OLD-FASHIONED YELLOW CAKE

Photography by Michael Long

    This is the first recipe that I made out the book Small Batch Baking. This is going to be a first in a series of recipes that I'll do.

______________________________

    As Debby Maugans Nakos (author) called her Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake.  pp42. This makes two cakes and uses two 14- or 14.5 oz cans, To bake in.  I had some small cake pans that I used.  

 INGREDIENTS:

• Unsalted butter, at room temperature, for greasing the cans/pans. 


• 1/2 cup A-P flour, sifted, plus more for flouring the cans.


• 3 tablespoons buttermilk


• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 egg Yolk (large egg)


• 1/5 teaspoon pure Vanilla extract


• 3 Tablespoon unsalted butter melted and cooled


• 1/3 cup sugar


• 1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place oven rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F 


2. Grease the insides of the cans and lightly dust with flour, tapping out the excess.  Place the cans on a baking sheet for easier handling and set aside. 


3. Place the buttermilk and baking soda in a small bowl, and whisk until the baking soda is dissolved.  Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and melted butter.


4. Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium size bowl and whisk to blend well.  Add the buttermilk mixture and whisk just until blended and smooth.


5. Spoon the batter into the prepared cans, dividing the batter evenly between the cans. Bake the cakes until a toothpick comes out dry.  (about 25minutes)


6. Remove the cakes and cool for about 15 minutes then De-can the cakes.  You may have to use a knife around the edges to loosen the cakes from the cans.  

 ______________________________

And that's all there is to it.......Poof you have cakes for dessert....... Is that cool or what.... and they taste pretty darn good too. 

BAKING FOR 2

I just got a book on Small-Batch Baking. By Debby Maugans Nakos. A super book. In the book Debby talks about Desserts for 2.  I made a yellow cake for tonights dinner and It came out fantastic.  I was very impressed.  She hit right on with the recipe. Time, Temp Measurements were right on.  It looks like most of the cakes are made in a 14.5 oz cans.  The cans that beans etc come in. I used very small cake pans for the cake below.  She goes into how to prep the cans to use for you baking molds. I made the yellow cake in just a few minutes, with 1 small bowl,  and one 3 qt bowl. and a wire whip.  The baking took right at 25 minutes. Ovens my vary on temp and time.

Photography by Michael Long

Here is what the Publisher had to say about the book.

Even the most enthusiastic home bakers may admit there are times when they really only need a few muffins for breakfast or a couple of cream puffs for a dinner party—not a dozen or more of each. When standard recipes won't reduce neatly (how do you halve an egg, for example?), frustration ensues. Nakos, a Shape, Southern Living and Cooking Light contributor, takes more than 250 classic cakes, pies, cookies, cobblers, puddings and breads and downsizes their proportions to yield just the right number of goodies for small families, singles, newlyweds, empty-nesters or the leftovers-averse (do such people exist?). Nakos certainly is creative: she uses tin cans to bake two-layer coconut cakes and chocolate cakes, jumbo muffin tins for Peach Pie and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, and small loaf pans for Moist Fudgy Brownies. Meanwhile, a full-size loaf pan turns out Mississippi Mud Cake or Gingerbread Roulade, and one regular baking sheet does the job for Cinnamon Hazelnut Biscotti. Small-batch baking as formulated by Nakos is liberating: with quick mixing, baking and clean-up times, the whole process of producing, say, eight Pecan Snowball Cookies for tea time, or two Honey Apple Oatmeal Crisps for a sweet breakfast, is less overwhelming.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I give this book a 4.5 star rating.  There are no pictures in the book. or at least none in the paper back edition.  I will be posting recipes from this book very shortly.