Last-Minute Berry Trifle

Happy Fourth of July! I went for a run this morning in the mountains near my house and spent the time thinking about how blessed I feel to live in such a beautiful land. Even when the trail is full of annoying mountain bikers. Even when I kept slipping off the rocks and getting soaked in creek crossings. Even though it was 90 degrees at 8am. Even still...what a place.

We're getting together with friends tonight and doing the fireworks thing--I hope you are too! I'm not doing dessert today, but yesterday I did whip up a quick Fourth-themed dessert. We were spontaneously invited to a friend's house for dinner, and when I asked what I could bring, they requested something sweet. Um...I have no problem with that. I had about an hour and a half to make it before we had to be over there for dinner, and in that time I made and baked the cake, cooled it, and assembled the trifle. If you use a cake mix the process will be even faster, but if you have the time (just 90 minutes!) the white chocolate-buttermilk cake recipe I used is ever so much better than a mix.

(No glamour shots of this one--this was snapped as we ran out the door!)

Trifles are one of my favorite desserts, because I LOVE moist cake. Love it. So having a dessert that basically involves soaking cake in whipped cream or curd or pastry cream or juicy berries is my idea of heaven. Plus they're infinitely customizable, and pretty low-maintenance to make. If you can throw things in a bowl, you can make trifle.

This is probably too late for anyone to make this for the Fourth of July, but summer's just beginning, and berry trifles are the perfect vehicle to show off all that amazing summer produce. So Happy Birthday, America, and happy trifling, everyone else.


Best Berry Trifle

1 recipe white cake, baked in a half-sheet pan (see below for my favorite recipe)
2 cups whipped cream
1/4 cup sugar
vanilla extract or vanilla pods
4 cups mixed berries of your choice
White chocolate bar, to garnish (optional)

To assemble the trifle, make sure the cake is completely cool. Chill a mixing bowl and beaters in the fridge for 15 minutes. While you're waiting for the mixing bowl to chill, chop your berries and toss them with a tablespoon or two of sugar (or more if the berries are very tart.) Let them sit and get juicy.

Whip the cream with 2 tbsp of sugar until it forms medium peaks. As you're whipping it, add vanilla extract or the seeds of a vanilla bean to flavor it. Cut the cake into cubes or strips, and place a layer of cake cubes on the bottom of a clear glass bowl. Top with a third of the whipped cream and half of the berries. Add more cake, top with half of the remaining cream and the second half of the berries. Now add a third layer of cake and cover it with the rest of the whipped cream.

Top your trifle with whole berries arranged in a pattern. If you want to make chocolate curls, take a white chocolate bar and make sure it's slightly soft. Just sitting in a warm room should be enough, or if you need to, microwave it at 50% power in short 5-second bursts just until it softens a bit. Use a vegetable peeler along the sides of the bar to form curls out of the chocolate. Refrigerate the trifle until ready to serve. It can be made up to 24 hours in advance.

White Chocolate-Buttermilk Cake
From Sherry Yard’s Desserts by the Yard

2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon slat
3 ounces white chocolate
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk


Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350F. Spray a 12 x 17" half sheet pan with pan spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Spray the parchment.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.

Melt the white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl at 50% power for about 2 minutes, stirring halfway through. Be careful — white chocolate burns easily. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the butter with 1 1/2 cups of the sugar on high speed for 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beaters and beat for 3 minutes more, until the mixture is light and creamy. Whisk 2 tablespoons of the whipped butter into the melted white chocolate until blended. Scrape this mixture back into the butter and beat on low speed until well blended. Add the egg yolks in 2 additions, scraping the bowl and beaters after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

On low speed, alternating wet and dry ingredients, add the buttermilk and flour mixture in 4 additions, beginning with the buttermilk and ending with the flour. Scrape down the bowl.

In a large, clean bowl, and with clean beaters, beat the egg whites on medium speed until they form soft peaks. Slowly add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar, continuing to beat at medium speed. Beat until the egg whites form stiff, glossy peaks. Fold half the egg whites into the cake batter, then gently fold in the rest.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth into an even layer with an offset spatula. Bake, rotating the pans from front to back half way through, until golden brown and firm to the touch, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

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TWD: Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

Back in my pre-blogging days, when I was a young idealistic lass, I thought that when I had a food blog, I would bake yummy foods and take pictures of them and write about how yummy they were. My eyes sparkled with naivete and hope.

