|
Sponsored by |
|---|
|
|
-
Need help navigating the forum? Find out how to use our features here.
-
Did you know we have lots of smilies for you to use?
Lunacy We all gotta eat, right? (Food Porn)
- Thread starter dorkus_molorkus
- Start date
bulllee
Well-Known Member
My wife made fried shrimp, fresh green beans, and wild rice and water chestnuts. She knocked it outta the ballpark! 
Some freeloader I found and fed!
We have our 2 grown kids, with us for another 2 weeks. Everyone here loves to cook. I feel blessed with family and food.
Some freeloader I found and fed!
We have our 2 grown kids, with us for another 2 weeks. Everyone here loves to cook. I feel blessed with family and food.
It was Greek night at my house last night....
Tiropita
Greek salad
And chicken kabobs
Tiropita
Greek salad
And chicken kabobs
@momofthegoons, @bulllee, your wonderful pictures are inspirational! My meal presentation dont come close to your delectable creations! My routine is to cook a meal and the eat leftovers for a day of two, or sometimes eat the leftovers the same day... After all...
bulllee
Well-Known Member
Who deserves a kick ass meal more so than yourself? Make an evening of cooking with someone. Hell break out some wine and nobody's gonna care what's for dinner !
Damn.
Mod note: posts merged
Last edited by a moderator:
bulllee
Well-Known Member
Did Instagram Ruin the Chocolate Chip Cookie?
There’s way too much dark chocolate and salt in today’s most-liked cookies.
www.tastecooking.com
Did Instagram Ruin the Chocolate Chip Cookie?
By: KAITLIN BRAY Illustration: TASTE
There’s way too much dark chocolate and salt in today’s most-liked cookies.
The chocolate chip—excuse me, chunk—cookie has lost its way. If your Instagram feed is anything like mine, I suspect many of the cookies racking up likes are deeply flawed. These oozing blobs are woefully imbalanced, often too bitter, too salty, and not structurally sound. Over the last decade, the chocolate chip cookie has shed its quaint Toll House roots. Fueled by a thirst for internet fame, spiking SEO rankings, and genuine geeky enthusiasm, recipe writers and baking bloggers alike have relentlessly tweaked America’s most iconic baked good to optimize it for the grid.
Every year, without fail, new articles appear, proclaiming, “We don’t need another chocolate chip cookie recipe, but…” Is it because food writers are on a never-ending quest to create a little buzz? Or perhaps we’re forever chasing the nostalgia of our youth. I fully support eating what you like, and how you like it, but I want to pause for a moment and consider if, collectively, we’ve gone a bit off course with this iconic food. What started as a few chocolate morsels suspended in a Ruth Wakefield’s Butter Drop Do in 1936 has transformed, 80-some-odd years later, into a barely recognizable, salt-flecked chocolate lagoon. Back then, 12 ounces—what was considered the gold standard of chocolate for 60 cookies—is now suitable for 20.
Why am I complaining about too much chocolate? Because in the context of a cookie, a mouthful of bitter, molten cacao is simply not good. That’s what chocolate lava cake is for. The greatness of a chocolate chip cookie lies in the interplay between sweet, salty, and bitter flavors highlighted by many textures, from crisp, caramelized edges to fudgy, craggy centers. Chocolate holds many flavors, from bitter and nutty to fruity and citrusy. In a balanced cookie, notes of toffee, butterscotch, and caramel offer sweet relief in smooth, rich pockets of chocolate. A sprinkle of salt keeps the whole thing in check, but a heavy hand can easily overpower it. Knock any one element out of balance, and you can end up with a one-note cookie. In the case of Instagram, that note is primarily bitter.
But I feel some personal responsibility for where we are. I’d like to blame the state of the chocolate chip cookie on Instagram culture alone, but for more than three years, I oversaw one of the largest food media social accounts. Instagram trends come and go—remember avocado roses? But in 2016, I began noticing that chocolate chunk cookies were on an upswing. In pursuit of growth, I began strategically pumping baking sheet after baking sheet of absurdly chocolaty cookies into millions of feeds on a regular basis. Molten cookie content, or “engagement bait,” as we jokingly called it, became a lever to pull to boost activity during a slump or to prime the audience for a new product release.
I began setting the (very chocolaty) bar of what a cookie should look like by rewarding the gooiest, meltiest puddles that tagged us with a regram. I wasn’t consciously pushing this sea change toward chocolate imbalance, but the standards for an Instagram-worthy cookie were evolving, and I was complicit.
