All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [0]
A Year’s Worth Of Weekly Recipes Tested, Tasted, and Approved By The Staff Of Npr’s All Things Considered
by Melissa Gray
Photographs by Annabelle Breakey and Stephen Voss
Dedicated to my Momma, FAYE GUNN GRAY
The first person I ever baked with and still my favorite person to bake with
Contents
Foreword
So, You Want to Bake a Cake, Huh?
How to Use This Book
You’ll Need Some Equipment
The Man Catcher—Sour Cream Pound Cake: Your Introduction to Cake Baking
A Word about Pans
How to tell if your cake is done and how to get it out of the pan
True Cake Lore
What’s in That Cake? A Briefing on Ingredients, with Tips
Chapter One
EASY CAKES FOR EARLY ENTHUSIASTS
Brown Sugar Pound Cake: How Come Ya Taste So Good, Now?
Missy G’s Sweet Potato Pound Cake: A Lesson in Re-caking
Key Lime Cake
Travelin’ Cake
Procrastinatin’ Drunken Monkey Banana Bread (New Technique Alert! Plumping Dried Fruit with Rum)
The Barefoot Contessa’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake: Culinary and Cinematic History—All in One Recipe!
Argroves Manor Coffee Cake
Miss Saigon Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake
Dorie Greenspan’s Swedish Visiting Cake (New Technique Alert! Toasting Nuts and Folding)
Dorie Greenspan’s Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes
Of Office Cake and Office Cake Eaters
Gingerbread, Glorious Gingerbread
Gingerbread
ATF Gingerbread
Like, Baking with Chocolate: A Few Things You Should Know
Chocolate Pound Cake
Mary Carole Battle’s Mother’s Wacky Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting: Chocolate Cake with Less Fuss (New Technique Alert! Separating Eggs)
Cocoa Bread with Stewed Yard Peaches
Chapter Two
BRING ME BUNDTS AND BRING ME MORE SPICE AND VICE!
How to bake a drop-dead gorgeous cake with hardly any effort. Plus spice, fruit, and drunken cakes—so very, very, nice!
Gimme Them Purdy Cakes! A Brief History of the Bundt Pan
Tunnel of Fudge Cake
Butter Rum Cake
The Naughty Senator: Peppermint and Chocolate Rum Marble Cake
(New Technique Alert! Marbling)
Paula Deen’s Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake
Coffee Spice Cake
Office Cake Lore
Hey, Lady—Nice Rack! Things you might like to know about what makes little girls so nice
Spanish Meringue Cake (New Technique Alert! Beating Egg Whites)
Honey Spice Cake with Rum Glaze
Holiday Honey Cake: Another Adventure in Re-caking
Araby Spice Cake
Black Walnut Cake: Smells Like a Pancake, but Tastes Like a Cake!
Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting: Smells Like Banana Bread, but Tastes Like Cake!
Fresh Apple Cake: Ah, Yes, This Is Another Family Story
The Fruit Voted “Mr. Popularity”: Baked Apple
Paula Deen’s Grandgirl’s Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia: Coconut Haters Beware—You Might Actually Like This Cake
Peach Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting: Yet Another Score for Those Small-Town, Community Cookbooks!
Faux Fruitcake: A Fruitcake for Those Who Despise Fruitcake
Martha Washington’s Great Cake: The Cake That Launched the Cake Project and This Here Book!
Chapter Three
BREAK FROM CAKE
OH, you’d better believe it happens … The Mistress of Cake Sometimes Gets Sick of Cake
Cowboy Cookies
Peanut Butter Fingers
Oatmeal Cherry Cookies
Salty Oatmeal Cookies
Chewy Butterscotch Bars
Fried Pies
Chapter Four
LAYER CAKES, ANGEL FOOD CAKES, MODERATELY SINFUL CAKES, ALL ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN AND HELL
Welcome to the Fancy-Pants Zone! Hard Hat Required
My Aunt Di
Poor Niece Melissa’s Humble Attempt at Re-creating Aunt Di’s Bittersweet-Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake (New Technique Alert! Unmolding and Dividing Layers, Frosting Layer Cakes)
Whipped Cream Cake
Honey Buttercream and Apricot Jam Cake: Another Option for the Whipped Cream Cake
Coconut/Not Coconut Cake: A Compromise of Congressional Proportions
Alma’s Italian Cream Cake: Yes, It’s Got Coconut in It! And Wanuts!
Sour Cream Spice Cake with Orange Butter Frosting
More Cake Lore
Devil’s Food Cake with Quick Fudge Icing and Raspberry Jam: If You’re Going to Sin, Sin Big
Like, Baking with Chocolate: Part II
Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake: For Those for Whom Plain Red Velvet Cake Is Too Jejune
Triple Chocolate