Ah, foolish youth.

Instead, what I mainly write about is bundt cakes, and my lack of success with unmolding them. Seriously.

For reals.

I'm not kidding.

This happens all the time.

It's kind of a problem.

I got a new bundt pan and the past few attempts have gone swimmingly. I was confident--cocky, even!--that my days of bad bundts were behind me. Smoooooth sailing ahead. You see where this is going?




Weeping. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth.

Honestly, I'm not so young anymore. I don't know that I can take the heartbreak and the emotional rollercoaster of baking bundt cakes. It's exhausting. I'm happy--the batter tastes good! The bundt cake looks beautiful! What could possibly go wrong?! And then--DISASTER. Someone cover this cracked mess with powdered sugar, stat.

I am willing to accept some blame. Maybe the cake was a little underbaked, maybe I should have waited a little longer to unmold it. Perhaps. But maybe it's just a sign from the universe that I should never, no never, no NEVER make bundt cakes again.

Word.


Well, this was a pretty good cake to go out on. I nixed the fruit options and instead used ground pecans in the batter, and added mini chocolate chips and toasted pecan chunks as mix-ins. It was nice and moist, although perhaps I should have kept in some fruit for a bit more texture. But it makes a nice, low-key tea cake, assuming you don't have a conniption fit upon trying to unmold it like I did.

Want to try your luck at bundt roulette and make this cake? Peggy has the recipe and some lovely pictures over at her blog, Pantry Revistited.

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TWD: Nutty Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake

I'm a little late posting this amazing bundt cake I made over the weekend, but I have a good excuse. Her name is Madeline, and she is verrrrrry distracting.

My niece is visiting for a few days, and we've had a swell time getting to know each other better. Madeline's likes include Olivia the Piglet, swinging, knocking down her wooden giraffe, and playing hide-and-seek. Her dislikes include going to bed on time, sun in her eyes, dirty hands, and, until recently, my baking.

I know. I KNOW. The last time I baked for her, I made a mini cake for her 1-year birthday. This was pretty much the reaction I got. Completely underwhelmed. So of course I was anxious to make a good impression this time around.
I brought out a secret weapon: a rich chocolate ganache glaze atop the cake, with more available to serve on the side.

I also tried to be generous with the flavors, using brown sugar, lots of bittersweet chocolate chunks, and fresh-grated cinnamon in the bundt's swirly layers. After all, 20-month olds are well known to have finely developed palates.


I think my strategy worked, because all of us--toddler included--loved this cake! This is the second Dorie bundt cake the has completely blown me away (the first being the Double Apple Bundt Cake).

It was rich, it was moist, it was flavorful, with the tang of sour cream and orange zest, and the thick swirl of chocolate, brown sugar, and cinnamon. This is a cake dainty enough to be served in small slices with tea, but delicious enough to be eaten out of the hand standing over the sink. Not that I would know that from experience.

This is a keeper and a make-again (and again, and again) for sure. In fact, I might be making it sooner rather than later, because her highness was none too pleased to find out the cake's completely eaten:

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TWD: Double Apple Bundt Cake, Drenched in Deliciousness

If you were around these parts for last week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, you may recall some apple-pickin' shenanigans that resulted in a half-bushel of apples taking up residence in my kitchen. Yes, my friends, they are still with us. [looks guiltily in the direction of the kitchen, overflowing with apples] Fortunately I've had a few more opportunities to bake with them, including this week's stellar recipe, Double Apple Bundt Cake.


