Andy Lien

My kingdom metformin weight loss co uk for a Bundt® !

More accurately, my childhood for a Bundt®.

Growing up in the Land of 10,000 Bundt® Cakes, these circular desserts are as familiar as Jell-O.  My mom would make versions that  were chocolate with chocolate chips, yellow with channels of chocolate pudding in them, and–I may be making this up fantasizing– chocolate with metformin hydrochloride 1000 mg channels of caramel.  Oh, Bundt® bliss.  As such, I couldn’t let National Bundt® Cake Week pass by without posting my own adventures with an old classic, thanks to Lunds and Byerly’s Real Food magazine, Winter 2010 (and my friend Regina who sent me the scanned recipe when I couldn’t find my old copy, 10 months later).  This recipe makes a gentle vanilla pound cake that is a little lighter than usual due to the ricotta…and a little brighter than usual due to the orange flavor.  It still has the heft of the pound cake, but also gives way to a elegant cake that stays moist for days.  Please make it.  Please report back.

Orange-Ricotta Pound Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Ingredients

Cake:
3 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
3/4 c (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 c whole-milk ricotta cheese (I used light)
3 eggs
1/4 c orange juice
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 t orange zest

Glaze:
1/2 c orange marmalade (buy the organic…for real, it’s got no high-fructose corn syrup)
2 t water

Directions

First, gather and prepare your materials and ingredients.  I recommend a vintage Bundt® pan, one of the oldies but goodies.  I made this cake in my parents’ kitchen for my father’s birthday, so I was able to use the very pan of my very childhood.  These things have been around for sixty years, I’m sure it’ll be around sixty more.  Never dented, never damaged, never doubted…just make sure you grease and flour it well.  This pan predates Teflon, so you’ve gotta do your due diligence.  With three sticks of butter in the batter, I simply took the butter wrappers and wiped the residual grease all over the pans…keeping my hands clean and my materials to a minimum.  Then, I made a mess while flouring the buttered pan, so take my advice and do it over the sink.

Oh, it's a beaut.

Form and function. Look at that luster.

Plenty of grease to go around. Note the vintage green bowl. Family fixture.

It's like a prophylactic for your hand.

Mind the hole. Keep shaking the pan and tapping it...making sure the flour gets up the sides of both the outer and inner rings.

Eye on the good ol' Washburn-Crosby flour mill, later renamed Gold Medal Flour.

Second, make the cake.

1.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium mixing bowl.  Try to find an old one.  The cake will taste better for your Ode to Old.

2.  Put the softened butter and sugar in a larger bowl.  Cream them together with a mixer on medium for about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

3.  Add the ricotta cheese to the creamed butter and sugar and beat it until smooth.

4.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. (I did them all at once and didn’t scrape until the end and my cake was perfect.  Do what you wanna do.)

5.  Beat in orange juice, vanilla, and orange zest.  It’s going to start smelling delicately delicious.

6.  Turn the mixer down to low and add the flour mixture one cup at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition.  (I added them all at once because I’m impatient and don’t like complicating things for the sake of complicating things.  Now, I’m sure there’s another reason to follow the directions as written, but they weren’t given…so I don’t care.  Do what you wanna do.)

7.  Beat on medium speed for 30 seconds after all of the flour mixture has been incorporated.  This is when you might wonder if it’s looking quite right.  You see, not being much of a baker, I expect cake batter to be runny and glossy.  This cake batter was closer to the consistency of dough…which made me say “Uh-oh.”  If you also have reservations, be sure to compare your results against my photos and rest assured that all will be well.

8.  Pour (or, kind of push) the batter (dough) into the greased and floured pan.  Spread it around so that it’s even on the top.

9.  Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, until it’s golden brown on top and a toothpick stuck into it comes out clean

This is what light and fluffily creamed butter and sugar looks like.

Orange juice and zest. The smell was bright and refreshing.

It looks a tad bit dense. Keep going.

It practically demanded kneading, it was so doughy.

Some of the best-tasting batter I've ever baked into a Bundt®.

Not to be taken lightly, the next-to-last step is getting the stupid thing out of the cake pan, intact.  This is when I usually choke.  For one thing, it’s an irregular shape of a pan.  It’s hard to get your hands around to invert the thing and let gravity remove it from its cozy home.  For another, I never know if the greasing and flouring is going to do the trick and keep it from adhering to the metal.  Call me superstitious, but I never think the tried-and-true techniques are actually going to work.  But, work they do.

1.  Find a wire cooling rack.  I don’t own one, nor do my parents.  So, I used the broiler pan’s wire rack instead.  I’ve also used a paper grocery bag, a flour sack towel, and the serving platter for this step.

2.  After the cake has been removed from the oven, let it sit for about 15 minutes.

3.  Place the rack (or towel, or platter) across the top of the pan and grasp the whole shebang with your hands…then flip it.  Don’t panic.  You might feel the cake fall to the rack, you might feel like you need to shake it or tap it a bit to help it out.  You can even put it on the counter, still together as a “shebang” and thump the cake pan to eject it.  I’m guessing, though, if you greased and floured it correctly, you won’t have to resort to any of those extra measures.

4.  Remove the pan and admire your cake.  It should be gorgeous.  It will taste even better.

Oh, a little golden...a lot good.

Brace yourself.

Stay in denial or take a look-see.

Ah...lurv.

Finally, while the cake is cooling, make the glaze.  This is about the easiest step in the recipe.  So easy, it’s a shame to waste numbers on it.

1.  The recipe says to take out a saucepan and heat the marmalade and water in it on medium-low until it liquefies.  (I say that you should put the marmalade and water in a microwaveable mug and nuke it for 30 seconds.  Do what you wanna do.)

2.  While it’s still hot, either pour the glaze along the ridges of the cake or take a brush and paint it on.  It should seep in nicely while giving it a nice glossy finish, with little bits of orange peel to bite into.  Which you’ll want to do as soon as possible.  Enjoy.

What you don't want in your marmalade. Go organic. (And orange...this was just for demonstrative purposes.)

I chose to brush it on as I wanted to be sure I ended up with a uniformly moistened surface.

That's 89-year old Gramma Ruby watching me finish her baby boy's birthday cake. We both laughed after I almost dumped it on the floor. Slippery little sucker.

We couldn't quite fit 64 candles around the ring. We'd need a bigger Bundt® pan for that. Like, one the size of a tire.