked beautiful coming out of the oven too. Golden brown with no burnt and crispy edges. Usually my loaf and Bundt cakes look like someone has taken a blow torch to them, but this one came out just right. The silicon pan is also a little longer and narrower than my metal loaf pan, so that may have promoted more even baking and less burnt edges.

And the cake just popped right out of the pan too. I had never used a silicon pan before, but this single baking experience has made a believer out of me. No more trimming burnt bottoms for me.

So how did it taste? 
Well... it was very lemony.

I’m not a big fan of lemon desserts so for me the extra tablespoon of lemon juice plus the lemon glaze made it a little to lemony for me. But if you like lemons the concentration would be just about perfect.

I also didn’t think the cake was rich and dense enough to be called "pound cake". It was just too light and fluffy, more like lemon cake.

So because the cake was soooo easy I whipped up another batch. This time I used 1 Tablespoon of Meyer Lemon juice, 1/2 tsp of vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract. I also substituted 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream for the milk. Heavy whipping cream, like butter, makes everything better!

Perfection. On this version I also eliminated the lemon from the glaze and added pecans. Now that is my kind of Easy Lemon Pound Cake.

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Easy (less) Lemon Pound Cake - The Bake More

Batter:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1-2 tablespoon lemon juice (depending on intensity of lemon flavor desired)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional depending on preference)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Glaze:
1/3 cup water or lemon juice
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Cake Directions:
• Grease a loaf pan, and preheat the oven to 325°F
• In a small bowl combine flour, salt and baking power.
• In another bowl stir together 1 cup of sugar and melted butter.
• Add beaten eggs to butter/sugar mixture and stir till combined.
• Add lemon juice and extracts.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet.
• Finally stir in the cream.
• Bake at 325°F in a well-greased loaf pan for 1 hour, or until golden brown.

 Glaze Directions:
• Stir 1/3 cup lemon juice (or water) and ¼ cup powdered sugar
• Use a toothpick to make holes in the top of the warm cake and drizzle the glaze on top of the cake.

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Enjoy...

Pound Cake Love

I’m a lover of all things Pound Cake, and this recipe is by far my favorite. It is a combination of two excellent recipes I found on Food.com (formerly RecipeZarr.com). Elvis Presley’s Favorite Whipping Cream Pound Cake and Five Flavor Pound Cake.

Both cakes are excellent but in different ways. The Elvis cake is dense and rich and simply melts in your mouth. It has that crunchy-sugary top that is the hallmark of a great pound cake. The Five Flavor cake is lighter and fluffier, and has a heady mixture of scents and flavors that fill your nose and mouth and make you snatch up slice after slice. It is additively delicious.

So in my quest for the ultimate pound cake I combined my two favorites. The dense, richness from the Elvis recipe and the "explode in your mouth" flavors from the Five Flavor recipe.

Here is “Pound Cake Love” ready to go into the oven. I cut the recipe in half and made a it in a single load pan.


Just out of the oven. The sides were a little burnt and tough, but just look at that crunchy, sugary top. No glaze needed here.


In the end I sliced away the overcooked sides and bottom to expose the soft, moist underbelly of the pound cake.


Yumm. I’m in Pound Cake heaven.

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Pound Cake Love

Ingredients:

• 3 cups sugar
• 1/2 lb butter (2 sticks), softened
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 3 cups cake flour, sifted twice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup whipping cream (heavy cream)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon butter extract
• 1 teaspoon coconut extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 teaspoon rum extract (optional)
• 1 teaspoon pineapple extract (optional)

Directions:

• DO NOT preheat the oven, this cake goes into a COLD oven
• Butter and flour a 10 inch tube pan
• Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Sift a second time and set aside.
• In a measuring cup combine the cream and 1 teaspoon of each of the 5 (or 7) extracts.
• Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy (3-5 minutes).
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Mix in half the flour mixture, then the whipping cream, then the other half of the flour mixture.
• Pour into prepared pan.
• Set in COLD over and turn heat to 350 degrees F.
• Bake 60 – 70 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted in the cake comes out almost clean. Do not over bake or it will come out dry, if anything err on the side of undercooked.
• Cool in pan for 5 minutes, and then remove and set on a wire rake to cool completely.

