Breads & Cakes

Brown Sugar Cherry Pound Cake

July 24, 2018 by mollygilbert520 Leave a Comment

When Sarah calls you up and asks if you want to bake something, the correct answer is always yes. Yes! You’ll shout into the phone, not caring what day of the week it is or what you might have planned to do that afternoon. New plan: bake with Sarah.

So that’s where I found myself one bright afternoon, sitting with Sarah in my kitchen nook, the two of us staring at a giant bowl of cherries on the countertop and leafing through a mound of cookbooks for inspiration. Pound cake! We decided. What does Ina have to say about it? We wondered.

Ina had a few things to say about her pound cake (honey, pure cake flour, no cherries, etc.), but between Sarah and my meddling the finished recipe was a far cry from the original – laced with almond extract, spelt flour, a healthy amount of brown sugar, and studded throughout with fresh cherry jewels.

We watched season 5 of the Great British Bake Off while our own cake baked, which is something I recommend doing, regardless of whether or not you make this recipe. (A Mel/Sue sandwich is always a good idea, y’know?) Anyway, despite all of the meddling, and the fact that we were distracted by television and missed our baking timers, the finished product – our brown sugar cherry pound cake – turned out to be quite simple and fresh, a perfectly dense and buttery cake, topped with a bright and cheerful glaze in the loveliest (slash trendiest) of summer hues.

Bottom line is it’s scrummy. Will you try it? On your mark, get set, BAKE!

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Kid-Friendly Banana Oat Muffins

October 9, 2017 by mollygilbert520 Leave a Comment

I’m on a muffin bender, and my toddler is VERY happy about it. First was the classic blueberry sort, then I turned Deb’s famous double chocolate banana bread into muffins (holy Popes, Deb!) (Also friends, let me know if you want me to post that recipe here, I will gladly oblige), and then I made these muffins three Friday nights in a row. (On a related note, I may have to get out more.)

I’ve convinced Calder that they’re a treat (chocolate chips help with this illusion, and the enthusiasm with which he asks for a “teat!” these days is both heart warming and slightly terrifying), but the truth is that these little cakes, packed with protein and whole grains (and only a small amount of processed sugar – fresh bananas and applesauce bring plenty of natural sweetness), feel perfectly appropriate for daily toddler consumption.

With my ever-growing mountain of muffins on hand (I find they do pretty well in the freezer, then either briefly microwaved or just left out at room temp to thaw), I’ve taken to doling them out as a post-Sunday-soccer practice “teat” (I have to say that I use the word “soccer” pretty loosely here — a bunch of 18-month-olds chasing bubbles around with orange cones might not fulfill the actual definition), as a welcome afternoon pick-me-up at the playground, or just as part of a “special” weekday breakfast.

If you have kids (or, you know, not) and are looking to get on the muffin train, look no further! These have it all. Bananas, applesauce, Greek yogurt! Oats, whole wheat and buckwheat flours! And some mini chocolate chips for good measure. “Teats” for everyone!

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Classic Blueberry Muffins

September 15, 2017 by mollygilbert520 2 Comments

At the beginning of September, as backpacks are filled and schedules are… filled (I excel at writing), everyone loves a good list. I know I do.

As such, I herby present you with my (highly scientific, expertly curated) list of:

Things That Aren’t Actually So Bad About Summer Ending:

It’s time to dip back into our really pretty great sweatshirt collection
Hot coffee, extra splash of cream
One Pot/Pan meals on repeat
Foliage/leaf peeps
Apple picking/pumpkin patch trips
Elections! Know your day to vote.
We can stop wearing those “cold shoulder” tops. What even are those?
Appropriateness of planning toddler Halloween costumes (sidenote, could use some input: garden gnome, fuzzy/non-fuzzy animal, or something else entirely? Might be important to say that my child looks a lot like a garden gnome, but also does a great fish impression.)
Blueberry muffins as lunch treat and/or after school snack!

Number nine is taking center stage in my house this week. There are still a few (a very few, maybe) good fresh blueberries to be found around these parts, but I also just unearthed a giant bag of frozen berries from earlier this summer (score!), and as such, some fresh, tender-crumbed muffins sounded like just the thing.

These are fluffy and dense with berries, with just a small hit of lemon zest throughout. The tops are wonderfully sugar-crunch-capped, so particularly healthy they are probably not, but particularly delicious? You bet.

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Victoria Sponge

July 21, 2017 by mollygilbert520 3 Comments

Ever since I first laid eyes on the absolute delight that is the Great British Baking Show (or Bakeoff, depending on where you live), I’ve been jonesing for some Victoria Sponge.

