My daughter wrote this poem when she was eight.

Things are Perfect the Way They Are

Did you know that I don't
have any wishes to put in this
world because the world is
perfect the way it is.

Rainbows have perfect colors
so I think that rainbows are
perfect the way they are.

Houses have perfect shelter
so I think houses are
perfect the way they are.

Blankets are warm and
cozy so I think blankets are
perfect the way they are.

Teddy bears help me go to sleep
so I think teddy bears are
perfect the way they are.

The world is a safe place to
live so I think the world is
perfect the way it is.

You are special the way
you are so you are you
and that is...PERFECT!

© Anna Goodman, (Dec. 2007)

Here's Anna's favorite coffee cake.
It's perfect just the way it is.

Recipe: Yogurt Coffee Cake

Serves: 12

Ingredients

I was paging through one of Dorie Greenspan's older cookbooks, Sweet Times: Simple Desserts for Every Occasion (affiliate link), and saw this coffee cake. The combination of raspberry and almond flavors sounded delicious.

Here's the thing. I'm ready to leave white pepper and chicken liver behind for a bit and pull out the sugar, so I'm starting to work through some of the lessons in Basic Pastry. The first class is all about Les Biscuits (Cakes).

What is Génoise
Génoise (pronounced JenWAHZ) is a delicate, Italian sponge cake named after the city of Genoa, a coastal city in northern Italy.

Light, airy, and subtly sweet, Biscuit de Savoie is a traditional French sponge cake that melts in your mouth with every bite. With a hint of vanilla, this versatile dessert pairs beautifully with chocolate, fruit coulis, or even a classic crème anglaise. It’s also delightful on its own as a mid-morning treat or a satisfying dessert.

Savoy (pronounced Savwa) Cake, or Sponge Cake, dates back to the 18th century and is a simple cake using five pantry ingredients. The only odd ingredient is potato flour, which helps produce a more tender cake. Although similar to a pound cake, it's often baked in a mold that looks like a turban.

After combining the yolks, sugar, and vanilla, fold in the flour. Then, after whipping the egg whites, fold them into the yolk mixture. Bake at 350°F until the center comes out clean. Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve with crème anglaise or fresh whipped cream and berries. Très simple.

I was skeptical about the Cinnamon Squares this week. I love coffee cake and I enjoy chocolate, but I had never considered putting the two together. I've never been a fan of pain au chocolat and prefer my chocolate treats after dinner. However, I've been convinced this week that cinnamon, coffee, and chocolate play well together. To prove the point, I made some of my squares without chocolate and some with. The chocolate ones were perfect and the plain version lacked this extra flavor boost.

I made some unintentional modifications when making this cake. I forgot to put the cinnamon/sugar/espresso powder in the middle so I sprinkled it on top. It would have been much tastier blended into the cake. I also lost track of time and didn't make the frosting.

Recipe: Cinnamon Squares

Makes: 9 servings

Ingredients:

This recipe is brilliant. It combines the best of both worlds by putting chocolate chip cookie dough on top of brownie batter and baking them together. The cookie forms a crust that hides the soft, moist brownie underneath.

Recipe: Chipster-Topped Brownies

Makes: 24 brownies (I made 48 minis and one 8x8 pan.)

Ingredients:

What makes tirami-su?
Tiramisu usually contains lady finger biscuits, mascarpone cheese, a coffee-flavored liqueur, and is dusted with cocoa. My version doesn't contain any of these ingredients. Dorie's riff on tiramisu uses a sponge cake instead of lady finger biscuits. I was forced to do a couple of riffs myself. Since I didn't have mascarpone, I used some long-neglected cream cheese that was soon going to expire. As well, I didn't have the recommended Kahlúa or brandy so I used crème de cacao. Finally, I forgot to put the chopped chocolate in between the layers so I sprinkled it on top which meant my cake wasn't dusted with cocoa. Whatever you call it, it's a treat in the middle of the afternoon guaranteed to pick you up and get you to the 5 o'clock whistle.

Recipe: Tiramisu Cake

Makes: 10 servings (I halved the recipe.)

Ingredients:

I love a good coffee cake, and this blueberry crumb cake doesn't disappoint. First there's the crunch and spice in the topping before hitting the moist crumb of the cake. I decided to bake my "coffee cakes" in little espresso cups. After a quick spritz with cooking spray, I baked them for 25-30 minutes.

