Fans of bread pudding will stand up and cheer, especially if you/they like pumpkin. The bread pudding is VERY easy to make – truly – although it does need to rest overnight before baking.

This recipe had been in my to-try file for several years. It came from Diane Phillip’s cookbook, Happy Holidays from the Diva of Do-Ahead: A Year of Feasts to Celebrate With Family And Friends. I own one of her cookbooks, but not this one – I think I found it at my local library and had made photocopies of recipes that sounded right down my alley. This was one. I needed a dessert that could be made ahead. Yes, you can mix it up ahead – and make the sauce that goes with it ahead too – but you do need to bake it somewhere close to serving time. I baked it a few hours ahead and then kept it heated in a very very low oven for an hour. The sauce I made the day before, which was good, as it said it will keep chilled in the refrigerator for up to 72 hours ahead. Diane Phillips is a master of the do-ahead meal. She and Phillis Carey teach a duo class at least once a year, near Christmastime.

The only problematical ingredient in making this is challah. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it at any of my local markets, but was surprised to find Trader Joe’s has it. I will say, however, that their challah is very dense. I expected it to be lighter in texture, but it was not at all. If you can’t find challah, you could use King’s Hawaiian Bread instead – it’s a spongy, eggy bread, but it’s also very sweet, so I would reduce the sugar some in the recipe – by about a third is a guess. The bread gets torn up into a bunch of small pieces, bite-sized is best. Then you mix up the pumpkin stuff – eggs, brown sugar, canned pumpkin, cream and lots of good spices and it’s mixed into the bread. Stir it around a bunch, then pour it all into a 9×13 pan (I would use glass or nonstick, not metal), press any bread pieces down into the liquidy mixture (there won’t be much), cover and chill for at least 12 hours (or up to 72). You do have to bring it back to room temp (about an hour) before baking. Keep it covered and bake for 35-40 minutes.

IMPORTANT: I’ve included notes in the recipe below about the bread – if the challah is very dense, you may need more of the pumpkin mixture to soak into the bread – increase those ingredients some to compensate. You want the bread pudding to have ample gooey-ness and it won’t if the bread is dense or dry.

Ideally, serve this warm. I baked it a few hours ahead and just reheated it in a 175° oven for about 30 minutes before serving. Whatever you do, don’t let it dry out.

What absolutely MAKES this dessert is the sauce. It’s not hard to make, but it does take a bit of time to do. It’s 3 parts whole milk and 1 part cream, so it’s not all that bad in the fat department. You steep the milk with crystallized ginger pieces and the zest of an orange. Those are strained out, then you make the sauce part with egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and some orange liqueur and cream added in at the end. BE SURE to strain the sauce at the end as you’ll invariably get some egg white solids in there, and it’s not so fun finding those in your super-smooth pudding or sauce when you serve it! I prepared it the day before, which made for easy reheating. Actually I warmed the sauce on the stove – watching it carefully so it wouldn’t burn, then I placed the saucepan right in the 175°oven with the bread pudding I warmed.

I had ample sauce left over – because people didn’t take enough of the sauce when they served themselves – but I found this sauce is absolutely wonderful as a pudding! I gave some to a friend and we had some of it a few days later. It’s not totally firm like most puddings, it’s looser, but you can see in the photo above, it’s still almost pudding consistency. If you want to make this AS a pudding, reduce the milk quantity down to 2 1/2 cups rather than 3.

What’s good: the sauce is the best part, but I like pumpkin anything, so I enjoyed that too. I liked making this because most of the work is done ahead of time.
What’s not: really nothing. I’d make this again – but I would increase the pumpkin and egg mixture so it’s more gooey. That’s it.

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Oh gosh, was this cake ever good. And lick-your-lips tasty. And easy! And, and, and. All the superlatives you want to use. Chocolatey, yes. Light in texture, yes. Can I repeat the “easy” word?

