Fruity Upside Down Magic Cake

Recently I've been playing around with making renditions of a childhood favorite dessert that my mom used to make and I always enjoyed. She simply called it ✨ Magic Cake✨. 

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This started with me thinking up ways to use seasonal fruit in new ways after a few trips to you-pick farms ended up with way more fresh fruit than we could consume in a few days. First fruit rendition involved peaches, but it came out overall too wet, I had messed with the recipe a bit too much and including applesauce was not a good idea. An important lesson learned, I find that yogurt is a better way to lighten up the butter in the recipe.

Inspired by the classic strawberry rhubarb flavor combination, I made this recipe by laying strips of rhubarb at the bottom of a large loaf pan lined with parchment (4" x 9") and I baked it briefly to soften just slightly as I couldn't get them to lay flat otherwise. I then layered thinly sliced strawberries on top and moved on to the actual magic cake. 

I can't help but feel the recipe originally came about by accident, but what a happy accident it is. Essentially, it's your classic pound cake technique of whipping butter+sugar, adding the yolks, flour, and milk then folding in the egg whites whipped separately for a light, springy texture. But someone somewhere may have gone heavy handed with their milk measurement and this was born. As the base of the batter is quite liquid before the egg whites go it, it separates beautifully in the oven and creates these layers of separation with distinct textures - a denser, rich custard on the bottom, a light, milky custard in the middle, and a fluffy springy cake layer on top. It's magic because it's a one bowl batter that bakes into a 3 layer cake. The strawberry rhubarb cake would present these layers in reverse as I planned it to be an upside down cake of sorts.

I adapted the recipe from the magic cake write-up on the Jo Cooks blog to remind me of the proportions my mom used. My mom's key to getting the light springy cake on top (on the bottom if you do an upside down version like this) is to start the cake in a hotter oven and finish cooking in softer heat - her old recipe helpfully said "somewhat hot, then moderate heat. It turns out with the right steady heat that's not really necessary, so that's one thing I don't have to worry about anymore - preheat the oven to 325F to get it ready.  I tried for an ombre look but as it was on the bottom the colors blended a bit more than I'd like. Also a bit unexpected (but really cool), the layer of strawberries floated up as they baked and settled right in the middle layer, so it's beautifully layered top to bottom rhubarb-custard-strawberry custard-cake. 

Start out by separating the eggs - set aside the whites for the moment and whisk up the yolks with the sugar until fluffy and lightened up in color. Add in melted (and cooled) butter and vanilla and whisk some more, then mix in all the flour until well incorporated. Finally, gradually add warm milk until well combined - the warmth of the milk helps maintain a smooth texture at this stage. With a clean whisk (or mixer beaters), whip up egg whites and cream of tartar until lightened up, then continue whisking at high speed until you get stiff peaks. Don't overwhip or it will separate and not hold its volume. Fold the meringue in the batter in stages until no lumps of egg whites remain, it's ok if it's not completely incorporated or if there seems to be batter at the bottom of the bowl, it's meant to separate a bit as it bakes anyway. Pour into lightly greased or parchment lined pan and bake for 40-60 minutes - times vary based on the material of your baking dish, oven temperature stability and overall thickness, but you're looking for a lightly golden color on top and set on the edges, but still wobbly in the middle. It will set perfectly as it chills in the fridge.

A further variation that I love is the chocolate take on it - simply sub out half the flour for cocoa powder, the richer the cocoa the more chocolatey the final result you'll have. I made the chocolate version you see here with peach and pineapple for a golden-dark striped look to honor World Honey Bee Day, it was also sweetened with honey alone, so yummy! Since I used the cake ring and parchment, I didn't invert it either so it's a reversed upside down cake aka regular cake with fruit on the bottom and middle :)

Garnished for serving with white chocolate honeycomb and a honey dark chocolate patty, you can never have too much chocolate!