Cream Cheese-Coconut-Pecan Pound Cake

I love pound cake and I adore coconut, so when I found a Southern Living recipe for Cream Cheese-Coconut-Pecan Pound Cake I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

The recipe called for bourbon in the batter, but I substituted it for an equal amount of heavy cream. I know people say that the bourbon intensifies the flavor of the cake, but I just don't care for liquor in my baked goods (no Tortuga rum cakes for me). I also baked the cake in mini loaf pans (7) instead of one large tube pan. The mini loaf pans had two advantages: 1) I could split the batter and make some with coconut and some without (weird family members who hate coconut) and 2) any loaves that remained uneaten by the end of the party could be sent home with guests and thus kept away from my greedy pound cake lovin lips and hips.

Here are the loaf pans waiting to go into the oven. I divided the batter between seven of the eight available wells. I could have used all eight, but I thought that it would make the loaves too flat.

Just out of the oven, puffy, golden brown and oh-so tempting.


Waiting for their bath in shiny glaze.


The original Southern Living article gave two glaze options. One was a plain powdered sugar glaze and the other was a brown sugar-praline glaze. I always go for the more calorie packed option, so I opted for the praline glaze. Here is the glaze cooking on the stove.


After I drizzled the praline glaze over a few of the loaves, I decided I didn't like the way it looked. The glaze looked splotchy and coarse, and it didn't flow like I wanted. Plus it hardened immediately and I didn't have time to smash the coconut into the glaze.


So I whipped up a batch of shiny butter cream icing, and used it instead of the praline glaze. The butter cream stayed soft for a while so I was able to coat the entire thing with coconut flakes. Perfect.


And here are the few slices.


While stuffing my face with pound cake I did noticed that the loaves with coconut in the batter were moister than the loaves without the coconut. Did the coconut help to hold moisture during baking? The loaves were all baked at the same time and the pans were rotated halfway through the baking period, so the only thing different was the coconut.

So don't omit the coconut, without it the finished cake is slightly dry.

If you want a deliciously moist pound cake without coconut and pecans try Elvis Presley's Favorite Whipping Cream Pound Cake. It is one of the best pounds cakes I have ever tried.

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Cream Cheese-Coconut-Pecan Pound Cake
from Southern Living - December 2004, 2008

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
* 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
* 3 cups sugar
* 6 large eggs
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup bourbon (I used heavy whipping cream)
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
* 1/2 cup shredded coconut

Preparation

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a baking sheet, spread pecans in a single layer and bake for 5-7 minutes or until lightly toasted and fragrant. Cool completely.
* Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees.
* Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.
* Gradually add sugar, beating at medium speed until light and fluffy.
* Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until the yellow yolk disappears.
* Sift together flour and salt; add to butter mixture alternately with bourbon (or milk), beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat batter at low speed just until blended after each addition.
* Stir in vanilla, pecans, and coconut. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch/12-cup tube pan. (I used 7 mini loaf pans.)

* Bake at 325° for 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 35 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack. (I baked my mini loaf pans for 35 minutes.)

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Brown Sugar-Praline Glaze
from Southern Living - December 2004, 2008

Ingredients

* 1/4 cup butter
* 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
* 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
* 2 Tablespoons milk
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

* Melt butter in a 1-quart saucepan over medium heat.
* Whisk in brown sugar and corn syrup; cook 1 minute.
* Add powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla; whisk until creamy (about 2 minutes).
* Remove from heat and use immediately.

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Shiny Butter Cream Icing
from Tongue-N-Cheeky

Ingredients

* 2 cups powdered sugar
* 2 Tablespoons butter, melted
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 Tablespoon corn syrup
* 1 teaspoon heavy cream

Preparation

* In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. With an electric mixer, at medium speed, beat until mixed well.
* If thinner consistency is desired, add corn syrup by the teaspoon.