I’ve also been in a generally better mood, because as anyone who has watched this show can tell you, it’s the loveliest of lovely things to watch and, somehow, can make you forget (if only for an hour-long episode) that things like this are the truths we live with now.

Plus, there’s cake! Or sponge, if we’re being British about it. As far as I can tell, a Victoria Sponge (I really want to call it a “Victoria Sponge Cake” but isn’t that like saying “Victoria Cake Cake?” Help me, Brits!) is basically just two light and buttery pound-ish cakes, sandwiched with a thin layer of jam and a thick (beautiful, billowy) layer of lightly sweetened whipped cream.

SWOON.

I’d put it firmly in the category of snack cake, which as we all know is the best kind of cake — the kind you can just snack on all day long and it somehow feels appropriate. Not overly adorned. Lightly sweet. Snacky. You know?

Anyway, when I went to create my own version, I ran quickly towards Nigella Lawson, Domestic Goddess that she is, and she didn’t steer me wrong. (Also, Mary Berry’s version — and most versions, actually — calls for castor sugar, which is the Brit way of saying superfine sugar, which I didn’t have on hand. I eventually picked some up, though, because the cake — the sponge, I should say — really benefits from a final dusting of the stuff before serving). The final verdict on this thing is: SCRUMMY. Let’s eat cake.

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Tender Rhubarb Snack Cake

April 25, 2017 by mollygilbert520 3 Comments

Sniff sniff, HONK sniff! I think I’ve officially entered the stage of life where someone in my house is always sick. Sniffles and coughs and viruses, oh my! (And Calder’s not even in daycare yet! Oh dear.) It’s all terribly glamorous and attractive, yes it is.

But what if rhubarb cake is a cure-all? Do tender crumb and sweet-tart fruit have healing powers? What if the soft cake is flecked with dark buckwheat flour, some Greek yogurt, and hints of citrus, too?

I’m going with yes. (And even if not, a friend I shared this cake with said it “tastes of unicorns,” so at the very least, we’ve got that going for us.) Join me!

Tender Rhubarb Snack Cake…

Homemade Bagels

March 24, 2017 by mollygilbert520 5 Comments

I’ve lived in Seattle for over three years, and while I love this city, I just have to say: Seattle has a bagel problem. Having moved here from New York City (by way of San Francisco, fine), I admit my standards are high, but Seattle, come on! Get your bagel game together.

I’m looking for a New York style bagel. A bagel bagel. I don’t want one of these “Montreal-style” shenanigans. I’m looking for a bagel that’s bigger than my fist, one with a chewy crust (with just a bit of crackle), and a crumb that’s tender but not overly doughy.

I’M LOOKING FOR LOX AND SCHMEAR. Can I get an amen?

In my dreams, I open up a wildly successful bagel shop here in Seattle. We sell hot, fresh bagels, plain and flavored cream cheese, and lox on lox on lox. Also maybe some black and white cookies, because I miss those, too. Side of fresh OJ and coffee with extra cream?

It’s a nice dream. Until then, these homemade bagels will have to do.

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Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (One Pan & Done!)

March 6, 2017 by mollygilbert520 2 Comments

We celebrated my kid’s first birthday over the weekend, and BOY if the day wasn’t a roller coaster of emotions. The mixture of pride and elation and nostalgia and exhaustion and pure joy… whew. All of the feelings showed up to the party.

In fact, over the past 365 days, I’m pretty sure I’ve emoted aaaaall of the emotions. Parenthood is both harder and better than I thought it would be, and this little boy of mine – this one year old (!) – with his happy, curious face, the one that looks up at me every morning and squeaks “hi!” from his crib, makes every moment (even the middle-of-the-night-wailing ones, the throw-up-on-my-new-shoes ones, the will-I-ever-sleep-again-please-please-please ones) so very worth it.

It feels like both a lifetime ago and just yesterday that Calder was placed in my arms for the first time, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment – both of us sizing each other up, his tiny hand wrapped around my finger, the two of us clinging to each other like our lives depended on it (they kind of did). Since then, he’s grown into a sweet and playful little boy with a coating of blond duck fuzz instead of hair on his head – a boy who drums on any surface he can reach (especially if he can use a set of spoons as drumsticks), delights in learning animal sounds (so far we’ve got “bahh,” “moo,” and “roar” on lock), wiggles on command (my favorite thing), loves croissants and feels lukewarm about avocados (go figure).

Happy birthday, little man of mine. You are ONE! What a wild and wonderful ride.

Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting…

Pumpkin Chocolate Icebox Cake

October 24, 2016 by mollygilbert520 27 Comments

Happy virtual pumpkin party Monday!

