Transition Cake, and the Cake That Almost Was

I have a question for you, dear reader. Why is it that when you cut yourself when cooking, it is ALWAYS chopping onions (maximum stingage) and ALWAYS on the single most inconvenient part of your thumb for a) doing anything else for the next week or so and b) for bandaid placement? Seriously. We even have those "finger" bandaids (I made us buy them even though you should have SEEN the side-eye I got in the drugstore I'M SORRY I LIKE HAVING ALL THE NECESSARY PERMUTATIONS OF BANDAIDS IT MAKES ME FEEL PREPARED AND ORGANISED AND THEREFORE CALM) and not even those fit. The best I can do is sort of sadly perch a bandaid on the very edge of my thumb (as if to say oh hey no I'm not really here just ignore me) and then wrap it in paper tape and pray it doesn't fall off. THIS means a) I can't text. Which. Problems. and b) it looks a hell of a lot worse than it actually is which makes ME looking like I'm making a big deal out of nothing.

I realise that "making a big deal out of nothing" just involved writing a paragraph about the aforementioned "nothing." Moving on.

Two cakes happened this week. (I know, these plus Chocolate Marmalade Cake from last week = I'd better make some cookies pretty soon.) The first was a cake from good ol' Beatrice that I've been saving to make for what feels like an eternity. The second was what I'm calling "Transition Cake", one that has elements of both summer and fall, and hopefully makes the segue into seasons a little more, ahem, palatable. OH YES. I JUST WENT THERE. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Oh and I almost forgot Baking Powder Biscuits happened too.

I normally don't mention these, even though I make them every other week or so.
But these came out particularly nice-looking. So here you are.  

If you ever need to make Mum spill US governmental secrets, just wave one of these puppies in her face. 

She'll crack like an egg. 

But to business, dear reader, to business.

LINGONBERRY JAM CAKE
or
THE CAKE THAT ALMOST WAS

I think I've made it clear on several previous occasions how we as a household feel about Lingonberries. We're Finnish. We basically bleed Lingonberry Jam (and no, they don't make a Band aid for that, I checked). So when I came across this recipe in Beatrice's Bible I immediately "scientifically" bookmarked it with a torn-in-half index card and vowed on my honour to make it soon. The time came on September the First, which seemed to hold the appropriate amount of gravitas. I got started and waited for the magic to happen.

Oh, dear reader, come with me . . .

Everything started out so well . . . 

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup lingonberry jam

Look! IT'S PINK!

Cream the butter and sugar together. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Blend flour, spices, baking powder and soda, and salt together in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine sour cream and lingonberry jam. Add both to the butter mixture, alternating between the flour and the jam, mixing until smooth. 

Pour the batter out into either a 9 x 5 loaf pan or a Springform pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 55 - 60 minutes until a tester comes out clean and the cake is starting to pull away from the pan edges. Let it sit for 5 minutes before turning it out onto a rack to cool completely.

BEETLE NOTES

As I'm sure you've guessed from my preamble, things did not go completely according to plan. Under normal circumstances I would just shrug and go eh and maybe tweak the recipe in the future or maybe never make it again. But this is BEATRICE, you guys. BEATRICE. When I use the expression "she wrote the book on Scandinavian cooking" THAT'S ACTUALLY WHAT I MEAN SHE REALLY DID WRITE THE BOOK. To get a result from her that was less than incredible felt . . .  I don't know. I might have wept a little. I might have climbed a hillock in the rain wearing a bonnet and recited Shakespeare sonnets whilst looking morosely across the countryside and whispering "Beatrice. Oh, Beatrice." 

Now. To make it clear. When I say "less than amazing" I mean "still pretty damn good." A dud by Beatrice standards is still head and shoulders above the best other bakers have to offer. It's just that this one was supposed to be THE LINGONBERRY JAM CAKE. This was supposed to be the cake to end all cakes, you guys. It was supposed to be epic. And it just . . . wasn't. 

The consensus from my three testers is that there's too much cinnamon. Which. There's only half a teaspoon in there. If half a teaspoon tastes like too much cinnamon then you'd better take that sh*t out fast. There is also cardamom and ginger, though, both of which are quite powerful, so perhaps all three combined just pushed it over the edge. Cinnamon is amazing. It's warm and sharp and sweet and spicy at the same time. But by token of its power, it does tread a fine line between "mmm I feel that all the way down to my toes" and "my tongue is numb." And it's especially strange because I am ALWAYS the one to bump up the spices. In my experience even Beatrice errs too much on the side of caution. This is the first time in recorded Beetle History that I've gotten "too much spice." So. Interesting. 