On a side note, today marks one year of TWD posts. My first was last March 24th, which was one of my favorites: Caramel-topped Flan. I've learned a lot this past year about baking and community, and I've made many friends through this group. Thanks, Laurie, for starting this amazing baking sensation!

Recipe: Blueberry Crumb Cake

Makes: 8 servings (8x8 pan)


You can find the recipe for Blueberry Crumb Cake in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Sihan from Befuddlement who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
Any cake with extra sugar and spice in each bite is a winner with me.

Recipe for Next Week (March 31)
Coconut Butter Thins on pages 145 chosen by Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch.

Other Crumb Cakes
• Nicole from Baking Bites: New York Crumb Cake
• Peabody from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody: Banana Fosters Crumb Cake
• Rebecca from Ezra Pound Cake: Pear Crumb Cake with Candied Ginger Streusel

While I was baking Wacky cakes as a child, French children were learning to bake this elegant cake! According to Clothilde, from Chocolate & Zucchini, this is the first cake a French child learns to bake. Most of the measuring uses the handy yogurt tub (which is approximately ½ cup), and you can see a rendition of this cake with this type of measuring on Clothilde's blog. Look! I Can Bake!
The first cookbook I owned was called Look! I Can Cook! (affiliate link) I still have it on my shelf. The binding is coming apart and there are some scribbles on the Lemon Meringue Pie page, but the most memorable thing I remember from this book is this quote: I don't know why this stuck in my head, but I've even heard myself telling my children the same thing. I think it's a desperate plea not to be the one left to clean up all the flour and sugar spills that are inevitable after baking with children, and now that I'm a mom I'm glad Angela Burdick included this sage piece of advice.

I decided it was time my children learned to make French Yogurt Cake to complement their Wacky Cake and Chocolate Chip Cookie repertoire. So they each took a turn preparing a part of this recipe. And we tried using the one-yogurt-tub form of measurement too.

Helper #1:
1. Yogurt
2. Eggs
3. Vanilla
4. Whisk

Helper #2:
1. Sugar
2. Lemon zest
3. Blend with fingers

Helper #3:
1. Flour
2. Ground Almonds
3. Pinch of salt
4. Baking Powder

Helper #3 again:
1. Blend everything
2. Oil
3. Blend again
Yogurt
Yogurt is more abundant in France. David Lebovitz did a post in 2005 about the yogurt at his local grocery store. Heck, leave the yogurt out of it…I want one of those beautiful containers. Carol Gillott from Paris Breakfasts painted the yogurt container and uses them to hold water for her watercolors.

Oil

This cake relies on the flavor of the oil. In fact, you should taste the oil before using it in this cake (if only to make sure it hasn't gone rancid).

I tried using both Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (EVO) and vegetable oil. Although the olive oil is fruity and nice to use in cooking, we didn't like it in this cake. Its flavor was too prominent and overshadowed the delicate lemon flavor. We loved the vegetable oil version much better. However, don't let me stop you from trying it yourself. Here's a link to Dorie's version on Serious Eats that uses EVO.

Marmalade
As for the marmalade drizzle, you can read all about my Seville Orange Marmalade in my previous post.

Posters
After a bit of digging, I found an adorable visual to help make this cake.

Recipe: French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Makes: 8 servings (8½ x 4½ inch loaf pan)

Ingredients:

I love a recipe with a story, and this one starts with "You're fired." For creative insubordination. Dorie Greenspan was the apprentice pastry chef at one of the trendiest restaurants in New York City at the time: The Soho Charcuterie. She was bored making the same two desserts over and over every day so she tweaked this cake slightly and sent it out for service. I can only imagine that the owners of Soho Charcuterie (who closed in 1985) now regret their lack of vision and trust in such a star of the food world that Dorie became after leaving their establishment.

The Cake
Dorie's Chocolate Armagnac Cake is a variation on a Chocolate Whiskey Cake known as Le Doris that was created by Simone "Simca" Beck (one of Julia Child's co-authors of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I: 40th Anniversary Edition). The Chocolate Whiskey Cake appeared in Simca's cookbook, Simca's Cuisine, and it was the one served at The Soho Charcuterie.

