Rhubarb Coffee Cake

This week's dessert theme for the Soup Kitchen was Rhubarb Cake. Such a fine fine example of a seasonal dessert. Like beets, brussels sprouts and artichokes, rhubarb is one of those latecomers introduced fairly recently into my adult diet. And like beets, brussels sprouts and artichokes, I think it's simply divine.

For those of you who are rookies to rhubarb, THIS is a complete guide to rhubarb in all its splendor. Since I'm not a big fan of fruit pies and tarts and the sort, I decided to make a rhubarb coffee cake, upon recommendation. It comes direct from Smitten Kitchen via an older issue of the NY Times. Her pictures trump mine by a million, but I've tried to provide a little bit of competition, if you can even call it that. The recipe is as follows:

Time: 1 1/2 hours, plus cooling

Butter for greasing pan

For the rhubarb filling:
1/2 pound rhubarb, trimmed
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

For the crumbs:
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted
1 3/4 cups cake flour (I was out and used all-purpose and it worked great)

For the cake:
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour (ditto on the all-purpose flour–worked just fine)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons softened butter, cut into 8 pieces.

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8-inch-square baking pan. For filling, slice rhubarb 1/2 inch thick and toss with sugar, cornstarch and ginger. Set aside.

2. To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk together sugars, spices, salt and butter until smooth. Stir in flour with a spatula. It will look like a solid dough.

3. To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula. Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

4. Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon rhubarb over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over rhubarb; it does not have to be even.

5. Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from rhubarb), 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

I have lost my mind a little bit today and started using a 1/2 tablespoon measuring spoon instead of the 1 tsp portion. I also forgot to dust the top with powdered sugar, which would have made it look immensely better. I guess every cook has her off days, right? Hopefully it tasted as good as it looked....

Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Ganache.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am getting involved with an organization who bakes dessert every Wednesday for a local soup kitchen. I swear these guys who eat here are eating better than I do!

The theme for this week was chocolate cake, and I had decided early on that I wanted to make a good, old fashioned, moist and dense Devil's Food Cake. After toying with the idea of a salted caramel filling, I decided to just take it back and go classic with a bittersweet chocolate ganache (I told you these guys are eating better than I do!)

I've recently become very infatuated with the blogworld of David Lebovitz, so decided to see if his site offered up any hits. Oh yes indeedy, a perfect classic recipe for devil's food cake with chocolate ganache! Sometimes I'll alter the recipe to adjust sugar content or cream content or whatever, but I found this recipe to be simply divine. Here it is, direct from the site:

For the cake:
9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ cups cake flour (not self-rising)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
½ cup strong coffee (or water)
½ cup whole or low-fat milk

For the ganache frosting:
10 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup water (or cream)
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter

1. Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter two 9" x 2" cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

3. To make the cake layers, sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.

4. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, or by hand, beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. (If using a standing electric mixer, stop the mixer as necessary to scrape down the sides to be sure everything is getting mixed in.)

5. Mix together the coffee and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, the add the coffee and milk. Finally stir in the other half of the dry ingredients.

6. Divide the batter into the two prepared cake pans and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

steps 3-6. Easy as pie (or cake)

7. To make the frosting, melt the chopped chocolate with the water (or cream) in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

8. Cut the butter into small pieces and whisk them into the chocolate until completely melted and the ganache is smooth. Cool until spreadable, which may take about 1 hour at room temperature.

ganache-goodness

To frost the cake:

Run a knife around the inside of each of the cakes which will help release them from the pans. Tilt one cake out of the pan, remove the parchment paper from the bottom and invert it back onto a cake plate. Spread a good-sized layer of icing over the top. Top with the second cake layer and spread the top and sides with the remaining icing as decoratively as you want.

Storage: Cake is best the day it is made, although it's fine the next day. Store at room temperature under a cake dome. Just be sure to keep cake out of the sunin the meantime.

Craig's Kitchen

Good karma, I'm all about that. What better way to earn some good karma than to cook for others? I've been looking into ways to involve myself more with the community in general, so when I heard about Craig's Kitchen I immediately became intrigued.

Without going into TOO much detail, Craig's Kitchen is an organization of volunteers who organizes a more sustainable, seasonal, nutritious, and home-cooked program for the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen. They work with local CSAs to ensure the soup kitchen receives as much good produce as possible, and I'm hoping they are able to do similar things with the meat they serve (though I'm a tad skeptical). I'm volunteering to bake as a part of their Dessert Corps. Baking! For a cause! Woooooo!!

Each Wednesday a handful of volunteers bake within the category that is given to them, with a reminder of the dessert and sample recipes sent out the weekend prior. The desserts also try to be as seasonal as possible, but let's be real- Sometimes you just gotta have a brownie.

Next Wednesday's dessert du jour is chocolate cake. There isn't a strict recipe you must follow, but you do have to bake some cake thing made out of chocolate. I'm thinking a two-layer moist devil's food cake with some sort of salted caramel icing. mmmmm. Will let you know how it goes.