I love creaming butter
and sugar, cracking the eggs on side of the mixer bowl. I love the smell of vanilla rising in the
kitchen. I love licking the beaters. I love sneaking peaks at the cake baking in
the oven. I love frosting the cake,
making swirls on the top. I love
cutting the first slice. And I love
sharing cake with friends and family.
Consider me a cake evangelist.
If you aren't already a cake lover and a cake baker, I hope I can
convert you with some of my favorite cake recipes.
Important note
about cake pans- these
are almost all layer cakes, which requires at least 2 round cake pans. Size is less important than having the cake
pans match. Some of the recipes refer
to odd-size cake pans. I've always been
fine using regular 9" X 2" rounds.
However, there are a few recipes that require special bakeware such as a
springform pan or soufflé cups.
5 star cakes
These are truly
impressive cakes, and most take a fair amount of work, but it's a labour of
love.
Old fashioned chocolate cake
How can you resist one of
Martha's favorite cakes? This is truly
a cake people will talk about long after the party's over.
Martha makes this as a
6-layer cake, but it is just as impressive as a 4-layer cake. Skip the trip to William Sonoma for new
8" X 3" cake pans- use your regular old cake pans, then cut each cake
in half. The cake itself is not
difficult to make, but note that it requires almost a dozen egg whites. You might consider buying a container or two
of egg whites to save yourself a lot of cracking (note that a large egg white
measures around 2T). If you do use
regular eggs, be sure to separate each egg white into a small bowl, then
transfer to a larger bowl. That way, if
you accidentally puncture the yolk, you'll only be wasting one egg, not a whole
bunch.
The companion to this cake
recipe is Mrs. Milman's frosting. Damn,
this is good frosting! Kind of ruins
you for any other kind of frosting, actually.
But it's very time-consuming.
I'd say 2 hours is the bare minimum time for babysitting this
frosting. After doing the chill-stir
routine for a while, you might want to stick the bowl of frosting in a slightly
larger bowl with ice in the bottom. This
will thicken it up much faster, but you have to keep an eye on it and stir it
more frequently to avoid it crusting up around the edges.
Word
format version- includes cake and frosting recipes
recipes online at
marthastewart.com: cake
| frosting
1-2-3-4 lemon cake
This is a truly fabulous
cake- wonderful tasting and elegant too.
It combines the zest and richness of lemon curd with a moist white
cake. Top with whipped cream, a light
dusting of powdered sugar, and fresh summer berries. Not a difficult cake, but somewhat time-consuming since you also
have to make lemon curd. Be sure to
make the lemon curd before the cake because it needs to chill a minimum of one
hour before you start assembling the cake.
Word
format version- includes cake, lemon curd, and whipped cream recipes
recipes online at
marthastewart.com: cake
| lemon
curd | whipped
cream
Flourless chocolate
espresso cake with raspberry sauce
This cake is a silky
delight, and the raspberry sauce goes well with it. Pretty easy to make too, but be sure to make it the day before-
this baby needs to chill overnight.
Also, you need to bake this
in a water bath like a souffle. A huge
roasting pan is best for this. Try folding a kitchen towel and laying it in the
bottom of the pan; this will keep the cake pan from shifting around when you
move the roasting pan in and out of the oven.
This recipe makes way too
much batter. Last time I made it, I
ended up getting 2 9" X 2" cakes out of it. But having extra of this cake is not exactly a hardship.
recipe online at epicurious.com. Epicurious.com is a great website run by
Conde Nast, the folks that publish Gourmet and Bon Appetit. It has a massive number of recipes from 10+
years of both magazines online.
Additionally, people post comments about how the recipe turned out for
them, with suggestions for variations on the recipe. It's my number one resource for online recipes.
Lemon sponge custard
Yum, these are heavenly
little desserts, half cake, half hot lemon curd, gobbled down in about a
minute. The accompanying raspberry
sauce recipe is the best one I've tried, and it's very versatile, so you might
want to keep it in mind for other desserts.
I think this recipe is best
made in individual ramekins rather than a souffle dish. They also need baked in a water bath, and
the towel trick mentioned above is even handier for ramekins. If you don't have ramekins, you can use any
small ovenproof containers.
These are beautifully served
turned out onto a small plate or bowl and drizzled with raspberry sauce.