A cacao arms race has occurred, with the chocolate-to-dough ratio skyrocketing. In 2008, after a summer spent gathering intel from some of New York’s greatest bakers, including Jacques Torres and Dorie Greenspan, David Leite published a recipe for the “consummate chocolate chip cookie” in the New York Times. His recipe departed from the iconic one on the back of the bag in a few notable ways: It called for two types of flour, 1.25 pounds of bittersweet chocolate disks (or feves), and dough that is chilled before baking. It was the first mainstream cookie recipe to glorify couverture chocolate (fewer stabilizers, superior melting), spotlight cacao percentage, and articulate the benefits of an overnight rest.
When the oversize, chocolate-laden cookies arrived in print, they were picked up early by bloggers like Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, but their influence didn’t manifest until a few years later, when a consensus from food blogs and high-profile Instagram accounts like Tasty began commanding serious attention. The Times recipe was widely considered to be too fussy, expensive, and time-consuming to be made regularly, but the lessons at the core of the cookie were instilled. There was a real appetite for new takes on the classic, and recipes from Ashley Rodriguez, J. Kenji López-Alt, Joy Wilson, Tara O’Brady, and Sarah Kieffer began making the rounds, incorporating their own spins, like brown butter, demerara sugar, and pan-banging. This new crop of Internet-famous recipes continued to sing the praises of hand-chopped bittersweet chocolate, encourage chilling, and instate the importance of salt. Compared to the Toll House standards of our youth, the chocolate pools, rivulets, and wrinkles were exciting.
Around the same time, dark chocolate was gaining popularity, thanks to a growing number of scientific studies linking cacao to positive health outcomes. Americans finally had permission to embrace chocolate—as long as it was 70 percent cacao—and embrace it we did. Despite their butter and sugar, chocolate-studded cookies managed to align with the growing conversation on wellness. The increase in consumer knowledge led national grocers like Whole Foods to begin stocking high-quality bars, feves, and wafers, and even Trader Joe’s and Nestlé began producing bittersweet chunks that used to be limited to baking supply stores.
Since then, the cookie innovations haven’t stopped. With home and professional bakers vying for attention in a crowded space, many have resorted to piling on more chocolate and salt—and it’s worked. A quick scroll through Instagram will reveal an abundance of artfully oozing, salt-flecked cookies. It’s not surprising that our algorithm-driven culture—which rewards absurd, extreme, and entertaining content above all—would distort our culinary proclivities. In a race to grab attention and likes, people are continuing to push the limits on how much chocolate a cookie can physically hold. A recent Martha Stewart recipe calls for a staggering four and a half cups.
It’s almost hard to remember that in the early aughts, salted desserts were considered avant-garde, chocolate chips were often the only grocery store option available for cookie baking, and we ate dinner without documenting it. While I have no doubt that we will forever be reinventing the chocolate chip cookie, for pleasure and for goosing social media engagement reports, I hope we begin to reprioritize taste and balance.
There’s a place for many different chocolate chip cookies at the table. Just be sure you’re making them the way you actually like them, and not for the sake of the ’gram. There are now a staggering number of resources dedicated to helping people devise their own perfect chocolate chip cookie. So go forth and manifest the cookie of your dreams—below, you’ll find mine.
bulllee
Well-Known Member
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/wh...7048&esrc=bgbbROTDpromo&utm_term=BA_Basically
Where You Buy Your Spices is Just As Important As How You Use Them
These companies keep ethics and quality at top of mind.
BY MACKENZIE FEGAN
MAY 22, 2020
As Sting’s uncle says in Dune, “He who controls the spice controls the universe.” Back here on earth, the sentiment is not far off. For centuries, trade routes have been carved, fortunes made, and people subjugated all for spice—nutmeg and pepper, saffron and cardamom, vanilla and cinnamon.
That fraught history means it’s worth taking a second to pause next time you find yourself reupping on coriander. Flavor is certainly one reason to take care with where you source your spices. Depending on the type and whether it’s whole or ground, spices can lose their potency in as a few as six months. A jar of ground cumin could conceivably have been sitting on a grocery store shelf for several months, its valuable volatile oils evaporating all the while. Your supermarket cinnamon is also likely to be cassia cinnamon instead of Ceylon cinnamon—which isn’t bad, just...less good—and if you’re not thoroughly scrutinizing labels, you could wind up with artificial vanilla flavoring instead of pure vanilla extract.
