This is an unusual bread. It is a sweet, enriched, white bread made from a thick batter rather than a dough. It is light and delicate and very rich as it includes a generous amount of butter in addition to the eggs, milk, and sugar. Also, it is typically baked in a tube pan rather than a loaf pan or some other more "standard" bread shape. All of this does make for a interesting and very enjoyable bread though! And, if you have a good stand mixer, then it is very quick to mix up and takes very little attention or active time.

Sally Lunn Bread

Slightly adapted from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

Ingredients

• 490-560g all-purpose flour, divided
• 60g sugar
• 1 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast (or 1/2 Tbsp. instant yeast)
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1/2 c. unsalted butter
• 3 large eggs

Directions

1. Combine ~200g of the flour with the sugar, salt, and yeast.
2. Gently warm the milk, water, and until heated through and butter is soft. (Aim for 40-45°C.)
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. (Or 3-4 minutes by hand.)
4. Mix in the eggs and an additional 140g of flour.
5. Beat on high for another 2 minutes. (Give it somewhat longer if mixing by hand.)
6. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a very thick batter.
7. Cover and let rise at room temperature for ~1 hour.
8. Stir the batter down and beat for 30-60 seconds.
9. Spoon the batter into a well-greased tube pan¹.
10. Cover and set aside to rise at room temperature for ~45 minutes.
11. Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F).
12. Bake at 160°C (325°F) for 40-50 minutes.
13. Transfer to wire rack to cool for 5-10 minutes.
14. Turn loaf out of pan and allow to finish cooling on wire rack.

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¹ I don't have a tube pan, so I used a Bundt pan for my Sally Lunn loaf. I also decided to flour the pan after greasing it. I usually just grease bread pans, but a) I'm not usually baking my bread in a Bundt pan and b) my bread normally involves doughs, not batters. Given that (and the fact that Clayton specifically warns about how fragile this loaf is when warm), I opted for flouring in the hopes that this would help the finished loaf release from the pan more easily. And it did, in fact, unmold beautifully! ^Back

Chocolate Bundt Cake (Sourdough)

I know I've already made a bunch of sourdough chocolate cakes, but I wanted to try this one, so here it is. I'm pretty happy with it overall, but I do find that I can taste the baking soda a bit. That said, I had fed my starter very recently and it wasn't even fully ripened yet let alone reaching the acidity levels of discard, so it's possible that there just wasn't enough acid to react with the soda and that's why it tastes a bit off.

Chocolate Bundt Cake

Slightly adapted from Northwest Sourdough

Ingredients

• 225g sourdough discard
• 1/2 c. oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 c. sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 170g dark chocolate, melted
• 200g soft (plain/standard/cake) flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 1/2 c. boiling water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a Bundt pan.
2. Combine discard/starter, oil, eggs, sugar, and vanilla and mix well.
3. Pour in the melted chocolate and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, soft together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix to combine.
6. Add the boiling water and mix well.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 180°C (350°F) for 30-40 minutes.
8. Let cool in pan for ~10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to finish cooling.
9. Serve with whipped cream and berries.

Honey-Butter Cornbread (Sourdough)

I really like this cornbread. It's amazing when it's fresh out of the oven. And I appreciate that it's actually got a decent amount of cornmeal in it. And not too much sugar. A bit -- I do like my cornbread to be a little sweet -- but it's not excessive. I don't like when it crosses the line into cake territory. So this is just perfect.

My main gripe with the recipe is that it's given by volume. Which is a huge pain to work with. Especially when you're using starter that's not at 100% hydration. Super annoying! I've done my best to convert the critical measurements to grams for easier measuring.

I think my only other complain is just that it makes too much. I love a good cornbread, but it's not really TF's thing. And the Kidlet can only eat so much. This recipe makes a HUGE amount! I think next time I'd try halving it and baking it in a 9" square pan or something. Other than that though, great success!

