So there I was at 2 am last night when I realized that I had run out of stupid t.v. shows on my DVR, there was nothing on t.v. except talking heads rehashing every last minute of Obama's win and the really bad infomercials that only come out after 1 am. I didn't feel like reading, and I didn't feel like playing a video game and yet I had 3 hours to kill until Chris woke up and I could go to bed. So I did the only thing I could think of, I baked a cake. :)
The recipe comes from my Cake Love book and it has intrigued me the entire time I have owned the book, especially considering that he serves it with a Pecan Crunch Buttercream that looks divine. The problem of course is that to make that divine looking buttercream involves LOTS of time standing over the stove. Even last night when I had plenty of time to spare and not a lot else to do I opted against the buttercream. One day though... Instead I topped the cake with a simple maple flavored powdered sugar glaze that worked really well.
The cake is very much a pound cake. Soft and moist, but also extremely dense with a tight crumb and slightly firm crust. It's not actually all that sweet so I can see why a super sweet buttercream would compliment it, but then again, a simple glaze also lets you enjoy the cake for itself without the flavors getting lost in the frosting. The only thing I really changed about the recipe was to add maple extract to the liquid ingredients -- just to punch up the maple flavor a little bit more. I love maple, and I wanted to taste it in this cake.
Ingredients:
Dry
13 1/2 ounces (2 1/4 cups + 3 tablespoons) all purpose flour
1 tbsp potato starch
1 1/2 tsps vanilla powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsps maple crystals
Liquid:
8 oz (1 cup) sour cream
2 tbsps heavy cream
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup brandy
1 tbsp amaretto
1 tbsp rum
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp maple extract
1 tsp whiskey
Creaming:
2 sticks butter at room temp
2 1/4 cups +1 tbsp sugar
1 vanilla bean
5 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
Glaze:
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp maple extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-3 tsps milk or heavy cream to get the right consistency
Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 12-cup bundt pan with baking spray.
In a medium bowl measure out the dry ingredients and stir to combine. In another medium bowl measure out the liquid ingredients and stir to combine.
In the bowl of a mixer cream the butter and the sugar along with the scraped seeds from the vanilla bean until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, finishing with the egg yolk, mixing for at least one minute after each addition. Make sure everything is light, fluffy and well-mixed.
Add half the flour followed by half the liquid mixture, alternating until it is all incorporated. This should go fairly quickly. Stop mixing as soon as the flour disappears.
Put the cake batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake 45-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the cake looks set.
Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for 10 minutes, then carefully remove the cake from the pan and place on a cooling rack. When the cake has cooled completely, make the glaze.
To make the glaze put all the ingredients but the milk into a bowl and stir well. Add just enough milk to get a glaze that will drizzle on the cake. From the pictures -- it is clear that I have trouble judging this consistency.
3 comments:
wow, that's a lot of liquid ingredients! and potato starch? very interesting! vanilla powder?
most of the Cake Love recipes look like this one. He likes potato starch because you can use less flour and still get the effects of the starch. note that this recipe has a vanilla bean, vanilla powder and vanilla extract in it as well. I think his recipes are overly complicated, but the results are usually pretty good so I go with it. However, his instructions on mixing are incredibly annoying, which is why I wrote them the way I think of them, and not the way the book has them laid out.
i did note that. i thought you should've gone ahead and added some vanilla paste for good measure :)
it also had maple sugar, maple syrup, and maple extract (from you)
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