Monday, March 17, 2008

East-West Spice Cake with Cardamom Cream


This is the other recipe that I made for the Asian night last Saturday. Chris has actually been looking forward to trying this recipe for quite some time, but it kept getting bumped off the list by other recipes. It had actually gotten bumped once again in favor of the Sweet Potato Pound Cake, but at the last minute I decided I had the time and energy to put this cake together for the gathering as well.

The recipe comes from the book Blue Ginger which is a Food Network/Ming Tsai book that Chris has had for a while now. Chris made the lemon-grass ice cream last summer and it was very refreshing and different. I thought this cake might be similar to the Indonesian Spice Cake I made for a slightly different Asian food night gathering, but that cake was fairly light and airy compared to these dark & rich little cakes.

The book calls to have them baked in 8 4-oz ramekins for mini-cakes but I don't have that many ramekins. I could have made one 8-inch round cake instead, but I opted to use the mini-bundt pan that I had never used. I only ended up with 4 mini-bundts, but I think I should have had at least 5 considering that I overfilled all 4 of the pans.

The cakes were super moist, and baked for a lot longer than I expected. I checked them after 35 minutes, but they stayed in there about 50 minutes. I thought they were good, but I also thought the ginger flavor got lost a bit with the molasses which is too bad. The cardamom cream was quite good and paired nicely with the cake, but it was incredibly rich and a little went a long way.



Ingredients:

2/3 cup cake flour
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup minced candied ginger
1/2 cup water

Cream:
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom

Preheat oven to 300. In a medium bowl, combing the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper and stir to blend.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, egg, oil, molasses, and ginger. Using an electric mixer set at medium speed, beat the mixture until well blended. With the machine running, add the water and mix to incorporate.

Remove the bowl from the machine and fold in the dry ingredients by hand until well incorporated. Spray eight 4-oz ramekins or a round 8 -to -10 inch cake pan with nonstick cooking spray and fill with the batter. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the middle of the individual cakes comes out clean 20 to 25 minutes. If using the cake pan, bake 30 to 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the cream. In a chilled bowl, combine the cream, brown sugar, and cardamom and whip until stiff peaks form. Refrigerate.

To serve, allow the cakes to cool to room temp (or serve them warm) and unmold onto 8 serving plates. Serve with cream.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woot! Both were excellent! Even my dad, who has to generally avoid the sweets cuz of diabetes, was totally going back for thirds and fourths (after we got home)! Thanks for the goodies to accompany chris' and jolene's and mira's excellent foodstuffs!

Anonymous said...

oy, i'm so sorry i missed this :(

Anonymous said...

i still have some. i'll bring it in tomorrow for ya.