Spice, glorious spice!
PHOTO BY LAURA MURRAY, FOOD STYLING BY KAT BOYTSOVA
But knowing where your spices come from is important for other reasons as well. Most spices still reach your kitchen in much the same way they did when the Dutch East India Company was operating in the 17th century—they were grown or foraged by someone in a country close to the equator, and they have passed through multiple hands before reaching their final destination. Because there are so many brokers, traders, processors, and other middlemen, those supply chains generally lack transparency. And with “spice” being a catch-all term encompassing scores of different crops grown in scores of different countries, each individual supply chain comes with its own challenges. Are the foragers making a living wage? Have the spices been adulterated by middlemen? Is climate change forcing farmers off their land?
Your best bet is to buy from a company with the shortest supply chain possible—ideally one that sources spices straight from their origin and sells them directly to you. By cultivating personal relationships with their farmers and foragers, these companies not only ensure that their customers are getting flavorful, fresh, high-quality spices, but also that their suppliers are being paid fairly. For spice growers, many of whom live in some of the poorest countries in the world, a trusted partnership with an ethical importer can mean a pathway to economic security.
WATCH
Basically Carbonara
More Bon Appétit Videos
Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite players in the spice world—from companies that source directly from farmers to artisan blenders who concoct complex spice mixes to shops where you can compare Kampot and Tellicherry peppercorns.
Spice Sourcers
Where You Buy Your Spices is Just As Important As How You Use Them
These companies keep ethics and quality at top of mind.
BY MACKENZIE FEGAN
MAY 22, 2020
As Sting’s uncle says in Dune, “He who controls the spice controls the universe.” Back here on earth, the sentiment is not far off. For centuries, trade routes have been carved, fortunes made, and people subjugated all for spice—nutmeg and pepper, saffron and cardamom, vanilla and cinnamon.
That fraught history means it’s worth taking a second to pause next time you find yourself reupping on coriander. Flavor is certainly one reason to take care with where you source your spices. Depending on the type and whether it’s whole or ground, spices can lose their potency in as a few as six months. A jar of ground cumin could conceivably have been sitting on a grocery store shelf for several months, its valuable volatile oils evaporating all the while. Your supermarket cinnamon is also likely to be cassia cinnamon instead of Ceylon cinnamon—which isn’t bad, just...less good—and if you’re not thoroughly scrutinizing labels, you could wind up with artificial vanilla flavoring instead of pure vanilla extract.
Spice, glorious spice!
PHOTO BY LAURA MURRAY, FOOD STYLING BY KAT BOYTSOVA
But knowing where your spices come from is important for other reasons as well. Most spices still reach your kitchen in much the same way they did when the Dutch East India Company was operating in the 17th century—they were grown or foraged by someone in a country close to the equator, and they have passed through multiple hands before reaching their final destination. Because there are so many brokers, traders, processors, and other middlemen, those supply chains generally lack transparency. And with “spice” being a catch-all term encompassing scores of different crops grown in scores of different countries, each individual supply chain comes with its own challenges. Are the foragers making a living wage? Have the spices been adulterated by middlemen? Is climate change forcing farmers off their land?
Your best bet is to buy from a company with the shortest supply chain possible—ideally one that sources spices straight from their origin and sells them directly to you. By cultivating personal relationships with their farmers and foragers, these companies not only ensure that their customers are getting flavorful, fresh, high-quality spices, but also that their suppliers are being paid fairly. For spice growers, many of whom live in some of the poorest countries in the world, a trusted partnership with an ethical importer can mean a pathway to economic security.
WATCH
Basically Carbonara
More Bon Appétit Videos
Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite players in the spice world—from companies that source directly from farmers to artisan blenders who concoct complex spice mixes to shops where you can compare Kampot and Tellicherry peppercorns.
Spice Sourcers
- Diaspora Co.: Mumbai-born, California-based Sana Javeri Kadri works directly with smallholder farmers in India to source heirloom, single-origin turmeric, chiles, cardamom, and pepper. She’ll expand to cinnamon, cumin, and coriander in the fall. Our editors love this company not only for its vibrant, fragrant turmeric, but also for its commitment to ethical and transparent supply chains.
- Burlap & Barrel: Like Diaspora Co, Burlap & Barrel co-founders Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar source their heirloom spices—including Basically editor Sarah Jampel’s favorite cinnamon—from smallholder farms and farmer cooperatives. By cutting out the middleman, they ensure that farmers earn a higher price for their product. Their direct relationships with suppliers mean that farmers can focus on quality rather than quantity, knowing that they have a partner who will reward their efforts.