Prunes for Raisins, Armagnac for Whiskey, Pecans for Almonds
I was curious and decided to make the two versions of the cake to taste side-by-side. To see what the hubbub was about. To taste the cake worthy of firing someone for. So I found the original version of Simone Beck's recipe for Chocolate Whiskey Cake, compared it to Dorie's and basically substituted raisins for prunes and almonds for pecans. I wanted to buy Armagnac, but at $99 CAD for a bottle, I had to settle for cognac. I ended up using cognac in both versions so it's not a true taste test, but it was close enough.

Malcolm Jolley: Why did you get fired?
Dorie Greenspan: Prunes.
— From an interview between Malcolm Jolley and Dorie 

Another food writer, Florence Fabricante, award-winning author for The New York Times has her own version of this cake too. Her changes include increasing the quality and amount of chocolate, using brown sugar, currants instead of raisins, and sometimes almond flour instead of all-purpose flour. She also uses Irish whiskey.

Every baker is a recipe hacker. I, too, use what I have available, leave out what I don't like, adjust the technique, and find a unique way to present it. A recipe is a sweet muse.

Virtual Dorie
I saw Virtual JFK on the weekend, and it made me think about what-if scenarios. What if Dorie had used currants instead of prunes? Would she have been fired? Would she have settled into a career as a pastry chef? Would we have Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) and bake each week through this wonderful cookbook? It's thanks to her tweaks and experimentation that we have so many beloved recipes. Cheers to her creative insubordination.

Recipe: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

Makes: 8 servings (I halved each recipe)

In the photo:
water, cognac & prunes/water, cognac & raisins
pecans, flour & salt/almonds, flour & salt
eggs, water, butter, chocolate, sugar/Glaze ingredients

I'm not sure if this is what David Lebovitz had in mind when he tweeted the following this past week:

"Another new idea for my next book: Desserts that can be eaten right out of the measuring cups" @davidlebovitz

I've been thinking about doing this for a while…baking something in a measuring cup. Why? I'm not sure what purpose it holds, but it works. It might be fun to give as a gift to someone since they can use the measuring cups after enjoying the treats. It could also be part of a cooking-themed kids' birthday party where they can decorate their measuring cup cupcakes and then eat them.

It's also good for portion control, similar to the idea of the S-XL Cake pan mold that lets each person choose the size of their cake slice. But by baking in a measuring cup, no knives are required. No asking what size slice everyone wants. Just pass the forks and make sure you have the same size measuring cup for all your kids or fights will break out.

This recipe is from Bills Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner (affiliate link),a cookbook I haven't used much but know I should since it's filled with wonderful recipes.

Recipe: Blueberry Butter Cake

(I halved the recipe, and it filled 2 ½-cup measuring cups, 2 1/3-cup measuring cups, 2 ¼-cup measuring cups and a partial 1 cup measuring cup.)

You can find the recipe here.

To bake them in stainless steel measuring cups (affiliate link), spray the bottom with cooking spray, line with parchment paper, and spray again. Fill ¾ full. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Tasting Notes
This is a nice, not-too-sweet cake to have for a snack or light dessert. The squish of the blueberry is like a burst of syrup that adds some sweetness to the vanilla-like cake base. Lingering on the coffee cake side of things, this cake would be delicious with other fruits as well. While good on their own, they're likely even better with crème anglaise or vanilla ice cream.

"There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it." — Erma Bombeck

Other Blueberry Butter Cakes
• The Scent of Green Bananas
• Vicious Ange

Other Coffee Cakes
• Sour Cream and Yogurt Cinnamon Coffee Cake
• Streusel Coffee Cake with Cherries

I love fortune cookies. They make me feel like a child hoping I'll get a good fortune that will come true. Each New Year's Eve, I pass around fortune cookies to everyone at the table, and we all read them out to each other, always adding "in bed" at the end and giggling like teenagers. One year, I cracked opened my fortune cookie and it was empty. It turned out to be a tough year! This year, the fortune cookies I bought were dipped in white chocolate and all contained two or three fortunes in each. Before photographing this cake I noticed there was one fortune cookie remaining in the container on the counter from the holidays. And since it was Chinese New Year yesterday, I cracked it open to find four fortunes! I baked this cake in my cast iron pan that I found several years ago at a garage sale where a retired foodie was selling many of his prized cooking items. This was a great buy since I've used it often, but never for something sweet. Now I have a list of treats I want to bake up in my pan.

Recipe: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

Makes: 1 9-inch square pan or 1 10-inch diameter cast iron pan (bake longer if using this size of cast iron pan and check the middle to ensure the cake is done)

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons confectioner's sugar (sifted)