Monday, June 16, 2014

Attempting to Make Coffee Cake The Modern, Effortless Way

We have a pint box of questionable-looking blueberries sitting in the fridge. Naturally, as any sensible person would do, we don't throw out things that are looking iffy, we throw more ingredients at them and make unhealthy things!
I found this coffee cake recipe in the mixer cookbook (which has previously seen here and here) which is as good a starting point as any.

Blueberry Baking Powder Coffee Cake

1 tbsp. butter
⅔ c. sugar
⅓ c. sour cream
1½ c. flour
½ c. milk
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 pint blueberries

Topping:
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. butter

Heat oven to 350°. Grease a round pan.
For the topping, mix the flour, sugar, and cinnamon, then add the butter.
Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the egg and when thoroughly mixed stir in the sour cream. Then add the salt and baking powder.
Alternately add the flour and milk- add a third of the flour, half of the milk, another third of the flour, the last of the milk, and the rest of the flour. Beat just until mixed after each addition.
Fold in half of the blueberries, then pour into the pan. Scatter the remaining blueberries on top and press them lightly into the batter. Sprinkle the topping on and bake 30-45 minutes.

I haven't bothered making something this simple with an electric mixer before, but I found this among my parents' things:
We got this when I was in high school at the marching band garage sale. I may or may not have kind of forgotten to set it out so I could fish it out of the room we'd held the donations in and say "We forgot to put this out, can I have it?"
Having dug it out of the closet, today we're going to see if, as promised on the inside cover, it really is a breeze to make a cake the modern, effortless way. The Dormeyer Mixer Company's fictitious home economist thinks I will. Check out the reassuring, matronly smile.

Well, who could turn down a recipe from someone like that? So let's have at the modern, effortless recipe!
This is all the butter we're supposed to use.
Right off, I feel like I'm making more effort forcing the tiny butter piece into the beaters than if I'd just done this with a wooden spoon.
Maybe the rest of this'll be really modern and effortless to make up for it.
The rest of making this was fairly uneventful. The egg made it yellow...
The flour made it thick...
The milk (it's powdered because we ran out) made it runny...

And we ended up here after stirring half of the blueberries.
It looked really good in the pan.
The other half of the blueberries went on top of the cake.
Then I made the topping the recipe calls for. I'd like to say that I made it going off of the amounts they gave, and that is some skimpy topping.

The cake really didn't look all that different cooked. I'd hoped the topping would kind of melt and the blueberries would pop and ooze tasty blueberry juice into the cake.
 And now we get to taste it!
And... it was good, but it tasted a little overbeaten. Using a mixer seemed really pointless with this one- it works, but it honestly seemed like more bother than just stirring it together would have been. Next time I'll make divinity or something like that where bringing out the big stand mixer really is justified.

2 comments:

  1. How will it be modern if you don't use a gadget?

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    1. That would be the mixer. The promotional electric mixer cookbook I took it out of has a note at the end: "We are so sure this will be your one favorite cook book, once you have enjoyed the perfect results of mixing and baking this modern effortless way..."

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