At the cooking class a few weeks ago with Phillis Carey, she did 4 soups and a dessert. She always says that people (us, the students) complain if she doesn’t make dessert. Well, I’m so glad she did make dessert, because this recipe is a real winner. I think Phillis has shared this recipe before – probably before I started writing a blog, because it seemed very familiar when she made it and served it. It’s all mixed up in a bowl, baked a short period of time, really, and while it’s baking you make the frosting which needs to be poured onto the warm (not hot) cake and allowed to cool for at least 30 minutes. The frosting begins to set up almost immediately. Oh, it was SO good!

There’s only one really big “condition” about making this – you need a 10×15 sheet pan (jelly roll pan with a 1-inch height). It’s got to be a 10×15. You could make it in a 9×13 cake pan, but it will be a thicker cake and require longer baking. I suppose that would work. I actually ordered the cake pan Phillis used – a Parrish Magic Line 10 x 15 x 1 Inch Jelly Roll/Cookie Sheet. She brought the pan from home because most cooking schools don’t have this cake pan size! Don’t get confused with the pans – the company (and amazon, at the link above) also sells a 10×15 deeper 2-inch cake pan too (which probably would work), but this recipe just plain works perfectly in the 10×15. The pan has a flat side lip on the edges – a flat edge that makes for easy grabbing right out of the oven. NOTE: when you click to the actual pan through the link above, it SAYS it’s an 11×15 pan – and if you measure it edge to edge, it is 11×15, but the interior is 10 inches. And make sure you get the one with the 1-inch depth – they also have a cookie sheet (no edges). Read the description carefully.

So, now, back to the cake. You melt butter, coffee, cocoa powder and oil and add it to the dry ingredients with some buttermilk and eggs. Just whisk well and pour into the greased or sprayed cake pan. It bakes for about 18-20 minutes. During the last few minutes before the cake comes out of the oven make the frosting: cook milk, butter and cocoa, add powdered sugar and vanilla. It can sit for about 10 minutes, so in that interim the cake will be cooling and then you pour the frosting over the still-warm cake, spread and sprinkle on the pecans. Allow to cool. See, I said it was easy!

What’s good: gosh, the cake was so full of chocolate flavor. The coffee or espresso you add to it isn’t discernible, but the food scientists say coffee brings out the best in chocolate. And the frosting is delicious – not too thick and not too sweet. Just right.

What’s not: really, nothing. It’s so easy. Make it!

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Smooth lemon deliciousness in a soft, smooth mousse. Perfect as a light dessert (well, it’s not really light in calories or fat, but light in texture). Our Meyer lemon trees are still producing and I look for any opportunity to use the wonderful sweet juice.

We had friends over for dinner and I needed a dessert, but this was just before Christmas, and every direction I headed my car there was traffic and congestion. Both in and out of stores. So I used ingredients I had on hand – my wonderful Meyer lemons that were beginning to wither on my kitchen counter, some whipping cream, sugar, zest, eggs, butter and a little tiny bit of gelatin.

First you soften the gelatin – that takes about 10 minutes or so. Then I made the lemon curd – I haven’t compared this recipe with my regular favorite lemon curd, but it’s all the same process. The proportion of juice to sugar is important and this one was spot on. Once that mixture thickens, you cool it, then you add the whipped cream (unsweetened) and pour it into serving dishes. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. I made them the day ahead. I’m sure they’d keep even a couple of days without a problem. From the whipped cream I made, I removed just enough to put a soft dollop on the top of each.

The recipe came from a wonderful little lemon cookbook, Luscious Lemon Desserts by Lori Longbotham. I’ve made several things from this cookbook and have been pleased with each one. If you have a lemon tree, you likely need some kind of lemon cookbook. I’m always on the look-out for new uses for lemon juice or zest.