This was actually the second apple bundt cake I've made in a week. The first was a variation on the Paris Hilton of internet apple cake recipes (surely that is a real category?), Mom's Apple Cake from Smitten Kitchen. Friends, I was not impressed. That particular cake has garnered over 500 fawning comments but I think Dorie's apple cake is much, much better. Maybe the Smitten Kitchen cake is not meant to be a bundt. I do not know. What I DO know is that I'm bummed I brought that gross cake to a potluck earlier this week instead of this other, far superior one! Superior, you say? Superior, indeed:


If you are wondering why my apple bundt cake looks drenched in deliciousness, it's because I made a brown sugar frosting for it. You might think the cake is moist enough, tasty enough, flavorful enough, sweet enough on its own, and it does not need a brown sugar frosting. You would be wrong. Fact: there is no apple cake that cannot be improved by a brown sugar frosting.

Especially a frosting that is thick and fudgy, with caramelized brown sugar notes, a hint of vanilla and maple, and a punch of salt in every bite. No, really. Check out this salt:


I didn't use salt in the frosting itself, but I sprinkled a large-grained sea salt liberally on top of the frosting. I wanted not just the flavor, but the texture of the salt to come through. I'm in love with this flaky sea salt and the way it pops in your mouth. I think a noticeable hit of salt is so necessary, especially in a dessert like this that could easily tip into the cloyingly sweet category.


I used my new favorite thing, Maldon Sea Salt. It's a great all-purpose large-flake sea salt that is perfect for finishing dishes (salted caramels, anyone?) because it keeps its texture well and crunches in the mouth. It's not wet (those moist sea salts creep me out) and it's reasonably priced--I got mine for about $6 total from saltworks. (I have no relationship with them at all, I just thought it was a monster steal and I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!)

Another exciting product going into this cake?


Okay, so fresh nutmeg is not exactly breaking news. BUT did you know you can buy it super-cheap at Cost Plus? 99 cents for about 8 nutmegs! (...nutmeg nuts? nutmeg megs? nutmeg seed pods? What do you call those??) Thus concludes today's Cheap Ingredient Shopping with Liz segment. Next week: vanilla pods on ebay!


So yes, if you were able to read between the lines of my product-bedazzled ramblings, this cake was phenomenal. I loved the way the grated apples melted into the cake, the extra apple kick from the apple butter, and the way it stayed so moist and flavorful day after day. It seems to keep getting better the longer it sits on the counter. I used plump dried cranberries and cinnamon pecans in the cake, and both of those were wonderful additions as well. I know I can sometimes be harsh on recipes (it's only because I love!) but I truly can't imagine improving on this.

The recipe will be posted on Lynne of Honey Muffin's blog, and the brown sugar frosting recipe is below.





Brown Sugar Frosting
Adapted from King Arthur Flour's brown sugar frosting

5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces) butter
1/2 cup (3 1/4 ounces) firmly packed brown sugar (light or dark)
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) cream
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 tsp maple extract
hefty pinch of salt

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the sugar melts. It might look separated, but that's okay. Stir in the cream, and it should all come together. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it into a mixing bowl to cool for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, stir in the confectioners' sugar, salt, maple extract, and vanilla. Beat well--I beat for about 30-45 seconds. If the mixture appears too thin, add more confectioners' sugar, if it's too thick, add a spoonful of hot water. Be aware that it sets up QUICKLY. Pour it over the cake while it's still warm. Know that it's hard to go back and correct mistakes because it starts setting and crusting soon after being poured, so one option is to put it in a large Ziploc bag and cut off a corner. Pipe the frosting over the top so it drips down where you want it to. Sprinkle any toppings on right away.

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Things I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging Here

I have to tell you a secret, but you have to promise to not get mad. The truth is, I make a lot of things that I never get around to blogging about. I know, shocking. It's not that they're not good, or that the photos didn't turn out, it's just that the act of baking and photographing is so much easier for me to fit into my day than the work of blog writing. I suspect this is a problem many of us have. It is something I'm working on--or, more realistically, something I'm hoping to plan on intending to work on--but in the meantime, I wanted to share some other fun things I've been doing around these here internets that haven't made it onto Cake or Death.

Honey cake for Rosh Hashanah

Okay, so the holiday technically started last night, but it's not too late to make honey cake! This one is moist and really flavorful, with lots of spices. I put together this recipe for the Oh Nuts blog, and you can find it on their site with lots of step-by-step pictures.

