I love cake. Yup. I do. I really, really love cake. I especially love Black Forest Cake being that it is the perfect marriage of chocolate cake and whipped cream, real dairy whipped cream that is. I love carrot cake too as long as there are no dried fruit thingies in it, like currants or raisins. Oh I hate raisins. Let me count the ways.
Angel food cake, spice cake, devils food cake, sour cream chocolate cake are top drawer for me as well, mind you, I haven't had sour cream chocolate cake in many decades, since I stopped talking to the evil woman who used to make it for me that is. She Who Will Remain Nameless was at one time a favourite family friend of mine (she continues to be liked by my parents, why? I do not know), then she stomped on my youthful aspirations like the mean, prematurely grey-haired, black-hearted stewardess that she was. Come fly with me! I'll abuse your emotions little man!!!! I digress...
But back to cake. I subscribe to the LA Times for one reason only - the Living Section and the Food Section in particular, well, other sections are good too, so that statement is a bit of a bullshit claim, however I mostly read it for the recipes and I am going to make it my mission to try to replicate as many of them as I can before I expire, that is, as long as the recipes don't include raisins.
So one evening this week, with the wife off doing wife things, and after having surfed all the internet porn I could stand for one evening, I decided to find some other activity to occupy my hands and making a cake came to mind. It wasn't the FIRST thing that came to mind but as I whittled the list down, however it was the only socially acceptable thing available to me at the time.
So I fired up my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and went surfing through the Food Section of the Times and happened on to this recipe. With the help and assistance of my youngest daughter we set to making this creation and hoped for the best as we did.
I followed the recipe exactly, well, almost exactly:
I messed up reading it given reading was never a strength of mine - too short an attention span, oh look! A puppy! I reversed the order of adding the flour, preferring or rather mistakenly, adding the oats to the butter sugar mixture instead of the flour first, but I soldiered on and finished it and baked it anyway. It was fantastic.
The original recipe calls for fresh figs and being that I live at the 54th parallel and there is 3 frigging feet of snow on the lawn, fresh figs are a challenge to acquire, so I chose to use frozen blueberries and they were perfect for it.
Rolled Oat Cake
1 cup rolled oats (I used quick oats)
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1¾ sticks) butter
1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons (2.8 ounces) honey (I used 4 tablespoons or a 1/4 cup if you like)
2 eggs (I used large size eggs. Free range. Brown shells. From contented hens)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (9 ounces) spelt flour or all-purpose flour (I used AP and my scale to weigh it)
5 to 6 fresh figs, halved or quartered (I used 2 cups frozen blueberries)
2 tablespoons turbinado sugar (I used brown sugar and it was just fine)
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, combine the oats and hot milk. Set aside for a few minutes to allow the oats to absorb most of the milk and to cool down the milk slightly.
Gradually add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift the baking powder and flour together, then fold into the butter mixture.
Drain any remaining liquid from the oats, then stir them into the mixing bowl.
Pour into a greased 9-inch-round cake pan and place the fig slices (or blueberries!) evenly on top. (Now I don't know what 9" pan they're using but mine was too shallow to hold all the batter so I switched up and used a 10" springform pan and it was perfect)
Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 50 to 65 minutes depending on your oven (it took 70 minutes at 350 convection for me). If the cake browns too quickly, loosely cover the top with foil until the cake is done. Cool on a rack.
Sprinkle powdered sugar over it and serve with whatever the heck you want. Me? I like whipped cream.
Notes at the bottom of the page:
This is a dense cake, which is appropriate given the cook is quite dense himself. The next time I make it, and I will, I am going to cut the flour down and increase the oats. I will report back with more pictures in that update. I'm thinking of using Saskatoon berries in the next cake as well. Film at 11:00.
Snowy Palms Resort