Everyone thought this was very tasty. Me included. The recipe was for 4 servings, but I just divided it amongst 5 dishes and I think the portion was just fine. It IS rich. The texture is really nice – the gelatin makes certain it firms up. If you were to make this just ahead of serving, you probably wouldn’t need to stabilize it with gelatin, but it’s not difficult or time consuming to add in that step.

What’s good: the taste, first and foremost. As I mentioned above, I liked the ratio of sweet and tart in this. I love-love lemon anyway, so it was a no-brainer that I’d like this. My cousin Gary was visiting – some of you may remember reading about his gluten intolerance (actually just wheat) so I always seek out recipes that are adaptable to his allergy. This one was easy. If you wanted to fancy-it-up, add a little graham cracker crumb mixture on the bottom. That would also add a nice texture change to this. Definitely a make again recipe. I added just a tiny sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg on top (not in the recipe).
What’s not: you do have to plan ahead – it needs a few hours of chilling time to firm up. And fresh (real) lemons are a must here. No concentrate, please!

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Do you read foodgal? It’s a great food blog by Carolyn Jung. She lives in the Bay Area, and often writes about restaurants and foodie activities in her region. And she regularly shares recipes too. She’s a food journalist in her own right, so she must get sent dozens of cookbooks for review. I assume that’s how foodgal acquired this recipe, from Pastry Chef Joanne Chang, who owns Flour Bakery + Cafe in Boston. Apparently there, this cake is a top-seller. The recipe is from her cookbook, Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe.  And the first time I made it I stuck to the recipe exactly. But in thinking about it I decided to change a few things. I added more spices (just more quantity, not different ones) and I reduced the sugar, as I thought the original was just a bit over the top. It was good – it was excellent, in fact – but too sweet for me that first time. So I changed it.

It’s only been in recent years that I’ve read any recipes that call a cake a “snacking” cake. Now, my idea of such a thing is something you’d make on a blustery fall afternoon and it would be ready for your 5 children when they tumble in the door with snow flurries around them. And the cake would be something sturdy and easily picked up in hand and gobbled down with a glass of cold milk. But maybe a snacking cake just means it doesn’t have frosting. Does anybody know? Do enlighten me if you do!

The description of this cake hooked me, though. It’s loaded – and I mean loaded – with minced-up apple (Granny Smiths). And it has some fragrant spices added, some golden raisins and nuts. As I explained I made this cake twice in 3 days. The first time to test it, the second time with my changes and it went to a dinner party. The first time it was made with walnuts, and the 2nd time (with a few tweaks) with toasted pecans. Both were good. We were going to a potluck gourmet dinner with friends (a new group we’re in), and I’d chosen to make dessert. Since it’s certainly apple season, I’d already decided I’d make something with them. I just didn’t know what. But spotting this recipe, and reading the headnote that said this was hereby the very last apple dessert recipe foodgal was ever going to use forevermore, that got my attention.

The first time I made it with Truvia mixed half/half with sugar so my DH could have some. He loved it. And I did too. But the next time I reduced the sugar and I used pecans (and I toasted them).  It was still plenty sweet. So the recipe below is my slightly adaptation of the original recipe. I served it with maple syrup-sweetened whipped cream (see photo below) for the dinner. I just drizzled heavy cream over each slice on the first one (see left photo).

What’s good: the wonderfully fragrant spices mixed in with the multitude of apples and a little bit of the cake part. If you like more cake then you might not like this recipe. It’s mostly apple with some of the cake batter to hold it together. It definitely IS a cake, but it’s just loaded with apples. It was best with the honey-sweetened whipped cream. We also ate it with heavy cream drizzled over it too.
What’s not: really nothing at all – it was a delicious cake. It’s not difficult to make, though you do have to peel and finely chop several apples. And that has to be done JUST before you add it to the batter because otherwise the apples will turn brown. Have everything all ready – the oven at temp, the cake batter ready to go, then cut the apples and finish making the batter. And as for the superlative about it being the best and last cake foodgal will ever make, I don’t think I’ll attach the word to this. It’s really good, but the Teddie’s Apple Cake is by far my favorite apple cake. And my Mom’s Crisp Apple Pudding is my all-time apple crisp type dessert.

