For the next year I am doing a project - a different cake each week
for an entire year - following the book All
Cakes Considered: A Year's Worth of Weekly Recipes Tested, Tasted and
Approved by the Staff of NPR's All Things Considered. You can read
about the start of my project here
and look at each week to date here.
The recipe: Miss Saigon Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake
So how many times can I say a cake was way too sweet? I'm really surprised that I haven't been loving these cakes. I have a major sweet tooth. When someone else finds a cake or candy too sweet, 9 times out of 10 I love it. But these cakes have all been over the top sweet.
I'm having a bit of a dilemma. One of the reasons I wanted to do this project is because I always change recipes before I've ever tried them. So I really wanted to bake every cake exactly according to the directions. But is it worth it if they're all turning out too sweet?
I actually made a minor substitution on this one. The recipe called for Saigon cinnamon. I took a half-hearted looked for it in stores and when I couldn't find it, decided to go with regular cinnamon instead. Saigon cinnamon is spicy and we are not a family that loves spice. Plus, I would have hated to bake a cake, pull it out of the oven and then tell Angelo he wasn't allowed to have any.
I did have another little problem with this cake. Usually when I'm making my weekly cake I bake it all by myself so I can really read through the steps and enjoy the process (don't worry, Angelo gets to bake other stuff with me during the week). Not this time. Angelo pulled up his chair to help me and Grace was sitting in her bouncy seat right next to us. So I wasn't totally paying attention when I poured in the vanilla extract. And then remembered it was supposed to be almond extract. This was the very last step and I wasn't about to start the whole thing over. So I just added the almond extract too. Vanilla extra is pretty mild so it couldn't make that big a difference, right?
But it was the streusel layer that was this cake's downfall - too sweet once again. Next recipe with a streusel layer is getting half the sugar.
Recipients: A friend I haven't seen in ages who stopped by for a visit.
Verdict: Okay, but like all the rest, too sweet.
Up next: Dorie Greenspan's Swedish Visiting Cake
The recipe: Miss Saigon Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake
So how many times can I say a cake was way too sweet? I'm really surprised that I haven't been loving these cakes. I have a major sweet tooth. When someone else finds a cake or candy too sweet, 9 times out of 10 I love it. But these cakes have all been over the top sweet.
I'm having a bit of a dilemma. One of the reasons I wanted to do this project is because I always change recipes before I've ever tried them. So I really wanted to bake every cake exactly according to the directions. But is it worth it if they're all turning out too sweet?
I actually made a minor substitution on this one. The recipe called for Saigon cinnamon. I took a half-hearted looked for it in stores and when I couldn't find it, decided to go with regular cinnamon instead. Saigon cinnamon is spicy and we are not a family that loves spice. Plus, I would have hated to bake a cake, pull it out of the oven and then tell Angelo he wasn't allowed to have any.
I did have another little problem with this cake. Usually when I'm making my weekly cake I bake it all by myself so I can really read through the steps and enjoy the process (don't worry, Angelo gets to bake other stuff with me during the week). Not this time. Angelo pulled up his chair to help me and Grace was sitting in her bouncy seat right next to us. So I wasn't totally paying attention when I poured in the vanilla extract. And then remembered it was supposed to be almond extract. This was the very last step and I wasn't about to start the whole thing over. So I just added the almond extract too. Vanilla extra is pretty mild so it couldn't make that big a difference, right?
But it was the streusel layer that was this cake's downfall - too sweet once again. Next recipe with a streusel layer is getting half the sugar.
Recipients: A friend I haven't seen in ages who stopped by for a visit.
Verdict: Okay, but like all the rest, too sweet.
Up next: Dorie Greenspan's Swedish Visiting Cake