Deep-Fried Candy Bars Video

I've started making lots of video tutorials for About.com, and these are one of my favorites. You can practically smell the oil frying when you watch it. I did deep-fried candy bars and deep-fried Oreos on the same day, but in my opinion, the candy bars are waaaay better. I still have to try Twinkies, though! Anyone here done those yet?

Candy Sushi Video

Another video recipe for About. The trickiest thing about this, no lie, is finding green fruit roll-ups. I'm beginning to think the market's fixed, because every grocery store I visited was full of tie-dyed and rainbow and stamped roll-ups, but finding plain colored ones was ridiculously difficult. As soon as I get my personal blogging sorted out, I'm going to write an expose blowing the lid off the fruit roll-up industry.

Banana Split Truffles Tutorial

No video recipe here, just a good old-fashioned photo tutorial showing how to make these adorable banana split truffles. The filling is a banana-white chocolate ganache, and then the dipped truffles are decorated to look like the world's cutest army of mini ice cream sundaes. This decorating technique is also perfect for banana cupcakes: just use an ice cream scoop to top them with a scoop of buttercream, and drizzle them with chocolate ganache and all the fixin's.

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The Ballad of A Bad Bundt Pan

This week's TWD recipe was Marbled Mocha-Walnut Bundt Cake. Another bundt cake? You know what this means:

Liz vs. Her Bundt Pan: Ultimate Death Match VI: Bake-Off Boogaloo

Remember last week when I made that Coconut Tea Cake in the bundt pan, and I whined about how my "nonstick" bundt pan was no such thing? Well, dear Leslie suggested that I coat it with shortening, then nonstick cooking spray, then flour. Aha, I thought to myself, not one, not two, but THREE elements that prohibit stickiness! This plan cannot fail!

Any guesses as to what happened next?

Bundt pan: 6 (or 7, I've lost count by now) Liz: 0

Look at it there, smirking at me with its stupid smirky bundt face.

Now, I'm no bundt technician. I didn't major in Bundt Studies in college (choosing instead the only slightly more helpful American Studies, ah, the liberal arts! Producing bitter temp workers by the thousands) but I am sort of a ninja when it comes to covering up my kitchen mistakes. So I got crafty with a soft plastic knife, and ever so delicately massaged the remaining cake back together in an approximation of its original shape.


I had originally made a chocolate sauce to serve alongside the cake, but once I saw the sorry state of this bundt, I knew there needed to be a more drastic cover-up. Fortunately, the sauce I made was Sherry Yard's 10-Year Chocolate Sauce*, which actually works moderately well as a poured icing, so I heated it until it was very liquid and poured it over the cake. Success! No one would ever know what horrors lurk beneath.

*Please make this sauce. It is outrageous. A wonderful texture, and a great tangy taste (I used sour cream in place of creme fraiche.) It was a bit thick to pour, but if the cream was increased by a few tbsps it'd be perfect. Or you could omit the cream to thicken it and have an awesome spreadable frosting. Love.

A word of strategy if you're ever in the same situation: put the cake on a cardboard round! It was way too unstable to handle the glazing and transferring to a serving platter, so I scooted a round underneath it and trimmed it at an angle so the cake hung slightly over the edge. You can't even tell from the pictures. See, what'd I tell you? Ninja.


To complete the deception, I piled the bundt high with fresh farmer's market strawberries and candied walnuts. I actually put a shot glass in the center of the cake and then just put berries on top for the photo, so there weren't strawberries piled all the way down into the center. It's an illusion. Also, I'm not sure why I'm suddenly compelled to unburden all of my deep dark baking and photographing secrets. Maybe I shouldn't have had that Truthiness Tonic at lunch.


I didn't make the mocha version, mine was just a chocolate-vanilla cake. And I got a little crazy adding the chocolate, so the marbling suffered a little bit. Next time I'll keep more batter plain, and exercise more restraint with the swirlin' knife. We had this cake for Easter dessert, along with the rest of the chocolate sauce, fresh strawberries, the candied nuts, and my very favorite homemade vanilla-honey ice cream (recipe under the cut).



We both loved this cake, but I think it really helped that it was covered with chocolate frosting and sauce, and served with so many extras. On its own it seemed a little plain and unexciting, but it got by with a little help from its friends.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bundt pan I need to go karate chop.


