Panned Out

It all started when I began to think about making a birthday cake for my mother that she might actually enjoy. My mother lives in an assisted living apartment in a building in my neighborhood. She eats her meals (except breakfast, which she prefers to have on her own in her apartment), in the dining room there. It is a pleasant room with tablecloths and tables set for 6, really sweet waitstaff, and 2 fireplaces. The food is okay, but seldom fabulous. We take her out to eat regularly, as do a couple of her longtime younger friends.

For breakfast, she prefers to make herself a cup of tea, with 2 plain cookies, and takes her time eating it in her robe before getting dressed. She doesn't even want to operate her toaster, and she has made it pretty clear that she would appreciate being supplied with her preferred type of homemade cookie. This is not too difficult, as I enjoy making the sort of plain but rich cookies she likes. She usually has a pretty good supply of them.

Recently, she let us know that the practice of combining her birthday celebration with Thanksgiving has always seemed to her to be horribly unjust. We have been doing this for years, who knew? She always gave a pretty good imitation of enjoying her status as the only guest at Thanksgiving dinner to receive presents. Simmering under the surface cheer was a unfulfilled wish for her own birthday party.

We decided to have a birthday lunch for her on Sunday, at her place. They have a "Private Dining Room" there which can be reserved in advance for special occasions, with a long table which will seat all of us, and a few family friends. I am to bring the birthday cake. I don't think this will seem like a birthday party without a cake, but my mother doesn't really care for the kind of sweet, special occasion cakes usually associated with birthdays. She does not like any sort of icing, frosting or ganache on her cake. She prefers something not too sweet, and not too slick looking, that she can see is homemade.

This got me thinking about coffee cakes, pound cake, kugelhopf, bundts and babkas, and a resulted in a (hopefully temporary) obsession with specialty baking pans.I am really more a cook than a baker. Thus, my collection of cake pans has been generally limited to the unadorned circular layer cake type. I turned my cupboards inside out, and, as I thought, I had only one dubious possibility for a bundt pan, picked up long ago at a yard sale. In fact, I had some concern that it might actually be a jello mold.

An experimental kugelhof made in this shallow non-stick tube pan turned out a delicious brioche-like treat, very nice even several days later, toasted. (1st photo). It did not look right to me, though, and I thought it would be a lot more attractive with a smaller circumference, and more height, in the traditional "turk's hat" spiral shape(2nd photo). I wound up shopping for one of these kugelhopf pans, and ordering it, though it will not arrive in time for the birthday. Still, a kugelhopf is something I plan on making often.

For the birthday cake, though, I decided on a sour cream coffee cake with a vein of preserves, as looking better in the low-slung pan format and being more birthdayish. I figured this would be simple enough to have a leftover slice for
breakfast, and dressy enough to carry off a few candles. Between deciding on the cake and actually baking it, I succumbed to a sale at our new local Sur La Table on the southside. There it was, reduced, one of those architectural Nordicware Bundt pans. I seem to have gone totally berserk for specialty bakeware. (3rd photo) Normally, I have to convince myself that a new kitchen item has multiple purposes, and these guys are not only uni-purpose, but bulky to store. Ack.

Well, back to the cake. Sadly, I cannot tell you the origin of this recipe. I know I did not make it up, because I do not make up cake recipes from thin air. It is scribbled in my notebook, without attribution, but with coffee-like stains. Nonetheless, I don't really remember baking it before, ever. The stains may well be due to some adjacent recipe.

This is what you need to make it:2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup preserves

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and flour a ten inch bundt pan. In a bowl, whisk dry ingredients to blend. In the bowl of your stand mixer, with the paddle,beat the butter and sugar until lightened. Add eggs, sour cream, and vanilla, beating until smooth. Add dry ingredients, and mix just until blended. Take out 1/2 cup of batter and combine with the preserves, in a bowl. Pour the rest of the batter in the bundt pan. Smooth top with a wooden spoon. Then, with the back of the spoon, make a trough in the center of the batter, going all round the cake..Spoon reserved batter/preserve mixture into the trough. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Remove from oven. Cool 15 minutes, then invert cake onto cooling rack. Pour sugar syrup over if desired. Cool thoroughly.

I used a homemade cinnamon, wine and pear preserve, and strained out some of the jelly to make a syrup. I poured that over the cake right after unmolding it, for a little extra shine and taste. I was tickled to see that it came out with a clear-edged design, though the cake didn't use the entire depth of the pan. A fuller pan would look more sculpted, since I've missed out on the bottom part of the design. I do think it's kind of cute. (4th one) I hope it will taste good and please the birthday girl.

While I am at it, I might as well admit that I also bought a special shortbread pan (#5), which purportedly makes these small designs on a nice, simple, 9" square of buttery shortbread. But I make shortbread all the time. So it's really sort of practical, isn't it?

Am I going to stop this pan thing soon? Jewish Cooking in America, by Joan Nathan, has a chocolate babka recipe that's calling my name, but I am determined to use a pan I already have to bake it .

Comments

[Alicat]

Lovely post :)

I am completely jealous of your baking-pan spree! It is a slippery slope when it comes to buying things for the kitchen. :)

[Annie]

I loved your Lindy, the chicken, comment on farmgirl - you are a great participant in the foodblog world - and I love Toast - it's the first blog I look at. I hope you never run out of ideas or interest!!

[Chanit]

I love chocolate babka and your site Too ;-)

[lindy]

So glad. Thanks!

[Luisa]

Might I pipe up and ask you for your Kugelhopf recipe sometime? It looks delicious in the first picture...

[lindy]

Luisa-Basically I fooled around a bit with the Kugelhopf recipe on DavidLebovitz.com. I was pretty happy with it, and it lasted really well- nice toasted even when stale.
Thanks for stopping by.

[Tanna]

I love everyone of these pans and I love imagining how much fun you had (I know I would have) while this went on. I relish such mad times. I trust the birthday cake was terrific.