Simply J Life » Food/Recipes

Cold Oven Pound Cake

James — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:04:31 +0000

southernfood.about.com/od/poundcakes/r/blbb681.htm

This was my first cake of 2010. The cold oven pound cake gets its name because you do not preheat the oven as you normally would for most cakes. You combine our ingredients, poured them into a tube pan, place it in the oven, set the oven to 325 degrees, and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes. It turned out well but next time I will use room temperature eggs so the cake will rise better.

Chocolate Egg Nog Rum Cake

James — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 23:10:03 +0000

Chocolate Egg Nog Rum Cake, originally uploaded by in2jazz.

1 cup of butter (2 sticks)
2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted Cake Flour
3 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup eggnog (I like the Berkeley Farms Eggnog from Albertson’s)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup Myers’s dark rum
1 package of Jell-O chocolate pudding
3 heaping tablespoons of Hershey’s Cocoa
Cream butter, gradually add sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Add eggs one at a time to creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture alternately with eggnog and flavoring, beating after each addition until smooth. Add package of chocolate pudding, rum and cocoa and mix well together. Pour batter into a greased 12-cup bundt pan. Bake at 350º for 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove and place on wax paper and let cool before putting on the glaze.

Rum Glaze

2 sticks of butter
1/2 granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup Karo syrup
1 cup of rum (currently using Myers’s Dark Rum and getting rave reviews!!!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Melt butter in saucepan until lightly boiled (do not overheat). Add powdered sugar slowly with a wire wisk then add granulated sugar. Once dissolved under low heat, add brown sugar. After the brown sugar has dissolved, add Karo syrup. Keep stirring with wire wisk. Bring to a light boil. Add rum and bring to a boil while stirring with a wisk. Remove from heat and wisk in the vanilla extract. Add more powdered sugar for a thicker glaze.
Poke holes in the cool cake with meat fork. Drizzle and brush the glaze over the cake. Continue to brush the cake with glaze that has ran down the side. Let dry and serve.

Cinnamony Goodness…

James — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 15:25:19 +0000

Recipe borrowed lovingly from this awesome individual via this awesome individual.
Cinnamon Rolls
4 1/2 – 5 C (unbleached/organic, if doable) flour
4 t active dry yeast (2 packages)
3/4 C milk
1/2 C water
1/2 C vegetable shortening (part butter — also, I use Spectrum’s non-hydrogenated shortening — it works very well)
1/2 C sugar (or rapadura, or ecocrystals, or turbinado)
1 t salt
2 eggs, room temperature
Measure 1 3/4 C flour into yr large mixer bowl. Add yeast and blend. Measure milk, water, shortening, sugar, and salt into saucepan. Blend. Heat until warm (about 120-130 degrees F).
Pour into flour/yeast mixture. Add eggs. Beat 30 seconds with electric mixer at low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 more minutes at high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Stop mixer.
Gradually stir in more flour (by hand) to make a soft dough. It will be rather sticky. Knead on lightly floured board or counter until nice an’ smooth, about 5-10 minutes (it’s good exercise!!). Cover with bowl or pan and let rest for 20 minutes.
Shape as desired. Here’s what I do: I cut the hunk of dough in half, roll out one of the halves until it’s flat and rectangular and large, brush it with butter, sprinkle it with a cinnamon/sugar mixture, add raisins (sometimes), and roll it up. Then I cut off the ends and cut the rest into 1″ wide slices. They usually fit nicely into 2 9″ greased cake pans. Then I put them in a warm oven (I usually warm it to 200 degrees for a few minutes, then turn it off) with a pan of hot water under them and a foil tent over them and let them rise for 40 minutes, or until doubled.
Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. You can ice these with powdered sugar icing (I usually do) after they’ve cooled off, but believe me when I tell you that they’re wonderful just plain and warm outta the oven. Cool them on a rack. When they’re cool, you can wrap them in foil, and freeze. Just warm them in a 250 oven for about 45 minutes and oooh boy, it’s like you just made ‘em.
Enjoy them — the recipe is from a cookbook called Homemade Bread, published by the Farm Journal people in 1969.
Powdered Sugar Glaze
1 cup of powdered sugar
1 tbl of milk
1 tsp of vanilla
Add milk and powdered sugar to get the glaze to the consistency that you desire.
What did I learn?
My dad made cinnamon rolls for us when we were kids so every now and then the thought of making them myself would pop through my brain and then disappear. I had never made anything using yeast before so I was a little nervous about how these rolls would turn out. It was much easier than I expected and I learned that working with yeast was not as terrifying as I thought. I mixed everything by hand and kneaded the dough by hand as well. As you can see in the photo above, my pan was a little crowded so I will put less in the pan next time and measure my strips of cinnamon dough a little better. Overall, I was very pleased.

The Second Annual Festival of Desserts

James — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 02:03:22 +0000

It is that special time of year. Continuing the tradition started last year, I hosted the second annual Festival of Desserts on Friday. As always, I ran out of time and didn’t make all the desserts I wanted to prepare. Here are the desserts that were enjoyed for this year’s festival.