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If beauty were the only thing needed in a cake, this one would be a winner in my book. Pretty! Carefully drizzled with icing that puddles on the cake stand. Lots of light and dark contrast in the photo. From a blogging point of view, yes, the picture is a good one! And actually, from an eating point of view, it’s tasty also. Not off the charts (because it’s from a boxed mix), but certainly good enough. It was for a church event. I did something a little bad – I cut the cake into about 20 slices, and cut one itty-bitty shred for myself and gently mushed the cake together. I needed to taste it, right? Quality control, for sure!

I’m not going to write up much about this cake – it’s fairly self explanatory – a boxed yellow cake mix, a box of instant lemon pudding, some oil, water, 4 eggs and into a greased and floured bundt cake pan it went. Once baked and cooled, I mixed up some lemon juice with powdered sugar and when it was thick enough I drizzled it on top. Just after I took that photo I sliced up the whole cake – here’s a picture of the interior. I removed 2 slices just to take the photo, then cut my itty-bitty see-through shred to taste and re-formed the cake on two heavy-duty paper plates.

How did it taste? Like a light, lemony cake from a mix. I do have another lemon cake on my blog that my friend Joan made – if you click on that link, you’ll find an Ina Garten recipe that was sensational some years ago. But also here on my blog I have a Yellow Cake with Fudge Frosting, a wonderful made-from-scratch yellow cake – it’s breathtakingly tender – like a cake mix, but it isn’t. It’s from scratch. Both of those are delish. But in this case I was in a hurry to make something – mostly to be eaten by children, so they wouldn’t know whether it was a mix or home made, so I opted to go quick and easy. And it was.

What I liked: obviously –  it was easy to make. I had a yellow cake mix in my pantry, and the box of lemon instant pudding. Even the icing was simple. And it had delightfully lemony flavor. It would be nice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, for sure.
What I didn’t like: nothing, really. It’s a cake-mix cake enhanced with lemon. Perfect for what I needed.

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I’m remiss in not posting this recipe a couple of months ago. I got permission to post it here on my blog, but then we went away on vacation and I forgot to post this last recipe. Not a good thing since this cake is such a winner.

For whatever reason, I don’t think much about making desserts with blueberries. Usually I’m not so fond of them in cooked form – I prefer them raw on my morning Greek yogurt. But then I was served this cake and I fell in love with blueberry cake. Ah, but it has to have the nutmeg in it. It would be nowhere near as interesting without the freshly grated nutmeg!

You may recall that some months ago (last May, actually) we attended a dinner in the backyard of some (now) friends who live a mile or so away from us. We met Cheryl Sternman Rule, a professional food writer and developer from the Bay Area (who writes her own blog, 5 Second Rule) and we and 20+ other people had a delicious 5-course meal from Cheryl’s new cookbook called Ripe: A Fresh, Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables. This was the finale of the dinner and I was all over it. So soft and tender a cake and the subtle flavors. If you like blueberries – and nutmeg – you’ll like it too. Easy to make for sure. The blueberries kind of sink down into the batter during the baking process – it’s not frosting or an icing there – but it makes for a really pretty appearance, I think.

Recipe reprinted with permission from RIPE © 2012 by Cheryl Sternman Rule, Running Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group. Cookbook photography © 2012 by Paulette Phlipot.

What I liked: the almost sponge-cake texture – soft and luscious. Easy to make too. The blueberries stand out for sure – and oh, the nutmeg. Of course I love nutmeg, so naturally I’d like this.
What I didn’t like: nothing whatsoever. A definite make again cake.

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If you’re most of my readers, you probably don’t have wattleseed in your spice pantry. If that’s the case, and you don’t really want to buy any (from Australia) then you may want to breeze on by this recipe. If you’re intrigued, you may want to look at my previous post about wattleseed, incorporated in the recipe for wattleseed ice cream – my favorite (to date) wattleseed recipe.

