Gooey St Louis Butter Cake

It has butter, it has sugar, it has vanilla, then it has more butter and more sugar. Sold yet? It has a semi sweet yeast cake bottom, and a topping made from a buttered up biscuit dough. This topping dough melts into the base, forming a gooey caramelised topping. The topping will tack your back chompers together. Think toffee, caramel, toasted marshmallows and fairy floss.

 

When you mix up your yeast and milk mixture with a fork, take the fork out before tipping it into the mixer. Fork 0. KitchenAid 1.

 

 Quality testing at its finest. Taste it once, poke it twice. The base and topping pass the standards.

 

 

Did I mention butter, sugar and vanilla with the ratio weighted heavily towards the butter component? You've been warned. I kid you not. Oh, and see the topping below? It's sticky! Brush your teeth after this one, kids. Below that - Gooey St Louis Butter cake, up on a pedestal, where it rightfully belongs.

 

Gooey St Louis Butter Cake

Base:

3 tab milk

1 3/4 tsp yeast

100g butter

3 tab sugar

1 tsp salt

1 egg

1 3/4 cups plain flour

Topping:

200g butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 heaped tabs glucose

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 heaped cup plain flour

Icing sugar to serve

Base: In a small bowl or glass, mix the milk and yeast together with 2 tabs warm water. If you're using instant dry yeast, don't expect foam, just little bubbles. Cream the butter, sugar and salt then add the egg. Add the flour and the yeast mixture alternately, finishing with the flour. Knead with a dough hook for about 7 minutes. Pat out into a greased ceramic or heavy based tray. About 8" by 12". Cover and allow to rise for a couple of hours.

Topping: Heat oven to 180c. Cream butter, sugar, glucose and vanilla. Beat in the egg with 2 tabs of water and then add the flour. Dollop the topping over the risen base and smooth out evenly. Cook for around 30 minutes. It will appear uneven and underdone in the centre, but it will be done. Cool in the pan, then slice and sprinkle with icing sugar to serve. I guess it would be too ridiculous to suggest serving with lightly whipped cream and fresh berries? Yes? I won't suggest that then...

More quality testing. Notice the far away glazed over eyes - she's not joking. It's that good.

Berry Orangey Sour Cream Cake

This is an absolute keeper recipe that I discovered this weekend. In the same spirit as the Blank Canvas Cookies, you can just play around with the base recipe, and formulate your own flavourings and embellishments. The cake batter is moist and light, and the zingy sour cream beckons to be supercharged with zests, juices and tart berries.

The original recipe calls for lemons, yogurt and blueberries - none of which I actually had on hand. I swapped these for oranges, sour cream and mixed berries. Someone was "helping" and decided a roughly chopped banana could be thrown into the wet ingredients when mummy wasn't looking. But, who am I to argue with pudgy fingers and blonde curls?

I tweaked this recipe a bit to make it a one bowl cake. Who needs to be washing extra bowls when there are so many other little distractions to play with? *Ahem* Everyone, meet Louey - the newest wannabeafoody apprentice. Awww!

Anyway, this one is really simple, no creaming of butter and sugar, no folding or fluffing or sifting. Suitable for those of us racing after children and/or puppies. Super quick and super yummy. You'd better make two of these if you want it to last long enough to become school or work lunches. You've been warned.

Berry Orange Sour Cream Cake 

3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 3 oranges
1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 cups frozen mixed berries

Grease a 8" square cake pan and line the bottom with baking paper. Preaheat oven to 180c.
In a mixing bowl, beat eggs, sugar, oil, sour cream, vanilla and zest until well combined.
Mix in the flour, baking powder and salt, stirring until just combined. Fold in the berries and pour into the pan. Cook for around 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

To make the glaze: Fill a measuring cup to around 3/4 full with icing sugar, and add 2 tablespoons of juice from a lemon or orange. Pour over cake when completely cooled.

And just because puppy noses and paws are the cutest things on earth...

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Challenge

Just over a week ago Jen over at Jen's Shangri-La requested a pineapple upside-down cake recipe to satisfy the senses. Most of the regular recipes used a plain buttercake batter (oftentimes made from packet mix) with a canned pineapple topping. A slice of mediocre anyone? Ready to tear this down and rebuilt it?

First off, the main event - saucy pineapple topping. Fresh pineapple! The tart taste-bud defibrillating acidity of a fresh pineapple cuts through the sickly butter-caramel sauce surrounding it. And there should be just enough sauce to dribble down each slice of cake. It's the way it should be!

