All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [36]
NEW TECHNIQUE
MARBLING
OK, remember the basics of folding from our Swedish Visiting Cake on page 62? You’re going to lightly fold your batter in the pan in order to get that marble effect, but you’re not going to fully fold the ingredients together. Here’s how:
Take a small spatula or plastic knife and cut through the middle of the batter ring to the bottom of the pan. Bring the spatula or plastic knife toward you and then up toward the side of the pan. Rotate the cake pan with your other hand and repeat. You’ll do 2 rotations total. No more.
13. Bake for 1 hour. When the cake tests done, cool for 15 to 30 minutes in the pan, then unmold onto a cake rack.
VARIATIONS
For a different flavor combination, you can keep half of the batter chocolate, without the rum, and flavor the other half with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract OR 1 teaspoon of almond extract OR 1 teaspoon of cherry extract, instead of the peppermint.
Oh, but you WANT more rum? Grab that recipe for butter rum glaze on page 91, mix, and drizzle away.
Paula Deen’s Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake
* * *
YOU’ll NEED
A 12-cup Bundt or 10-inch tube pan
1 cup sliced almonds
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups sugar
1 cup sour cream
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
6 large eggs
½ teaspoon orange extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
1. Center a rack and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare the pan.
2. While the oven is preheating, spread out the almonds in a shallow baking pan and toast for 3 minutes. Remove from the oven, toss the almonds in the pan, then return to the oven for 3 more minutes.
3. Cream the butter with the mixer on medium speed and gradually add the sugar. Add the sour cream and beat until smooth.
4. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flour and baking soda together.
5. Add ½ cup of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and beat until blended. Add 1 egg, then beat until blended. Repeat until all of the flour mixture and eggs are mixed in.
6. Add the orange extract and almond extract and beat until blended into the batter.
7. Using a wooden spoon or spatula, fold in the toasted almonds.
8. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until the cake tests done.
9. Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes. If it’s in a decorative Bundt pan and has a domed top (which will be the bottom of the cake), use a long serrated knife to level it. Unmold and allow to cool completely on a cake rack.
10. Dust lightly with confectioners’ sugar.
Paula Deen puts my husband’s salivary glands into overdrive. He loves her madly. She’s old enough to be his momma, but he does not care. She’s a Southern cook, an unapologetic Ms. Butter-and-Cream who says, “If you want low-fat fare, get out of my kitchen.” But you’d stay put because she’s so down-to-earth on her cooking shows. Jimmy and I like to add running commentary: “Here comes the butter!” “I bet she uses shortening next.” “She’s about to lick that whipped cream right off her fingers!” “There goes a scrap for the dog!”
Paula has one of those rags-to-riches stories: Both parents died by the time she was twenty-three, she married young, then divorced young. To support herself and her kids, she started a catering business, selling bag lunches to workers in Savannah. She opened her first restaurant there, the Lady and Sons, in 1996, then self-published her first cookbooks. By 2002, she had her own cooking show on the Food Network, Paula’s Home Cooking.
I first heard of Paula Deen in 2003, shortly after Jimmy and I married. He was downstairs watching TV, homesick for Deep Southern cooking. Then Paula’s show came on. “Oh my god! She’s using PIG!” he cried. He became progressively more homesick as he watched Paula fry up bacon and then stir up corn bread in a skillet. Paula Deen’s show became a regular event in our house until Jimmy got somewhat used to living in the DC ‘burbs.
The last time Jimmy, his dad, his brother, and I were in Savannah, we tried to get a meal