Usually if I try a new recipe and it doesn't turn out well, I just move on and don't give it a second thought. After all, I have shelves full of cookbooks and a to-bake list as long as my arm, so who has time to waste on disappointing baked goods? But I recently had a spectacular cake catastrophe that made me want to go back for seconds.
I was trying Melissa Gray's recipe for "Argroves Manor Coffee Cake," a recipe that she developed while visiting her father-in-law, Bruce Argroves. As the story goes, there was no sour cream or vanilla extract in the house, but her father-in-law had plenty of vanilla yogurt. As a result, the batter contains a cup of vanilla yogurt; the cake also has a cinnamon-walnut streusel and a ripple of stewed blueberries and apples.
The first step in making the cake is preparing the fruit: you cook blueberries, a chopped apple, water, and sugar until the blueberries break down, the apple is soft, and the liquid is thick and syrupy. Then you make the streusel by cutting cold butter into flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt, and adding chopped walnuts.
Finally, you make the cake batter by creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs, and alternately adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) and the vanilla yogurt. While I eat a Greek fruit yogurt every day for breakfast, I never eat vanilla yogurt, and I spent a lot of time perusing the grocery store refrigerator case trying to decide which yogurt to buy. I decided to use Liberté Méditerranée French vanilla. I've never tried the brand before, and I based my decision purely on the nutrition facts panel -- namely, how bad it is for you. A six-ounce container has 260 calories and 12 grams of fat, and I needed to use two to make the cake. (Who eats this stuff on a regular basis?!) My personal philosophy is that when it comes to baking, I don't skimp.
To assemble the cake, you put half of the cake batter into a greased tube pan; pour on the blueberry-apple mixture; sprinkle on three-fourths of the streusel; pour on the rest of the cake batter; drag a spatula through the batter to pull the fruit to the bottom of the pan; and add the remaining streusel. Then the cake is ready to bake.
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The recipe headnote says that this cake is "insanely declious when served warm" (emphasis in original), and the directions say to cool the cake for 15 minutes before turning it out of the pan. So when the cake came out of the oven, I waited 15 minutes, and then tried to unmold the warm cake. The cake was fully cooked, but what came out of the pan was an uncontrollable avalanche of large cake chunks; a significant portion of the cake remained stuck in the pan. It appeared that the layer of fruit in the middle of the cake was the literal sticking point; even though I had lined the bottom of tube pan with parchment and greased the sides, it didn't matter. The cake was irrecoverable.
I was crushed, and I didn't even bother tasting the cake. I scraped out the bits that were stuck to the pan and threw them in the compost pail, but I saved the rest, sticking it under a cake dome before I went to bed.
The following morning I figured I should at least give the cake a try. I could not believe how delicious it was. I think it was the best coffee cake I've ever tasted. The crumb was very tight and dense, super moist, and buttery rich. The cinnamon streusel and the crunchy walnuts added the perfect bit of sweet spice and texture, and the fruit layer was also delicious. Every bite was intensely flavorful and satisying. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the cake besides the fact that it was lying in a pile of chunks. And I was seriously regretting having put any of it in the compost.
I knew I had to make the cake again. So a couple of days later, I gave it another try, and I made a few changes. First, I lined the entire tube pan with parchment, something I have never even tried before. I used one piece to line the bottom (a cake circle with a hole cut out of the center), another piece to line the center post, and a third piece to line the sides. In other words, I didn't take any chances that a single iota of batter would be in direct contact with the pan.
Second, I baked the cake for an extra five minutes, thinking that could only help ensure that the cake stayed in one piece. Finally, I waited until the cake was almost entirely cool before turning it out of the pan. And when I did finally unmold it, the cake stayed in one piece!
The second time I made the cake, it was not quite as tasty as the first. I think it was the extra five minutes of baking time, because the texture was not as soft and tender. Still, it was close, and it was some pretty darn good cake. And let me tell you -- while cutting parchment paper to fit a tube pan is an enormous pain in the butt, every bit of that time and effort was worth it. This cake is everything Gray promises it to be; it is insanely good.
Recipe: "Argroves Manor Coffee Cake" from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray.
I was trying Melissa Gray's recipe for "Argroves Manor Coffee Cake," a recipe that she developed while visiting her father-in-law, Bruce Argroves. As the story goes, there was no sour cream or vanilla extract in the house, but her father-in-law had plenty of vanilla yogurt. As a result, the batter contains a cup of vanilla yogurt; the cake also has a cinnamon-walnut streusel and a ripple of stewed blueberries and apples.
The first step in making the cake is preparing the fruit: you cook blueberries, a chopped apple, water, and sugar until the blueberries break down, the apple is soft, and the liquid is thick and syrupy. Then you make the streusel by cutting cold butter into flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt, and adding chopped walnuts.
Finally, you make the cake batter by creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs, and alternately adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) and the vanilla yogurt. While I eat a Greek fruit yogurt every day for breakfast, I never eat vanilla yogurt, and I spent a lot of time perusing the grocery store refrigerator case trying to decide which yogurt to buy. I decided to use Liberté Méditerranée French vanilla. I've never tried the brand before, and I based my decision purely on the nutrition facts panel -- namely, how bad it is for you. A six-ounce container has 260 calories and 12 grams of fat, and I needed to use two to make the cake. (Who eats this stuff on a regular basis?!) My personal philosophy is that when it comes to baking, I don't skimp.
To assemble the cake, you put half of the cake batter into a greased tube pan; pour on the blueberry-apple mixture; sprinkle on three-fourths of the streusel; pour on the rest of the cake batter; drag a spatula through the batter to pull the fruit to the bottom of the pan; and add the remaining streusel. Then the cake is ready to bake.
I was crushed, and I didn't even bother tasting the cake. I scraped out the bits that were stuck to the pan and threw them in the compost pail, but I saved the rest, sticking it under a cake dome before I went to bed.
The following morning I figured I should at least give the cake a try. I could not believe how delicious it was. I think it was the best coffee cake I've ever tasted. The crumb was very tight and dense, super moist, and buttery rich. The cinnamon streusel and the crunchy walnuts added the perfect bit of sweet spice and texture, and the fruit layer was also delicious. Every bite was intensely flavorful and satisying. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the cake besides the fact that it was lying in a pile of chunks. And I was seriously regretting having put any of it in the compost.
I knew I had to make the cake again. So a couple of days later, I gave it another try, and I made a few changes. First, I lined the entire tube pan with parchment, something I have never even tried before. I used one piece to line the bottom (a cake circle with a hole cut out of the center), another piece to line the center post, and a third piece to line the sides. In other words, I didn't take any chances that a single iota of batter would be in direct contact with the pan.
Second, I baked the cake for an extra five minutes, thinking that could only help ensure that the cake stayed in one piece. Finally, I waited until the cake was almost entirely cool before turning it out of the pan. And when I did finally unmold it, the cake stayed in one piece!
The second time I made the cake, it was not quite as tasty as the first. I think it was the extra five minutes of baking time, because the texture was not as soft and tender. Still, it was close, and it was some pretty darn good cake. And let me tell you -- while cutting parchment paper to fit a tube pan is an enormous pain in the butt, every bit of that time and effort was worth it. This cake is everything Gray promises it to be; it is insanely good.
Recipe: "Argroves Manor Coffee Cake" from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray.
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