Yesterday my 12-year-old daughter decided she wanted to make a cinnamon coffee cake recipe she received at school from one of her friends. She loves to bake and is a big fan of the Cake Boss television series. I’m not a baker so it’s great having her in the kitchen to watch and learn from.

She prepared this recipe all by herself except for a little help from her mother getting all the ingredients together. Because she needed to use the oven, my wife supervised the preparing of the cake but other than that, Nell was responsible for the delicious result.

Kids Can Cook

If you’ve been following my blog or spending any time on my web site, you know I am a big fan of Cooking With Your Kids. I think it is a great way for them to learn how to think independently, understand measurement, practice safety as well as a great way to spend some quality time together.

Please be sure to read my blog post Teaching Your Kids To Cook – Developing Intellect -  as well as my Squidoo lens, Teaching Your Kids To Cook

Cinnamon Coffee Cake With Chocolate Chips

Ingredients

For the Topping

• ¼ cup of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon

Dry Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients

• ½ cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 cup of non-fat vanilla yogurt
• 1 cup of chocolate chips

How to Make at Home

Preheat the oven to 350° F

Butter a 9-inch square cake pan. In a medium bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Beat means to mix the butter and sugar vigorously with a spoon, fork, or electric mixer.

Add the eggs, one at a time while being sure to blend the mixture well after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix all together.

Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and then the yogurt. Be sure to mix everything until just combined. Finally, add the chocolate chips.

Spread the batter in the buttered pan and sprinkle the topping mixture of sugar and cinnamon on top. Press down lightly with your hand so the topping does not move when the cake rises.

Bake in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes until done. My daughter used a toothpick to determine if the cake was done or needed more time. She stuck the toothpick into the cake and if it came out clean it was done, if cake stuck to the toothpick, it needed more time.

Baking has never been my strong suit but I’m loving how much my daughter is getting into it and becoming comfortable in the kitchen.

Jenni’s Best Pound Cake Recipe

I consider myself a bit of a pound cake snob. I grew up eating my mom’s chocolate pound cake, which is one of my favorite cakes ever.  She also makes a mean almond pound cake as well as a really incredible cranberry-orange one.

One of the first cakes I ever tried to make was mom’s chocolate pound cake.  I learned very quickly that how you put the batter together has a huge impact on the resulting batter.  I had no idea what the creaming method was, and when the recipe said to add the eggs, I did.  All at once.  I ended up with a very thin batter, when my mom’s batter was always thick and fluffy.

Since that first rather botched attempt, I’ve learned a lot about how to successfully put together a great cake batter, sometimes painfully.  And while I enjoy an airy genoise or a moist butter cake, my favorite cake is still pound cake.  I love the tight crumb, the way is slices and toasts so beautifully, and the way it melts in my mouth.

A few months ago, a friend sent me a recipe for pound cake that she said was the best she’d ever had.  Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I tweaked it some, based on things I’ve learned myself and on a few ideas from Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise.  And here it is—Van Halen Pound Cake.  Named by a DJ friend of mine after Van Halen’s song of the same name, I’ve made several variations of this cake, and it is always excellent.  This is the basic recipe, which I call the Whipped Cream Van Halen Pound Cake.

Give it a try, and tell me what you think.

Whipped Cream Van Halen Pound Cake

• 13 oz cake flour (I use Swan’s Down)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 10 oz granulated sugar
• 10 oz brown sugar (light or dark), free of lumps
• 12 oz (3 sticks) butter, at cool room temperature
• 5 large eggs
• 2 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup heavy cream, very softly whipped

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Thoroughly spray a 10-cup Bundt pan with nonstick spray.  Sprinkle in about ½ cup all purpose flour and rotate the pan to coat the interior with the flour.  Make sure to get the flour up the sides of the pan as well as up the central tube.  Turn the pan upside down and firmly knock out the excess flour.  Set aside.

Whisk together the cake flour, salt and baking powder.  Set aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and soft, scraping bowl as necessary.

Add the sugars and cream on medium-high speed until very light and fluffy—5-7 minutes.  Scrape the bowl.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating them in–first on low, and then medium speed–for a total of about 20 seconds before adding the next.  Scrape bowl thoroughly between each addition.

Beat in the vanilla.

On low speed, mix in the dry ingredients in two additions.  Mix just until the flour is moistened.  The batter will be a little lumpy.  That’s okay.