Have you ever made something – in this case baked something – and it was good, but not the “best,” so you gave it away, or even tipped it into the trash? Sometimes it’s just that whatever it was didn’t appeal to you the next day – I’ve had that happen often enough. Like left overs! When I made this cake, I also made the wattleseed ice cream along with it. The ice cream was the star of the show. No question! I was bereft when the quart of wattleseed ice cream was gone. In the meantime I’ve restocked my wattleseed supply. That, in itself is another story – an acquaintance at a local herb and spice store had an employee who was visiting Australia – one thing led to another and I ordered wattleseed from Vic Chericoff, had it shipped to where this employee was staying and she brought it home in her suitcase! I gave her a Starbucks card as a thank you. Yippee. I now have enough wattleseed to make another 3-4 batches of ice cream. There’s a lesson here – if anyone you know is going to Australia make arrangements to have them bring you some! I bought it when I was in Australia 2 years ago, but I only bought a little bit. Definitely not enough!

The cake recipe. Well, I found it on a website that also (it just happens) sells wattleseed and some other indigenous Australian products. And a wattleseed cookbook. And has a group of wattleseed recipes too. The cake looked interesting – I like Bundt cakes. I had an orange and a lemon, so I put it together and baked it up in a flash. The batter is divided in half – half gets wattleseed – the other half gets orange/lemon flavorings. You swirl it around in the pan a bit and that’s what you get. The above photo shows the top before I’d swirled it. The one at right shows it after I’d used a knife to swirl the batter.

So, to get back to this cake story . . . after making the cake I was hoping the wattleseed would be just permeate the flavor. It didn’t. What I tasted was the orange and lemon in it. Hmmm. Not what I had in mind. We had it that night, and I think my DH and I had a piece the next night. By the following day it didn’t appeal to me at all, so without asking my DH I threw it out. My hubby doesn’t eat much sweets, so I never thought for a minute he would miss it. Oh yessiree, he did! Went hunting for it a day or so later. Therefore, I made a couple of minor flavor changes to this recipe – toning down the orange (I only added lemon because I didn’t have enough with just one orange) and lemon. Use small ones so the zest doesn’t overpower the cake. That’s all. And definitely don’t over bake it – I think I did and it was a bit on the dry side. I prefer moist cakes. My DH I guess likes cakes drier than I do!

What I liked: well, that here’s another way to use wattleseed. I don’t have a big inventory of recipes for it (yet), although if you click on the link up above you’ll find several, mostly desserts. Just remember that wattleseed is subtle. You don’t want to use a lot of it (it’s precious, remember, for a Californian since it ships from Australia!) in any case. I’ll watch the baking time very carefully next time.
What I didn’t like: that the wattleseed flavor wasn’t the predominant flavor. But it was still nice anyway. A kind of a white spice cake. See what you think and let me know!

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Honey ice cream? It just sounded so sweet. Dulcet. Mellow. I’ve read dozens of recipes for honey ice cream over the last few years, and I’d copied a few for my to-try file. But when I read this one, that didn’t require a custard (egg yolks and milk, simmered until thickened), I thought I should try it first. There are just a few ingredients in it. And truly, it was easy to make.

Part way through I decided to add some lavender to it. It just sounded good.

So, I slightly altered the recipe to add that in and to let the lavender infuse a little bit. Not taking time to go look up how other cooks have added lavender to ice cream, I just added it to the just-simmered milk and honey and let it sit, kind of like steeping tea. Once it had cooled to room temperature I filtered out the lavender. I didn’t want to leave the lavender in the ice cream – some folks might be a bit averse to finding little  flower particles in it. Once that chilled, it was added to the heavy cream and it was ready to be churned.