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Fruity Upside Down Magic Cake

Makes a 6" square or large loaf (4"x9")

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp greek yogurt
• 6 tbsp flour
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• (Optional) fruit of choice - peach, strawberries etc

Method

1. Preheat oven at 325F and line you baking pan with parchment paper (or oil lightly, pieces won't come out quite as cleanly though).
2. Melt butter in the microwave and set it aside to cool slightly. Measure out yogurt to come to room temperature. Warm up milk 40 seconds in the microwave as well to prepare for use.
3. (Optional) Thinly slice any fruit you want to use and line the bottom of the baking dish with it in a thin and even layer.
4. Separate eggs into two bowls, yolks in the larger one. 
5. Whisk yolks with sugar until fluffy and paler in color.
6. Add butter and vanilla, whisk well.
7. Incorporate flour, then gradually whisk in milk until smooth.
8. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar and a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form.
9. Gradually fold into the batter until most of the meringue is incorporated, don't overmix.
10. Pour into prepared pan and bake until edges are set and top is lightly golden. It should still be wobbly in the middle when it comes out of the oven.
11. Let it come to room temperature before setting in the fridge several hours or overnight. Serve chilled or take out a few minutes early to warm up slightly.

Notes

• I have tried this recipe with several fruit already - if it's baking friendly (i.e. you can include it in a cake/pie), then it will probably work ok for this as well, your limit is your imagination!
• You can go full butter and just use 4tbsp of butter in the recipe. Any milk is ok, I love using a nut milk but full fat dairy will yield a richer result.
• For the chocolate variation, I used 3 tbsp of flour and 3.5 tbsp of cocoa for a rich color and flavor.
• I wrote up the recipe for the basic sugar version, I've used maple syrup and honey as 1:1 substitute before and it turned out great. Note that the yolks won't really whisk up in volume or turn pale with a liquid sweetener, and the cake will be a little more custardy and have a thinner cakey layer as a result, but equally delicious.

Birthday Cake Project

When I started the new chapter of this blog, I envisioned it as a mix of project chronicles and recipes. These past two weeks I've undertaken one of my more ambitious projects to date, simply because I've been dying to stretch myself a little and practice some old favorites while trying my hand at new skills. Perfect opportunity - my own birthday cake. Using inspiration and feedback from a friend, I set out with some general goals in mind: strawberry cake, naked cake aesthetic with the cake tiers cut out in number shapes, try as many techniques as feasible in one dessert. 

As I thought about it more and various things piqued my interest, I settled on the final flavor profile: strawberry, dragon fruit and black sesame. I want to document all the different components that went into this dessert here not only for having a place with richer context for the final result, but as a reference to myself to find some of what worked best for later reference. A birthday diary, if you will. 

First, the cake - I wanted to make a strawberry cake since the fruit is in season and wonderfully flavorful, and my favorite recipe is, unsurprisingly, from Sally's Baking Addition (link). I wanted an ombre look (are we doing technique bingo? we should haha) so I replaced a quarter of the strawberry puree with thawed pitaya puree (pink dragonfruit) for a brighter pink in one of the batches, followed the recipe exactly in another, and substituted 1tbsp of liquid in the third with white coloring for a lighter pink. I baked each in a half sheet pan, then cooled thoroughly before cutting out the numbers using a template. 

I knew from the start that the buttercream would have to be Swiss Meringue Buttercream - it's my favorite, it's light and silky and would be the perfect texture to showcase in a naked cake design. My dear husband volunteered to make the buttercream for me as his contribution to my birthday dessert and I happily presented him with my all time go to recipe, the one from Liv (link). Perfect execution, made me proud :) For the black sesame flavor, he added 1/4 cup of black sesame powder after it was perfectly fluffy and velvety, whisked it in and it was a beautiful thing. 

I noticed a related link for German Buttercream and I was intrigued, so I went down that rabbithole as well. I first made the creme patissiere, then incorporated it in fluffed up butter and whisked in reduced strawberry puree for a mildly sweet, incredibly creamy buttercream. 

Toppings

The toppings are where I got to flex my technique muscles/try new things. I wasn't good about taking progress shots of each one as many of these happened late at night with Netflix playing in the background, but see if you can spy them on the finished cake :)

- chocolate cookie chips: I adapted this recipe for the cookie topping for melon buns to incorporate cocoa powder, and cut them in thin circles that I baked until lightly crisp and trimmed to a neat circle when still hot.

- cream puffs: I made regular cream puffs (1/4 recipe) but piped them really small and baked half of them with a thin wafer of the above mentioned cookie dough on top, it worked as a chocolate craquelin in a pinch. The second half of the cream puffs got dipped in a simple dragon fruit sugar glaze (powder sugar,  a few drops of pitaya puree). I filled all of them with chocolate buttercream.

