Heavy Cream Two-fer: Chocolate Chip Scones and Cream Cake

One thing that's nice about living in upstate NY is that milk and cream are a lot cheaper than in CA. A gallon of milk is around $2. A quart container of heavy cream is $3.50-$4.00. I don't buy it often, but decided to get some for baking.

Biscuits and scones can be made with a mix of cream and butter, rather than all butter. This seems to be common in older recipes. I've never tried this before but now that I can get cream cheaply I decided to try it. I made some scones using a recipe from my favorite cookbook.

Chocolate Chip Cream Scones

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar

4 tbsp cold butter
1/2 c chocolate chips (or currants, raisins, crystallized ginger, or blueberries)

1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 c heavy cream

Preheat oven to 425F
Combine flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Add butter and cut into small pieces (the size of a pea or smaller). Add chocolate chips (or other chunky ingredients) and then add egg and cream. Mix until barely blended, and then transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead it briefly until it just starts to for, a rough ball. Shape it into a ball. At this point you can roll it out and cut it, but it is easier to just put it in a greased round pie or cake pan, flatten it out, and then cut it into 8 wedges. Transfer wedges to a cookie and bake until golden, about 25 minutes.
The scones came out well. They were tender, flaky, and had a delicate flavor. Were they better than scones made with butter? Not really, but they were just as good. I felt like they stayed fresh a bit longer, but that might've also been due to the egg.
I liked the recipe better because I found the slightly wetter dough to be easier to work with. As some of you know, I'm not all that good at making biscuits, pie crusts, etc, because I did not grow up in the South did not grow up eating them because my mom also lacks the biscuit gene. Any tricks to make the process easier are fine by me.

The second recipe I tried was a simple cake. Unlike the scone recipe, this one uses no butter at all. Eggs are beaten, sugar and vanilla are added, and then the dry ingredients and cream are added in portions, alternating between dry and wet. I followed the recipe, except that I added extra vanilla and about a teaspoon of almond extract. I also ran out of flour, so I was a little bit short on that.
The cake puffed up nicely and turned golden, but then deflated when I took it out of the oven. I suspect that the right amount of flour would help. Anyway, OM NOM NOM! I didn't share the first cake with the grad students. It's more like a pound cake than a typical layer cake, and is kind of dense, but it's nice and moist and has a very pure, clean flavor. It was even better the next day. It would be absolutely divine with strawberries and whipped cream.
I made the cake again. This time I doubled the recipe, used the proper amount of flour, and sprinkled slivered almonds on top. It did not deflate this time, and was a lot lighter, more like a traditional cake, but was slightly drier. I may lower the amount slightly the next time I make it. The almonds tasted really good on top. This time I shared it with the students.
This experiment reminded me that in baked goods, butter does impart a flavor, and at times this may detract or distract from the flavor of the item. In addition, extra eggs are often added to provide moisture and emulsifiers, and they too impart a flavor. It reminded me of when I was a little kid - I didn't like anything that was too eggy and buttery (I hated pound cake, believe it or not.) I will definitely try more cream-based baking in the future.

Bacon Cake

You know you want it. Yes, it's time for me to make a bacon cake. I'm going to Thanksgiving dinner at one of the grad students place. We've had many discussions about bacon, so it seemed just fitting.
I found a recipe online which sounded good and I had all the ingredients. Here it is.
Bacon-Brown Sugar Coffee Cake

6-8 slices bacon (regular or sugar or maple-cured, but NOT peppered or jalapeño or garlic or anything you wouldn't want in cake)
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
2 cups AP flour
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup uncooked rolled oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour the bundt pan.

Fry the bacon slices until crisp. Set aside to cool and drain.

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and sour cream. Sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir in to creamed mixture and blend.

Crumble or chop bacon slices into little pieces. Add dark brown sugar and oats, and mush together with your fingers to get the bacon and sugar blended and clumped with the oats. It will be a loose mixture, but you want the three elements to be well-acquainted with each other.

Put half the cake batter into the bundt pan (you'll have to put globs of it in--it's a thick batter), then top with half the bacon mix. Put on the rest of the batter, and top with the remmaining bacon mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until done (test with a toothpick or your finger). Allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before eating. If you let it cool for a few hours, the cake itself seems to taste a little sweeter.


The preparation of the cake went pretty much as described. I cooked up a bit more bacon than called for, since I knew the cats were going to come and beg. (They did) The bacon/sugar/oat mixture didn't stick together like it said, but instead made a sort of loose bacon streusel mix.
There was a bit of collateral damage when I tried to remove the cake from the pan. The bacon struesel had stuck to the sides and the cake didn't pull out cleanly. I covered it with some frosting so it didn't look quite as bad.
The cake was pretty rich, and tasted sort of like a cake doughnut that had sat on a plate with some maple syrup and bacon. It was tasty, and the grad students liked it. As for me, I don't have the metabolism that I did when I was a grad student so I'd better just stay away from bacon cake as a matter of principal.

Day 11: Angel Food Cake

My knee continues to improve. Yesterday I was able to sit normally and stand for longer periods of time. It still hurts to go up or down stairs, so I have to take those one step at a time, literally.
To celebrate the fact that I did not have to collapse on the couch as soon as I got home, I tested the whisk attachment on my stand mixer and made an angel food cake. I've made them in the past, and it's not one of my baking strengths. I'm not very dainty and never was very good at gently folding flour into egg whites.

Back when I was in junior high, I took a cooking class. We spent at least half the semester learning to bake. I had helped my mom but this was my first introduction to recipes and kitchen chemistry. (Mom doesn't really use recipes.) Towards the end of the baking unit, our homework assignment was to bake something and report on how it came out. I chose to make an angel food cake. It came out pretty dry and tough due to my inexperience with folding. Fortunately, it was tasty so it didn't last very long. I got an A nonetheless for trying something complicated. I've gotten marginally better at folding but I don't think I've made an angel food cake from scratch since high school.

So anyway, it seemed appropriate to revisit my old homework assignment to test the mixer. This time around, I whipped up the egg whites and cream of tartar. For the baking geeks out there, the proteins in the egg white uncoil when the egg whites are beaten and trap air bubbles. The cream of tartar prevents them from cross-linking through sulfur atoms in the amino acids in the protein. This would lead to graininess. Anyway, it only took about two minutes for soft peaks to form and then it was ready to add the sugar. This was a lot faster than if I used a handheld mixer. I then sifted the flour over the eggs and gently mixed it in. It was definitely faster and easier than folding it in by hand. The batter seemed like it didn't lose as much volume as it normally does.

When I pulled it out of the oven, it looked beautiful and smelled great, with just a faint whiff of egginess. After it cooled, I removed it from the pan. It seemed a bit damper than usual, so I probably should have baked it longer or been careful to measure the egg whites. I tasted it this morning. It was tender and moist but not soggy. I haven't eaten a from-scratch angel food cake in 20 years, and had forgotten how much nicer they taste without all the additives. It's tenderer, less sweet, and has a much more delicate flavor. I'm going to take some of the cake over to my mom, along with some strawberries.

The mixer works great for bread and cakes. I am very pleased with my purchase and with the fact that it allowed me to finally conquer the angel food cake. For biscotti, it was convenient but didn't provide an advantage in the final product.