Banana Chocolate Walnut Brownies
Chocolate Brownies
Egg Nog Rum Cake
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Cheesecake
Lunchroom Butter Cookies
McNannygocious Pound Cake
Egg Nog Pound Cake
Red Velvet Cake
Banana Nut Bread
7 Up Cake

Special Guest Desserts

Lemon Squares
Sweet Potato Pie

Special thanks to Joey for the lemon squares, David for the sweet potato pies, and JS & AF for the chicken. Another big hit of the party was the hot apple cider with the mulling spices from Williams-Sonoma. A good time was had by all. I must apologize for not taking more dessert photos.

Holiday Baking

James — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:27:25 +0000

7 Up Seven Cake
3 sticks of butter
3 cups of sugar
6 eggs
3 cups of cake flour
3 tsps of lemon extract
3/4 cup of 7-Up

Preheat the oven to 325. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until well mixed. Add the eggs, flour, lemon extract and 7-Up; mix well. Spoon mixture into a 10-inch tube pan coated with cooking spray. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until cake tests done when a wooden toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.

Lemon Glaze

juice of one squeezed lemon
powdered sugar
Add powdered until you have the desired consistency then spread onto warm cake.

Recipe taken from “The Church Ladies’ Divine Desserts” by Brenda Rhodes Miller.
Another great cookbook is Joyce White’s “Brown Sugar: Soul Food Desserts from Family and Friends.” It is filled with holiday baking treasures.

I am very proud to present My Baking Portfolio which displays some of the tasty treasures that I have made over the past year. Don’t worry, I will continue writing about the music that we have all come to love but I also notice that occassionally people search the site for recipes so I decided to do this feature. I will eventually create a separate blog for baking, maybe. Here are some other holiday favorite for your enjoyment.

McNannygocious Pound Cake
Lunchroom Butter Cookies
Hershey’s Best Brownies/Banana Chocolate Walnut Brownies
Cranberry Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Pecan Tarts
Egg Nog Rum Cake
Sweet Potato Pound Cake
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Red Velvet Cake

Have you been to Blackberry Bistro yet?

James — Mon, 18 Aug 2003 00:07:48 +0000

This has been a very restful day after having a fairly busy weekend. I stopped by Blackberry Bistro for lunch and had a wonderful burger and fries. It opened about 3 months ago and I have been there several times for breakfast and have never been disappointed. Their menu is eclectic comfort food and you do not want to miss out on their biscuits. Chef/Co-Owner Robert Dorsey III prepares all the wonderful dishes while co-owner Sherrie Sparks handles the business end of the restaurant. Blackberry Bistro is located on a cozy corner at 4240 Park Boulevard in the Glenview district of Oakland and is open for breakfast and lunch, Tuesday thru Sunday. There is a great write-up on the restaurant in the Montclarion newspaper.
If you are wondering how this remotely relates to music, Robert had The Best of the Gap Band playing while I was there which made it even more relaxing. Hey, that could be a flashback one day.

Just a little Brown Sugar…

James — Thu, 27 Feb 2003 02:50:53 +0000

No, this is not about the popular D’Angelo song from a few years back or the popular movie from last year. It’s about the new cookbook from Joyce White entitled “Brown Sugar: Soul Food Desserts from Family and Friends” which is the sequel to “Soul Food: Recipes & Reflections from African-American Churches” which was published five years ago. White definitely does her homework and even if you have never baked before, her instructions are clear enough to make you a success. Her recipes are gathered from urban and rural home cooks, church groups and her wide circle of friends. Just the cover is enough to make you hungry. Thanks Dre!!
Read more about Joyce White and “Brown Sugar” in the SF Chronicle article, “Old-fashioned desserts with soul”

The First Annual Festival of Desserts

James — Thu, 26 Dec 2002 08:27:01 +0000

Every now and then, you come up with a really cool idea but do not realize how big it will be until you do it. I recently hosted the 1st Annual “Festival of Desserts” and it was quite well received. Besides collecting music, I enjoy baking. I am often listening to good music while baking. For the festival, I made 11 different desserts including egg nog rum cake, sweet potato pound cake, McNannygocious pound cake, red velvet cake, oatmeal raisin cookies, and butter cookies. Even though many goody bags were taken home, I had enough leftovers to make two trays for a holiday party the next day. I wanted to make a three layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting but that would have been overkill. When I told my mom I was doing this, she said “you are having some food, right?” Thanks to js and af for bringing the great chicken and also the mashed potatoes and gravy that hardened as the night went on. I had a great time and may do this again next year but maybe not as many desserts. We will also have hot apple cider next year since I got some mulling spices from Williams-Sonoma for Christmas. I have included a few pictures from the festival to tempt your taste buds…enjoy!!!
P.S. More recipes to follow….
Hershey’s Best Brownies/Banana Chocolate Walnut Brownies
Cranberry Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Pecan Tarts