Vanilla-Honey Ice Cream

1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup honey
2-1/4 cups half-and-half cream
3 eggs, beaten
1-1/2 cup heavy cream
1 TBSP teaspoon vanilla extract

Break the eggs into a medium-sized bowl and lightly whisk them.

In a saucepan over medium-low heat, stir together the sugar and half-and-half. When the mixture begins to simmer, remove from heat, and whisk half of the mixture into the eggs. Whisk quickly so that the eggs do not scramble. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan, and stir in the heavy cream.

Continue cooking over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. (I always use a thermometer--175 degrees F is the magic number.) Remove from heat, and whisk in vanilla. Pour into a bowl, cover the top with cling-wrap, and refrigerate until completely cool.

Pour cooled mixture into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Notes: You can omit the honey and use 1.5 cups of granulated sugar. For a stronger vanilla flavor, use 1 vanilla pod, scraped, and reduce the vanilla extract.
Also, this makes a DELICIOUS cinnamon ice cream! Simmer the half and half with 1-2 cinnamon sticks, and/or add ground cinnamon at the end with the vanilla. So. Good.

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Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut Tea Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe features...wait for it...COCONUT! What a perfect recipe to finish up coconut month! And on the subject of coconut, I know we're all entitled to our opinions, yadda yadda politically correct lip service, but seriously, what's up with the coconut haters? Are you sure you guys have really tasted coconut? Because it's delicious. Maybe you're doing it wrong? Just a thought.

Anyhow, this vehicle of pure coconut love was a "tea cake," which is what I guess we're calling bundt cakes now.


You guys, I have a bundt problem. (That's what she said?) My allegedly nonstick pan is the stickiest thing since Super Glue. I coated it with spray AND flour, and still had a heck of a time coaxing the cake out without major damage. I'm wondering if there's a way I can re-season it--maybe oil it well and bake it for awhile? Or would that not work with a "nonstick" pan? Please advise. Signed, Baby Got Bundt


Aside from the sticky pan aggravation, this was a lovely cake. It had a nice pronounced but-not-overwhelming coconut flavor, and I loved the slight chew and moisture the shredded coconut added. I did "put the lime in the coconut," if you will, and added some lime zest and lime juice, but I couldn't really taste it in the end product, so next time I might double it--at least--to really get that flavor.


There were some comments from people who found this cake dry, and since the thought of a failed coconut dessert gives me hives, I decided to be proactive and soak the cake with a coconut syrup before glazing, just to give it a little bit of extra moisture. I'm not sure if it was necessary, but the end result was nice and moist (but not wet!) and just about perfect. The glaze was made with lime juice, coconut milk, and powdered sugar, and was really just for looks, although I think it also helps lock in a little moisture. All in all, a wonderful cake that we're enjoying a little too much around here, if you know what I mean, and one I'm sure I'll make again.

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TWD: All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake

Dear Inventor of the Bundt Cake Mold,

What is the deal with all of the ridges? Why would you purposely create more nooks and crannies for my poor cake to stick to? If I wanted to spend an hour scraping cake from the inside of a pan and then painstakingly cleaning it with a toothbrush, I would do all of my baking in thimbles. But I don't do that, because I am not a crazy person, despite your pan's best efforts to make me so.

Yes, when it came time to unmold this All-In-One Holiday Bundt, the cake was...how the French say...le hot mess. Half of the top totally stuck to the pan, and of course being an impatient monkey, I kept reaching in and trying to peel it off the hot pan in one piece, but it was still warm so it practically disintegrated on contact and peeled off in dust mite-sized chunks, to be precariously placed back on the cake with a safecracker's precision. Fun this was not.

However, through the miracle of glazing, no one will ever be the wiser...

...until they read this post. Shut up, me!


Bundt cakes aren't really my cuppa--I prefer my cake three layers tall and frosted, thank you--but if I were a bundt fan, I would love this. Pumpkin, cranberries, pecans, ginger, and cinnamon, in a moist cake topped with a maple glaze? Yum!

Great flavor, great texture, now all we have to work on is great release-from-the-panage, and we'll be set.

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