Updated: Super Simple One-Bowl Cake

Years ago I posted a recipe for my basic cake, and it's one of the most popular of all my posts. I've been baking a version of this cake for decades, almost half a century actually, soon after we got our first oven. I got the basic idea from a cookbook. Now all my cookbooks have been given away or trashed, so when I need one of my recipes, I check my blog.

This basic cake has morphed into all sorts of cakes. I've even used it as a base for ice cream cake. There was a time I made a lot of marble cakes, and when the kids were little I'd make it very low and later on pour jello to harden on it as a treat. Another version of it had cut up leftover apples baked into it. When the kids couldn't be relied on to finish their apples, I'd collect the leftovers in the fridge. 

In recent years I save mushy bananas in the freezer to be mashed into the cake batter, which also gets a generous dose of chocolate chips. After all these decades I must confess that I eyeball the liquids. The only ingredients I'm really careful about are the relative amounts of flour, sugar, eggs and baking powder. Water and oil are approximated, since I know how the batter should mix. I add enough until I'm satisfied.

I bake about a month's worth of cakes and freeze them. Today six cups of flour made five cakes in loaf/Englishcake pans. 

You may have wondered about the color of the cake. It's not white. I use extra fine 70% whole-wheat flour and dark brown sugar. 

Here's the basic recipe for a small cake copied straight from that original blog post. You can double, triple etc. Just make sure your bowl is large enough. If you're using whole wheat flour, you may need a bit extra liquid. I add an extra egg every three cups of flour. And nowadays I use canola oil, since we never find soy in the local store. And in my modern oven I have to know the temperature, 160 Centigrade.  

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 t baking powder
1/6 cup oil (soy)
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 t vanilla

mix dry ingredients
add oil and water
mix
add eggs
mix
pour in pan
bake medium heat
until pops up when gently pressed in center of cake

Suddenly Cupcakes

Suddenly I got a hankering to make cupcakes. I hadn't made any for decades. In those days I needed a special cupcake tin and little paper things to keep them from sticking. When I "purged," threw things out before the crew came to renovate my kitchen, those old pans were sent off.

Don't worry, I didn't get upset that they're gone when I decided to make cupcakes.  Now it's much easier to make them. You can buy self standing disposable aluminum or paper mini-tins.

Theses disposable baking "tins" are the perfect size for cupcakes and not very expensive. I used the aluminum ones, which have been waiting patiently in the closet for years next to the paper cupcake tins. I placed a bunch on a large baking tray and poured in the cake batter.  

"What batter?" You're probably wondering.

I used my super easy TNT one-bowl cake recipe. I've been making it for almost half a century, and nowadays I barely measure. I added chocolate chips to the batter and decorated them with colored sprinkles. Honestly, you can't get easier than that!

Maybe I'll bring some to THE GAME for the kids and grandkids. Yaala Big Blue!

Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake, Like No Other

The other day I had to replenish my cake* supply. I bake a few cakes and freeze all but one. As usual I did a version of my very simple, basic cake. It really is the easiest cake to bake and very amenable to variations. For the basic recipe, click above on the embedded bold links.

My plan was to use perked coffee I had put in the fridge a few weeks ago for the liquid, but it didn't look usable. I had thought it would go perfectly with chocolate chips. It would be a bit more sophisticated than just the vanilla.

Then I got another idea. I added some instant coffee and some of the morning's leftover coffee grounds from the French Press.

The cake was absolutely delicious. There are three more in the freezer!

*I bake with 70% extra fine ground whole wheat flour and brown sugar. Besides the health value, I think it has more flavor than white flour and white sugar.

Cooking in New Kitchen, B"H

Yesterday, although it's still a mess in my house, I began cooking for Shabbat. I used both ovens, though not simultaneously. Since they are large and have a turbo setting I could even use more than one tray at a time. That's a timesaver for sure. I bought Electrolux which is larger inside than the Sauter.

Some of the cooking/baking was done in bulk so I won't need to do it weekly. Challot and cakes freeze well for sure. I may have enough challah rolls to get me through most of the fall Jewish Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, pre/post Yom Kippur meals, Succot and Simchat Torah, depending on how many guest we have and meals we're invited out. The cakes will be enough for a few weeks, especially if I make my traditional Rosh Hashanah Applesauce Cake. And I already froze some of the baked chicken breasts.

So, yesterday's cooking/baking was truly a time investment, besides learning how to use the new ovens.

