I Take the Cake

My Plum Kuchen was a success at church coffee hour.

Gone in 60 seconds!

I actually never got to try it. This violates Julia Child's rule, "Taste the food before you serve it." However I did everything I could to help it along. I got to church a half hour early, went into the empty hall and set up my cake for best results. I picked out a fine purple platter for it, then unfastened the Springform pan, took out the cake and placed it carefully on the platter. Springform are the greatest. They protect your cake in transit and then you can take the cake out of the pan and it is perfect.

Bundt cake pans are overrated. Springform pans are underrated!

Anyway. After placing my cake on the platter I took a knife and cut it carefully into squares. Then, using a spatula, I pushed the pieces carefully together so they would not dry out while Mass was in progress. Then I sprinkled the cake with powdered sugar. Then I sugared it again.

Then I placed the cake at a place on the banquet table where I thought it would be sure to go over big. You want to put it close enough to the center so people have not yet filled up their whole plates and they have room for it.

Finally I photographed the cake. That is it up above!

Because I have made cakes two weeks in a row, I now have momentum going. Next week I will have to make a third cake. What will it be? I am leaning toward a Polish lemon cheesecake. However my brother George might turn up with some other fruit from the Clinton Bailey Market. That drove my choice for the last two weeks and might do so again.

It is almost apple season. That will be fun!

So many coffee hour ideas.

So little time!

My fair share

We are entering the high eating season of the year.

You pass the September Ember Days, and you are into it!

This morning for our St. Anthony's coffee hour I made two pumpkin delicacies. I am sorry if I was jumping the gun a little but I could not help it! I made a pumpkin wreath, one of those big coffee cakes I make with yeast, and I also made a Bundt cake I called Buttercup Rum Cake. There is this amazing recipe, Whiskey Squash Cake, which was the first successful Bundt cake I made a couple of months ago. I riff on it now and this version used rum instead of whiskey, as well as deep orange Buttercup squash.

I assume it was good because it vanished pretty quick!

I have been having a good time with the farm I joined, this CSA. This is the same ol' organic farm I used to belong to, Porter Farms. I just do not remember having as much fun with it then as I have been having this year.

The deal is, they deliver to the office. And so every week, on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, all of us are going downstairs and collecting these bags of produce. It is hard not to smile when you are toting this big bag with collard greens sticking out of it and so it is always a bright and cheery day.

I took the picture up above of one share. That was especially heavy because of the cantaloupe which was like a bowling ball! But it was so sweet and good, worth the long haul across the parking lot.

Here is the share from Sept 7.

I love how the farm says one share does for four people, or for two vegetarians. That Sept. 7 share, I think I ate it pretty much single-handedly in two days! The cantaloupe on the other hand lasted us a week. We ate every bit of it.

This current share included an array of peppers which, I used them for this Mexican cheese soup I made for the coffee hour. The coffee hour sees a lot of the vegetables. A few weeks ago I made yummy white bean soup with greens from the farm.

Bring on the fall eating season.

I am ready!

Cakes... winners and losers

This is the coffee wreath I brought to the St. Anthony's coffee hour this morning.

Despite the fact that I made it kind of on the fly, in between going to a wedding, going to the reception, and taking care of other business. .. it came out well!

The same cannot be said of this week's Bundt cake.

This was a lemon Bundt. Everything was perfect except for it did not come out of the pan. Half of it was in crumbles.

And may I point out this is the second time this Bundt pan has stuck it to me. Third time. This was the pan that soured me on Bundt cakes to begin with, now that I think about it. The cake stuck. Then it stuck again a couple of weeks ago, though not so badly. 

Strike three, you're out! I personally took that pan out to the garbage.

A sorry end to a pan I had greeted with such joy. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe when I made my first cake I scratched it too much or something. Well, whatever.

I panned that pan!

So for now I will stick with the Kugelhopf pan that worked well for me.

As far as the lemon cake, half of it was served at the St. Anthony's coffee hour. It was gone in 60 seconds, rivaled only by these gooey brownies someone brought and the Monsignor's manicotti.

I brought the other half of the cake home and am going to do something with it. Cake pops, perhaps? Bread pudding? I am leaning toward cake pops because I have never made them. Lemon flavored cake pops, yummy!

As a result of the lemon of a cake pan.

The Bundt baker

Last week I made my second Bundt cake for church. The first, a week before that, was a big breakthrough.

I know, Bundt cakes are not supposed to be a huge challenge. However, years ago, I had attempted a Bundt cake, and it had stuck to the pan. I did something with the cake, I made a bread pudding. But I never forgot the outrage.

And I never attempted another Bundt cake. Until just recently. This is the beauty of participating in our church coffee hour, at St. Anthony of Padua Church. I like to make a game out of it and try to do new things.

I made a Whiskey Squash Cake out of a Reader's Digest cookbook I have. It was a recipe I had had my eye on for some time. Whiskey, got to love it. I almost subbed rum because Rum Squash Cake sounds good too, and I am sure it would work. But I had to go with Whiskey.

I baked the cake in my Kugelhopf pan which previously I had used only for yeast breads. Hmmm. Consulting Wikipedia just now I see that Kugelhopf -- well, they say Gugelhopf -- is the original Bundt pan. Nordicware copyrighted the name Bundt in the 1950s and '60s.

Whatever my pan is called, let me tell you, I oiled and floured that pan half to death.

That cake came out with its hands up!

I sugared it up and took this picture.

So, success!!! Drunk on my success I made the cake pictured at the top of this post. It is a Banana Cream Cake. Oh, excuse me, Banana Creme. It has sour cream in it, is the reason for the name.

I used my other Bundt pan for that. Remember that pan? You can make cakes in it from all over the world.

I took the cake to coffee hour. Gone in 60 seconds!!

I never had a bite!

But I can assume it was good. And so forward I will go as the Leonard Pennario of Bundt cake bakers.

Fire up that oven!