- Spicewalla: James Beard-nominated chef Meherwan Irani sells his carefully curated spices both individually and in sets, including a “Kitchen Essentials” pack of 18 spices that is beloved by Healthyish editor Amanda Shapiro and currently on sale.
- Rumi Spice: Founded by US military veterans with on-the-ground experience in Afghanistan, Rumi Spice’s goal is to increase the economic opportunities for Afghan farmers and agricultural workers, many of whom are women. Their focus is on saffron, but they’ve recently expanded into cumin and spice blends.
- Frontier Co-op: This member owned co-op headquartered in Iowa was founded in 1976, and its spices—as well as its 100% organic line, Simply Organic—are a good grocery store option. Frontier Co-op introduced the first Fair Trade Certified spices in the United States in 2009, and their Well Earth program supports spice growers and foragers by providing multi-year contracts and capital for new agricultural equipment.
- New York Shuk: Best known for its signature harissa, New York Shuk creates spice blends that reflect founders Leetal and Ron Arazi’s Middle Eastern heritage. Unlike many commercially available za’atar blends which rely on dried oregano and thyme, New York Shuk’s actually contains za’atar—an herb unto itself that grows wild in the Middle East. They source theirs from the Zawtar Farm Collective in Lebanon.
- Spice Tree Organics: Egyptian-Americans Doaa Elkady and Freda Nokaly source their organic spices from reputable suppliers—including Burlap & Barrel—and then toast, grind, and mix them into evocative blends like NYC Halal Cart and baharat.
- The Spice House: Ruth and Bill Penzey, Sr. opened The Spice House in 1957, a time when garlic was still considered "exotic" by much of America. Their daughter Patty ran the business until 2018, when it was purchased by business partners with backgrounds in finance and tech.
- Penzey’s Spices: Bill Penzey, Jr. followed in his parents’ footsteps and started his mail order spice business in 1986. He now has 70 retail locations and is nearly as famous for his progressive politics as he is for his seasoning blends and his Vietnamese cinnamon.
- Oaktown Spice Shop: With two locations in the East Bay, Oaktown sources its wares from hundreds of importers and offers everything from amchur powder to single-origin Pemba cloves. Spices are ground and seasoning blends are mixed in-house. John Beaver, who owns the shop with his wife Erica Perez, cut his teeth under Bill Penzey, Sr. at the Spice House.
- Curio Spice Co: Curio Spice Co sources many of the spices it sells—from Japanese sansho pepper to Ethiopian besobela—directly from small farms. Founder Claire Cheney Curio’s female founder places special emphasis on supporting other female-owned businesses and cooperatives that contribute to the economic empowerment of women.
I was told to bring an appetizer... served with stone ground mustard.
Marlon Rando
Well-Known Member
Brekky Burritos..
Braised Bok Choy, fried rice, 5 spice chicken.
Madri-Gal
Well-Known Member
Unless the cookies were tossed after their photo sessions, I figure someone ate them. It's not my preference, but people have wildly different ideas about what makes a good cookie, and extra chips and salt are as legitimate as tubes and tubs of dough from the supermarket. I've been known to use Canna butter in mine, so I can't fault others for switching up the recipe. Even Ruth Wakefield couldn't resist fixing up a Butter Drop Do.Did Instagram Ruin the Chocolate Chip Cookie?
There’s way too much dark chocolate and salt in today’s most-liked cookies.
Did Instagram Ruin the Chocolate Chip Cookie?
By: KAITLIN BRAY Illustration: TASTE
There’s way too much dark chocolate and salt in today’s most-liked cookies.
The chocolate chip—excuse me, chunk—cookie has lost its way. If your Instagram feed is anything like mine, I suspect many of the cookies racking up likes are deeply flawed. These oozing blobs are woefully imbalanced, often too bitter, too salty, and not structurally sound. Over the last decade, the chocolate chip cookie has shed its quaint Toll House roots. Fueled by a thirst for internet fame, spiking SEO rankings, and genuine geeky enthusiasm, recipe writers and baking bloggers alike have relentlessly tweaked America’s most iconic baked good to optimize it for the grid.
