Preheat oven to 325 F
Makes 2 ea. 8 Inch Springform cakes
Like most of the baking recipes I have been doing during quarantine baking, they are either adapted from Epicurious or Bon Appetit, mostly because if I do end up doing the original given recipes to test whether we like them or not, they usually turn out exactly as promised (unlike many of the other baking recipes floated around online) that have not been tested in actual test kitchens, i.e. to make them reasonably foolproof.
I don’t know how many times a friend has called me up and said, “Oh, I just tried this recipe, it looked soooo good, and I must have done something wrong….” and then sends me the recipe. It’s usually something that’s author error, either not scribing the recipe down correctly or adapting someone else’s and not testing or just making it up as they go along. Apologies if that sounds a bit skeptical, but considering how often friends reach out to me for culinary advice and how many times I’ve looked at a recipe and went, “it’s not you, trust me, it’s not you.” You can’t expect non-professionally trained people to recognize there is not enough (or too much) of a spice, or it’s missing a step, or an ingredient or five is not entirely correct or not even there, i.e. missing it completely.
The original recipe this is based on was Swirl Spice Cake from Epicurious.
The first time I made this, I added in some diced apples, we had been getting some wonderful local apples this past fall, and when they start to turn a little or get spotted, i.e., my husband won’t eat them, I dice them up and freeze them to use for baking or cooking. The first time I made this, I doubled the recipe, got distracted, and added half the amount of sugar called for. I compensated by drenching it in orange Grand Gala liqueur, orange juice concentrate and powdered sugar, about four times the amount called for in the Epicurious recipe (with the addition of the Grand Gala and minus the pecans with some altered spice mix as well) for the first time I messed with this.
A few additional differences between the original and this recipe as I altered to taste some of the amounts and ingredients. Salted vs. unsalted butter in the streusel mix, their Savory to Sweet mix is different, mine because I like espresso vs. regular coffee in recipes, and being out of at the time: pecans, orange peel, cardamom, and fennel. I have all of those now (except for the bee pollen) but like the flavor better with the original mix I made.
Baking time is different from the original recipes as I use springform pans. No parchment liner instead of loaf pans with liner, decrease the amount of sugar slightly. When I did the recipe again with the appropriate amount of sugar (see note last paragraph), it was too sweet, especially with the orange glaze (no liquor). Plus, I added some passion fruit flakes for this batch, which added some slight tartness.
I’ve been using maple syrup as a sub for pure vanilla for ages. It is cheaper for one, and I’ve baked with both side by side, and honestly unless the vanilla is for something specifically vanilla flavored, you can’t tell the difference in a baked product, custard yes, baked no.
I also cream the butter and sugar, add the rest of the wet ingredients, and then slowly incorporate the dry ingredients. A lot of these recipes online make you do five steps for things that you can get the same results with two stages, and I had been doing those 2 or 3 steps for years cooking professionally, so I kind of roll my eyes when I see some things.
Many of these online recipes make me crack up because it takes twice as long to do something that doesn’t have to be done the way suggested. There is also a huge difference between when you have a couple of hours free to make a cake at home vs. you’ve got about 10 minutes or less to whip something together in a restaurant kitchen.
For the middle streusel mix:
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- ¼ cup AP flour
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- ½ cup melted salted butter, I prefer Kate’s Homemade Butter (localish out of Maine)
- ¼ cup espresso powder or very finely ground regular espresso (a little less if using the straight coffee as the flavor is stronger)
- 2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 2 Tablespoons ground ginger
Dry Ingredients:
- 4 cups AP flour
- 1 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- ½ teaspoons baking soda
Wet Ingredients:
- 2 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 ½ cups salted or unsalted butter, room temp
- 6 eggs, room temp
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
- ½ oz. Suncore passion fruit flakes
Add to batter:
- 16 oz. mango chunks (I used Wymans frozen mango chunks and cut them up a little bit more as the chunks were kind of large, let them defrost prior to mixing into the batter), do not strain any liquid.
- 16 oz diced apples (skin on) of your choice. (For this recipe, we had some frozen diced Macoun apples from our local orchard that were going soft so had diced them up and frozen to use for baking at a later date.)
Cake Glaze:
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- 2 Tablespoons orange juice concentrate, room temp
- 5 Tablespoons Grand Gala Orange liquor
(you can skip adding the sugar and orange juice but definitely recommend dousing with the orange liquor)
Method:
- In a stand mixer with a paddle, cream butter and sugar together, incorporate in slowly all of the eggs, than add the sour cream and maple syrup. Add in the dragonfruit flakes and mix on slow.
- Sift the dry ingredients together and slowly incorporate into the sugar/butter/egg mix. Scrape batter into a large bowl and incorporate the apples and mangos.
- Spray the pans with non-stick cooking spray, I prefer Vegalene (available in restaurant supply places or Amazon) as it’s what we always used in professional kitchens and in my opinion it’s much better than retail cooking sprays like Pam.
- Mix the spice mix together including the melted butter, it will look a bit granulated.
- Spoon half the batter into the pans and spread evenly, split the spice mix between the two pans and swirl around evenly on top of the batter, spoon the rest of the batter over the top and settle it. I pick the pans up about 2 inches off the counter top and tap a couple of times onto the counter to help settle the batter.
- Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes or until a tester comes out clean
- Remove from the oven and place on a baking rack and let cool in the Springform pans for about 15 minutes before loosening the springform clips.
- Remove the outer ring of the springform pan, leaving the cakes on the bottom forms. You may want to move the rack on top of a baking sheet at this point as the next step can make a little bit of a mess.
- Combine the orange juice concentrate, Grand Gala and powdered sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves, spoon the mix over the top and sides of the still warm cakes.(or just the liquor if you choose)
- Serve warm or let cool completely before refrigerating. Good hot, cold or toasted. Wrap well as the cake can pick up refrigerator odors. This recipe freezes well.
- This is a pretty dense cake, it gets denser when refrigerated, more like a traditional pound cake than airy cake.
I made several mini cakes with this as well mixing in Suncore red dragon fruit powder (red coloring), the cook time was about an hour and 15 minutes for these, I have been playing around quite a bit with Suncore foods color powders off and on. I fell in love with their food color powders a few years ago but don’t buy often as they are a bit on the pricey side, but well worth it for the results especially for cookies, meringues, macarons and custards.
It’s on my to do list to mess with them with some fresh pasta which I will do at some point soon. I’ve made black pasta with squid ink in a few of my restaurants before but have not experimented (yet) with their ebony carrot powder which I’m looking forward to. When I was at CIA and we had a module called Experimental Kitchen in our first year, my partner for the week and I were experimenting with colored pastas and dessert pastas, considering this was in the very early 90s probably a little before it’s time but we had a lot of fun with them. I do remember we tried some pretty wacky flavors, but the pasta with dried blueberries and blueberry extract was absolutely beautiful in it’s pre-cooked state, sadly a bit washed out when cooked but delicious when we paired it as a chilled dessert dish with some Creme Anglaise and white chocolate shavings.
The mini cakes added a nice light pink color to the top of the cakes but I didn’t add enough to significantly color the interior but it did add a nice little extra tangy flavor to the mini cakes.
