When you indulge, remember great cake is loaded with fat, sugar and flour
If your current food plan excludes sugars, wheat flour and shortening (like butter) you need to stop reading. Please keep reading if you like cake and occasionally allow cake into your food plan.
I love cake in all its forms, from layer cake to cupcakes. My number one cake is all-chocolate layer cake, with loads of filling and frosting. Yummmm.
Before you go there, I'll go first; usually, cakes that are tender and moist have a lot of added fat (like butter or oil), as well as a Radio-Flyer load of sugars and wheat flour. It's unfortunate, but that's what makes a cake so darn good.
Long before I wrote about food and cooking, I used to make my brothers' and parents' favorite cakes from scratch for their birthdays. I'd love to tell you that I was a cake baking wizard back then; I wasn't. One year I made a chocolate birthday cake for my brother, the chef, which I later dubbed a "thud" cake since it weighed so much. I failed to convince my brother that the blame lay with all the added candles.
If I'd owned the newest cookbook from America's Test Kitchen: "The Perfect Cake," perhaps that earlier effort would have impressed my brother, instead of making him laugh.
Numerous all-cake cookbooks line my office bookshelves. Many are excellent examples of what a cake cookbook can be, such as Rose Levy Beranbaum's classic: "The Cake Bible."
"The Perfect Cake" is a collaborative effort by the talented editors at America's Test Kitchen. Their recipe development success lies in their extensive testing. That arduous testing process resulted in a series of winning cakes if you precisely follow the directions as written and use the proper tools; with an additional reading of sidebar material.
ATK's editors ensure that each cake will turn out just like the numerous pictures by educating the reader in everything from the types of chocolate that can be used to the correct frosting-spreading spatula (such as on offset).
"The Perfect Cake's" first 30 pages are like a mini-master class; covering cake making and baking tools and ingredients. The amount and kind of information in this section is reminiscent of the three bears: "Not too much, not too little; just right."
Finally, we get to the meat ... er, substance ... of this cookbook: cake. The ATK crew begins with classic layer cakes to get the reader drooling; starting with a chocolate frosted Fluffy Yellow Layer Cake. They follow that lead with two classics: Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake and Devil's Food Layer Cake.
Those cakes would be just fine with most folks, and they could stop there. For the more adventurous, ATK delivers a classic Red Velvet Layer Cake along with, for those that require it, a Gluten-Free Chocolate Layer Cake.
You'll also find 230 more cake recipes, such as Salted Caramel Cupcakes, Tres Leches Cake, Black Forest Cake (chocolate and cherries), Chocolate Éclair Cake (graham cracker layers separating a rich vanilla custard filling topped with semisweet chocolate frosting).
Some cakes did not appeal to me, like an Eggnog Bundt Cake (never been much of an eggnog fan) or a Pomegranate Walnut Cake (I like walnuts; pomegranates, not so much).
The ATK editors also offer the classic "Why this recipe works," preceding each recipe. The photography got me yearning to break out my layer cake pans and bake a cake. You may feel that way, too.
America's Test Kitchen showcases five additional recipes from their new cookbook at americastestkitchen.com/guides/the-perfect-cake/recipes-to-make-now. Get ready to drool.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.
Tahini-Banana Snack Cake
1½ cups (7½ ounces) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup tahini
1¼ cups (8¾ ounces) sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 to 3 bananas)
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup whole milk
2 teaspoons sesame seeds
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 8-inch square baking pan, line with parchment paper, grease parchment, and flour pan. Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda together in bowl.
Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter, tahini, and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down bowl as needed. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until combined. Add bananas and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with milk in 2 additions, scraping down bowl as needed. Give batter final stir by hand.
Transfer batter to prepared pan and smooth top with rubber spatula. Sprinkle top with sesame seeds. Bake until deep golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking.
Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan, discarding parchment, and let cool completely on rack, about 2 hours. Serve. (Cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 days.)
Serves 8
Nutrition values per serving: 369 calories (32 percent from fat), 13.2 g fat (4.3 g saturated fat), 56.3 g carbohydrates, 35.3 g sugars, 1.3 g fiber, 6.5 g protein, 69 mg cholesterol, 250 mg sodium.
By permission: America's Test Kitchen