Honey-Butter Cornbread

Adapted from Northwest Sourdough

Ingredients

Starter

• 100g (100% hydration) starter¹
• 125g hard (strong/bread/high grade) whole wheat flour
• 242mL water

Batter

• 1 c. buttermilk²
• 1/2 c. unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 1/4 c. honey
• 375g cornmeal
• 260g all-purpose flour
• 1/2 Tbsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda

Directions

Starter

1. Combine the 100% hydration starter with the flour and water.
2. Mix well, cover, and let stand at room temperature for 4-8 hours.

Batter

1. Grease a Bundt pan.
2. Add the buttermilk, butter, eggs, and honey to the starter and mix to combine.
3. In a separte bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, salt and sift in the baking powder and baking soda.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir to combine.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and set aside for 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).
7. Bake at 200°C (400°F) for 20 minutes³ then reduce temperature to 160°C (375°F) and continue baking for another 30-40 minutes.
8. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for 10 minutes.
9. Turn out onto wire rack to finish cooling.

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¹ I used recently fed very active starter for this. That said, I think you'd probably also be fine using discard. You're adding more flour and water to adjust the hydration anyway, so that'll refresh it a bit. Maybe not enough to do a proper sourdough where the starter is the only rising agent, but the starter isn't being used for leavning in this recipe (aside from the acid in it reacting with the baking soda, but the buttermilk is also acidic and the yeast isn't really needed to leaven it at all). So, given that, I think discard would probably be fine, I just haven't tested it that way yet. ^Back
2 I didn't have any buttermilk, so I just soured some whole milk with a bit of vinegar: 1 Tbsp. vinegar + enough milk to make a total volume of 1 c. Let stand for a few minutes while you get everything else ready. ^Back
3 The original recipe called for baking at 400°F for the full 50 minutes, but my cornbread was already looking really dark after 30 minutes, so I turned it down to 325°F for the remaining time and that seemed to work well. I think that I'd be inclined to turn the temperature down a bit earlier next time though, but this may mean it needs slightly longer in the oven overall. Use your judgement. ^Back

TF is a big fan of ginger. So this cake seemed like a natural choice as this year's birthday cake. I would've liked to have topped it with some candied ginger, but after visiting two stores and not being able to find any, I gave up and just decided to roll with the cake and glaze, recipe-as-written.

A few slices I packed up to give away.

Gingerbread Bundt Cake

Slightly adapted from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

Cake

• 355g all-purpose flour¹
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 c. unsalted butter
• 2 Tbsp. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 c. sugar
• 4 tsp. grated fresh ginger
• 3/4 c. molasses
• 3/4 c. stout beer

Glaze

• 200g icing (powdered/confectioners') sugar
• 1-2 tsp. ground ginger²
• 3 Tbsp. ginger beer
• 3 Tbsp. chopped candied (crystallized) ginger (optional)

Directions

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 190°C (375°F).
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. Melt butter over medium heat.
4. Add ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and pepper and cook for ~30 seconds. Remove from heat and set aside.
5. Beat eggs with sugar and fresh ginger until light and frothy.
6. Stir in molasses and stout.
7. Stir in butter mixture.
8. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until fully combined.
9. Pour batter into a greased and floured Bundt pan.
10. Bake at 190°C (375°F) for 45-50 minutes.
11. Cool in the pan for ~20 minutes.
12. Invert onto wire rack and let cool.

Glaze

1. Sift together icing sugar and ground ginger.
2. Whisk in ginger beer.
3. Once cake has cooled, pour glaze over.
4. Sprinkle with candied ginger (if using).
5. Let glaze set for ~15 minutes before slicing.
6. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

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¹ Soft (plain/cake/standard) flour should also work for this. ^Back
2 The original recipe called for 1 tsp. of ground ginger and 3 Tbsp. of ginger ale. I used 1 tsp. of ground ginger and 3 Tbsp. of ginger beer. (Ginger beer tends to have a sharper ginger flavour than ginger ale.) TF still felt that the glaze was somewhat lacking in ginger presence so I'll probably up the ground ginger to 2 tsp. next time. ^Back

Apple Cider Cake

This is a good cake. I'm glad I tried it. The apple cider reduction is absolutely delicious. Especially when used as a glaze. (And in the icing.) I'm happy with how it came out.