Every year, without fail, new articles appear, proclaiming, “We don’t need another chocolate chip cookie recipe, but…” Is it because food writers are on a never-ending quest to create a little buzz? Or perhaps we’re forever chasing the nostalgia of our youth. I fully support eating what you like, and how you like it, but I want to pause for a moment and consider if, collectively, we’ve gone a bit off course with this iconic food. What started as a few chocolate morsels suspended in a Ruth Wakefield’s Butter Drop Do in 1936 has transformed, 80-some-odd years later, into a barely recognizable, salt-flecked chocolate lagoon. Back then, 12 ounces—what was considered the gold standard of chocolate for 60 cookies—is now suitable for 20.
Why am I complaining about too much chocolate? Because in the context of a cookie, a mouthful of bitter, molten cacao is simply not good. That’s what chocolate lava cake is for. The greatness of a chocolate chip cookie lies in the interplay between sweet, salty, and bitter flavors highlighted by many textures, from crisp, caramelized edges to fudgy, craggy centers. Chocolate holds many flavors, from bitter and nutty to fruity and citrusy. In a balanced cookie, notes of toffee, butterscotch, and caramel offer sweet relief in smooth, rich pockets of chocolate. A sprinkle of salt keeps the whole thing in check, but a heavy hand can easily overpower it. Knock any one element out of balance, and you can end up with a one-note cookie. In the case of Instagram, that note is primarily bitter.
But I feel some personal responsibility for where we are. I’d like to blame the state of the chocolate chip cookie on Instagram culture alone, but for more than three years, I oversaw one of the largest food media social accounts. Instagram trends come and go—remember avocado roses? But in 2016, I began noticing that chocolate chunk cookies were on an upswing. In pursuit of growth, I began strategically pumping baking sheet after baking sheet of absurdly chocolaty cookies into millions of feeds on a regular basis. Molten cookie content, or “engagement bait,” as we jokingly called it, became a lever to pull to boost activity during a slump or to prime the audience for a new product release.
I began setting the (very chocolaty) bar of what a cookie should look like by rewarding the gooiest, meltiest puddles that tagged us with a regram. I wasn’t consciously pushing this sea change toward chocolate imbalance, but the standards for an Instagram-worthy cookie were evolving, and I was complicit.
A cacao arms race has occurred, with the chocolate-to-dough ratio skyrocketing. In 2008, after a summer spent gathering intel from some of New York’s greatest bakers, including Jacques Torres and Dorie Greenspan, David Leite published a recipe for the “consummate chocolate chip cookie” in the New York Times. His recipe departed from the iconic one on the back of the bag in a few notable ways: It called for two types of flour, 1.25 pounds of bittersweet chocolate disks (or feves), and dough that is chilled before baking. It was the first mainstream cookie recipe to glorify couverture chocolate (fewer stabilizers, superior melting), spotlight cacao percentage, and articulate the benefits of an overnight rest.
When the oversize, chocolate-laden cookies arrived in print, they were picked up early by bloggers like Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, but their influence didn’t manifest until a few years later, when a consensus from food blogs and high-profile Instagram accounts like Tasty began commanding serious attention. The Times recipe was widely considered to be too fussy, expensive, and time-consuming to be made regularly, but the lessons at the core of the cookie were instilled. There was a real appetite for new takes on the classic, and recipes from Ashley Rodriguez, J. Kenji López-Alt, Joy Wilson, Tara O’Brady, and Sarah Kieffer began making the rounds, incorporating their own spins, like brown butter, demerara sugar, and pan-banging. This new crop of Internet-famous recipes continued to sing the praises of hand-chopped bittersweet chocolate, encourage chilling, and instate the importance of salt. Compared to the Toll House standards of our youth, the chocolate pools, rivulets, and wrinkles were exciting.
Around the same time, dark chocolate was gaining popularity, thanks to a growing number of scientific studies linking cacao to positive health outcomes. Americans finally had permission to embrace chocolate—as long as it was 70 percent cacao—and embrace it we did. Despite their butter and sugar, chocolate-studded cookies managed to align with the growing conversation on wellness. The increase in consumer knowledge led national grocers like Whole Foods to begin stocking high-quality bars, feves, and wafers, and even Trader Joe’s and Nestlé began producing bittersweet chunks that used to be limited to baking supply stores.
Since then, the cookie innovations haven’t stopped. With home and professional bakers vying for attention in a crowded space, many have resorted to piling on more chocolate and salt—and it’s worked. A quick scroll through Instagram will reveal an abundance of artfully oozing, salt-flecked cookies. It’s not surprising that our algorithm-driven culture—which rewards absurd, extreme, and entertaining content above all—would distort our culinary proclivities. In a race to grab attention and likes, people are continuing to push the limits on how much chocolate a cookie can physically hold. A recent Martha Stewart recipe calls for a staggering four and a half cups.
