All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [20]
Gardner (not Garten—it’s easy to get them confused) plays a fictional Spanish sex symbol, who marries the love of her life but remains childless because he’s got an old war wound. Gardner (again, not Garten; let’s not start rumors here) takes a lover and becomes pregnant. But, tragically, her husband kills her and the father of her unborn child.
Hmmm. I think I like this sour cream coffee cake much, much better than the movie.
Many thanks to Ina Garten, who has allowed me to reprint her recipe, originally published in Barefoot Contessa Parties!, with my notes. This is a good opportunity for you to read someone else’s recipe style while applying what you’ve learned so far.
This cake serves between 16 and 20 people.
Argroves Manor Coffee Cake
* * *
YOU’LL NEED
A saucepan
A 10-inch tube pan
FOR THE STEWED FRUIT
¾ cup sugar
½ cup water
½ cup blueberries
1 large apple (Granny Smith if you like bitter, Gala if you like sweet, but NOT Red Delicious!) cored, peeled, and chopped
FOR THE STREUSEL
½ cup all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pats
¾ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup chopped walnuts
FOR THE CAKE
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup vanilla yogurt
From: Quinn O’Toole
Sent: August 24, 2007
To: Melissa Gray
Subject: Cake!
oh - my - god. I love you
from afar.
This cake was the result of a lot of re-caking and a near disaster. I settled on the final version while I was home on leave, recovering from surgery. I sent it in to work and was besieged by a flurry of satiated e-mails later that afternoon.
I’m told it caused a “collective cake-gasm.” I would have liked to have seen that.
Here’s how I came up with this recipe: One New Year’s, at my father-in-law, Bo Argroves’s, house in Greenville, Georgia, I was working on a coffee cake, using my Southern Living cookbook and the ingredients at hand. There was no sour cream or vanilla extract in the house. But Mr. Argroves’s refrigerator was stocked with vanilla yogurt, because that’s usually what I have for breakfast. I used that instead. The cake turned out so well, I couldn’t wait to try it out on the ATC staff when I got back home.
The second time I made it, I got all fancy and added pecans and a little extra yogurt, then baked the cake in a sunflower-shaped cake pan. I was in a rush to get to work, so I didn’t test the cake when I pulled it out of the oven, just took a look at the dark brown crust and thought, “That looks done.” I showered while it cooled, but later, when I went to unmold it, part of the cake stayed behind in the pan.
Disgusted, I headed for the trash can, but that voice in my head piped up, “Pecans are expensive!” Thrift got the better of vanity, so I wrapped up this embarrassment and into work it went.
And the crowd went wild. They could not believe I was going to throw this cake away. They especially loved the moistness and the nuts.
In the final version, I cut back the yogurt to 1 cup, swapped the pecans for the Barefoot Contessa’s streusel (see page 54), and added stewed blueberries and apple to the inside of the cake. I’ve also moved the cake into a tube pan so it bakes all the way through.
Because yogurt is acidic and there’s no additional baking soda in the recipe to neutralize it (remember—there is a little baking soda in baking