For those wondering about oven temperatures, something I never paid attention to with my old oven,* I sort of followed the guidelines on the inside of the oven doors:

To whet your appetite, here are some photos of my cooking/baking experiments from yesterday:

Challah recipe

Simple Basic Cake**, with blended banana and mango rescued from the freezer

These Chicken Breasts were simply layered over sliced onion and topped with tomatoes, dehydrated basil and coarsely grated pepper. I baked them covered with foil. I could see their cooking progress, since I used a pyrex baking pan. (Recipe)

Oven Baked Chicken, the food my kids consider my specialty

Besides enjoying the ovens, I'm super happy to be finally cooking on gas after almost two years of using an old two burner electric "hot plate."

The kitchen is almost completely organized. I think that all of the chametz dishes and pots are stored, but I will need help with the Passover things which will be on higher shelves. More updates, Gd willing, in future posts.

Bottom Line:

Was the expense and chaos of a new kitchen worth it?
YES!

*The numbers had long been rubbed/cleaned off the old oven, so it was like telling time from a sundial. 

**I made a few small changes, cinnamon instead of vanilla, and the blended banana and mango instead of some of the water. That's the beauty of the recipe; it's very adjustable.

"Handmade*" Cake

When I found myself with the grandkids on a Thursday afternoon, I decided to "kill two birds with one stone" and do some of my Shabbat preparations with them. I also loved the idea of baking in my daughter's nice big oven. So we made cakes.

I used my fantastically easy no-fail basic cake recipe to which I added chocolate chips.

The youngest of that crew was very enthusiastic about helping, so I took advantage of the opportunity. We also did some basic math in English, since there are lots of numbers when baking cakes:

"We need 10 half-cups of flour. Two were from the now finished bag of flour, so how many more do we add from the full bag of flour?"

Even though the Second Grade had started barely a week before, she could calculate it all in her head. NO FINGERS!

We made 4 1/2 cakes. And I guessed the temperature correctly. If there's a dial, cakes generally do well when the dial almost points directly down, just slightly cooler. The "display" showed it as 270 degrees centigrade. Then I double-checked by googling on my phone. The numbers on my oven haven't been visible for years.

When the cakes were finished, we served the small one as a treat to all the kids. I just had a couple of "crumbs" to sample. Calories! Even though, rather inexplicably, most of those grandkids aren't noshers, it's hard to resist a cake straight out of the oven.

Once the cakes had cooled sufficiently, I packed up three, leaving my daughter one for Shabbat. The grandkids reported that the visit was fun.

Why is this post titled "Handmade*" Cake? Very simple. My granddaughter had never heard of mixing a cake by hand before. She called it "handmade." My daughter uses a mixer, and I don't. Of course, you can certainly mix the cake batter with an electric mixer, but I haven't had a functioning mixer for decades. It's just another thing to wash after baking, so I'm not interested. This one-bowl cake comes out perfectly fine when mixed by hand.

Baking an Apple-Coffee Cake

For this cake, I used my simple, basic cake recipe. Click here for it. It's the basis of the best of basic simple cakes and as easy to do as a cake mix.

I was feeling pretty stressed out when I started making this cake, or cakes to be more exact, since I used lots of small baking pans to give Mishloach Manot, the Purim food gifts. I had planned on making the cake with chocolate chips, but then I discovered that I hadn't enough, so I began to improvise and granted in a couple of apples. And I found some cold coffee in the fridge waiting for a purpose in life.

And as usual, I used dark brown sugar and whole wheat flour. I didn't measure exactly. My mind was someplace else. Post-fast can do that to you. But considering that I've been making this basic recipe for decades, it really did come out pretty well.

OK, I haven't tasted it, but what could be wrong?

Applesauce Cake for Rosh Hashanah

Unlike most people, I don't go for classic Honey Cake on Rosh Hashanah, or anytime. To be honest I don't find it all that great and considering the price of honey, it's such a waste to bake with it. And as much as I love coffee, I don't see the point in adding it to cake batter of what is supposedly a "sweet cake." My Rosh Hashanah Applesauce Cake has evolved from a Honey Cake with applesauce instead of coffee to a very sweet cinnamon and applesauce treat.

This year I made two rather small cakes, since there wasn't much room in my freezer, and we're not having many guests for Rosh Hashanah. We used to invited people who live far from shul to our quick kiddush between Shacharit and Shofar Blowing, but now the shul has a community one. We still go home, so we can have our traditional coffee and cake and relax a bit. So, I hope that we'll manage on just one of the cakes and leave the other in the freezer.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of dark brown sugar
• very generous shakes of cinnamon
• 3 cups of 70% whole wheat flour, or whatever flour you generally use
• 2 packets of baking powder, or whatever quantity of your baking powder needed for 3 cups of flour
• 5 average Israeli eggs or 3 large American eggs
• most of a can of unsweetened applesauce, don't scrape what doesn't pour easily, close to 2 cups
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 oil

Instructions:

• mix all dry ingredients well
• add all liquid ingredients
• if it's still too dry to mix, then add some more water
• pour into baking pan/pans
• bake until firm to the touch, medium heat, whatever is best in your oven

Yes, this is a very easy and delicious cake to bake. You can also add pieces of fresh apple or raisins or whatever... Please tell me how yours came out, thanks. 

