Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Not a TWD: I made a cake, though

This week's recipe was for something called Mrs. Vogel's Scherben. It is essentially fried dough with powdered sugar on top. I am not opposed to frying. I own a deep fryer. I like dough and I like sugar. However, this one didn't appeal to me. I did go to Teanna's blog, Spork or Foon, and saw a lovely photo that made me think I want to try these another day.

I did make a delicious cake, though. I have fairly recently discovered cardamom. It has a sort of herbal, woodsy taste. It's used a lot in Scandinavian baking and Indian cooking. (Thank you Wikipedia!) We had friends over this summer and I made a wonderful cardamom ice cream. I had plenty left over, so when I was trolling blogs, and I found this recipe, I knew I wanted to make it.

The cake was very easy to put together. It has two parts: cake and swirl. I used a whole vanilla bean instead of a half and yogurt in place of the sour cream for the cake. Each component had orange zest and cardamom in it. The swirl ingredients were unchanged. My kitchen smelled amazing while it was baking. I let it "ripen" overnight. (I'm discovering that this is a good trick for most of the cakes I've made lately)

This is an excellent cake.


My swirl didn't end up very swirl-like. It sort of clumped. Truth be told, the cake would be fabulous without it. It's a rich cake with hints of cardamom, citrus, and vanilla. The swirl is a little more crunchy with a very concentrated cardamom taste. The cake is very moist.


I would absolutely make this cake again. I might either play with the swirl or take it out completely.

9 comments:

spike. said...

clump...swirl...it all tastes good. fun cake!

Welcome to our crazy blessed life said...

Yum! I think I would love the swirl in that cake!

Katrina said...

All you missed with TWD is eating way too many little scherben (fried foods!!!) when you kept thinking you didn't really care for them anyway, then eating more. I'm just, you know, guessing that's what you missed! ;)
And the cake looks de-lish.

betty geek said...

I love cake! I would love a slice please.

You were not the only person that didn't make those fried things. Bad for your heart anyway.

Cake is so much better! ;)

Hindy said...

This cake sounds yummy. I recently made a cardmom vanilla bundt and it was great. Now I want to try your recipe.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I think I need more cardamom in my life. The cake! The ice cream! It all sounds delicious.

Teanna said...

Cardamom is a fantastic spice and that cake looks so delicious!

Megan said...

I'm embarrassed to say I've never tried cardamom before. It's one of those things that you say to yourself, one of these days.....

I think you were better off with the cake than the deep fried things, though. It sure looks good.

Judy said...

Your cake sounds delicious, and I need more recipes that use cardamom. The scherben were pretty good, too. Maybe baking them is the way to go.