Using a whisk, whip the cream until thick.  The whisk should leave tracks in the cream that will fill in in a couple of seconds.  The cream should still flow—it should not be whipped even to soft peaks.  This takes about 2 minutes.  If you’d rather, you can whip the cream with a hand mixer.  Conversely, you can whip the cream in the stand mixer, transferring it to a bowl and holding it in the refrigerator before creaming the butter.

Add the cream and mix it in on low speed for about 5 seconds.  Stop the mixer, and finish mixing the batter by hand, folding rather than stirring, until the batter is free of lumps and the cream is gently but thoroughly mixed in.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.  I usually shake the pan as well to evenly distribute the batter.

Bake on the middle rack until the cake is well risen, golden brown and springs back when touched on the top.  You can also test the cake with a wooden skewer or toothpick.  If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is done.  The cake will just be pulling away from the sides of the pan.  This takes about an hour in my oven.  I usually turn the pan after about 40 minutes, just to ensure even baking.

Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for half an hour.

Turn out onto a rack and cool completely.

Glaze when cool.  Store at room temperature for two days or refrigerate.  If refrigerating, make sure to let the cake come to room temperature before serving.

Glaze

• About 2 cups of 10x powdered sugar
• Pinch of salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• Enough milk or half and half to make a thick but pourable glaze

Place a piece of parchment or tin foil under the cooling rack holding the cake to catch any drips.

In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar and salt together.

Add the vanilla and about 2 tablespoons of dairy.  Whisk thoroughly.  Add more dairy, just a bit at a time, until you have a very thick but smooth paste.  Test it by holding some up on the whisk.  It should flow very slowly off the end of the whisk and lay on top of the rest of the glaze for a few seconds before sinking back in.

Once you are pleased with the glaze consistency, spoon/pour over the cake and let slowly run down the sides.  If your glaze is thick enough, it will stop running before it drips onto the paper under the rack.  If the glaze is a little thin, scrape the excess glaze off the paper and pour back onto the cake.

Let the glaze set for an hour.

I hope you enjoy this cake, RG—please let me know how it turns out and if you have any questions.

Chef Jenni
Pastry Chef Online

Related Topics

The Art of Baking

How To Make a Traditional Pumpkin Pie

Classic Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Pumpkin pie is basically a custard pie.  It contains dairy, and is thickened with eggs and sits in a wonderful, flaky pie crust like the one we just talked about a couple of days ago.  The pumpkin and spices evoke the aromas and flavors of fall, and more specifically, one of my favorite food holidays - Thanksgiving.

Sometimes, we want to break out of the traditional mold and make a daring dessert and I have no problem with that.  In fact, as an alternative to pumpkin pie this year, I suggest you check out my good friend Chef Jenni’s Gingered Pumpkin Mascarpone Cheesecake. It’s different and definitely daring.

But for those of you who have tried something new only to be met by sad faces at the table and have your family say, “It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s just that it’s not what we usually have.  It’s not what we look forward to on Thanksgiving.”  Avoid those sad faces around your holiday table and give the folks what they want, but make it the best pumpkin pie you can.  Dare to be traditional!

Creamy Pumpkin Pie

One of my issues with pumpkin pie is that I can’t taste the pumpkin.  Dial back the spicing a bit and up the salt to bring out the flavor in the pumpkin. Not too much salt but add some, taste and adjust.

1 pastry shell - check out my post on store bought or homemade pastry shells
1 - 14 0z. can sweetened condensed milk
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 (16 oz.) can pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line a deep dish pie pan with pastry dough.  Trim, crimp and parbake.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg and yolk until light and uniform in color and texture.

Add the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, sweetened condensed milk and pumpkin and whisk until smooth.

Cover the custard and let sit in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes and up to four hours.  This step ensures a creamy end product.

Strain the custard through a mesh strainer, just to remove any pumpkin fiber.

Pour the custard into the pie shell and bake in the center rack of the oven until the custard just barely jiggles in the center when you shake the pie pan, 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your oven.  You might need to cover the pie crust during the last thirty minutes of baking to prevent over-browning.

Cool at room temperature for an hour and then refrigerate.  Cover with plastic wrap once the pie has reached refrigerator temperature.  This will reduce and hopefully prevent condensation from forming on the surface of your pie.

Remove from the refrigerator about half an hour before serving to take the chill off the pie.  The flavor will be more pronounced if it is allowed to warm a bit before eating.

For an added note of fall, serve with whipped cream sweetened with a bit of maple syrup.

Related Topics

How to Make a Flaky Pie Crust

How to Line a Pie Pan

Pumpkin Pie - Three Speeds