- white chocolate mousse spheres: I melted white chocolate with a simmer mixture of coconut cream, vanilla bean and glucose, then mixed in a bit more cream and chilled until set in the fridge. Later, I whisked it until fluffy and piped into spherical molds that went into the freezer until ready to use. Lesson learned - coconut cream does not like heat, it held up nicely in the fridge after assembly though.

- air sprayed macarons with dragon fruit jelly filling: the one and only Not so humble pie recipe finally broke my bad streak of sad macarons in the new oven. I got smooth and perfectly risen cookies with consistent texture, and I piped some with spiky edges and basil seeds on top to look like slices of dragon fruit. I then air sprayed them hot pink to look like the pink skin of the fruit and filled them with black sesame buttercream sandwiched with pitaya jelly.

- strawberry macarons with white chocolate coconut mousse filling: I followed the same recipe from above, but added pulverized freeze dried strawberries (to replace some of the powder sugar), probably a bit too much as I struggled to get the consistency quite right, but overall happy with the results. I painted on "seeds" with edible marker and filled with white chocolate coconut mousse left over from spheres.

- meringue cookies with strawberry/black sesame: I piped meringue cookies (recipe) in different shapes to play around with what would hold up the best, and sprinkled pulverized freeze dries strawberries on some and powdered black sesame on others.

- dragon fruit jujubes: I pureed fresh golden dragon fruit and mixed it with simmered agar agar syrup then let it set in a thin layer in the fridge, cubed it up and it was ready to go (recipe).

- dragon fruit jellies: I used frozen dragon fruit puree (pitaya) that comes in a hot pink color with intense pigmentation, and used this recipe to make soft set jellies for accents.

- strawberry + dragon fruit mousse spheres: I followed my own fruit mousse recipe from the entremet project, replacing mango with reduced strawberry puree and a dash of the thawed pitaya puree. I piped the mousse in the same kind of spherical moulds as the white chocolate mousse and let them set in the freezer. The kids loved the leftovers from the mousse on their waffles for breakfast. 

- strawberry jelly pearls: what's a crazy project without a dose of molecular gastronomy? I used fresh strawberries and agar agar to make fruit caviar. Easy to do, magical to witness, the kids really loved this one.

- candy melt curls:  this is very straightforward, no recipe required, only a little bit of patience. I gently melted hot pink candy melts in the microwave, then dropped them in dollops on a strip of acetate and spread it with the back of the spoon to get a petal effect. I used tape to curl them slightly and let them set in a champagne flute in the fridge (glass just happened to be about the right width).

- black sesame lace cookies: I didn't want the black sesame to be the only flavor that didn't show up in more than one form, so I added these to the lineup last minute. I love lace cookies but I don't get to make them very often, so this sounded fun and I love the visual effect of the black sesame seeds floating in an airy wafer of sugary delight. I used this recipe to make a small batch and left some larger for shards while I cut others to small circle size while still hot from the oven so they cooled to a crisp in perfect little coins.

- fresh strawberries: just wanted to highlight these as well, the only secret here is the non-melting sugar. It's a nifty dessert pantry ingredient, essentially just powdered sugar with a bit of incorporated fat that prevents it from readily melting in surface moisture from desserts. I dipped the edges of a couple of halves strawberries in it to give them a bit of a highlight and put them directly on the cake.

Assembly

This is where my passion for mise-en-place really paid off. There were really two stages to assembling this cake - carving the layers and stacking them with buttercream, and decorating. 

I did the first part the night before, letting each layer firm up. a bit in the fridge before placing the next to be more forgiving to uneven pressure when transferring the laters on top of each other. After the last layer firmed up, I wrapped everything in plastic to prevent the exposed edges of the cake from drying out. The strawberry cake is so deliciously moist that it kept really well, no syrup needed.

Then, after finishing dinner prep and with the casserole already in the oven, I set up my decorating station - all the toppings, all the tools I needed and of course, the cake. This was the easy and most satisfying part of the process, seeing it come together. Apart from eating it, of course, it was both delicious and well enjoyed by everyone in the family which always makes my heart sing. A wonderful birthday indeed!

We had a delightful family dinner to celebrate the day, and finished on a sweet note with slices of this cake. Obligatory crumb shot to show the nice and even layers, but also it how moist the layers of cake are throughout. Onto another exciting trip around the sun and many exciting projects to come!

