Dense and dark

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from Nigella Lawson

from Kristen Miglore's "Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook"

1 cup soft unsalted butter
1 2/3 cups packed dark brown or dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup plus 2 Tbsps. boiling water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Put a baking sheet on a lower rack in case of sticky drips later. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan and line with parchment paper. The lining is important as this is a very damp cake. Use parchment paper or one of those loaf-pan-shaped paper liners.

Cream the butter and brown sugar, either with a wooden spoon or with an electric mixer, then add the eggs and vanilla, beating in well. Next fold in the melted and now slightly cooled chocolate, taking care to blend well but being careful not to overbeat. You want the ingredients combined. You don't want a light, airy mass.

Mix the flour and baking soda and gently add the flour mixture to the batter, alternately spoon by spoon with the boiling water until you have a smooth and fairly liquid batter. Pour into the lined loaf pan. (Note: Don't let this batter come closer than 1 inch from the rim of the loaf pan or it risks overflowing. Pour any excess into a smaller cake or muffin pan.) Bake for 30 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F and continue to bake for another 15 minutes. The cake will still be a bit squidgy inside, so an inserted cake tester or skewer won't come out completely clean.

Place the loaf pan on a rack and leave it to get completely cold before turning it out. (Lawson often leaves it for a day or so. Like gingerbread, it improves.) Don't worry if it sinks in the middle. Indeed it will do so because it's such a dense and damp cake. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

A veggie diet

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie."

Jim Davis

Dessert first

Because life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

Weekday cake

"A party without cake is really just a meeting." 

Julia Child

Sweet

Because it is apparently National Chocolate Cake Day.

Sweet start

It is a sweet and savory Sweet Bar start to the new year. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Old-school

Bring us some figgy pudding and bring it right here...

Figgy Pudding

from Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell's "The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook"

softened butter for the pan
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 pound plump, dried figs, stems removed, cut into small bits
3 Tbsp. orange liqueur
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned into cup and leveled off)
1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3 large eggs
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs (white or whole wheat)
ice cream or whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter an 8- to 10-cup tube pan or metal steamed pudding mold with a top.

In a small saucepan, combine the water and figs. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a bare simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes, or until the figs are very tender. Remove from the heat, but don't drain. Stir in the orange liqueur.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt.

In a bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the eggs and granulated and brown sugars until well combined. Beat in the butter and bread crumbs. Stir in the figs and soaking liquid. Fold in the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the pan. If using a tube pan, cover the top with a double thickness of foil and place a pot lid that will fit snugly on top. If using a steamed pudding mold, close the top.

Place the pan in a roasting pan and pour hot water to come halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake for 2 hours, or until the pudding is firm and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Remove the pan from the water bath and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Run a spatula around the sides and center tube and invert the pudding onto a serving platter. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired. Makes 12 servings.

Turkey Day

Because it is silly and so over the top.

Piece of cake

If only it was that easy...

Plum perfect

It is a plum polenta upside-down cake from Sweet Bar Bakery. It is sweet indeed. Plum perfect.

Coffeecake

The addition of instant Folgers, Nescafe or some such makes this a different kind of coffeecake. It is a recipe for something promising. 

Mocha Loaf
from Donna Egan's "Ice Cream Sandwiches: 65 Recipes for Incredibly Cool Treats"

1 Tbsp. instant coffee powder
1/4 cup boiling water
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 extra-large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
scant 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8 1/2- by 4 1/2- by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan.

Add the coffee powder to the boiling water and stir until dissolved. Let cool. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder, and set aside.

With an electric mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add one-third of the flour mixture, mixing on low speed just until combined. Add half the milk, half the coffee and all of the vanilla extract, mixing until combined. Repeat with the flour, milk and coffee, ending with the last third of the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing and allowing to cool fully. Use as required or store in an airtight container. Makes 10 servings.

Fundamentalists

"I come from a family of cake fundamentalists.

"We are people of the Cake. A baby is born and welcomed with cake; there's cake for anniversaries, cake for graduating high school or college; cake for passing the bar or the CPA exam, cake for winning Second Runner-Up in the Miss Peanut pageant; cake for getting out of prison, cake for visiting kinfolk, cake for Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July; cake when you marry, when you're sick, when you die."

Diane Roberts in "People of the Cake" in the book "Best Food Writing 2010"

Lemon poppyseed

Consider it a bit of sunshine on a Wednesday afternoon.

Sweet chocolate

It is a frog of a chocolate cake. But dang if it doesn't taste pretty good.

Lemon cake

"The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop.

"The house was quiet. The bowl of icing was right there on the counter, ready to go, and cakes are best when just out of the oven, and I really couldn't possibly wait, so I reached to the side of the cake pan, to the least obvious part, and pulled off a small warm spongy chunk of deep gold.

"Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing into my mouth."

Aimee Bender in "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"

Without question

Because in life there should always be cake.

Sweet tarts

"Once inside, there was nothing especially quaint or ye olde about Patisserie Tante Marie: just a few plain tables, a freezer full of homemade ice cream, and a long display case of cakes and tarts. But what cakes and tarts!

"Lumpy golden fruit tarts oozing golden nectar were lined up beside fudge-brown disks floating above clouds of mousse. Sheets of almond sponge barely contained a lava flow of coffee cream. Lemon tarts, the color of butter, almost shivered with fragility."

Michael Krondl, in "Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert"

The Lunar New Year

Because it is the Year of the Dragon 4710. And it promises to be fierce.

An apple (cake) a day

An apple (cake) a day. 'Tis not an altogether bad thought.

Red, white and blue

Because it is the Fourth of July.