The recipe below makes a quart. We ate all but a smidgen when I took it to some new friends, at a dinner for 6 people. There was just enough for one moderate scoop per person. And oh, was it ever good. Oh my yes! I’m glad there isn’t any more of it as I’d be too tempted to dip a spoon in it now and then. It’s special. The ice cream, after all, is almost all cream – there’s just a bit of milk in the mixture. Then the honey . . . I used sage blossom, but what fun it would be to vary the types of honey. You definitely taste the honey, but there is JUST enough honey to make a light sweetness to the ice cream. Just a perfect amount. The lavender was very, very subtle. If you like lavender, add more. If your lavender is old, it may not have any scent left in it, anyway. Taste it to see. Lavender, in and of itself, is a subtle flavor, so letting it get old would make it null and void, I would think. Some upscale markets do carry dried lavender these days. Do seek it out. Or harvest some from your garden! Let the ice cream sit out for about 10-15 minutes before you try to scoop it.

What I liked: every little tiny thing about it. Altogether delicious. I’d make it without the lavender too – the ice cream itself was very smooth.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all.

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Can you ever have too many recipes for strawberry ice cream? Hopefully not, since I think I have 3 on my blog already! This one is fairly straight forward – except for the addition of kirsch, which surely must add some taste, but I couldn’t pick it out – it just enhanced the strawberries, I think.

First off, I must tell you that the lovely ruby ice cream color in the photo up above has not been enhanced. I do own PhotoShop, and I use it all the time on my photos (cropping, lightening the whole picture, especially if I didn’t have sufficient light on the object to begin with, then inserting the text).

An aside here – do you know why I always type text on my photos? Because people steal my photos and put them on their own blogs or websites, claiming them as their own. I got really ticked off at one guy a couple of years ago who just lifted about 20 of my blog posts and recipes and plopped them all into his website. It wasn’t just the recipes, it was the entire posts. The only thing he did was add advertising within the text I’d written, and particularly in the recipes. So if it said “yellow lentils,” or “chili powder” or “ground cinnamon” he inserted a link on the words so you could go buy it somewhere. I’d suppose he was going to get revenue from manufacturers by providing buy-links. He actually told me he thought I’d be flattered that he was reproducing my stories and recipes on his website. His mistake was including a trackback link to my website (if he hadn’t, I might not have ever known). I set him straight about that in one big hurry! So generally I insert text and my copyright buried somewhere on it. Hopefully that prevents others from using them. It doesn’t prevent anyone from copying and pasting my stories someplace else. I don’t care about a lot of my photos, but the ones with text usually contain the copyright. It’s the courteous thing to do to ASK first if you can lift an entire story or a photo (and provide attribution).

Well, there, I’ve gotten that off my chest! Sorry for the sidetrack . . .

Now, this ice cream I adapted a little bit after reading the recipe over at Cheryl Sternman Rule’s blog called 5 Second Rule. She got it from a cookbook, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. It sounds like a very intriguing book – I’d like to glance at it, in a bookstore, though, before I buy it. Among other things, Cheryl mentioned some ideas for children’s snacks. Anyway, if you go onto amazon, you can click on the book photo to view some of the book’s pages – including her recipes for ricotta cheese, cream cheese, buttermilk, quick oatmeal, granola and several pages of her cooking explanations and stories. The author, Alana Chernila, is a young mother, and she must be a stay-at-home mom since she obviously spends a copious amount of time in her kitchen, and on her kitchen sofa (one of her favorite pieces of furniture, where she often piles up stacks of cookbooks). In my next life I’m going to have a comfortable sofa right next to my cookbook bookcase. I have a sofa near mine now, but it’s part of our family room furniture and it backs up to the bookcase. Not convenient. So, next time it might be something out of the pages of Country Living. Red and white plaid, I think. With a table big enough to hold a tray for a pot of tea. Can you picture it?

