"A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift."

Laurie Colwin

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Cake for when you're blissing



My Baby and I love and adore our combined brood, but every second weekend when they’re all away it’s just all about us being into each other.  We do stuff together and kinda bliss out and have many a smug moment about how lucky we are.  Oh, it’s pathetic.

So anyway.  Last weekend after we’d blissed out and blissed out some more, I announced, “I feel like making cake!”  The cake I was thinking of making was one I hadn’t made for many years, but daydreamed about on a regular basis (also pathetic), and this was the day.  But that’s not what’s important.  Take note:  the fact that this is the cake I wanted to make on a day when I was blissing out tells you pretty much all you need to know about this cake.

The essential accompaniment to this cake, other than bliss, or even just a bit of a knockabout mood, is not tea or coffee but a glass of milk or a cup of excellent, thick hot chocolate made with actual chocolate and not some dubious powder out of a packet.  In fact, the traditional, Mexican way of eating this cake is to dunk it with your fingers into aforementioned cup of excellent hot chocolate.  Heck – if you weren’t blissing out before you made the cake you’d have to be after that.



MEXICAN CINNAMON CRUMB CAKE
Take care: there’s a few steps involving dividing ingredients or setting ingredients aside.  But it’s still simple and so worth it.
(1 large cake or 2 regular cakes)

Ingredients:
560g. flour
375g. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
245g. butter
2 tsp. cinnamon
4 tsp. brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup milk


What you do:
1.  Grease and flour two square cake pans or one slab pan.  Preheat oven to 190oC.
2.  First, make the crumb mixture.  In a large bowl, mix together 375g. of the flour, the sugar, and the salt.  Rub in 185g. of the butter.  To make the topping, take 1 cup of the crumb mixture and add cinnamon, brown sugar, and remaining flour.  Rub in remaining butter.  Set aside.
3.   Add baking powder, eggs and milk to remaining crumb mixture, and beat well.  Turn mixture into prepared pan/s, and sprinkle over the topping.  Bake 25-30 min, until cooked when tested.  Cool in pan on a wire rack.  Serve cut into thick squares.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

5 comments:

  1. Ooooh, look at that piece. I love me a good piece of cinnamon-type cake. I've never heard it called "bliss out" before. ;)

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  2. Hee hee. We use it all the time. Told you we're smug. :)

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  3. I actually have a recipe for something called "Bliss Cake" somewhere... But it's not this. Just the aroma of cinnamon alone makes me bliss out. Perfect!

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  4. Oh, now them's provocative words, Claudia! You know you're going to have to share that recipe now, don't you?

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So! Whaddya reckon?