The cake needs to be... a little different perhaps? I tried cardamom. (Or as the health food shop lady "corrected" me - "cardamon".) Cardamom is... hard to explain. Cinnamon, citrus and pepper come to mind. It's highly fragrant and can be overpowering so just a small amount as an aromatic is perfect and enough to tweak the experience up a notch. I bought the whole pods, emptied out the seeds from about four of them and ground them in a mortar and pestle. This one little spice makes this cake.

The addition of some Drambuie (spiced honey brandy) also adds an extra dimension. Don't worry about getting the kids blotto, the alcohol will be all cooked out by the time you get to eat it, leaving a rich depth of flavour.


Pineapple Upside-Down Cake All Grown Up!

Topping:
1/2 pineapple, peeled, quartered and sliced
100g butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar

Batter:
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 - 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
100g butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tab Drambuie (spiced honey brandy - optional)
1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease a loaf tin or 10" round cake tin. In a pan, melt butter and sugar together and cook over a low heat for 4 minutes. Pour into the bottom of the cake tin then layer pineapple on top.

In a sifter, add the flour, cardamom, baking powder and salt. Beat butter and sugar until pale and creamy, add eggs one at a time, followed by vanilla and Drambuie, beat well. Sift in half of the flour, then add pineapple juice, then the rest of the flour, beating well between each addition. Pour the batter over the caramel and pineapple and bake for around 40 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. Stand in tin for 5 minutes before inverting onto a plate.

Serve with vanilla icecream, lightly whipped cream or like someone did - with creamy toffee chunk icecream and a nip of Drambuie.

More notes about the cardamom: The whole pods can be ground, but will often give a bitter flavour. Leave the seeds inside the pods until you're about to grind them - they spoil and can go rancid quickly. Buying ready ground cardamom is expensive and will have likely lost most of its flavour, and certainly it's freshness. I bought about 10 times the amount of whole fresh pods I needed from the health food shop for 50c. I used just over half a teaspoon of the ground seeds, the original recipe had three whole teaspoons and I can't begin to imagine how strong that would be. I definitely advise using a smaller amount first off, especially if you've never had it before. If it scares you, you can trade the cardamom for cinnamon, nutmeg or mixed spice - but I think it's definitely worth trying out. We loved it!

Pimp My Blank Canvas Biscuits (cookies)

This is one of those recipes that gets down on it's hands and knees and begs to be pimped. The unadulterated biscuit dough is quite perfect as it is. It's buttery, chewy, rich and sweet - but it's plain, which is fine sometimes, for some people. But who wouldn't want to, just sometimes, revert back to the days when the thought of wallowing in large tubs of mixed lollies was your idea of a successful adult life, and childishly smoosh every kind of sweet into one biscuit? (This is the part where you tell me that you used to dream about this too, and that I am in fact, not strange. Thanks.) What I'm saying is, they can be plain jane simple, sensible biccies, or you can go absolutely OTT with them. And if you're not as mentally unhinged as I, you could even be tasteful and classy and fall somewhere in the middle.

This recipe makes a lot. I make this much so I can cook some right away, then roll the rest of the dough into little logs and freeze for later. Then it's just a matter of thawing, slicing off rounds and cooking them. If you're not into that, just halve the recipe or be prepared to share them with the neighbours. Or double it and gorge on 120 biscuits yourself!

Blank Canvas Biscuits (Makes approx. 60)

250g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 1/2 cups whatever mix ins you choose
 
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease or line biscuit trays with baking paper. Cream the butter, sugars and vanilla together until pale. Add eggs one at a time and beat until combined. Stir in the flour and then bring the dough together with your hands, adding the mix ins at the same time. You can pretty much keep adding more and more mix ins until it just wont take anymore. Load them up!!

Shape the dough into balls with about 1tbs of mixture, or use a cookie scoop (larger melon baller or smaller ice-cream scoop) and place on the trays, allowing room for spreading.
Bake  for 10-12 minutes. Yes they still look pale and raw, but the bottoms should be a little coloured. This is the secret to chewy biscuits. If you like them crispy cook them a few minutes more. Cool on the trays for about 5 minutes, then onto a cooling rack.

Mix in Madness: Try M&Ms, Smarties, macadamia nuts, white chocolate, chocolate chips, boiled lollies, crystallised ginger, pecans, peanuts, sultanas, citrus zest, cinnamon or mixed spices, glace cherries, pistachios, coconut, chunks of fudge, mars bars, chocolate cookies, dried fruit, honeycomb, craisins, mini marshmallows, Maltesers, Skittles, sprinkles, peppermint crisps, mint slice, tim tams, oreos, hundreds and thousands, anything and everything!