All that being said... I think I actually prefer the apple cake recipe Deb posted on her Smitten Kitchen blog. Both recipes avoid mixing chunks of apple into the cake batter itself; that way disaster (or at least soggy cake) lies. But I think I prefer the layers of cinnamon-y apple chunks used in Deb's recipe over the grated apples mixed into the batter of the Cook's Illustrated recipe. They're both good. My preference just lies with the other method.

One thing that I would like to try with this recipe is converting it to whole wheat. It's good as is, but I think the flavour and texture of whole wheat would actually complement the apple and hints of cinnamon and allspice quite well. Because of the nature of the recipe and the fact that it gets mixed very little, I think any whole wheat flour would be acceptable. My preference, however, would be for a flour milled from soft white wheat. White wheat has a paler colour and milder flavour than red wheat. I think either red or white, hard or soft could be used here though.

Apple Bundt Cake

Slightly adapted from Cook's Illustrated September/October 2017

Ingredients

• 4 c. apple cider
• 530g all-purpose flour¹
• 1 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground allspice
• 85g icing (powdered/confectioners') sugar
• 1 c. unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 680g Granny Smith apples, peeled and shredded

Directions

1. Bring the cider to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil until reduced to exactly 1 c. (~20 minutes).
2. Grease and flour a bundt pan and preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
3. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and allspice and mix well.
4. Sift icing sugar into a small bowl and set aside.
5. Once cider has finished reducing, add 2 Tbsp. of cider reduction to icing sugar and whisk to form a smooth icing. Cover and set aside.
6. Combine 1/2 c. of cider reduction with melted butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla and whisk until smooth and homogeneous. Reserve the remaining 6 Tbsp. of cider reduction.
7. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.
8. Stir in shredded apples.
9. Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth the top.
10. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 55-65 minutes.
11. Remove from oven and brush top with ~1 Tbsp. of reserved cider reduction. Let rest for 10 minutes.
12. Place a wire rack in a rimmed baking sheet and invert cake onto rack. Remove bundt pan.
13. Brush remaining 5 Tbsp. of cider reduction onto cake. Let rest for 20 minutes.
14. Uncover icing, whisk, and drizzle over cake.
15. Let rest for at least 20 minutes before slicing.

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¹ I think pretty much any flour could be used here. I actually ended up using a mix of all-purpose (medium-hard) and pastry (soft) flour because I ran out of AP. ^Back

Saffron-(Blood) Orange Bundt Cake

This cake was the product of a late-night craving for sweets. As I said to my partners when I made it: I am an adult. In theory this means I am capable of making healthy and responsible choices. In practice this means I am capable of making saffron-blood orange Bundt cake at midnight. Oh, and I used blood oranges because I had a bunch on hand, not because that's what the recipe required. Plus, it sounds even fancier with blood oranges in the name!

Saffron-Orange Bundt Cake

From The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

Cake

• 1/2 tsp. saffron threads, crushed
• 1/8 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1 Tbsp. boiling water
• 3/4 c. buttermilk
• 4 tsp. orange zest
• 2 Tbsp. orange juice
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 c. (425g) all-purpose flour¹
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 18 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 2 c. sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 egg yolk²

Glaze

• 2 c. icing/powdered/confectioners' sugar
• 1 tsp. orange zest
• 2-4 Tbsp. orange juice

Directions

Cake

1. Grease and flour your Bundt pan and place it on a baking sheet.
2. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
3. Combine saffron and turmeric and pour boiling water over them. Set aside for 15 minutes.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.
5. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (~3 minutes).
6. Break in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
7. Beat in egg yolk.
8. Whisk buttermilk, orange zest, orange juice, and vanilla into saffron mixture.
9. Add the flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture in three additions, alternating with the buttermilk mixture in two additions.
10. Stir once or twice by hand to make sure everything is well mixed, then pour into prepared Bundt pan.
11. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 50-55 minutes.
12. Let cool in tin for 10 minutes.
13. Invert onto cooling rack and remove tin.
14. Allow to cool for two hours before glazing.