So, yeah. I may have gone too literal here. I didn’t originally intend to shape this softly-spiced pumpkin chocolate icebox cake like an actual pumpkin, but I started frosting and stacking and frosting and stacking and before I knew it, there it was. A mound of cocoa-y chocolate wafers and fluffy, pumpkin whipped cream, begging for a jagged chocolate “stem” and a curly vine of carefully plucked sprinkles.

I couldn’t resist.

My dad is the original icebox cake maker in my family. He makes one every year on Thanksgiving (along with a giant, multicolored layered jello mold — #midwesternforever), and it’s always the first dessert on the table to go. Probably because it tastes like a giant, cool-whip ensconced Oreo cookie?

Yeah. Ensconced.

I wanted to up the ante a little bit here. Real, fresh cream, whipped to soft peaks. Roasted pumpkin purée and warm spices. The original chocolate wafer cookie. In the shape of a pumpkin, WHYNOT?

It’s just my contribution to the giant, blogger-wide effort (lead by the fearless Sara and Aimee) to saturate the interwebs with all things pumpkin today. Which, by the way, is working. Check it:

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Deb’s Plum Cake

September 13, 2016 by mollygilbert520 8 Comments

Leave it to Deb to get me back in the kitchen! I mean, when that lady says “jump”, I’m the first to ask “how high?” so it stands to follow that when Deb says “make this plum cake,” I know it’s in my best interest to bust out the butter and search for some plums.

Except, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to search very far, because my neighbor, Martha, happens to have a plum tree in her yard, and Martha also happens to be quite generous (in general, but also specifically in plums), so as it happened, just as soon as I got it in my head to make plum cake, there was Martha, bag of plums in hand, to save the day.

The cake lives up to the hype. It’s a cinch to make (you could easily do it in the short span it takes for, say, a 6-month old to wear himself out on his play mat… just saying), looks beautiful, and tastes like it should — perfectly sweet, warmly spiced, and happily damp with fresh plum. I find it a perfect segue from summer to fall, using both the last of the season’s sweet, juicy fruit, and also a generous dash of warm cinnamon.

I actually made two of these plum cakes in one day — one for some neighbors who just welcomed their own new babe, and one for my own family to gobble up in a single (yep, just one) day. What I’m saying is, we need more plum cake. (Once plums are gone, I may give this another try with pears, although I don’t think Martha has a pear tree. Shoot).

In other news, I feel like I’ve typed “plums” one too many times today and now I can’t look at the word without feeling like it’s spelled wrong. Plums. PLUMS. Plummmmms.

I think it’s time for me to go.

And as an aside, we haven’t given Calder much solid food yet but we let him sort of gum and suck on a (ahem) plum and it was both amazing and hysterical. Boy loves him some PLUM.

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Sour Cream Bran Muffins

June 6, 2016 by mollygilbert520 7 Comments

HELLO! Well, wow. It’s been awhile. It seems I had a kid (!) and everything else (cooking, writing, showering…) fell by the wayside. I’m officially one of those people. Yikes.

But! Lest you think all you’re going to find here is a terrible iPhone picture of a pretty delicious muffin, I’d like to introduce you to someone:

OH hi there! This is Calder. He’s my son and I’m keeping him forever. Incidentally, he’s also a pretty delicious muffin.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly how much of the little guy I want to put out there on the internet, but let’s start here. Calder likes: fresh air, hiccups, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, midnight snacks, bouncing. Dislikes: long car rides, crib naps, wearing socks.

Though I’ve not spent much time in the kitchen, the past three months (three months already! bah.) with this little man have been the most delicious ever – so thanks for bearing with my absence around here.

Before Calder was born, I loaded up my freezer with a few simple meals and snacks (including this soup and these meatballs) that I knew I’d want around post baby, and these muffins proved an excellent call. Parading under the guise of good health (I mean, bran muffins), these are light and tender crumbed cakes packed to the gills with sweet fruit and rich molasses flavor.

In the early days when the babe needed to eat every five seconds (or so it seemed), leaving me ravenous at all hours, my nighttime routine included pulling two (or, uh, three) of these muffins from the freezer and setting them by my bedside — they’d thaw just in time for that first, late night nursing session, and I’d descend hungrily on the things after my sweet boy had gotten his fill (of milk, not muffins… little guy didn’t know what he was missing).

I’ve made a few batches since the first to restock the coffers, as it were, and served them, warm from the oven and slathered with butter, to last-minute brunch guests (instead of shoveling them in my mouth at 2am, say), but these muffins will always remind me of those first few amazing, exhausting, terrifying and exhilarating weeks with Calder.

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