One Little Thing: Lemon Yogurt Mini-Bundt Cakes . . . with Limoncello Glaze

What is it about having a miniature cake to call your own?

Nothing so common as a cupcake, mind you, but an accurate-to-scale mini version of a bigger cake. Something about being in possession of such a diminutive gateau seems to confirm what you, hopefully, already knew about yourself. If that dinky cake could speak it would surely remark, "Hey, you must be extraordinary because you merit your very own tiny cake. You are worthy."

It's a positive development that we Americans, somewhere along the way, reached a stage of gustatory evolution wherein we began to appreciate carefully constructed and painstakingly detailed individual dessert items, versus huge layer cakes predictably blanketed in sugary American buttercream. Cakes that are designed to serve a dozen or more people are good, oh sure, and they have their place. But let's face it, they exist to feed the masses. They don't care who you are, particularly.

The mission of a super-sized cake doesn't involve catering to the different tastes of each person in a crowd. On the contrary, everyone gets the same thing. A huge cake lives to serve by being sliced up equally. Take it or leave it. One size fits all. You don't like frosting? Gosh, that's tough. Scrape it off with a plastic fork and don't forget to dump your soggy paper plate in the trash on your way out. Not a pretty scenario.

So when the craving for a sweet possesses you, don't you find it reassuring to have the option of selecting one single-serving dessert--modestly portioned, artfully prepared, and seemingly unique? Of course you do. After all, sometimes all you want is one little thing.

It's all about choice . . .

Which brings me to today's lemon yogurt mini-bundt cakes. Neither complex nor time consuming to make, these baby bundts are delightfully presentable. Ultra moist and very tender, this cake falls on the texture spectrum somewhere between a butter cake and a soft pound cake. You can make these as 12 mini-bundts, or 24 cupcakes. (If you're brave, you can try it as one large bundt, too, but doing that apparently makes this recipe less predictable and more prone to producing a dense/fallen cake, just fyi). You can choose to make the tangy-sweet, limoncello glaze thin enough so that most of it demurely soaks in (as I did), or mix it thicker and slather it on as a flashy embellishment. You're the driver.

See? It's all about choice. I love having choices. I know you do, too.

About the recipes . . .

I adapted the cake and glaze recipes from Baking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America, a volume that's on own my short list of highly admirable cookbooks.

What did I alter? Well, instead of using buttermilk in the cake (the book's recipe is called "Lemon Buttermilk Cake") I substituted Greek style plain yogurt, along with a few tablespoons of milk to smooth it out.

And, there's no limoncello in the CIA formula, but I suspected that it would tag along perfectly with the existing flavors, so I added a smidgen into the cake batter in place of some of the lemon juice, and also used it with lemon juice in the glaze. (A popular Italian liqueur, it's such tasty stuff. If you've never tried it, you might want to get some, but if you prefer not to use it you can always omit it from the recipe entirely and go with all lemon juice. The cakes will still be luscious.) I also reworded, and slightly revised, the instructions.


Lemon Yogurt Mini-Bundt Cakes with Limoncello Glaze

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Liberally coat with baking spray, or thoroughly grease and flour,  pans for 12 mini-bundts, or 24 cupcakes. 

2 and 2/3 cups All-Purpose flour (I used unbleached)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
1 and 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
4 eggs, large
1 cup and 1 Tbsp. plain Greek style yogurt
3 Tbsp. milk (I used 2 percent)
5 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 to 1 cup confectioners' sugar
4 Tbsp. limoncello (lemon flavored liqueur)

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In another small bowl, stir together the yogurt and the milk just until smooth.

In a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and lemon zest for about 5 minutes, until smooth and light. Stop to scrape the bowl periodically.
Add in the eggs one a time, still at medium speed, scraping down the bowl between each addition. Mix well after each egg.
On low speed, add in the flour mixture alternately with the yogurt in three additions. Mix just until incorporated. Increase the speed to medium and mix for 2 minutes more, until the entire mixture is smooth and light.
Add in 3 Tbsp. of the lemon juice and 1 Tbsp. of the limoncello. Blend just until evenly mixed, no more than 30 seconds.
Portion the batter evenly into your pan(s); smooth the top of the batter.

Bake until the center of each cake springs back when pressed lightly with a finger, and a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean. This will be about 15 minutes for mini-bundts or cupcakes (if making minis or cupcakes, don't wait for the exposed part of the cake to look golden brown; golden around the edges is enough).If you've made the cake in mini-bundt pans, let them cool for about 10 minutes before inverting the pans onto a cooling racks to remove the cakes. If you've baked cupcakes, give them no more than about five minutes in their pans before carefully removing to a cooling rack.

To make the glaze, mix the confectioners' sugar, 2 Tbsp. of lemon juice and 3 Tbsp. of limoncello in a small bowl and stir until any lumps are completely gone. If you'd like the glaze thicker, just stir in a bit more confectioners' sugar until it's the texture you prefer.To apply the glaze, place the cooled cake(s) on a cooling rack set over a rimmed baking sheet. Using a spoon, drizzle the glaze liberally over each cake, allowing it to drip down the sides. Let the icing set for about 15 minutes before moving the cakes.If you like, serve each cake topped with a little unsweetened whipped cream and some lemon zest curls. Yummy.