I will say that in the "going for it" column I can put: moist, not too sweet, smells absolutely incredible, and actually tastes like it has Lingonberries in it (aka Point. Of. Cake.). But the spice was overpowering bordering on detrimental. If I give you a bite of Lingonberry Jam Cake and you think it's a Cinnamon Cake, we've got ourselves a cake situation. 

I would like to pause briefly at this stage and say that spellcheck REFUSES to recognise "lingonberry" as a word nay a viable food and keeps suggesting that perhaps I mean "loganberry." To which I reply THANKS BUT NO. 

This is a Loganberry (Rubus loganbaccus)                          This is a Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) 

Basically AMBROSIA

Basically a mutant raspberry

WE GOOD?

So. I would very much like to make this again. There's a lot of emotional weight riding on this recipe being amazing. Based on the reviews, I think I might take out the spices completely, and let the Lingon speak for itself. Maybe add a bit more jam this time. I read online that one baker had added frozen lingonberries, which, if the Hannafords in Lunenberg, MA sold frozen lingonberries, well . . . there would be a whole lot of things in my life that were better, let's just say that.

Bottom line, I fundamentally love the idea of a Lingonberry Jam Cake. And I refuse to believe that there is a universe in which this CANNOT be good. So stay tuned, and remind me to buy stock in Lingonberry Farms in the Arctic because imma start burning through this stuff pretty fast.

This is the cake shuffling abashedly from view . . . until next time . . . 

AND NOW TO TRANSITION WITH TRANSITION CAKE 

[Oh Beetle you're SO amusing]

LEMON PEAR HONEY CAKE

Transition cake happened primarily because I wanted to use up the rest of my sour cream, and also because I found a jar of Lemon Pear Jam that I knew Mum wasn't going to eat and figured I'd make a cake. This is normally how Sunday afternoons go up here on the farm, btw.

I took a break from my beloved Springform pan and broke out the Bundt pan (aka the Sandcastle pan), deciding that since I'd be adapting a Martha Stewart Bundt Cake recipe, using a Bundt pan would be a show of good faith. I started with the Lemon Ginger Bundt Cake that I'd made for Easter Supper back in March and tweaked it accordingly. Onward.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
• 3 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup Lemon Pear Jam
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup honey

Cream the butter and sugar together in your mixmaster until pale and whippy. Add in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Add the jam and the lemon juice, and two tablespoons of the honey. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl. Alternate adding sour cream and the flour mixture, beating well after each addition, until everything's gone.

Pour the batter into a greased Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for 55 - 60 minutes until a tester comes out clean and the cake is starting to pull away from the edges. Let it cool for 5 minutes and then turn it out of the pan (this is the scary part, you have to invert an incredibly heavy pan containing a meticulously shaped cake that may or may not stick and/or fall out badly and it's one of those holy hell please let this work moments. don't worry, you got this.) and let it cool completely.

This is just after the above silent prayer. 

When it's cool, decorate the top with the remaining honey.

I did this from a squeeze bottle of honey, which is significantly easier for pretty purposes, but if you want to get all wild and crazy and Martha on your bad self then go ahead and do it with the edge of a fish fork or whatever and create actual spiraling falling leaves that move when the cake is sliced.

HEY. SHE PROBABLY DOES THAT.

Ain't nothin' wrong with a squeezy bottle. All I'm saying.

BEETLE NOTES

I call this Transition Cake because Lemon and Bundt Cakes are things I generally associate with "summer," whereas Pear and Honey are things I generally associate with "autumn." You start with summer, and by the time you finish eating it's autumn, but you don't care because you're eating cake.

See what I just did there? I made it seem like there was an actual aforethought to my making this cake, when in fact it was just huh, just made a Lingonberry cake gotta get rid of the sour cream . . . huh look at that jar of Lemon Pear Jam maybe I'll use that  . . . huh you know what might be fun to pour on top honey yeah let's try that . . . huh let's call this Transition Cake and it'll make it seem like I know what I'm talking about. 

That's really what happened.

But, gotta say, as Transition Cakes go, this one turned out nicely. And I'd like to think it helped ease the seasonal metamorphosis for my Lovely Librarians.

Unseen Bonus Element: When you decorate the top of the cake with honey, it soaks down into the top half. This changes the texture into a super-dense, super-sticky, super-moist cake-of-awesome. 

Again, looks like I planned it. Again, absolutely no pre-planning involved.


Hillbilly Beetle strikes again.