New York Crumb Cake

I grew up in a suburb of New York City.  It was a lovely place to live.  Just a train ride into the city for all the culture you could ever want but very suburban when you went back home.  New York was the center of the universe.  Bagels like no other, roasted chestnuts on the sidewalks...they definitely have a smell unlike anything else...I don't think I ever actually ate them.  And crumb cake.  Delicious, lovely, buttery crumb cake.  I was blissfully unaware that crumb cake was not available across the universe until I went to college in Indiana.  It appears to be big in NY and the shore towns of South Jersey.  Who knew?  Anyway, there was always Drakes but bakery crumb cake is a thing of beauty.  I have spent the last 30 plus years trying to find a recipe that makes a crumb cake the way I remember it to be. 

It finally happened.  I've tried Martha Stewart, Carole Walter (who has a lovely crumb cake recipe in her book that is fabulous but it's not the NY style one I was looking for but I've made it a bunch and it's really good), various online recipes and then I got a Cakespy email with new posts.  She posted one that came from the Food Maven.  The angels sang, the heavens opened and the recipe was "the one".  I've made it at least 6 times since I got it.  The kids love it, I love it.  You can freeze it.  You can substitute greek yogurt (even the non fat stuff) for sour cream because you don't have any and it's still great.  It has a lot of butter in it.  You've been warned.

New York Crumb Cake
Original Recipe from The Food Maven, adapted slightly from Cakespy
Makes one 9″ by 13″ cake

Ingredients:

Topping:

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 ½ cups packed dark brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (or use salted if that's all you have.  I do it all the time)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting the top (optional)

For the cake

• 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon plus 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup sour cream

For the topping: In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
Mix with the brown sugar. Set aside.In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. When melted, pour on top of the dry mixture. Add the vanilla. Stir with a fork until the mixture comes together to form small crumbs (if you clump it in your hand, it should easily form crumbs). Set the crumb mixture aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Place a rack in the middle of the oven.  Coat a 9″ by 13″ pan with non stick spray.
For the cake:
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or using a hand mixer), cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar, and continue mixing until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes in a stand mixer. Don't skimp on this.  It takes time.  Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed using a rubber spatula.  Add the eggs, one at a time, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl with each addition. Add the vanilla. 

Reduce the mixing speed to low. Add the dry ingredients in three additions, alternately with the sour cream, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Continue scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Blend only until combined. The batter will be thick.  Spoon the batter into the well-greased pan and smooth with a flat rubber spatula.

Now comes the fun part.  Take a handful of the crumbs and break on top of the unbaked cake. Continue, making crumbs of your desired sizes all across the surface of the cake. You need to cover all of the surface with crumbs, or the cake may bubble over the crumb mixture. That is not pretty and nobody wants that piece because it doesn't have the good stuff on it.  Gently pat the crumbs into the batter with your hand or a wooden spoon, but don’t sink them all the way into the batter, just pat them down a little bit.

I hope you don't have a horrible looking hand like I do in this picture.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown on top and begins to shrink from the sides of the pan. Remove from the oven and place the pan on a wire rack to cool. If desired, dust the top with confectioners’ sugar. Once cool or just lightly warm, slice into squares.
Store leftovers, well wrapped, at room temperature for up to 3 days.  It also freezes well.  I wrap the pieces individually and store them in a zip top bag.

The cake was good even if my photography wasn't.  Sorry.

Baked Chocolate Cake (Donuts)

I'll let you in on a secret.  I don't really like donuts.  I know.  I'm apparently crazy.  Someone on my unit owns a Dunkin Donuts and will occasionally leave donuts right outside of my office, which is quite nice, however I never, ever eat them.  There are many reasons for this.  First and foremost they have too many calories and are not enjoyable enough for me to be bothered with.  I could go on forever about the multitude of atrocities that donuts have committed but I'll spare you my rant.  Second, my office door has the credentials "Registered Dietitian" on it which would make me a really bad example.  But I don't even need a second reason.

Anyway, this recipe is called a donut but really it is a cupcake in disguise.  They're cute, they're chocolate and they're from Joy The Baker.  I just like my picture.  I'm a frosting girl at heart so if I want a cupcake, I really want the frosting more than the cake so that's a drawback if you're like me.  These are really nice though and everyone in my house liked them.  Like most donuts, they are best the day you make them.  I'm really selling this recipe.  Don't be like me.