Update from Jane, January 2013: 

Dear readers, 

I have heard from dozens of bakers who've tried this recipe since I first posted it almost three years ago. About half of them love it and got great results, and about half had cakes that were extremely dense and disappointing. Based on reader feedback, it also seems like this recipe is more predictably successful when made in mini-bundt pans, versus one large bundt pan. So, that's something to consider before giving it a whirl.

In light of the inconsistent results, if you still want to try it in one large bundt pan, I am recommending (especially if you don't bake bundts regularly) that you visit this link before you start the recipe: 
How to Bake the Perfect Bundt Cake (http://www.nordicware.com/files/bake-perfect-bundt.pdf)
It contains helpful hints on baking with bundt pans and may help you to achieve success with this formula as one large cake. Nordicware is the original creator of the bundt, and they are the true experts. I trust their advice. 

Thanks very much for visiting and for providing me with honest feedback. It's always appreciated.

Keep on baking!
Jane

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Arrivederci to Winter: Orange Polenta Cake with Sweet Citrus Glaze . . .

Citrus zest in a cake. Olive oil in a cake. Cornmeal in a cake. An accordion in a cake. Okay, maybe not that last one, but all the others? Yes. Today's the day for an orange polenta cake, drizzled with a sweet citrus glaze. Is it Italian? Oh, you betcha. Does the olive oil make it taste strange? Only in the mysteriously delicious sense of the word.

Though pyramids of vibrant winter oranges are still ubiquitous in every grocery store around here, that will soon change. Do you realize we'll set our clocks forward by an hour in just about two weeks? I can hardly believe it, but I welcome spring's approach with open arms. Winter's bloom has faded. Bring on spring. Bring it on, I say!

I'd been wondering lately if the crocuses might already be nudging the soil aside beneath the snow, on the south side of my house. I investigated that possibility this afternoon, and I'm pleased to report that, sure enough, they've made their debut. In Michigan, crocuses are quite the vernal harbinger. They're hopeful little messengers of warmth to come. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite poems, one could say they're "looked for like mail." And I have been looking for them.

Now, about this cake . . .

The plan to whip up a bright, citrusy, polenta-and-olive-oil cake had been simmering on my mental back-burner for a while. Never having tried one before, I perused several recipe versions before settling on this one. It comes from the book Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen, by pastry chef Gina de Palma (Babbo being Mario Batali's famous restaurant in NYC). A slightly simplified, but almost identical, version of the recipe in the book also appears here, in Babbo's website.

This particular cake's lack of heaviness appealed to me. Some of the polenta cake formulas that I'd read through contained not only a generous portion of olive oil, but also butter. One that sticks in my mind (probably because it would also have stuck in my arteries) contained almost four cups of finely ground almonds in the batter in addition to olive oil, almost a pound of butter, and five eggs. Yikes. Alright, if that's what you're in the mood for, but I had no desire to bake a cake with such heft. Cakes like that emit a resounding thunk when placed on the table. No thunking allowed. All thunking is currently prohibited.

My adapted version of the recipe includes no lemon or lime zest in the batter--just orange zest-- and only orange and lemon juice in the glaze. Aside from those small changes, I did a little rewording of the directions here and there.

I want to mention that I used Meyer lemon juice in the glaze. A cross between a regular lemon and a mandarin orange, the Meyer's color is luminous, like a lemon that's blushing. Its juice is distinctly different, too--sweeter, with perhaps more character. Meyer lemons seem to pop up briefly at this time of year, at least in this neck of the woods, and they're not expensive.

Orange Polenta Cake with Sweet Citrus Glaze

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

1 and 1/2 cups, plus 1 Tbsp., unbleached All Purpose flour
3 oranges
3/4 cup instant or fine polenta (I just used regular Quaker brand cornmeal)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
4 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 lemon

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and place a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly grease or spray a 9" springform pan. Dust the pan with flour.

Grate all the the zest from the oranges. Set the zest aside for the cake batter, and set the fruit aside to use in the glaze.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, polenta, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed until they're pale yellow and have tripled in volume (about 3 to 4 minutes). Beat in the reserved orange zest.


Alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the olive oil to the egg mixture. Begin with one third of the dry ingredients, then add half the olive oil. Continue, ending with the dry ingredients. Beat each addition only until it's incorporated. Stop and scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.


Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees halfway through the baking time. The cake is done when it springs back when touched in the center, when the cakes pulls away from the sides of the pan, and when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (Note from Jane -- My cake took at least 35 to 40 minutes to bake. I recommend you cover the top of your cake lightly with foil as soon as it gets golden on top, just in case you need to leave it in the oven much longer!)

Cool the cake in the pan on a rack, for 12 to 15 minutes, then carefully remove the sides of the pan. Let the cake finish cooling completely on a rack.

While the cake is cooling, prepare the glaze. Sift 2 cups of confectioners' sugar into a large bowl. Squeeze at least 2 Tbsp. of juice from the orange, and at least 1 Tbsp. of juice from the lemon into a small bowl. Make sure no seeds remain in the juice; strain it if necessary. Add the juices to the large bowl and mix into the sugar with a spoon or a whisk until completely smooth.


If the glaze is too thick, add more of the juices or a few drops of water. Too thin? Add in a bit more of the sugar.


Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake and allow it to set until it's completely dry. (The sugariness is more subdued, and the citrus flavors are more at the forefront, when the glaze is dry.)


If you want to do so, carefully remove the cake from the bottom of the springform pan and transfer it to a serving plate. Store any leftover cake well covered.


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