It’s almost hard to remember that in the early aughts, salted desserts were considered avant-garde, chocolate chips were often the only grocery store option available for cookie baking, and we ate dinner without documenting it. While I have no doubt that we will forever be reinventing the chocolate chip cookie, for pleasure and for goosing social media engagement reports, I hope we begin to reprioritize taste and balance.
There’s a place for many different chocolate chip cookies at the table. Just be sure you’re making them the way you actually like them, and not for the sake of the ’gram. There are now a staggering number of resources dedicated to helping people devise their own perfect chocolate chip cookie. So go forth and manifest the cookie of your dreams—below, you’ll find mine.
bulllee
Well-Known Member
Idk, it has become an obsession with me . The quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. I have made so many variations that I've come to this conclusion. It's all good !
No matter if i use dark chocolate, or semi-sweet (I like to use a combo of three), sea salt, or not. It's was a moment of zen. I think it's human nature to want to improve something. Making it the absolute best you can . In that haste to improve I lost sight of the fact of the true integrity of food. Sometimes you have to let go with the preconceived ideas on food in order to appreciate it.
Marlon Rando
Well-Known Member
Tisk tisk
back when I was cooking and catering high end parties Chef Bernard (rip) would yell at us if we sent out dirty rimmed plates.. I still hear that old French bastard in my head all these years later.
bulllee
Well-Known Member
https://bakingamoment.com/pineapple-upside-down-cake/
"Desserts like these bring me back to another time, where ladies wore full skirts and high heels, and donned pretty embroidered aprons before popping into the kitchen to effortlessly whip up something magnificent on any given weeknight! "
JAJAJAJA I didn't know where to post! Jokes, or Food porn ?
"Desserts like these bring me back to another time, where ladies wore full skirts and high heels, and donned pretty embroidered aprons before popping into the kitchen to effortlessly whip up something magnificent on any given weeknight! "
JAJAJAJA
I didn't know where to post! Jokes, or Food porn ?
LOVE a good pineapple upside down cake... My Romanian grandmother made a killer one. However it wasn't like the traditional cake where it's moist and fluffy. It was a dense, chewy cake that I cannot seem to replicate.
bulllee
Well-Known Member
Check this one out. it's dense and chewy, it uses ground almonds and sour cream. I always use the butter, brown sugar topping. And I use a spring form pan cause i don't have a 10 inch high sided cake pan !
Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe
- Prep time: 15 minutes
- Cook time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
- Yield: Makes 12 to 14 servings
INGREDIENTS
For the topping:
- 1 cup (200g) of firmly packed dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1 can (20 oz) of pineapple slices (Dole brand works best)
- 1 1/2 cups (200g) all-purpose flour
- 6 tablespoons (55 g) cake flour
- 6 tablespoons ground almonds (from about 2 oz or 56g of blanched almonds)
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 3/4 cups (350g) of sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 4 large eggs
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 8 candied or maraschino cherries
1 Grease the pan with butter: Generously grease (with butter) a 10-inch diameter non-stick cake pan with at least 2-inch high sides.
2 Make caramel topping: Heat brown sugar and butter in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture is bubbly, several minutes. (After sugar melts, don't stir.)
3 Pour into pan, top with pineapple slices: Pour the caramel mixture into the pan. Arrange pineapple slices in a single layer on top of the caramel mixture.
4 Preheat oven to 325° F.
5 Make cake batter: Whisk the flours, ground almonds, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the sugar and butter together until light. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.
Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream in 2 additions each, beating well after each addition.
6 Pour cake batter over caramel and pineapple in pan. Spread the cake batter over the pineapple and caramel so that it is smooth on top.
7 Bake: Bake the cake at 325°F until a tester inserted into the center comes out mostly clean (internal temperature of about 205°F if you have an instant read thermometer), about 1 hour.
8 Turn out cake: Cool cake in pan on a rack for 5 minutes. Turn the cake out onto a platter, after the cake has cooled for 5 minutes, and while the cake is still warm.
If some of the topping sticks to the cake pan (it often does), just scoop it out with a butter knife and patch the cake.
9 Add cherries: If you want to add candied or maraschino cherries for decoration, just put one in the center of each pineapple round.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
|
Sponsored by |
|---|
|
|
|