Glaze

1. Combine icing sugar, orange zest, and 2 Tbsp. of the orange juice.
2. Add additional orange juice 1 tsp. at a time until desired consistency is reached. Glaze should be thick but pourable.
3. Drizzle glaze over cooled cake and allow to set for at least 10 minutes before serving.

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¹ Soft/plain/cake/standard flour should be fine here. But if you are going to swap out the flour, it's probably best to do it by mass rather than volume. ^Back
2 My eggs were on the small side (~55g), so I just put in four whole eggs. ^Back

Tunnel of Fudge Cake

TF was craving something sweet on the weekend, so I baked a cake!

Tunnel of Fudge

Slightly adapted from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

Pan Coating

• 1 Tbsp. cocoa powder (any kind is fine)
• 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Cake

• 1/2 c. boiling water
• 60g semi-sweet or dark chocolate, chopped
• 20 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 3/4 c. packed brown sugar
• 5 large eggs
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla
• 2 c. (280g) all-purpose flour¹
• 2 c. walnut or pecan pieces
• 2 c. icing/confectioners'/powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3/4 c. Dutched cocoa

Glaze

• 3/4 c. heavy (35%) cream
• 1/4 c. corn syrup
• 230g semi-sweet or dark chocolate, chopped²
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Pan Coating

1. Combine the melted butter and cocoa to make a paste and mix well.
2. Grease a Bundt pan by painting the butter-cocoa mixture onto the pan with a pastry brush.
3. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Cake

1. Pour the boiling water over the chocolate and whisk until smooth. Set aside and allow to cool to room temp.
2. Cream the butter with the sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.³
4. Beat in the vanilla.
5. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, icing sugar, salt, and cocoa powder and then add the nuts and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined. Or, if you're lazy like me and trying to avoid dirtying extra bowls, you can do what I did and just sift all the dry ingredients directly into the bowl with the wet and toss the nuts in on top. Then just take the electric mixer to it and mix for 30-60 seconds until everything is combined. (Make sure to get all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. There's a lot of batter here!)
6. Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan.
7. Place a baking sheet under the Bundt pan and place it in the preheated oven.
8. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 45-55 minutes⁴.
9. Allow to cool in tin for 90 minutes.
10. Invert onto wire rack, remove from tin, and allow to cool for another 1-2 hours before adding glaze.

Glaze

1. Heat cream, corn syrup, and cocolate over medium-low, stirring constantly, until melted and smooth.
2. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
3. Allow to cool for 30-40 minutes so that glaze thickens slightly.
4. Drizzle glaze over cooled cake and allow to set for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

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¹ If you don't have AP flour, then swapping it out for soft/cake/standard/plain flour should probably be fine. I'm just not sure how the softer flour with affect the fudge-y centre. If you're worried about how the different flour will affect the crumb and fudge, then you could always mix hard and soft flours together to make an approximation of AP flour. I think 160g hard/bread/high grade/strong flour + 120g soft/cake/standard/plain four should be roughly equivalent to the 280g of AP flour called for in this recipe. ^Back
2 I actually used up the last of my dark and semi-sweet chocolate making the cake, so I had none left for the glaze. I ended up using a mix of unsweetened and milk chocolate to make the glaze and it seems to have worked out quite well. I used 120g unsweetend chocolate and 110g milk chocolate. ^Back
3 The original recipe has you whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a large measuring cup and then pour the egg mixture into the creamed butter-sugar mixture. Use whichever method you find most comfortable. I mostly just wanted to save dirtying the large measuring cup! ^Back
4 ATK say 45 minutes, but I ended up letting mine go for an extra 10. It's possible that it would've been ready to come out after only 45, but it still seemed quite underdone when I checked it. I know this cake is meant to be slightly under-baked by design. But I was worried that the centre would be runny rather than fudge-y without the extra 10 minutes. Use your judgement. I'm sure either way would produce tasty results. ^Back