Banana oatmeal blueberry muffins

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One predictable things about kids is that they're unpredictable. Sounds cliche but many cliches exist for good reason. Case in point, bananas! On weeks when I don't have or buy any, oh boy they'd really love a banana for snack. Sometimes I just grab a couple and they devour them immediately. So naturally, when I buy a whole bundle of bananas, they hardly get touched and actively rejected. 

In the spirit of making lemonade from lemons, I made a whole bunch of things from browning bananas. A recent favorite combination has been bananas and quick oats in baked goods. I paired it down to this one bowl, easy to throw together and delicious recipe that is suitable for many form factors - muffins, donuts, bars. I will walk you through the basic recipe, what mix ins I've tried (and lessons learned, heh) and variations that can elevate this to the next level. 

First step is to mash the bananas - if you can patiently enough for them to be over-ripe (decent amount of brown on the skin, flesh very soft and starting to get mushy at the ends) then that's really the ideal point. They're extra sweet, creamy and very easy to mash down for the recipe. If you prefer less ripe, then any ripeness level where you no longer see green on the outside is ok. Start out with all the bananas in a large bowl - this will be your working bowl and everything will come together right in here. With a firm whisk or fork, mash the bananas until mostly smooth (small chunks ok), then whisk in sugar, egg and vanilla extract until uniform. Add melted butter and stir well. 

Now you can measure all your dry ingredients on top. Remember you want to avoid overmixing so you don't get gummy muffins, so after measuring the flour scatter the leaveners, spices, salt and oats on top so they more readily mix uniformly. It's pretty forgiving, no worries. Mix just until everything is incorporated.

It's time to incorporate the add-ins. For my first go-around I used blueberries, they were beautifully ripe and starting to soften so I didn't want them to go to waste. Simply fold them quickly into the batter until they're distributed pretty well throughout. You can also use frozen blueberries, mix them in frozen so they don't get the mixture overly wet when getting incorporated. They'll bake just as well as fresh.

The texture comes out fluffy but moist, with a bit of chew from the oats and creaminess from the bananas, truly delightful. The kids are eager to eat these by the handful. 

Now let's talk form factor - no treat is complete around here until it becomes a donut. For whatever reason, donuts and waffles are far more exciting to my kids than muffins and pancakes, and first impressions matter. Something I found with donuts is that fruit mixed inside can get stuck in the pan and affects the structural integrity of the baked good enough that it may fall apart when taken out. That happened with my apple cake donuts (especially when I tried using peaches inside) and it happened with these (see blueberry one below). As a result, I recommend sticking with the add ins on top for donuts, they look prettier too and make the treat easier to manage. Side note: rhubarb needs some sweetness, if you pick it as a topping as I did, make sure to sprinkle some sugar/drizzle some honey on top or else it dries out and it crisps up more than ideal. 

To serve, enjoy as is with or without a hot cup of coffee. Or embrace the donut form factor (no worries, works with muffins too) and jazz it up a bit with vanilla yogurt and a drizzle of nut butter on top. To demonstrate the versatility of it, yesterday was National Ice Cream Sandwich day, so I took a muffin from my latest batch with peaches inside, sliced it in half and enjoyed it with a scoop of chunky monkey ice cream, delightful indeed! The possibilities are endless.

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Banana oatmeal blueberry muffins

Makes 10 muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 medium ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup quick cooking oats
• 2/3-1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Method:

1. Mash bananas in a bowl with a firm whisk or fork.
2. Add sugar, egg and vanilla and mix well until fairly smooth (a few small lumps of banana are ok). 
3. Stir in melted butter, mix well. 
4. Add dry ingredients, fold until incorporated, don't overmix! Add blueberries, if using frozen don't thaw first so they keep their structure a bit. Scoop in paper lined muffin pan, bake at 375F for 20-22 min until golden on top.

Notes:

• For added flavor, brown the butter when melting it. On medium heat, keeping a watchful eye, leave it on the heat for a bit longer once it's done melting. You're looking for the separated milk solids to turn a golden amber color. As soon as that happens, remove from heat. Let cool slightly before adding to the batter so you don't scramble the eggs.
• You can get creative with your spices! I like to add a pinch of cardamom or alspice to complement the cinnamon. Or leave warm spices out altogether and use a bit of extra vanilla or a splash of rum extract.