Cooking Up a Storm, Healthy Traditional Jewish Food

I haven't posted recipes for quite a while. Every time I cook it seems like I'm making some new version of old favorites. So, in some ways my food is all the same, but in many ways it's different.

This year's tzimmes has most of the usual ingredients, but is lighter than many:

Tzimmis ingredients, all cut, before adding water, to almost cover.

Relative quantities aren't that important:

• prunes
• raisins
• carrots
• sweet potatoes
• apple
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• fresh ginger root
• dark brown sugar
• water to almost cover

Cook it all on low flame in covered pot until soft. Yes, that's it.

With my very flexible and simple basic cake, I made an Apple-Fig Upsidedown Cake for Rosh Hashanah! Here's the simple one-bowl recipe. 

This is the basis for all sorts of cakes, including chocolate, apple, chocolate chip, etc. It can be multiplied, and I never make it with less than 3 cups of flour. Of course, it can be frozen and iced. I make it with whole wheat cake flour and brown sugar.
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 t baking powder
1/6 cup oil (soy)
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 t vanilla
mix dry ingredients
add oil and water
mix
add eggs
mix
pour in pan
bake medium heat* 
until pops up when gently pressed in center of cake

This time I added cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter instead of vanilla.

On the bottom of the cake pan I put sliced apples and fig "jam." Then I poured on the batter and baked. It was a great success.

I also made Apple Cake with the same batter. I diced up some apple and placed the pieces in the cakepan. Then I poured in the batter and mixed.

They all baked up beautifully. It's very easy! I froze the apple cake and two little ones I made with the batter for later eating.

Cooking does not have to be difficult and stressful. I find that having simple basic recipes that can be varied is the best way to cook and enjoy myself. I can be creative and not get all hysterical and OCD over finding exactly the "right" ingredients. I base my cooking on what I have and what is easily available and reasonably priced. 

*My oven does not have regular temperatures, and I just "know" where the dial should be. For baking a cake I set the dial at just after 5 o'clock, if that helps you.  If the top seems cooked, while the batter is still watery, lower the heat.

The Cakes I Took for Shabbat

We were invited to relatives in Efrat for Shabbat. I asked what to bring, and I was told to bring cakes for the siyyum (the festive completing of a portion of Torah learning) in memory l'ilu'i nishmato, of my mother-in-law's cousin, the father of our hostess.  So, on Thursday morning I rushed down to the local grocery to get some baking supplies.

I saw these blue and white sprinkles, and decided that they would be the prefect addition to one of the cakes. This Shabbat was shabbat mevorchim Rosh Chodes Iyyar, and the 5th day of Iyyar is Yom Ha'atzma'ut, when the color scheme is blue and white.

I made that cake with white flour and white sugar, so the blue and white of the sprinkles would be obvious. I was horrified to see that those pretty sprinkles made the cake batter green, as you can see here.

Luckily, I saved some and then coated, generously sprinkled them on top, hoping that they would end up hiding the green.

I guess it did work, because the final product does not have that green, which davka matches my nail-polish.

Click here for my simple, easy basic cake recipe.

The Chanukah (Tevet) Kosher Cooking Carnival!

Let's start with a better turn down the volume  latke making demonstration:



If you haven't yet seen this, here's your chance.

I've long ago lost track of what number Kosher Cooking Carnival this is, but I do know that we're in Chanukah so it's Tevet.  KCC comes out monthly, according to the Jewish Calendar.  If you'd like to host one, then please contact me.  To submit an article use blog carnival's form or via the instructions on our facebook page.  Next month, Shvat, will be hosted on Frugal and Kosher.  Who can host Adar?  Please let me know, thanks.

The Kosher Cooking Carnival includes all sorts of posts about kosher food and kosher cooking.   It's more than just a collection of recipes.  I include halachik issues about kashrut,  reviews of kosher cookbooks and restaurants, too.  Enough of an introduction, here it is:

special for Chanukah or any time

Yosef presents Onion Bhajis and Cilantro Chutney posted at This American Bite, saying, "A great alternative to potato latkes."