By the way, who decides if they're donuts or doughnuts?  Homer Simpson?  Mr. Dunkin?  I wish I knew.  I'm very open to either spelling.  I pride myself on my open mindedness. 

Maybe you should just go make some and formulate your own opinion.  It'll be fun.

Baked Chocolate Doughnuts with Chocolate Glaze
makes about 6 doughnuts
recipe adapted minimally from Joy The Baker
This is halved from her recipe because I knew I didn't want a lot sitting around and my kids are weird so you never know if they'll eat something or not  (they did).

For the Doughnuts:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted until just browned
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the Chocolate Glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
color jimmies

Preheat oven to 325  degrees F.  Spray a doughnut baking pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and brown sugar.
In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, egg, melted butter, and vanilla extract until thoroughly combined.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold together until all of the ingredients are well combined.  Scrape the bowl well.  Use a small spoon to portion batter into the prepared doughnut baking pan.  Each doughnut mold should be about two-thirds full.  Bake doughnuts for 11 to 13 minutes or until a skewer inserted into one of the doughnuts comes out clean.  Remove from the oven.  Allow to rest for five minutes before inverting doughnuts onto a wire rack to cool completely.  Allow doughnuts to cool completely before glazing.
Repeat the baking process until all of the batter is turned into doughnuts.
To make the glaze, in a medium bowl whisk together powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and salt.  Add 2 tablespoons of milk and all of the vanilla extract.  Whisk to combine.  Mixture may be thick.  Add milk, a teaspoon at a time, until the glaze is thick but still pourable.
Dip each doughnut (I dipped the bottom side) into the chocolate glaze.  Shake off some of the excess glaze.  Return to the wire rack and sprinkle with color jimmies.   Allow to rest a few moments for the frosting to harden slightly. 

Porch Project

 

We have a  lovely wrap around porch on our house.  We had the floor replaced about 6 years ago and it's in desperate need of a coat of polyurethane.  Over the years we've had lots of different porch furniture.  The stuff we inherited from the previous owner which was ugly but comfortable.  The stuff I bought from Restoration Hardware which was really cute punched metal and really went with the house but was incredibly uncomfortable. It was like this.
Finally I got something a little more comfortable from Target a few years ago.  It's holding up well.  It's not my dream furniture but it was affordable and comfortable.  Anyway, my big plan over the very long, cold, snowy winter was to find a piece of furniture that I could use to put stuff on if we have company.  Like a buffet or something.  After scouring Craigslist for many months and not finding much I decided to shop my house and found a bakers rack that I used to use in my old kitchen.  It was sturdy and the perfect size.  I decided to paint it with milk paint.  My initial thought was to use it as a pop of color so I ordered what I thought was coral and a blue/green as a just in case.

It was really, really pink.  It's Miss Mustard Seed Apron Strings.  It's very pretty but it wasn't going to work the way I wanted.  I had also purchased Eulalie's Sky, which is what I ended up using.

Being that I'll never be a blogger, here's the before...which was really sort of on the way to being after but you'll get the idea.  It was just a stained bakers rack, originally all brown!

                            

This is what it looks like after.  


I really like it although I have to admit that I did not love working with milk paint.  This was the first time I used it and I found it very difficult to mix.  I'm sure I'll use it again sometime but it's not the easiest thing to put on a piece of furniture.  I used it with a bonding agent and it still chipped more than I would have liked.  It just gives it a rustic look so it's all fine.

Here's what it looks like in action (or inaction as the case may be).

I like it.  Of course we didn't end up doing a lot of entertaining so I only used it with stuff on it but it'll be good for the future entertaining I'm sure to do next summer.  Yup.  Next summer.

The Non Blogger

I'm fairly sure I'll never be a real blogger.  I can't seem to plan that far ahead.  I don't want to have Halloween in September or Thanksgiving in October.  I don't want pumpkin desserts and holiday decorations until the season is upon me.  Same goes for Christmas.  I lament the fact that it's Christmas in the store as soon as the Halloween candy is gone. Plus, I just haven't been able to get my act together to actually post the cute things I've made.  Anyway, here are a few from over the past months.

Yes, it's March, I know. 

I had great plans for Dr. Seuss's birthday but I ended up decorating a door for Frank and not doing any cute treats.  He had a student leave the Friday before and I made brownies and cookies so they could throw her a little going away party so he didn't want more sugar in the classroom which makes sense I guess.

It's almost St. Patrick's day and I haven't made anything green yet.  You never know.  It could happen but it won't be timely.  Maybe I'll surprise myself.