All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [38]
To me, this cake is reminiscent of gingerbread, but the office foodies say it has a more complex taste, thanks to the coffee, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, in addition to the ginger, molasses, and brown sugar. The cake flour gives it a light and very delicate crumb. I bake it in a Bundt pan and sprinkle coarse sugar over it (see picture on page 84) because it reminds me of Christmas ginger cookies. But you can also dust it with confectioners’ sugar.
This cake has a more delicate crumb and doesn’t slice thinly, so it will serve anywhere from 16 to 24 people.
FOR THE CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE (SEE TIP)
* * *
YOU’LL NEED
Two 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
1½ cups (about 1 small can) sweetened condensed milk
2 tablespoons cold strong coffee
Tip: Here’s where the essence of mocha Frappuccino comes in.
TO REMAKE THE CAKE
1. In hopes of getting a richer, moister crumb, I ditched the ¾ cup of shortening and used 1½ sticks (¾ cup) of unsalted butter instead. This did make the crumb moister, but it was still rather delicate. I also ditched the ginger completely. Because I wanted to do a chocolate drizzle on the cake, I opted to use a Bundt pan that has a lot of vertical ridges in it: vertical ridges = more places for the chocolate to run into and stick.
Follow the main recipe to bake and cool the cake, making the above adjustments.
2. In the top of a double boiler (or an improvised one), melt the unsweetened chocolate over water at a medium boil until smooth.
3. Add the sweetened condensed milk. Stir until fully incorporated, and continue stirring for about 5 minutes, until the mixture has thickened. Then add the coffee.
4. Remove from the heat and stir occasionally until it’s time to drizzle over the cooled cake.
5. Use a teaspoon or a soup spoon and let your inner Jackson Pollock take over to the extent that your inner Martha Stewart doesn’t freak out about the kitchen mess. If the drizzle has solizzled (that’s Snoop Dogg for “solidified”), just get a medium boil going again and stir until the mixture is smooth.
Office Cake Lore
Jonathan “Smokey” Baer has been with All Things Considered for thirty years. Some might say he’s eaten his way through thirty years of ATC, such is his reputation as an office grazer. Every office has one or two: wherever there’s food, there they are. Yet, Smokey is remarkably fit, younger looking than his fifty-plus years. And he has a discriminating palate.
“This cake is not one of your best cakes” he’ll tell me on his first bite. “I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it’s not one of your best.” He chews, “the crumb is a little too dry”; he swallows, “and I hate nuts”; he cuts another slice, “but can see how some people might like this cake”; he licks his fingers, “nice frosting, though.”
Thanks, Smokes! I know you critique with love.
As much as he likes to eat, he also likes to bake, which is how I roped Smokey into making a cake for the staff when I was on vacation.
There I was, enjoying myself in sunny Florida when my BlackBerry started buzzing. I got not one, not two, not three, but four e-mails from colleagues about the event we all now refer to as Smokey’s Tragedy. He had baked the Coffee Spice Cake (it’s his favorite), and happily brought it in to share (Good boy, Smokey), but as he was holding his cake carry aloft at his cubicle, trying to unsnap it to get to the cake, the entire bottom, cake and all, tumbled to the floor. “It had a little more fiber in it”, he told me later, grinning, “carpet fiber.” Apparently most of the staff followed the five-second rule and passed on partaking, but not Smokey: “It was ugly, but it was still very, very good”, he noted later, with a Cheshire cat-like grin.
Hey, Lady—
Nice Rack!
THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT MAKES LITTLE GIRLS SO NICE
I hate it when someone asks me a question and I don’t know the answer. Like when I’ve made a cake and I’m telling someone what’s in it and he says “Mace? What’s mace? Where do you get that?” And I answer, “From my spice rack.”
While that’s TRUE, it’s not