I posted about low-carb latkes, which are worth trying.

desserts

Jay3fer presents Pareve Sugar Cookie Mix for (not exactly) a Year posted at Adventures in BreadLand, saying, "Make ahead and store in your freezer for a quick homemade mix to have cookies in minutes!"

Yosef presents Easy Apple Pie posted at This American Bite.

Mrs. S. presents Ceasefire Pie posted at Our Shiputzim: A Work In Progress, saying, "A recipe for chocolate mousse pie. Thanks for all your hard work!"

any time dishes

I present Simply Delicious posted at me-ander.

Jay3fer presents Happy Easy Tomato Egg-Drop Soup posted at Adventures in Mama-Land, saying, "Mmm... with or without chili flakes/sauce, a great way to warm up a chilly fall evening!"

Here's a new version of my vegetable soup, which I managed to make when I could barely use my arm.

anything kosher!

Leora Wenger presents Bok Choy Red Cabbage Salad - Here in Highland Park posted at Here in HP.

Chaviva Karon presents Grilled Thai Chicken posted at Challah Maidel, saying, "Save yourself from the excess amount of MSG,sodium, and calories by making your own Thai sauce for this simple but delicious grilled Thai chicken recipe."

economical use of left-overs

Yosefa Huber presents Cooking Outside the Box: Southwest Chicken Salad posted at Cooking Outside the Box, saying, "With this technique you can make soup and Shabbat lunch at the same time, or use leftovers in a fun, low-fat way."

Jay3fer presents My Brilliant Friend Rachel’s Brilliant Freezer Burritos posted at Adventures in Mama-Land, saying, "Make from scratch or use leftovers - freeze these for quick delicious HEALTHY lunches!"

Restaurant or Cookbook Reviews

Yosefa Huber presents Cooking Outside the Box: A walk in Tel Aviv, lunch at Armando posted at Cooking Outside the Box, saying, "I review a kosher fish restaurant in Tel Aviv."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of kosher cooking carnival-kcc using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Coffee Chocolate Chip Cake, Rated "Better Than The One We Bought You"

Last Wednesday afternoon-evening, I ended up with "nothing much to do," so I baked cake and challah* and put them straight into the freezer.  We had been expecting guests for Shabbat, three teenage boys including my husband's nephew, so I wanted to treat them to the best we could offer.

I based my cake recipe on my classic, super simple, very easy to make one-bowl "plain" cake.

Here's the basic recipe. Multiply as much as you need. It freezes well.

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 t baking powder
1/6 cup oil (I use soy)
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 t vanilla

mix dry ingredients
add oil and water
mix
add eggs
mix
pour in pan
bake medium heat, every oven is different, until pops up when center of cake is gently pressed
If it seems done on top and loose inside, then lower the heat a bit.

You can ice, sugar or serve plain.

Cake baking is easy!  This time I used the leftover coffee from the percolator as liquid, and I added about a cup of chocolate chips to the recipe tripled, x3.  The flour was 100% whole-wheat and I used dark brown sugar.  It did not "taste healthy." The cake was absolutely delicious.  You can't fool teenage boys.  They had brought a store-bought cake as a "house gift" and preferred mine, whole-wheat flour and all.  After Shabbat I froze the store-bought one and will donate it to a shul kiddush.

*Bli neder, I'll blog about the challah baking later.

Mobbed

Close to forty people crowded into our livingroom/diningroom/kitchen (open "L") to hear our neighbor Rabbi Dov Berkovits this afternoon for our annual Shavuot Shiur (English Torah Class.)   Lots of neighbors came, as did visitors; some were parents of neighbors. 

There was a short program in English last night at a neighbor's home, but I didn't go.  I had been debating between that and the women's classes.  But I didn't go to that either.  I realized that I was too tired and would probably fall asleep.  I was disappointed.  I didn't even drink wine last night, because sometimes the wine knocks me out.

And just in case you're curious.  I served melon and watermelon chunks with toothpicks, my rich, moist banana chocolate chip cake and water.  That's it.

This one was slightly different, since I used juice concentrate instead of some of the sugar and water. And I didn't bother with oil.

• in a small or medium bowl, mash 4 bananas
• add half cup juice syrup
• 2 Tablespoons of vanilla and some cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water, mix liquidy ingredients
• in a larger bowl 4 cups of flour and baking powder according to recommended amount
• 1 cup brown (can be light) sugar and a hand-full of chocolate chips, mix dry ingredients
• add liquid to dry, and mix; if too dry add some water
• add 5-6 eggs and mix
• pour into baking pans and bake medium heat, until pops up when pressed