Carrot cake with orange
cream cheese frosting
This is another truly great
cake, and the frosting, with its hint of orange and ginger, is inspired. Skip the ridiculous candied carrot
strips. For an elegant touch, toast
about 10-12 perfect pecan halves, allow them to cool, then arrange them on the
top outer edge of the cake. It helps to
have a food processor for all the grating in this recipe- if you don't, try to
draft a helper.
Word
format version- includes cake and frosting recipes
recipes online at
marthastewart.com:
Pumpkin cake with brown
butter icing
It doesn't look like much,
but this is a delicious alternative to a traditional spice cake or a pumpkin
pie. The frosting is sweet, but thin
enough not to overwhelm. I like this
cake more every time I make it. And
it's easy to make- you don't even have to worry about burning the butter!
recipes online at
marthastewart.com: cake
| frosting
4 star cakes
These cakes didn't quite
make it onto my Top 5 list, but they are still impressive and well-suited to
dinner parties.
Strawberry rhubarb
courting cake
The only thing that keeps
this cake from being a five star cake is that leftovers tend to get soggy. But, it's an impressive cake all the
same. It's an old-fashioned kind of
cake, with a strawberry rhubarb compote sandwiched between dense cake
layers. Excellent topped with whipped
cream laced with a little vanilla and nutmeg.
recipe online at
Epicurious.com
Lemon Chiffon cake
This is a light, wonderful
cake that would be equally at home at a summer picnic or a dinner party. Chiffon cakes are similar to angel cakes,
but without the tang.
It requires a special tube
cake pan, designed for angel food and chiffon cakes. It is also best made with cake flour rather than general purpose
flour.
Maple Layer cake
This cake is a little too
sweet for me and requires $20 worth of maple syrup, but it is a lovely
cake. Very pretty and with a
buttercream frosting to die for.
recipes online at
marthastewart.com:
cake
| frosting (sorry the frosting recipe's gone AWOL)
Winter cranberry and pear
upside down cake
This cake is a nice twist on
the traditional pineapple upside down cake.
One of Laura's favorites, it is very fragrant and pretty. Requires a little extra time because of the
fruit preparation.
Brownie cupcakes
These cupcakes are strictly
for professional chocoholics. They call
for the same Mrs. Milman's chocolate frosting as Martha's favorite cake
(above), which is incredible but very time-consuming. My suggestion: skip the frosting on the cupcakes; they'll still
be great and no one will succumb to chocolate poisoning.
recipes online at
marthastewart.com: cake
| frosting
Mint chocolate chip cake
Who doesn't love an ice
cream cake? I only loosely based my
cake on the following recipe. For one
thing, I used a store bought cake mix and only 1 kind of mint ice cream- I know,
pretty trashy, huh… Martha's probably rolling over in her jail cell right
now. The only difficult thing about
this cake is dealing with the ice cream, which is invariably too hard or
starting to melt. Liberal use of both
your hands and the microwave is recommended.
Very time consuming because you have to freeze one layer a while before
adding on the next, but I think you can skimp a little on the between-layer
freezings as long as you give it a final long freeze (and don't mind a bit of a
mess). I also didn't bother trimming my
cake into a square- I left the round cake layers as is.
recipe
online at marthastewart.com
Comfort cakes
These are the kind of
cakes you want after the end of a long day at work- the cakey equivalent of a foot massage or a nice
long soak in the tub. Make them for
yourself or company.
Warm chocolate raspberry
pudding cake
This is one of my new
favorite cakes. It's a good last-minute
kind of cake because it's served warm and you don't need to frost it. The "pudding" is really a thick
sauce of bittersweet chocolate, raspberry jam, and cream that you pour into the
pan before the cake batter. Ah,
wonderful and messy.
recipe online at
epicurious.com
Chocolate bundt cake
Laura thinks this might be
the best chocolate cake ever, which certainly was Cooks' Illustrated magazine's
intention. It manages to be light and
rich at the same time, and it goes great with homemade raspberry sorbet. The secret ingredient: sour cream. It's pretty quick and easy to make too.
Dutch baby pancake
All right, so this one is
not technically a cake, but I couldn't resist sharing it anyway. It's is a great brunch item, though I would
confess to occasionally having it for dinner.
This recipe is even more amazing with strawberries, peaches or other
fruit. Just cut down on the honey if
you're using sweeter fruit. We also
tend to use 2 or 3 peaches instead of one and substitute cinnamon for
cardamom.
If you don't have a cast
iron skillet, a thick-bottomed stainless steel skillet works fine, or you can
transfer your sauteed fruit from skillet to buttered baking/casserole dish for
oven.
Page modified by Amy on 5-12-04.