The ice cream – well, it was delicious. It takes 2 baskets of berries to make it – and a cup of heavy cream and just 1/2 cup of half and half or fat-free half and half, which is what I used. I’m sure it must have been the Kirsch that made it different because it’s much like other strawberry ice creams I’ve made. It is a custard-type. Do mash up the strawberries sufficiently (I elaborated the directions about that because mashing them up “a bit” which is what was in the original directions, and that is definitely not enough – we had big frozen chunks of strawberry in the finished product). See the photo above – see the one whole honkin’ strawberry there on the right! My freezer keeps things at 0°, so a berry is frozen solid! The ice cream has to sit out at room temp for about 10 minutes before it can be scooped very well, too. If you have Kirsch in your liquor cabinet, you might want to give this recipe a try.

What I liked: the very-berry strawberry flavor, and the bright ruby-red color. The taste is delightful – very much strawberry. The grandkids thought it was great too. I found out our youngest grandson’s favorite ice cream is strawberry, so he was very happy! He just turned 5.

What I didn’t like: really, nothing.

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When I read the write-up about this cake on Baking Banter (the blog from King Arthur Flour’s test kitchen) they talked about how very tender this cake is – like from a boxed mix, but it’s NOT – I knew I’d be trying it soon. And yes-yes-yes it’s every bit as good as it should be!

Over the years I’ve been baking I’ve often wondered why I couldn’t make a yellow cake (or any kind of cake, for that matter) as tender as a box mix. I mean, gee whiz, it can’t be those yucky additives in a boxed mix that make it tender? Right? I’ve tried. Many times I’ve tried. So when the gals at Baking Banter (the blog written by the staff in King Arthur Flour’s test kitchen) talked about it on their blog, about how they devised a cake that IS just as tender as a boxed mix, and certainly more tasty than a boxed mix, well, my cooking antennae went up. Then I forgot about it, so when we had a big family celebration (5 birthdays within 2 weeks) recently I decided to make this cake. We were going to have 10 people. This cake makes 10 slices. Great. That way I wouldn’t eat the leftovers.

So what makes this cake tender? Well, it’s likely a combination of things: yogurt in the cake, and probably the method of combining and mixing the batter (I think they mentioned that in the write-up). The cake has ordinary ingredients (other than yogurt in the cake which is a bit different). It’s easy to make, really.

The cake bakes in a one of those taller-sided 9-inch cake pans. Not an ordinary cake pan or you’ll have cake batter spilling over the edges. Someone mentioned you could use a springform pan for this but you might wrap the outside with foil. The batter is relatively thick, though, so I don’t think that would be necessary. It bakes for 30-35 minutes – DO make sure the very center is cooked through – I thought mine was at 30 minutes – the cake tester came out clean – but didn’t find out it wasn’t until it cooled, when the center sunk a little bit, that it wasn’t quite done. It didn’t matter. . . there was enough frosting that it filled in the hole. Nobody knew! But, in the photo above you can see the pointed end sinks just a little bit – that’s why. It did need the full 35 minutes.

Then you make the frosting. Gosh, this frosting is SO easy and SO good. I’ll be making that again on other cakes – not that I make them all that often – but I really, really liked this one, so perhaps I will. Everybody at the table raved about the cake and the icing. You melt and briefly boil butter, yogurt and cocoa together, then add it to powdered sugar and a little tiny bit of espresso powder (optional). It makes a perfect pouring type frosting. Obviously soft and pourable enough that it puddled around the cake. Once poured, don’t smear or try to spread or you’ll end up with a mess. Part of its beauty is the sleek top, untouched until it firmed up. The experts at King Arthur also have a chocolate version (although it’s actually a totally different batter). If you love Boston Cream Pie, they recommend using this cake, slicing in half horizontally and filling it with a custard or cream filling. Everything else would be the same. Maybe next time I’ll try that.

What I liked: everything, absolutely every little thing about it. The gals at Baking Banter did it again with a real winner. This will go onto my favorites list if that tells you anything.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Fabulous cake in every dimension.

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